"Ora et labora," writes Dr Wichern, in one of
his pleasant papers, " is carved in a peasant's house in the Vierland. 'It
must be French,' said a neighbour's wife, as I stood looking at the
legend; ' but it just means:—
Pray with one hand, work with t' other, God will bless
them both together!'
The translation made up for any deficiency in language,
and presently she ran in to praise the good old time when people believed
in ora et labora." The honest woman was right; such faith belongs
to a good old time, the time of St Paul and St John. The much-decried
Middle Ages knew something about it. But the world has long since lost
sight of it in any public way, save in a pretty motto. To work is honest
enough; nay, work has been exalted into a kind of deity in our day, and a
kind of service has been promulgated for the worship. But prayer over and
above the work is treated as a courteous superfluity. Let the work be done
manfully, to the best of your ability, it is preached; let it be even
blundering, provided it be sincere; but prayer is somewhat a waste of
energy, and cannot really mend what is good already. The tendency of our
time has been to exalt the lower and visible agencies, to depreciate the
higher and spiritual. The height to which mechanical skill has been
carried, and the aid which science has been made to render it, until
itself has become mechanical, have bred in men a contempt for any work
which is not mechanical. Not many years ago a clever writer suggested that
the time was coming when grave, common-sense Englishmen would fall down
before the spindle and the steam-engine. And may there not be something of
that idolatry traceable in the national review of itself, in the thorough
quiet materialism in which it ends J Is there not more than ever the
disposition to throw over upon praying men, who believe in an invisible
power, and skill, and law, and presence, the charge of folly, enthusiasm,
fanaticism? Is there not the notion that the world is only what the world
sees itself to be, and that if you take other than worldly forces you will
come to no result? Praying men may not always have been judicious; there
may be some plausible foundation for separating the worker from the
prayer; foolish things may have been attempted by well-meaning but unwise
people. Let the world have the credit of this admission. It does not touch
the power and reality of prayer, as a force of which, though the world
knows nothing, yet it establishes greater than the world's works. The man
who prays best will be the man who works best. The man who prays that he
may do a work for which he has no possible aptitude or fitness, is praying
against the laws of prayer. If, on the one hand, it may be said, not in
Carlyle's but the Christian sense, that, true work is prayer ; so, on the
other, it may be said that true prayer is work. They run into each other,
not as things arbitrarily joined, but as different aspects of the same
man. And it so happens, that in our own generation, there is a singular
group of men, who, somewhat about the same time, and without the least
knowledge of one another, and in very different spheres, took for their
watchword that French puzzle of the honest Vierlander, and over whose
lives might be written as their clearest exponents, ora et labora.
They are men who maintain that God exercises some direct influence in the
affairs of the world; who therefore appeal to Him in any puzzle or
difficulty; who expect His help, and as they believe that He has the
hearts of all men in His hand, do not know any special circle or class of
men, or any special type of actions, within which that help must be
limited. They distinctly believe in God as their Father, and never care to
realise Him either as a pure infinite Intelligence, or as an Eternal Law.
They believe, also, that prayer is not an arbitrary provision for
temporary circumstances, but that it is fixed in the ways of God, and in
harmony with the settled relations of the world and the laws of human
conduct. And they believe that if in God's name they begin a fitting work,
God will establish it; answer their prayers regarding it; enable them to
deal wisely, and righteously, and prosperously by it; and that behind
every other means to its success, and as the very highest means, and often
supplanting the other, there in prayer itself. Each of them has done
something very remarkable in its way, quite independent of the mode of
operation. It may be interesting to trace these several works, ascending
to the principle asserted by their working. It will be necessary in doing
so to dwell at some length upon the character and history of the workers
themselves. If they are right, they read a very earnest lesson to our
times and to ourselves.
