n ^ PRINCETON, N. J. <^' BV 4406 .G3 S7 1863 Stevenson, W. Fleming 1832 1886, sAe!/.... P^^ying and working ,^f/i^c^^^^^^^Z^ y^'^ f raging aA 3S0rliing. NEW BOOKS Praying and Working ; Being some account of what men can do wlien in ear- nest. By the Rev. W. Fleming Stevenson. 12mo. . " ' Praying and Working' will be found more interesting than any i noveV— The Daily Eev lew, Oct. 2Q. j • "It lias been our lot to read many books, but never have we read I a book in which there was more direct moral earnestness, and the i power to bring that to bear effectively upon the inquiring and open-minded, than in this 'Praying and Working' of Mr. Steven- son We are sure our readers will not rise from the volume till they have thanked us in their hearts for recommending it to their attention." — The Montrose Beciew, Get. 10. "Mr. Stevenson's book is one of great value and interest. It consists of detailed biographies of John Falk, Immanuel Wichern, Theodore Fliedner, John Evangelist Gossner, and Louis Harms. The names of these noble philanthropists have hitherto been but little known in this country, but this volume will doubtless make them henceforth as familiar as those of Clarkson, Howard and Wil- berforce."—7%e ^ooA; Circular for Octoher. Parisli Papers. Bv Norman Macleod, D. D., author of "Wee Davie," "The Gold Thread," etc. 12mo The Last Day of our Lord's Passion. By the Rev. William Hanxa, LL.D. 12mo. . . 1 25 "Dr. Hanna's new work, as a prose poem on 'The Last Day of Our Lord's Passion,' stands alone in the crowded ranks of our theo- logical literature. It has a greater value than a whole ship load of treatises on the evidences." — Edinburgh Witness. " A lucid, tender and beautiful delineation, which we trust thou- sands will read." — Patriot. Vesp er: A Series of Narratives. By Madame the Countess de Gasparin. 12mo. . . ' 90 By the same Autho7\ The Near and Heavenly Horizons. 12mo, gilt top • . . . 1 25 " ' The Near and Heavenly Horizons ' is a charming book. Madame de Gasparin has the touch of genius, which has the strange gift of speaking to every one ' in their own tongue.' " — London Athe7ice2i7n. ^rajing aitb Kfeking; SOME ACCOUNT OF WHAT MEN CAN DO WHEN IN EARNEST. REV. WILLIAM FLEMING ^EYENSOX, DUBLIN. NEW YORK: ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS No. 5 30 BROADWAY. 1863. CONTENTS, Page INTRODUCTORY I JOHN FALK .... , , i; IMMANUEL WICHERN— I. The Builder . 61 2. The Foundation . . , , , . 90 3. The Building . 108 4. From Morning till Evening . , . T40 5. The Brethren of St John . 172 THEODORE FLIEDNER — I. The Blue Flag of Kaiserswerth . 197 2. Deacons and Deaconesses , , , . 227 JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER — I. The School . 251 2. The Scholar . 276 3. The Teacher . 293 LOUIS HARMS — I. At Home ...... • 325 2. New Hermannsburg .... . 368 3. The Missionary at Work • 393 INTRODUCTORY. T^TO one will question the activity of our century, probably the quickest and busiest of any the world has seen. It is possible that men speculate as much as ever, that there are as many poets and paint- ers and sculptors, that there is as much love and cul- ture and appreciation of art, as much patient study and thought ; but the entire age is stamped with an unmistakable energy and force. It is an age of gigantic and universal toil, possessed with the idea that there is work to be done ; restless and insatiable, resolute and quiet, in pursuing this idea ; a practical, sagacious, ready-witted age. "Work is lauded and glorified, even for its own sake, and without regard to its end. It is held to be something sacred, a thoroughly manly and almost devout pursuit. Nay, it has been exalted into a kind of deity in our day, to be worshipped v^dth a pure and rigorous devotion. Life is to be doing, because it is felt more than ever that there is power in life. And insensibly this character offeree and strength 2 Praying and Working. has spread itself over the various fields of thought. Literature, science, art, bear witness to the dominant practical tone as much as the ceaseless ring of the workshop, the fever of modern business, or the struc- ture of our social life. There is even a muscular Christianity, — curious outgrowth of a strong-limbed generation. And there is a healthiness about this zeal for work. As a protest against a hollow and indifferent age, an age of shams and fine gentle- men and idle, self-indulgent, shallow sceptics, an age of lazy, stereotyped, and powerless beliefs, it is invaluable : and, as a reaction from last century was unavoidable, work perhaps is the safest form it could have assumed. There is something genuine and thorough and earnest about it. It is some re- cognition of the meaning and dignity of life. And looking at what has been accomplished, the vast stride forward that has been taken, looking at the vigour of Christian work and the numberless Chris- tian activities that have been called into play, there is cause for honest, thankful congratulation. Yet there is also cause for much fear and regret. There is a rapid growth of materialism. The passion for force and energy exhausts itself in extravagant forms. People demand a sensation, unreal or immoral, if it be only sensation. The tendency is to exalt the lower and visible agencies, to depreciate the higher and spiritual ; to measure life by what it can shew for itself rather than by what it is; to cultivate Introdtictory. 3 and respect mere display of strength. A clever writer has suggested that the time is coming when grave, common-sense Englishmen will fall down before the spindle and the steam-engine ; and some incipient idolatry of that sort may be detected even now. Is there not the notion that the world is only what the world sees itself to be, that if you take any other than worldly forces you wall come to no result 1 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, enthu- siasm, fanaticism? To work is honest enough; but prayer over and above the work is treated as a cour- teous superfluity. Let the work be done manfully, it is preached ; let it be even blundering, provided it be sincere ; but as for prayer, it is somewhat a waste of energy. Or, if there be prayer, it is freely hinted, let it be kept apart ; let it have its own sphere, and not intrude upon the working day; nay, let it have its praying men, and give us our working men. Praying men may not always have been judicious ; there may be some plausible foundation for separating the work- ing from the praying man; fooHsh and impracticable things may have been attempted by well-meaning and unwise people. Prayer, moreover, has its o\vn sphere, and is not to encroach upon another; it is not to usurp the place of work. But neither is it to be divorced from work, nor is it less real and needful ; and to say that the praying man is to be kept distinct 4 Praying and Working. from the working man is practically to close the com- mon energies of life against the intrusion of prayer. Those who say it have a vague impression that a man who lays stress upon prayer is deficient in practical wisdom ; that the devotiona^ element of character tends to remove a man from the region of common sense to the borders of the fair^Mand of sentiment ; that he be- comes a dreamer of dreams that will never fit into the plain rough order of the world. If that were true, it would be worth considering. Any element of char- acter existing in excess will disturb a man's balance. But if the inevitable tendency of a prayerful spirit were to thwart a man's activity and usefulness, it would be incompatible with Bible-teaching and Chris- tian principle. There is no need to deny any inevit- able tendency of the kind. The Bible, which exhorts to prayer, is the most practical of all books ; devout men are at least as practical as their neighbours; and if they were not, it would be because they have not rightly understood the Bible doctrine, or because of some strong natural fault. If three men were singled out who laid almost extravagant stress upon prayer, whose belief in it would startle m.any modern Christians, they would be Augustine, and Bernard, and Luther; yet men of the most various temperament, and men of the rarest practical gifts and insight. For the greatest workers will always be the foremost in com.- munion with God, and communion with God is the very heart of prayer. InfivdMctory. 5 Nor are prayer and ^york connected by any arbitraiy link, but as difterent aspects of the same man. " Ora et laboi'a" writes Dr "vVichern in one of his pleasant papers, " is carved on a peasant's house in the Vierland. ' It must be French,' said a neighboui-'s wife, as I stood looking at the legend, ' but you know it just means — With this hand work, and Avith the other pray, And God will bless them both from day to day.' " Ora et labora is the legend of the Christian's faith, and the plan of his life. His fervent prayer begets honest, manly, unshrinking v/ork ; his work, as it is faithful, — and it is faithful in proportion as he realises it is for God, — throws him back upon prayer. It is true that this connexion is regarded with some sus- picion. It is associated v/ith the failure, and worse, of monastic life. Oi'a et lahora was the monkish watch- word with which men went into the wilderness, and builded up their lonely cells, and toiled at their simple gardens, and knelt in solemn tliought of the world be- hind them, through long fastings and wakeful nights. But on their lips it was a profound mistake. They had cut themselves off from brotherly sympathies and social duties, from the entire sphere of Christian v/ork. They had thrown themselves upon the selfishness of lonely hours and solitary thoughts. Their ora, earnest and well-meant at first, became mechanical and un- real ; their labora was a fiction. They had no right to their motto. And remembering the hollowness and hypocrisy to which their system brought them., its utter 6 Praying and Working. worthlessness, its world-wide scandal, men have shrunk with fear from the truth they misused. Nor are they alone guilty. Those who by practice or speech arrogate to prayer the time and place of ordinary duties are in the same error. Divorced from the common charities of life, prayer must become mechanical and untrue. If it be used to set some apart, on some sacred and haughty height above the rest and the ordinaiy obligations of society, if it only make them more rigid censors of others, while they themselves are less kindly, less helpful, less useful, who can wonder that the world revolts, or that the more thoughtful and reverent minds are carried to the other extreme, and boldly say that work is prayer? Work is no more prayer than prayer is work, although the looseness of the expression is often forgiven for the deeper truth of the thought. Work is no more prayer than a walk in the fields is religious worship. To the devout man both are devout. To the unde- vout man they are nothing. Nay, work without prayer is as dangerous, ay, and more, than prayer without work. It is the practical ignoring of God, of a spiritual world and spiritual laws. It is the start downwards to the grossest and most superstitious materialism. It is a clear peril of our present time. W^e do not want to be reminded of the need and dignity and sacredness of work ; the whole century is preaching that ; but we do want to be taught the need and sacredness of prayer, and that it is a force, of Introductory, 7 which though the world knows nothing, yet it estab- lishes greater than the w^orld's works. 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 simple Vierlander, and over whose lives might be written, as their clearest exponent, Oi'a 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 hmited. They distinctly believe in God as their Father, and never care to reahse Him either as a pure, infinite Intelligence, or as an eternal Law. They believe, also, that prayer is not an arbitrary pro- vision 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 fit- ting work, God will establish it; answer their prayers re- garding it ; enable them to deal wisely, and righteously, and prosperously by it ; and that behind every other means to its success, and as the veiy highest means, and often supplanting the others, there is prayer itself Each of them has done something very remarkable in S Praying and Working. its way, quite independent of the principle involved. It may be interesting to trace some of these works. It -w-ill be necessar}^, at the same time, 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 time and to ourselves. Those selected are Germans, and their work covers the most recent period of spiritual activity in that countr}^ The sketches, sHght as they are, have a certain chronological and spiritual sequence, and they concern the two great departments of a revived Church, the Home and Foreign JNIission. The work of the Home jNIission, in its most ex- tensive meaning, is peculiarly a work of the present century. Not but that it has been recognised from the beginning of the Church, and comes into pro- minence at every gi-eat outburst of religious hfe. Ample pro\-ision, for example, was made for it by the Churches of the Reformation : questions of dea- cons and deaconesses, of the relation of the poor to the Church, parish organisations for social reform, were leisurely debated; ecclesiastical edicts were issued ; and here and there a clumsy and scanty machinery^ was set in m.otion. The need was not felt so much as the necessity of recognising the principle ; and though on many points the conclusions bore a thorough, practical character, yet the tendency of the whole was theoretical. The resolutions of these old Churches were soon forgotten, and laid aside among Intro d^tctory. 9 other ancient and dust}- records ; the machinerv- ran on for a time, and then stopped ^^-ithout exciting any notice ; and the ver\' notion of Home ^lission gently passed array. The next great thrill of life that ran through the Church was that of the epoch of the French Revolu- tion. It seems somewhat idle to debate whether that epoch of revolution is the starting-point of a nev%- era, which it has helped to originate and mould, or is itseh'" merely a result, in common with that era, of the pro- found causes hidden in the heart of the last centup--. There is truth in each : it vras both the end and the beginning. All the elements of a vast change were waiting till the time should combine them, waiting in sufficient force to produce not only a 'French bur a European revolution, not only in pohtics, but in literature and social life and the general thoughts of men. The pohtical movement came first It was but a sign of the rest ; yet it also exercised a large influence over the development of the century'. Na}^ it itself was at bottom a social movement, and in that lay its greatest force. .Ml social questions were opened and stirred by it Its impulses reacted ever}-T\-here. It started new ideas, raised up new men, wakened slum- bering thinkers, penetrated among the people, with its unsettling, uphea\ing forces, and left its impress for good or e\-il upon the time. The Church v\-as stirred also, not altogether by the wild, fresh, ^^gorous Ufe that was throbbing in the lo Praying and Working. world, but by more certain spiritual needs that were making themselves felt within. And as the spiritual life asserted itself in the Church, it received fresh im- pulses from the new living thoughts that occupied all men. Characteristic of the sudden energy of the Church was the immediate growth of Home Mission agencies ; characteristic of the Revolution were pre- eminently its social aspect and bearings. It was the problems of social science that were most keenly dis- cussed ; it was social evils that were most rudely laid bare. Discoveries were being continually made in new directions of the old, hollow, false state of society ; as years advanced, the wounds and sores of this society were freshly probed with better lights and subtler in- struments; and as each fresh examination shewed them deeper and more dangerous, it provoked another and more careful search. The need of some healing, of some interference for the removal of these disorders, was thus kept continually forward. The Home Mis- sion energy, characteristic of the revived Church, fell in with the eagerness about social questions charac- teristic of the time. The Home Mission field ob- tained an importance never conceded to it before ; men were ready to welcome any effort by which so- ciety would be improved. And thus the work ot Home Missions has assumed a permanent interest; an interest that is growing with a daily and nightly strength, that is stimulating workers to begin in all directions, that is calling out the latent vigour and Introductory . 1 1 capacity of the Church. Whether the Church will shew that vigour and capacity, that intensity of pur- pose and breadth of sympathy, that thorough, absolute faith in Christ, and that right estimate of her mission to the world, which are demanded, is just the question that is now being tried. So far the trial has been favourable and hopeful. But hitherto the work has lain mostly in the hands of individuals. Little has been done by the Church as such. And these isolated efforts have many disadvantages. They do not secure unity of action ; they do not prevent, but may rather encourage conflicting interests ; they do not economise the labour and the labourers ; they do not provide for the distribution of effort according to the V2xy'vs\g pres- sure of the necessity. A larger and more authoritative organisation is already demanded; not such as will exclude but include individual effort. The very suc- cess of the isolated workers, the rapid extension of their work, its contact at different points with the ac- tivity of the Church, — these are demanding such an organisation as each section of the Church may see fit to carry out. In Germany the conception of Home Mission is wider and profounder than here. The name Inner Mission suggests that it is the mission of the Church wdthin its own bounds, and to every aspect of social life in a Christian land. Such questions as are here thrown over upon Congresses for Social Science, and philanthropists — of any shade of belief or unbelief — 12 Praying and Working. are there considered peculiarly Christian questions, affecting the well-being and mission of the Church of Christ, to be handled by Christian men rather than any other. The social aspects of the large towns and rural districts ; the condition of the labourer and the artisan ; prisons, and the bearings of crime and punish- ment ; reformatories ; the help and recoveiy of outcast women ; the care and nursing of the sick ; the em- ployment and sphere of Christian women, — these and kindred topics come within the province of the Inner Mission. And the Mission in this sense is associated with t^vo men, with one especially. To the labours and writings of Dr Wichern it 'owes its first impulse ; to his energy and practical vrisdom its organisation. It is through him that its various departments are brought into friendly co-operation; its isolated and sometimes antagonistic workers reconciled. It is under his control that it has reached its present im- portance. But while his special labours were for reformatories, and the employment of Christian men, Dr Fhedner turned his attention to the hospitals, and the employment of Christian women. From the Rough Honse on the Elbe, hundreds of brotherly and devoted men have gone out to teach in schools and prisons, and among the waste places of crime ; from Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, have gone out hundreds of schoolmistresses, and sick-nurses, and parish-visi- tors, from Berlin to Jerusalem. No more important movements have been begun in the modern Church : Introductory. 1 3 none more absolutely wanted, more carefully executed, more healthy and wise ; but even those who are familiar with what Dr Wichem and Dr Fliedner have done, may not be aware that they have done it in faith, as men of prayer as well as action. On the same principle, Gossner and Mr Harms have worked the Foreign Mission. Gossnefs life touches at its outset the singular evangehcal revival in Bavaria, and thus brings the last century into contact ^vith the present. That revival is one of the few instances in which a witness for the truth was maintained within the Church of Rome by prominent men of its own communion. It is perhaps the only instance in which a movement so profound, and spreading for years with a fiery swiftness and kindling, and strengthened by per- secution, ceased almost without result. It is curious and interesting as a study of the times ; and in its relations to the Romish communion, deserving of the most careful study, and full of suggestive teaching to Protestants accustomed to regard everything Romish from the Protestant point of view. It is perhaps scarcely intelligible to those unacquainted with Ger- man Romanism, with its scholarly tone, with the semi- evangehcal character of its occasional teaching ; but should such brief notice here as its connexion with Gossner demands lead any one to a more thorough investigation, he will be amply repaid. It was out of it that Gossner came and founded his mission,— a foreign mission of great compass, developed and 14 Praying and Working. sustained single-handed, on two principles: that it was God's work, who would supply means and agents for it in answer to believing prayer; and that the agents would not shrink from labouring ^^dth their own hands. Mr Hamis has more recently established a mission on the same foundation of faith, also single- handed, and on a novel theory of agency. It is a parochial mission, by far the greater part of the mis- sionaries being his own parishioners ; and it aims at Christian colonisation as the best means to missionary labour. It has settled an agricultural colony (with all the trades necessary to its existence) among the Zulus of East Africa ; that colony in its various crafts is composed of missionary men and women. It is thought that by such a missionary settlement addi- tional power would be given to the missionary pastors, and that a chain of such small missionary villages might be carried through the country. These men are all one in the principle of their work, but very various in its application. It is a mistake to suppose that that principle discourages the use of means. It is merely selecting from many means what appears the most efficient ; and to these men that is prayer. As to other means; some use them more freely than others, but they all use them in subordination to the first. They do not hold that prayer nulhfies a man's wit, or thrift, or counsel, or prudence, but intensifies and guides and purifies them. From what has been said ahready, it may be inferred they do not hold that Introductory, 1 5 prayer justifies inaction. They are conscious of a work to do ; it is in the strength of that consciousness that they commit it to God ; that while using every likely way to success they believe there may be un- likely ways, that they do not see all God sees. Nor are they so foolish as to beUeve that God Avill help them to a work for which they have no fitness ; but on the other hand, they believe that the man who prays that he may do a work for which he has no aptitude is praying against the laws of prayer. There is also considerable variety in their theologi- cal opinions, but such variety as is compatible with the firmest faith in Christ. Some are High Church, and some Low Church; some are Lutheran, some Reformed. JMr Harms even pushes his ultra-Luther- anism to a superstitious extreme.* But the heart of the men is simple and transparent ; their faith genuine and Biblical ; their works will speak for both.t * The ultra-Lutherans have so many points of resemblance to a well-known Church-party at home, that they are often con- founded, and unfairly. They represent the same tendency of thought, but it is allied to purer doctrine. They are as ecclesi- astical, incline to the same views of the sacraments^ are as fond of Church-symbolism. But most of them are loyal to the Bible, have little regard for tradition, and hold Luther's exposition of justification by faith. And Mr Harms, though sometimes violent in his teaching, is an evangelical man of his party. + Some apology, perhaps, is needed for writing of men most of whom are still living. It can only be said that whatever personal detail may be found in the sketches of Wichem, Fliedner, and Harms, is drawn from their own published writ- ings, and has become public property. JOHN FALK.* TT is singular to observe how the new hife and feel- ing of the Church, which ushered in this centur>-, shewed itself in different places, and in men of the most different characters, working out, each in his own way, some special problem of the Home Mis- sion. Raikes started his Sunday schools in England; in Scotland, Chalmers diligently wrought at his ideal of a Christian parish and its economy; in Germany, the first effort was the reformation of young criminals. And the man chosen to that work there was one of the most unlikely to have been called. Dr Wichern's * Information of Falk and his life and work is scanty. Among other sources may be mentioned, Johannes FaWs Satirische Werke, Leipzig, 1826; his Liehe, Lehen tmd Leiden in Gott; his Anserlesene Werke, (including the Letters io his Cousin and a brief rhyming autobiography, and edited in the truest Teufelsdrockhvein by his friend Adolf Wagner,) 3 vols., Leipzig, 1819 ; his Goethe; and Oldenburg's valuable little memoir. Das Leben des Johannes Falk, Hamburg, 1854. 1 8 Praying a7id Wo7^king. name has overshadowed, and rightly, every other in the same field. He has identified it with the Society for Home Mission, and he has certainly made that So- ciety what it is. But the real founder of the Mission in point of time, and the first to commence a reformatory, was a middle-aged man, attached to one of the petty German courts, and who had come in younger days to Weimar as a mere literary adventurer. Beginning life as a follower of Goethe, and a sentimental and often spasmodic writer, becoming afterwards coun- cillor of the Embassy, and a bustling eager citizen, he died writing hymns for rough lads whom he had picked off the gaol steps. It was a singular change, a singular calling; and the life is worth preserving, all the more as it contains within it, though hidden and weak, that secret power of other lives to be yet mentioned — the prayer of faith. John Falk was born in October 1768, in an ordi- nary little house by the Fish Gate of Dantzic. His father was a wig-maker, a grave and diligent man, shrewd and steady in his business, " Godfearing, and very strict in all things :" his mother was a gentle Moravian, and a good manager; and from morning prayer till evening the household was ruled with a silent and easy order. As for the child, it was odd how he came into that staid family. For he had an unaccountable vivacity, restless eyes that wandered till some sudden thought would fix them in a long dream, John Falk. 19 tastes that were inherited from neither side of the house, the quickest sensibiHty to music, a passionate eagerness for something far off, unknown; naughti- nesses and caprices far beyond a baby's share. As he grew older, he would gaze for hours at the lively pictures of street life before the door, or silently sit with his mother at the gate in the summer eveni-gs, and watch the ships that sailed by, or loiter at some street or bridge looking at the quaint houses, and the sailors, and the thick forest of masts, — a sensitive, observant, silent child, and ever more restless, leaping out of the house if a door was opened, and often found i 1 the meadows after sunset, listening to the echoes, and the rippling water, and the last songs of the birds. He was a puzzle in that old-fashioned, matter-of-fact household, and they knew no solution. He would come round in time, no doubt ; but, notwithstanding, Mr Falk often shook his head sadly and helplessly. The household life went on in its austere simphcity. Only, of winter evenings, while the girls span and the children read the Bible to their mother, she would tell them stories out of her own childhood j one, especially, about an angel that delivered her from the wolves, '' and as often as she came to the wolves, the lights burned blue, and we thought the room was full of trees and wolves, and we saw the angel with his fiery sword." Sometimes her father would drop in, a Genevese emigrant, "whose French flowed out like 20 Praying and Working. water;'' or her brother, the precentor of the French church j and her husband with his two apprentices might join them. And there would be much mingled talk of foreign lands, most of all of England, for Falk was a.n Englishman by birth ; one eager listener also who remembered the stories better than the Bible- verses, and in whom these foreign recollections and hints of travel roused vague, strong yearning for some freer, wider, less prosaic life than that at home. Such life as • that, however, did not enter into the family calculations. A margin was left at the beginning for babyhood, and a httle more for schooling, but it was clipped as close as might be, lest encroachment should be made upon the purpose of living ; and when he was ten, the boy left school and entered his father's workshop. For, to his father, life meant the right making of wigs — a limited view, but which satisfied him, and ought to satisfy his children ; nor was it any contemp- tible calling a hundred years ago, when ever}^body went abroad in borrowed locks, and when Dantzic boasted of so many stately burghers. And as he began early, why should not little John % And these whims about reading, and these quaint flashes of thought, he never had them, and why should his son % Nothing for him like learning an honest trade, and the sooner the better. Inconclusive reasoning, but common enough, as many misdirected and bitterly struggling lives will testify. The child is father of the man by very much John Falk. 21 more than the man is the father of the child. It has its special way marked out for it. You bring it on by yours. All the while, by sympatl:ues, cravings, tastes, pecuharities, it is yearning ignorantly for its o\\ti j seeks it in its own way. You try force \ by some side-door it slips out on its own quest. You try punishment ; it may turn dogged and defy you : the nature may be soured, filled with angry thoughts ; or it may submit, bend the body to obedience — it can do no more. It has not been set to its right work, and can never be rightly satisfied till that work is done. It does its best with what is given it, but there is a secret unhappiness planted in it for life, a sense of unfitness, a perpetual conflict between what it could and what it must; and the intention of that child's hfe is marred. You say it is unreasonable. Has it not better right to say you are unreasonable % In your garden every flower has its own habit of growth and soil. If the gardener complains they will not all grow in his one way, which is unreasonable, the flowers or he*? Let us come as students into that beautiful child- garden God has planted in the world, to learn as much as to teach, and there will be fewer lives wasted, ' fewer children unhappy. Little Falk, perhaps, did not do his best at the wig- block. He was perpetually in disgrace, perpetually undergoing some quiet whipping. It must have been provoking to an expert curler of hair to see the boy dreamily singe it before his eyes, or to send him with 22 Praying and Working. a peruke for the burgomaster's party, and find, when the party was half over, that he had never got beyond that turn of the dock where the ancient mariners lounged about their weather-beaten ships. But it is surely provoking also to a lad who has curious and eager thoughts that no one about him understands, and a consuming thirst for books, and the feeling of a real calling to some life-work other than he has seen, to toil from morning till night at perpetual curling, and powdering, and carrying of hair, and be sent to bed without a candle lest he should read, and to have those pleasant tendrils, by which he laid hold of music and poetiy, cut off by rigid discipline. At length indeed he so w^earied his father about music that he was allowed to learn the violin with a master who lived in St Peter's Churchyard, and with whom, it seems, he went on the Sundays to the Catholic church, and tried his hand as second violin in the choir. The house- hold discipline somehow connived at it. This music was a sort of trifling and worldliness about which, once it was permitted, the less perhaps that was said the better ; and the little second violin was suffered to go 'his own way and his teacher's, his father silencing his scruples as well as might be. But it was a time when scruples of that kind were not rigorous; and if he went to the Moravian church with the rest, it would be thought no harm that he helped the Romish choir in a mass. The laxity of opinion on points like these in the last century is often curious, when contrasted with John Falk. 23 the severely religious aspect of household life in other respects. Yet if a certain conversation with Father Lambert had been kno^vn, it would have alarmed the quiet household by the Fish Gate. For as the choir stood round the fire one cold morning, Lambert came up and asked Falk his name. " Master John/' he replied, whereupon they all laughed; but Lambert patted his head and drew him aside, and asked him if he would not like to become a good Cathohcl " Reverend Father, No. I was baptized a Christian after Calvin, and in such faith I intend to die ;" and with this, the tears rolled down the lad's cheeks, but Lambert protested it was nothing, a mere curious question, and led him back to his place. " I make verses also," he ™tes about this time ; no doubt in the profoundest secrecy and fear. Wedel, the bookbinder, reports they are not bad; on one occasion even goes farther, and prophesies Falk will become as famous a poet as " Mr B., the clergyman, who writes all the festival poems for our town." The future satirist is too modest to take such criticism for more than compliment, and sighs over his deficiencies and hardships, and his want of reading. At home there was scanty literature ; " and if I take up a worldly book, they ask if Satan has got hold of me again; nay, they come be- hind me and snatch it away." So his reading was accompHshed in the most fitful and uncomfortable way. With the pence that his father's customers gave 24 Praying and Working. tlieir little messenger he bought such poor books as he could upon the stalls, and then wandered into some silent street, or sat behind a cannon on the ramparts, devouring Goethe and Wieland and Biirger. Many a time, when the snow was thick upon the ground, he would halt upon his rounds, and read under the lamp-post till the book fell from his frozen hands. He was not happy. " Next year," he wrote to his cousin, " I shall be thirteen, and every year I am a head bigger, and every one who sees me says. How tall you grow ! But if I said I was glad to hear it, it would not be true, for I think there is many a tall fellow who is an ass, and what is the use of my being tall if I can't study ? . . . . My mother would have it, but then she cannot do just as she pleases." His mother was his great supporter; but even from her he does not seem to have received much sympathy. Bewildered and frightened at his thoughts, she would rather have him put them away than help him through them. Naturally timid, and in some awe *of her husband, she was able to obtain but few concessions. And the boy's life must have been dreary enough ; although he comforted himself with a certain Lucian, " an author whom Wieland has translated out of the Greek, and who was poor, and a child of humble parents, and brought up in a workshop, like myself, and yet became a famous and learned man." About this time a waggon rolled over him, and broke his leg ; and to his unbounded delight he found him- John Falk. 25 self in bed for weeks, and doing nothing but read. As soon as he got well, however, he came once more under strict motionless rule. The real nature struggled up within him, vehemently and passionately now as he grew older. It was beaten down by a stout hazel stick. He grev/ restless and troubled ; fought with wild -wrong thoughts, as many a lad has fought ; remembered his mothers stories out of the Bible ; prayed with some dim notion that it v/ould help him ; went back to his work till the struggle began again ; and would have run away at length with a thoughtless sailor if the old spell of music had not been laid upon him as he passed a church door through which the mellow organ swell rolled out upon the street, and made him think some solemn thoughts of God, and the father and mother He commanded him to honour. Poor lonely dreamer, misunderstood, misunderstanding himself, weary, as boys sometimes persuade themselves, of life, the sea was his companion, and answered him with its many voices, and by it he would sit pouring out his heart in murmurs of plaintive song like this, written one summer evening as he sat on the shore, and watched the sails dropping into the west, and the sea-birds flashing over the dance of the waves : — " Sea-birds, That year by year Fly up across our eastern foam, Might I but mount with you and roam, Till through the west some land appear ! Sea-birds, wild sea-birds ! 26 Praying mid Working, *' Sea-birds ! Year after year I come and sit on this dull stone, A weary child, unhappy, lone — Spring-time and autumn, year by year ! Sea-birds, wild sea-birds ! •' Sea-birds ! Year after year Your wings will cleave our purple sky. While under this cold stone I lie. Forgot, unwept by dropping tear ! Sea-birds, wild sea-birds ! " Falk was now growing up, and his father was letting the truth slowly dawn upon him that his son would never make a good barber. There were others in Dantzic who took notice of the bright-eyed boy as he went his errands, book in hand. And among the rest there was a Mr Drommert, an English teacher, and his mother, who " wore a black velvet cape, and used to sit at the Green Gate ; " and these two so entreated Falk the elder, that he allowed his son to learn English twice a-week. The permission came just in time. Falk's struggle was becoming more than he could bear. The temptation to run off to Batavia, or anywhere, was coming up stronger as he grew older. He almost envied the wild Poles as he saw their watch-fires along the banks of the river, and heard them sing to wild, melancholy music. But his thoughts carried him mostly southwards, to that land of enchantment from which his books had come, yohn Falk. 27 whose voices seemed to call on him, to reach which had become the over-mastering purpose of his life. Drommert found a willing pupil, who left the other boys far behind. He had no money to buy school- books \ and his schoolfellows would not soil their patrician dignity by lending him theirs, or so much as letting him look on ; so he borrowed Ossian from his teacher, transcribed it, and carried off the prize. All this while his father was undecided, and had kept him in the workshop. But when news of his success spread, and the pastor cam.e over, and the burghers dropped in as they passed, and neighbours, and even the parents of Drommert's scholars, besought him to let his son be a scholar, the strict old man could hold out no longer, but consented that John should be a student. At the High School he was indefa- tigable j sat up at night with his feet in cold water ; and went with a steady rush on to the first place. He would have studied philosophy, but that it had thrown the professor of philosophy into a nervous fever and killed him. And in Dantzic, the honest people got alarmed lest this philosophy should be- come an epidemic. There was still poetry, hov/ever. He had sung in his wild, unformed way; would not the professor of so divine an art help him to sing bet- ter ? A long gaunt man, in a long blue coat, entered the class-room, took his seat, looked round with hollow eyes, and began with a sepulchral voice to read his essay, beating solemn time to his cadences on the 28 Praying and Wo7^king. knob of his stick. It was not promising ; but young poets ai'e'nof easily -damped, and Falk opened up the' depths of his heart to this tall, hollow-eyed man in blue; might he perhaps hope, under so illustrious a guide, to sing some worthier songs % " I have been fifteen, ay, eighteen years professor of poetry," rephed the sepulchral voice, " but, thank God, I never made a verse in my life ! And more, young man, if there is one thing I have warned my pupils against, it is this, making verses ; for a long experience has taught me that, as a rule, these rhymers are just good-for- notliings-L" . "Is it. not .curious," . writes Falk. to his faithful cousin, " a professor of philosophy who dies of philosophy in the nerves, and a professor of poetry who warns his pupils against making verses ? " In truth, Falk had striven as far as Dantzic gave him opportunity, and the burghers perceiving it, took, friendly counsel how they might send him to the University. At length they met in the town-hall, sum- moned John Falk to their presence, and seeing him somewhat abashed by so many grave and silent elders, a kindly old man stepped forward and said for the rest, that it was time he should visit the University; that they had provided for him there ; that they prayed God would go with him : " One thing only, if a poor child should ever knock at your door, think it is we, the dead, the old, grey-headed burgomasters and councillors of Dantzic, and do not turn us away." Falk's eyes filled with tears ; the words sank into his yohn Falk. 29 heart. The next session his name was enrolled on the University books of Halle. A single room, in one of those tortuous lanes which people at Halle miscall streets, received the barber student. Besides him it contained a bed, two chairs, and a table. The German student is careless of ex- ternals ; his existence is a romance coloured by his imagination in dainty hues ; he moves in a world of" beautiful ideals ; his life is still wet -with the fresh dew of youth j it is a time of poetry, of lofty thoughts, and large dreams, and indefinite capacities. The ever}^- day world is under his . feet ; his tread is on the misty mountain-tops of thought ; he sips ambrosial food. Ten years, and you find him a humdnmi la-\\yer, pettifogging in a country village ; a farmer, bucolic in his walk and speech ; a merchant, stmggling greedily up the ladder of gold ; the be-titled underhng of some under-sized Httle state, laced with red tape, and prickly as the prickly porcupine. The extravagant idealism of the student exhausts itself, and leaves, perhaps, a very coarse and narrow reality. For three years he walks about and shuts his eyes, and calls it Paradise ; then he wakes up as if it was a dream, and sets to work like another. He is not more uninteresting, less heroic than the majority; it is the width of the contrast that provokes a smile at his matter-of-fact future. Falk went through this student-fife fike the rest; its radi- cal politics, Fatherland, German unity, speculations on Being and not-Being, wonderful socialisms, reforms of 30 Praying and Working, the world. He came out of it, as earnest spirits will, strug- gling with ne^.Y emotions, grappling with realities, grop- ing his way through other problems than those he set himself in sport; not to toss it all back into the past, and forget it, as a child might play with a bubble, but to go out gallantly into common and patent facts, and see what help he might bring in the never-ending whirl and wreck of human lives. It was the dawning of the day of revolutions. He mourned over the night that covered his countiy; its helplessness to understand the future ; its materialism ; heavy, indifferent sloth ; blind subjection to traditions ; the utter absence of national hfe. There was no voice to call the people, no rallying centre. It was that icy, well-bred coldness which froze the heart of the centuiy. It led him to God for help ; for there was none on earth. And as he cried for the nation, he learned to cry for himself, — a slow process, the teaching of years and many sor- rows ; but at last he cried, God be merciful to me a sinner^ and v/as caught to the Saviour's arm.s for ever. Before he reached so far there came from one spot promise of light; and having finished with Halle, Falk chose his residence at Weimar. Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and many more, were making it famous. It became the point to which men looked for help, for true and profound thoughts, for truth itself, as opposed to the shallow, frivolous formalism of the time. The genius of the leaders attracted many minds of lesser note, and for literary brilliance the circle at Weimaj Joint Falk. 31 rivalled the palmy days of Greece. Falk went to it hopefully. He was warmly received, for young men of promise were welcomed within that charmed circle. He joined himself mostly to Goethe, struck, like the rest, by his profound insight, his many-sidedness, his power over men. He cultivated his old poetical fan- cies, sung l}T.-ics that had a reputation in their day, flung off poetical sketches, and shared the intellectual energy of the place. He was knowTi as a satirist, author of an annual Satirical Pocket-hook^ and of some odd, almost grotesque plays. He wrote novels and tales, 2J^^2i Prometheus that is not undeserving of study. Wieland noticed his first work so favourably that high expectations were formed of him even in that time of unusual intellectual richness ; and his ability was at least sufficient to win him support and an honourable place at Weimar, and such intimacy with Goethe as justified him in publishing Goethe's conversa,tions. But as a literary man he does not survive. He ofte:i wTOte a high, forced, stilted style, drawing largely upon hidden meanings, and personifying all impersonal things ; about as unintelligible and dreary to the Germany of the pre- sent as poetry of the Danvin school is to contemporary Enghshmen. His shorter poems are better, and have passed into Students' Song-books and other hke col- lections, where they are at least secure of a miodest immortality. But, after all, poetry was not his gift. In the first decade of the century he was " pointed at as a type of the national literature in decay." And as 32 Praying and Working. a man of letters his life would scarce be worth recall- ing ; nor is it recalled, save as it has connected itself in some slight measure with the lives of more enduring men. But neither v/as it the gift of this Weimar society to provide the light for which Falk, and many with him, sought. It v/as too purely intellectual to be veiy human in its practical sympathies. Goethe chose the moment of his country's deepest ruin to publish an exquisite classic story ; Schiller wrote like an earnest Roman. The age of rigid mathematical beliefs was breaking up, and -the 'exquisite, sensuous grace of paganism threatened to take its place. With some noble exceptions, like the heroic Duchess, there was* not even national feeling ; it was a private intellect- ual coterie, from which Httle generous impulse thrilled out over the land. It had looked hopeful to him from Halle; in his boyhood it had drawn him re- verently like a sacred shrine ; and judged by the last centuiy it was an incredible advance, and pro- mising enough to dazzle young and inexperienced minds. But it had not even moral depth and earnest- ness ; it ignored Chi^stianity altogether ; a specula- tive, shallow society that might become as hollow as that which it replaced, and that was found wanting in the day of trial. When Jena was lost, and the wounded soldiers with blackened and bleeding faces poured into the streets, Weimar fell into panic. Its literary ease was rudely broken; its writing men yohn Falk. 33 were helpless ; idealised mythologies and many-sided geniuses were poor shelter against the storm. Falk felt there was no living, saving power there. He had hfted up his own voice, — a John's voice in the wilderness he called it, — in loud prophetic warning ; he had been bid forbear, he had drawn out no re- sponse. And now as the cannon-balls hissed through the deathly silent streets, while the birds sang sweetly under the calm October sky, he alone seemed to feel that the time was gone by for satires and lyrics and pleasant authors' readings in pleasant ducal bou- doirs ; that there must be some tmth more radical and profound than the literary world had hit upon ; that it became men first of all to bring practical wisdom into this social and political chaos, some help of human sympathy to the wide-spread suffering. He listened to voices that were despised, — Stilling, Lavater, Melchior, Claudius, — voices that were lifted up for the Bible, and that strove to win a hearing for Christ in that tumultuous epoch. They reminded him of his mother's lessons ; they wakened an anxiety in his mind for personal rest ; they made him turn, though still with indistinctness, to the Gospels, as containing the only peace for himself and for his age. It was then, while the French swept over the land, and through the troubled years of misery that followed, that, out of the depths, Falk cried unto the Lord, and found mercy and plenteous redemption. It is no wonder that the memory of those years is 34 Praying and Workmg. scored beyond erasure in the hearts of the German people ; that, a quiet and passive people, the slightest hint of a French invasion rouses them in sternness and wrath. The dark nights of winter were lighted with burning homesteads ; the roads from village to village were thick with corn ; horses were bought for a crown, and foddered on the unthreshed wheat ; wool was sold for a farthing the pound, and the sheep were roasted by the score ; the peasants were driven in at the point of the bayonet to roast and grind the coffee for breakfast; the air was rent with the cries of women and children, who fled from the brutal soldiery ; and Ragusa, at the head of 20,000 brigands, filled the country with terror and blood. During nine months, 900,000 hostile sol- diers and 500,000 horses were quartered on the Duchy of Weimar, with its population of 100,000. But one man preserved his head, bore up against the panic, spoke brave, cheery words, and acted with wisdom and vigour. The Duke made him a councillor, and hung an order on his breast. " The people in Weimar," says the only biographer I have been able to find, " saw the new councillor walk through the street with a ribbon at his button-hole ; but the Lord in heaven saw only a publican which was a sinner." Falk was the good genius of the place. " There goes good Mr Councillor," people used to say, as they sa.w a homely man in an amazingly wide coat hurrying in the early morning through the town gate. His coat would be wider and his step slower when he returned j for he yohn Falk. 35 spent the day from hamlet to hamlet, filling his capa- cious pockets with valuables which the peasants trusted to him without scruple, and scarce able sometimes to totter back under his burden. " I am but one man," he would suggest apologetically, " and I have children, but I never fear death upon the path of duty." How he laboured thus, and wTote at length to the French General, and received a company at his free disposal, and patrolled vvdth them about the country, repressing the frightful disorders, is a singular episode, worthy of being put side by side with the contemporary adventures of Perthes at Hamburg. Peace came at length, but like sunshine over the wreck of flood and storm. The land was desolated ; those whom the war had spared were carried off by a pestilence j the way to the graveyards was marked by a continuous procession ; mourning became the universal habit ; in one village alone, sixty orphans wept both parents. Falk himself lost four out of six children, and buried, as he declared, the best part of his life in the grave. He seemed at first to sink under this blow. His natural elasticity forsook him, and he shrank into himself, and listened to his murmurings. " So it is," he wrote aftenvards ; " we all like the gloiy on Tabor, but we cannot bear to spend our nights upon Golgotha." Yet God led him there to receive the right aim and consecration of his life. The same sickness that had stripped him of children had stripped hundreds of 2,6 Praymg and Working. homes ; and up to Falk's door in Weimar, the Httle ones came wearily, hungry and tearful and clamant, for he was the only one who they thought could help them. Then Falk thought of the burgomastei-'s nolemn words; and of that strange prophecy pronounced over him by his aunt, when he was rescued from the ice in his boy- ish days, and the aged, holy woman, laying her hand upon his head, had said, John^ God has been with thee again; He will not leave thee nor forsake thee ; for I know and am assured in my spiiit that the Loi'd hath chosen thee for His service; and he thought of his own children in God's acre; " and he opened his door, and gave the orphans to eat and to drink, and clothed them, and went out and wept bitterly." This became the turning-point of his life. He found an object to live for ; he recognised the guiding of God's hand ; his buoyancy and faith and power returned. Poet, in some sort, he was by nature ; councillor by the Duke's grace ; but now he became what God had called him to be. The pressure from without soon compelled him to seek for a society, and he founded the Society of Fiiends ifi Need, the beginning of that great work of Inner Mission which has spread so wide in our day. The society was to lend money without interest to the pea- sants, to make them free money grants, to assist in rebuilding their houses, to support the orphans and sick. In the circumstances of the time this might be supposed sufficiently arduous work ; but Falk's energy, yohn Fa Ik. 37 once roused, was untiring. It was not the plague only that made orphans. The long years of war, by draining off the men to unwilling death in Russia and Spain, had made so many fatherless that the orphanages could not overtake a tithe of the need. He determined to enlarge his own. He gathered the children off the streets and Vv^aysides. " Come in," he cried; " God has taken my four angels, and spared me, that I might be your father." Nor could he stop here. Brought as he was into close contact with the disorganised social life, he soon discovered a class of children more pitiable and neglected than any, a class that had been largely swelled by the troubles of the period. There were chil- dren practically orphans by vagabondage and crime, wandering from one prison to another, pests of their neighbourhoods, never hearing a kind word, shunned, and cast out by all. And as he grew better acquainted with this singular under-stratum of society, his pity deepened, and the conviction grew up that these children might be brought round ; that perhaps it was not all their fault ; that there might be some blame even to good and well-meaning people, who looked on, but never interfered unless through the medium of the police. He made shelter for these also ; invited them as lov- ingly as the others j and by degrees established the first Reformatory. It would have been easy to say this was a likely notion for a sentimental poet ; it appears that this was ver}' liberally said when Falk began ; it was long before those like Perthes could reconcile themselves to 38 Praying and Working, the belief, that