PEACE ! O restless heart of mine ;
Thou, the Still, the Blest,
Lead me to Thy Courts divine,
Thine untroubled rest.
Tossed upon the raving sea,
Still, fair land, I long for thee.
Lord, from Thee I went astray,
Lured by magic song ;
Through dim places far away
I have wandered long—
Now when lost are moon and star
Shines the light of Home afar.
O'er the waves that cannot rest,
O'er the drifting foam,
Wandering dove without a nest,
Weary-winged, I come.
From the lonely wastes of sin,
Blessed Noah, take me in.
Take me in, my heart implores,
Leaving far behind
All the thunder of the shores,
All the wailing wind ;
In the chambers of Thy rest,
Fold me, hush me, on Thy breast.
~~~
Still and sweet the silence deep,
Where no foot hath trod ; Softer than an infant's sleep
Rest alone with God ;
Closed on me Thy palace door,
Perfect peace for evermore.
—G. TERSTEEGEN.
LET us try to realize the life in that little room at Mülheim. Gerhardt alone, with his regular monotonous work, a book open on his loom ; books on his shelves and his table; paper and ink, for he already wrote some of the hymns now known and loved so well. He wrote letters in a neat, clear hand, some of which, carefully preserved, are now in my possession.
But his books ? At that time they were perhaps but a small collection, yet a strange and bewildering medley. Passing over the Bible, the Heidelberg Catechism, and various hymn books, we find the Aurora of Jacob Behmen, and the History of Heretics, by Gottfried Arnold, and the Letters of Antoinette Bourignon, and the " Philadelphian " writings of Mrs. Jane Leade, and the Visions of Dr. Pordage, and the Torrents of Madame Guyon, and the Lives of S. Teresa, and S. Francis, and The Discovery of the Brotherhood of the Honourable Order of the Holy Cross, and the Sermons of Dr. Tauler, and the Book of the Eternal Wisdom, by Henry Suso, and the Divine Economy of Peter Poiret.
We cannot count them all, nor would it be possible to give an idea of the variety of their contents. Let us open that old book of Behmen's. "I saw and knew," we read, "the Being of all beings, the Byss and the Abyss, the origin and primal state of this world, and of all creatures through the Divine Wisdom. I knew and saw in myself all the three worlds: i.e., (1) the divine angelic or paradisiacal world ; then (2) the dark world, as the original of nature, as to the fire ; and (3) this external visible world, as a creation and outbirth, or as a substance spoken forth out of the two inner spiritual worlds."
And here are Gottfried Arnold's books. Gottfried Arnold, good and devoted man, but how often mistaking the wild enthusiasms of the natural heart for the deep and divine work of the Spirit of God. If he could stir up the soul of Gerhardt Tersteegen, he could also ensnare and mislead him. For one so impressionable, so hungry for love and for rest, many a strange, sweet voice might sound as the voice of the Shepherd, and lead him on into dark and perilous places, where the path was lost.
And here are the visions of Antoinette Bourignon. Could they lead him back to a true knowledge of the mind of God ? They had a charm for him, for Mistress Antoinette Bourignon was an earnest believer, a mystic, and a persecuted woman. But her Romanist education, and her faith in the workings of her own mind, had beclouded her faith in God. Her many writings were not the food which could nourish and strengthen his soul ; and her dreams and "inspirations" had far too much fascination for one who was so ignorantly searching for communion with God, and so liable to confound it with human imagination.
And Mrs. Jane Leade, who was she ? It is strange that, though little known in her native land, her influence amongst German Pietists can hardly, writes Goebel, be over-estimated. Mrs. Jane Leade was a widow of Norwich, who launched forth into the daring career of a prophetess. Had her errors been unmixed with truth, her revelation might have been less dangerous.
" The Protestant churches," said Mrs. Leade, taking up the thought already given forth by a disciple of Speller's, Frau Petersen, "are the Sardis of Revelations—dead, yet with a name to live. Laodicea is yet to come. Meanwhile, let all the awakened betake themselves to the mighty work of raising up Philadelphia."
And thus, by Mrs. Leade, her friend Dr. Pordage (an ex-clergyman of the Church of England), and a third disciple of Jacob Behmen, named Bromley, was the first "Philadelphian Society" founded in London, in the year 1695.
Other Philadelphian societies, also founded for the most part by wild and visionary women, arose speedily in Holland and in Germany. This strange movement, forming what is called the Philadelphian Period in the history of German Pietism, may be said to have lasted till the middle of the eighteenth century.
Frau Petersen, Mrs. Jane Leade, and others of this wild sisterhood, were of one mind in teaching the final restoration of lost souls, and of the devil and his angels. Amongst these " wandering stars " were some whose lives of utter depravity and wickedness, whose blasphemies and profanities, will not bear recording. But, strange to say, the truly Christian Countess Hedwig Sophie is to be found amongst those who formed Philadelphian societies ; and her devoted and excellent son, Count Casimir, read and valued the dreams of Mrs. Jane Leade.
May we give our hearts and minds into the keeping of Him who alone can keep them. The histories of these past delusions have a warning voice for all of us.