Any time within the last few years strangers who
visited Berlin may perhaps have met in Potsdam Street, and especially if
they ever took an early ramble out through the Potsdam Gate, an old and
venerable clergyman, walking with a firm and sometimes rapid step, with
unbent shoulders, towering, like Saul, above the crowd, a few white hairs
straying from under his broad-brimmed hat,—a man of so unusual and
commanding a presence as to be easily remembered. There was a peculiar
blending in his face of a loving, gracious kindliness with the deep-scored
lines of a strong, resolute will. One or two might doff their caps to him;
the children might whisper, "There goes the old father;" but beyond this
natural respect to his years, there was nothing to betray that he was of
more note than his simple seeming. His name did not appear among the
ministers of the town; it was seldom spoken in the circle in which
strangers moved; those who pricked out their Sunday's round in the
service-list and went over the preachers, fashionable or famous or only
good, never saw him in the pulpit. On the 30th of last March he died. The
Bethlehem Church could not contain the mourners. A blow was felt to have
fallen on the city. The sorrow penetrated the palace. Divines and
statesmen met at his tomb. The courtliest preacher and the most popular
dropped common wreaths of fairest words upon his coffin;—a member of the
cabinet wrote a long oration on his death. Who was he? What had he done?
John Evangelist Gossner was born of Roman Catholic
parents in Hausea, a little village of Bavaria, 14th December 1773. When
very young he was sent to the Jesuit school at Augsburg, and then prepared
to enter the university of Dillengen. Sailer, Zimmer, Weber, and other
well-known men were among the professors, and under them it had become a
place of note for learning, and, what was much rarer, for piety. A strong
personal love of the Saviour bound many members of the Bavarian Roman
Catholic Church together. They did not seek emancipation from former
systems; they did not enter upon grievances, nor contend so much for
principles. They sought rather an individual communion with God, a life in
the soul which would vivify the form— the enjoyment of realising the grace
of Christ rather than to clear and rearrange the doctrines of the faith.
This tendency towards mysticism was met by other similar tendencies of the
period, penetrated metaphysics and science as well as religion, opened up
views of the truth wider than ecclesiastical tradition permitted, and led
men to disregard the limits of the Church in their interest and sympathy
for the soul. It was not at all dogmatic; it did not enter into conflict
with systematic theology. It took for granted most of what had been;
sought to discover the hidden and forgotten truth in it. It radiated from
personal influence, from the piety that made itself unconsciously felt,
and that, quite as unconsciously, led to the setting up of the godly heart
above the formal rule of faith. Dillengen was notorious for it. Sailer,
though without much foundation, was regarded as its representative; Martin
Boos had passed through the university ten years before, and had already
gone beyond Sailer. The Jesuits warned their pupil of the dangerous
doctrines. They said that Dillengen was a place where young people would
lose their religion. Young-people however went, until in 1795 the Jesuits
banished the leaders; and with the rest went young Gossner. He appears to
have remained there till 1793, and to have entered afterwards the Georgian
College at Ingolstadt, where he studied canon law. He was ordained a
presbyter in 1796, and the year after commenced his active duties as
curate in a country village. It was here, a few months later, that he was
made "to see and to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ; to confess it in
his heart as the power and wisdom of God."
But the ground had been long prepared in which the good
seed took such thorough root. One day, at Augsburg, a school-fellow said
to him, "I have a book in which the name of Jesus stands on every page."