a man whose verses they abused was doing a genuine, thorough Christian work. One gentle- man wrote from Weimar, — " Falk is so impressible and fanciful, that the dreadful destitution of the youths, and their subsequent improvement, may very well both be creatures of his imagination. Then he is importu- nate in seeking subscriptions and aid of every kind j he is, in fact, a bore. He has a few enthusiastic fol- lowers ; but in general he is not liked here ; people avoid him, and laugh at him behind his back." But the work soon established its own reputation. Nor was there much in it but what was practical, sagacious, and profoundly Christian. The children were well taught in point of mere schooling, as well as in any school of the place ; and only those who have engaged in similar work can tell what an expenditure of labour this must have been to a solitary man starting so new a project. But the children were depraved, and it was a principle of Falk' s, that the root of the evil had its chief source not in ignorance but in sin ; that it was not enough, there- fore, to teach writing and arithmetic ; that that was the least part of education j that it was more important to impart the secret of a righteous life. " What in all the world," he said once boldly before the Estates, " does it profit the State to have thieves who can write, and thieves who can cipher % They are only so much the more dangerous. Ay, and what profit is it though your thieves should speak Latin, and Greek, and yohn Falk. 39 French % " They were daring words then ; for most shrewd and able men were led away by a loose phil- anthropy, and fancied that culture would do every- thing ; that to give a man knowledge was to keep him moral. The spread of education was to be the reform of the world. The influence of a lovv^ moral tone, the strength of a vicious habit, were to melt away under a course of easy reasoning. They are daring and un- popular words still. Mere information is still regarded by many as a panacea against crime ; an accomplished criminal is looked on as a monstrosity j and from the use made of statistics, it might be supposed that being neither able to read nor write was next door to burg- lary or murder. It still needs to be asserted as vehe- mently as ever, that the truest education is to teach a man to be righteous in word and deed ; that the reform of a criminal is hopeless without some hold upon his sympathy and conscience ; that the living contact of a human heart is infinitely more to him than the most universal knowledge j that there is but one thorough though old-fashioned remedy, the power of the everlasting gospel. Where there is the bad heart there will always be the bad life ; and even should the spread of education lessen the grossness of crime, may not the criminal element of society be only the more widely diffused, assume more subtle and refined disguises, and become more dangerous by being less easy of detection % Falk had his own decided views. He would have no 40 Praying and Working. mere school. The children would learn what befitted them, and learn it well ; but they would also learn that there is a blessed Saviour who died for the outcast; they would see and feel what a true godly life is ; they would come in contact with the force of Christian love ; they would be bred up to honest trades. We are fa- mihar with such principles now, but it seemed hazard- ous and merely romantic then. In the face of all difficulties, and working out his way through his own mistakes, Falk pushed on. The boys came in; they were trained; apprenticed out in ¥/eimar and the neighbourhood; and every Sunday they returned to spend two hours with him and his faithful coadjutor, Pastor Horn. When they came they were wicked and hopeless enough. Auguste Miiller was a confirmed beggar at eleven ; ran from a home which his father had deserted before him; when brought back, ran off; was laid hold of by the pohce ; wandered again, and when Falk found him had almost lost any trace of a human being. Eriicknern at twelve had lain for some time chained like a wild beast. Senf, even after he came, ran away repeatedly. Stellenberg attempted to hack off his finger rather than work at the linen trade. " Horrid, cannibal-like faces had they all," wrote Perthes in 1822, "with the image of the desert unmis- takably imprinted on their foreheads." Senf s brother had known all the prisons, served as a soldier in four countries, and deserted from every regiment he was yohn Falk. 41 in. There were others as bad vvho might come. A boy of sixteen had murdered two Httle girls for a piece of flannel, w^hich he aftenvards sold for three shillings. Two little boys, of ten and twelve, set a village on fire, and burned eighty-eight houses with the church. A httle later, in the first quarter of 1826, there were 162 juvenile criminals in the Prussian prisons, twenty of them for arson, and two for suicide. After statistics were much worse, but Falk's hfe is not concerned with them. The results were satisfactory and convincing. There were lads that turned out ill. But he was able to wTite, " Could you see us, you would rejoice and bless God. The children of robbers and murderers sing psalms and pray; boys are making locks out of the insulting iron which was destined for their hands and feet, and are building houses such as they fonnerly delighted to break open.''' Hundreds of honest trades- men left the Reformatory^ Some entered the service of the State. There were clergymen, la^vyers, and doctors among those who were at Weimar; school- masters, merchants, and artists. And these were not merely out of the very worst material, but if Falk had not cared for them, they would have been an injury to the State. They would have been not only unprofitable but hurtful. iVnd in his pleasant way, Falk used some- times to shew at how much less cost his plan made them honest citizens, than the State plan would have kept them harmless criminals : — 42 Praying and Working. (i.) Bread, water, shame, flogging, cost per boy in prison, £7, 17s. 8d. per annum. (2.) Meat, bread, honour, the Bible, Christian teach- ing, cost in a Christian workshop in Weimar, once for all, £3, 15s. So far as these results shev/, Falk had succeeded, and results are eloquent enough, and have a plain direct utterance which is hard to gainsay. They are the test by which men persist in judging the most moving appeals, and theories of however lofty a character. They have a practical, decisive air about them. More- over they avoid the awkward necessity of studying details and getting entangled a,mong principles. Yet it may be questioned if our respect for them does not run into idolatry. It is perhaps conceivable that some good and right theory may break down in practice ; there may be some link wanting to complete the con- nexion between the principle and its exposition, a link which another generation, or other circumstances, or happier auspices may supply. It is perhaps not incon- ceivable that there are truths, sacred and unassailable truths, which refuse to be gauged by mere statistics. It is possible, though the suggestion should be made with all caution, that we are somewhat over-statistical in our generation; that our judgments of right and wrong are too arithmetical ; that we are too much at the mercy of figures. And even where the results are excellent, as at Weimar, they may give us little yohn Falk, 43 sympatliy or light. "WTiat we want to know is how they were brought a.bout ; not the dead figures, but the living, working power. Falk's first principle of conduct was a sa}'ing ever on his lips — " Love overcometh." There was to be no compulsion. The lads might wander freely away, as freely as they came. There were no locks and bars. "We forge all our chains on the heart/' he would say, "and scorn those that are laid on the body; for it is Amtten, If the So?i shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed^ If a vagabond shewed uncontrollable restlessness, Falk would point out to him that the house was always open; that if he came back to Weimar, he must pass through the street, and would surely come in ; but he would also point out the folly of his wandering, how much present comfort, how much prospect of the future it lost to him. This open confidence and authority of love was not merely philanthropic. If it had no higher ground than that, it would have ended in good-natured disorder. It w^as the love of a Saviour of which he thought, and on which he founded his work — a love which implies the hatefulness, and lawlessness, and madness of sin. And if he left the door unbarred, he m.ade it be clearly felt that the criminal fife, in every aspect of it, is sin. The children were met by a love which bore all things, and endured all things — which never met their surliness by surHness — which kept open house for them 44 Praying and Workmg. — which did not rake up their offences — which was always kindly — never shrunk into itself. They re- garded it with surprise \ they were slow to believe in it; yet they could not deny it, and in the end it won from them some slow respect, and even love in return.^ But that same love beheved all things, trusted them, depended on them ; and yet Mr Falk must have known they were a set of liars and rogues. This struck them as more singular still. It was a silent appeal; it roused what they never knew they had — self-respect. To be trusted, believed, gave them a kind of dignity, stirred up a feeble sense of moral principle, and before they were well aware, they found themselves standing on their honour. Some charitable people once sent a poor neglected lad to Weimar, and clothed him from head to foot. In a few months he ran off, sold his clothes, and took to his old rags. He was sent back again. " He told me," says Falk, " faithfully what happened him; how in Wittenberg he had lived in jail on bread and water; in Leipzig had been flogged; in Naumburg flogged again." " And were you ever flogged here ?" I said. " No." " And instead of bread and water, you had some- thing warm to eat every day*?" " Yes." " Well, if I were you, I think I would stay where I was best treated. If you wish to run off again, how- yohn Falk. 4.5 evei, I shall not hold you. You know our hours : six in the morning, and ten in the evening." The Christmas holidays came, and the boys dis- persed. The old Hfe rushed back upon the poor lad, and he secretly wandered off. In a fortnight he re- turned, and crept into the house in the twilight. Falk met him : — " Well, Stahl, where have you been so long V^ " With my father," he sobbed out. " Why, child, these tears are quite needless. And if in future you want to see your father, just tell me. Every one is allowed to see his father, and why not you'? Do you know, in another half-year will be Whitsuntide? Then, when the lambs are playing in the meadows, and the cuckoo is singing in the grove, I shall give you new clothes, and you shall go home quite of yourself' When Whitsuntide came, he got his clothes, set out, and returned to the day. There were no com- plaints of him again. The story needs no comment. It is an excellent and lively portraiture of Falk's system, in which any one may see the principle and secret of his success. But besides this principle, there were minor details that deserve notice. Singing was a prominent part of his system. It may have been his own natural musi- cal taste that led Falk to it, or it may have been the effort to do something that would keep up the boys' attention. But the singing of hymns became one of 40 Praying and Working. the most effective elements of the training. It led them involuntarily to pure thoughts ; it suggested to some associations to which they had been strangers since infancy; and the choral harmony of itself exer- cised a remarkable influence, seeming to vibrate curi- ously along the chords of a nature which crime and neglect had degraded and thrust out of sight. Falk had once some skill as a performer, and had not forgotten the use of the violin ; he had some skill also in making verses, and it must be said for him that his best verses were what he wrote for his children, likely enough, moreover, to survive in all German Reformatories. The man who translated the SiciHan Mariners' Hymn into words that are sung round every Christmas tree,* and at every great Christian festival in Germany, needs no other remembrance among children " Where'er resounds the German tongue, Where German hymns to God are sung." The solemn prayer at sea,t and the bright idyllic Shepherd Song, J both introduced with such happy effect in Martin Luther in Popular Rhymes^ are other familiar examples of his just popularity as a hymn- writer. And his happiness was complete when, stand- * ^'- O du selige, o dufrbhliche.^^ f " Wenn mit grimni' gen Unver stand Wellen sich bewegeny % " Was ka7in schoner sein Was kanti edlcr sein Als von Hirten abzustamnien.''^ Johyt Falk. 47 ing in the centre of his evil-looking group of boys, he led them, in some simple hymn, to the praise of Christ. Another qualification for his work was ahready natural to him. He had to deal with a class of minds in which the faculties were dormant. The mind was worn down to a level with the body, swayed with the bodily necessities, and betrayed itself in gleams of sharp animal cunning. The most elementary reasoning was distasteful and unintelligible. And what they needed to leam suggested ideas so strange and unconnected with their habits, that they gazed upon a teacher with a stupid stare. It was useless to speak to them as to others; even the weightiest reason and the plainest statement were useless, and rhetoric fell off helplessly from their stolid natures. But they enjoyed a story; they took in a picture painted in vivid, simple words. And Falk was capital at a story; his mind was hung round with pictures. His stories were graceful, touched with poetical fancies ; he brought out the truth in apo- logues and pretty parables, and caught his pupils thus under the poet's disguise. He had warmth of feeling, right natural instincts, homeliness, all dashed, perhaps, with a certain weak, old-fashioned sentiment, but not enough to hide the reaHty and heartiness of the man; and it was no uncommon sight to see the rough, rest- less boys spell-bound at his feet, or eagerly leaning their hands upon his knee, while he improvised his quiet, pleasant tales. It was no trouble to him, no effort into which he had patiently schooled himself 48* Prayi7tg and Working, Othenvise it would have lost its power ; for there is nothing more vapid than a story told mechanically, unless it be a story told with the effort not to be me- chanical. It gratified his poet's nature and his old tastes, and used them and consecrated them to work- ing ends. Certain little incidents that find casual record re- veal his relation to the children in the happiest way ; such as this, v/liile they sat one evening at supper. For when one of the boys had said the pious grace, Come, Lord Jesus, be our guesi, and bless what Thou hast provided, a little fellow looked up, and said, — " Do tell me why the Lord Jesus never comes ? We ask Him every day to sit with us, and He never comes." " Dear child, only believe, and you may be sure He will come, for He does not despise our invitation." " I shall set Him a seat," said the little fellow ; and just then there was a knock at the door. A poor, frozen apprentice entered, begging a nighf s lodging. He was made welcome ; the chair stood empty for him ; every child wanted him to have his plate ; and one was lamenting that his bed was too small for the stranger, who was quite touched by such uncommon attentions. The little one had been thinking hard all the time : — " Jesus could not come, and so He sent this poor man in His place ; is that it % " " Yes, dear child, that is just it. Every piece of 'John Falk, 49 bread and every drink of water that we give to the poor or the sick or the prisoners for Jesus' sake, we give to Him. Inasiniich as ye have done ii unto one of the least of these my brethren^ ye have done it unto me.'" The children sang a hymn of the love of God to their guest before they parted for the night, and neither he nor they were likely to forget this simple Bible comment. Among other ways to criminal reformation, Falk saw clearly that w^ork was one of the chief. He was not so clear about the mode in which the work should be done. For many years the boys were apprenticed out so soon as a place was open. They were thus removed for a great part of the week from his care, and they grew up without any bond to knit them together in a common life. The work, the learning of an honest trade, was good. But there were many evils connected with the mode. The tie between the boys and him was weakened ; temptations were multi- plied to them at a time when the Hngering influence of the criminal life made them more dangerous ; they grew out of acquaintance vvith each other, and fell into the ways of their companions ; and their regular lessons were too soon interrupted. Later, he had a glimpse of something better; when necessity sug- gested that the boys should work together, and at a house for themselves. It was too late to make much use of the suggestion, but its value was recognised. In the few days before his death, Falk would not 50 Praymg and Working. suffer the ring of the boys' hammers to stop. It rung in his ears hke music to the end. Something hke this incompleteness and tardiness of reaching the right characterised his entire work. It had in it the germs of v/hatever has been done since in the same direction ; the principles, the various details, were the same as afterAvards, but with him they were feeble and only half-wrought, and he was stumbling on discoveries up to the last. He gallantly shewed the way by his mistakes as well as by his successes. And his nature was too genuine, too healthy, above all too full of faith in Christ, to allow him to repine because other men might enter into his labours, or to murmur because he was only rightly beginning when he died. I have said, a genuine and healthy nature, not forgetting that exu- berance of feeling that beset it, ran wild in it, and peeped out in many extravagant and ludicrous forms. It is true that his outcasts were taught charity by marching round the room on Sundays singing a charity hymn, and dispensing bread to the poor beggars who had stolen in. It is true, also, that he inscribed his family history with painstaking minute- ness on a tablet of his Reformatory. But how much of this was owing to the sentimental period in which his mind was formed? How much worse was he than men of great repute of the same time? And, after all, what does it shew but that some sentimentalism and egotism clung to the good man out of the past? yoh7i Falk. 5 1 Those few glimpses that we have into his house- hold life — and always when death opens the door and bids us look in — teach us charity and respect " God has deigned," he says, " to make me His instrument ; He has moulded me in the fire of affliction, and pre- pared me in the valley of tears." " Go and ask," he says again, "why it was in the bleeding heart of a father, who buried four children in one month, that God planted a tree to give fruit and shadow to many hundred children of the land." He felt that that first fourfold sorrow was God's call. Years passed, and he and his wife sat in the darkened room ; a son of nineteen had died but an hour before, and they sat in the shadow, silent. A hand tapped at the door. " Oh, my Edward," cried the mother, " would that it wert thou ! " It was a poor ragged lad of fourteen, and he struggled through his tears to say, "You have taken so many children from our place ! Have pity upon me also ! Since I was seven, I have had neither father nor mother;" and he could say no more. Then the mother lifted up her eyes to heaven, and cried, "Lord, Lord, Thou sendest us stranger children without pause, and oh. Thou takest away our own!" And the father prayed, "Thy will be done," and took poor Bennewitz to his heart. Two years, and again the room was darkened ; Angelica had died at sixteen. " Pray for me," Falk had written, " for I must still be far from the Lord, when He needs to lay me again and again upon the anvil." All 52 Praying and Workmg. honour to that brave pair, who cared so truly for the stranger children, while their hearts' blood was slowly- trickling into the graves of their own. All honour to that poet-councillor '"' — fanciful, sentimental, or what- ever else it pleased the age to call him — who could feel in his heaviest sorrow that God was forging a fitter instrument to cany out His love to the lost. There were other lessons that the time was teaching. Falk had no fortune to spare on his fancies ; and to provide for so many children involved a large outlay. He begged hard for subscriptions. Uncharitable people voted him a bore. He did not mind it much, but he learned that there was a directer begging and a simpler w^ay. He never ceased laying his necessities before men, but he was more importunate with God ; and though men should refuse him angrily, he had faith that God would refuse him nothing according to His will. "We began our work," he wrote, "with whole and half florins, yea, with groschen, and in peace, if we had only sufficient for the need of the cur- rent day. Our balance was, ' Take no thought for the morrow ;' ' Behold the lilies of the field.' " Two instances may be worth record: — It was a time of great scarcity, almost famine, and prices were so high that Falk did not know how he was to get bread for the children, when a poor boy came into the Sunday-school on crutches, and said, weeping, * "It is not his fault if he be a poet into the bargain." — Letter of Perthes. John Falk. 53 " No one pities me. The dogs have often fallen upon me, and bitten me. Dear sir, for Christ's sake, pity me, and let me have some rest. Put me in a work- shop. I will be good. I will be a tailor, or anything you like. Only take me in." "Dear children," said Falk, " the times are hard, but I will send none of yon away, and I will take the stranger from far off in. And I tell you — and now think of it — blessing will fiovv- richly in upon our house, and God, who has led Lud- wig Minner over the Thuringian Forest in snow and rain, has not led him in vain to us, and He will provide bread not only for him, but for us all." And before the next Sunday, a tailor had taken Minner into his workshop, and the Prince of Rudolstadt had sent a donation of 500 crowns. At the time of Falk's last family soitow he was sud- denly informed that his Reformatory had been sold over his head. In dismay he searched for a suitable house and could hnd none. At length, he remembered a proverb that the people in Weimar had got, they could not tell how : Let John Falk go into Luthet^s Lane. Into Luther's Lane he went, saw a large ruined palace, bought it, and determined that the boys would build a house on the spot. The price was nearly a thousand pounds ; the building materials would cost as much more. But he undertook it. " Trust in God," he cried, " trust in God ; and we have all that we need, and often more." The project was made known, and in various ways the money was collected, and there was 54 Praying and Working. no debt. This was but part. People laughed at the notion of his boys building. He had settled that also with God in his own way. He was determined that " every tile on the roof, every nail in the wall, every lock on the door, every chair and table in the rooms, should be a witness to the industry of Falk's children." And this was accomplished, and before he died, he pronounced, in old German fashion, the blessing on the house : " So long as this house will receive poor chil- dren within its walls, so long will the blessing of God abide on it and them that dwell therein ; but if, forget- ting mercy, it shall ever close its door against poor children, the blessing of God will depart from it." And, perhaps, the actual building was the least im- portant result ; for, during its progress, many dis- coveries were made that have been since turned to golden use in reformatory work : the unity which a common work inspires ; the honest manly independence which was evoked ; the sense of helpfulness to others ; the distribution of the children under various older persons as overseers, and the better knowledge thus acquired ot each, and his aptitude for any special calling. These and other gains were too late for Falk ; his day was closing. But the Rough House at Horn, and the Colony at Mettray, have proved what gains they were. Falk's energies were not limited by his Reformatory. He organised a plan for the decay of beggars, which has since been enlarged and nobly carried out at Elberfeld. John Falk. 55 Each beggar child was given in charge to a circle of five or six people in V/eimar. As far as these benevolent circles extended, the children were provided for. Nor, if fresh children had wandered in to supply the place of these, would it have affected his plan, vrhich was to put an end to begging children, and not merely to exclude them from V/eimar. Then, in the course of his inquiries, he came across an endowment for the education of sixty poor schoolmasters, and finding that no care was taken about the men, and that they were educating themselves in the very worst way for becom- ing teachers of the young, he gave Weimar no rest until reforms were introduced, and finally the school- masters brought into personal contact with himself, and more or less under his training. The endowment was of a singularly irregular kind. From one house they had dinner, from another lodgings, from a third their educational expenses, and so on. It was felt to be a mere almsgiving in a somewhat coarse fashion ; and probably this feeling, and the perfect carelessness v/hich prevailed about them, drew the men to low com- pany, and card-playing, and cheap theatres, and bad books, until they passed their examination, and went out through the Duchy to teach the young. With a boldness which he had not hitherto shewn, Falk ex- posed the negligence with which this charity was ad- ministered; and although it brought him into collision with the best famifies of the place, he succeeded in establishing a personal oversight, and making the foun- 50 Pi'aying and Working. dation more of a home. The gambhng, bad company, and bad books, were soon exchanged for evenings at Falk's house, practising of choral-singing, and quiet hours over the Bible. The next step was to secure that only those should be selected for the foundation who shewed fitness for the work — a fitness to consist in the heart as much as the head. This department of his work was named, after the apostle of love, the Johanneum^ and completed the circle of his labours. He had charge already of the schoolless children ; he now took indirect charge of all those at school. He stamped his own viev/s upon the young schoolmasters, sent them out with the same principles that had be- come so fixed in his own life, and the impulse of that trusty, energetic faith with which they came in con- tact at his house ; and thus, it might be said, the entire education of Weimar was in his hands. It would have made his influence felt in time over the whole country, but his life was over. He had 300 children in his Refoniiatory, 60 schoolmasters in his Johanneum^ hundreds of young men and women ap- prenticed out to various industries, beggar children provided for, and stray children of every description welcomed as they came. His singleness and blame- lessness of life had silenced all the early ridicule. Next to the Grand Duke, and perhaps Geheimerath Goethe, no one was treated with so much respect. He was involuntary treasurer of all poor schemes in the place ; for if people had mxoney to bestow in charity, it yohn Fa Ik. 57 was sent ^vithout reserve to Falk. Strangers came from a distance where news of the singular work had penetrated. Old pupils, now well off in the world, returned to thank him, and to see the old place and the new faces. And he kept up an unflagging corre- spondence with those at a distance \ cheering them, helping them with loving words and sage counsels ; as much interested in their progress as if they were children of his o^vn. At length sickness struck him down. He lay for sfx sleepless weeks racked with fierce incessant pains. Out of these weeks proceeded the fullest and deepest spiritual letters to his friends, the best hymns for his Sunday-school, the richest in Divine grace, careful and wise plans for his Reformatory. Then he seemed to recover ; for weeks his friends had hope j but the body was worn out and had no rallying strength, and he sank again. Three days before his death he com- pleted a book of devotional thoughts and the preface to another, Martin Luther in Popular Rhymes. It is characteristic that the poet should survive to the last, and something of the energy of early Weimar days flashes up in that preface. The country, he felt, was still dead, nationally and spiritually. Where there was life, it allied itself too often with romanti- cism, and buried itself in Rome. He thought he would write the old heroic life of Luther in popular ballads for the people, " that by the fire of song and prayer all that wooden framework that the schools 58 Praying and Working, called history might be burned down and left in ashes. For a people with a glorious history, and yet only sleepily conscious of it, and opening its mouth wide and stupid like a child when it hears of the great dc^e J5 «.)f its fathers, since it knows no more of them than names and battles and dates, — it is no people, but the mere ghost of a people, yea, a mere withered mummy." The rhymes are forgotten, but this preface is worth remembering; brave strong words to come from so hallowed and peaceful a deathbed, — words that shew what fire of righteous indignation may abide in the same heart with the sweetness and crucifixion of Christian temper. The next day he spent in making his will, devising in it various arrange- ments for the conduct of his Ltitherhof, solemnly committing it to his family, and closing with a prayer for all his friends and enemies. And having done this, he calmly awaited the end. His friend and former pupil, Rheinthaler, had been sent for from Erfurt, where he had charge of a similar good work upon a smaller scale. When he reached in the evening, Falk's eye was filmy and his utterance indistinct. But as they stood round the bed they heard the broken words at intervals, " God — popular —faith — short — Christ — end." It was after the sun- set of a brief February day in 1826 that the lijDS were sealed and the eyelids closed. His wife's birthday, it had also become his. Three days more, and the John Falk. 59 children bore him to the grave with singing of Chris- tian psalms j and for epitaph remain his own wordr-, quaint as Baxter's : — ' ' Underneath this linden tree Lies John Falk ; a sinner he^ Saved by Christ's blood and merc^, " Born upon the East Sea strand, Yet he left home, friends, and land, Led to Weimar by God's hand. "When the little children roimd Stand beside this grassy mound. Asking, Who lies under ground ? — "Heavenly Father, let them say. Thou hast taken him away. In the erave is only ckv»'* IMMANUEL WICHERN.* I. THE BUILDER. TJ EFORM, though ever so sHght and hmited in its range, does not seem able to dispense with it.; reformers before the reformation. It is not the sudden birth of a year or a day, but advances slowly, as the dawning grows into the sunrise, though by no means with the same regularity and harmony. It is linked to the past by many feeble, imperfect, perhaps blundering efforts of those who discerned it with more or less prophetic clearness, worked it out some little * Those who wish fuller details of Wichera's Rough House and the German Inner Mission will find abundant material in the Fliegende Blatter aus dem RauJien Hause zu Horn bei Hamburgh 1844-61, 18 vols. ; Das Beiblatt der Fhegenden Blatter, 1850-61, 12 vols.; Berichte uber die Kinder anstalt, 27 (1836-61); Festhuchlein des Rauhen Hauses, von Dr Wick- em, ite Auflage, Hamburg, 1856; Die Inner e Mission, von 62 Praying and Working. way, and left their discoveries and mistakes as a legacy to a riper time. Nor are these strivings fruit- less though they may utterly fail of reaching their aim, nor are they lost though they make no impression, and excite no interest, and apparently pass away to be buried with other things that were. They prove the existence of a real need which has not yet found clear expression, which even if clearly expressed the age is not quick to perceive, but which being real cannot be put down ; they are symptoms which may become in after years the first clue to the disease. Moreover, they are quietly marking out and prepar- ing the way for truer efforts, to which some life shall be distinctly consecrated, and when those elements of success are waiting that were denied to them. Falk's Lutherhof ^2iS imperfect enough, yet it was a genuine and successful reformatory; but long previous, and while Falk was still a raw student, writing indifferent verses, his conception was shaping itself in the minds of some men in Switzerland and elsewhere, of one man especially. Pestalozzi is not a name that excites any interest at Dr Wichern, ite Atiflage, Hamburg, 1849; Die Evangelische yohajines-Stiftung tmd das Johamtes Siifi in Berlin, von Dr Wichern^ Berlin, 1859-61 ; Das Raiihe Uatis, von Th. von Wedderkop, Oldenburg, 1 85 1 ; Die Verhandhmgen des Kir clien- tages^ 1848-60, II vols. ; Missionswege innerhalb der deutschen protestantise he7t Christenheit, 1857-59, von F. Oldenburg, Ham- burg, i860; and various excellent papers in ^^rjjc^'j- Encyclo- Immaratel Wichern. 63 present, further than as associated with a great educa- tional revolution not altogether of the wholesomest character. He is remembered as a man of curious, sometimes absurd theories, and of a curiously-exag- gerated reputation in his day. V/e can scarcely think without a smile that Fichte recognised in him the com- mencement of a regeneration of mankind, or that the various governments of Europe strove together for teachers from his Institute. "What do you see, children % " he would say, pointing to one of the numberless holes in the school carpet. "A hole in the carpet." " Good ; now say after me : I see a hole in the carpet ; I see a large hole in the carpet ; I see a round hole in the carpet j I see the floor through the carpet." It was his way of teaching habits of observation. Few mothers would have the cruelty to carr)' out the grand scheme, by which even simple peasant .women might be perfect schoolmistresses, if they could only read his book.* We are happily growing out of such rigid mechanical processes, though it would be premature to say that we are above being taken by educational crotchets appar- ently as ridiculous. Pestalozzi, however, has been * That is, as the child points with pride to the new red shoes on its restless little feet, to teach it to repeat, "The lo toes of my 1 feet have 28 joints — 10 fore-joints, 8 middle joints, and 10 hinder joints; and 28 knuckles — 10 fore -knuckles, 8 middle knuckles, and 10 hinder knuckles : the 5 toes of each foot have 14 members — 5 fore -members, 4 middle members, and 5 hinder members ; " and so on with endless like barbarities. 64 Praying and Working. unfairly judged. His mistakes, and practical in- capacity, and extremes have brought his system into contempt ; in the effort to realise his theories, his disciples ended in a lifeless mechanism. But the author of the thoughtfal aphorisms in the Abendstimden and the noble sketch of family life in Lienhard und Gertf'ud is not a man to be thrust aside with a few words of faint praise.''^' And a truer, braver, more patient, and loving heart there never beat : philan- thropist he was in the purest sense, if that means an unmurmuring sacrifice of everything for the good of tlie race. Through a life that was a battle with poverty, till the fight was ended in the grave at eighty, he never faltered in his labours for the children. The strange eyes, care-seamed face, v/ith the marks of pain about the eye and mouth, and the gentleness of the firm resolve, tell sufficiently the struggle and suffering, the hardness of the school out of which he came to teach others. His educational projects were only part of a wider thought. " From my earliest years," he once said, " my heart rushed like a mighty * "Those misunderstand Father Pestalozzi who fancy he would rejoice in the unnatural system that prevails in many schools at present. He was an upright man, full of love, who did not care much for art, but delighted in simplicity. His object was to simplify education, to make it go deeper, not to overload it and make it cover larger space. He wished that little' should be learned, but this little thoroughly. He preferred the ability to know to the amount of knowledge But what he strove for coidd not be worked out by books." — Zeller, hnmanuel Wichern. 65 stream on, on to one goal, to dam up the fountains of that misery in which I saw the people round me sunk." Education might, he thought, do this ; indeed, education was his idol : but he was prepared to take other measures as w^ell, to employ all the charities of life to shelter the beggar child and the orphan. When the revolution broke out in Switzerland, Pestalozzi's friends came into power, and tempting political offers were made to him by the Directory. He refused them Avith one word, saying earnestly to Director Legrand, " I shall be a schoolmaster." The opportunity soon came. The French overran Unter- walden, and left the usual marks in robbery, fire, poverty, and orphans. At Stanz, in that canton, there was an Ursuline cloister empty, and to Stanz he hastened, supported by Legrand. The cloister was partly unfinished and altogether unready, and the children flocked in before a stove or a bed was in the house ; they were in rags, covered with vermin, in- fected with such diseases as are associated with rags and vermin, yet many of them tenderly brought up. Some were sent away for want of bedding : they re- turned, he declared, in the morning more laden with vermin than ever. There was no alternative but to take them at once ; the weather was bad ; the place was damp ; the passages were choked up with lime and rubbish ; and low fever crept in. " I had nothing," is his own account, "no housekeeper, no friends. What they ate, I ate; what they drank, I 66 Praying and Working, drank. If they were well, I stood among them ; if they were sick, I was by their side. I was the last who went to bed, the first who rose ; I slept among them, and even when they were in bed I prayed With them and taught them From morning till evening, at eveiy moment, my children were to see that my heart was theirs,, that their good was my good, their joy my joy ; they were to read it in my face, they were to hear it from my lips." Every one who has read the later history of reforma- tories must see in these words that Pestalozzi had seized the right principle ; that he possessed also the self-sacrifice that it demanded. The children got into orderly ways. They learned with some rapidity ; the better class returned his loving care by obedience and good habits. Meanwhile, poor relations came clamor- ously round the cloister walls ; they considered they had done the schoolmaster a compliment by letting him keep the children ; they insisted on being paid an equivalent to what the children would have got by begging. They were rude ; spoke loud ; hated the intruder ; set him down as an educational speculator. So it lasted for a year, and then the cloister rung again with French arms, and Pestalozzi went his way. " Did you see how wretched the man looked to-day T said one. "Ay, ay, I am sorry for the poor fool." "So am I ; but there is no hope for him but the grave." " True, neighbour ; the best we can wish him is to die." Immaii2Lel Wicherjt. 67 <'That," says Pestalozzi, "was the reward of my work at Stanz." Yet the last ghmpse we have of him in public is at a reformatoiy. More than twenty years before he went to Stanz he might have been seen daily among a crowd of beggar children in his house at Neudorf He made a io^N discoveries in teaching, spent his little fortune, and broke up the establish- ment More than twenty years after the folk at Stanz had wished him in the grave, he stood among a crowd - of children at l^euggen, the silver-haired old man who had been feted by all Europe. The children welcomed him with singing; they reached him an oaken weath. He put it gently away, saying, " Crowns are not for me, but for the innocent." Then they sang him a hymn out of his Lienhard und Gerfrud, till the tears stood in his eyes, and with choking voice and broken words he hurried out of the room. He had outlived all his projects ; but his deep human love, his desire to succour the wretched, lived on in him warm and im- pulsive as ever. It had been his wish that "another generation would take up his broken strivings, and reach his aim, while he lay in the grave." And at Beuggen he saw part of that wish accomplished and was content. Beuggen is a stately castle near Basel, and the seat of an ancient order of German knighthood. The Rhine, blue and rapid, sweeps past the walls; the Jura Alps rise to the south, northward lie the first dark belts of the Black Forest. About forty years ago, a clergyman 68 Praying and Working. of that modem order of knight-errantry which enrols a Howard, and a Wilberforce, and a Fry, seized upon the castle for certain purposes of his own. The place had been sadly wrecked during the wars, nor was its last use linked with any pleasant associations ; the rooms had been crowded with the wounded and pest-stricken, and 8000 bodies were buried in the neighbouring fields. But as soon as it was vacated. Father Zeller gratefully accepted it from the Grand Duke of Baden, and converted it into a reformatory. This connexion of charitable Christian works with the plague of war that was desolating Europe was by no means uncommon at that time. It was the war that drew Pestalozzi to the orphan children of Stanz ; it was the war that made Falk the builder of the Lutherhof; it was the war that gave the first practical impulse to the noble band of German deaconesses ; and from the Crimea we ourselves have received a like legacy, in the gentle and wise nursing of our sick, and the rightful ministry of our devoted women. The connexion is more than casual, and must be understood as part of that wider system by which the evil of this world is ever being redressed by good, and the very outbreak of wrong in one direction is meant to . '^rgest a remedy for it in another. At every point of trial it would seem God has some servant waiting, with kindly offices and sym- pathy ; and the blows by which nations inflict horror and suffering upon each other become the chastise- Immanuel Wichern. 6g ment which yields, in nations as well as individuals, the peaceable fruit of righteousness. And while the evil is local, and while time " obHterates its traces one by one, the good that has sprung from it abides and deepens, and is spread over the globe. Zeller founded a double institute in his castle, one for educating voluntary schoolmasters for the poor, the other for special reformatory work. Both have had remarkable success. For v/hile Pestalozzi exercised a powerful influence over Zeller, Zeller had that practical skill and shrewdness in which Pestalozzi was deficient. His views were comprehensive, but systematically carried out. The reformatory served for the district j it was a normal school to his schoolmasters ; and these again, as they were gradually scattered from the Neva to Africa, and from Moscow to the Mississippi, spread their master's teaching. Thus the influence for good was indefinitely multiplied ; and as the institution has now been forty years in full vigour, and has sent out upwards of two hundred teachers, vast numbers must have been reached by words of Christian kindness, who would otherwise have grown up helplessly and blindly m crime. This has been the most effective part of the work, and for which Zeller was most gifted. Yet the reformatory receives nearly a hundred children, in this the largest but two in Germany, and has become the rallying-point, and, indeed, the starting-point of all reformatory work south of Prussia— a position owed entirely to its founder. Father Zeller and his monthly yo Praying and Working. organ are household words in Germany ; nor can there well be shrewder, quainter, more original papers than those of the MonatsUdtt^ rich as they are in sagacious and profound thought, kindly in expression, yet brilliant with striking truths, models of biblical exposition, and fraught with no mean results in the great religious struggles of the country. His reports are quite as characteristic and quite as good reading, and a singular instance of their power is worth relating. Zeller had a brother, well known in Prussia for his educational labours. This brother was lodged one night at Beuggen, and taking up a volume of reports became so absorbed that the morning surprised him over its pages. "Brother, happy brother," was his greeting next day ; " how richly God has blessed you since we parted ! Would God that I might spend the evening of my life in so charming and blessed a ser- vice !" As he reached Stuttgart the same day, a paper fell into his hands with an appeal to secure a ruined nunnery from falling into the market, and devote it to reformatory uses. It met the longing that was upon him ; he secured the building with the aid of friends, and within a year entered it with twelve boys. There were but two rooms, — one for work-room, sitting-room, dining-room, and school; the other for sleeping, al- though the snow fell in through the roof It was only January however, and December saw thirty-two boys in a roomy building constructed out of the ruins. Before five years had elapsed, there were as many as Immanuel Wichern. 71 ninety children, and the cloister of Lichtenstem is now a sister establishment to the castle of Beuggen. Meanwhile Falk was rejoicing over his boy- workmen in Weimar, and from him too Reinthaler went out and founded the Martinstift at Erfurt. North and south the theory was making practical progress. Separated so widely as to remain unknown to each other, the two men laboured on in the same spirit, with the same faith j and in due time the widening circles of their labours touched. Nor had the war performed its ministry until at Diisselthal also there rose a refomia- tory. The Counts von der Recke purchased the great convent there in 1820, received children, lived among them, and when their fortune was exhausted, sustained their noble charity by friendly help from without, and sustained it without a break, in honest dependence upon God. In the same year, a poor schoolmaster, named Hoyer, estabHshed a reformatory at QuedHn- burg; others sprang up at Berhn and Ziillchowj and, in 1832, there Avere upwards of twenty in Germany, twelve in Wiirtemberg alone. Mechanics, noblemen, councillors of education, men of letters, parish clergy- men, were their founders. Help and organisation could scarcely have been drawn from more various and unlikely sources. Each man was working out his own conception apart, learning by his own experiences, un- conscious that others were working with him. And yet the result was almost a unity in the method and in the larger details, an entire unity in the fundamental 72 Praying and Working, principle of living by faith. While the notion seemed to die out \\dth Pestalozzi, like one of his exploded theories, in Falk and Zeller it found venturous, patient, and practical exponents, and from their time it main- tained a hold upon the country that has been strength- ened every year. Falk might fairly prophesy to Perthes, "The idea which has possessed me will spread throughout Germany and all Christian Europe." But while the idea spread, it was rather forced upon the age by its adherents ; it met no genial response, rather suspicion and reluctance ; each institute was sur- rounded by the prejudices and opposition of its own neighbourhood ; and even when there were twenty reformatories for the one at Weimar, they were unin- fluential, isolated, struggling for existence. Mistakes of the injudicious were set down against the system. Want of common sense in some of the men was damaging, and no goodness of intention was sufficient to shield their cause from ridicule. There was need that some connexion should be established between those who were carrying out a difficult and unpopular object ; that they should be made to know and help each other; that they should be saved from falling into each other's mistakes. There were many im^- perfections in the reformatories of that period that threatened to become stereotyped; the relations be- tween the life of faith and the use of means were by no means clearly defined, and this indefiniteness had already bred some confusion. Besides, the reforma- Immamiel Wichern. 73 tory was no longer alone, but had already connected itself with other departments of the Home Mission. The same keen-sighted Christian love that had detected the dangers of neglecting the children, was not slow to detect other perils as great. Yet no one had hitherto shewn sufficient wisdom and penetration and courage to grapple with the problem of the Home Mission as a whole ; no one had appeared, with such peculiar gifts as to command the respect, to organise the efforts of the rest. And until this was brought about, reformatories could make but little way, and efforts forthe Home Mission were hable to be restricted, if not crushed, by the general carelessness and hostility. It was at this juncture that Dr Wichern's name be- came associated with reformatories, and the story of his labours is henceforth the story of the entire Inner Mission. The cholera was still lingering in Hamburg, break- ing out in those fitful, irregular cases that mark its subsidence, v/hen, on an October evening in 1832, a few men vrere assembled in the room of the school- master H . The room evidently did not belong to the upper ten thousand, nor did the people. Both were plain and simple ; and the men, some of whom w^ere artisans, and some in business or in the profes- sions, wore earnest and grave faces. It was an un- known, but very energetic and working society, then recently organised for visiting the poor; and any one 74 Praying and Working, who is acquainted with Hamburg will conceive the seriousness and weary effort of such a purpose. Ham- burg has an unholy pre-eminence among continental seaports; its vice is more open, its materialism is grosser; and whatever life there is in the Church is confined to a few individuals scattered through the city, and thus powerless. There are quarters of the town that are stricken, from old to young, with a moral plague ; there are courts containing hundreds of families, where men poor, and not overscrupulous, would be ashamed to shelter ; there are blind alleys and regions under ground where even the poverty is outdone by the awfulness of moral degradation. So far, perhaps, London or Paris might furnish similar details, though those who knov/ Hamburg best declare, that even such ugly features as are common to large cities are more hideous in their own. But it was the entire city that was demoralised. It was not here or there that the fabric of society was decayed, but all moral strength had rotted out of the building. The public opinion, the columns of the newspapers, the gossip of the streets, the talk of the slums, bore the same wit- ness to a defiant, reckless, lustful ungodliness. The churches were empty, the gospel was a name, and the tendency was ever downward; for 75,000 communi- cants in 1772, there were only 22,000 in 1848.* * In 1849 the Bible Society report that girls of eighteen and twenty held up to the colporteur the five new sojigs, printed in Immamiel Wickern. 75 "What the poor would be under such circumstances, — how hard to rescue them, or overtake a tithe of their need, — how helplessly the visitor would pass from lane to lane, and grope through the horrible and mysterious cellars, is easily conceivable. Moreover, in a time of pestilence, all hcence seems withdrawn from evil, the whole social state is confused, and the power of reform possessed by a handful of isolated and uninfmential workers is imperceptibly small. It was just this matter that these men were discussing ; and how best to face the discouragements of theii position ! The most eager was Immanuel Wichern, a young caiididat"" of twenty-four, thorough and clear in his speech, and with firm lines in his face, which, to- gether Avith his deep-set, steady eyes, betokened an energy and resolve that would grapple hard with most problems that he met. His father was a Hamburg notary, who had died ten years before. He himself, this year, crying out with scorn, There is our Bible ; mothers, in the presence of their daughters, declared they would rather go to the daiicing-booth than read a page of the gospel. Master- workmen said their Bible -was a plate of meat ; journeymen asked if they had no sausages to give them instead of szich stnff. Some put down the Bible as a danijiable book that had turned the zuorld mad, others as a booh of lies ; others asserted that they themselves ivere the Bible. Some asked if the colporteur kept no good thieves'' stories, some shouted that they had that day thrust the Bible in the stove. There was everywhere not only denial of the Christian faith, but "of the simplest fundamental moral truths that we had believed were written in tlie heart." * A clergyman not yet in orders. 76 Praying and Working. educated at a time when the spiritual sleep of half a century was broken, was carried at once with the evan- gelical movement, and as soon as his university life was closed, began work as a Sunday-school teacher in his native town. This effort not only made him tho- roughly familiar with the evil aspects of the social life, but brought him into contact with some men of a kin- dred spirit, and led to the formation of the Visiting Society. As a visitor he had mixed with the poorest day-labourers, with porters, crossing-sweepers, coster- mongers of every species ; just that side of the popu- lation which is the great feeder of the criminal class, and which swallows up individual effort with as little impression as an Irish bog will receive anything, from Pat's old shoes to a railway embankment. His expe- riences were discouraging ; it seemed every day more idle to assail that huge compact mass of evil that fronted them, and every day more serious."