Let us return to the bookshelves of Tersteegen. Here are Pietist hymn books and books of devotion. And here are books of alchemy and ancient herbals, and the writings of Paracelsus, of Albertus Magnus, and Raymond Luny. And here are Labadie's hymns, and his Manual of Piety, and Spener's Pia Desideria, and the lives of S. Gertrude and S. Mechthild, and the Spiritual Guide of Molinos, and the autobiography of S. Catherine of Genoa. Old books borrowed from convent libraries, and from good old Precisian neighbours, and from the "Inspired," and from Mennonites and Quakers. French and Latin books, as well as Dutch and German, and some few in Greek and Hebrew. But it is well to note that the book which bears the traces of most constant reading is the well-worn, well-marked Bible.
After this review of the library of the strange, dreamy boy, we need not wonder at the next phase in his singular history.
"For five long years," he says (beginning apparently with the end of that year 1719), " the sense of God's grace was withdrawn from me."
Five years of darkness, trial, and temptation. He was often ill, sometimes lying in bed or on the floor for ten or twelve weeks. The people in whose house he lodged seem to have been aware of his frequent illness ; and he often longed that one of their maids, who had plenty of leisure time, might be sent up to him with a drink of water. But they passed and repassed his door, and none came in except at the stated time when his food was brought to him, and sometimes even forgot him altogether till the afternoon.
When his mother died, his brothers and sisters, who regarded him as a simpleton, and felt much ashamed of him, divided the property without referring to him in any way. As they were necessarily obliged to give him a share, they gave him only a house ; for," they said, "if he has money he will give it away at once." They were right as to this. He persuaded his brother John to give him the value of the house in money, paid in several instalments, most of which he gave to the poor. The anger of the remaining brothers and sisters knew no bounds ; and it was thus that during his long illness none enquired after him.
His illnesses seem to have arisen from suppressed gout, causing palpitation, violent headaches, and fainting fits, with occasional fever and cough. But the five years of darkness of which he speaks were in no way connected with his health. He was ill, perhaps, more frequently in later years.
"I read eagerly," he said, "the books of Jacob Behmen, lent to me by a Lutheran pastor. I cannot say I understood them, but I read them till I was filled with strange fears and bewilderment. I prayed earnestly for light and knowledge. Sometimes I put the books away. Sometimes I could not resist reading them again. The doubts and disturbance remained, and were like a wall built up across my path. At last I took the books back to their owner, and it was like a weight lifted off my heart."
The prophecies of Mrs. Leade and the visions of Dr. Pordage were not likely to dispel the mists raised by Jacob Behmen. Gerhardt read on, and became yet more miserable.
He found as he read, and as by degrees he knew more of professing Christians, that the sects and divisions amongst them were endless and hopeless.
He found also that some whom he had loved and reverenced proved to be utterly regardless of the morality which even the respectable of the world possessed. Strange tales from the woods of Wittgenstein must often have reached him ; and at times the wickedness of the " awakened " equalled the heathen wickedness of courts and palaces, and the "Christian" wickedness of Jesuits and monks.
Had Gerhardt been living in the early morning of Pietism, when thousands were turning simply to Christ, when the name of Jesus, as the historian of the Pietists expresses it, was disinterred from the ruins and the rubbish of theological controversies, there would have been rest for him in those green pastures of the flock of God.
But if impiety is hurtful, distortions and caricatures of piety are much more so. And the strange outgrowths of the first simple Pietism were standing as beacons on every hand. They were related to Pietism, it is true, as Mormonites and Jezreelites, and image and saint worshippers are to Christianity. But it was as natural that the orthodox of the Established Churches should judge of Pietism by its mad and immoral offshoots, as that the heathen should judge of Christianity by the worshippers of S. Peter's skull, or the followers of Joe Smith.
And, on the other hand, the " unawakened," with their dry theology, their hatred to life and warmth and devotedness, their self-righteous morality, their pride of orthodoxy, their name to live while yet they were dead—was it to them he could turn from the wild confusion of sects, and Philadelphian societies, and " inspired prophets and prophetesses, and from the dreams of theosophists and alchemists and stargazers ?
And the new philosophers of "enlightenment," who were rejoicing in the discovery of something more reasonable and more creditable to the human understanding than Christian faith, or who were fitting all that they did not despise in Christianity into the dissected map of human thought and wisdom —could such as they guide him through the dark paths into which he had wandered ?
On the contrary, he would feel at times the horror of the thick darkness, when the thought seized him, " Could it be that after all there was no God, no love, no truth to be found or known by men ?" He stood alone in the great universe, without a guide or a compass. Was it true that the Church—Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist—was but one great Babylon ?
Equally true did it seem to him that the sects and the separatists, each following his own reasonings and dreams, were the Babel of confusion.
And the world without, those who made no profession of Christian faith, what was it but a cold region of ice and mist, or a slough of nameless abominations ?
It may be that Gerhardt, like the prophet Elijah in olden times, was living in ignorance of the existence of many godly men and women around him. He was not likely to know much of his neighbours, living as he did all alone in his little room.