"And I," replied Gossner, "have a book in my hand in which the name of
Jesus is never mentioned. Shall we exchange?" The offer was accepted, and
he obtained Lavater's "Letters to a Young Man on his Travels." There is
something singularly prophetic in the young lad with his love of poetry
and story leaving his cherished folkslore and romance for a book
which had Jesus on every page. It is the only light that is thrown, during
that time or long after, on the thoughts that were stirring within him. It
must be taken for what it is worth. At any rate, there was some movement
and far below the surface; and when his teacher was proud of his learning
in Scotus and Aquinas, he was weighing the letters of a Swiss heretic. The
key of faith on which Lavater's life was set seems to have stirred a
slumbering chord in Goss-ner's. But they stood wide apart. That which the
one had almost as a passion, so deep-rooted that it might be called
innate, the other came to by a tedious process and discipline. But the
"Letters" had done their work. His respect for Lavater shewed how truly
the book had met him. We may differ from the man who helps us, but we
cannot help loving him; the words that lighten us over a dark and lonely
passage of our life may sink in our later judgment, but we honour them and
bless the pen that wrote them. Gossner was very unlike Lavater, yet in
later days when it became the fashion among the younger generation to
despise him, Gossner's voice was loud in his honour and defence. Whatever
earnestness was thus excited about Jesus in the academy was not likely to
pass away in the university. Unfortunately both the studies and the men
there were such as would give it a wrong direction. The ethics of the
schoolmen do not satisfy the thirst for a personal salvation, and the
science of morals in a Roman Catholic college is not encouraging to a
humble and mistrustful soul. Sailer and Zimmer were very excellent people,
very thorough and enthusiastic professors, for beautiful character and an
uncommon piety and love-ableness; but dogmatically or scientifically they
were merely strong moralists, engaged with religion while they touched
little on the central Lamb of God—the omnipotence of sacrifice, the
impotence of works. Holy living, works of righteousness, the human
striving to be like the divine, these were their great points; and though
the evil seemed partly carried off by their own humility and love of
Jesus, it was really only driven deeper,for these made it amiable and
seductive to their scholars. Not long after a poor girl said to Sailer,
"You have been baptized with water as of John, but you have not the
baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire as of Jesus;" and he confessed
that it was partly true. Gossner left him with a strong personal
affection, with a zeal for God, with a clear sense of the divine beauty of
the truth, but, as one of his friends described it, knowing nothing of the
power of Christianity, nothing of the Crucified, nothing of faith no more
than if it had been a strange country, holding fast only by morality. He
studied dogmatics two years, read hard, was greatly praised, formed an
impregnable system but only to test its weakness, and then in dismay
forsook systematic for pastoral theology. In pursuit of this he went to
Ingoletadt. He was restless, in search of something undefined even to
himself, oppressed with a vague pain and misgiving. He began a diary,
which was found among his papers with the motto, Noli me tangere.
It is much occupied with sermons by a certain Professor Niedermayr,
sermons which produced a marked impression on his mind. He preached twice
himself, to his great dissatisfaction it appeared. He plunged into the
literature of the time. The great epochal change of the Revolution was
making itself felt; minds were moved by it unconsciously, fresh breezes of
thought were stirring in the silent death of the cloisters, fresh
sympathies were wakened. He stumbled upon very "disquieting books"—Kant,
Fessler, Steinbart, Pfenniger, &c. His restlessness increased. The
atmosphere of the seminary grew stifling. Sailer was now banished to
Munich, and he set out to visit him. But Sailer did not quite understand
these new ideas, and he was not quite confident to Sailer; they were both
uncomfortable—the one from exile, the other from mental trouble, and he
returned sadder than he went. Matters continued thus till he got his
curacy and the joy of liberty threw other feelings into the shade. "Now,"
he wrote, "I could breathe, I lived once more, and really felt that I
was an existence." Another pleasure followed and was linked to the real
blessing of his life. Sommer, one of the neighbouring curates, was a man
after his own heart; a quiet friendship sprung up between them; they used
to meet in a little wood half-way between their cures for private,
unrestrained speech about themselves and the state of their hearts before
God. One day Sornmer spoke of Tersteegen. Gossner read him, as he had read
Lavater, with blessing and delight. Another day he spoke of one Martin
Boos, a heretic it was said, and yet, he added, there must be something
