To learn, and yet to learn, whilst life goes by,
So pass the student's days;
And thus be great, and do great things, and die,
And lie embalmed with praise—
My work is but to lose and to forget,
Thus small, despised to be;
All to unlearn—this task before me set;
Unlearn all else but Thee.
—G. TERSTEEGEN,
AT the time when John de Labadie was at Bordeaux, slowly making up his mind to the great step of leaving the Jesuits for ever, a young girl at the Hague was studying Greek and reading philosophy.
She was unsatisfied and unhappy; she needed she knew not what—something to make her forget the many sorrows of her life, or to make her endure them as she desired to do, bravely and calmly. Perhaps there were few who knew that this lively girl, with her merry talk, was sad and hungry at heart. Yet she had had trouble enough to cloud her life, and little to comfort her.
She was the eldest daughter of the unhappy Frederick V., the "winter king" of Bohemia. Her father had died of a broken heart, crushed by the ruin and the disgrace of his country and his house. Elizabeth lived at her mother's Court at the Hague, the eldest of three handsome sisters. Her youngest sister, Sophia, and her young brothers were brought up at Leyden by tutors and governesses.
"Our mother," said the Princess Sophia, "preferred the sight of her monkeys and dogs to that of her children." The queen was also fond of horses and of hunting, and spent a part of the year for this reason at a country house at Rhenen ; but when at the Hague, in spite of her many misfortunes, her Court was gay and lively.
Elizabeth was not her mother's favourite. She was fond of her artist daughter Louise, and of her beautiful Henriette, who had, so says Sophia, fair flaxen hair, a complexion of lilies and roses, soft eyes, a pretty mouth, and great talents for needlework and the making of preserves.
Louise and Henriette considered Elizabeth a bookworm, and dreamy. She was the subject of many jokes. Her mother's coldness and her sisters' mockery drove her the more to the solitude of her room, where she read and thought, and became more and more sad and bewildered, as she tried to understand the hard problem of life the present sorrows and troubles, and the great misty future.
She thought also of the mournful times that were past. She could remember how her father and mother had been driven away from their beautiful castle of Heidelberg, when she was too young to understand the meaning of the wars and tumults around her. It was in the first year of the terrible Thirty Years' War that she was born in that princely castle ; and she had faint, dreamy recollections of it, and of the old town below, and the wide, sunny valley of the Neckar.
Then she remembered her wandering life, with her good grandmother, the Electress Dowager Juliane, who had taken charge of her when only two years old, and later on of her brother Charles, and her baby brother Maurice, whilst father and mother, and other brothers and sisters, were flying before their enemies from place to place, at last settling down at the Hague.
Also she remembered the early lessons in the Bible, and in the Heidelberg catechism, given her by the pious grandmother. And then her return to her parents at the 'Hague when she was eight years old, and how she felt herself a stranger in her own home, and shy and lonely, because she was laughed at for her demure ways—" So like her grandmother," they said.
Then came the life at Leyden, before she was old enough to take the place of the dogs and monkeys in her mother's esteem. And she remembered with a shudder the old, stern governess at Leyden, with her two prim and proper daughters, who taught the little girls some dreary lessons, and saw that they did not forget the Heidelberg catechism.
Then there was a gleam of sunshine to remember, her handsome, clever; affectionate brother Henry, just a year older than herself, with whom she read and played, and for whose sake she wished to learn Latin and Greek, and all that the boys had to learn. And afterwards there was the terrible day, from which time she had been all alone in her innermost heart—the day when the news came that Henry had been drowned in the dark night on Haarlem Meer.
She could remember too the sad time when the news came from Maintz of her father's death, four years later. She knew that he had died of a broken heart, talking in his wanderings about Henry and Haarlem Meer, and about the little children he had left at Leyden.
Then came a time, when at fifteen years old, she had to consider whether she would marry the king of Poland, who had heard much of this remarkable princess, and wished to have a wife so learned and clever. But to marry him she must become a Roman Catholic, and Elizabeth was a staunch Protestant. She had not learnt the Heidelberg catechism in vain.