^'" If only * Take the following picture out of one house. In the first room there was a tipsy woman with three children. As a child she and her mother used to be turned out at night into the streets by a drunken father. She married, was left a widow with one son, and afterwards lived with a low wretch who beat and starved her, and also died. The eldest lad of seventeen gathered rags and bones by day and night ; a girl of twelve was stone-blind by the sin of her parents ; the third was a helpless, unhealthy boy of six. In the next room, there was a rough, dnmken labourer, with hungiy children ; a nephew of eighteen had lived with him who had never seen his father or mother, neither could nor would read or pray, and either gathered rags or helped in a smithy. Off this room there was a drunken woman with two little girls. The Inimaimel Wichern, "JJ the children could be rescued ; but the Sunday-schools had no cheering results. The impure influences that surrounded the child through the week, that were a eldest daughter, a girl of eighteen, had been sent for a year to the house of correction for stealing, and the mother alternately wept and swore because she had not brought up her children m the fear of God. The next group was a woman with seven children ; a naked boy of ten was crouching in the ashes on the hearth ; an infant was cradled in rags ; dirty, impish-looking beings were running wild over the floor ; in the centre, a girl of seventeen, actress in some penny theatre, with spangled dress and elaborate hair, was setting a feathered hat on her head by one hand, while she held the looking-glass in the other. The mother considered she had done her duty by her family. A man and woman lived above by making lucifer-matches ; they had a poor little fellow who went through the streets selling their wares. Some years before, these unnatural parents had turned him out mto the frost to die. A neighbour heard his pitiful whimper, and rescued him, but not till he had lost some of his toes and the fingers of one hand by frost-bite. A melancholy house surely, and enough to weigh down the hopefullest and bravest mind. One other soli- tary room may suffice to illustrate Wichem's position. It was in a narrow court off a narrow street. It may be said there -^as no furniture. A powerful young man of twenty lay on the boards, scarce clothed, and gnawed away by hunger ; in the middle lay a girl of fourteen, covered with nothing but a piece of rag ; the mother sat by the window, pale and hungiy ; staining children clustered round her ; in the corner lay the father, a man of seventy, his gray head on a bundle of straw. *' My husband is Dr ," said the vv'oman. Dr was dying, and the girl, who was gnawing a piece of apple she had picked up in the street, reached it to her father ; it was all she had. He died that day : the children were sent to school, work was obtamed for the rest ; but it was of no avail : they sank down in the sur- rounding vice, swiftly and deeply, and disappeared no one knew whither. "/^ Praying and Working, part of its home life, rendered the efforts of the Society fruitless. He saw that it was useless to visit them so long as they remained exposed to a daily corruption ; that to train them at school while they lived in their old haunts, was only to roll the stone up-hill all day, and let it roll back at night; yet he saw also that there was hope with the children before poverty and wicked homes drove them into crime. And it struck him that for any real good they must be separated from their previous life, and kept entirely out of the way of their old associations and companions. No doubt a prison-school had been opened in 1828 for young criminals, and in 1833 had multiplied its inmates from nineteen to fifty, while many were sent away from want of room ; but there was a radical objection to the qualification for entrance, — they were qualified by juvenile criminality. It was clear that this would not do. And so the young candidat con- tinued his reflections, not neglecting to gather such statistics as might help him ; such as that in Prussia at that time there were one hundred thousand cri- minals, and that the increase of juvenile criminals was 70 per cent, above the increase of population; that, in 1828, the Newgate chaplain returned fifteen thousand boys, from eight to twelve years of age, who lived in London by theft; that, while in the United States the proportion of juvenile to adult criminals was one to seven, in Prussia it was one to thirty-four, in Holland one to thirty-five, but in Immanuel Wichern. 79 Schleswig-Holstein, which touched hmi closer, one to sixteen. In Liverpool it appeared that, with a popu- lation of 300,000, as many as 51,000 criminals had stood in the dock during seven years, and that more than one-tenth of these were under seventeen years of age. It appeared also that the fifth part of them had been convicted five times within the previous three years, so that the only result of the first conviction was to drav/ four others in its train ; nay, that a boy of twelve having been twelve times before the magis- trate was transported for ten years ; a boy of ten, after eleven convictions, transported for seven years j a boy of nine, after four convictions, transported for seven years j and that these three, with eleven others in the same case, had cost the Government £880. Along with these statistics, however, certain clear ideas were shaping in his mind. Separation was necessary, and a shelter for the chil- dren. Was that enough? The other reformatories sought no more ; but it struck him that a household of a hundred children was unnatural and unhomelike. The nearer he kept to existing relations, he felt the surer of success. The family was God's own order, and the natural place for a child. The family life was the circle within which the purest and strongest influences were to be sought. He knew there was little of it among the poor. A child of ten years could tell him that his father was drunk, and often deserted them ; that he was 8o Praying and Working. brought back by the poHce. It was a sorry house ; and yet the mother was a tie to the children, though vvdiat kind of a mother she was is plain from a gleeful recollection of this very child, when once she had armed all the children with household utensils, and led the charge against the poor drunken man on his return. At last the mother died ; and, if that can be called a home, it was broken up. The children were divided among other pauper families. " What shall I do?" said the little fellow soon after to a sister in another family. " Go and drown yourself, and I'll soon follow. " He waited till it v/as dark — it was a Sunday — then went to the water and put off his clothes. . . . God saved him. Weeping, he said, " Mother was dead, and there was no pleasure in liv- ing any more. " There is scant family life in that picture ; but what there was vv^as moulding the child : if the atmosphere had been purer, who can measure the influence 1 So Wichern felt, meditating upon this and many a story like it, his plans slowly maturing. He would have no more children together than would make one household ; they would have a household head and household ways ; and if their number increased, there might be many separate households, each independent, and yet all bound in one large household, of which he would be the general father. But was not any improvement of the children chi- merical ? Was there any likelihood oi success ? He Immamtel Wichern. 8i nad studied this also. Elsewhere three out of four children were reformed ; in one place only one out of ten seemed lost ; in Wiirtemberg the proportion was even less. And therefore, feeling he might have some confidence, he made his proposal to the meeting. He was warm and enthusiastic about it ; the need of his city was pressing him on. " About this time," he says, " a little, unknown child came to me in the open street, and with outstretched hands, and begging face, and many tears, tried to kiss the hand that had never done it a benefit, and cried, ' Come with me, come with me, and see for yourself' " That child was for ever in his thoughts ; there could be no rest for him till he had answered it. He spoke as only men of deep feehng and purpose can : he appealed to them all ; their ex- perience was the same as his ; it was needful to do something ; and when the meeting broke up, they had determined, in God's name, to establish a Reforma- tory. The friends dispersed with new thoughts, and a sudden responsibility for the future. They were men of very moderate means, unable to give any consider- able money contributions, unlikely to influence others. It was a subject on which no interest was felt in the city ; even in their own circle it could be broached only with some timidity and caution. And yet it was a large and comprehensive scheme, one requiring capital and generous support ; and if adopted by a few enthusiastic men, was it at all likely to find a response 82 Praying a7id Worki7ig. among quiet, easy, common-sense people % Would it not be pooh-poohed by them as a visionary notion 'l Would not this Visiting Society be ignored in that careless, matter-of-course fashion by which the great world puts down the small % Likely enough ; and probably these men never felt themselves poorer or more powerless than when they went thoughtfully back to their homes, and saw the poverty and crime of their city by the glare of its lamps, and knew that no man cared. But the sense of weakness is by no means a sense of failure. It is just in their weakness that men who believe in a spiritual world outlying and ruling this of ours, are cast utterly upon its force, and find them- selves girded with a superhuman strength — "out of weakness are made strong.'' "We had only one treasure," they said, "the promise of our gracious Lord." Realising that, they felt no need of any other. They talked httle about the matter; but if they met in the street, the question was — " Are you praying earnestly?" The question soon answered itself A gentleman, who knew nothing of their plan, gave them a hundred thaler (£15) for the poor, and especially to help in raising up an institution for re- claiming criminals. They thought this a considerable sum, and sought for some public man in whose name they could invest it. One of the senators was sug- gested. He accepted the trust, and then mentioned that he was executor of the ^vill of a Christian mer- Immanuel Wichern. 8^ chant who had bequeathed large sums to pious objects, and, among others, £1000 for a Reformatory. He mentioned, also, that this sum would be at their dis- posal. It was now time for the November meeting. Four weeks previous they had nothing but prayer, and the promise, and faith ; now they had upwards ot <£iooo. Nor did their encouragement rest here. In January some of them started a periodical which was to spread reformatory intelligence. On the very day of its first pubHcation a lady left a large donation ; in a few weeks it crept out that some servant girls were collecting their mites ; a journeyman shoemaker emptied out his saving-box with both silver and gold ; many similar gifts flowed in, some of them ^vrapped up in encouraging texts of Scripture ; it was felt that God was strangely working for them ; the sympathies and sacrifices of the poor gave them hopefulness and strength j and at length they began to look for some suitable building, unsuccessfully, as it turned out. There was then in Hamburg the Syndic Sieveking, and there is still near Hamburg the pretty village of Wandsbeckj and to those who have read the very touching and noble memoir of the bookseller Perthes, neither of these names will be unfamiHar : the one the name of a family loved and honoured through many generations, and now worthily represented in our own London j the other known as the chosen home of Matthias Claudius. Sieveking had a considerable estate lying round the town, aitd on that part of it 84 Praying and Working. which verged upon Wandsbeck, he presented ground for the Reformatory. It was one of the most charm- ing spots in the neighbourhood, a most choice and picturesque site, and promised to be every way suit- able and convenient Very late on a winter's evening, Wichern hurried into town with the good news, but, late as it was, he assembled his friends for a thanks- giving ; for had they not been simply waiting for what God would give them % and now, in three months, they had friends, and money, and land ! In a day or tvvo, however, tidings came that the will already mentioned was disputed ; a few days later, it was found that the site was useless for building on. This was no light blow; and men less finn might have lost faith, and let their purpose slip through their wavering, unsteady hold. But they were perfectly clear about their way, that it was the right way to reach their object, and that God would not disappoint their trust. They might have been hasty and over- -confidentj they might be trusting in their success; they might need a warning ; and they read the lesson truly — " That we should never build on anythmg but Him, no, not even on His gifts." And so they went on precisely as before, in prayer and calmness, and as hopeful as when they began. The issue deserves special heed. Mr Sieveking bethought him one morn- ing of a little place he had in Horn, between Wands- beck and the Elbe. Unfortunately it was leased, and the lease had some time to run ; and as he went over Immamtel Wiche7^n. 85 to try what could be done with the tenants, he felt by no means sanguine. Singularly enough, they were anxious to leave. The ground was not extensive, yet admirably adapted to the purpose ; and there was a house upon it, no way remarkable certainly, for it was a h'tle cottage half in ruins ; but the rooms could be easily improved, the thatch was pretty good, there was a deep well close by, the finest chestnut of the neigh- bourhood flung its shadow over the roof, there was a garden, and even a fish-pond, and the name of this spot from time immemorial had been, ^'- Das Raiche Haus." * Improvements were immediately begun (it was the end of April ;) the will case went in favour of the charities, and was decided with an unusual quickness; and by August the friends were in pos- session of the money and the building. Matters had now assumed so definite a shape, that it was thought advisable to call a public meeting in September, when one or two hundred persons came, and the plan of a Refomiatory was laid before them and adopted. It was to provide a refuge for the children until confirmation. It was not to be an orphanage, nor a ragged-school, nor a house of cor- rection, nor a beggars' asylum, but a Christian house- * "The Rough House." The origin of this name is uncertain, but it is totally unconnected with the Reformatoiy, to which it has since been attached merely by local association. The tra- dition, indeed, runs in the family of Claudius that it was built by one called Ruge, that it got the name of Ruge's Haus, and that this was popularly corrupted into Rauhes Haus. 86 Praying and Working. hold. It repudiated any support from the State, or from any benevolent or civic institution ; it would limit its operation by the help it would spontaneously receive through the sympathy of Christian hearts. These were the simple principles which the meeting sanctioned, passively it would seem, and because they were carried away into enthusiasm by Wichern's persuasive pleading and his terrible statistics ; for the notion of a Refomiatory was too novel to be well understood, and people asked each other what the word meant. Some said it was only a way to mislead the criminal population ; parents would edu- cate their children to crime in order to procure for them a comfortable home, or even to be rid of the burden of their support ; that a reformatory, instead of checking any evil, would introduce one new and more fatal than any.* Others declared that there were no children in Hamburg for such a place j and that, in any case, none could be prevailed to enter it. Nevertheless, the scheme had received this public recognition, and on the last evening of the next month — another October — the young clergyman and his * This objection is plausibly uttered still, and readily believed by those to whom this reclamation of our moral wastes is only a theoiy. It may be well to quote Wichern's weighty words : "/ believe that premeditated child-murder is more frequent than the deliberate, conscious 7noral destruction of a child by its parents. During a twelve years' experience I have become acquainted -with hundreds of instances that should have confirmed this objection, but I have never met one that did, " Immamiel Wichern. 87 mother passed quietly under the low thatched roof of the little Rauhes Haiis^ and the Reformatory was begun. There was no festival, no stir of applauding friends ; only, thoughtful Syndic Sieveking had hung in the sitting-room two of his favourite pictures, Chrisfs Entry into Jerusalem, and the Blessing of Little Children. There is something touching in the contrast be- tween the unconscious heedless city, with its gay lights shimmering in the Alster, the gay music escap- ing in bursts out of its crowded saloons, and its crime and misery stalking through the night, its brawls and wantonness, and the sad, haggard faces of its poor, and faces of despair bending over the gloomy river — between this, and that self-denying son and mother, leaving cheerfully their world behind them, unattended, unknown, with no arm about them but God's, entering by faith on a life of the most painful and incessant sacrifice, and all for that very unwitting city, the glare of whose lamps cast up against the sky is the last thing they see as they close the door of their humble cottage behind them. And this man's work is to associate with rough, hardened lads, bom and bred in crime, to shut himself up with them in the hope of winning hold upon their wild natures, to bear their coarseness and brutality, train them up through their ignorance, to be their companion, gentle and kind and frank to them. That is precisely what he has undertaken : surely a real, thorough, manly work. 88 Praying and Working. He says also that he has undertaken it by faith. They are to come to him, these shy, half-savage, free-living Arabs, out to this grave, modest, little cottage, and to sit down and be taught. They must be fed and clothed. And he is to have no subscription-lists, nor charity-sermons, nor annual donors, nor collect- ing-cards, but he is to depend on the sympathies of Christian hearts 1 Perhaps you smile : he is an enthu- siast. Let him be : I am not now wishing to pro- nounce him either right or wTong ; but only to shew the principle on which he worked. From this time we lose sight of the Visiting Society ; it falls back again into the social life of Hamburg : the Reformatory centres in Wichem. He had been the mover in it all along, he had borne the others with him. He was the only man to carry it through. They hold out to him strong, brotherly, helping hands, they sustain him by their prayers, but for the rest we hear no more of them. Like other men of marked characters, and with distinct labours laid on them by God, he is now to push his way from among the crowd into a clear space where he can work freely and alone, where he is rid of the hesitations and doubts and tra- ditions that fetter most of us, and can act directly on those about him. He has been rapidly changing through the past twelve months; his will has been gaining an iron strength, his purpose has been mould- ing his thoughts, his life has assumed a definite and almost rigid shape ; he is no longer jneditating sadly Iniinanttel Wichern. 89 the phases of a vexing problem, but bent on carrying it on to some solution. And he sits there firmly in the sacrifice of youth, he and the kind, true-hearted mother, looking out to the winter days before him, and waiting for the lost children to be brought to his door.* * The good old lady survived till the autumn of last year, a genuine mother to the last. The name of mother has been transfeiTed from her to Madame Wichern, who had already been called tJie yoting mother. But Wichern enters a strong protest against all such names as do not rise naturally to the children's minds out of the circumstances ; and against all official and titular names. And as for the name oi father^ he declares he would not tolerate such an unreal sentimentalism. go Praying and Working. II. THE FOUNDATION. XX7ICHERN in the little pictured room of the Rauhes Haus, looking over to Hamburg, and expecting its juvenile rascality to come out to him, is a singular fact to hit upon in the whirl and birr of our nineteenth century. It does not exactly square with nineteenth-century notions, but on the whole contra- dicts them and throws them quietly aside. And if the last thirty years had not written the story beyond dis- pute, fnost people would drop it here. The man, they would say, may be earnest enough, but his way of set- ting about a thing is really too absurd ; let us have something practical. It is a tme instinct, let us at least have nothing impracticable ; sin is too real, and time is too short, and men's hands are too full for that. But what is practical ? Hard, faithful visiting among the poor is not a likely way to educate the dream.ers of society. A mind that is capable of voluntar}'- and steady effort in an unpo- pular direction is not likely to be vague and unreal in its conclusions. And just as one would expect, the details of the scheme were wrought out in a remark- ably clear and business-like statement. Practical Iimnanuel Wichern. 91 means were freely employed to develop it, to enlist some sympathy and interest for it. Private influence, the press, and, last, a public meeting, were tried, and with a shrev/d eye to practical results. An unpractical man is but a poor and foolish worker in the kingdom of God. But then, prayer and faith are practical, walking by faith and not by sight ; and the difference in this matter betv/een the world and the Christian is just here, — that the one reckons only upon visible in- fluences, bases its calculations upon men and motives as it finds them; and the other, while fully recognising such calculations and their necessity, reckons also upon invisible influences, and because the unseen v>^orld overrules the seen, is quite prepared to hold on singly against appearances and seeming probabilities if he has the honest and true conviction that he is right, and has the witness of the Word of God. That was the conviction with which Wichern entered on his work, by which his conduct and system must be inter- preted ; that was the faith that carried him through. Out of the hundred and odd people who went to his meeting and were ^\Tought up into enthusiastic aye, ayes, some were probably there with the simple, good- natured benevolence poiir encourager les autres, and some suspiciously, and some ignorantly. The mass of the outcast poor was still unconscious of reformatories, and was likely to hold itself aloof from them ; and it must be admitted that things did not look so very hopefully in the dull November weather. When the 92 Praying and Workiizg. wind has buried the last leaves in the mud, and the rain drizzles in a damp fog before the door, and the sky is leaden and chill, and the days are altogether gloomy and mournful, — and November in North Ger- many is not so very different from November in England, — that is not just the cheeriest time to open a new life, to feel that a man's friends are sceptical about it, that he must do without sympathy and fight his way alone. Nor is it just the congenial time to be remarkably buoyant and confident, when the neighbours and all judicious people whisper to their neighbours and all judicious people, that it is a mad scheme — perfect folly. No doubt there are some men of an energetic and positive temperament who are independent of these outward things, whose will rises bravely up to defy them. But if we are disposed to exaggerate the ease with which their work was done, and to count it a mere trifle to set up a lonely opposition to the world for the sake of an unappreciated truth, it would be a great mistake, as any one can prove it out of any day's experience. That kind of opposition is a test from which we shrink back into our easy-chair. For when a man stakes his sagacity and prospects and life upon an unpopular theoiy, there must be a m^ar- vellous resoluteness in his purpose ; that kind of resoluteness that nothing will daunt ; that fervent glowing confidence which no amount of cold water will quench, which warms up into enthusiasm at the Immamiel Wicker n. 93 least possible provocation. And it was in some such mind that Wichern went into the Rough House, some such feeling that made him so calm and patient and reliant, so thoroughly prepared for reformatoiy work, although no man knew better how much might be plausibly urged against the probabihty of success. The source of that feeling he declares to have been that he walked by faith, seeing Him who is invisible. He sifted keenly the social state of his city, made his observations, matured his plans, weighed everything for and against, tried to interest his friends, waited on till he dared wait no longer. The prospect was still so indifferent, that, from a purely business point of view, it would have been prudent to retire; from his point of view it was prudent to push on, for the work was in the hand of the unseen Worker, and no matter how unlikely the prospect, it would be taken up at the point beyond which he could not carry it. And so it was that he was waiting there for these poor lost children of Hamburg, and that aftenvards he wrote, in words that some may think over strong, Jesus Christ is the founder of the Rough House. On the 8th of November the first three boys came ; by the end of December there were twelve. They varied in age from five years up to eighteen; their variations in vice were not so great, for they were uniformly bad. Eight of them were illegitimate ; four were under the influence of criminal and drunken parents ; one lad of twelve was knowTi to the police 94 Praying and Workmg, by ninety-two thefts ; one had escaped from prison •, one had sinned till he had become imbecile ; they were all thoroughly wild; lying and stealing were their second nature. They were poor street-wanderers, such as may be seen in London in the dreary winter nights, crouching in doorways and under bridges ; little heaps of rags with perhaps bright, hungry eyes, that sparkle on you in a kind of savage fear. They used to sleep on piles of stones or on steps ; only, said one who slept in empty carts, the stars awoke me in winter, for they looked down on me so clear and white. There was a shameless, false, httle beggar among them, a poor thing deserted by his mother, and who had risen to be the leader of all the street boys in his neighbourhood, and a notorious plague. There was a boy who had been treated like a beast, and naturally lived like a beast ; his so-called adopted parents had bought him for £13 ; the woman was an idiot, the man a coarse drunkard, and under them he lived till he was eighteen : no wonder he came shy, full of mistrust, naked within and without. A boy of twelve declared positively that he beheved in no God, much less a Saviour, no resurrection, no judgment; he had once laid violent hands on himself, and, when angry, he threatened that he would run himself through with a knife ; frightful fits of passion seized upon him, culminating in one which lasted twelve hours, and during which four men could scarcely hold him. Before he came he used to be chained at such Immanuel Wichem. 95 times. These made up the household of that loving son and mother. Others followed like them ; noto- rious pickpockets, vagabonds who from very vaga- bondage could not speak fluently, young house- breakers. They had learned to sleep on the ice, though as for other learning they could scarcely count two. They would eat raw meat, potatoe-peel, swine's drink, Maybugs, tallow for greasing shoes,— this last with pecuhar rehsh. Two of them were from a kind of wild beasts' den, a cellar inhabited by their grand- mother, and where thieves and beggars of every sort came to drink brandy and pass the night in the vilest orgies. A girl of thirteen had "every conceivable bad quality." A boy of the same age cudgelled his mother (helpless by a sprained hand) and his gi-and- mother ; beat the neighbours' children ; came home at night drunk and smoking cigars; stole from his mother what he could lay hands on, and was three times put in prison. There was a giri of fourteen whose mother reported that she was a "very good child, only that she stole eagerly, and lied as much as she stole ; and she would steal and lie though you might strike her dead." The mother of one boy held the lies she told for her children as a special merit, and indeed a proof of extraordinary virtue ; the boy himself drank, and kicked his mother. A child of nine is described as lying, stealing, abusing his father, scratching, kicking, biting, swearing. A giri of ten- it is the poor mother's testimony— " will look in your 96 Praying and Working. face like an innocent Christian, and lie more than ten gro^\Ti people. She breaks open ever}'thing, and has been beaten half dead." And here is the history of a lad of sixteen : he stole a hundred marks from his father ; was apprenticed in a shop ; stole ; was hunted away ; apprenticed to a cigar-maker j stole again and was again hunted out ; went to service ; broke into the savings-box of his master's children ; worked at day labour ; stole from his comrades ; was arrested ; returned to his father.'"' The air they breathed was tainted ; they were habituated to the absence of com- mon morality and decency ; they were checked by the rudest and most barbarous punishments ; and grew up to be more like beasts than men. " Little one/' said a mother one day, "what makes you tell Hes? you know you don't need to do it now." Another mother used to seize her boy by the feet, sit down on a chair, and " pummell the ground with his head ; but even that," she added with some surprise, "did him no good ; and so I think your Rough-House measures will scarcely succeed." One made his entry by throwing do^vn all the little boys he could find, rushing into the stalls, driving out the swine with a halloo, and hunting them over the garden beds, with * " Hie, you fellows," cried another, when his comrades told him of the Bible, ' ' let the Holy One hang on the gallows ; that Word of God is trash, and whatever is \vritten in it is a lie, and the fello^v who makes you read out of it every day is a liar, and far worse ! " Immanuel Wichern. 97 an axe in one hand and a spade in the other. They were brought up famihar with the scenes of the Ham- burg dancing-booths, the joys of street theatres, filthy romances, the most obscene ballads, travesties of the purest hymns, clever parodies of the Bible ; there could scarcely be a more corrupt atmosphere than that in which they lived. Some of them had to be forbidden to speak a vv^ord for weeks after their en- trance. They were mostly hopeless ; young incorri- gibles, given up by everybody who had tried a hand upon them. And this vvas w^hat he had waited and prayed for ; to have his room filled with these ; to make them his companions j to see these hard vicious features that make one shudder. He might shrink from them, and decline the sacrifice, but they were certainly of the right stamp. Twelve completed the number of the first family ; they had a common dormitory and a common par- lour; they shared them Avith Wichern. Their chai- acter has been given already, very faintly and only from some statistics of their lives, but there is enough for any one to complete the picture. And now while they sit round him wdth their idiotic and cunning and hardened faces, what will he do wdth them'? How will they ever be brought to a manliness and purity, and grace of Christian strength like his own? His principle of reform was quite as singular as his prin- ciple of faith. They were to be placed under new and healthy influences ; they were to be controlled, gS Praying and Working. educated, won off from the old ways, to become gentle, teachable, sober, busy, honest, — and all by loving them. One look at those twelve boys, with their wildness and stubbornness of sin stamped in upon their features, and what a folly that thought of loving them into good- ness appears ! What a sentimentalism ! Perhaps not ; it depends on what the love is. There is a love that came sweetly down from heaven, and flowed out sacrificially upon the cross, and it melts the most rugged hearts into repentance, and under it the chief of sinners becomes an apostle of the Gentiles, and heathens such as they were in Ephesus and Corinth become Christians such as they are in the epistles of Paul. We do not call that sentimentalism. And there is a godly love which is after the pattern of the Divine, and of which it is said faith worketh by love. It is not kind sentiment, or petting, or good-nature, or philanthropy : these are feeble things with which to play upon rough and seared souls, for they ignore the depth and awfulness of sin. It honestly confesses sin, and sets out from sin, and says that, notwithstanding the sin, it loves ; it is allied to righteousness, and to a firm and brave spirit ; it is even severe, and it aims constantly, not so much at making people happy, as if personal comfort were the swnvmm honwn, but at making them true and righteous, and then let them be happy if they will. And by all this it comes that it rules and moulds men, for it goes down into what Immanttel Wichern, 99 they really feel, and shews what they ought really to be. It did so in the Rough House, and it will do so every^vhere. And this is how it worked. Besides the natural viciousness of the boys, there were three especial difficulties to be overcome — their distrust, their premature independence, and their vaga- bond freedom. When Wichern kindly reached out his hand to welcome a lad one day, he drew his quickly back, lest he should be struck. Kindness came to them only as a cunning guise, under which some mysterious project for their hurt lay hidden. A new and more cruel prison threatened them ; and they watched every act with a suspicion that was quickened by all they had known hitherto of Hfe. There was indeed some slight hold upon the first twelve. Wichern had visited most of them, either where they lived or in the prison : they must have felt his uncommon power of attraction, and that confiding trust which he inspires almost at a glance. But then they were the first ; it was all new ; there was no one to encourage them ; and they required the most delicate and sensitive handling. He assured them of an entire forgiving and forgetting of the past j that there was to be no punish- ment for anything they had ever done ; that there was not a word to be said of that past unless to him ; that his mother was to be their mother. They heard and gazed in amazement. But as time wore on, and they found it was true, their whole heart warmed to their new hfe. In the evening they came into Wichern's lOO Praying and Working. room, to sit with him and talk over the day. They brought Jthe first flowers to shew him ; and one morn- ing his room was decked with flowers, and with such a quiet secrecy that he never found who did it. Love was the atmosphere of the house, and the harshness of their own experiences gradually gave way to it, until the same spirit was wakened among themselves. On their first Christmas a boy ran oft"; he was met unexpectedly in the Christmas fair, and, though in evident anxiety, did not hesitate to return. When he arrived, the rest were singing their Christmas hymns round the mother : there was a pause and a shrinking from him, and at length the elder boys proposed that he should be punished. They retired to consider what the punishment should be, and after a quarter of an hour suggested some punishments that were very- fitting, but very severe. One then stood out and beg- ged forgiveness ; and, with a sudden change, they all joined, and reached the culprit their hands. And when, shortly after, he found himself sent as before a mile off for milk, and mthout the slightest want of confidence, the change was complete. He went after- wards on the most distant errands, nor did he ever abuse his freedom again. For some time, as often as he heard the Christmas hymns, the tears would start into his eyes ; and when, about the next Christmas, he was sent with a considerable sum for meal, he came forward, grasped Wichern by the hand, and said in a choked voice : " I never can forget that you trusted Immanuel Wichern. loi me last Christmas." That trust was met by trust ; and a feehng of honour was roused, and kept from being selfish by being joined to the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake. " I would have run away," said a ]\'Iet- tray boy, "for nothing could be easier, and I often wanted to go; but when I thought that our directors trusted me, I could not bring myself to do it." The craving for the old vagabond life which led this lad away, was one of the greatest difficulties to combat. They had grown up in this free wandering until it was a second nature, and when the desire seized them, it was irresistible. Nothing had sufficed to restrain them hitherto : they broke out of every confinement, and had even got up in wintry mornings to walk by the frozen Alster. It was hazardous to tiy them with no outward restraint, and only the power of a Christian life j but it was found sufficient. One ran off in the morning, and was found in the evening close to the house, but ashamed to come in ; another, after a long absence, came back at last with a hen and a bag of apples as a peace-offering, and saying, " Forgive me ; God forgives too." One declared there was no use in running off, for he must always come back. An- other, who had never been anything but a wanderer for sixteen years, set out one day; and about ten o'clock the same evening, he walked into the room as if nothing had happened, rubbed his eyes sleepily, and said he had gone home to fetch a better pair of trou- sers. Wichem saw he was tired, made him a supper 102 Praying and Working. of bread and milk, and sent him to bed, greatly re- freshed, but with little disposition to run off again. A more formidable obstacle even than either of these was a precocious independence, observable enough among any poor children, but developed to an extra- ordinary pitch in poor castaways. They would suffer no control; they Avould be bound by no tie; they were in a continual self-assertion. They would not be taught ; for " they w^ere not coming to school : ^' they would not work ; for " whether I '11 do what I 'm asked or not depends altogether on myself; if it don't please me, off I go." This wilfulness threatened, of course, disorganisation ; the repressing of it threatened to empty the house. It was here again that love became the bond. The children wxre made to feel the at- mosphere of a home, to realise a kind and thoughtful father.* Family ties, of which the greater part knew nothing, were represented in this new life ; they found they had common interest and sympathy : that there was an end of the reign of terror ; that they were per- fectly free to carry out their threat and go, but it would be somehow a grief to one who really loved them. It w^as at first an incomprehensible experience, this of a pure and unselfish love seeking them for their own sakes ; but as it was real, they yielded to its power. And if, on the one hand, there was this open freedom, on the other, they saw at once that the family had its duties as well as pleasures ; that if they were members of it, they must be orderly and active members ; that Immanuel Wichern. 103 it had a rule and way of living to which they must conform. This family life was made the centre to which they were unconsciously attracted, and rourd which their httle world kept moving ) while witliin it again, there was another centre, made visible at all times by the very structure and relations of life in the Rough House— the Word of God. There was a morning and evening worship; the Bible was read and -hymns were sung, and the boys heard wonderingly the -simple, reverent words of prayer. The singing had a peculiar effect. During the morn- ing worship several of the elder boys and even the youngest broke out into loud weeping; all Avere so moved on one occasion, that the singing had to be stopped ; one was observed to stand with a vacant, far-off look, and when roused up he said, " I forgot that I was here, and could not help thinking over the past." Two brothers fell into each other's arms, and were so overcome that Wichern had to send them into the garden ; the thought of their unfortunate mother was too keen to be borne. " We cannot stand it," the boys used to say ; " it makes us think so of what we were." The singing seemed to penetrate the hardest with soft and blessed thoughts, and to lay hold on the tenderest part of their nature ; so that, after work hours, they might be seen walking up and doAvn by the hour, or sitting in the upper branches of the chestnut, and raising hymn after hymn. The hpim became thus the involuntary expression of the new I04 Praying and Working. thoughts that were rising in their minds, and by its rich and full teaching of Christ, prepared the way for the gospel. The Bible was taught as a history of the redemption both in its promise and fulfilment ; and in this aspect the children seized it readily with more or less vividness. They followed the hne of the history with great eagerness ; and when it terminated in Christ Himself, they were overcome with joy. Upon this his- torical aspect of the Christian faith, Wichem sets the highest importance. " What is that faith," he says, " but the history of redemption becoming personal to you and me?" He has the art of leading the interest skilfully on from step to step, until at last the mind is caught up in some suspense for the issue. He finds that this mode of treatment leaves the deepest impression • that as the doctrine was first presented historically, so it is best presented to the mind still ; that the pic- ture of Christ in the gospel contains all we need to believe, and contains it in the foiTn of the highest and most touching appeal. The story went straight to the hearts of his untutored pupils ; they were so taken with it that v/hen some two or three fidgeted with the usual restlessness of uninterested listeners, they banished them into a little knot by themselves. '' A lad came up to me recently. I thought he had some- thing special to say, but it was just to tell about a new story that he had heard out of the gospel. The other day the door of my room opened and the same lad stepped in. ' Would I permit him to go with one Immanuel Wichern, 105 of the- brothers who had some business m town^' * WiUingly/ I repHed. ' Oh ! that is so kind,' he said, ' for I just want to go and tell the children [of whom there were several where the brother's business lay] the new story I have learned.' . . . . ' This evening,' one of the brothers told me, ' X remained after the reading hour to tell me some stories that he had heard from N N . He was very graphic in his picture of the boy that was possessed. When I let him know how glad I was that he had remembered it so well, he went on to tell how Jesus had healed the dumb j and he wetted his finger and laid it on his ear and tongue, in order to make the whole thing plain ; then he told about the blind and the good Samaritan, and would have run on I don't know how long, had I not said it was time to go to the family.' " The reaUty of the story underlay their reception of the truth, and in the character brought out and placed before them, they were ready to recognise themselves. When a little fellow was asked one day how Samuel was taught by Eli, he replied, " that Eli told him stories out of the Bible :" it was in that way the Bible was educating him. Some boys v/ere wondering how long one of them was in coming to any understanding of the truth. " Wait a bit," cried a voice in the group ; " just wait till he has gone through the history, down to the Nev/ Testament, and he will find it all. I know that was the way with me." It was the story ot Jacob that be- came the turning-point in the life of the girls. "That 's io6 Praying and Working, me," said a lively boy, as a Bible character was once set in their midst ; and " that 's me," was the beginning of personal religious history in many. This was how the system worked, and these are the fruits of it in the first twelve. They have eaten their bread in honour ; they have their children, their Chris- tian household life ; four of them settled in Hamburg ; four settled elsewhere ; two went seafaring. Of those three who have been specially mentioned, the first be- came a help and stay of the house ; the second, a God-fearing, thorough man, with few capabilities, but with strong practical sense, and an entire trustworthi- ness \ the third, of whom it is told — and it is charac- teristic of that retarded childhood that marks the whole class, the child's freshness and simplicity that had been withered by poverty, and cruelty, and crime, pushing out, often grotesquely, in the grown-up man when he is brought under loving and humanising in- fluences — that when digging in the garden he used to vex himself with such questions as whether he could dig on till he came out at the other side, and what the world would look like there, who was the terror of his mother and sisters, and of the other boys, and even a terror to himself, soon drew everybody's heart, and grew up a gentle and forgiving, but brave, strong, determined man. This love and forgiveness, and Bible-reading and singing of hymns, up among the flower-spikes of the chestnut ; this quiet, active country life, it sounds well Immanuel Wichern. 107 and pretty ; it was also real and thorough. It was an education of the heart and spirit ; a careful and patient cultivation of the blighted and decayed moral sense, and it had its reward. It was a hazardous experiment to any one who should try it by himself; as such it could neither have been faithfully nor boldly carried out ; but it was easy and pleasant to one who went to it by faith, who felt that Christ was working with him, that His hand would perfect what His Spirit had put it into his heart to begin, that His unseen influence was busy even where there was no outward improve- ment to encourage. It needed faith to bear up against the frequent disappointment j to watch without despair, when the seed after long care seemed to be springing in the coarse mind, how the springing quickly perished; to be hopeful in the midst of such confirmed vice ; to refuse the common experiments that were inconsistent with his principle even when they alone promised the speediest result. Such faith was given, and the pro- mise of God to it was not broken ; and on the foun- dation of Jesus Christ, Wichern was a master-builder, and, according to the grace given unto him, reared his Rough House. How that house was built up in the silence of prayer, how God prospered it, and what re- lation it afterwards bore to its early promise, must be reserved for another chapter. io8 Praying and Working, III. THE BUILDING. A DOZEN rough, lawless, and Avild street-boys, who know so little of the commonest kindness that they suspect it, and take virtue for some new form of vice, are not likely to be controlled by excellent theories of love alone. There is a great force in the orderly strength of a regulated will, there are certain eyes that dart a strong appeal, there are faces that hold the worst natures by an undefined attraction — a mingled goodness, and trust, and friendliness that look out from them ; there are persons in whose bearing the Christian life is so evident, that they act with a silent, effortless power on every one in their neighbourhood. But a dozen boys are not always in direct contact with this will, the eyes cannot be always fixed on them ; they will draw much together, their common evil habits will be a ready bond ; if they are left without employment their energies will run to evil, secret at first, until it becomes strong enough to be defiant. Personal influence is indispensable in a reformatory ; but it is indirectly felt, it operates through other agencies; not being able to come into imme- diate contact with everybody at every time, it pene- Immanuel Wichern. 109 trates the whole hfe, its occupations and conditions, and in any moment of contact afforded, it secures that it shall be felt and acknowledged as a real power. And if it were even practicable to work directly by personal influence alone, it would be dangerous, for it would foster such an entire dependence, that when the lad should leave his teacher, he would break also with the good that had been ^^TOught in him; he would be unable to stand alone. The Christian ele- ment in the Rough House afforded the sure, and, as it appeared, the easiest and simplest foundation for a new and independent, because permanent hfe ; the training and the personal influence were made to foster that Hfe, to give it vigour that it might abide and increase when removed from the school into the world. But other means were needed to act on these ill-starred, deformed, unhealthy natures. They could bear little of positive schooling; they could bear still less the perils of idleness. It might be very senti- mental and pretty to have a kindly man watching the gambols of young Hamburg reprobates through three-fourths of the day, and to think of the beautiful atmosphere of love in which they lived, and to con- trast aU this with their old hardships ; but it would be downright folly. They must have employment, and a sense of order, and get to know the law of our tenure of the earth, that it is work, service. And therefore work at once suggested itself to Wichern as a necessity, however difficult it might be to bring into submission no Praying mid Working, such wilful and vagabond beings as he had invited out to Horn. The first difficulty was overcome by his happy blending of a moral purpose with the work. A bank of earth overgrown with low shrubs and brushwood, about six feet high and as many broad, ran round two sides of the ground to a length of five hundred feet. It was proposed that this should be entirely removed, so that every one might see that " the Rough House was a house of love, that it suffers no ramparts, nor walls, nor bolts, because the love of Christ binds faster than ramparts, or walls, or bolts," and that " they were not hid in corners, but flung open their life before men and before God." They went at it with a will ; the thought took hold of them pleasantly; and in their eagerness to have the levelling completed, they often wrought far on into the winter evenings by lamplight, and in spite of snow and rain. By the 25 th of Jan- uary 1834, their work was completed with great joy; and thus the grounds remain with no blank height of stone such as fences in our prison-like charities, with no barrier whatever, but with open doors and unfenced paths. They might wander out if they chose ; it was all wide and free before them; but the story has proved that " no wall is the strongest wall where the spirit of Christ is." However, there were days when it was impossible to go out of doors ; and when the frost had bound up the earth, they were driven to new resources for employing the time. At first there was Immanuel Wichern, III no little perplexity, for the premises were small, and the twelve lads were active, and now that they had got into the way, were willing. But there, was a Canadian poplar that found no favour in Wichem's eyes : — " It is such a fickle, meaningless, shadeless tree," he says, " who can like it % It looks for all the world like an embodied anguish." Still, the wood is not bad, and on the proposal to cut it down every eye and hand grew eager. Once down, it w^as soon split up, and a certain W essayed his hand to make it into wooden shoes, and having succeeded after an abortive effort in the region of the toes, E and G set to the manufacture of lucifer matches, and others to the cutting out oi spoons. There was no marked success for a httle ; but it drew out their confidence, made them conscious ot what they could do, and opened a field for their cleverness, and was the beginning of many a good work that they under- took long after. Through the winter the busy workers laboured on ; some more daring than the rest produced brushes and hooks, and it was not long till one audacious mind spent its energy on a bedstead, which is still extant and useful, though irregular in its design, and which was so quickly improved, that within two years a bed- stead could be made for one-fifth of what it then cost. When the spring drew near, a lad was found who knew something of country life, and with his help and a few hints from a friendly neighbour, seed "was rown and 112 Praying and Working. trees were planted.* Moreover, as they grew rich in winged stock, a fowl-house was erected, and a bee- house stood out in the sunshine, and a little kid made its way to the stall ; and one morning a well-propor- tioned and stately cow, gaily crowned with flowers, lowing softly and ringing its bell, walked up to the door ; and a donkey and cart followed ; and then the boys would bake their own bread, and built an oven from which the loaves were turned out fresh and crisp * Outdoor work had a marked effect in checking the wander- ing habits of the boys, and bringing them to a consciousness of the vaUie of settled Hfe. Wichem tells of a certain D , a noted vagabond, who had run off at different times from the house, whose mind gathered itself so slowly, that after a year he could not speak fluently nor count more than six, and on whom nothing seemed to produce effect till the spring, when he was sent out to the garden. At this the slumbering intelligence roused up, and somewhat quickly ; the vagabond spirit dis- appeared. His plot of ground shewed marks of uncommon industry ; instead of being laughed at as a ridiculous and helpless boy, he became an actual leader of men, and even fertile in expedient. For, having waged war with the birds on behalf of his beloved seeds, and all in vain, he constructed a sort of rude sentry-box on the spot, and was to be found there, bow and arrow in hand and reading-book in pocket, from three o'clock in the morning, and came off victorious. Falk remarks on another aspect of the work, that it must be severe. " Rainy days are the worst, for then the lads cannot get to the fields. They must be tired out, but not beaten. Wool-picking and such light labour is of no use. To vagabond lads, accustomed to the constant use of hands and feet, wandering over hills and valleys, and every kind of physical exertion, light work is no better than a kind of idling." Immanuel WicJiern. "3 for many a year.