good about him. They heard presently that a manuscript book of his, with
the pregnant title, "Christ for us and in us," was circulated in the
neighbourhood. This also was eagerly read. But three years before Gossner
had begun to study the Bible; and as he felt less peace and comfort, he
studied it the more, and mostly upon his knees; and when he mentions his
conversion he says, "The Bible opened my eye and heart." The work, begun
after this long preparation, ran swiftly on. Sommer wrote that he lay
continually at the feet of Jesus, that his only work was to beat upon his
breast and weep over the old Adam, that he looked most like an angel, and
was ready, for the Lord's sake, to go to prison or death. Shortly after
Gossner wrote in his diary upon a visit from Langer-mayr, "One is so
unfaithful, I said. Yes, said he; the Lord must be faithful, the Lord
Himself. That made a great impression. What he said came back after he
left; the Lord must be faithful, not we. . . . . . And always I seemed to
say and feel, Back, thou devil ! Thou old Adam in me, die ! Live, Lord
Jesus! And so it was; and this whole day my prayer has been just this,
repeating Pereat A dam! Vivat Jesus!" These days of betrothal went
by, and were succeeded by others dark and joyless and weak and marked
especially by carelessness in prayer. It was unbearable until the joy of
the presence was restored, and "I felt so art thou, left alone,
without the Lord; then what thou truly art is the Lord. I started,
thinking, is it possible that Thou Lord canst be with and in me? .
. . There is only one Lord, and I carry Him in me! Adam, Adam, die! Jesus,
live in me, I give myself to Thee that by Thee Adam may die." And he
quaintly adds in dialogue :— "I.. Lord, what wilt Thou in me?
Dominus: I will have nothing in Thee or from Thee. I: Thou canst have
a superfluity of that. I have nothing, and I am nothing, and Thou takest
but a heap of sins." There is here a touch of that infinite humour which
broke out continually in his speech, flashing in afterwards through the
grim shadows and sorrows of his life like Lear's Fool upon the windy moor.
It was a part of his very nature as it has been of all natures akin to
his—the strong-willed, deep-thoughted, and childlike Augustine, and
Luther, and Knox, and many another; and as the puzzle of life was solved
and the burden of it fell off, this humour rose lightly up and sparkled
over his speech, sometimes in the gro-tesquest forms, or in the simple
confidence of a child at play, or running into a keen irony against
himself, or as a light among the dark retreats of sin, irresistible in the
gravest positions and as visible in his secret communion as his social
intercourse, though so softened and chastened by the presence of God that
it never even remotely suggests irreverence.
Soon after he had received Christ for us and in us, he
went to Seeg, where Fenneberg the vicar received him into his house.
Fenneberg was a good, true, pious man, full of faith and the Spirit, and
with him and Schmid, another scholar of Sailer's, and the author of
well-known and well-loved books for children, Gossner gained strength and
light. The household life of the vicar and his two curates has not been
very distinctly preserved. The diary deals mostly with personal matters;
yet, judging from one incident, it must have abounded in the most
practical and impressive teaching. A poor man, with an empty purse, came
one day and begged three crowns that he might finish his journey. It was
all the money Fenneberg had, but as he besought him so earnestly in the
name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus he gave it. Immediately after, he
found himself in great outward need, and seeing no way of relief, he
prayed, saying:— "Lord, I lent Thee three crowns; Thou hast not yet
returned them, and Thou knowest how I need them. Lord, I pray Thee, give
them back." The same day a messenger brought a money-letter, which Gossner
reached over to Fenneberg, saying, "Here, father, is what you expended."
The letter contained two hundred thalers (L.30) which the poor traveller
had begged from a rich man for the vicar; and the childlike old man in
joyful amazement cried out, "Ah, dear Lord, one dare ask nothing of Thee,
for straightway Thou makest one feel so much ashamed! "
In 1801 Gossner went to Augsburg, where he had the
honour of being brought before the same Inquisition as Boos, sleeping in
the same dungeon and tended by the same jailer, who, like his predecessor
of Philippi, had been converted through his prisoner. Notwithstanding, he
laboured in Augsburg till 1804, when he was removed to the village of
Dirlewang, a cure which he retained till 1811. Much of his religious
history is identified with this place. His first step was to form a
society of like-minded friends. They numbered five who met to confirm and
inflame their love of Christ, to pray, and to intercede for other friends
and brethren. Before a month had passed, the following entry occurs in his
diary:—"Truly the Lord has marvellously blessed our prayer-meetings. How
true it is, as James writes, the effectual, fervent prayer availeth much.