So for three years there were treaties and discussions, and embassies and entreaties on the part of the king, and a very fixed purpose on the part of Elizabeth. No, she would never be aught else than a member of the Reformed Calvinistic Church of the Netherlands.
And when all was settled, and the king found another wife, Elizabeth buried herself amongst her Latin and Greek books, and, moreover, found at last a kindred spirit, a friend whom she loved and reverenced.
And she determined that she would never again think of marriage, but become as nearly as possible like this ideal friend, Anna von Schurmann, eleven years older than herself, and the most learned woman in Europe.
Anna von Schurmann, "the tenth muse," as she was called in those days, the greatest linguist of her times, or of all past time ; the renowned mathematician, scientist, artist, musician, engraver, singer, wood carver —what might she not be called ?
Anna lived at 'Utrecht with her widowed mother, and her brothers. She was a pupil of Dr. Voet, who taught her Semitic languages and theology. That one small head should carry all she knew, seems to us incredible.
She wrote fluently and correctly in the purest Latin, Greek, French, and Hebrew. She was well versed in Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, English, and Italian. She studied philosophy as a recreation, and was expert in embroidery, as well as in painting and carving.
Moreover, she missed no sermons or services conducted by Dr. Voet. She was a devout Precisian, as were her parents before her.
It was on the death of her father, who lived at Cologne, whither his father had fled to take refuge from the persecutions of Alva, that she had returned with her mother to the Netherlands ; and it was at the age of fifteen that she had begun her course of study under Dr. Voet.
There can be no doubt that Anna von Schurmann was not only, like Elizabeth, a devoted member of the Reformed Calvinistic Church, but also that she was a true-hearted believer in Jesus.
She sometimes told the story of the great turning-point in her life, a story which may encourage those who have the charge of children to bring them early to Christ.
She said that once, when she was four years old, she was sitting with her nurse by a brook, to learn the Heidelberg catechism. Her nurse made her repeat the answer to the first question : " I am not my own, but I belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ."
In saying these words, her heart was filled with a sweet and sudden joy, and with a love to Christ that flowed forth from her innermost soul. " Thus," she said, "did God first awaken and touch me ;" and from that day Anna's heart burned within her when she read the words of Christ, and stories of the martyrs who had died for Him.
A good confession in truth for all who believe, yet scarcely one to be put into the mouth of any child. lint, as in the case of Anna, we see that God answers to the faith of those who, in however unenlightened a manner, sincerely desire to bring little ones to the Saviour who loves them.
Many such stories were told in the household of Frederick von Schurmann, for both the grandfathers of Anna had been exiles for the truth, and many dear to them had suffered torture and death during the eighty years of the Spanish persecution in the Netherlands.
Thus Anna grew up as a loving child in the household of God, but it would be saying too much to declare that she was unspoilt and unchilled by her mass of learning, and the fame and admiration which she had gained.
It was a dangerous honour that learned men from distant places thronged to Utrecht to see her, that her books went rapidly through numerous editions, that the Queen of Poland and the Queen of Sweden went to visit her, and felt themselves honoured by her friendship.
It has to be admitted that Anna became lukewarm and self-satisfied, but she never ceased to study the Bible, and to listen humbly to her beloved teacher, Dr. Voet. It is a proof of the life of God in the soul of Dr. Voet, that his devoted pupil never left the narrow path in her years of worldly honour, though she walked in it slowly, carrying the great burden of human learning and human praise.
Anna and Elizabeth became fast friends. Next to Anna, Elizabeth was regarded as the great wonder of the age amongst the learned women of the world, " She knew every language and every science under the sun," says her sister Sophia.
" She had," Sophia tells us further, " black hair, a dazzling complexion, brown, sparkling eyes, a well-shaped forehead, beautiful cherry lips, and a sharp aquiline nose, which was rather apt to turn red. At such times she hid herself from the world. I remember that my sister, Princess Louise, asked her on one such unlucky occasion to come upstairs to the queen, as it was the usual hour for visiting her. Princess Elizabeth replied, ' Would you have me go with this nose ?' The other answered, ' Will you wait till you get another ?'"