* Certain schooling besides went diligently fonvard, and with great progi'ess in reading, and writing, and singing, and other such simple lore. Meanwhile, applications were made for the receiving of boys, young men rather, from fifteen to twenty years of age ; and when some were received, more were prepar- ing without, and there was no room. Many more were turned away than could be taken in ; a few years after, out of seventy-six appHcations in ten months, only fifteen could be granted. The prejudices wore away with the happiest celerity ; and other prejudices, of as dangerous and obstructive a kind, were disappearing. For masters and employers do not look with too favourable an eye on reformed criminals, and hold aloof, with certain shrewd suspicions and mutterings, even when it might be for their advantage to get a good servant. And if no one would take these men off Wichern's hands, he would be driven to desperate shifts. It appears there was no difficulty. Applica- tions for his " children " poured in in as great excess over the supply as applications for admission exceeded the room. . Nor do we ever hear that he was troubled by any would-be economist suggesting that he was introducing an unfair competition into the labour market, and disturbing its balance, — not even when reformatories spread to all points of the compass. * The kid was a present from an old Danish colonel ; the cow, with an entire milking and dairy apparatus, minus a daiiymaid, was a gift from some ladies in Hamburg. \\ 114 Praying and Working, The evil of little room he tried to redress by a careful visitation of the children in their own homes. It was kindly meant, and so far successfal that some of the apphcations were rendered unnecessary. But it was too great a tax on the strength of his resources ; it was very partial, for, of necessity, all could not be visited; and it was, at the best, a mere shift, and unsatisfactory. The true and only remedy was en- largement of his plan. Four-fifths of those admitted had been bred up by godless and reckless parents who had bartered away their families for their own pleasures ; one of them had thus four so-called fathers and three mothers living at the same time ; he had been passed, sold probably, from one to the other. It was sad to hear the story, and refuse. And the boys with one consent hurrahed the proposal that they should build for themselves, and leave the old house to new-comers. It was a serious undertaking, for people do not build houses by instinct. The house was built, however, and is standing to this day. The good Syndic Sieveking laid the foundation-stone in fair spring weather ; a hundred thousand stones were laid during the work ; in April the gable was crowned with the needful fir-tree, and while its ribbons streamed out toward the sunset, one Botschinger climbed beside it, and, with hat in one hand and a paper in the other, began his oration. Excellent homely verses they were, though being but a polisher of floors and not an orator, he somewhat untowardly read them from the end. Immanuel Wichern. 115 Yet they were received with much applause, and the building advanced so rapidly, that in July the boys marched into it in procession, while the organ, which had been given by a friend, pealed a hymn out of the lower story. There v/ere now thirt}^-two boys, and so much the more need for work; and about this time a cry came into the Rough House from others. There had been no provision made for girls, and a piteous and clamant supplication was raised for them. A mother begged for her daughter of eleven years, who stole the very sheet from her grandmother's dying bed ; a girl was applied for, whose father had been schoolmaster, land- steward, butcher, finally murderer, and who had left his daughter little better than a brute. Wichern had a sister who would take charge of them. If a house were built they could be taken in, and there would be work, and the boys would not have all their washing and sevv^ing and knitting and cooking and chambering to do for themselves. So again they rose up to build, and with more ambition than hitherto they projected not only a dwelling-house for twelve, but a chapel, and kitchen, and wash-house, and et ceteras, all under the same roof. Botschinger made his oration from the beginning this time, and the first family of girls was soon housed under the thatch of the old house. They were more unmanageable than the boys. "I have never seen," says Wichern, "so downrightly wicked a spirit in the boy as in the girl." They would 1 16 Praying and Working. clench their fists and roll their eyes wildly, and gnash their teeth in paroxysms of passion. There was no reasoning v/ith them : they would abide by their shrill, " I will not f or they v/ould stamp with their feet and cry, " I 'd be quiet if I could only once let all the devil out of me/' They were addicted to poetry of the vilest order, improvised ballads about "a beautiful young lady who sat imprisoned in the Rough House," made honible travesties of the liymns, were the foremost in ridicule and profanity. And yet, not quite a year after their entrance, they, with one exception, gave evidence of the power of the Word of God And now it happened, that the artisan faculties of the older members were requiring more scope, and the coming boys more elbow-room, than the work- shop could afford. It had been a stable at first with tumble-down walls, and so small that two people were sorely in each other's way ; and their carpentry was done with borrowed tools. It had been changed to an old greenhouse, and then to the lower rooms of the Swiss House, and many an honest piece of work- manship had left them, many a wooden spoon and pair of slippers, and door and window-frame, and bedstead and bench, but they were too small. Here were the carpenters, and there were the shoemakers, and yonder the tailors; and the least practised eye could mark a great confusion. So the peasants that passed by into Hamburg saw one day the roof of a ImniamLel Wichern. nj workshop eighty feet long, and on the gable the gal- lant Botschinger, who was by this time perfect in his vocation, and enlarged with great delight upon the works that might be expected of the future ; and under this roof there has been no unnecessary crowding, but shoemakers, basket-makers, tailors, wool-spinners, car- penters, and all the rest, do their spiriting gently and in order. In 1839, it was found that the room used for the common worship was inadequate, and that the only remedy was to build a separate chapel ; for about seventy persons required seats. It was completed before the winter, and opened by a missionary meet- ing; somewhat cold and bleak-looking at first, and too large almost, but it was soon furnished, and be- came one of the cheeriest of the rooms, while a bell, (the gift of a friend,) round which ran the legend, " God the Lord is sun and shield," rung out from a law, wooden turret over the middle, and the organ swelled within. Next year they built again ; for the tenants of the Swiss House had become so many, that Wichern hints they were like the children in the market-place of Jerusalem, and if the one family wanted to laugh the other wanted to weep ; they were in fact uncomfortably near neighbours, and used to beseech Wichern : " Oh, do, please, let us live sepa- rate." So a new building rose up, and still the old were full. About this time the printing-press of the Rough House came into operation; an old wooden press, ii8 Praying and Working. presented by Nestler; and to which Tauchnitz of Leipsic added a couple- of boxes of type. The first sheet struck off was the 23d Psahii. It is a famous press now, and employs many clever heads and nimble fingers, and the boys print every month thousands of those Fliegende Blatter that for the last sixteen years have borne such holy and sagacious and blessed messages over all Germany, and far beyond Ger- many; and they print one can scarcely remember how many books besides, books of worth and piety and eager welcome, and charming pictures of Otto Speckter's. For they offer, Rough-House boys as they are, to print anything ; and whoever is fortunate enough to have the " Memoir of Miss Sieveking," or one of the Vierzig Bilder mit Versm^ will admit the remarkable merits of their work. The 23d Psalm had been only issued, when on the 5th day of May 1842, long spurts of flame were seen to shoot up over the roofs of Hamburg, and through the heavy and still air the columns of fire rose higher, and leapt about the tall church spires, and when the night fell it was like a lurid day, for over the city there hung a broad red sea of flame. AmeHa Sieveking . gives a lively picture of the time in a letter to the Queen of Denmark : — " Just about this time eight days ago, I w^as sitting quietly in my room. I had heard nothing of fire- alarms during the night ; and when I learned in the morning that some houses had been burned in the Im^namtel Wicher^t. 119 Deichstrasse I was not the least uneasy, but set it down as no uncommon accident. Quietly I went to church, and after church I wrote as quietly, until about three o'clock in the afternoon, when I was told that the tower of St Nicholas was in flames. I recognised at once that the matter had assumed a serious aspect As my own house was secure at least for the moment, I went over to some friends at the Neuenburg, to see if I could help them At last, as the fire continued to spread, I had to see to the safety of my own effects. I carried off, myself, as much as I could. Nor was that singular. Gentlemen and ladies of much higher rank than I did the same. That occupied the entire night. The glow of the flames had lighted up the sky as clear as day had it not been for the clouds of ashes that were blown about and into our eyes. The sparks were driving through the air. At intervals there came frightful explosions where houses were blown up, and the fragments of glass fell thickly round us. After one of those tremendous reports, I saw a poor lady fall into the most frightful convulsions, and she ha i to be brought by force into a carriage. Crowds were running here and there, frantic and shrieking ; but my pen is too weak to describe the manifold scene of horror. .... Still the flames spread, and it was no longer safe even in the New Town, where the Syndic lives. Every one fled ; and even my cousin, who had long kept up heart ancj hope, allowed the necessary steps to be taken for securing his property The 1 20 Pray'ng and Working. tumult on the streets was indescribable. At the same time, I must say that a certain outward passiveness, approaching in some almost to apathy, characterised most of the sufferers. The apathy, I think, arose from complete bodily prostration ; the outward passiveness from the greatness and universality of the calamity." All through the night, and on into the day, it burned ; and the roads were choked with weeping and distracted people, and vehicles filled with household goods, — lost children wandering with helpless cries, and sisters cry- ing for brothers, — men driven mad by the calamity, many half-clothed, just as they had hurriedly escaped, and many stripped of their entire fortunes, every one anxious about another, — miserable groups sheltering coldly behind the ditches, and armed bands of plun- derers making the confusion more terrible ; while away from the city, th^re was borne the ceaseless mingled roar of fire and voices and crashing houses. The night sunk in flames once more ; new streets caught up the fatal glow, and when the day broke it was still over a burning city ; a third night, and the fire spread wider ; buildings were ruined and blown up in vain; a slight change in the light wind threatened another quarter; the ashes floated in a dark cloud overhead, and fell hot through the streets, and when the fourth day broke, it was on Hamburg in ruins. In the Rough House also there was lamentation ; the boys had friends or relatives (such as they were) under that cloud of flame. Numbers of them went in to Iinnia7i2iel Wichern. 12: give tiieir help. The doors were thrown open to thr poor starvTDg outcasts who lined the way. Tlic chapel was filled with men, women, children ; poor, rich j lost ones and found ones ; those who wept tear.^ of anguish and those who wept tears of joy. As the boys returned with tidings, each seemed a worre messenger than the other. At length days went by. and the fire was stayed; and, notwithstanding the licence of the time, the lads not only remained firm to the trust reposed in them, but received the public thanks of the Senate for their help in putting dowri the fire. But the fire added to the responsibilities of the House, by adding greatly to the class fi-om w^hicli it was filled. Twent\^-five children were received in a short time, and again there came the necessity of building. A house was completed for tw^enty-four girls, and the old house was vacated for a new famil}- of boys. Other buildings were added : a new laimdn and baker}', offices, houses for new boys, a house for Wichern in 1852, and in the same year, the largest of all the houses, a pensionat for boys of the same incor- rigible habits as those who fill up a reformatory, but of a better standing in society. Upwards of two hun- dred parents had entreated that their sons might receive instruction in the Rough House ; it was at last felt impossible to reject these urgent petitions, and a boarding-school was opened for twelve, where classics, modem languages, and mathematics are taught in addition to the regular education. The last addition 122 Prayi7tg ajzd Working. was made in 1853, when a new family was formed in a new, and by far the most complete, building for the purpose. It was in 1 848 that Dr Wichern enlarged his schemes so as to make the Reformatory national rather than local in its aims. The political crisis of that year was the immediate cause. The revolution laid bare social evils with greater clearness than before ; it had also made it more than ever incumbent on men to look broadly at the German people as such, and to seek rallying points round which the moral strength and efforts of the people, and not of isolated communities only, might gather. It was announced that^ in future, fifty places (about half) would be reserved for Ham.- burg, and the rest thrown open. It was not supposed that the necessity of Germany in this direction could be met by such help ; nor was it because the necessi- ties of Hamburg were less. The old want of room still continued ; and no extension of the one institu- tion, even if it had been desirable, would have met the demand of tlie country. Reformatories were quietly growing up in various places ; and the numbers would increase, and local needs would in time be met. In 1 848, there were already thirty-seven reformatories in Germany, including German Switzerland, some caring for upwards of 100 children, and some for only six, and having about 1500 in all. By 1853, eighty-seven reformatories had been added, with about 900 children. In 1856, the total number was estimated at 260, and Immamtel Wichern. 123 the number of children could not be short of 3000. The number is still increasing, although it is 'yet far from having reached the limit assigned by a \mter in the Fliegende B latter, when " every considerable town and every district in the country (large or small, ac- cording to its need) shall have a reformatory for boys and another for girls." * In the face of such facts, a national reformatory would have been absurd ; nor was it proposed to enlarge the 'number at Hamburg beyond a hundred. Local need would demand local help ; and help thus given, is always the healthiest, if it is often the slowest in action. But there was room for an institution which, as far as it went, would meet the demands and sym- pathies of Germany, which would be open to the out- casts from every German province, which would fulfil the conditions of a training-school, where Saxon and * The same writer gives the following statistics from one of the Pnissian provinces, Pomerania : — Thirty reformatories were established in the seven years from 1849 to 1856, making, with those already in existence, thirty -three, of which fifteen are for boys, ten for girls, and eight for both sexes. They maintained, in 1856, about 580 children, (390 boys and 190 girls.) and 420-430 had left, by far the greater number giving ground to hope the best oi them. Of these 1000 children who had passed through the Pomeranian reformatories, only twenty had died in those institutions during a quarter of a cen- tuiy. Their income was about 50,000 ikaler (£7500) yearly, and, since their foundation, 200,000 thaler {£30,000); and they possess property to the amount of 90,000 thalej' (£13,500). The proper proportion of reformatories to the province is esti- mated by the writer at from 70 to 80. 124 Praying mid Working. Suabian, Rhenish and Pomeranian might be studied and taught together. It was especially to the last that Wichern addressed himself, the political situation prompting his dicision. For the chief importance of this work at Horn is not in its direct but indirect results; not as a reformatory, but as a model and parent of reformatories, and as an education for the entire work of the Inner Mission. The number of children may seem small ; but that is characteristic of all the German institutions. It has arisen partly from this, that most German refor- matories originated in private benevolence and indi- vidual effort, partly from recognising that individual dealing v/ith the children is essential, and that there is a limit, and often a narrow limit, to personal influ- ence and control. A pastor establishes a reforma- tory in his parish, a landlord on his estate ; a school- master, a peasant, some ladies, have founded others. Perhaps a Presbyteiy or Synod forms one ; at least two had sprung from conferences for foreign missions, curiously illustrating the mutual dependence of all spheres of missionary effort.^" But the State and '^' Out of 80, 9 were formed by clergymen, 6 by little groups of clerical friends, 20 at pastoral confei-ences, i at a district, and another at ■ a provincial synod, 6 by landlords, 3 by the squire and the vicar, 2 by peasants, i by the teacher, 1 by a govern- ment clerk, 1 1 by associated women, i by a clergyman's wife, 2 at conferences of societies for foreign missions, 9 by societies for inner missions, and 2 1 by societies for the rescue of outcast children. ImmanMel Wichern. 125 official boards and civil bodies have founded none. They avail themselves of those in existence. A law in Prussia, for example, provides that, for certain offences, children under sixteen may be either restored to their parents or sent to a house of correctioii ; and as there were no suitable houses of correction, it was the practice to send them to such reformatories as w^ould receive them. Some would not ; indeed, a pro- minent characteristic of the German reformatory is its entire independence of the government ; and in the Rough House no one is received without the formal consent of parents or guardians. It would be an error to regard the reformatoiy even as an adjunct to the prison system, as in France, and, to a large extent, in Great Britain and America. Imprisonment is an in- dispensable quaUfication at Mettray. In Germany the qualification is simply a moral one. Wichern, though an excellent consen-ative and churchman, attributes the early inefficiency of the Swedish reformatories to mak- ing them part of the State, or State Church, or civic machinery. In Germany, again, the movement has been prominently Christian, started by Christian people, penetrated by devout Christian feeling, and sustained by Christian sacrifice. It has also gone hand in hand with tlie Church. It is very much parochial or con- gregational. It is in the parish that has estabhshed its reformatory that the inmates are aftenvards ab- sorbed, and thus the Christian life and love of the congregation are kept active and developed. These 126 Praying and Working. characteristics are important as suggesting much of the success that has attended German reformatories ; they suggest also why it is that such vexed problems as are encountered in England scarcely come to the surface there. They are little troubled with the right adjusting of State aid and control to the free action of private benevolence ; they have no need to fight the battle of education, secular or religious, over the wretched waifs of criminal life ; there is no tempta- tion to denominational strife. It is avowedly a Chris- tian, and not mere philanthropic effort. The mere phil- anthropists did not take it up, and are content to see it worked thoroughly and faithfully out on Christian prin- ciples. It avails itself freely of the existing agencies in the Church. Its supporters maintain that on no principles can it be worked so well; that none but Christian men and women can rightly conduct it; that they are the most honest, patient, persevering, unselfish, of all workers, with the truest perception of difficulties, and the best means to overcome them. They maintain, also, that it is paramountly a Christian duty ; that it is part of the debt which the Church owes to the so-called Christian community; that it is strictly Home Mission. They are jealous of official red-tapeism; they are jealous of ecclesiastical rules; but they agree to carry out their plan by free Christian love, to submit to whatever orderly coi- operation with both State and Church is not in- compatible with that freedom and love. It cannot Immamiel Wichern. 127 be doubted that they have been fortunate in their leader ; that he has stamped his own mind and views upon the rest; that they have been spared many difficulties (difficulties arising both from the number and strength of the various churches) that meet us at home. It cannot be denied that their relations to Church order and discipline, as such, are of a peculiar and delicate and irregular character, requir- ing great confidence on both sides, — that these are the source of some unsetded and disturbing questions. Yet on the whole they point with much confidence to the resuhs, possibly also to. certain weaknesses and failings of ours. If the Christian principle is good for Germany, it ought to be good for England, one which should be openly and manfully confessed, and not compromised. If Germany, to which we attribute so little self-help, can work without government grants in aid, it is hard to see why Enghshmen .should not. If individual dealings with the outcast, personal in- fluence, and study of men's character, is good at all, it should be good with us, w^here- eve.r)'thing fosters independence of thought, and where character has the greatest individuality. And that other principle is worth more than a passing thought, by which the prison and the police-office are not looked to as the sole feeders of the reformatory, but rescue is sought and made before guilt is branded on the culprit by the law. The old Rough House has thus" grown to be t^venty separate houses, and possesses property to the amount i 28 Praying and Working. of £7000 ; the old patch of garden round the fish- pond has spread out into fifty acres, the twelve boys have multiplied into 452, and 130 girls fall to be added to them.'"" It has a high place, moreover, in the world, draws visitors from every countr}^, some- times thousands in a year; is studied by wise and thoughtful men ; and names of note and wide respect are associated with many of its quiet activities. Kings and Queens of Prussia and Denmark and Bavaria, Archdukes and Archduchesses of Austria, Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, and Royal Princes and Princesses, have been found standing among the children and questioning earnestly how such results were brought to pass ; and, of as high but natural a royalty, there have moved among them, such as EHzabeth Fry, who once spoke in the chapel for an hour in her own clear, sweet, persuasive way. It * On the first of January 1 860 there were 7 1 boys and 32 girls, or 103, in the children's part of the Rough House. 18 boys and 5 girls left during the j^ear, and 18 boys and 7 girls A\'ere admitted. The number at the close of the year was 105. The average number of children during the year was loi^. Of the boys who left, 10 were apprenticed to some craft, 7 went to the country or to sea; 3 of the girls went to service, and 2 girls and a boy were returned to their parents at their parents' wash. As to age, the 25 new arrivals are divided thus : — of 8, 9, and 10 years old, there are three of each, two of 11, four of 12, three of 13, five of 14, and two of 15. As to birth, 67 were from Hamburg, 12 from Altona, 6 from Holstein, i from Silesia, 6 from Prussia, 3 from Mecklenberg, and 2 each from Bremen, Hanover, and Saxony, i from Brunswick, and i from Trieste. Immamiel IVichem. 129 issues a paper of the highest influence on social questions, and with a monthly circulation of 6000 •, it has established a rehgious book-shop in Hamburg, with agencies through the country, principally in Prussia; it has a publishing house of its own for promoting a healthy Christian literature among the Yv^orking men and the middle classes ; and through all it caiTies on its special training, and every year sends out into the world steady^ sensible men, and modest helpful women, who, but for it, would have filled the prisons, and died miserably in that semi-savage state in which it found them. "A glance round the circle of those who were children of the House,'"' says Wichern, "carries us into every region of the world, even into the heart of Australia. AVe find them again in every grade and social position ; one is a clergy- man, another is a student of theology, and another a student of law ; others are or were teaching. We find among them officers in our German armies, agriculturists, merchants in Germany and at least in two other European countries, partners in honourable firms ; they are presidents of industrial institutions, skilful landscape-gardeners, lithogi-aphists, and xylo- graphists ; artisans scattered through many towns, wandering apprentices in every conceivable craft. One is a sea-captain, some are pilots, others sailors, who have taken one voyage after another, and seen all the seas of the world. They are colonists in Ame- rica and Australia, and both there and at home there 130 Praying and Working. are happy fathers and mothers among them, training their children righteously, and building up their family life after the fashion they have learned here. And there are men-servants and women-servants, and day-labourers ; and, besides those who are better off, there are also the poorer, and such as are burdened, by care either with or without their own fault. Be- sides, a considerable number have died at home and abroad, (veiy many, in proportion, of its earlier girls ;) and some of those who went out to sea have never returned, probably many have found a sea-grave ; some have disappeared ; some suddenly turn up after long years have passed. I recall one who left this house twenty years ago, and of whom I heard nothing for the last ten years, until he has now notified himself as a well-doing master-artisan, and a happy father, in a distant town." Hundreds of helpers — " Brothers" is the pleasant word for them — have been trained and distributed over the prisons, and reformatories, and city missions of the Continent ; offshoots from this parent institution have been planted from north to south of Germany; a vast organisation, called the Inner Mission, has been spread over the country, restoring the decayed forms of Christian social life, and rescuing the outcast, and building up the Church ; almost every town of importance has its Brother busying himself among its lanes and hardened crimi- nals. And the germ of this entire work, and the cause of this notoriety, is to be found in that October even- Iimnanitel IV ic hern . 132 ing when Wichern and his mother drew towards the little house in Horn, and shut themselves in, and prayed that God w^ould build up His work on the foundation of Jesus Christ ; and it is characteristic of the man, that whatever he has accomplished since, is traceable in the speech he made as a young candidai nearly thirty years ago. He has been but filling in the outline. He has been acting out his principles. And now these buildings, and new and distant efforts, and these hundred and ten children and forty brothers represent a large expenditure. Societies with all their appliances would not accomplish more; they would be tasked and burdened to obtain the money. When his position and circumstances and object were all against him, how is it that Wichern succeeded % It has been a standing question, " How did you get all the money"?'' " At the beginning," he replies, " we had to ask that question in another form. How shall we get all the money % and we had to answer it before going farther. Silver and gold," he frankly confesses, " I have none. But we work, and God blesses our work. And what- ever else we want we pray for, and expect out of His rich hand, in certain faith that,it is a faithful and true w^ord He spoke when He pointed us to the fowls of the air and the liHes of the field. Whoever will hold this faith, and abide in it by the grace of God, will have a marvellous watch kept over him even at this day j and what appears natural to others, will come to him as a witness of the heavenly kingdom in w^hich 1 3 2 Praying and Working. he has been set, and for which Christ has opened the eyes, and ears, and heart of His people.'* It will be important to see how the facts sustain this, and whether Ave can learn from them what it means. The circumstances of the foundation are already familiar : the meetings for prayer and the unexpected answer; the rapidity with which money and land were furnished, although no one had been asked but God. Some years had passed when the chapel be- came necessaiy. There were mlling hands to build, but there was no money, nor any prospect of avail- able funds. The inconveniences were daily greater; the children, whom they had begged from God, were coming; it was impossible to thrust them out, but they encroached on the spare room, and the family life was threatened with disorder. Yet there was the feeling, the faith, that He who had sent the children would not forsake them there ; and just at the time when the need and difficulties were most pressing, a sum of several thousand marks was received from some American friends, and the build- ing was begun. A house w^as wanted to relieve one al- ready overcrowded. It was put off as long as possible, for these wiUing Rough-House hands were also very empty. Then it was prayed for that the means would be given. And as Wichern sat one evening with two early friends, the question was suddenly started. How much a house for twelve boys would cost % and on the sum being stated, one of them promised it. Thus the Iinma7iuel Wichern. 133 house was built, but money failed for windows and doors and paint; and just before the work came to a stand-still, enough was received for its completion ; for three ladies in a distant country, and independ- ently of one another, had been led to think that the cost might exceed the estimate, and the result was the failing seventy-five crowns. In 1843, the lease of the tillage ground ran out, meadow, corn, and potato fields were gone, and it became necessary to purchase instead of to rent. There was a suitable piece of land to be sold for 7000 Hamburg marks. These sixteen acres were absolutely necessary to the existence of the institution; on the other hand, 3000 77iarks of the purchase-money had to be paid dovm in hard coin, and there was not a penny in the exchequer. The circum- stances were laid very simply before God ; it was de- termined at length in His name to buy. A few days after, a person, who was ignorant of all this, came with the mformation that Ivlrs Pronotary Schiilter had bequeathed 3000 marks to the Rough House, and that the money was ready. " Just look," was the quaint saying of a friend at the time ; " just look ! we no sooner make our purchase in faith, than the Lord stands behind us with the purse to pay the bill." The year of the fire brought grave responsibilities. It was likely that many friends would be unable to give through their own losses; the demands on charity were greatly increased ; where there were so many beggars^ it was not improbable the Rough House would 134 Praying and Working. be overlooked, and its o^^^l charity during that terrible time have exhausted its means. The simple and ordinary expedient would be to close the door, and hear nothing of the cry from without until better times came ; and even this would be only a remedy on the surface, for there was no support assured to those who were already inmates. But this year the applications for children were more numerous, pitiful, and urgent than ever ; six were received from burnt-out families alone ; the House incurred a larger expenditure, and the result was, that there was scarce any diminution of the subscriptions from Hamburg, while from Bremen, and Frankfort, and Wiirtemberg, and Holland, new friends poured in their contributions. To take a final instance. The year 1853 was one of excessive need, and a critical period for the House ; 8000 marks were wanted for the necessary expenses ; there were various mutterings without. "Where is now their God ?" "Now they will go down." "Now we shall see what will become of this fine piety and living by faith." Friends were anything but sanguine. After thought and prayer, a brief statement was put into the Fliegeiide Blatter , and the result was awaited in patience. It was extraordinary. A poor clergyman in Silesia sent half-a-dozen tea-spoons ; his wife, a neck- lace, and ten half-farthings from some beggar children, whom she taught sewing. Some poor widows in Ham- burg sent twenty-eight Hamburg shillings ; an artisan from East Prussia, twenty francs, with Matt. xxv. 3 1-46, Ini77iamLel Wicherii. 135 and this written, " The Lord, who clothes the HHes, will not forget the little ones of the Rough House ; " a class of poor children in the Duchy of Mark, thirty half-farthings ; a circle of poor children in Berlin, fif- teen shilhngs. "Thanks," wrote one round a fifty- mark note, " for the strengthening of our faith by the Rough House." " My mother," wrote another, " read the FUegende Blatter yesterday, and told me to seal up ten crowns directly and send it. ' Will you be able in these hard times % ' ' He who has sustained me sixty-four years, and given me more than I need, will not desert me now. Send it in faith.' " A miner from Freiburg in Saxony sent, greeting the whole house, and saying, that down where he was, more than a hundred yards under the earth, there were hearts and hands raised to the Lord for it. From a poor Hamburg washerwoman there came nine groschen ; and in a scarcely legible hand : " I know you long, though you are not likely to know me ; and I have been saving long that I might send some pence for the dear chil- dren." And a child wrote, " I have no more money in my saving-box. I want to send something. I have learned to knit. I and brother have knitted a pair of stockings." Thus that faith was answered ; and out of the children's farthings and the rich men's pounds, there was received within three months three times as much as was required. These facts have been selected, because, taken to- gether, they shew fairly how the house was built 136 Praying and Working. Each house has its separate history — the history of prayer and simple faith. A Bremen merchant may have given the money for one, and a prince of Schon- burg for another, and the charity of a young lady visitor may have raised a third ; and the way in which these gifts came is quite natural and explicable ; and the way in which the money was furnished in these in- stances that have been related (and they might easily be multiplied) is also quite natural, and it might be said only a series of striking coincidences. But their pecu- liar feature is, that they invariably followed prayer. Some singular coincidences and unexpected aids may be passed over ; they happen to every one. But why, whenever there is necessity for the prayer of faith, should one of these singular coincidences succeed the utterance of that prayer? Why should this happen with the regularity of a law % There is no disarrange- ment of ordinary laws, there is no departure from ordi- nary circumstances ; leave prayer out of the story and one might say, perhaps, It is very singular^ and there would be no occasion to say more. But it is the in- troduction of prayer that removes the circumstances from the region of mere coincidence and happy acci- dent ; that shews them to be illustrations of a fixed and orderly law. The answer to prayer may come about as the most natural thing in the world, by hints thrown out in conversation, or the visit of a wealthy friend, or the natural impulses of pity, by the opera- tion of every-day motives and situations and events, Immamtel Wichern, 137 and to those who watch it from without, it is an every- day matter. But the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; they know that they are receiving that for which they asked, and that, unobtrusively as it comes, it comes by prayer. It is the existence of such a law and the belief of it which make it possible to establish by faith an Orphanage like Francke's, or a Reformatoiy like Wichern's. As the Rough House was built, so it stands. People think it has a floating capi- tal. Deny it, and they point incredulously to the 200 inmates, and its order and neatness, and the garden, and crowd of various roofs half seen through the trees, and the rich fields stretching away towards Wandsbeck, and they say, " People's eyes are not bHnd ; you can't throw dust into them ; the town must make a secret sub- sidy ; all that can never be kept up for nothing.'-' Prayer is nothing to such persons ; and to tell them that it is kept up not by secret subsidies or interest of capital, but by waiting on the Lord who provides, will always provoke an unbelieving stare or a sneer. Yet such is the fact. There are small annual sums paid by some benevo- lent persons for a few of the children ; boys are taken into the pensionat as into any boarding-school ; there are gifts from friends which amount to a yearly aver- age of about 5000 marks. But as the expenditure is over 32,000 marks, by far the largest part of it has to be met from other sources. These are three. The land is tilled without any hired labour, and entirely 138 Praying and IV orkiiig, with the spade , it produces in favoiu-able years twenty tons of hay for the cattle, besides corn, potatoes, rape, peas, beans, cabbage, and every kind of good vege- table, as well as apples, pears, cherries, plums, • and " whatever else God permits to grow on our fruit-trees/' The clothes are all made in the house, the bread baked there, carpenter's and other needful household work is done by the boys. For what remains, there is the third source — ^viz., that the Lord who blesses their labour, and gives them the fruits of the earth, will also open men's hearts, and bestow on them through human agencies, and even unexpectedly, whatever is lacking. They are thus kept continually looking to Him, for they are never out of want, although they are never destitute. It is a common thing for the housekeeper to say to Wichern in the morning, or mid-day, or at the end of the month, " I have no more money to pay the reckonings /' and before the evening, or before the next month begins,, he has received v/hat was needed. Is this credible ? Is it consistent with the re- lation between our Hfe and God % Is it not fanatical % The most satisfactory and the briefest answer is the Rough House, as any one may see it for himself. " I know," says Wichern, " that it seems to many wrong or even dangerous for a household, where hundreds must be daily fed, to have no more laid up than the sparrows. It is true, also, that whoever will remain sure of the power and riches of his faith must have learned it and felt it and lived it. But who- Immamcel Wichern. 139 ever lives it and feels it, the treasure-chambers of our heavenly Father lie open to him, and he has but to take in order to be inwardly certain that our God is a living God and Saviour of the body and the soul. Such is the hope and comfort with which we meet the future. As I write, we are in urgent need ; our need has no end ; but then we know the better how the Lord alone is our help. I do not mean that in this respect ours is a special house, that other famihes do not enjoy the same care as our own. But I beUeve that whatever Christian household or person trusts the Lord utterly, and allows Him to be the only God and Saviour, although it be out of great faltering and weak- ness, that household or person shall never want, but shall have all it wants, even if it should obtain it through daily need and peril" 140 Praying and Working. IV. FROM MORNING TILL EVENING. TT is not always possible to see the Rough House under such favourable circumstances as during the Hamburg Kirchentagm 1858. One pleasant afternoon the omnibus rolled out to Horn ^vith an unwonted freight; droskies followed, laden within and without ; the footway was dotted with hurrying groups, and a lively crowd soon filled the alleys and open spaces of the House. They were mostly clergymen, though one of them re- marks, with satisfaction, that the sombre black v/as relieved by much feminine attire. People of note mingled quietly in that throng, the leaders of reli- gious thought in Germany, some of its choicest repre- sentative men, quite content to drop their dignity and differences before the simple Rough-House boys. It was a day of peculiar, but very deep and solemn joy. A colony was to be sent out to build up a new Rough House in the very heart of Berlin; they were- met to send out these twelve men with singing and prayer and dedicative words ; and the members of the great Church Assembly had stolen away from the debates to come and mingle with the throng. Wichern Immaniiel Wichern. 141 dismissed them from Hamburg, Nitzsch welcomed them to BerHn ; and when the greetings and farewells were spoken, Wichern led the way, and a young brother blew a trumpet beside him, and the crowd struggled after. As soon as they came opposite a house, Wichern mounted on a stool, and told them the story of the building \\dth a quaint humour, that becomes him, and with a genuine and manly enthusiasm, and . that freshness and simplicity that identify him with the boys. And so they came to the old house, standing, as it had stood from the beginning, under its plain thatched roof, close into the shadow of the great chestnut. Buildings had sprung up round it till they had assumed the propor- tions of a settlement, buildings more shapely and im- posing, gayer and roomier, until it was only one and the humblest among many, and shrunk modestly back into its quiet comer. But he spoke of it as it was five- and-twenty years before, and told how it was the first shelter for the poor lads from Hamburg, how it was the true parent of the others, and had seen them rising year by year under the hand of the unseen Founder, and remained to testify to the fmitfulness of a hving faith ; how the new boys were brought to see it, and how men and women turned to it from other lands, as the home w^here they had learned to know a Father in heaven ; how, indeed, it was the Rough House, and it was truly from it this Berlin colony went forth, and how, because of all this, they could not find it in their 142 Praying and Working, hearts to change it, but it kept its old place and its old look, and every spring the old guardian tree shed over it the whitest blossoms, and every autumn the crimson-fingered leaves. So he went from house to house, till they grew as eager about his stories as ever the children were, and grave professors and church- dignitaries were elbowing their way to get within easy hearing, and the more they heard they were thrilled into a quicker sympathy, and he might have led them as long as he chose, but that the sun v/ent down, and reluctantly they turned back to the city through the gathering twilight. That is the perfection of seeing the Rough House, and a luxury which does not fall to every visitor. But if some autumn tourist, weary of the Alster-Bassin and the Neuerwall and the Bourse and the crowded streets of Hamburg,— albeit picturesque enough, with their shifting life and contrast, and their - quaint, pretty Vierlanderinnen, and the long vistas of gloomy water running between tall-storyed houses and broken by the plash of oars, and the gleam of the red-bloused water- men, and the dark bridges that echo far away to the steady roar of the thoroughfare, — if weary of this, he will walk through the Stein-Thor to the suburb of St George, and leaving that dreary district as soon as possible on the left, loiter on along a high footpath overshadowed by noble trees and running beside one of the great roads leading out of the town; and while the red leaves drop softly through the autumn Immanuel V/ichern. 143 air, and the sun gleams brightly over the broad reaches of the Elbe, and the gay-looking villas — one almost for every roadside tree — display the last of their dahlias and scarlet geraniums, and the city tumult lies so far behind that the birds can hear their own voices, and sing m.errily up into the blue sky, and he feels this is really the country, and a tempt- ing little sidepath draws him up from the highway under its thick chestnuts, and even the soft sand, in which the foot sinks at every step, is grateful for its very quiet, he will see at the top of a gentle rising ground a lov/ v/ooden spire and one or t^vo high roofs, and then a whole cluster of houses, with gardens and shaded alleys between, until a wide opening re- veals a park, belted round for the most part with dark woods, and studded with buildings of every shape — cottages, and offices, and some handsome and imposing structures, all grouped round the lov/ wooden spire, but with apparently no other principle of ar- rangement, the walks leading freely out and no gate swung across them, some boys moving briskly here and there, and others scattered at v/orl: through the distant fields — altogether a singular and puzzling sight And this is the Reformatory, world-famous now, to be found with honourable record in all reports of Social Science and the like, and where the weariest tourist will find a fresh and genuine interest. An easy walk will take us out before eight o'clock, in time for early chapel. Neither porter nor porter's 144 Praying and Working. lodge bars our entrance ; the great bell is chiming still, seven times for the words of its legend, and the household is assembhng, but it began life hours ago, for in Horn they rise with the suri, and every family has its choi-alc and morning prayer. Until six the famihes remain in their ossm houses, reading, or writing, or taking a peep at their flowers ; but at six the bell rings out for school, and they march off to the common room where classes are formed till seven.* Sometimes, indeed, the hour is turned into a singing lesson, and one hundred and fifty rich, clear voices, well concerted in the four parts, take up one German song after another ; sing of the spring, and * There are four classes of scholars, the boys numbering about 70, the girls about 30, the boarders in the Pensionat about 14, and the brothers about 40, and divided into two sets of 20 each. The children are taught in winter 28 hours a-week, in summer 23. The summer teaching is thus divided ; — Old Te.^Lanaent History 2 hours, New Testament 5, Luther's Catechism 2 {i.e., 9 hours for religious instruction) ; Grammar, History, Geogra- phy, &c., 8 hours; Arithm.etic, 3 hours; Singing, 3 hours. The classes are difficult to arrange, and can never be so large as in a public school ; consequently the time spent in teaching is out of proportion to the number taught. And some notion of the labour involved in this department alone may be formed from the number of hours it occupies every week during the summer course : — By Dr Wichern, the inspector, the house-teacher, and 5 upper-teachers, 162 hours. By II of the brothers and female teachers, 108 By the teachers of music and English, i5 286 Immajiuel Wichern, 145 summer, and travel, and the brave old fatherland, or join in the full music of the chorales, or try a more ambitious flight with Mendelssohn or Palestrina ; and the singing is carried on with such spirit and skill that the Rough-House choir has acquired no little noto- riety. However, at seven the classes, of whatever kind, break up, and the famihes return to breakfast ; and from breakfast they are ready to be summoned to chapel. . And here, while the boys and girls are filling up the forms, it may be well to slip in a word or two of explanation. The old peasant's hut was adapted for tvvelve boys; they led a common life, looked up to Wichern as their common father, and felt the associations of family and home. When these twelve increased, it became ne- cessary to build a new house, not to enlarge the old ; for the number was not chosen arbitrarily or from mere necessity of space, but as the largest number in which the experiment of a family training was safe. Each new house, therefore, was a simple reproduction of the old, with more outward conveniences, but with the same living structure. There was no slavish copy- ing of a fixed type in this. It was the natural de- velopment of an organic body from the germ into the maturer form; and the repetition of the germinal fomi in all the parts is characteristic of any such de- velopment. It is in the discovery of this germinal form, arrived at through patient thought and wisdom, that the peculiar gift of Wichern for his work first 1 46 Praying and Working. shewed itself. " It provides for the fullest rightful individual development of each child, and at the same time secures that family relationship within which alone individual development is safe." And so, as in any family the boys came to exceed twelve, there grew a demand for a new house. There are now eight families in eight houses, and in each there lives a young Christian man as its head, the centre of its special interests, related to the inmates precisely as Wichern was at first ; in intercourse and contact and sympathy with them, in control and moral standing and authority above them. The structure of these families is adapted to meet two manifold defects. The place of parents must be supplied, and the uni- versal corruptness of moral tone must be combated. Allied to each group of children, and living under the same roof, is a group of six or seven young Christian men. One of them is appointed head of the house. The children are his children; the young men or brothers are his helpers. These brothers give the tone to the family life. Their mutual love and helpfulness and diligence and order are a constant example. They mix freely with the children, gain their confidence, direct and counsel and watch them. The children themselves elect a boy called Friedensknabe, or Boy of Peace, whose duty is to preserve the order of detail in a brotherly way. And at the same time the characters and progress of the children are carefully noted. In each house also there is a candidate of theology, who Lmmanuel VVickern. H7 serves as the link between that house and Dr Wichern. There is thus a somewhat complex machinery. There are the families of children; the famihes of the brothers; the candidates of theology ; and next to them is the head of the house. Yet complex as it is, it pro- vides for the most thorough superintendence, and places each child in contact with Wichern, and under his control. Every group of brothers holds a weekly meeting, when the state of the family is fully discussed ; and every fortnight the reports of these meetings are read and considered at a general meeting of the brothers under the presidency of Dr Wichern. Meetings of a more informal character, but no less important, are also held once a-week. Each of the brothers keeps brief record in his journal of the boys with whom he has been thrown together. The journals are handed to the President, and after devoting a day to mastering the contents, he has obtained material for this weekly con- ference, where the entire discipline and condition of the House are freely discussed. These w^eekly reports and discussions are protocolled, and fill already about thirty folio volumes, the history of the Reformatory. Complex as the machinery is, its objects are simple and intelligible. There must be a unity in the work. Wichern and his helpers must thoroughly understand each other ; and the children must thoroughly know and trust them. The children must be watched, moreover, with a jealousy unknown in ordinary fami- lies ; not with espionage, but with the tenderness of 148 Praying and Working. Christian love. A fault or a ^vrong overlooked, a friendship unnoticed, might be hurtful to a whole house. Each boy or girl is a distinct and difficult problem, that will yield no right solution if there be any remissness in the working. Centralisation is neces- sary on the one hand, one- governing mind and work, one impulse felt throughout. The free, independent growth of the different households is as necessary on the other. The families are not constructed on any mechanical arrangement, " They are neither divided by age, nor knowledge, nor trade, least of all by any moral measurement." The utmost variety in these respects may be found under the same roof The only recognised bond of union is love. And, con- structed on this natural basis, the family becomes strong enough, not only to receive new members without hurt, but to draw them up to a level with itself Some rough, wild, inaccessible lad enters from the novitiate ; he holds aloof, sullen and half-savage ; a boy, perhaps much his junior, takes him up, cleaves to him, draws out his slumbering human feeling. There is no anxiety for the younger lest he should suffer from such companionship, but the whole house is watching eagerly the effect upon the elder. It is obvious that changes from one family to another would be incompatible with such arrangements, that anything like a graduated advance from a lower family to a higher would weaken the family ties. Such a change, Wichern says, has not occurred more Iiirrnaiiucl Wichern. 149 than three or four times in the last ten years. On the other hand, the family becomes so fixed, that it acquires " a more or less marked physiognomy." Everything is done to strengthen this family feeling, and to supply those subtle moral influences which are always active and even undying in a healthy Christian household. The family not only lives apart, but it has its own plot of garden, its own locality, and to some extent its local associations; its own festivals, such as the birthdays or baptismal days of its inmates; its own sorrows and joys; its own family worship; its own special verse for every week and every year. Thus, this household of strangers insensibly recognises a separate existence and unity, a special relationship and common tie. There is^ a jealousy for its own reputation; afiections and in- terests, familiar enough in happy homes, but like the opening of a new world to the poor children of the streets, are called into play ; and, instead of the boys being thrown in singly among hundreds, and lost there even to the most watchful eye, the entire pres- sure of evil from the rest surrounding and crushing in upon each, their family bond becomes a shelter ; they are always within its restraints, and besides the guard- ianship which their immediate contact \^dth the head of the house imphes, their home pleasures are always winning stronger hold.'" Every one of the twelve is * Countless illustrations might be furnished, but two will suffice. A wrong had been done in a family, and no one knew by whom. 1 50 Praying and Wo^^kmg. daily taught to feel his life is part of the family life, that he is interested in maintaining it. The little household duties are distributed : some tidy the rooms, some lay the table for meals, some give out the clothes. And so it is, for example, that after break- fast, Carl reads the verses for the day, Hans and Uli the Catechism, Henry the Lord's Prayer, and Peter lays hold of the family Bible and carries it into the chapel. At the same time, care is taken that one family feeling should be felt throughout, penetrating every household, that in fact these house- holds themselves should form a family. This is partly accomplished by the mingling of all at school and at work, partly by giving all a sympathy in the wel- fare of each, by making the special family festivals publicly known, by a series of festivals which are shared by the whole house, and very much by the chapel service, morning and evening, in which both the course of the Church Year and all the little inci- dents of any importance are observed. For the chapel is the centre of the settlement, and the chapel service is the centre of its activity ; eveiy day's work It was in vain the head of the family tried to discover the culpnt. At length one of the boys cried, " We must find him ; " and in half an hour he was brought up. The family honour was at stake. Two boys worked in the same shop, but one so carelessly and stupidly that the superintendent was greatly vexed. The other quietly took his companion aside ; spoke to him, explained, taught, helped him, and with such effect that he worked afterwards very fairly. Wichern. 