What I have experienced of prayer at these seasons is beyond all my
expectation, more even than I can understand." He was learning the secret
of the Lord, slowly becoming conscious of that gigantic power which God
puts into His child's hands, and by using which he became a prince in the
Church of Christ. Other experiences followed and openings into wider
circles of religious life. He read Zinzendorf, fell into the acquaintance
of a pious Quaker, wrote to Karg in Nuremberg and Steinkopf in London
about a new translation of the New Testament. Sailer was to procure the
necessary imprimatur. The Bible Society in England and the Mission
Society in Basle took it up, and some years later it was not only
completed, but 60,000 copies were disposed of in an incredibly short time.
All this did not occur without the bitterest opposition and a persecution
so keen and unrelenting that at length he laid down his charge and
withdrew to Munich. He lived in retirement, wrote some of those devotional
books with which his name will always be associated in the religious
literature of Germany, and, as he became better known, was asked to
preach. His audience rapidly increased—a smaller circle gathered round him
for private teaching and communion—he established prayer-meetings for them
in his house, and drew to him the scattered ones in whose hearts Boos had
already sowed the gospel. Tidings of this wonderful movement reached
Berlin in a letter of 1816. It could be scarce credited. People went to
Munich to satisfy themselves of what they heard: Von Bethman-Hollweg, the
two Sacks, Snethlage, a long roll of visitors worthily closed by
Schleiermacher, and to which also, though not at this period, must be
added F. H. Jacobi. They found more than they expected; above all, they
found in Gossner himself the spirit of the movement. He was a new type of
character, but of genuine, real character ; and they left him—wise and
gifted men, whose names rang as leaders through the then world of
thought—with amazement, respect, and love. Meanwhile troubles awaited him.
He had introduced public singing at the meetings in his house; he ventured
to bring choral music with German words into the church during the Advent
services of 1817. An energetic friend personated the organist, precentor,
director, and teacher; those who came, we learn, were edified. But there
is a class of persons who are always waiting to be scandalised by an
innovation. They denounced this "new and uncatholic worship" to the
Consistory; and when this failed, fresh accusations were put forward. He
had printed extracts from Protestant writers in his books; he had written
an offensive tract on the human heart—("A Temple of Sin, or a Workshop of
Satan;") moreover, he had translated the New Testament; and as at this
time that devilish engine with the heavenly name—Concordat—was introduced
into the state, and the minister who had said he would leave the pious
folk to their piety, began to profess he must root out all sectaries.
Gossner again resigned his office. This time it was the north that
afforded him a shelter. The Munich letter had left very permanent results
in Berlin. The government had recently acquired the Rhenish provinces.
They offered Sailer the archbishopric of Cologne, Boos a professorship and
Gossner a pastorate at Dusseldorf. The two latter accepted. Goss-ner's
preaching produced "a mighty sensation;" people cried out during the
sermon—it was felt as if they must all be changed. If the Jesuits won't be
converted now, it was said, they must have seven skins. Even here,
however, his enemies reached him; and after a short stay he accepted an
invitation from the Emperor Alexander to St Petersburg.
He was appointed to the large Maltheser Church from
which Lindl was going to Odessa to be Probst of Southern Russia. Lindl was
one of the same school and bore the same stamp of the true mint. He had
belonged to the aesthetic side of the old rationalism, and sought the
salvation of his flock in the cultivation of their taste. To this end he
had erected a theatre for the young people, and otherwise also strove to
lead them in the narrow way. But during Gossner's stay in Munich, deeper
springs were opened in his heart by the casual reading of some fragments
of Jung Stilling. There was then little difficulty in frank intercourse
between Protestants and Romanists if they had a meeting-point in Christ.
Gossner had warm Protestant friends in Wurtemberg and Baden; in Munster
the Princess Gallitzin bade Claudius and Stolberg to the same table;
Furstenberg and Katerkamp moved in one circle with Hamann. Sympathy for
the truth led them together; there was neither an ecclesiastical nor a
political life; those who were earnest drew off from the crowd and towards
one another. Lindl determined to see Stilling for himself. On his way he
went to Munich. Gossner counselled him to make the 25th Psalm his prayer
during the entire journey; and he returned in joy. Having received light
and peace from God he preached the gospel with great fulness and power and
with an overwhelming eloquence, until persecution drove him by slow steps
to Russia. His refinement and grace, his mysticism and hidden meanings and
apocalyptic speech, his command of feeling, the pathos of his voice, the
fiery flow of his zeal, alternating with his sweet, persuasive pleading,
combined to attract crowds of the higher circles of the capital as well as
the habitual church-goers. In six months he had endeared himself to
numbers—a kind of mighty-worded, mystic - speaking, poetic, brilliant
Irving of the north. It was a critical position to fill. And Gossner was
plain-spoken; manly and vigorous, but withal ungainly; monotonous in his
voice and perhaps of an occasional harshness in manner: his words flowed
quietly about the text, a still, clear water through which it could be
always seen; there was no adornment, but the simplest and yet often
profound and searching unfolding of the Scripture. It was only quiet,
faithful teaching that went to the heart. The crowds remained and
increased. His first Sunday in St Petersburg was Lindl's farewell and all
the people wept that he was gone. The next Sunday he preached himself and
all the people wept for joy that he was come. His fame soon went abroad.
There was a breathless silence while he spoke. People came to him from
Caesar's household. Lords and ladies-in-waiting rubbed with beggars off
the street; the Greek Church shouldered the Romish in the vestibule; the
Lutheran pressed by both. The service was often interrupted by cries. The
sighing and praying and smiting on the breast and murmur of "God be
merciful to me a sinner," was once so loud that he knew not what to do,
and was obliged to pause. One day among the crowd a cry rose, "Hear it; it
is the voice of God!" Without faltering he answered, "Hold thy peace," and
continued the sermon, for he was humble to the heart's core. When Bishop
Eylert asked him if he was not touched with sectarianism, "No, my lord
bishop," he answered; "good shepherds do not rend the flock." "How many,"
said one of his friends, "how many, dear father, will meet you in eternity
to whom you have shewed the way of life!" "It is not," he replied, "the
poor instrument that will be praised, but the Workman. He alone has done
it; and nothing is left to me but disgrace and shame for all my
unfaithfulness, carelessness, and failure." And if he was humble he was
also bold; and though as nothing before God he stood like a prophet to the
world. No sin, no rank or pride, ever made him quail or stoop for a moment
from his place as God's messenger. Rebuke or counsel, it must be uttered,
sometimes in the homeliest way, sometimes with a noble, simple dignity. He
often pointed with outstretched finger to some one on whom his eye fell,
held up his sins before him, and besought him to repent; and not seldom
the sinner was constrained to obey. When the present King of Prussia
visited him in his hospital, and expressed his pleasure, and asked if he
had any wish that he could fulfil, he only raised his finger and pointed
upwards, and said, "My wish is that I may know your Majesty by my King
yonder."
He had laboured in Petersburg for nearly four years
when the gathering dissatisfaction of the Greek popes and the
antipietistic section of the Russian nobles found a pretext for his
dismissal. The priests saw their churches empty; the nobles resented
Madame de Krudener's influence over the Emperor. All the clergy were not
like the honest preacher, who found one day but lour or five hearers and
invited them to adjourn with him to the Maltheser Church where they would
hear something much better. All the nobles were not like Prince Gallitzin.