1 5 1 begins and ends there ; the chord that is struck in the chapel vibrates in every house ; every side of Rough- House hfe is brought in some way into connexion with the service; and no matter how variously the time is spent, the employments and the thoughts they suggest are made to meet together in this one point. There is thus one centre for the entire House, attach- ing every separate interest to itself, the point of meet- ing and movement for every separate family, and that is the point where worldly things meet with heavenly, where the soul is smitten by the sword of the Word of God, where our working and our living are shadowed by tlie glory and kingdom of Christ. Now, let us look round the chapel, roomy and yet crowded. Some fine frescoes adorn the walls, a recent gift of a few Hamburg ladies and some of the former Rauhhditsler. A few sculptures are placed here and there ; a John the Baptist, Thorwaldsen's Chiist Bless- ing Little Children, Ranch's two orphan boys ; and be- tween them, and oddly enough, if not to an English eye incongruous, couches Thorwaldsens exquisite little Amor, loosely touching a lyre ; symbohsing, however, not the Eros of the classics, but the Love of the Gos- pels, — a heathen symbol rescued, as Wichern says, for Christian uses, and inscribed with the motto, Singef und spielet dem Herrn. Otherwise, the chapel is plain and scrupulously clean. A bunch of fresh flowers lies on the desk, placed by an unknown hand ; and there in the centre of them is a queenly rose, the pride of some 1-52 Praying and Working, boy's garden. Surely these flowers are a sign of love, and gentle and kindly thoughts, among those hundred children. The communicants sit in a circle round the room ; the non-communicants occupy five forms in the centre, seated according to the forwardness of their preparation. As a hymn is sung, the exquisite melody and rhythm startle a stranger miprepared for anything like cultivated music, and the devout earnest- ness and feeling are very touching. Three boys then read the three ^^erses of the day, — a doctrine, a pro- mise, and a prayer ; prayer follows, and the verses are read which belong to one of the families for the current year, and as the last words fall the children respond with a full liturgical Amen. Two, either boys or girls, are then called forward and repeat part of Luther's Catechism in question and answer ; a boy reads out of the family Bible the verse of his family for the week, while, to shew their unity, all read with him j and this united reading or reciting, which is common in children's ser\dces in Germany, has an admirable effect, the syllables being accurately and slowly timed, so that it is like a sentence clearly uttered, but with a vast volume of variously-blended sound. Singing and silent prayer follow, and a short lecture on some book of the Bible. This lecture is usually a picture out of the past, simple as a child may take it. The Bible is presented as a real book, a recprd of historical facts. The mind is first appealed to by its reality, and when this is seized, that deep, Immanuel Wichern, 153 eternal connexion between Bible past and our present, between God's words and histories and all men and times, is skilfully revealed, and a natural way made for a personal application, which the speaker takes care shall be felt, though without making any apparent effort. And all the while his gray eyes are flashing with an honest tender warmth, and he tells the stoiy as one of whom it has taken entire possession, while the children are caught by his spirit and follow him eye to eye. After the lecture, any special days are remembered, and the verses pronounced that- belong to each, and when they have once more prayed and sung, they separate.'" I have written fully of this service ; for the truth of the Bible, the presence and reahty of Jesus Christ, the hfe of faith, are central truths of the Rough House. It is an effort not only after a family Hfe, but after a Christian family life, in which everything is * Frequently the lecture is omitted, and all the rest of the service retained. It is a liturgical service, after the fashion of the Prussian Church, but the liturgy is not fixed ; it is selected from Bunsen's prayer-book, and allows large latitude for free prayer. This prayer-book remains a link between Bunsen and the Rough House. It has adopted it for its own, and prints it at its own press. For those who are accustomed to associate Bunsen's name only with vague and erroneous theological spe- culation, it is well to mention that this AUgemeines Gesang-tmd Gebetbuck, as it is the richest, so probably it is the devoutest col- lection of evangelical prayers. Some of the treasures of its hymns have been already made known in this country by the admirable translations in two series of the Lyra Germanica. 1 54 Praying and Working. traced up to Christ, in which He is the Person who keeps it pure and firm and strong. The Bible is its only authoritative text-book, from which all principles are to be drawn, and which is to be a book of life. Bible study, Bible practice, is the very essence of its education, an education not by formal dead rules, but by living and embodied truths, felt to be living, and embodied in the very history of the House. It is a praying and religious House; and that is its glory and might, and the secret of its othenvise puzzling success. It is a mode of life which suggests to many people laziness and disorder, with which they can only associate meditativeness, abstraction, a looseness from the world, and a want of common sense. They may have some grounds for that opinion ; we do often see a lamentable divorce between a man's spiritual appre- hension and his practical sagacity — between, if one may so say, his sense of God and his sense of every- day duty. But true prayer is the parent of work, and if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God. It is the sentimentalism of faith that begets idleness ; it is the mere selfish pursuit of religious ideas that unfits people for the ordinaiy relations of fife ; but if any man will do ' faithful honest service, let him first enter into his closet and shut the door. That is Dr Wichern's way at Horn. No man is more sensible of the danger of a rigid pietism ; the twist it gives to religious thought; the hypocrisy it inevitably fosters and conceals. No man is more forward to expose Immanuel Wichern, ' 155 that danger, to warn of it, above all in institutions like his. The same narrovrness of view which re- stricted the Greek of the students, in the noble orphan-house at Halle, to the Greek Testament, and put the entire classics in an Index Expurgatorius^ has appeared in more than one German Reforalator>^ The songs of the fatherland are excluded as profane ; hymns are sung till the children are weary; prayer is made sixteen times a-day, and sometimes oftener;* the freedom and power of the Christian hfe are exchanged for the narrowest and most censorious formulas of Christian behaviour. Against that the Fliegende Blat- ter have energetically protested ; and the order of the Rough House itself is a standing protest. It is felt that if the daily life be not healthy and free, and the .sympathies broad and human, the religious life will be sickly and untrue ; that life is many-sided, and that it is a woful mistake to make it one-sided, even if that side be religious ; that the power of the gospel is to manifest itself over the range of life, and not in one arbitrary direction. Therefore they sing the * And as for the indiscretion of the prayers "some examples may suffice. Once it was,—' Men have become so greedy of plea- sure thai they zvill have their bread buttered on both sides.'' An- other time when a boy had run off, and to his great dehght got some white bread and sausages by begging,— 'J/aZ-^ tis first pious, and then give us tvhite bread and sausages.' Again, * The Lord is good and gracious. Solomon had 700 ivives, and 300 concubines. What fidness, and -what riches are in Thy Jcing- ^m I ' '—Fliegejuie Blatter, x v. 2 7 1 , 2 7 2 . 156 Praying and Working. cheerfuUest German songs, and keep their Battle of Leipsic as part of the great German people ; and are famous gymnasts and swimmers, and steady workers ; and grow up intelligent men and women, to take their share and proper place in the world.. Their House is altogether a Christian house ; they are taught to feel that it is Christ sustains it ; the Bible occupies more space in their day than any other book ; their notion of prayer is what is often called fanatical. But there is nothing that can make them confound piety with pietism ; nothing to make them feel that a pious life is not the most genuine and happy of any. They are equally guarded against another danger. Where the necessity of order is so imperative, and so much atten- tion must be given to the accuracy and regularity of detail, the life of the place may come to be a dead mechanism, set out by rule and hours. There will always be that temptation, perhaps there is always that tendency. " It is true," Dr Wichern writes, " that our syston (though we never called it by that name, and would rather have no system) can become a mere dead form ; nay, for some it is that already. But if the form is developed as if // were essential, it will be just as worthless as any other. It is the spirit embodied in the form that is essential. Now that spirit is no other than the spirit of the gospel of Christ. It alone sustains the whole work in the life of truth." Much- of the life of the family is free to assume its own form ; most of the household prayer is free Immaiittel Wichern. 0/ prayer ; the very form of household service is arranged by each house for itself. There is not even uniformity of dress, it is felt that it would be a denial of the family independence ; if they go to walk it is not in long lines, two and t^vo, "but like other children with their parents or friends, together or alone, singing or talking as they please. For the life of a child is only genuine in freedom — i.e.^ true freedom, as far re- moved from compulsion on the one hand, as from wilfulness on the other." There is an order in the daily worship, a minuteness in arranging its detail, which might at first sight seem over-formal. But this order is the growth of years of patient experiment, and the minuteness is only found in describing it ; for in practice each detail is so instinct with living associa- tions that none of them are burdensome. The sei-vice is done, and we foUow the stream out and over a little way to the range of workshops, in front of which the boys are drawn up in families. When they are settled, Inspector Rhiem gives an odd word of command : Makers of slippers, march ! and here and there, from various groups, boys start forward and advance under a Brother to their business. Tail- ors, march I Bakers, march ! Printers, march I the in- exorable voice continues until the entire circle of call- ings is exhausted ; and still some lads are left. Some of these are told off to do the remaining household work in their respective families ; there is a little paint- ing and glazing, it appears, and that occupies one or 158 Praying and Wo7^king. two ; and then faithful Voigt, master of the agricul- ture, advances with a rueful face to take the leavings. Voigt is certain that the spring was so late the seed will never be got down in time ; in a few months he will be as certain that the grain can never be cut before the autumn rains ; he is persuaded that he should have at least ninety-nine followers, and leave one to take care of the house ; he is certain, also, that every other calling was invented out of an especial malice to agriculture ; but he has been so long certain of this that he makes up his mind solemnly to the worst, and marches off doggedly at the head of his men, neither so few nor so despicable when they get together and advance in the bright morning, singing merrily, after innocent, clear-hearted Matthias Clau- dius : — * We plough it, arxd we dig it, and we sow the furrowed Jand, But the growing and the reaping are in the Lord's own hand." As all is quiet again, we may take advantage of the next hour or two and make the round of the work- shops. One long range is given up entirely to the tailors and carpenters and slipper-makers, and spinners and joiners. Each trade has its own benches and right busy and nimble and skilful workers. They work at one trade for half a year, and then, if it be thought prudent, they can be transferred to another. It is the department of home manufactures, and the rooms have sometimes been festive, and garlanded in honour of industry; and once there was held a kind of Immamiel Wichern. 159 Rough-House Industrial Exhibition, for which many marvellous feats were executed both in prose of matter and in rhyme. Voigt's men made a show of potatoes, mangold, beans, oats, and even agricultural imple- ments, over one of which floated a lively poem, be- ginning— "I am the brightest of pitchforks." The carpenters had doors and windows and tables ; the turners, spinning-wheels and stools and children's toys ; the slipper-makers, who make between 300 and 400 pairs in the year, had their very best, and over against them an ode in praise of the art, beginning with the pertinent question — • '' Slippers, slippers, slippers, who ever sung of slippers ? " The shoemakers sung of Hans Sachs mth a pardonable enthusiasm ; the tailors displayed all their winter cloth- ing ; and the bookbinders tersely declared, «' Bookbinders' works can speak for themselves, You may go, if you please, and consult them. " There was spun wool on one table ; on another hem- mings, collars, and all manner of dainty work wrought by maidens' fingers ; and at the end, the baker boasted over his loaves : — "There's never a doctor can cure like me the ache of the stomach and tooth ; It's not by your clothes you grow tall and strong, but by eatmg good bread, forsooth. The hunger-woi-m burns in my oven till he 's dead, While I bake for you all, boys, the sweetest of bread. 1 60 Praying and Working, And though you turn damty, and Hve upon cake, sir, You may bless all your days the Rough House and its baker." There is no festival to-day, but downright hearty work, and mostly happy and pre-occupied faces bending ovei it, so we may. turn away to the printing-room.* Beyond a few school-books, the hymns, the Bible, and such works as may be read by the children, the House made no special claim upon its printing, and probably all these things might have been pur- chased without any very great additional expense. Employment, however, was to be given, the principle '^" The following is the sum of work for i860 : — Shoemakers — 54 new pairs, 615 repairs, 345 pairs wooden shoes. Tailors — 6 coats, 155 pairs trowsers, 127 blouses, 20 caps. Cai'pe7iters — besides constant repairs, a winnowing machine. Smiths — among other work, 57 new iron bedsteads, which they can now make for 8s. 5d. each. Spinners — 245- lb. wool. The Bakehouse va'&VAdi 11,308 loaves of black bread, at 6 lb. each. Mattress -makers made 2, and stuffed 76. Glaziers put in 245 panes. Painters painted 8 of the houses. The Field Work included charge of 7 cows, 10 swine, and many fowl. The cows yielded 11,579 cans of milk, and 3 calves, and 2 yielded themselves to the butcher ; the swine gave 25701b. meat, and the fowl 3220 eggs. There were 32,500 lb. of hay, 45,000 lb. of straw, 35 bushels of rye, 75 bushels barley, 56,000 lb. of oats, 290 saclcs of potatoes, £30 worth of frait, and abundance of all kinds of vegetables. Besides taking charge of the laundiy and kitchen, &c., the girls darned 5299 pairs of stockings, repaired 4363 articles of dress, and cut out 1459 others. They also knitted 441 paii-s of stock- ings, and sewed 1315 articles of dress. Immamiel Wichern. i6i of self-supply was established ; and instead of issuing a few tracts and reports only, the Rough House is now a recognised publishing firm of Germany. From the first broadsheet of the twenty-third Psalm, a little dim and uncertain, and dated 2d February 1842, it has made rapid strides of progress. The FUegende Blatter with its Beiblatt alone would never suffer it to be idle. EstabUshed as a means of com- munication with those who had been trained at home, and with all outside who were -interested in the work, this paper is now the organ of the Ger- man Home Mission. It connects the earher in- mates, no matter how scattered, with the present ; it sustains their interest in the welfare of the House and its aim; it has story and counsel and teaching for them ; it brings together those who are struggling for social reforms, develops and combines their efi"orts ; and it treats of social questions with an ability and Christian manliness that have won for it the widest • reputation and influence. It has been a great means of bringing the gospel once more into the daily hfe of the people ; it has been a channel through which the warmth and force of Wichern's pity, and the uncon- scious impression of his faith, have flowed north and south through Germany ; it has done more than any other single agency to bring back into the popular (as distinguished from the clerical) side of the German Church, unity of faith and purity of doctrine, by the less dogmatic unity of a noble Christian work. And surely 1 62 Praying and Working. it is as interesting and suggestive a sight as may be to watch the young printers — ^jail-birds and street vaga- bonds a year ago — striking off thousand after thousand of these flying leaves, by which the message of Christ, the friend of sinners, is sent over the whole Continent. But this is only a part of the work that goes on, for their press has sent a Hbrary of Christian books into the world, and has recently made Hedley Vicars and English Hearts and English Hands as well known as they are at home. Then they engrave as well as print, and have a regular lithograiDhic establishment. The little leaflets, with a verse of a favourite hymn or a good old nursery rhyme, and the pretty woodcut above, and which are in the children's hands from Konigsberg to Basel, are printed here ; and their pictures are full of art and feeling. Richter designs for them, and Peschel, and Andrea ; and perhaps behind one of the presses may be found Otto Speckter — dear to all children by his Puss in Boots — looking in upon the wood-cutting, for he almost belongs to the place, and has identified the cunning and grace of his pencil with its history. One might linger here long were it not that the bell has rung in through the noise of the printing-presses and the place is empty ; for to those who rise with the sun, dinner is not amiss at mid-day. At the door they separate, each to his own family. Let us follow the two quick-looking type-setters, who turn to the right over the narrow bridge and enter the Schonburg, The Schonburg is the prettiest and most perfect in its hnmamtel Wichern. 163 arrangements of all the houses. Each is built in its own way, has its own legend, which it passes down through its successive residents, its own special points. The legend of the Schonburg is that it was built by a prince of the name, and its special point is that it has every new arrangement which the experience of the past sug- gested. The rooms are large, the bedsteads are iron,'' the chairs are not so hard as the first, and the dinner is excellent,— not, however, as if that were a special point here, for the general dinner, being cooked in one building, is as good elsewhere. Before it can be eaten there is an important preliminary. Every boy must receive from his superintendent a certificate of his work, that he was either busy, or only half-willing, or lazy. Whoever brings the last has no dinner whatever, but is referred to 2 Thess. in. 10, where he may read, This we command you, that if any would not work, ?ieither should he eat. With this ancient and weighty principle he must be content to stay his hunger, and is likely to remember so uncompromising a union between precept and practice ; while, independent of the punishment, there has sprung up so keen a sense of honour that the family would feel a lazy certificate a disgrace to itself; and the combined action of these motives helps to render it very rare. Dinner is a talkative cheerful meal, where everybody has something to say about the morn- ing's work ; and as soon as it is over, half the boys rush out to the play-ground. At one o'clock work * All the bedsteads in the House are now iron. 1 64 Praying and Working, is resumed, and continues till near five. And as we turn round to the silent, deserted Schonburg, a young brother comes fonvard and tells us of the merry way in which the first family took possession of it. For it was on a July evening of 1854 that they assembled — not having, nor caring, for a con- cert room — in the drying loft, which they be-laurelled and otherwise adorned, and then sang Palestrina's forty-second Psalm, Bach's exquisite / know that my Redeemc}' liveth, (less known but more spiritual and worthy than Handel's,) one of Gerhardt's hpnns, and Bortnianski's doxology. Then the guests wandered out by the old house, but as they passed, the great chestnut struck up into a mighty song, from every bough floated the clear and sweet and many-voiced music, and one song melted into another till the old tree shook with melody; and looking up, they saw that on to the very crown it was filled with jRauhhdusle?'. And as the singing still rose here, from another corner of the garden came other voices, after which the guests pur- sued and heard ever}^ band sing of its own people until the great Fatherland hymn of Arndt merged them all into itself, and then singing, they moved on to the edge of a little wood, where the echoes leapt out from the dark green wall, and died away, as the shadows fell down, in Martin Rinkart's Nim danket alle Gott. And so back again, as with singing they took possession of the Schonburg. We feel that that will be a very charming legend of which the Schonburgers have be- hnmcumel Wichern. 165 come inheritors, and walk towards the houses of the Swallows' Nests, thinking much over this wonderful blending ot rough practical life with the sweet singing- time of youth, how at every point work and prayer are made to meet, and the steadfastness and toil of duty are consecrated by festival and psalms. It is worth noticing how Wichern invariably associates work ^vith play j how he brings the free joyous side of life into connexion with its sweat and travail; how he lays out the daily routine v/ith apple-feasts, cherry-feasts, foun- dation-feasts, and even working-feasts, till it becomes itself like a festival j and how he makes it felt that the charm there is in this proceeds directly from the Gospel, that it is because life is Christian that this thread of pleasure is woven in through all its movements. The Swallows' Nests lodge most of the girls ; their family life is the same as that of the boys, while their work naturally varies, being mostly in the household. They take charge of the cooking, are busy ironing and washing and drying, knit and sew, and look pure and neat and thrifty. There is no great mystery about such employments, nor anything to delay a visitor, and a simple walk through laundry and kitchen is sufficient to shew that the' principle of order and thorough communion of labour is carried out also here. It is evident that these girls are passing through precisely the training that will fit them for common social duties in the world. They will be the better wives and mothers for knowing cookery and plain 1 66 Prayijzg and Working, sewing, and they will not be the worse for having learned that a Christian woman should be the most womanly of any. Apart from the boys, they are taught something of the modesty, retirement, and specialty of a woman's life ; they are kept, or rath^ (for they enter almost unsexed) they are made femi- nine ; and they grow up familiar with the private and narrow relations of the family ; while they feel at the same time that there are duties which they owe as members of a society, that there is need for help and service to our neighbour, and that there is a family beyond the family, and to which we stand in a con- stant relation. A stroll through the grounds and the parterre about Wichern's house, and away into the fields after Voigt and his merry men, and back by the new boarding-school, leads one to the Grime Flatz, a roomy green space, elevated enough to command a view. Meadows, windmills, a wooden spire or two, the smoke of a village, t^vo rivers spotted with white sails and brown, and the feeble outline of a few round hills make up this landscape, which is characteristic of the country, and very invigorating to the heart of a Hamburger. I would prefer, however, those boys who come tumbling in at play, now their afternoon's work is over. When, at five, the bell rings out the sports, the children separate once more into famihes ; the family Bible is laid before the brother, each lad has his own ; Immamtel Wichern, 167 and a quiet, friendly, natural conversation is begun over the chapter which has been already explained at morning chapel. Many questions have to be asked, ^Yhich in their turn suggest other questions, miscon- ceptions are removed, allusions fully brought out, interest in the Word is excited, and also a connexion maintained between this private reading and the public service. Isolation is the special foe of the Rough House. The entire system is made to war against it. Every day, every occupation, must have its connecting link \vith some other day or occupa- tion; everyone must feel that there is a bond bet^veen him and the rest. Each is allowed to advance in his free natural order, but never allowed to forget that he is only a member of an organised body, and that the real life and strength of that body is in the recognition of Jesus Christ. By six o'clock, as it is a Wednesday, they will be summoned from their reading to the general drill, where they play at soldiers for an hour and half, gaining manly strength and the proper use and control of their bodies, and shewing themselves true sons c* the Fatherland, in token of which I suppose it is that as they march they sing lustily their old national martial airs. At eight there is evening service in the chapel, and supper follows after. But on Saturday evening, before supper, there is a general review of the week. It was a good German custom of an older time to devote the last hours of the week to this 1 68 Praying and Working, purpose, and by greater stillness and special devotion to usher in the solemn and joyful rest of the first day. Reviving this custom, the evening of Saturday is spent, first by each family settling its own affairs, establishing a universal washing, receiving their several trusts from the boys or girls to whom any office has been com- mitted, making new appointments, and summing up the certificates in one general character. The weekly certificate is afterwards read in the chapel, appropriate lessons follow, appropriate prayers are offered, the weekly verses chosen; and on the Monday everything goes quietly on after the pre-arranged order. From supper till bed-time is spent much as the children wish. Part-songs of Mendelssohn's flow over the walks from one house, a hymn of Claudius from •another; some are watching their flower-beds, some, arm in arm, strolling through the meadow; and the nightingales warble in the oaks and thorns, "most musical, most melancholy;" and when the moon is up, and the soft mists steal over the Elbe, there is still the chant of the watcher through the night, chant- ing and watching for the dawn. So the day passes in the Rough House, day by day; so the house was founded, so the building was raised up, and so the work abides on that foundation which is laid by Jesus Christ. And what is that work % A few years ago Wichern stood before a crowd of the notables of Berlin, and he said, — " Many called it a piece of Immmtuel Wichern. 169 folly or a young man's dream, when, in a meeting at my native town, I pointed to a picture of what the Rough House might be. Now it has become a reality. A village has spread much larger than that which a friend's hand had sketched j five hundred children have grown up among our trees and flowers ; two hundred persons sit daily at our table, and hve by the blessing of Him who to this day can satisfy thousands ^vith five loaves. Hundreds of brothers have been sent out; they serve hundreds of prisoners in the spirit of love ; they visit thousands of poor families in their need ; thousands of sick are tended by them ; they teach three thousand children. In this brotherly family and communion of the one faith and the one love there has risen a spiritual garden of the Lord, where the quiet flowers grow over the earth, and till trees thrust mightily up into the sky." That is the work, and our day is over ; and as the day, so is the year ; festival upon festival ; service after service j and, complete as each day is in itself, the year is no less complete. For the life is both a united life of children and brothers and superintendents together, and a continuing life advancing from day to day; and the twelve months are as carefully mapped out as the twelve hours ; so that to give an accurate conception of the House, it should be sketched not merely from morning till evening, but from January till December. But our day is over ; and that is how the people 1 70 Praying and Working. live here, and a pleasant and delightful life it must be, you say. Yet remember, these are Rough House boys ; it is an earnest, terrible, real struggle that is carried on from year to year; nat child's play and pleasure, but stern, unflinching battle against the lowest of our vices. What vrith the order and in- dustry and cleanliness, the cheerful laughter and free- dom, the quietness and steadiness, this has been almost forgotten. No one of those brothers or teachers dares forget it ; the system of the place is made for it ; if you look at the shy boys shuffling awkwardly among the others, you will see in their dogged, sullen, blank faces good cause to remember it. They are known to the turnkeys of a dozen prisons ; policemen will identify them by the number of committals ; parish boards have been glad to get quit of them on any tenns. The Rough House has no magic wand to lay on them. Whatever is accomphshed is slow, after much failure, through persevering and manful effort. A patient and thorough work was begun in the morn- ing, was continued unbroken through the day. Even the board that fronts the entrance reveals its character : visitors are requested not to speak with any of the inmates — not a word, lest, incautiously dropped, it should overturn the care of weeks. We look on, but the rest are in the fight, and a brave and gallant fight it is. That fight will go on to-morrow with tlie same patient purpose, and the same outward calm. Mean- Immanuel Wichef '11, while the night falls, and the great bell rings out, God the Lord is a swi and shield; the steps and the voices are hushed, save only the watchman's steadfast chant, / will lay me down in peace; and the nightingale seems to answer, For Jesus Christ is the founder of the Rough House. 172 Praying and Working, THE BRETHREN OF ST JOHN. "NOTWITHSTANDING what has been already WTitten of the Rough House there remains one agency unnoticed, one which has grown to such im- portance and spread so wide, that the House itself seems only to have crept in under its shadow. . In the midsummer of 1834, when the first boys were busy finishing their first house, a young Swiss was led to join his fortunes with theirs. His opportune arrival solved a difficulty that threatened to be serious. In a few days there were to be two households, but Wichem could not be so easily divided. While he superin- tended the one, what was to be the fate of the other % The difficulty was imminent; yet it had been long foreseen. The conception of the Rough House in- volved separate households, and these again separate superintendence. If the experiment should meet with even moderate success, helpers would soon be wanted. And from the outset Wichern, his mother, and sister were alone. Nevertheless, having determined his duty, he had begun his work, not at all in a spirit of folly and headstrong obstinacy, but with a hearty trust in God. He had measured his own resources ; he Imjnamiel Wichern. 173 knew they must prove insufficient ; but he knew also that there were resources in his Father's keeping which defied measurement, and he worked quietly on, be- lieving that at any critical moment God would be his helper. He had faith and prayer : God has the hearts of all men in His hand. While he was still mthout any prospect of aid, while the future of his undertaking depended on that aid, and while the issue was nan-owed down to a few days, young Baumgartner came from a most unlikely and remote quarter, from the slopes of the distant Alps. He became the centre round which the new family of boys rallied, and the starting point for a new organisation. And thus the Brothers as well as the children trace back their origin to the same humble beginning, in faith and prayer. From that time workers poured steadily in, in no great crowd, yet in such numbers as to assume the position of a separate body, and to carry out separate aims. Each family of boys is supplemented by a family of Brothers. They live in the same house, but in separate rooms ; they number usually from five to seven, and each household is called a convict'' Every building has its separate name, and so has every convict-, but * This name is liable to misapprehension. It was chosen simply by way of easy distinction from \h% family. The Comitess de Gasparin, in her well-known work, Des Corporations Monas- ttques au Sein dit Profestaniisme, uses it as proof that the Rough House is a cloister. While in England, and even m Germany, it has been ludicrously, but not unnaturally, associated with thieves or ticket-of-leave men. 1 74 Praying and IVorking. while the names of the buildings are derived from some circmnstance of their foundation, those of the convicts recall the places that were marked by the lov- ing steps of Christ : Bethlehem, Nazareth, Bethel, CaJia, Emmaiis, Nam, and Tabor. They are composed of young men who have dedicated themselves to some branch of home-mission work, and who come to the Rough House for their training. Their mode of life is identical with that of the children ; they have the same family independence, the same common family interests, the same common life. Their relation to the life of the House has already been noticed. One of them is the head of the children, their " Father," and lives entirely with them. The rest are the chil- dren's friends, their elder brothers, ready to counsel and help and guide them, to join in their sports, to share in all their little joys and sorrows, but otherwise distinct. They are foremen and superintendents at the work-shops and in the fields, working themselves among the foremost j they have a general supervision of the establishment ; they are made familiar with its working and requirements, down to the minutest par- ticular; they bear its responsibilities; they help in the school hours, and they receive, along with this practical education, a scholastic suited to their posi- tion and calling. For an average of five hours a-day, they are taught not only in elementary subjects but in the history of the Church, the ecclesiastical fea- tures of the time, home and foreign missions, and, Immamtel Wicker n. 175 above all, the Word of God.* Thus when they leave they are ready to enter on some practical service; they have had the advantage of studying for years the actual working of the system at Horn ; they have been brought into personal contact with the criminal class ; they have tested their own powers both of endurance in their work and of influence over others ; they have acquired habits of self-control, of decision and action and of administration; and they are well informed by their reading on the causes and characteristics of social evils, on the various modes of cure, and on the capa- bilities of the Church to provide an adequate remedy. It would not be easy to over-estimate the importance of the Brotherhood, viewed as an auxiliary to the ordi- nary Rough House work, its mediating power between Wichern and the scattered families, the strength of its healthy moral tone. But, from what has been said, it will appear that its sphere of activity is contemplated as much wider, and embracing the entire social life. The Rough House has already sent out upwards of 300 Christian workers ; some of them have gone to orphan- houses, v*'ork-house schools, bridewells, and prisons, where they teach at present more than 3000 children ; some have taken charge of reformatories, as many as * Their course of education comprises Exegetical Reading of the Bible, Histoiy of the Old and New Testaments, Church History, German and other Histor)', Natural History, German Literature, English Literature, Singing, the Violin, and Gym- nastics ; and each of them receives from 29 to 32 hours' instruc* tion every week. 176 Praying and Working. forty, Avith upwards of 700 children, being under their control; some serve as turnkeys in the larger jails, where they watch over many thousand prisoners ; some are catechists and chaplains in the prisons, and some tend the sick in prison-hospitals. They are visitors of the poor in large cities, agents of the Inner Mission, superintendents and under officials in the poor-houses. They welcomxC the wandering artisan into a pleasant room and a Christian household, instead of the drunk- enness and discomfort of a low inn ; they teach schools in London, Paris, Constantinople, and out-lying desti- tute villages in Germany, acting both as schoolmaster and missionary ; they carry Bibles and Christian books through the country. They are to be found under the shadow of Turkish mosques, at the base of Vesuvius, among the Laps of Russia, and by the great lakes of North America — faithful, steady, manly workers — Rough House workers all of them. "The 2 1 2 at present in service are found among children of every class in public and private schools, reformatories, orphanages, poor-houses. They work as city missionaries in the large towns, Konigsberg, Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen, London ; they tend the sick in hospitals, Lazarethen^ and private families, away on the borders of Lithuania, in the heart of Germany, in Nassau, on the S)Tian shores of the Mediterranean ; they are teachers, over- seers, superintendents, in prisons and bridewells both in town and country ; they labour among the Germans scattered over Europe, in England, Russia, Sema, Ivtmanuel Wichern, 177 Italy, Constantinople; they have built churches and minister to congregations in the deep woods of Ame- rica; they labour among populations of the most various speech, — Poles, Letts, Servians, Itahans, French, Turks, Armenians, more recently among the Arabic-speaking Christians at the foot of the Lebanon, — ^very much among the English." * Early in 1848, fever swept over Silesia, in the track of the famine. " Who will go with me % " said Wichern ; "you have four-and-twenty hours to make up your mind ; the people are dying down ; there is no one to help the widows and orphans ; the fever is of the worst." "We are all ready," they cried with one voice, as thirty men, with two of the superintendents, came forward to offer themselves. Ten were selected ; they found the region panic-stricken ; in one place hundreds were buried at the same time ; villages were actually dying out ; dead bodies were laid overnight at the churchyard wall, or sometimes flung over into the enclosure ; the country, ■* Their distribution of place is :— Prussia, 124; Hamburg 10 ; Bremen, 1 1 ; Saxony, 10 ; North America, 9 ; Mecklenburg, 8 ; Hanover, 6 ; Russia, 5 ; London, 4 ; Syria, 4 ; Wiirtemburg, Bavaria, Holstein, Lubeck, each 3 ; Altenburg, i ; Hesse-Cassel Nassau, Switzerland, France, Italy, Servia, Turkey, each i. Their distribution of work is : in reformatories and oi-phan ages, 61 (42 as superintendents, 19 as assistants) ; in bridewells, 8 ; as teachers in town and country schools, 30 ; in the various offices of 7 prisons, 60 ; among discharged convicts, 4 ; in poor houses, 4 ; as masters of inns for working-men, 3 ; in hospitals, 10; as superintendent of a Magdalen asylum, i; as colonial preachers (in America), 8 ; in various other posts, 9, M 1 yS Praying and Working. mth its level, undrained reaches, and lazy and abun- dant waters, and low dense forests, was itself a hotbed of the plague ; the habits of the people — a people stag- nant and dirty as their drains — were all in favour of disease ; their ignorance and superstition and fear threw every obstacle in the way of cure ; and most of those who were helpful had been already prostrated. For months those gallant men lived there "as if in graves," watched the sick, soothed the dying, comforted the desolate, taught the children, erected orphanages, and, when compelled to return, left two of their num- ber to carry on what they had begun. These orphan- ages were their chief care. The number of orphans was over 6000 ; and every week added hundreds. The children were left alone in their smitten households without so much as a visit or a kindly word ; and the oldest was sometimes not over ten. If they were cared for, it was often by the most selfish and careless shelter. The neighbour who took them from pity, grew tired of them, sent them out to herd his cows, and threw them scraps from his table. Even the girls suffered this treatment, and would run off at last, scarce covered with the rags that they had worn for years. There was public shelter also, and orphanages were hastily extemporised by the parish boards. But the oversight fell upon the gens d^aiines or the beadle ; a Polish woman took the charge ; and the result was a combination of dirt, disorder, and dishonesty that is in- describable. Then the children partook of the sluggish- Immamiel Wichern, 179 ness of the county, increased by the presence of disease to apathy; it was next to impossible to rouse them ; it was weeks before they would leave off crouching in the corner j games were unkno^\Ti, and it was no common victory to persuade them to touch a ball. Against this jealousy for dirt, and unhealthy apathy of character, the battle had to be fought out inch by inch, with pru- dence and unbending will, and by no other weapon than love. Real orphanages were established j real cleanliness was proclaimed ; the children came to have elasticity of spirit hke other children ; and the founda- tion of a permanent reform was laid by these zealous men. It was a work that proved what need there was for them, and what stamp of men they were. It was both training and stimulus. It is a fair illustration of the common work they do. For it may be dangerous, often loathsome; it is weary, slow, and without ap- plause ; it is full of labour and hardship ; it brings in no worldly return; it is self-denying and continuous. And it is a noble and blessed sight to see that handful of men, in the time when life is sweet and fresh upon them, waiting at the gate to march out over the waste places of society, to sit by the felon in his cell, to kneel do^vn in the garret by the unfriended sick, to wander through the wicked lanes of the city that they may snatch a child from death, to teach the old and hardened, to meet the wanderer with a smile, to repair the ruin of the household, to plead with the criminal, to bring the gospel everywhere to the poor. 1 80 Praying and Working. It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that this work was altogether of a high and educated class acting down upon a lower ; it would be a mistake to work by such a system. There might be a greater expenditure of self-sacrifice, a more romantic devo- tion ; but there would be no proportionate gain : it would be working against the very structure and laws of social life. The tendency, perhaps instinct, of so- ciety is to preserve certain class distinctions, to be jealous about them, to be almost suspicious of any in- trusion from class to class. The artisan maintains the rights and respect of his order as strictly as the noble- man; the poor are as much on their guard against the intrusion of the rich as the rich against the intru- sion of the poor. Education and gentlemanly feeling, no doubt, will tell anywhere \ and none are so quick to know them as the poor, who are supposed to have neither. Men and women of culture and refinement are sometimes the best district-visitors, and for some things exclusively the best. They will have more diffi- culty at first than others ; more prejudice to meet j more to overcome in themselves ; yet they have that to do which is best in their hands, and they will shew that there is a union deeper and truer than all pos- sible class divisions. But they have never been in the position of those for whom they labour ; their life is a conscientious effort to understand it; and yet, when it is understood, there are sympathies and feel- ings and ways of putting things that belong to it, and Immamiel Wichern. i8i which they have not mastered, or only clumsily. Others, to whom such sympathies and feelings are natural in their own life, have here a great advantage. And the man who works for his own class will have the most power, the freest action, the readiest hearing. The Brothers belong to every class ; if any one predomi- nates, it is that of the mass of the people ; and the training they receive is not so much of culture as to educate them for acting with most effect in their natu- ral social position. This is carried out to the fullest extent among the Pilgrim Bivthers. It is part of a young German artisan's life to travel from place to place for work, not from necessity, but for gaining a better knowledge of his trade, and seeing more of the world. Groups of such travelling workmen may be encountered all through the summer months, march- ing gaily along, and singing their German songs. They are thus thrown closely and pleasantly together at a time of life when the strongest impressions are made, and those impressions have been commonly hostile to religion. It is among the artisans that the infidelity and materialism of Germany have found their strong- est support ; any national change for the better, if it is to be real and strong, must include them, for they are the bulk of the intelligent population; And one way of reaching them was suggested in the Rough House, that artisans of Christian spirit and the proper gifts might go out from it and wander with these wan- dering groups, using such opportunity as they have 1 82 Praying a7id Working, for Christian influence and reform. These are the Pilgrim Brothers, — artisans who come to the House with this view, work at their trade while there, learn the discipline during the year or six months they re- main, are taught how to use their position, and then set out on their pilgrimage. The same habits of the working men led to another employment of the Brothers. The lodging-houses where the travellers put up were frequently of the lowest character ; uncomfortable, more- over, as well as low ; and the man who disliked bad company was forced into it with the rest. Much evil was traceable to this source alone, and it was deter- mined to establish on all the great artisan routes houses of a better character, where there would be comfort, cleanliness, and quiet, a good library, and the presi- dence of a Christian landlord. Local effort would supply the means, the Rough House the men. The experiment was greatly sneered at ; none made more merry over it than the working men themselves. The " praying-houses" were painted to the younger men in the most mournful colours; it was said they would get nothing to eat, and only the Bible to read. Neverthe- less it has succeeded ; the prejudice has worn away, and the men are recognising a genuine benefit. By such efforts as these the Brothers were extending their influence, and becoming more powerful for good. Up till this time they had been simply a part of the institution at Horn, quietly going out from it to do their work; but as they dispersed over the country, Immanuel Wichern. 183 and discovered other work to be done, and as their owTi worth and their adaptation to social reform were recognised, and their organisation grew to be both more definite and extensive, they became connected not only with Horn, but with all Germany, and the import- ance of the Rough House as a reformatory is now secondary to its importance as a training-school for the Inner Mission. That Mission itself is but an outgrowth of the Rough House, and originated in this way. The year 1848 was one of European disorder; a year of street barricades and flying princes and popular constitutions. The faces were sullen in the streets, there were marks of blood on the houses, rapid march- ings of soldiers over the continent, embryo revolutions and rough military repressions, outbursts of deep and long-pent feelings, hunger too, and fear. The pohtical confusion spread itself over the family hfe ; famine and commercial panic added their quota. The evils of society crowded up to its surface, laid themselves bare in every conceivable wicked form. No wonder those who looked on say it was a ghastly spectacle. Among these onlookers w^as Wichern, but not a spectator only. There were others as well as he who saw that the gospel alone cou",^ :jz^>. these disorders, who felt the necessity of immediate action, who prayed for the energies of a living Church to cope with the crisis. And it did happen that the same year that ushered in the wildest pohtical anarchy witnessed the revival of the Gemian Churcl", and the assembling of the first Kirchentag. It 1 84 Praying and Working, was in September. Wichern had travelled north and south, and east and west, among the ten thousand typhus orphans of Silesia ; among the thirty thousand prisoners in a hundred jails j he had passed through the seats of the revolution, tracked the steps of the plague, gone into the low dens and lounges of the city, heard the godless words, marked the evil spirit, mock- ing, defiant, hating Bible and order alike ; he had come face to face with this miser}^, and fresh from it he stood up in the Church Assembly at Wittemberg, and told them what he had seen. They w^re thrilled till their hearts vibrated to his own. He reminded them of their solemn duty, of their mission to Germany. His words were caught up ; the sensation was profound, the situation too real and tragical to let it die away. And from that time the Inner Mission became the cherished scheme of the best men of Germany, and the most wide-spread and powerful auxiliary to the Church. From that time also the Inner Mission and the Rough House came into the closest contact, the one almost as much Wichern's child as the other. Much of his leisure was taken up in investigating the social condi- tion of the country. His journeys always furnished him with fresh statistics, opened wide fields and hitherto unknown forms of crime, forced on him the necessity of new and larger remedies. The House at Horn was the great feeder of the mission work ; but as the field of the work expanded, it proved altogether inadequate to the need. By the end of 1857, 641 applications Immamiel Wichern. 185 had been made for Brothers, — made by the Govern- ment, pubHc institutions, governors of prisons, lown- councillors, parochial boards, private individuals. Of these, 202 were wanted for reformatories, 56 for workhouses, 44 to care for the poor, 27 for orphan- ages, 143 for prisons, 18 for hospitals, 76 for schools, 75 for various objects somewhat difficult to classify. And these wants represented twenty-three provinces of Germany. These are the statistics of twelve years, during which the Rough House could only spare 180 labourers, so that more than two-thirds of the need was left to accumulate to a still greater need and peril.* It was felt that there must be new houses erected in the spirit of the old; it was felt also that these should be in the great cities, the centres both of influence and evil. Berlin was pitched upon as the first ; it was -the capital of North Germany, the head - quarters of the Inner Mission. The great prison there was already officered by forty of the Brothers, holding all situations, from chaplain do\\Ti to the lowest turnkey; and Berlin was fruitful in crime. Wichem has some strange stories to tell of the criminal population. Here is a group of families : — The father is a drunkard, the mother a confirmed thief, the three sons regular inmates of the prisons, the daughters lost to virtue, and every member of this household, independent of the rest, maintaining the closest relations with people as wicked and shameless as themselves. — The father is ostensibly a shoemaker, * More recent statistics will be found at page 228. i86 Praying a7id Working. but never works ; the mother has no occupation, yet they Hve well, and dress well ; they never steal, have never been before the bench. The secret is in this, that they have educated their children to be pro- ficients in every branch of thieving. — The eldest son has been in prison for years ; two daughters are evil j the three other sons have lately been in prison together — the youngest, who is not more than twelve, for the fifteenth time. Here, again, are statistics. In the town prison of Berlin, 760 boys have been committed during the last five years; and in 1858 alone, 221 boys and girls. " I have at present before me tables which shew that fifty of the present prisoners, Berlin- ers by birth, have passed the greater part of their life in confinement. The terms of sentence increase with their age. Children of eight, or twelve, or thirteen are sentenced to a few weeks ; this has occurred to them three, four, five, or even twelve and fifteen times ; after that they have gone in for months, and, still later, for years."* It is curious also to find the same revelations of a criminal society in Prussia that have been made in * For example : B., eleven years old : — six times, at fourteen days, or shorter. 1849, 1850, nine times, at from four to six weeks. 1852, a year (till 1853.) 1853, a year and half (till 1855.) 1855, two years and a half (till 1858.) 1859, ^ve yeai-s. Iminanuel Wichern. 187 England, the same constituent elements, the same inverted honour and breeding. The Berhn picture, however, is drawn on a larger scale, for it affirms an international Ufe with common types in all great cities, with thorough intercommunication, perhaps with an international social congress sitting on vexed ques- tions, as to the economics of higher thieving and housebreaking. There is an aristocracy of thieves, and a marvellous variety of grades between the upper ten thousand and the vulgar. The beggars, prowling round street doors for a stray chance, are at the bot- tom ; the gentlemanly pickpocket crowns the edifice. Thieving is an art carefully systematised, and rich with the lore of ages. And after a walk through Ber- lin, Dr Wichem suggests what a fertile field for a his- torian there is in the thieves' life, narrating of the scout system and the alibi system, (alibis being sold cheap at certain places,) of the helpers and receivers, the swindlers and gamesters, of their schools, and transactions on thieves' change, of their travels to the spas and fairs, their grand tours round the capitals of Europe, of the barter of stolen goods, their trade agencies, their social parties and amusement, their literature, their common tongue. Like a kindly and well-informed writer in the Conihili Magaziiie^^ he discovers a certain moral code for the protection of their immorality. Those who cheat the whole world dare not cheat one another. Woe to those * See article on Thieves and Thieving, September i860. 1 88 Praying and Working. who deal unrighteously with a comrade ! Woe, above all, to him who is unfaithful to thievery! He is banned of the Vehmgericht ! Stratagem and jeers are played upon him to win him from his honourable folly. If these are powerless, he may prepare for a terrible revenge. A man who had been often punished for theft left the jail with good intentions, and declared to his old comrades that he would steal no more. They mocked him ; he resisted their laughter and temptations. They got angry. One (Evening, as he stood at a window, they came behind 'im. A gentleman was near; a woman stole his purse, thrust it into their old comrade's pocket, and, gliding back, whispered, " Have you your purse, sir 1 That man yonder was at your pocket." He was arrested, and sentenced this time as the reward of his honesty. They have a hard struggle. We can surely spare them some sympathy. " There never was a door open to me," said a prisoner the other day, " but a thief s, and — ^well, I '11 go no more there. But who will open the door to me?" "My wife has left me," said another; "where shall I turn? Shall I steal again? Well," after a pause, " I must see ; as God will." Poor people ! who will help them ? And who will help thousands like them with whom the low quarters of the city are crowded ? Who will reach a hand to the discharged prisoner ? Who will take up his chil- dren and give them a Christian training ? Who will open their old home to those whose name dare not be I-mmanuel Wicker n. 189 uttered over the threshold % " I would give a couple of crowns/' said a sister of a convicted brother, " to anybody who could tell me that the fellow is dead ! '' "If he is free/' said also the sister of another, "let him not dare come to me ; no jail-bird shall sleep in my house." Who will unlock hearts like these with the gospel % To these, and a hundred questions as unlikely of answer, Wichern determined to reply. If there was a brotherhood in Berlin, here was ample training-gi-ound, a larger and more varied school than Hamburg, the good done reaching -wider in its results. He called a meeting in April 1858, "to hear an account of the proposed Hospice of St John in Berlin." He had a capital of 1000 crowns, the promise of 200 more, and a friend who undertook the expenses of the meeting. As for prospects, he had the encouragement of twenty-five years, — years that whispered him with one common voice, Go forward. His sphere of opera- tion was definite enough ; and of fellow-workers there was no lack. In the Rough House he had never been able to receive one-third of those who sought admission; the number of applicants had even kept in advance of the number applied for. The day of meeting came ; that day twenty-five years he had first heard the name of the Rough House. Upwards of 700 people assembled in the Singakademie, Bethmann- Hollweg, the Minister of Worship, presiding. Though the King was absent from ill health, many of the royal 1 90 Praymg and Working. family were there, among the rest the Crown Prince ; there were many members of the Ministry, of the Houses of ParHament, representatives of the magi- stracy and town-council, clergymen, schoolmasters, artisans ; a contrast altogether to that earlier meeting already narrated at Hamburg. Wichern spoke for two hours, developed his plans, concluded with a prayer that the Holy Spirit would move many hearts in love and sacrifice to lay the foundation-stone of the Hospice of St John. The whole assembly responded with a deep Amen. Contributions poured in from twopence up to £150. The King and Queen sent 10,000 crowns. A year after there was a capital of nearly 29,000 crowns. In the autumn of 1858, Olden- burg, and twelve Brothers, were sent out from Horn to be the founders of this work in Berlin. The shape of the building is a twelve-sided polygon, every side 100 feet. Six of these sides are occupied with sepa- rate houses, embracing reformatory, school, work- shops, hospital, residences for the members and for the clerical assistants, and all surrounding a simple chapel in the centre. " The beauty of the building is to consist in its simplicity and fitness." It is dedicated to the EvangeHst John, the apostle of love. Its aims will include every department of the Inner Mission : it will afford training both within and without. Those scattered societies that operate in our own large towns may find their ob.octs represented in it, and it will have objects for which we have as yet no societies. Gather Immanuel Wichern. 191 under one roof, ragged schools, reformatories, town- missionaries, hospitals, colporteurs, mission colleges, turnkeys, prison-chaplains, pilgrim-brothers, ticket-of- leave men, and discharged convicts, and any other form of vice and its remedy which may suggest itself; control and unite these in one educational and ame- liorative system ; maintain one principle j preserve subordination to one head j allow each mode of social reform the utmost freedom, yet so that it will not con- flict but supplement and harmonise with the rest ; let the Word of God be the foundation, the Spirit oi Christ the bond ; let this be regarded as a school in which young men of faith and wisdom and devotion are trained for aggressive action on every positive evil of our modern social life ; let them be spread over entire Germany ; let them penetrate ever}" order of life ; let the same unity of effort and harmony of plan char- acterise those isolated workers in their future callings ; let them be bound together, and so supported, by common ties ; let their efforts be guided by watchful and far-sighted men; let each feel himself the centre of a new movement, and develop round him a smaller agency on the pattern of the first; this is the conception of the Hospice of St John ; and I think there has not been a nobler conception in this century of philan- thropic effort. It may be too large ; you may think it too fanciful ; it may seem too systematic ; you may persuade yourself there is a monk's cowl creeping already over that Brother's fair, honest, Lutheran face. 192 Praying and Working, But why should it be a dream 1 Our young men are thirsting for excitement ; the exuberant Hfe of our age seems to find no sufficient outlet ; old and quiet forms, traditional habits and limits are forsaken, burst through with impatience ; the spirit of the time is for adventure. Why should there not be a Christian chivalry % Why should there not be hearts to join in the new crusade % Why should there not be life-service for the good of your poor neighbour as much as for war or travel, as heroic spirits to fling themselves into the battle against sin as into the strife of a kingdom % Romance, adven- ture, action, sacrifice, a purpose worth living for, the springs that touch generous minds are touched here, and the delicate and subtle springs of religious feeling which the clumsy fingers of the world can never reach. It would be a shame to doubt that the men would be found, that the dream would be a truth in the broad light of the day. And Wichern is surely right when he says, that the right men exist and with the right temper, that he only seeks to bring their energies and the ripen- ing purpose of their hearts into play. Up to this time he has found them. Twenty are toiling in Berlin at present. And this is now the comprehensive aim of all these brotherly workers, whether at Hamburg or Berlin; and if it seems to any over-comprehensive, a mere high-sounding scheme ot mission effort, let it be remembered from what a practical beginning it has sprung, what patience and plodding earnestness have characterised the work already done, and that it has Immanuel Wichern, I93 been as much the growth of circumstances as of any preconceived plan, rather forced upon its author by those circumstances and his own slow success than forced by him upon any. It is twenty years since, through the influence of Baron Bunsen, the govern- ment°determined to try the Brothers in the prisons; yet it is only now that they are really there. But neither was the purpose relinquished, nor was it suf- fered throughout all that time to interfere with any other department of labour. Next to the Reforma- tory-, it is the most important efl^ort against crime. If anybody will have influence upon criminals, it will be the daily influence of Christian men who really care for them. And as aheady the Pmssian reforma- tories have led to a remarkable and steady diminution of crime, results as favourable may be afterwards looked for from the statistics of discharged convicts^ Thpy are certainlv more hopeless ; to the ignorance* of Rough-House boys they add the hardihood and habits of men; but it has been proved that they are * - It is not so strange that they should make Paul the brother of Abraham, and place the Psalms m the New Testament; or ly that Prussia is the same as Y.rov.-Ne^..R^cpp^n they cdl ^ But one declared that Jesus was bom 500 years before the birth of Christ; and another, that it was 10,000 years ago ; another that Jesus lived in Austria; and another, who had answered Tex-usalem, explained that that city was situated on the Spree, for that Berlin was formerly called Jerusalem. One had never heard that Jesv.s was crucified ; another, though 22 years of age, could remember only once in his life that he was m church. - Pastor Oldenburg in his Official Reprt on the Prison at Moabtt. N 194 Praying and Working. not inaccessible, that even the difficulties that assail them out of prison may be overcome. Criminal work has hitherto been the chief emi^loyment of the Bro- thers ; it will likely be so for long. The Moabit is but one prison, though no doubt the most important ; and not a hundredth part of the Prussian prisoners are yet under their care. Other, and even new work, however, is looked after. There has been a Prussian revival of the Knightly Order of St John, on a gospel basis, and for such chivalrous ends as befit Christian men. Like its predecessor, it turns its interest to the East, but with no weapon save love, and to rescue not a Holy Sepulchre, but a people to Christ. There may be a touch of German sentiment in this j something of the mediaeval romance that tinged the mind of the late king. It has to be proved yet what this Order is. But when the tidings of the Syrian massacres were brought to Europe, it sent out two of its members to establish hospitals, and four of the Brothers trained to hospital work went with them. That they have been of no common service is testified by those on the spot; and those who are familiar with hospitals will understand the importance of this new effort. Even should it not be permanent in the East, there is urgent want of such men for the sick at home. And these are the Brethren of St John. They are our brothers, said the children of the Rough House twenty years ago, as they felt how the young men loved them, lived v/ith and served th err \ we Immamtel Wichern. 195 have no brothers of our own, these will be ours. The name clave to them, touching and full of meaning; the very name they ought to bear. Bi Others they will remain, and as Brothers the Rough House sends them out. This brotherhood enters the Hsts to com- bat with all foes ; a brotherhood of the old brave, gentle, unselfish spirit. Mechanic and noble, learned and unlearned, may meet in it. The most illustrious names of Prussia represent its supporters ; its own knighthood more honourable than any. Its members will live as the Rough House lives, by faith and prayer ; they A^dll be ready vrith a cheerful sacrifice to follow when God leads them the way ; they will be stem to sin ; pitiful, kind, courteous to the sinning ; they wiU shrink from no pain or trouble, guided and inspu-ed by love j they mil be the teachers of the most abandoned children, the succourers of the most feeble and out- cast ; with gentle words and refuge for the forsaken ; with hope for the desolate ; patient and unswerving : tracking out the lost through dismal lanes ; leading the strayed home; artisans sitting on the bench, and speak- ing words of trath and soberness to their comrades ; students preaching Christ by pure and simple and righteous lives : employers \A\}ci a Christian home for their men, thoughtful for their comfort, helping them to be honest and steady ; clerg}-men building up the ruined churches, purifying the family life, bringing the gospel of the kingdom into garrets and robbers' dens. Any one who knows the poorer quarters of our towns. ig6 Praying and Working. or has thoughtfully considered the aspects of our social relations, will estimate the worth of such knightly men and of such a temper, — men who are not combating blindly in the dark, but striking fair blows in the light of a definite aim. They may be scattered and alone, but every one feels that his battle is the battle of the rest ; every one knows his point of attack ; every one is skilled in his weapons. The cause is still so strug- gling and weak as compared with the organised and gigantic evil before it, that any new band is eagerly welcomed in the strife. But the Brethren of St John deserve higher recognition. They are not only fresh strength, but they have the elements of a new power. Their strength is incalculably multiplied by their system. They knit together the unknown and solitary workers ; they rally round them energies that are running to waste j they find room for every class, and employment for every gift. It may not be possible to do the same here ; it might not be judicious. Mere imitations or transplantings of excellent works are mechanical, often ludicrous. But those who feel the earnestness of these social questions, and the certainty that the gospel con- tains the true solution, are likely to watch this German experiment with interest and hope and prayer. THEODORE FLIEDNER.* THE BLUE FLAG OF KAISERSWERTH. TJP the RJmie, has no more the meaning it bore in the days of Thomas Hood's exquisitely droll itinerary —not so long ago, but for this railway and now telegraph speed at which the world is flying past us,— when it meant leisurely sailing for days together from the very Rhine mouth up to Basel, with nightly bivouacs at the villages on either side, and endless opportunity of observing the vicissitudes of social life from the crowded quarter-deck. For the first -:^ The various Kaiserswerth publications contain the fullest account of the Institution, particularly the Kurze Geschichte der Entstehung der ersten evang. Liebes-AnstalteJi zu Kaisers- werth; Das erste Jahrzehnt mid das driite Jahrfunfi der Diakonissen Anstali ; Emsegnung der Diakoiihsen ; and the 198 Praying and Working. point of departure from Rotterdam is now the pretty station of the Dutch-Rhenish Railway, and along this railway you are whirled at a steady, comfort- able pace, without so much as a peep at the rejoicing river, or at anything else, save a deep, full ditch, close to the rails, an occasional sand-hill, or flat colourless fields where the hard soil is bleached by the sun, until you see the towers of the great cathedral at Cologne, and there take the water for Coblenz and Bingen, But should any one be simple, quiet, and old-fashioned enough to embark at the Boompjes, in one of the fast Rhine steamers, and be content to look, for two days, at a row of bulrushes on the one side and poplar trees upon the other, or at poplar trees upon the one side and a row of bulrushes on the other, he will not only come upon the exquisite scenery higher up with all the advantage of contrast and relief, but will pro- a.dmirable Armen-mid-Kranken-Freu7id, (1849-1861,) a peri- odical devoted to the general work and progress of Protestant Deaconesses. On the whole subject, Fliedner's Nachrichi nher das Diakonissen-Werk in der Christlichen Kirche, alter und neuer Zeii^ Wichern's Dienst der Frauen in der Kirche, and his article in Herzog's Real Encyclopadie on Diakonen- 2md Diakonissen Hduser, may be consulted with the greatest advantage. Dr Howson's article on Deaconesses, elsewhere referred to, has been separately published while these sheets are passing through the press, {Deaconesses, by the Rev. J. S. Howson, D.D.,] and with many valuable additions. No better manual could be desired, and the question is discussed in all its bearings with admirable clearness and abundant information. Theodore Fliedner. 199 bably see, about an hour before reaching Diisseldorf, a strr.nge flag floating from a tower upon the left. It is not time for the- " Fruit, foliage, crags, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine, And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells. From green, but leafy walls, where ruin greenly dwells ; " the only rising ground in sight is on the horizon, and the tower is only the relic of a -windmill. Neither does the flag suggest anything of battles passed below, but is simply a large blue flag, bearing in the centre a white dove with an olive branch. It is the signal that you are passing Kaiserswerth, a paltry, ordinary village, as you would presently say, looking at the houses that straggle down to the river ; and it is nothing more, notwthstanding its ruins of the eleventh century, and that St Suibert, the first evangelist of the district, is buried in the Pfarrkirche. Moreover, on nearer in- spection it turns out to be dirty, as most Roman Catholic towns unfortunately are. And yet it is better worth stopping at than St Goar or Ehrenbreitstein. It is the seat of a movement which is exercising a pro- found influence on the German Church, and dramng no little attention from England, as well; where an unpreten'iin'Z German clerg}mian has been working out in his own way a problem which deeply concerns us all — the right relation of womanly gifts and service to the kingdom of God. That simple flag over the old windmill tower has a very eloquent meaning, and 200 Praying and Working. no one will repent loitering about Diisseldorf till its story is fully learnt* Kaiserswerth was entirely a Roman Catholic village until near the close of the last century, when certain velvet manufacturers brought over their work-people from Protestant Crefeld. The Protestant congrega- tion was small enough, — two hundred in a population of eighteen hundred ; and over it Candidat Theodore Fliedner was placed as village pastor in the year 1822. He was not there a month when the velvet manufacturers failed, and the congregation, mostly their own workmen, threatened to be broken up. Fliedner was offered another charge. He says he could not reconcile it with his duty to leave his flock when they most needed help ; and as they WTre no longer capable of supporting a pastorate among them, he made a begging tour as far even as Holland and England, and returned with a sum sufficient to afford a moderate endowment This, however, was by far the least result of his journey. His longing and aptitude for practical work, not as * This flag is displayed on such, festival days as are notable in the Institution. Its emblem of a dove meets the eye in every form, on the Kaisersvi^erth books, in the rooms, and carved on the steps before Dr Fliedner's house ; while in the building for aged nurses, in a recent fresco painting, a gift of the Diisseldorf artists, it appears with a touching fitness of symbolism, as a weary bird with heavy wnigs, flying into the arms of the Saviour. An excellent view of the town and neiglibourhood may be had from the tower, if any one has courage to flounder through the hay which occasionally occupies the lower story. Theodoi^e Fliedner, 20 1 a philanthropist only, but as an earnest minister of Christ, had been gi'eatly stimulated by what he saw. He had visited hospitals, workhouses, schools; in London he dwells simply on having " seen Newgate, and many other prisons :" he regrets only missing Mrs Fry. And when he came back he thought, with deep shame, that in faith and love Englishwomen far surpassed German men. It was not long till his thoughts found a practical outlet. The prison at Diisseldorf was no better than other prisons at that time. There v/as no classification of the prisoners, no schooling for the young, scarce any separation of the sexes. The filth was horrifying, the arrangements for sleeping and eating of the worst. The prisoners had no employment, and there was no effort to give them any spiritual instruction. Mean- while the jailors grew rich, and the prison-boards fell asleep. Fliedner sought admission to the Diisseldorf prison, having more leisure, as he says, than his brethren, and obtained permi^ion to preach in it every Sunday fortnight. It was characteristic of that period in Germany, that a Roman Catholic was his chief friend in the matter, and that the same Roman CathoHc helped him to found a Bible Society. His chapel was humble enough — two sleeping-rooms, with the bed-straw piled up recently in the corner, and a doorway betvreen them, where the chaplain stood, that he might be heard by the women on one side, and the itien on the other : but it was the commencement of a 202 Praying and Working. genuine prison reform. The next year he visited the prisons of Rhenish Prussia, carefully collected statis- tics, and laid them before the authorities. They were amazed. At Diisseldorf, out of 220, only 70 could write, 90 could not read; at Cleves, out of 152, 80 could not read ; out of 290 at Cologne, 130 could not read ; and at the workhouse of Brauweiler, only 80 out of 516 could read. A society was immediately formed, after the pattern of that in England, to provide chaplains and schoolmasters, introduce classification, and procure work for discharged convicts of good char- acter. There was much opposition, but the Govern- ment sanctioned the plan; and in 1828 the first chap- lain was appointed, and to the prison at Diisseldorf. Fliedner was now thoroughly roused, and the aim of his life was daily more clear. In 1827, he had made a journey through Holland, Brabant, and Fries- land, to study the bearings of the Church upon the prisons, the poor, and education; in 1832, he made a tour through England and Scotland with the same object, and with his merits so far recognised that the iNlinistry of Education paid part of his expenses. His range of view was gradually enlarging, and assuming at the same time definiteness and precision, and the conception was always in his mind by which his later life has been signalised. During the second visit to London he met Mrs 'Fry, and went mth her to New- gate ; and in Scotland, where he wrote, " the Lord greatly quickens me," he made the acquaintance of Theodore Fliedner, 203 Dr Chalmers, at that tmie Moderator of the General Assembly, and to whom he was chiefly attracted by his work in St John's. The end of his travel was, that he proposed a Refuge for Discharged Female Convicts. People shrank from it, and said it was too troublesome : they ridiculed the notion of prisoners remaining where they would be under no compulsion, and prophesied that they would not stay a month. This did not hin- der but that, \vith the assistance of his wife, w^ho had formerly, from love of the work, taught some years in the Reformatoiy of Diisselthal, he declared such a Refuge open at Kaiserswerth. A woman came in the autumn of 1833, and, for want of better accommoda- tion, was lodged in the garden-house of the manse. Others followed, and in a short time a house was taken specially for the purpose. Fliedner's next thought was for the children. In a manufacturing town they are peculiarly to be pitied ; for the father is all day at the mill, and the mother, perhaps, too busy to watch them, the streets are un- wholesome playgrounds, and bad companions are at the door. But the younger children are even more helpless ; shut up alone in the house, or carried about as a burden, or left hurriedly with a neighbour, ne- glected, and sickly, and fretful. He had met Wilderspin in London, and seen his infant-school in Spitalfields ; so, having helped to found one at Diisseldorf, he con- verted the now empty garden-house into another at home. Nor could he rest here. These were only the 204 Praying and Working. first steps to a larger project, certain feelers timidly thrown out ; and, as each step was blessed, his confi- dence grew, and his thoughts took shape in a careful, comprehensive, well-matured plan. Only, let it be remembered that neither now nor later was it confi- dence in himself, but in God alone, to whom he was joined in a living faith, and to whom he looked, in great humility and distrust of his own gifts. The sick poor, he says, had lain long upon his heart. There were r.any towns without an hospital, and there were hospitals without nursing. He saw one in England, gleaming -with marble, but there was miserable tending of the body. Physicians com- plained of the nurses by day, the nurses complained that the men were drunk by night. As for any spiritual tending, it did not exist even by intention. Hospitals once bore in Holland the name of God's Houses, but where, he wrote, would that name be well- bestowed now % He brooded over these thoughts ; a high ideal of an hospital lay before him, where the sick should be tended by Christian love, where there should be ministry of faithful, self-sacrificing service night and day ; where .Christian teaching should be given, and Christian prayer be made, and the Word_ of God be the comfort of the dying, and where the sores of the body might be made the way for the heal- ing of the soul. It would need Christian women of a rare devotion ; it would be a large and burdensome undertaking. For he saw that besides an hospital it Theodore Fliedner. 205 should be a school for other hospitals ; that Christian vromen needed certain training, and could give but poor, irregular, uneconomical help without it ; and that such women were required, if for a village like Kaiserswerth, much more for Germany, and if for tending the sick, then for other work as necessaiy, to vrhich by their position and gifts they seemed already called. Yet Kaiserswerth was not the place for all tliis, and he was not the man. So he tried his breth- ren in Diisseldorf, Elberfeld, Barmen, and elsewhere, but they refused. And feeling it all laid over upon him, he began. There was a house for sale, and as it happened, the house of the head of that failed firm already mentioned. It was the chief house of the place, had twenty lofty, spacious rooms, a large yard with offices, and a walled garden of half-an-acre. The good people looked on in amazement; village gossip had it that a new manufacturer was coming. When it was known it was for an hospital, the to-vMi became excited ; some persons in the house threatened law ; the Romanists were stirred up to protest against It j a physician who had been passed over went from door to door with the story of " a plague-house in the very midst of the town ; they would all catch the in- fection j " a deputation of town-councillors waited on the sohtary pastor, to represent public feeling; the appointed physician was in dismay. While this battle was raging round his cherished project, he went to a mission festival at Gladbach, and, 2o6 Praying and Working. sitting with some Christian guests after the speeches were over, he told pubHcly, for the first time, that he intended opening a training school for sick-nurses. His proposal was met with applause, and on his return he was laden with the offerings of the company towards his help. An excellent and pious and othenvise suit- able woman was prepared to come, but not for months. He was impatient of the delay. Then a lady from Diisseldorf offered to take interim charge, and his children's maid offered to help ; so they moved into the lower story of their house, and, on the 13th October 1836, the Deaconess Institution was opened without Deaconesses.* Their hospital furniture was a table, som.e chairs with unsound legs, some damaged knives and forks, and a few old-fashioned, worm-eaten bedsteads. It was beginning at the farthest end from the gleaming marble. Dr Fliedner does not care about beginnings being small, provided there be only the * This word is simply borrowed from the German. It is not meant to affirm that it rests on those scriptural grounds which Dr Fliedner claims for it. It is a mere translation, for con- venience, of the name by which these Christian women are de- signated. Whether such an office has any warrant in the New Testament, how far it might be practicable to sustain it in the present condition of the Church, are c^uestions of veiy deep in- terest. English readers may consult with much profit two re- cent articles in the QiiarL-rly Review, on "The Missing Link and the London Poor," and "Deaconesses," where these ques- tions are fairly and largely discussed ; and whatever may be thought of the writer's conclusions, he has at least on Bib.UcaJ grounds an eminent claim to be heard. Theodore Fliedner. 207 beginning of a right thing. He felt that watchfulness, tenderness, and sympathy, were more to the patient than corridors and lofty ceilings, and that, if corridors and ceilings were necessary, they too would come in good time. Now they only waited for a tenant, and at length one morning a servant-maid, a Roman CathoHc, asked to be taken an. Immediately the battle was renewed, and-how it was fought Dr Fliedner may relate himself: — "She was scarcely in the house when one of the tenants, a half-pay officer, burst in upon me as I was putting on my gown to go into the church to preach, and demanded that the sick should be immediately turned out ; if not, he would summon me. I begged him to be quiet; whereupon he stormed up, went over to the burgomaster, who was chatting with some friends at the apothecary's, and demanded from him the immediate explusion of the poor girl. He assured him he had no authority. Then he called the burgo- master a stupid dolt ; and he, being likewise an officer, grew hot, and requested an explanation." The quarrel was made up with some trouble ; the tenants vacated the premises ; and the battle was won. Yet, in the neighbouring towns, they laughed at Fliedner s folly j the Roman Catholics declared that, as these ladies had no vow of chastity, nor other nuns' rules, the whole thing would fall to pieces ; and even the burgo- master would not be at the trouble of enrolling the names of those who entered, for " he knew that they would straightway scatter." Mockery from the largest 2o8 Praying and Working. party, hostility from his neighbours, astonishment only, and an occasional bravo from his fellow-ministers ; these were the aids with which he commenced an ex- periment looked on suspiciously by many good people, full of hazard, costly — and he had no means. And these are the circumstances which try men what manner of spirit they are of; which, if they are brave and true to God, strengthen them for a perpetual victor)^, bring out the depth of their faith, shew them calm, clear-sighted, self-possessed, and reveal the texture of that life which is Christ who liveth in us. Of that time Fliedner only says : — " It was the Lord's good pleasure in this also, to choose the foolish things of this world, and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, that no flesh should glory in His presence, save in God alone." '"' The work was thus fairly set on foot, and during the first year there were forty sick, and seven Deaconesses. Each succeeding report speaks of advance, and not only within but without. Stations were opened in many towns, and requests for others were constantly pouring in. An hospital, or an orphanage, or a parish society, or a clerg}aiian, sent for a person who had been trained at Kaiserswerth. Similar institutions began to rise in other places, — in Holland, Switzerland, and France, — and as they rose, they sent their workers * Gertrude Reichardt, the first assistant in this work, is now spending the evening of her life m the Feier- Abend- Haus — the motherly counsellor of all. Theodore Fliedner. 209 to be taught by Dr Fliedner. Deaconesses were sent from Strasburg and Zurich j and even a Sister of Mercy, who had been led out of the Romish Church and to the truth by meeting a Bible, was taught the system which gloried in the Word of God alone. A wide field was opened in Berlin. In the Charite hos- pital alone, there was room for 80 nurses. In 1847, the first attendants were suppHed to the hospital Bethaiiien, for which Fliedner had sketched an organi- sation at the King's expressed desire.* The first re- port contemplated an activity in Rhenish Prussia and AVestphalia ; but now it was necessary to take a range that included the globe. Fliedner travelled with four deaconesses to America in 1849 ; in 1851, he travelled with others to Jerusalem. Bishop Gobat had sought earnestly for Christian women to wait upon the sick ; they were found, and obtained the readiest welcome. The physician of the English hospital, Dr Macgowan, acted as their medical head, and they not only took the sick into their house, but visited them at home. We are told of little courtesies of the Pasha, donations left for the children by his own hand, and other proofs of his liberal goodwill. Nor are the Moham- medans slow to avail themselves of the Sisters' care ; as many as from 20 to 30 are tended by them in one year. In 1852, an hospital for Germans, that had been formed six years before, at Constanti- * Bethanien is the most perfect hospital in Prussia, and is a normal school for deaconesses as well. 2IO Praying and Working. nople, was handed over to Kaiserswerth, and has from 60 to 70 sick annually. The school opened at Smyrna a year later for elder girls, has been re- markably successful, and had, before its misfortunes, over 160 pupils while excluding many from want of room, besides that, acting as a mission station, it made a German pastor necessary and practicable in 1857. At Alexandria, the violent proselytism of the Sisters of Mercy and other Romish orders, compelled the foundation of a Protestant hospital, chiefly sup- ported by the English and Prussian Governments, and managed from Kaiserswerth. Besides the direct nursing indoors, from 70 to 80 Arabs come every day for free consultation, and mth whom there is op- portunity of entering into conversation on higher things. The Viceroy has signified his approbation of the system in the most emphatic manner; many harems have been thrown open to the nurses j and a glance at the nationalities represented in one year will give the best conception of the amount of good wrought.* The list of foreign stations may be con- cluded with Bucharest and Florence, the two most recent, but not the least important. While the institution was widening its limit of opera- * 93 Englishmen, 11 Prussians, 3 French, 4 Swedes, 2 Nor- wegians, I Dutchman, 3 Americans, i Pole, 2 Russians, i Spaniard, i South African, 2 Syrians, 2 Arabs, i Armenian, 1 Italian, 6 Greeks, 4 Hungarians, 2 Austrians, i Tyrolese, 4 Bavarians, 2 from Baden, 2 from Bremen, 2 Swiss, 6 Wallachians, \ from Hamburg, i from Darmstadt. Theodore Fliedner. 2 1 1 tions, it was also adding to its practical efficiency. An orphanage was opened partly for the daughters of poor clergymen, and chiefly as a nursery for future deaconesses. The family system of the Rough House was carried into it ; the children, of whom there are about thirty, being divided into two households, and knit together by birthdays and other ties familiar to those who know the Reformatory at Horn. It was by a noticeable coincidence that one of the first orphans received was Hedwig Francke, a de- scendant of the noble-minded man of faith who founded the great orphanage of Halle, which was in later days to be the training-school of Mr Miiller.* A druggist's shop, a general shop, (to save the Sisters the inconvenience of purchasing in the town,) a bath- house on the Rhine, an ice-cellar, and a bakery, were added ; and as the inmates came to be nearly as many as the population of the place, a special grave- yard was obtained. A large building was erected as a seminary for the training of governesses and nursery- * Mr Miilier's Orphanage at Asliley Down, by Bristol, at pre- sent accommodates 1 150 children, and an enlargement to 2000 is contemplated. Nothing can be better than the system of management, and probably no institution of the kind will so well repay a visit. The principle on which Mr Miiller has been able to build and provide for it is — that God, to whom the work is committed in faith, will provide for it through various and tm- known instrumentalities. Those who are most sceptical about the principle will be struck by the remarkable practical sagacity that characterises all the arrangements, and the quiet, happy, simple, Christian tone of the place. 2 1 2 Praying and JVorking. maids ; and the King having made a present of a barrack, it was converted into a lunatic asylum, one of the most pressing necessities of the colony, as, owing to the want of a special education for the in- sane, the deaconesses had not been allowed to enter on this dej^artment of nursing. To the original Refuge was added also a Magdalen ; and other addi- tions were, a Home for the aged, sickly, and worn-out deaconesses, of vrhich the King laid the foundation- stone ; and a country retreat, called Salem, where, in the midst of wooded and mountain scenery, the deaconesses might occasionally recmit their health, and the less severe cases of insanity find change of treatment. FHedner had before then resigned his pastorate, after holding it faithfully, and exercising it in the might of prayer for twenty-seven years. It is but fair to say that his occasional absences were ne- cessary to recruit his health, and the vast addition to his cure had never been suffered to interfere v\ath his first duties to his people. He was instead appointed pastor of the Institution, which received parochial rights. At present the colony (for such it must be called) consists of an Hospital for men, women, and children; a Lunatic Asylum for females; an Orphanage for girls ; a Refuge for discliarged female convicts ; a Magdalen Asylum ; a Normal Seminary for gover- nesses ; an Infant School ; a Chapel ; two shops ; a publishing ofiice ; a museum ; residence for the dea- conesses ; and a Home for the infirm. A baker, Theodoix Flied^ier. 213 two tailors, a shoemaker, a carpenter, and other trades- men belong to it. Besides, as the property of the Institution, there are — a Home for maid-servants in Berlin ; an Orphanage at Altdorf ; the Deaconess Home at Jerusalem; the Seminaiy at Smyrna; the Hospital at Alexandria; and the Seminary at Buch- arest. The number of these Christian women is about 320, of whom upwards, of 100 are at Kaiserswerth or at private service, and the rest scattered over 74 stations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Up- vrards of 800 teachers have been sent out to educate many thousand children. The number annually in hospital is over 600, and upwards of 50 families are supplied with sick nurses ; in the Asylum, there are 24 ; in the Orphanage, 30 ; in the Infant School, 50 ; in the Refuge, 20 ; in the Seminary, 50. The number dependent on the Institution for daily bread is be- tween seven and eight hundred. These are mere hard statistics, but they are the briefest and most ' tangible evidence of what has been done, and done, I must repeat it, in faith. " We live by grace ; and the gracious Lord of the heavenly treasury knows how to furnish us eveiy year with so many under-treasurers of ever}^ rank and age, that to the question, ' Have you ever wanteds we must joyfully answer, 'Lord, never ! ' '' The object at Kaiserswerth is, "to educate Chris- tian women for the service of Christian love as far as women mav serv'e, and that among all classes of the 214 Praying and Working. needy, — the sick, the poor, the children, the prisoners." The object determines the character of the House. I'he details are throughout those of a normal or training school, and the benevolent works under Dr Fhedner's immediate superintendence are limited by this prin- ciple. The hospital, a great unattractive German liouse in the broad street of the village, has about loo beds, and, though larger than the necessities of tlie place demand, is proportioned to the number of nurses to be taught. The Orphanage and Asylum, the Refuge and Infant School, are erected and carried on for the same end, and are not to be estimated by the number they shelter, but by the number they train. The nurses are of three classes, those for the House, those who go out to private famihes, and those em- ployed in parish work. They all pass through the same discipline, and have the same practical teaching in the same things, and live by the same rule. The greatest number are house-nurses, and their chief school is the hospital. For the men's depart- ment there are certain male-nurses, and the women merely direct ; for the rest, they do all themselves. The rooms are uncommonly cheerful, the nurses help- ful, and even the patients in the common wards good- tempered. For they are not only carefully and gently tended under two experienced physicians, but they are read to, instmcted, and kept busy when they are able tor it, so as to benefit both mind and body. The \ l:.-itor sees many of them knitting, sewing, combing Theodore Fliedner. 215 hair, working in straw and pasteboard, and looking so thoroughly contented, that the usual painful impres- sion of sick wards is forgotten. The children also are taught if they are old enough,''' and, till they can read, they learn some of that endless store of hymns with which Germany is endowed ; if they are very young, they play with the newest Nuremberg toys, and contrive, poor things, to make out a wonderful amount of happiness, notwithstanding bandaged faces and tied-up Hmbs. But a chief aim of the nurses is to teach their patients the Word of God. They are to be ministers to their souls as well as to their bodies. Not, however, as if they were to force this spiritual medicine with the mere help of authority upon their patients, or took unfair advantage of their helpless- ness. There is nothing of the mere official tract- distributing about them, or of that speaking of hard religious commonplaces to the sick, against which still harder words have been written, and perhaps not unjustly. But there is a careful patient watch, as over those whom God has brought into their house, and as they feel, given to their keeping ; a watch of love and sympathy, deHcate and unobtrusive, wise to note the deeper and more hidden feelings, skilful to minister to them with a friend's gentleness and good faith. They * " Children of fifteen and sixteen, who have never learned a lesson, sit there beside those of four and five ; the lame with the half-blind, the sickliest faces beside the ruddiest, a strange mingling of all kinds of patients, but all learning with a hearty ^oy.''''— Eighth Report. 2i6 Praying and Working, drop a quiet, loving Bible word as they smooth a pillow. They try to induce thought in those who can bear it : they are ready to commence earnest religious conversation, to read a chapter, to repeat a psalm. To this end they receive diligent religious instruction from Dr Fliedner, and his son-in-law, the Rev. Mr Disselhoff, also resident ; and in cases too difficult for them, the chaplain is always at hand. Formerly, moreover, the Romanist received the same religious care as the Pfotestant ; but that was in the old days, when good Procurator Wingerode helped to found the Bible Society. The Romish curate keeps strict watch against such irregularities now. As might be expected, such hospital-tending as this, is followed by the happiest results. " A consumptive patient came in with the same lightness and folly of spirit, in which she had wasted the years of her youth. She took it ill if the kindest word was said about her condition. The Lord had patience with her, and, contrar}^ to our expectation, spared her for some months. She learned to know herself as a great sinner, and sought grace with Jesus, who sent a blessed peace into her heart, and so earnest and de- vout a spirit, that she was a wonder of Almighty grace to eveiy one who had known her before." " A young man of nineteen was sent to us from a distance. He was in consumption, but would not hear a word about his soul's salvation. ' He would soon be well ; and there was plenty of time to be converted if that v/ere Theodore Flicdner. 2 1 7 necessaiy.' Soon after he was so much worse, that the physician could give him httle hope. . . . Two days later the chaplain was summoned, and found him, his face laid against the wall, in bitter conflict of soul, crying aloud for mercy, with most suitable and mighty words of Scripture, many of which he had learnt in childhood. ... It was not long till he entered into everlasting rest, praising and glorifying God for His unspeakable gift." "V\'hat she says is all lies," said a hot infidel one day to the others in his ward, as the nurse went out. " But what she says is out of God's Word," they repHed. " Oh ! that is all written by a pack of men, and it is the most stupid stuff." ... In a very few 'days he was so softened that he begged the nurse to come again and read to him. And many such instances, and some of them mbst touching, but too long for quotation, might be taken at random from the journals of Kaiserswerth. The ignorance of anything spiritual is often profound. " Do you pray f said a nurse to a girl of sixteen who had come in. "What is that?" she said, and stared. a Pray— I don't know what that is." A poor woman complained that she had gone to so many doctors, and all to no purpose. " Have you gone to the right, the good Physician ]" said the nurse. "Well, I have really been with very many, but whether any of them was the right one, I can't say." In conversation with another patient, a nurse asked what way (of life) she had followed before she came. "Why, I came 2 1 8 . Praying and Working. right through Charles Street into the Charite." Even where no impression seemed made, a squeeze of the hand, a tear in the eye at parting, told a silent and unmistakable story. When the pastor was on his travels, it would quite commonly happen that some one would run up with a beaming face : " Don't you remember me, sir? I was in the hospital, and brought away a blessing for soul and body." And this suggests the admirable practice of the hospital, which is, to offer a New Testament to every one on leaving, — ^not as a gift, but for purchase. It is often taken, though often refused, and the sales of Bibles and Testaments average over 200 in the year. Another department of the House-nurses is the Refuge and Magdalen. In the tenth report, it could be stated that out of seventy-two who had left, more than half had turned out well, and eleven had been married. The proportions have not much altered since, though sometimes unexpected declensions oc- cur. "We rejoice over them with trembling; and that is well ; lest we should be exalted, and think we made them better by our own power and might." They are divided into three classes, one including those who have gone off, and then returned. Some of them are desperate ; and it is the duty of the nurse to remain with each class constantly.* The Asylum is * One ill-featured and sullen -looking woman whom I saw, was kept apart, and a nurse appointed to her alone, as she had more than once attempted to commit suicide. Theodore Fliedrier. 219 also managed by them, and from its peculiar difficulties occupies several. Christian companionship and care is apparently the cause of a large percentage of cures. Nor must it be overlooked, that if the influence of vv'omen is found so salutary in our as3^1ums at home, v.here nothing more is looked for than quiet feminine tact, it will be proportionately greater when it implies also the steadfast, gentle service of Christian love and contact with a spiritual mind. If it is the law of insanity that it submits to a high and regulated will, then the Christian will is the highest, the steadiest, and the calmest. If the jarrings and harshnesses of a mind diseased are to be soothed, there is nothing so soothing as the trust and peace of a Christian heart. And if it be true that insanity opens and reveals the spiritual chasms of the soul, those void and gloomy depths which are in every man till Christ has filled them, then what is there so proper to the insane as the nearness of a spiritual life, with its inner sympa- thies and power of apprehending spiritual trouble 1 Yet chaplains are not tolerated in some of our asy- lums, and the notion of a Christian nurse would encounter as much ridicule as hailed Macaulay's ■wdtless joke about "essentially Christian cookery." There may be ill-assorted chaplains, and there are Christian women without the gifts of a nurse. But surely we shall soon feel ashamed to use that old argument against the truth of a principle which rests solely on the faultiness of its exposition. Besides 2 20 Praying and Working. these principal departments, there are many lesser — kitchen, laundry, garden, and so on, in all seventeen - — over each of which a nurse presides, and is supreme in her own domain, and by learning in each of which a practical experience is gained which may be turned to fruitful account in almost any circumstances. The private nurses go to private famiHes, often to a great distance, often to people of distinction, and their private visits have not seldom resulted in much public good. The parochial nurses are perhaps the most important, if their freer and wider relation to the com- munity is considered, and the almost unlimited room for them. They are to conduct all the womanly activities of the jDarish, to represent mother-love to itj to care for its forsaken and helpless ones; to '' tend the poor, and the sick, and the children, and the fallen ; to exercise their mother's office as humble servants of the Lord, and servants of all ; to organise helpers from among the willing wives or daughters," — r-to be, in fact, the general, unobtrusive bond of parochial and congregational life. The parishes in many parts of Germany had sunk very low during the last forty years. It was not so much that any definite rationalism had entered into them, as that the prevaiHng spirit of the time bred a carelessness in the clergy, which kept them from any effort for the welfare of their people. Rationalism, with all its boasted service to humanity, and its claim to be the purest interpretation of the life of Christ, neither originates Theodore Fliedner. 221 nor sustains Christian activities. And when, after long sleep, the Church awoke, these activities had died out one by one, and left only a very visible spiritual death. During the same period the material prosperity of the country had been advancing, and had come to occupy the place of religious culture and the spiritual life. And the struggle is now between a pious and earnest ministry and the gross carelessness and materialism of the people. One example, though it is extreme, will suffice. " A man, in consumption, died during Lent. He had been formerly a drunken brawler, and during his sickness he charged his com- panions in sin that if he died in Lent they were to put a mask upon his corpse, give it a flask of brandy, and sing Freiit eucJi des Lebens round the grave. This was literally attempted, but when the people came to tlie churchyard they were so drunk that they could not carry out the ceremony.'''"' While such things were possible in the parish, there was no effective church- organisation. Private effort was occasionally made, but neither boldly nor with such freedom as we are accus- tomed to at home, and the parochial deaconess be- came invaluable. She vv^as not to supersede any other worker, or to put a stop to the Dorcas Society, or Visiting Society, or any agency in operation. She was not to intrude upon any work that could be more naturally and effectively done by men. But she was to bind the Societies together in a common acti- * Arincu-imd-Kranken-Framd, i860, p. 73. 222 Praying mid Working. vity, to stimulate individual effort, and at the same time arrange that it should not be conflicting but united, and to take the lead in such work as befits a woman among women: "A deacon, for example," says Dr Fliedner, "can never teach the housewife how to keep her house clean and orderly ; how to Vv'ash the wild and dirty children that are scampering round the fl^oor ; to mend clothes or darn stockings, or earn an honest penny by knitting, or sewing, or spinning, or such other housewifely work." And so the deaconess visits the sick poor in their rooms, cooks for them, makes their bed, gives them medicine, and washes the children if need be. She holds what answers to a ]^.Icthers' Meeting where the women and elder girls of the honest poor meet to sew at their clothing, and hear the Word of God, and sing a hymn. She sees to the children that they attend the school, and, by her example, she encourages others to be as lielpful as herself Nor, in fact, is there any definite limit to her exertions, for wherever a woman can be of use she may be present. This is regarded as the crowning work. But as it demands so much faith, wisdom, love, and energy, it is not given to all to attain to it, and the early reports express much thank- fulness that few such women were sought for, because few such could then be given. The Seminary introduces us to another department of work, and a new class of deaconesses. Infant schools had either proved a failure, or did not exist Theodore Flied^ier. 223 in Prussia, when Fliedner began, and it quickly struck him that teachers might be trained for this especial calling. A demand soon rose for a higher class of teachers. The Normal Schools of Prussia had not enlarged in proportion to the increase of population ; and vdiile, in some instances, the new population was double the old, the relative number of teachers re- mained the same. Hence schools of from 100 to 130 children were often placed under charge of a young , girl of sixteen or seventeen, and there were places w^here it was worse. A great mass of ignorance was silently growing up. At Kaiserswerth it came to light on every side. Prison statistics, workhouse statistics, and hospital statistics combined in shewing that the famous Prussian educational system was breaking down, that it wanted energy, development, life. For the Prussian state had been becoming more and more a purely civil and not religious state. The Church had lapsed into indifferentism, and the educational machiner}^, Vv-hich the Christian vitality of the state had set in motion, was allowed to nist. It is at least a pregnant lesson. It is the Christian element in a country v/hich is the essentially educational element. Unchristian men seize hold of a system which the Christian men have, though perhaps not directly, called into existence. And so long as Christian hfe is active and wakeful in the countr}', they may ad- minister the system with success j it may be de chris- tianised, and yet as a secular education, it may be 2 24 Prayiiig and Workiiig. vigorous and sufficient. But if the country is decliris- tianised, and that in the long run must be the end of a purely secular system, then the education, even as secular, will fail ; it will be carelessly controlled ; it will not overtake its field ; ignorance will rise up be- side it unrebuked ; its Boards will fall asleep. It will be found that it is the Christian life of a king- dom alone which insures a thorough, progressive, and .watchful secular education. However, this state of matters in the • Prussian schools appealed for a swift remedy. Besides supply- ing teachers, Kaisers'.verth might supply Christian teachers ; there is a womanly power of education that might reach far beyond infant schools, on to the more advanced girls, and into the industrial schools. And henceforth Kaiserswerth became a normal seminary for teachers of this class, as well as private governesses. The course of training lasts two years, and includes something of garden work and housekeeping. The Government gives every aid, and those who pass the board are soon appointed to a situation. The number sent out is now very large, over 900, including gover- nesses, and the number of children who thus receive a directly Christian, and not outwardly but vitally Chris- tian education is proportionably great. The teachers maintain a connexion with the institution ; they carry out its principles. They make school pleasant ; one writes that the children asked an hour additional, and when she complied, as an experiment, it did not fail. Theodore Fliedner. 