Lindl had married and lost his Probstship already. Gossner had written a
book in which he denied the perpetual virginity of Mary. Lutherans,
Calvinists, and Romanists joined in the clamour. He belonged to none, and
there were some of all who hated him. One Saturday he found an order on
his table forbidding him to enter the pulpit again. He had a private
audience. The Emperor assured him of his esteem; repeated that it was
impossible to retain him; begged him, if he was in any strait, to look
with confidence to him, and handed him 1000 roubles. He handed them back,
with the remark that he served a richer Lord than the Emperor, and
prepared to depart. One party demanded his banishment to Siberia, another
that he should be handed over to the Pope, or thrown into prison. Some of
his writings were burned, others confiscated. [He wrote on the second
volume of his "Spirit of the Life and Doctrines of Jesus Christ in the
New Testament,"—"On the 8th May 1824, thou, dear little book, didst
drive me out of St Petersburg, leaving thy firstborn brother there in
arrest, to be burned in the cloister on the 9th October."] They were laid
under ban throughout the empire for the future. And with an escort of
Cossacks, whom the Emperor made responsible for his safety, he passed over
the border. There was great woe when the loss was known. Gossner is
gone—Father Gossner is gone, was on everybody's lips. A crowd of
sympathizers and spiritual children accompanied him part of the way,
weeping as they went. For himself, he came to Berlin "like a bear robbed
of her whelps." "I was like a father," he said, "who is robbed of all his
children in one day." As his friend Bethman-Hollweg describes it,—"It was
written in every lineament of his face, 'Henceforth let no man trouble me,
for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.'" One singular mark of
this period remained with him till his death; consistories, synods, public
and officious bodies had haunted him for years, pursued him from cure to
cure and from the Danube to the Neva; and to the very last nothing gave
him so much horror and alarm as the mere name of a Board.
From Berlin he went to Hamburg, and from Hamburg to
Leipzig. He yearned after his Petersburg "children," and was unhappy till
he had leisure, not only to write to them, but for them. In Leipzig he
found what he sought—wrote much and held intercourse with few, and through
the friendship of Tauchnitz, the publisher, was enabled to support himself
by his pen. Every week he wrote a sermon for his beloved Maltheser Church.
His "Spiritual Casket"—a far commoner book in German than ever Bo-gatzky
was or will be in English households—his "Life of Martin Boos," his
"Family Pulpit," and others of his most valuable works, were the fruit of
this repose. It did not last long. After two years, the police— that
everlasting torment of quiet people abroad— discovered a sufficient reason
for intermeddling. He was not of any confession! He said he was a
Christian. They declared the answer was insufficient and unsatisfactory,
somewhat dangerous indeed. "Well, now I know," he cried, "that in
Christendom one dare no longer be a Christian for fear of the police." And
in Leipzig, at least, it was so; he could not remain. A hundred asylums
were pressed upon him at once; princes and statesmen were as forward to
receive him as the rest—Reuss, and Dohna, and Rehden, and Stolberg. He
fixed upon Berlin, and found it to be the place of God's appointing.
Hitherto his life seemed aimless and broken; a very weary wandering and
loosing of any ties that held oat promise. He is scarce in one place till
he is persecuted to another; scarce opens his lips till a sealed order
closes them; scarce at rest till he is in motion. It was a painful
education. Every step of the journey he had to stop and cry Pareat
Adam! Vivat Jesus! It was a thorough undoing of the human and the
self, a learning of lessons that were repeated till they were got, and
often bitterly, by heart. The life of faith is not a simple outburst;
effectual prayer is not the easy steady flow of a first love. They come
out of slow and patient and somewhat harsh training. Whatever Gossner had
learnt it was in this school of God; and the apt scholar there passes at
once into the teacher's place.