225 They visit the children at home; gain an influence over their parents ; promote the sanctification of the Lord's day ; battle against the drunkenness of Eastern Prussia ; and establish knitting unions, Sunday schools, children's mission societies, and the like. Some of them choose to become deaconesses, and learn the nursing as well as the teaching, submitting of course to the common rules of the other deaconesses. But the greater part have no nearer connexion than that of occasional correspondence, and such other bonds as may serve to prevent their early associations and influences from being weakened. Nor is the opera- tion of this system confined to Germany. The Semi- nary at Bucharest has already sixty pupils; that at Florence has increased from five to fifty. An orphan- age and school have been opened at Beirut, whither Mr Disselhoff betook himself with some Deaconesses two years ago."" In Smyrna, too, the latest accounts represent the scholars as two hundred ; in Jerusalem there are forty. These are large and tangible results, and shew that in Germany Christian women may be organised and educated for Christian work, with vast advantage to * The number of oi-phans there is now appalling, and the Roman Catholics are not slow to take advantage of the situa- tion. They have purchased ground for 300,000 francs, and purpose expending 600,000 more upon the building. However, nearly one hundred children have been already received into the Protestant Orphanage, and the number is being swelled every day. P 226 Praying and Working. society at large. They by no means express the total result of Kaiserswerth. It attracts visitors from every part of the world. Names that are brilliant and notable in the world turn up at every page of its visitors' book. Besides, it opens its training to those who seek to be skilled labourers for the sick and poor, but do not wish to join its band. It has its guests. Miss Nightingale may be mentioned as one best known in this country, and remembered with affectionate honour there ; there are others well known abroad, and not a few ladies of high rank who seek some work in their own neigh- bourhoods, and not merely to control it as lady- patronesses, but to do it in a practical and helpful way. And the interest which is thus widely spread has long since borne fruit, and will doubtless continue to bear ever more from year to year. Theodore Fliedner. 227- II. DEACONS AND DEACONESSES. XTT'ITH the theological or ecclesiastical aspect of these names this chapter has nothing to do. It is true that they occur in Scripture, that they char- acterise certain persons, that the one perhaps as much as the other implies a definite office, that they were familiar in the early Church. But one of them has been so long disused that its very novelty has made it startling and suspected ; the other receives such various interpretation of ecclesiastical standing and function that it would require separate and lengthened treatment ; and both are involved in intri- cate questions of interpretation. They are used here simply as the names given to certain Christian workers of our present time ; names whose fitness is recognised in Germany, where their work had its origin, and where it is considered as a work separately recognised in the New Testament. That opinion is sustained by many weighty arguments, appai^ently by the practice of the first centuries, and by various eftorts of the Church to realise it. It may be right ; by adopting these names I do not mean to say that it is. They 2 28 Praying and Working. are merely transferred from the German, (as the Gel • mans transferred them from the Greek,) because in Germany they characterise with sufficient distinctness two spheres of Christian activity, one for men and the other for women ; and because it is important that the labours of these men and women should not be con- founded with any similar labours among ourselves. Scripture-readers, city missionaries, ragged-school teachers might answer to the one, Bible-women to the other ; but the resemblance would be partial and deceptive. These Deacons and Deaconesses under- take much more various labours ; and they undertake them as Deacons and Deaconesses, as persons asso- ciated and set apart for the whole lay-work of the Home Mission. Their rapid growth, and the still more rapid demand for them, are proof of their value and fitness elsewhere; and if their organisation is suffi- ciently elastic to give them as much value and fitness here, it will be admitted that they are w^orth inquiry. The origin of the Brothers of the Rough House has been narrated already; how they sprung from the necessities of the House itself It was about the same time that applications were made from various quarters for men to be trained under Wichern's care. A Bre- men society for sendmg jDreachers to the colonies, Hanoverian gentlemen who wished Christian teachers and superintendents of benevolent institutions, so- cieties in Middle Germany and Switzerland, made the same request. The Holstein gentlemen sent in money, Theodore Fliedner 229 others men, for this object ; and the King of Prussia, at the instigation of Baron Bunsen, founded a bur- sary for the training of turnkeys. As the Brothers went out to their work and did it faithfully and wisel}^, its necessity became more evident, and applications greatly multiphed. Another necessity appeared. So- cieties and single persons found their work maiTed by inefficient agents ; they had no means of procuring better; and, after fruitless efforts, they turned to the Rough House. And meanwhile the Fliegende Bldttef were opening the eyes of Christian men to the crisis of the time. In the last sixteen years application has been made for 787 Brothers, and from such quarters, and for such work, as to bear the highest testimony both to the men and efficiency of their organisation.* The demand has, in fact, far outstripped the supply \ * '252 Avere asked for reformatories and like institutions. 116 for poor-houses, &c. 40 for orphanages. 170 for prisons. 36 for hospitals. 93 for schools. 80 for work among emigrants, wandering artisans, Magda- len asylums, &c. Of these applications, 471 came from Prassia ; 26 from Saxony; 28 from Hanover; 35 from Mecklenburg; 20 from Holstein ; 142 from other Gemian States ; and from Holland, France, England, Switzerland, Italy, Russia, Poland, the Principalities, Turkey, North and South America, and Polynesia, 65. Those by whom they were made are classified thus : — Ministries of state, 3; committees of societies, 273; prisons, 26; city magis- trates and public institutions, 43 ; countiy congregations, 19 ; school-boards, 44 ; 1 1 1 smgle persons, &c. 230 Praying and Working, for no more than a third of the applications have been granted." The more the men have been tested the more they are sought j and the mode of their support is itself a test. They are supported by the voluntary effort of those who wish their help. The Rough House is no more to them than a place of training ; it pays no salaries to those who leave. And the spread of such an agency is the surest evidence of its efficiency; for it can only extend by the help of those who are thoroughly persuaded of its necessity, and that it has met that necessity in a practical and real way. The Rough House is merely the school of the Inner Mission, established in the faith that it is wanted. It professes to furnish that education which is indispens- able to a rightful discharge of missionary work. With the largest staff of Christian lay-agents, and with the largest and most difficult work, we are content to take our agents as they come, content with mere aptitude and zeal, or often \vith zeal alone. With the highest reputation for practical power and skill of economy, we are content to use our workers and their gifts in the most wasteful and irregular way. ^or the calling of a Scripture-reader or city mission- ary is as faithful and honourable, and in its place as important, and needs to be as efficiently discharged, * It is true that during the same period — the last sixteen years— 844 persons applied for admission to the Brotherhood; but 524 of these were rejected as not possessing the necessary qualifications, and 70 were afterwards rejected during the course of the training, leaving only 250. Theodore Fliedner. 231 as any higher calling in the Church ; and thus, and because it requires such peculiar duties, and therefore peculiar tact and knowledge, it imposes the necessity of some special education. To a great extent that education has been trusted by us to the common sense of our agents ; to the experience that they gain, and the rough emphatic way of gaining it, through a series of blunders ; and the excellence of our home- missionary agencies proves that such confidence is not misplaced. But it is a clumsy and unsatisfactory expe- dient. Though self-education may be very thorough as far as it goes, and may make a man more self-reliant, and develop the fertility of his resources, it would be a singular conclusion that all men should be self- educated. Yet it is the conclusion into which we have drifted in this matter; and it involves a woful loss of energy and time, as well as a continual lament over the difficulty of procuring suitable men. If we had training schools, (for w^hich such great societies as the London City Mission afford already a suitable basis,) the difficulty would be got over. To command confidence, they would require to be thorough and not theoretical, and to be free of our party-divisions and shibboleths. And for special parochial or congre- gational work — no doubt the most important of all — each Church might have its own. But what is the unity of this body of Brothers % How are its members chosen ? Who are they % What connexion do they maintain in after life with the 232 P^^aying and Working. Rough House? Who appoints their duties? What bond Hnks them together % How are they able to act as one brotherhood ? Questions most pertinent, and not to be shrunk from ; for we^ in this country, have a righteous abhorrence of monasticism and reHgious orders, and our independence and tendency towards isolation of life strengthen our dislike. We will not have them at any price. We know they carry within them the seeds of their own corruption ; that they trample on the sanctity of natural relationships by their constitution, and therefore cannot purify those relationships in the world ; that they pretend to organise society by overturning its basis ; that they are wasteful of men's energies, and hurtful to their souls. But no one can have watched the social movements of the last few years, and the clumsy imitations of religious orders which have been tried by well-meaning people, without observing that our perplexity is to have the organisation and unity of a definite body, without the formahties and vows and cloister-spirit of an order ; and, therefore, it is natural that we should turn curiously to the Rough House, or Kaiserswerth, or elsewhere, to see how this per- plexity has been felt there, and whether it has been overcome. In a paper issued by the Brothers themselves, they tell simply and clearly who they are, and why they come. It is young men under thirty who speak : — "We, the Brothers, here assembled, come from all Theodore Fliedner. 233 parts of our beloved fatherland. Our homes are in Prussia from the Memel to the Rhine, in Baden, Bavaria, Hesse, Wiirtemberg, Thuringia, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Holstein, Schleswig. There is not one of us who was not in a position to earn his daily bread. Want has brought none of us here. When, in distant lands, we heard of the work v/hich the Lord had begun and is carrying on in this house, we prayed that we might be sharers of the blessing and work among the children. Our house-father called us here to be helpers in the work, and none of us has followed this call without the blessing of his parents. We bring neither money nor property ; and if there were some of us both able and anxious to give of their substance, they were prevented by a riper wisdom than ours. What we have we freely give, namely, ourselves, as a thank-offering to God for the service of the com- munity. We are here with our house-father and the entire Rough House in one faith in Jesus Christ our one Lord and Saviour. We are nothing but unprofit- able servants ; Christ is our righteousness ; His Word alone is a lamp for our feet. In this faith and spirit we are here one, and have one love towards each other as brothers in faith^ and in the work to which we are called." To this it may be added, that they must come perfectly free of engagements that would interfere with their new calling ; that they must be unmarried ; that they must pay their travelling expenses and provide themselves with clothes for the first year. They receive 234 Praying and Working, no salary for their work, but have free maintenance. They are bound by no vow, and can give up their calhng at pleasure. On the other hand, if they are unsuitable, they can also be dismissed. Their average term of service in the House is three years. In one respect only their freedom of action is curtailed. They do not know, nor can they fix, their field of labour. That is arranged by the committee through DrWichern j 'and when their probation is ended, they may be sent to a country school or a city prison, to a fever district or to be the parent of a new reformatory. Were they to refuse, they have the liberty of resigning connexion with the Brotherhood. To continue, or at all rightly to enter on its membership, they must be prepared to go. Nor is there anything harsh in this, since the committee, with Wichern's experience and intimate personal knowledge of the men, and habit of studying their capabilities from day to day, are less likely to make a mistake in their designation than the men themselves : and should it turn out unsuitable, a fresh appointment can always be made to some more fitting work. While, on the other hand, if the path chosen were arbitrarily left to the Brothers, there would be a way opened for all confusion by the blunders of some, the selfishness and fastidiousness of others, the growth of mutual jealousies, and the perpetual difficulty of disposing the supply in some fitting proportion to the demand. The House undertakes no more than a moral obligation to the Brothers when their training is Theodore Fliedner. 235 over and their work is set. That obligation is mutual. The House is their home, towards which they turn for counsel and sympathy and love; to which they are bound by the strongest ties. And the strongest and highest bond of their union is their common work for Christ. Besides that, they are ahvays en- couraged to feel that they are members of a definite body, with a common interest. It protects them from the painfulness and despair of isolation. The Flie- ^ende Blatter serve as a link between those at work in and out of the House. Circular letters are regu- larly VvTitten by Wichem. Latterly those in the mis- sion-field have made an effort to establish convicts among themselves, though with the serious disadvan- tage of being many miles apart. They use also the same Bible verses as at Horn, the same hymns, and in other such sUght ways maintain a common life. They have never yet been able to hold periodical general meetings, though at the Jubilee in 1858 as many as 160 came together ; and the project is before them, and no doubt they will realise it. In all this there is nothing of a religious order; nothing of hierarchical rule ; nothing of " bureaucratic dead level." The indi- vidual element of Christian life is not only allowed for, but insisted on. Probably it will be found that more freedom would only end in positive weakness and dis- organisation ; it is certain that no one has a greater liorror than Dr Wichem of outward rules however excellent, of any undue binding of the Christian con- 236 Praying and Working. science. "I remember," he sa3'S, "how a Roman Cathohc, a man of great labours, and a noble spirit, pomted out to me once the E.omish way as the only means by which we could reach our aim. Agreement on this point was impossible. The difference does not even lie in any one dogma, but in the totally different point of view, the way in which we regard the personal life and the life of the people in their relations to the gospel." Anything more opposed to monastic life and rule than these Brothers could not be conceived. As organisation, theirs does not affect to be perfect; nor even to have solved the problem of reconciling Chris- tian liberty with unity of organic action. But there is nothing to render it impracticable or unwise in any evangelical community. The principles on which it rests are capable of application to all. It does not oppose itself to the Church, as independent of it ; it does not claim the right of introducing and removing its agents when and where it pleases, irrespective ot the Church of the place. It works in the strictest co-operation with the existing civil and ecclesiastical machinery. And possibly it may be found that even as organised it is adapted to other countries and Churches and modes of thought than the German. The same questions that are started as to the Dea- cons are started, and perhaps more timidly and anxi- ously, about the Deaconesses, — On what principle is their Society constructed 1 Is there no danger in it 1 These Deaconesses are a free Christian Society, in- dependent of both Church and State. Their theology Theodore Fliediier. 237 may have been partly gathered already. It is em- bodied in a few rough metrical Unes, which may be thus as roughly rendered : — " The only ground whereon we stand Is Christ, and His most precious blood ; The only aim of all our band Is Christ, our highest, only good ; The only rule we understand Is His own living, mighty Word." Through the days when simple trust in Jesus Christ was scorned, when the atonement was laughed at as the blood-theology, Fliedner held to the atonement of Jesus. Some critics passed a glowing eulogium on the work and its aim, but they took exception to the '' blood-theolog}'/' " We comfort ourselves," he writes, " with this : that the spirit of the blood-theology is the spirit of the aposdes, and of all Christian men of faith in all ages ; and the spirit of a Luther, a Spener, a Francke, who have served God in labours of love." Another critic found everything to praise but that they prayed : " The institution is admirable ; only, what a pity they pray so much!" The last objection turns us, naturally, to their rules. Are they addicted to laborious hours and minute forms of prayer, such as have brought suspicion and contempt on some so- called "sisterhoods" in England] They have none. The liturgical element is feeble in their society; and the sisters are not only allowed but encouraged to free prayer. Prayer is their rule, and it is their life- rule. But it is not to be associated with anything mechanical. Anything like form for mere form's sal^e^ 238 Praying and Working. or even for mere order's sake, is discouraged; and Avhatever form there is, is made to spring freely and naturally out of their common life. Their liturgical prayers are very beautiful and appropriate, and are prepared chiefly for their more pubhc and solemn services. But alone, and by the bedside of their patients, and with their children, and even sometimes together, their prayer is the simple utterance of the thoughts that are prompted by the time. Dr Fliedner walks by faith — a daily, constant faith in the personal leading of the Hving God, which does not fetter itself by rule, but rather tends to independence of rule. And the life of faith may also be said to be the life of the institution. Organisation is introduced as far as it seems necessary to the proper conduct of a manifold and widely-scattered work. The inner organisation especially avoids the ascetic character of the cloister in the taking of a vow; it shrinks, as if instinctively, from any arbitrary outward shaping of the religious Hfe. Those who join must prove their willingness and aptitude, and their Christian prin- ciples. The probation may last six months, or nine, or a year ; and it is such a testing time that fully half retire. If the result is satisfactory, and they are re- ceived, it is understood they will continue for five years ; but at any period during that time they may withdraw on giving six months' notice. They have a veiy free constitution, and, while strict order is main- tained in each department, as essential to proper nurs- ing, they have a voice in the election of their matrons, Theodore Fliedner. 239 and the reception of a new Deaconess. They take their meals together, have family worship twice a day, hold a fortnightly conference, and a monthly meeting. Their birthdays are kept, and the days of their confirma- tion to the diaconate, as in every German household. They use a common psalm-book, tabulated for daily reading, a Bible similarly and excellently arranged, a common hymn-book, and have one of Scriver's parables read at dinner. These are sufficient bonds to link the absent with those in the House, and to bring before then- r^c re^^-'^v of their being both a separated and united body. The teachers keep a monthly meeting with any Christian friends they may have near their school, and at the annual meetings they hold an annual conference. The Deaconesses wear a common dress. It is simple and appropriate — a plain blue dress, with white collar and sno^\y cap. Some time since, the teachers asked permission to wear the same ; they said it would be simple and economical, and make them easily recognisable. Mrs Fliedner is the matron : she has a deputy-matron : and those who are on trial have a matron for themselves. These are their simple rules ; and whatever objec- tion may be made to their constitution, it can scarcely, be on the score of their keeping too many. If they are to be organised at all, it must be on some definite basis ; if their organisation is to be orderly, it must have some form of order. There is a rigour of proba- tion and sifting of qualifications that might seem to cramp the free offer of Christian service; but the 240 Praying and Working, position of Deaconess demands certain indispensable faculties which it would be folly to overlook. Wichern declares from his experience that anybody is thought fit for a Deacon ; above all, a man broken down by reverses or drunkenness, and who would be rejected for any other service. There is some notion that the outcast can best help the outcast, that it is a kind of work requiring only spent energy, that if a man has failed in everything else he must be qualified for this. And Wichern and Fliedner are compelled to reject by far the greater number of applicants, and so arrange that those whose unfitness is undetected or doubtful at first will make it plain during the probation. There must be government of some kindj and a head sister, a chaplain, and a committee of men and women are about the simplest that could be hit upon. There must be some definite purpose of service ; it is not a way of life to be either rashly assumed or laid aside ; but all tliat is asked is a voluntaiy engagement for a brief period, and reasonable notice before retiring. The uniformity of dress is not so singular ; and it is easy to see how its advantages outweigh its associa- tions. In all the Deaconess Institutions it has been preceded and followed by the same experience. It has been found necessary to distinguish the Deacon- esses, so as to be easily recognisable ; that a plain dress of simple colour and material is the best for attendance on the sick ; and that it is an effectual means of preventing a thousand little jealousies and Theodore Fliedner, 241 temptations to display. In Kaiserswerth an experi- ment was made of allowing latitude in the choice of colour, but led to such extravagance that if was speedily dropped. Other Deaconess Houses besides Kaiserswerth have been mentioned j and there are also other Deacon Houses besides Dr Wichem's. There are at least eight of the latter in Germany, where the training and objects are much the same ; they are character- ised by the same evangelical basis and teaching. There are none besides his with as thorough and ex- tensive organisation, and the same means of practical education. There is no other of nearly as great im- portance. Yet the number of Deacons must be over a thousand; and they are every year becoming a richer and more conscious gain to the Church. A conference of Deaconesses was held last year at Kaiserswerth, when twelve institutions were repre- sented, and these are not all. There could have been no better illustration of the evangelical freedom of these associations. Each had its o\vn. order and economy. Some ordained Deaconesses, others did not. Some elected a presiding sister for life, some for three years, some for an indefinite time. Some had blue dresses and some gray, and there were black and brown. There was no attempt at imposing uni- formity; it was felt that each could best develop itself. But on some points of great interest they were heartily agreed. They claimed connexion with the Church, Q 242 Praying and Working. and to work ^\ith its sanction and co-operation. They claimed sufficient independence to prevent their ope- rations being crippled, and. to keep them from sectar- ianism. It was felt that the Deaconess represents the practical unity of Christians, that she must accommo- date herself to the outward forms of the Church where she may labour, pro\dded it be built upon Christ. Committees composed entirely of ladies were disap- proved ; and the education was decided to be chiefly practical and bibhcal. Culture was not depreciated; rather the wish was expressed that women of culture would devote themselves to such work. But the work itself required such diligent training, and took up so much time, and depended so much on the spiritual life of the workers, that it was felt that life above all must.be strengthened; that if want of leisure necessi- tated a choice between spiritual and general culture, the former must be chosen. Anything like imitation of Romish error was strongly condemned, no matter how well meant and innocent in itself It was a point on which they could speak from experience. The Institution at S':rasbourg has incurred great odium by the Deaconesses wearing a httle cross, inscribed — To me to live is Christ, to die is gaifi. It did not matter that Pastor Haerter, who suggested it, is kno^vn as an uncompromising champion of Protest- antism, and it was at once laid aside. " This work is not to be endangered by useless symbols." Nor is any one more opposed to them than Dr Fliedner. Theodore Fliedner. 243 When the late King of Prussia consulted him about the cross as an emblem for Deaconesses, it was he who suggested that, independent of other abuses, it was inconsistent with the simplicity of these Christian women and would rouse their vanity ; it was he who drew out the reply, " I will have nothing to do with this cross-wearing." And to understand this w^atch- fulness and prudence, it must be borne in mind that symbolism is predominant in Germany, and the cross a common symbol in the Protestant Church. But these are minor questions compared with two which lie at the bottom of the Kaiserswerth Union — Whether it is desirable to have Christian women trained to perform acts of Christian serviced and whether it is desirable to unite these women in a society? In Germany, France, Switzerland, Holland, and Sweden, the answer has been given already by Reformed Protestants as heartily as by Lutherans. There are various kindred associations in England, more or less successful, but none of them conceived in the same free spirit, — none that has not missed the right idea of the German Deaconess. The ■ parish Deaconess will be found the most helpful in this country, and the least likely to excite prejudice. Nor does it matter if another name be chosen ; nor is even the ecclesiastical position a matter of primaiy import- ance. But it can scarcely be said that we have as yet any training schools for such service — any, at least, sufficiently comprehensive to deserve mention. Our 244 Praying and Working. own Bible-women are already a self-constituted train- ing-school in London. But beyond this movement, which is one of the healthiest signs of a revived Church, there is no other ventured in the same direction, and justly claiming the same popular sympathy and recog- nition. On the Continent, however, there are now at least twenty-three homes for the education and employ- ment of such women; connected with them there are at least 600 deaconesses. Rapidly as the organisa- tion has extended, the demand upon it has increased to a much greater extent. It is impossible to sup- ply hah the recognised need, and the unrecognised is yet greater. The need is one of which, in this country, we are well aware ; the need of organ- ised and educated womanly service. At the same time, it is one which is only whispered cautiously about, as if a step towards supplying it would plunge the adventurer either into a woman's rights conven- tion, or the hapless cloisters of a nunnery. It is a -discouraging subject, as those will feel who have timidly broached it for the first time to their friends. The bare notion of the employment of women as a class is met with either real or affected terror — cried down or laughed down. The wildest theories are suggested, as if the question was entirely beyond the pale of common sense. Comical exaggerations are drawn of the possible results ; weak failures of weak enthusiasts are brought for^vard as final ; and then it is triumphantly asked if things are not better as they Theodore Fliedner. 245 are. It is an innovation, and society brings all the weight of its traditionary maxims to bear against it ; the religious world shrink from it with suspicion ; and the great majority of people, not inquiring much about its bearings, and stumbled, perhaps, by some foolish word, hft up their hands in well-meant horror. It is at present, as IMrs Jameson has well said, " the battle of opinion, and not the difficulty of practice," that must be met; for the practical details are not much investigated, but inclusively condemned with the first sweeping condemnation pronounced upon woman's service in itself But this battle of opinion is only to be won by practical detail ; by being able to point to the practical, simple, beneficent working of the condemned visionary theory, to shew that it is only what we dreaded that is visionary ; by proving that there is no actual harm, but good. In this way the battle has been fought abroad, and suspicion and discouragement have been met by plain, incontestable results. And if Dr Fliedner's labours have done nothing more than enable us to see the reasonableness and possibility of Christian women being trained for Christian work, they would still have been worthy of enduring and grateful record ; for, to a great extent, we acknowledge those unpleasant facts with which he started. We are ready to abuse the present state of helplessness in which many excellent women find themselves by the poor and sick ; no one knows better than the skilled ladv-visitor the advantages of a 246 Praying and Working. regular training, or the awkwardness, to say no more, of our everyday mistakes ; every one knows persons anxious to work, but ignorant how to begin ; and probably every one knows work which is done clumsily and but half by men, because there is no woman to do it. In her famous letter to Lord John Russell, Mrs Jameson mentions an hospital for sick children somewhere in London, "in which the constituted authorities consist of twenty-six men, and ojie woman in a subservient position." It is plain that these tilings are not as they should be, that they need a remedy, that the sooner a remedy is found, the better it will be for society. The remedy may or may not be at hand, but so long as we disguise from ourselves that it is wanted, we have no right to pronounce one way or the other. It is at least confessed, that there are many v;omen marked by gifts and circumstances for the active service of others ; and the problem to be worked out, and which it may be hoped this generation will see solved, is how to use that service with the greatest advantage to society. If the benefit to society be genuine, it can be at no loss as to what is feminine and domestic in woman ; for what is pure and modest and feminine in woman lies at the very basis ' of our social purity and welfare. In this aspect, the effort at Kaiserswerth is full of interest. German women are more domestic, more confined to purely household duties, less independent in their move- ments, than Englishwomen, and if it is practicable to Theodore Flied^ier. 247 learn the duties of a sick-nurse in Germany without being thought unfeiiiinine, so far it may be as practi- cable here. There is much- depressing, even piteous want; there is material ready for use. There are many rushing into service with gifts that are invalu- able in themselves, but made valueless and perhaps ridiculous through mistakes and want of practical skill to turn them to account. " It is wonderfully and often pathetically absurd," says Mrs Jameson, " to see with what . a large stock of goodness and conscientious anxiety, and what a small stock of ex- perience, knowledge, and sympathy with their objects, some excellent women set off on their tasks as lady- visitors of the poor." For a woman is not born a Deaconess or even a nurse. " I believe, on the con- trar}^," Miss Nightingale has" recently declared, "that the very elements of nursing are all but unknown;" and if her definition of nursing be accepted, the state- ment is not so very odd ; and " it ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet — all at the least expense of vital power to the patient." There are many burning to work, but irresolute and sad, because there is no one to direct them, — no proper and known school where their energies might be made available. Where there is an excess of women over men that is so steady as to assume the character of a law, it is impossible that all can have domestic ties and definite home-work. 248 Praying and Working, Many, from perfectly natural causes, will remain with- out a life-calling, unsatisfied with the trivialities of society, eager for something better and nobler, that will worthily represent life, and not simply pass the time. And it is not to be lost sight of, that just as our more complex social life stirs greater needs, and as it were creates new distresses, so that very com- plexity has been proved to involve a large excess of women unemployed. Is it not possible that the plan at Kaiserswerth is not exclusively German ; that that blue flag, with the fair white dove upon it, is not a symbol for the Rhine alone % May not some workers take heart and try it here ; not transplant it, but work out the principles in whatever form is suited to our EngHsh habits and necessities? There may be pre- judices to overcome, and misrepresentation and. pro- phecies of failure ; and Dr Fliedner had to encounter all these. There are jargons uttered on the one side and on the other : " Keep clear of both the jargons, now current everywhere : of the jargon, namely, which urges women to do all that men do ; . . . and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do. . . . Oh, leave these jargons, and go your way straight to God's work in simplicity and singleness of heart."* There are examples enough to warn from any clumsy imitation of a religious order. But it has not yet been shewn that it is impracticable — and our social statistics * Miss Nightingale, Notes on Nursing, p. 76. Theodore Fliediier, 249 are sufficiently startling to make the experiment worth risk and trial — to educate Christian women for more efficient and varied service to the poor, and even to associate their efforts and abilities in a healthy Chris- tian spirit, with a view to more combined and syste- matic help. JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER.* THE SCHOOL. TN the year 1770, tvvo young men met at the Jesuit School at Landsberg as novices of that Order. They were of the same age, of the same stamp of character, both sprung from the poor, both eager students, they hved in the same house, and became fast friends. Michael Feneberg was born in February 1751 at Oberdorf in Bavaria. The son of peasant parents, he * See two brief memoii-s by personal friends, one by Von Betliman Hollvveg, and the other, yohaitnes Evangelist Gossner, eine biographische Skizze von 'J. D. Frochnow ; Der Christ- liche Haiisfrennd, 1848-61 ; Alartm Boos, der Prediger der Gerechtigkeit die von Gott gilt, heraiisgegeben von y. Gossner ; Leben des Martin Boos von F. W. Bodemann ; J. M. von Sailer dargestellt von F. IV. Bodeiuann ; Aiis Feneberg' s Leben von J. M. Sailer ; Leben J. AT. Feneberg von F. -W. Bodemajin ; Die Biene anfdem Missionsfelde, 1845-61 ; and a valuable paper by Herzog in his Eneyclopaedie, on Sailer U7td seine Schule. 252 Praying and Working, had few advantages and few opportunities. To his parents' discomfort he declared he must be a student. They had strong objections. The "learned handi- craft," as the countr)^-folk phrased it, was uncertain ; every other handicraft had a golden floor. It took up time, moreover, and it was so many years before it brought in any return. And then it cost florins upon florins j and at the bare thought of that scandalous waste, all to make a man speak Latin, the honest couple declared against the student. A fire, which left them nothing but their lives, conspired to crush the boy's hopes. But in some way it happened that he became a scholar; was somewhat stupid at his first school, an average pupil at the second, and then rose to be first of his class. Michael Sailer v\^as bom in November 175 1, also in Bavaria. His father was a shoemaker, and a devout man in his way. Of his mother nothing is known but the touching picture in the preface to one of Sailer's books, written forty years after her death. The memory of the slightest detail of her life — the glance of an eye, the touch of a hand, any household work — quickened in him a religious sense, that "no distance of time, or press of sorrows, or even sin itself could weaken." It is the strong expression of a pro- found feeling that does equal honour to mother and son. The village schoolmaster taught him what he could, and the chaplain grounded him in Latin, until, what with his own application and his teacher's enthu- John Evangelist Gossner. 253 siasm, it was plain he should go to college. His father viewed it hopefully, but always with this con- clusion, " From aU they tell me about that craft, it is too cos'tly for us." Rieger, the carpenter, was of an- other opinion. " I am as poor as you," he would say, -and my son is a student in ^lunich. As for life, neighbour, God gives that, and good men give the rest." It was a sanguine view of the world, and an imperfect theology; but it so far impressed the shoe- maker, that when Michael was ten years old, his father took him to Munich. Passing a gamekeeper's on the way, Rieger solemnly adjured his neighbour to buy a brace of snipe, and the other from some whim or impulse obeyed. Arrived at Munich, the snipe and the gracious words of the shoemaker opened the schoolmaster's heart 3 young Sailer was introduced to a wealthy family, became companion to their son, and obtained board and schooling for more than six years, and a friendship for Hfe. He used to go back with pecuUar pleasure to this epoch. When his school- fellow, long after, entertained him at dinner, "Next to God and the two snipe," he said, "I owe my entire hterary existence to you." For the snipe were never forgotten. He used to say meditatively among his friends, " It was by two snipe that God made me what lam."' His seal was two snipe, with the legend, Under God's guiding. And when the art-loving King of Ba- varia raised him^ statue, he ordered two snipe to be carved on the pedestal. In due time the snipe also 254 Praying and Working. led him to Landsberg, — a clever, .thoughtful, hard- reading student of nineteen ; and at Landsberg the two peasants met. Sailer wrote of Landsberg that it was a paradise. Notwithstanding, in 1773, it was suppressed, with every other Jesuit institution in the country. Probably the Government had no adequate notion of a paradise of Jesuits ; probably the student saw in his teachers only kindly, intellectual, genial men, and cared and knew Httle . of a world outside his books ; perhaps there is some truth in what he said afterwards, " In the origin of their Order there was much that was divine ; in its spread much that was human ; in its suppression much that was neither human nor divine." But, being suppressed, even enthusiastic pupils sub- mitted to the new order of things ; and the two friends went to study canon law at Ingolstadt. Ten years have passed, and we catch a glimpse of •these friends again. Sailer is professor at the Univer- sity of Dillengen, reading lectures on pastoral and popular theology, and discoursing on religion. Fene- berg is also at Dillengen, professor at the gymnasium. For ten years more the gymnasium prospers ; students crowd the University class-rooms ; Dillengen rises into note ; men come to it from remote angles of the kingdom, and even foreigners matriculate ; and the professors work with a hamiony which has passed into a proverb. There is some power and attractiveness growing silently up within the queer little cloistered jfohn Evangelist Gossner. 255 place ; something that is not in the estabhshed routine; some independent interest. Rumours spread about the teaching. The dogmatic positions of the Church, it is said, are thrown Hghtly aside. Christ and divine love are spoken of more than the canons, and indeed without much regard to canons. Students return home quoting Lavater and StilHng, and deep in the writings of Fene'lon and Tauler. They even profess to reverence and beHeve the Bible, against the free assertions of the philosophers. Dillengen becomes to the ex-Jesuits "a dangerous place;" they warn against it ; "a young man may lose his faith there." Hints are thro'wn out that the professors belong to the Ilhimi?iati ; they are called Mystics, and Jansenists, and Protestants ; the Illuminati themselves league against them; secret influences are brought to bear upon the Government ; Feneberg is removed from the gymnasium, and Sailer and his friends are crushed out of the University. Feneberg retired to the" vicarage of Seeg ; Sailer wandered to Munich. " What brings you here?" said his old friend Winkelhofer. "They have dismissed me." " Oh ! then come and rest with me. My room, my table, my bed, my goods, my heart, — all mine is thine." In this matter the sagacity of the Jesuits did not play them false. They were right in tracing up to Dillengen " a dangerous tendency ;" they were right in fixing on the two friends as its real strength. Sailer and Feneberg were the most eminent m.en of the place. 256 Praying and Working. They were men of the purest and simplest lives, loving, loveable, and blameless. They had rare gifts of teach- ing ; they loved it for its own sake. When Feneberg, in an early curacy, found leisure time hanging on his hands, he set up school in his house, and was, he says himself, "head-master and usher, rector magnificus^ bedell, hotise-father, and often housemaid ;" he com- posed hymns, and sung them with his pupils ; walked, and played g^^mnastics with them ; studied them and studied with them. It was his pleasure, his holiday. One of those fifteen pupils has written how his master shrewdly cured him of his ghost-fears, bringing him up to the spectre pretty much as you would a shying horse. And there lingers still another tradition of cure, quaint if not graceful, by which he reconciled two boys who would not speak, setting them down to their porridge with but one spoon between them. Sailer, also, was never so happy as in the professor's chair ; and one of the best books he wrote was on education. He knew what was passing in young men's minds ; the vague speculative thoughts that rise up, at which they are half proud, half startled ; their struggles with the past and with tradition and with all beliefs, through which they often pass by fiery ordeal. By his gentle wisdom he disarmed them of the proud sensitiveness with which they cling to thoughts that oppose them to the rest of the world. By his sym- pathy he deprived them of that chivalrous despair that has sometimes forced a man on into positive scepticism, yohn Evangelist Gossner. 257 because every man's hand was against him. His frankness, mildness, purity won them rapidly over to his confidence ; and men of the wildest natures, rest- less, lawless, defiant minds, were often noticed to yield to him after a single interview. And the two men were not only gifted -with singular power over others, but were in the best position to use it. The High School was the feeder of the University ; and the boys who were for years under Feneberg, went with minds ready, softened and plastic, to be moulded into men under Sailer. The one prepared the way for the other, and the tendency of both was the same. Before Feneberg was long at Seeg he had won the hearts of his people ; and, successful as he was in the High School, perhaps the pastorate was his proper sphere. One v/inter evening, however, as he was returning from preaching on the patience of the saints, his horse fell on the slippery forest path, and Feneberg's leg was broken. A clumsy country doctor tried to set it; and two stout peasants were ordered to push the bone into its place. A surgeon came at last, and, after tedious waiting, amputation became neces- sary. " The Lord hath \dsited me ! '' was his simple exclamation when his leg was broken. When they told him of the surgical decision his prayer was as simple : — " Lord ! Thou givest faith, but mine is very weak, even as this foot. Yea, it is Thou who plantest faith, and causest it to grow. Give me faith. Nature 258 Praying and Working. would willingly keep the limb ; but not my will, Thine be done." The leg was taken off and buried j a wooden one supplied its place ; a^id henceforth Feneberg signed his letters, "the one-legged vicar," or — for no other word comes so near the strong idiom — tmiher-toes. There was a deep humour in the man, that came out, as it usually does with quiet natures, in his misfortune. " Dear heart," he would exclaim, " I used to be melancholy when I had two feet. I can say now a broken leg is good medicine." And many a hymn of Claudius, and other favourite poets, made the sick-room cheery. " Happily," he wrote to Sailer, '' the nag was a neighbour's ; so the credit of my old nag is saved." Weber in Dillengen used to say, that having been nearly drowned he had got a new idea ; and Feneberg chuckled over that meditative professor that the wooden leg gave him new ideas every day. He used to boast of its uses : — "There is the economi- cal^ for I only need one stocking and one shoe j there is the socialy for I .need go no more to court, for which nature never meant me ; there is the religions" and so on, counting them up upon his fingers as he lay wearily upon the sofa. As he got better, and his trusty chaplain, Bayr, would take the crutches to shew how easily one might walk with them after all, " Ay, ay," he would laugh, " if you have two sound legs, and go on a pair of crutches besides, no doubt you will go bravely." Nor even when the leg was buried had it performed all its functions. It was dug up some yolui Evangelist Gossner, 259 years after, and placed on the study-table, and hon- oured with an inscription. "Has not the apostle said,'' he once appealed to an angiy married couple, " that ' a man will no more hate his own wife than his own flesh % ' Why, there is my leg, a dead bone, and yet I love it still, for it is part of my body. And you would hate each other! That leg will plead against 3^ou at the last day!'' "Perhaps," he ad- dressed the soldiers as they were marching to the wars, "you may have a leg shot off in battle. What matter? Don't you see by me that you can get on in the world with a wooden one 1 " But the lesson he was learning most v\^as this : — " Oh that I could draw nearer to Thee, Lord, and I would cheerfully give Thee not one foot but two ; yea, my hands and my head ! " Up till this time he had been drawing himself nearer by self-denial, patience, dili- gence, devotional thoughts. His knowledge of the truth was more outward than inward, what it should be and not what it really was in himself; his relation to Christ was still legal, and he had but the dullest sense, and that only at times, of justification by faith ; even the Bible, he complained, was to him a book sealed with seven seals. The complaint ceased before his illness left. Instead of dead letters, the words came to him like a living and searching spirit. But in proportion as he felt that, he felt as if he were drawn away from Christ. Sin became to him an awful terror and guilt ; it started up 26o Praying and Working, among the purest thoughts of his life ; it fronted him at every memory; it spoiled his virtues. And this feeling, startling to himself and growing in intensity, threw a darkness over his life. He was restless and peaceless, and day and night he poured out through his tears one cry, Lord^ save 7ne, I perish ! Meanwhile, Sailer was passing through much the same struggle, but with less of spiritual intensity. From his boyhood, his devotional habit and his intel- lect had been at war. At Landsberg, at Ingolstadt, at Dillengen, he had been a doubter. Under the strong, calm exterior, the wise and patient words, the brilliant and eager lecturer, there lay at times un- speakable anguish, that terrible anguish to a devout temper of intellectual scepticism. "You believe in Christ, because the apostles declare Him," it whispered once ; " but what if the apostles were deceived and deceiving 1" He opened his mind to an Indian missionary. Father Pfab talked with him for hours about his travels, and the country, and the people. After some days, he asked, " Can you believe what I have said] Do you think it is true?" "I do not doubt it for a moment." " But I might have deceived you." " But a man who left his country for the sake of the Gospel will not lie, and he will not deceive." " And you believe that of me, and not of the apos- tles ! " It struck home, and Pfab urged it with great skill and power. Yet what could it do beyond what it did — bring Sailer to his knees for a little, crying out, yohn Evangelist Gossner. 261 My Lord! my God! Intellectual doubt goes deeper down than the intellect, nor will intellectual clearness cast it out. Unless the heart be settled in Christ, the intellect may go on doubting for ever. Unless the spiritual atmosphere be clear, it matters little what is the character of the intellectual. It is that spiritual kingdom that gives laws to all the rest ; they depend upon it, not it upon them. And as long as a man's spiritual relations are uncertain, he is liable to be tor- mented by the cruellest, and what perhaps his reason would call the foolishest doubts. Sailer was pacified for a little. But fresh agony returned ; fresh and ugly questions leaped up in his soul : they came to him in silence and the night ; they haunted him in dreams. Behind that face from which so many took courage, and those clear, earnest words that throbbed in the hearts of his scholars, what darkness and misery — a death^s head, how cunningly concealed ! Nor was Sailer the first to wear the mask, nor did he carry it more bravely than another. Behind what quiet, placid looks, what courteous and kindly ways, what thought and affection for others, what firm show of energy, what busy or vacant or smiling face, the agony of the soul may be acted out as a mere every- day matter, the battle of life and death raging within, while the man is counselling a neighbour, or the woman spinning at her wheel ! Now, at this time Sailer was more than commonly agita.ted by the tidings of a sudden movement in a 262 Praying and Working. distant parish, — a movement of a profoundly spiritual character, that was getting talked about with great warmth and suspicion, but that he felt concerned himself, and his deepest and still unsatisfied want, and in which he was an unconscious agent. Among the students at Dillengen, there had been one too noticeable to be forgotten. Martin Boos had been dropped into the world apparently by mistake. He was the fourteenth child of a small farmer, — a ''Christmas-child,'' yet born in so cold a night that the water in the room froze. An orphan at four, his eldest sister's first thought was how to dispose of him with due regard to economy. Being a sturdy girl, she set him on her shoulders, and started for Augs- burg; but getting tired, she flung him into a corn- field by the way, where he soon cried himself asleep. However, in the afternoon she returned, laid him at an uncle's door in the city, and went her way. The lonely child managed to grow up in some fashion in this surly uncle's house, saved himself by his scholarship from becoming a shoemaker, and went to Dillengen, where, a brilliant, handsome student, he carried off the first honours. Sailer's teaching had more influence than he knew. And when his uncle had celebrated his first mass by giving a three days' shooting-party, he thankfully subsided into a quiet parish priest, cultivating, in thorough Romish fashion, holy affections, and yearning after that calm, mystic relation to Christ that had been pointed out in the John Evangelist Gossner. 263 lectures. " I lay," he says, " for years together upon the cold ground, though my bed stood near me. I scourged myself till the blood came, and clothed my body with a hair-shirt; I hungered, and gave my bread to the poor; I spent every leisure moment in the precincts of the church ; I confessed and communi- cated every week." He "gave himself an immense deal of trouble to lead a holy life," and was unani- mously elected a saint ; but the saint was miserable, and cried out, O wretched man that I a?Jt ! who shall delivei' me 1 Going to see a pious old woman on her deathbed, he said wistfully, "Ah! you may well die in peace!" "Why?" "You have lived such a godly life." "What a miserable comforter!" she said, and smiled; "if Christ had not died for me, I should have perished for ever, with all my good works and piety. Trusting in Him, I die at peace." And from this time the light fell in upon his soul; the dying woman had answered his miserable cry. He stayed some months with Feneberg, at Seeg, as voluntary chaplain ; with Sailer, was one of those who accompanied the good man on the first Sunday he went out with his wooden leg ; then received a curacy at Wiggensbach, near Kempten, and began preaching Christ. " Flames of fire darted from his lips, and the hearts of the people burned like straw." He declared their sins, and when they cried, " What shall we do % " he gave them no answer; "repent?" no answer; "confess?" no answer; "good works?" no answer; 264 Praying and Working. until the question was driven deep into their souls, and then they knew how vain was any answer but one — Christ. Moreover, he had a terse, original way of putting things, and a power of homely, some may think too homely illustration. One or two examples may be given at hazard : — " They are dearer to God that seek something from Him than they that seek to bring something to Him." " He that says he is pious is certainly not." "The most read their Bibles hke cows that stand in the thick grass, and trample the finest flowers and herbs." " People think it a weak- ness to forgive an insult. Then God would be the weakest in heaven and on earth, for no one in heaven or on earth forgives so much as He." " Death strips us of this world's glor}^, as a boot-jack draws off your boots. Another wears my boots wdien I am dead, and another wears my glory. It is of little value." "The most learned declare they know nothing, and the most pious that they have nothing ; therefore the profoundest learning is in knowing nothing, and the profoundest sanctity in having nothing." "A gentle- man passed through to-day, and the people said, * He wore the cross of St Theresa ; he must be some great man.' A cross was once a disgrace. Now, the larger the cross, the greater the man." A preacher of this stamp would make himself be heard anywhere; and it is little wonder that great excitement gathered about the little country chapel in John Evangelist Gossner, 265 Bavaria. Many found the Saviour when he preached ; persons came long journeys to hear so strange and blessed a doctrine ; and the chapel was thronged with men and women who had gone about anxious, heavy laden, and hopeless for years. Feneberg heard of it, longed for more than he had yet found, and wote that he was like Zaccheus, waiting in the tree till Christ should pass by. "Then wait quietly in the tree," Boos wrote back; "Christ will soon enter thy house and thy heart." This was in the autumn of 1796, when Feneberg was bitterly crjdng for light. In December, Sailer came to him on a visit, much dis- turbed by the news from Kempten. " Let us send for Boos, and hear it from himself," he said. Boos came, and brought with him some of the awakened to speak to their own experience. According to one of Feneberg's poems, his vicarage was '* Lean and ugly, all decaying, And a haunt of loneliness ;" but it received the guests genially, and a more singular Christmas party has seldom met. There was the vicar himself, with his two curates, Bayr and Siller ; Sailer, Boos, and the converts,— five Romish ecclesias- tics met to hear about an evangelical revival, begim by the evangelical preaching of one of their number. A peasant giri from Boos' parish whispered him, almost as soon as she saw his old professor, " That man has much that is childlike, and a good heart, but 266 Prayijig and Working. he is still a scribe and a Pharisee, and must be bom again of the Spirit." Boos was startled, and assured her she must be mistaken. But before the evening was over, she said openly before them all, "Sir, you have the baptism of John, but not the baptism of the Spirit and of fire ; you have drunk out of the river of grace, but not yet plunged into the sea. You are like Cornelius, and have done and suffered much for the truth, but you have not yet received Christ." There was an awkward pause ; no one knew well what to say. But finding Sailer silent. Boos himself urged the truth with great earnestness. Sailer, still silent and much disconcerted, withdrew. He had left the next morning before the house was astir, but one of the peasants said he had met him, and had repeated out of John, He came unto His own, and His ow7i received Him not; but as many as received flim, to them gave He power to become the sons of God; and that he had replied, " Good, good ;" but his face was troubled, and he rode away. They blamed themselves, fearing they had offended him, and the woman wept; but presently she lifted up her eyes, and said joyfully, " Be comforted ! grace has met him on his way. God works wonders with him. The Lord will appear to his heart." She had scarcely spoken, when a messen- ger came to the door with some lines written by their friend on horseback. " Dearest brethren," they ran, " God has given me an unspeakably quiet mind. I do not doubt that He has come to me in soft whispers ; yohn Evangelist Gossner, 267 yea, is already in me. I believe that John baptizes with water, but Christ with the Spirit. Pray, brethren, that we may not fall into temptation. The rest we will give over to God. Farewell." " Blessed be God !" exclaimed the vicar, who had never ceased to pray. Lord, if Thou zvilt come to 21s, come first of all to him. Before the Christmas party broke up, Feneberg was also filled with joy, and Bayr and Siller received Christ. Boos returned to Wiggensbach. This awakening spread more widely than ever; and on New-year's day 1797, a hot persecution broke out on every side. The " Jesus preachers," as they were called, were hunted from their cures ; the converts were mocked, stoned, imprisoned, thrust out of their homes. Boos himself was obliged to flee, and found refuge wath Feneberg; but a decree of the Inquisition v/as issued against them, the vicarage was ransacked in their absence, all their papers were taken, and they themselves brought up in custody. One of Feneberg's answers throws some light on his position. '* Do you know why you have been cited here V " Yes. Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, has fulfilled to me, a poor sinner, and more than a hundred others, His precious word that He spoke at the Last Supper, He that loveth me shall be loved of My Father., and I will love him, and will mani- fest Myself to him." Union with Christ had been always his dream, but till now he had never known the way. Union with Christ from this time became the (:i;^ 268 Praying and Working. tinguishing feature of his preaching and spiritual his^ tor}^ Christ for us, and Christ in us, were the leading points of Boos' doctrine, and of the movement that began with him. With Feneberg the Christ for us sinks somewhat out of sight ; his stress and happiness are laid upon the presence of Christ in the heart. This communion, often mystically and dimly expressed, and perhaps at the best somewhat mystically seen, expresses the rest of his quiet life, and explains his contentedness with his Church. Released from his persecutions, and placed at Vohringen, he continued his faithful ministrations, edified his friends, prayed daily for divine light and knowledge, and died peace- fully at the age of sixty-one. The continued suspicion and malice that followed him did not seem to touch his calmness of communion; bhndness threatened him, and passed away ; his friends were true. It was a gentle, simple life ; a fresh, pure, innocent nature. Natha7iacl he was called ; he was frank and righteous, unable to utter a compliment or hide the truth; a man of great confidence and childlikeness before God. " If I could not call Thee Thou^^ he was once heard to pray, " O Father, we could never get on." " It is a fine thing," wrote Sailer, "if you can say a man lived and never lifted up a stone against his neigh- bour; but it is finer far if 5^ou can say also, he took the stones out of the path that would have caught his neighbour's feet. So did Feneberg, and this his doing: was his life." yohi Evangelist Gossner, 269 Boos was driven from place to place. Through the best part of his life he may be recognised in swift and anxious and perilous flight. At last, at Gallneukirchen, in Austria, he seemed to be settled ; the scenes of Wiggensbach v/ere repeated on a larger scale ; and this time he was accused at Vienna. "Dear chil- dren," said the Emperor, to the peasants who crowded round him on his way through the parish, "your pastor is no teacher of error." It was the impulsive testimony of a man who had a finer spirit than his counsellors, but it did not avail; and Boos had to leave the Austrian shelter, and commence his wander- ing anew. In 181 7, the Prussian Government ap- pointed him Professor in the Gymnasium at Dussel- dorf; but it was not his gift to teach, and they ex- changed it for the living of Sayn on the Rhine. He lived for some years unmolested in this retired and lonely spot, visited by many friends, writing noble letters, guiding and inspiring the movement in his own country, and seeing more clearly the breadth and grandeur and all-important necessity of the truths for which he suffered. He lamented the unfruitfulness of his ministry. " There is scarcely a spot on these hills where I have not flung myself do\^Ti and wept, and prayed that the Lord would give me again the grace to open my mouth with joy, and to preach His Word to the awakening of the neart." This also w^as given him, and in 1825 he died. Sailer hved the longest, and alone reached to any 2 70 Praying and Working. honour. The persecution fell lightest upon him. From 1802 till 1S21 he was professor at Landshut and Munich. Besides his old subject, he lectured on morals and homiletics ; on liturgies, catechising, and education j he had a class for the study of the Bible, and was university preacher. It was the most brilliant period of his life. Students came from every part of Germany, and his fame was carried back by them to their own lands ; he was called to one university after another, and at last to be Archbishop of Cologne. But he refused every offer that would lead him out of his native country, while it was just there that hostile influences were used against him in the most opposite ways. He could be identified with no party, and was hated by each. Napoleon prevented his promotion at one time by assuring the king he was a mere hanger-on to the Roman Court; the Pope re- fused it at another, because he suspected his attach- ment to the Church. At last he was appointed Bishop in partihus^ and died in 1832 as Bishop of Regens- burg. His character was of the same class as Feneberg^s, but it exchanged much of his childlike spirit for shrewdness. He was one of the mildest and most tolerant of men, mild to excess. It is told that having preached one morning near Saltsburg, the parish clergyman rose up, and said he would preach himself m the afternoon, as Sailer had made the doors of hea- ven too wide. " You are excellent at bandages," said yohn Evangelist Gossner. 271 one of his friends, "but a bad operator/' "Very- possible," he rephed ; " in my Ufe I have seen more Vv'Ounds healed by a good bandage than by the knife/' He was humble, patient, easy of access, sweet-tempered under every trial, and a tried friend. His religious views wanted the fervour of Feneberg's and the depth of Boos'. He never thoroughly understood the first of the two propositions, Christ _/2?r us, but took it up in some purely mystical sense. His unrest returned after the Christmas of '96. Often twelve times in the day he withdrew to give himself up to God, crying, " Lord, I will not let Thee go until Thou bless me.'"' Doubts hitherto unknown swept over him and crushed liis spirit. He found an answer on which he relied to the end, yet it would not have satisfied his friends. He was to look into his heart, and see if the thought of God pleased him more than any other. It was a poor, uncertain tenure of peace j it was the Roman Catholic doctrine still. A feeling* that he must do something, give something, bring something, be some- thing, ran through his theology, and weakened it. And as he grew older he seemed to turn more to the Church, abjured "all pseudo-mysticism," submitted himself "with fihal piety" to Rome, and apologised for any inadvertent error, anything inconsistent with Romish teaching. Yet his testimony to Boos remains on the other side. " Boos is a spiritual, cathoHc Christian. I would rather die than condemn a man possessed of so many extraordinan/ spiritual gift?, and 272 Praying arid Working. who has led so many thousands to repentance and faith, for the sake of a few expressions, which, after all, are susceptible of an orthodox meaning. I am now in my sixtieth year, and I would tremble to ap- pear before the judgment-seat of God if I did not loudly confess before my death that this great work of the pious Boos is of God." As for the entire movement, the narrative of the conversions is profoundly interesting, rich in every variety of spiritual incident. The persecutions — on so large a scale that twenty-four priests were at one time involved in them, and a minister of state led the assault — are not without a sad and tragic interest. The awakening presents features of striking resem- blance, even in remarkable psychological facts, to the recent revivals in Great Britain and America. What, it may be asked, became of it ? Was there any permanent influence % Beyond the time it would seem scarcely any. A strong personal love of the Savi- our bound many members of the Bavarian Roman Catholic Church together. They did not seek eman- cipation 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 meta- John Evangelist Gossner. 273 physics 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 j it did not enter into con- flict with systematic theology. It took for granted most of what had been j sought to discover the hidden and forgotten truth in it. It radiated from personal in- fluence, 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. Hundreds of the clergy must have come under Sailer's influence, but he founded no school of religious thought ; and the explanation will probably be found in this, that his religious views wanted distinctness, that the power he wielded was one of personal character. He met, indeed, a wild young lad at dinner at a friend's house ; in an hour's conversation the youth became quiet and thoughtful, soon after studied for the Church, and died recently as Archbishop of Breslau. In Melchior Diepenbrock, Sanely's influence seems to have exhausted itself, — a kind of genial, tolerant pre- late, like the well-kno^^oi J. K. L., but without even Sailers pietism. At Feneberg's table also there sat a young priest who bore a name honoured now in Pro- testant Germany and in far mission -fields, the only one of the party that left the Romish communion — the venerable Gossner. These tvvo bring down the links into our own generation, and there seems no s 274 Praying aiid Working. further link to carry on the chain. Yet, if the story of many hearts in Bavaria were known, it might be found that there is still a spiritual seed there, that the light still shines in dark places, and men and women are walking by faith in the blessed words, Believe in the Lord Jesus Christy and thou shalt be saved. To Gossner, however, as one living w^ithin the range of its influences, it was of the utmost importance. It was the school of thought and Christian life in which he was trained. It makes his relation to the Church of Rome intelligible. 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, towering like a Saul above the crowd, walking with a firm and sometimes rapid step, with un- bent shoulders, 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 pecuhar blending in his face of a loving, gracious kindUness with the deep-scored lines of a strong, resolute v/ill. Ovc or two might doft" their caps to him ; the children might whisper, Thej-e 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 stJnngers moved j John Evangelist Gossner, 275 those who went over the preachers, fashionable, or famous, or only good, never saw him in the pulpit. Eut when, two years ago, he died, the Bethlehem Church could not contain the mourners; a blow was felt to have fallen on the city. The sorrow pene- trated 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. He was one of Sailer's pupils ; he was Feneberg's guest ; the friend and biographer of Boos —John Evangelist Gossner, formerly Romish curate in Bavaria. 276 Praying and Working, IL THE SCHOLAR. ** Pereat Adam ! Vivat Jesus ! "— Gossner's Diary. JOHN EVANGELIST GOSSNER was bom of Ro- man 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. He ap- pears 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 next year 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 beheve 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 schoolfellow said to him, " I have a book in which the name of Jesus stands on every page." " And I," repHed Gossner, " have a book in my hand in which the name of Jesus is never n:ien- John Evangelist Gossner. 277 tioned. Shall we exchange?" The offer was ac- cepted, 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 slum- bering chord in Gossnef 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 ^\TOte them. Gossner was very unlike Lavater, yet in later days, when it became the fashion among the younger generation to despise him, Goss- nefs voice was loud in his honour and defence. ^Vhatever earnestness was thus excited about Jesus in 278 Praying and Working. the academy was not likely to pass away in the uni- versity. But 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 encourag- ing to a humble and mistrustful soul. Gossner left v/ith a strong personal affection for some of his pro- fessors, 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, hold- ing fast only by morahty. 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 theo- logy. In pursuit of this he went to Ingolstadt. He was restless, in search of something undefined even to himself, oppressed with a vague pain and mis- giving. 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 im- pression 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 stum- John Evangelist Gossner, 279 bled 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 exist- ence." 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 betw^een their cures for private, unrestrained speech about themselves and the state of their hearts before God. One day Sommer spoke of Tersteegen. Gossner read him as he had read Lavater, with blessing and delight. An- other 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 manu- script book of his, with the pregnant title, Christ for Its 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 28o Praying and Working. 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, went 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 Hke 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, Fereat Adam! Vivaf 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 re- stored, and " I felt. So art thoti, 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 : — "/; Lord, what wilt Thou in me ? Dominies : I will have yohn Evangelist Gossner. 281 nothing in thee or from thee. // 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 Ufe hke 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 grotesquest fonns, 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 com- munion 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 vrent to Seeg, where Feneberg the vicar received him into his house. With him and Schmid, an- other 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 pcisonal matters ; yet, judging from one incident, 282 Praying and Working. 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 Feneberg had, but as he besought him so ear- nestly in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus he gave it. Immediately after, he found himself in gi-eat 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 Feneberg, say- ing, " Here, father, is what you expended." The let- ter contained two hundred thalers, (.£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 1 80 1 Gossner went to Augsburg, where he had the honour of being brought before the same Inquisi- tion 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 181 1. Much of his religi- ous histor}' is identified witli this place. His first step yohn Evangelist Gossner. 283 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 brethreD L..iore a month had passed, the following entry occurs ii. his diary: — "Truly the Lord has marvellously blessed our prayer-meetings. How true it is, as James vmtes, 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 w^hich 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 Hfe. 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 Testa- ment. Sailer was to procure tiie necessary imprimatur. The Bible Society in England and the Mission Society in Basel took it up, and some 5^ears later it was not only completed, but 6c 000 copies. were disposed of in an incredibly shori time. All this did not occur without the bittercs^ opposition, and a persecution so keen and unreki;l, ng that at length he laid down his charge and withdrew to Munich. He lived in retire- ment, wrote some of those devotional books with which his name will always be associated in the religious hterature of Germany, and,, as he became 284 Praying and Working. better k^xO^\Tl, was asked to preach. His audience rapidly increased ; a smaller circle gathered round him for private teaching and communion ; he estab- lished prayer-meetings for them in his house, and drew to him the scattered ones in whose hearts Boos iiad already sowed the gospel. Tidings of this wonder- ful movement reached Berlin in a letter of 18 16. It could be scarce credited. People went to Munich to satisfy themselves of what they heard : Von Bethraan- 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 t}^e of character, but of genuine, real character; and they left him — wise and gifted men, whose names rang as those of the 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 \\ith Ger- man 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 inno- vation. They denounced this "new and uncatholic worship " to the Consistory ; and vrhen this failed, fresh accusations were put forward. He had printed John Evangelist Goss7ier> 285 extracts from Protestant Avriters in his books ; he had written an offensive tract on the human heart {A Temple of Sin, or a WorksJiop of Satan;) moreover, he had translated the New Testament ; and as at this time that deviHsh 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 arch- bishoprick of Cologne, Boos a professorship and Gossner a pastorate at Diisseldorf The two latter accepted. Gossner 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 v.ill not 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 x'az cultivation of their taste. To this end he \:Z'\ 286 Praying and Working, erected a theatre for the young people, and otheiAvise 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 httle 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 Miinster the Princess Galhtzin bade Claudius and Stolberg to the same table ; Fiirstenberg and Katerkamp moved in one circle with Hamann. Sympathy for the truth led them together ; there was neither an ecclesiastical nor a pohtical Hfe ; those who were earnest drew off from the crowd and to- wards one another. Lindl determined to see StilHng 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 en- deared himself to numbers, — a kind of mighty-worded, yohn Evangelist Gossner. 287 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 un- gainly ; 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 adorn- ment, 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 Peters- burg was Lindl's farewell, and all the people wept that he w^as gone. The next Sunday Gossner preached himself, and all the people wept for joy that he was come. His fame soon w^ent 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 j 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 ciy arose, " Hear it ; it is the voice of God V' 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, 288 Praying mid Wo7^king. "No, my lord bishop," he answered; "good shep- herds 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 rephed, "the poor instrument that vv'iil 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 re- pent ; and not seldom the sinner was constrained to obey. When the late 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 St 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 John Evangelist Gossner. 289 clergy were not like the honest preacher, who found one day but four 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 ISIary. 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. The Emperor, through one of his Council, 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 ser\^ed a richer Lord than the Emperor, and prepared to depart. One party de- manded 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." They were laid under ban throughout the empire for the future. And with an escort of Cossacks, whom the Emperor made responsible for his * He wrote on the second volume of his Spirit of the Ufe and Doctrines of Jesus Christ in the New Testament— '' Ovi the 8th May 1824, thou, dear Httle book, didst drive me out of St Petersburg, leaving thy first-bom brother there in arrest, to be burned in the cloister on the 9th October." T 290 Praying and Working. 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 sympathisers and spiritual children accom- panied 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 re- mained 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 Ham- burg 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 in- tercourse 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— '2. far commoner book in Germany than ever John Evangelist Gossner. 291 Bogatzky- 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 inter- meddhng. 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 Berhn, 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 out promise. He was scarce in one place till he was persecuted to another; scarce opened his lips till a sealed order closed them ; scarce at rest till he was in motion. It was a painful education. Every step of the journey he had to stop and cry, Pereat Adam ! Vivat Jesus I It was a thorough undoing of the human and the self, a learning of lessons that ivere repeated till they were got, and often bitterly, by heart. The Hfe of faith is not a simple outburst; \ 292 Praying and Working. effectual prayer is not the easy steady flow of a first love. They come out of slow and patient and some- what harsh training. Whatever Gossner had learned, it was in this school of God ; and the apt scholar there passes at once into the teacher's place. jfohn Evangelist Gossner, 293 III. THE TEACHER. **He has done more than we all." — Buchsel. .T>EFORE leaving Leipzig, Gossner quietly passed into the Protestant Church, and partook of the Lord's Supper. The immediate reason seems to have been that, while his zeal to preach would not suffer him to remain inactive, his pastorate in the Romish Church was evidently at an end. There was no additional inward light, only an additional outward necessity. So long back as 1804, this necessity had placed the thought before his mind. The persecution of Augs- burg suggested it very forcibly. In his diary he \M-ote at the close of that year : — " Neither the spirit of the times nor the philosophy of the day can redeem men from their sins ; neither do the ruling superstition nor the mechanism of its popular worship and the daily priesthood redeem men from their sins ; one can see that with both eyes. What is to be done % This is a question I am not yet ready to answer. Neither Rome nor his holiness the Pope frees us, but they only empty the purse by their dispensations, and screw down upon 294 Praying and Working. us countless fonns, and bring us under a yoke which we can no longer bear." If on the one hand his mind was not yet made up, on the other hand it is plain that the question with him was more one of personal liberty than of ecclesiastical principle ; that there was nothing in the idea of the Protestant Church with which he was at variance; and that he did not join it before simply because the pressure from without had not culminated. From that time the unsolved ques- tion v/as frequently brought up to him. From Dirle- wang, he turned once to Schoner in Nuremberg, to ask his advice. " Remain where you are," he said, in the true spirit of the time \ " the Lutheran devil is every whit as~black as the Romish." Again, in 1811, he made a journey to Basel for this special object ; but when there it seemed as if the stones burned under his feet, as if an inward voice warned him back, as if it was God's will that he should still preach the gospel in the Church where God had found him. Had he not to go daily through a dead service % But Sailer had taught him to spiritualise it ; and beneath every form to see the pure stream of the vrater of life. Were there no traditions that made void the cross of Christ % But he believed, with all of his school, that they were the work of scribes and Pharisees, and that one might still hold the pure old faith. He wrote a tract to shew how the Church-fathers held it. " Our heresy," he said, " stands in every prayer of the Mass." He did not look at the question in a broad yohn Evangelist Gossner. 295 way as one of abstract right or ^\Tong ; his personal ne^ds supphed him with his point of view. So long as he could freely teach Christ, he had no wish to leave the Church. He united in the closest fellowship with evangeUcal Christians at Nuremberg, at Basel, at Herrnhut. He sought to build up within the Romish body a living brotherhood in the faith. But he never busied himself vrith any save practical issues ; he never seems to have thought much of the error bound up with the system. It may have been partly the ten- dency of his mind ; very much, no doubt, the tendency of the time and the peculiar bias of his university. He saw that the Protestants had a few faithful people, and so had the Catholics j he felt that Jesus was all in all with the faithful of both. Yet, even making large allowance, it is difficult to understand his posi- tion, to sympathise with the extent to which his personal love and work for Christ made him careless about all wider questions. There is still much enig- matic, unexplained, perhaps unsatisfactory, in this part of his history — much that the strength and habit of Protestant tradition prevent us from realising. When he left the Romish Church, however, it was only in name ; he had left it thirty years before. " Sinca,'' he wrote in his petition to the Consistory of Berlin, " through the persecution of blind zealots, I have lost my public sphere of labour, and am a husbandman without land, a shepherd without a flock, and yet feel myself called to work as long as it is day, I beg the 296 Praying and Working, honourable Consistory, seeing that my Uttle boat has been driven upon the sands by the storm of persecu- tion, to help it out to the open sea — i.e.^ to procure me opportunity and permission again to preach in pubhc the word of God. For thirty years I have had the grace to proclaim the gospel, and, though not outwardly in the Evangelical Church, have been always an evangelical preacher Since I have suffered so much from the Catholic Consistory, I hope and beg that the Evangehcal Consistor}^ will heal the wounds, and, like the Samaritan, pour into them oil and wine, and treat with forbearance one who has been often smitten and sorely hurt" There is no error to repent, no dogma to recant ; that had been done long ago. He pleads now with a frank dignity as a persecuted preacher of Christ Jesus. After the petition was presented there were many tedious and vexing delays ; after it was granted there were many vexing forms. He had to go through the trials of a candidate. Notwithstanding the friendly kindness and dehcacy of Neander, it was a hard struggle for his old man. Then there was difficulty about a church; and it was not till two years after- wards, in the spring of 1829, that he was installed as pastor of the Bohemian congregation in the Beth- lehem. Meanwhile he was not idle. The prayer-meetings of Munich were re-established. Quiet evenings were spent in Christian intercourse. The highest circles yohn Evangelist Gossner. 297 opened to receive him. He sat silent and con- strained if the conversation was not congenial. If any opening led to Christian subjects he was warm, animated, and eager. He had a horror of religious dissipation, and shrunk from the idle, fluent talk on solemn subjects that prevails in religious circles. But if he noticed any earnestness and real feeling, no one was readier to speak, most of all on Christ in us. After brief, silent prayer, he would open the Bible, read a chapter and explain it, dwelling some- times on redemption and the new birth, sometimes on the Christian walk and the fruits of the Spirit. Many were quickened; some were arrested; but "the good man dreaded the tea that followed the closing prayer, and that the impression would vanish at the clatter of cups, and the busy gossip of the day." Schleiermacher opened his church to him, where the most select, brilliant, and intellectual audiences of the capital assembled ; and it was characteristic of his large instinct that he discerned Gossner's gifts, and rejoiced in them. No two tj^^es of mind, no tvro modes of preaching, could well be more opposite : the one weaving philosophy into the Christian system, and expanding Christian doctrine into a philosophy, — the other abhorring everything but the bare cross of Christ; the one overwhelmingly eloquent, imagina- tive, scholarly, ranging over human thought, — the other with his homely, straightforward, unvarying mes- sage about Jesus. Madame Schleiermacher found in 298 Praying and Working. this preaching what she needed, what her husband had never given. He had no envy, he made no change himself, he was only thankful that his wife was reached. Then the Moravians gave Gossner their hall. The Louisenkirche echoed to his message, and was crowded to the door. And when he ascended the pulpit at Bethlehem, the people flocked to hear him. " Five years since," he wrote to a friend on his installation, "I fell — rather was thrown — out of the pulpit. How hard to climb to it once more ! Pulpit- stairs are perilous for me to go up and grievous to go down." He was pastor there for seventeen years. It became a living centre for the work of God in the city. Church-extension, town-mission, the preaching of the Cross, took their impulse from it. Circles of students assembled about him, whom he urged, out ot the fulness of his heart, to the Saviour of sinners. The middle class and the artisans were the special sj^here of his influence, and the progress of Christian Hfe in that direction is greatly owed to him ; but he was welcomed also in the royal household, and minis- tered to the dying Princess William. And from this time " Father Gossner " was a dear and familiar name, spoken with reverence and afl"ection among high and low; as much honoured in the university as by the simple-minded Christians of his pastorate ; more a part of Berlin than even its Schelling or Neander ; as much an acknowledged power in it as the police-ofiice or the king. yohn Evangelist Gossner. 299 It was now that the work of his Hfe began. He was in his fifty-sixth year ; truly a late starting, but he was singular in everything. God had been educating him ; and if the foundation was tedious and deep, the building was a glorious temple of the Spirit. ^Few men have had such a training : thirty years of conflict without and within ; a continued overthrow of his own plans ; the rending of every attachment ; persecution and applause ; an endless tossing over a stormy sea. No doubt it was needed ; God's children are not tried for nought. He who is the treasury of wisdom will not let the painful lessons of years be thro\vn away ; and if we see a man cut down before the gathering of the fruit, can we pierce within the veil, or can we count the fruit which angels gather with unseen hands ? But Gossner was to have yet thirty years of service ; and when he died, he was like a tree whose branches bend with heavy ripeness to the very ground. Though not congi-egational, the work with which he "vvill always be associated sprang out of his connexion with the Bethlehem Church. Janike, his predecessor, had founded a mission school as early as 1800. Those he educated he transferred to the English and Dutch societies. His students were the first missionaries of the Church jVIissionary Society ; he could count among them afterwards such names as Rhenius, Nicolayson, and Gutzlaff. Some years before his death, an inde- pendent society was formed under the auspices of Neander and others, and which (as the Berlin Mis- 300 Praying and Working. sion) has at present fifteen labourers among the Kor- annas and Caffres in Southern Africa. Gossner's name appears on the committee of this Society in 183 1. But ultra-Lutheran tendencies sprang up within it; ecclesiastical order and scientific training were more regarded than personal piety; and in 1836 Gossner seceded. He never felt an interest in deno- minational matters ; any stress upon the form or idea of a church seemed to him a check upon the spiritual life, an outward thing which ought to be passed by among Christians, and more nearly allied to bondage than to Christ. Of scientific theology he had an instinctive dread, lest it should usurp the place of the theology of the heart. " The scholastics," he said, " never opened my eyes ; if they did not make me sceptical, they left me just where the false philosophy did." And to philosophy of any sort he was not very patient. It represented the human to him ; he wanted only the divine. When Hegel's wTiting-desk was presented to the hospital, he made a kitchen table of it, and pro- fessed it did better service than before. " You would discern no more philosophy in it now," he said, " than a few spots of ink." Nor could he yield to the neces- sity of learning Ovid and Homer in order to preach Matthew and John to the islanders of the South Seas. He was intensely and necessarily practical ; by no means opposed to learning and study, but not able to recognise their place in the mission school, unless as much Latin as would carry one through the yohn Evangelist Gossner. 301 Vulgate, and as much Greek as would make the New Testament readable in the original. It was a needful protest, but it was an exaggeration of the truth. Cceteris paribus, the man of cultivation will make a better missionary than the ploughboy or mechanic. His knowledge of Homer will help him when he has to fight with Siva and Krishnu ; he is able to turn everything to account ; numberless resources are at his command ; he is not limited by the readiness of his mother -vvit, or the honest straightforward dash of his zeal. He may find no immediate application foi learning ; its practical gain is to be sought in the tone and grasp it gives to his mind ; in the stead it stands him at some unforeseen crisis. But it was needful to assert that the engines of human wisdom are powerless against the defences of the devil ; that the poor, un- lettered man may preach Christ more faithfully than any ; that our machinery, however cunning and excel- lent, is often an encumbrance ; that the true teacher of a missionary is the Spirit of God ; that the ever- present power and help of God is the foundation of missionary success. For some time Gossner remained quietly at his pastoral work, confined often for months to his room by severe pain. There, one day, three or four young artisans came to him. They had been turned away from the seminaiy as incapable. They burned, nevertheless, to go out among the heathen ; they sought his counsel and help. He refused them. They besought him again and again. He prayed for 302 Praying and Working. direction, and took them. 'They came— they were now ten or twelve — a few hours every week. " What shall I do with you ?— Where shall I send you V he said, " I don't know ; I can do nothing for you." " Only pray with us/' they replied ; " that can do no harm ; if we can't go, we must even stay. But if it is God's work, and His holy will that we go. He will open the door in His time." He withdrew ashamed and strengthened ; he felt that the mission was begun. They were excellent workmen, and their masters allowed them two or three afternoons in the week free. For the rest, they came every evening when their work was over, and learned what they could. Students and young candidates rallied to his help. To teach an hour in the week for Gossner was an honour. And many of them, smitten with the zeal of these humble working men and the influence of the old man's spirit, went over later to the mission-field. It was a singular picture that the pastorate presented on these winter evenings ; the twelve earnest, patient men in fustian, after their day's work, learning as they could the early Church history, or reading in the Scriptures, or puzzling over Greek syntax with the young, half-wondering student, or hearing recitals of the first missionaries, and the story of old martyrs glowing freshly out of the past, while the " father " himself moved about with a word of deep meaning and counsel to each, or related his own struggles, and poured out the most childlike and true prayers. A singular mission, that began in a yohn Evangelist Gossner, 303 workshop, without money or friends, or any prospect but faith in the Hving God. But now a question rose about the future. Where were they to go % Who was to send them ? Gossner applied to England, and was told that as many men as he could furnish would be sent to the Papuas of New Holland. This difficulty over, another took its place. An ordained missionary must go out with them, and Gossner had none. He sought his usual counsel ; and prayed that God would give him the man he sought. In a few days a young candidate offered himself After Gossner had proved him, he shewed him the place in his room where he had knelt down to ask him from God. In 1838, eleven missionaries set sail for Australia. Next year, a place was found for others in India. A Christian gentleman, possessed of ample means, had travelled to India to evangelise the heathen ; and when his wife died, devoted his entire fortune to mission work. He came twice to Europe for help. The second time Gossner s missionaries were on the eve of embarkation ; they were much talked of, and he determined to visit Berlin and inquire for himself Mr Miiller of Bristol accompanied him. It would be curious to know something of the meeting of two men so different from the rest of the world, and so like in the work of God, and who were both in their way testifying the same truth — that a man can live by faith. All we are told is, that the missionary candi- dates were tested during several weeks, and that, in 304 Praying and Working. July 1838, twelve of them sailed with Mr Start for India. Five followed in 1839, and in 1840 three more. This was the first of Gossner's Indian mission. Mr Start bore the entire cost. The mission is at the junction of the Gondak with the Ganges, in Berar, and in the locality of the annual holy fair. The mis- sion building had served as betting-room, dancing- saloon, and hotel; the large ball-room was made a chapel. The brethren were located through the dis- trict, and streams of blessing flowed out over the dead heathendom. Aftenvards, religious dissensions sprang up; Mr Start's position to the missionaries was not well defined ; some joined the Church missions, some the Baptist ; but, by Christian prudence and forbear- ance, the danger passed away, and the mission stands " as a bright light in the Church, to the rebuke and courage of many." Meanwhile, other missions were undertaken, chiefly supported by himself. 1839 was marked by one to the Tubuai Islands, in the South Seas. In 1840-41, twelve brethren went out to North America to labour among the scattered Germans in the Western States; sixteen afterwards joined them. In 1 841 a station was occupied, under pecuHarly favourable circumstances, near Nagpore, in Central India; but within a year, cholera swept off the six brethren, and the mission was not resumed. In 1842, five brethren established a station in Chatham Island, near New Zealand. In 1844, four joined their earliest predecessors at New South Wales. 1845 will be me- yohn Evangelist Gossner. 305 morable for the establishment of the mission among the Kohls at Chota-Nagpore. Eveiy year, in fact, has its own stoiy to chronicle of missionaries equipped and stations opened, — now it is the Gold Coast, now it is Java or Macassar; at one time under shelter of the Dutch, at another of the English ; the Cape has its turn, and so has New Guinea. Wherever a people was living without God, there Gossner was w^aiting to step in. Little vronder that he marvelled as he wrote — " There are missions with zealous friends, hundreds of thousands of pounds, institutions, auxiliaries, col- lections, subscription lists, and yet they have not done so much as God has wrought through me, a poor, weak shepherd-boy of Bethlehem ! " It is difficult to realise that so many missions were conceived, organised, controlled, and sustained by one man. Nor were they either hasty experiments or struggling failures. If any were relinquished, it was with the same deliberation and prayer by which they were begun; and some have been blessed be- yond all precedent, so that their story is as marvellous as their founders. The clearest testimony to their character ^\dll be found by grouping them together with their varied results up to the present time. ^ The Australian never reaped any fruit of its labour among the aborigines, sharing in this the fate of all similar missions, save the Moravian ; and recently the mis- sionaries, nineteen of whom are there and at Chatham Island, have turned their care mostly to the scattered u 3o6 Praying and VVo'rking. German population. The North American Mission, which also is mostly colonial, is at present supplied by thirty labourers, and from its very beginning has been made a means of great good. The African has had missionaries at the Cape of Good Hope ; twenty missionaries are scattered through Java, Sumatra, Celebes, New Guinea, and elsewhere, in circumstances of the greatest peril and denial, but with less promise. In India there are sixteen, besides seventeen who have joined other societies. Gossner had a prudent and manly horror of reports and statistics as any gauge of success ; he took it, that the work is for the most part hidden, and is not to be annually dragged up to the light, as children do \\\\h their first seeds. One day, an old friend, as they sat together in his arbour, asked him how many his missionaries had baptized, and hinted that it was a matter of curiosity among the brethren at the Pastoral Conference. " So, so," he re- plied, " the gentlemen would like to know. But do not the gentlemen remember a certain king who thought he would number his people, and what a sorry ending it had ]" Yet it may not be out of place to mention that he sent in all 141 missionaries, (including the wives of those who were married, 200,) of whom 15 were regularly ordained ministers,* and 113 are still in active service ; that, at the four stations in Berar, many hundreds have been received into the Church, * With few exceptions, they were students of Halle, and scholars of Professor Tholuck. yohn Evangelist Gossner. 307 while the scholars number many thousands ; and that among the Kohls a work has been going on which equals in romantic interest and wonder any stoiy of modern missions. These Kohls are one of those wild tribes found in many of the mountainous districts of India, of an evi- dently different origin from the surrounding popula- tions, notable for rude and savage ways, a very low and undeveloped reHgion, consisting mostly of the worship of good and evil spirits, and for the contempt with which they are regarded by the Hindus. There seems little doubt that they are primitive inhabitants, pushed up into the mountains by the pressure of foreign inva- sions. Wherever found, whether in the west or east, there are broad, common resemblances between them, and probably the Kohls present most of the character- istics of the race. The district they inhabit has an area of 44,000 square miles, and a population of about four millions, two-thirds of whom are Hindus, and the rest are made up of a number of aboriginal tribes, unlike in language, physiognomy, and character, but allied in worship and traditions. They are the navvies of India : athletic, powerful men ; lazy at home, but capable of hard work abroad ; found on the Indian roads, canals, and railways j in the West Indies, British Guiana, Australia, and the Mauritius. They have no knowledge of a supreme and holy God, no hope of a future life, and but a very slight perception of tlie difference between good and evil. Vices of 3o8 Praying and Working, every kind flourish among them without shame or restraint. Their devil-worship leads them into the cruellest practices, even the secret offering of human sacrifices. They worship him out of fear lest he should destroy them by the wild beasts of the jungle. Their misfortunes are attributed to an insufficient reverence for this evil being. A father will ascribe his child's death to him, and straightway flee far off, leaving his house and all that he has. Cruel in their superstition, they are cruel in their lives ; wild and bloodthirsty and merciless as the tiger. If they have no caste among themselves, each tribe is a caste to all the rest. A dog may lap from the same dish, and they will not throw it away, but quietly eat on, only taking care that they do not come short ; but as soon as a man of another tribe, although it is a Brahmin, uninten- tionally shadows their food, it is cast out with the utmost abhorrence. If they were uneducated in the formidable mysteries of Brahminism, they were found within the last fifty years to have borrowed hundreds of its popular idols, and to worship also trees and stones and the sun. They were devotees to their ani- mal cravings ; and if a man had his stomach satisfied, and the brandy bottle in his hand, he considered him- self in want of nothing. Whole villages were found in ruins; for "an evil spirit has settled in them." "Get up ! be off!" shouted the excited people to the missionaries, as they camped on a little green knoll near the hamlet. "Why?" "That is our devil's yohn Eva7igelist Gossner. 309 place ; you must not inconvenience our devil/' Whr.le villages were sometimes found with a drunken popula- >tion. The people who came to hear the missionaries were drunk. It is not respectable for a man to get dmnk till he has children ; but after that the mission- aries' letters report a fearful amends for this absti- nence. They are fond of music, and especially sing- ing j and have lewd dances, which they practise daily. They are stupid towards all higher things, for they have no sense of beaut}', or morals, or truth. And they are helplessly obstinate. " It is no use speaking to a Kohl : prayer is our great refuge." It was among this tribe, barbarous, cruel, supersti- tious, despised, stupid, that four missionaries settled seventeen years ago, and began forthwith to teach and to preach the gospel of the kingdom. Their instructions were very simple : — " Believe, hope, love, pray, burn, waken the dead! Hold fast by prayer; wrestle like Jacob ! Up, up, my brethren ! the Lord is coming, and to every one he will say. Where hast thou left the souls of these heathen % — with the devil % Oh, swiftly seek these souls, and enter not without them into the presence of the Lord ! " At first they opened a school, and built an orphan house. Some children were slowly sent in, and learned pretty hymns, and sung them sweetly. Some of these children were aftenvards brought into the fold of the Good Shepherd, and died, as the missionary believes, in Christ. The school had its hard struggle, however, for at first the 3IO Praying and Working, fifty naked little things would occasionally hurl round the room with wild shouts and laughter, and end with a cry in full chorus of " Give me food ! give me clothes ! give me a book ! " and the lessons must have been oftener interrupted than profitable. Still, the children were sent, and though there were few if any Kohls among them, it was an actual result, and a work that kept the missionaries' hearts from altogether sinking. But after some time the schools were less hopeful, and the mission prospects continued of the gloomiest. The first house was but built when one of the brethren died. Three arrived soon after, but one of these also died j and up to 1851 the mission had lost five of the brethren and one sister by death. These were heavy personal trials, and trials of another character made them all the more painful. As soon as they had learned the language, the missionaries had begun evangelistic tours through the district. These ap- peared to be without the slightest results to those for whom it was begun. Brahmins and Mohammedans would sometimes collect round the preacher, enter into conversation, and dispute with him, asking for his book. The Kohls remained studiously away, and could by no means be drawn into any interest in reli- gious conversation. This continued for five years. Through private sorrow and disappointed hopes the missionaries had held on. They had never ceased to teach the plain words of God, nor to study how best it might be brought before so rude and careless a yohn Evangelist Gossiier. 311 people. They had not lost their faith in the work God gave them ; they were as urgent in prayer as at the first. Without a visible sign of success, against ordinary rules, against their own misgivings, they have been sustained by the grace of God ; and they had their reward. They were sure that the Word was a good seed ; they were sure that God could prepare the hearts of the Kohls to receive it ; that, lodged there, it would be a living and glorious power. They were sure also of their duty, that it was to do precisely what they were doing, and that the consequences must abide in God's ,hands ; and their duty here corresponded to the promptings of their honest, loving hearts. In 1850 Kohls began to come round the mission tent. They entered upon religious subjects. They began to shew some notion of sin; although they threw their sins over upon the priests, and the priests again upon the Company, as having the broadest shoulders to bear a burden, and with some dim notion, that as the Go- vernment had taken the disposal of their territory, it must also have assumed the responsibility of their conscience. They denied that they worshipped the devil : No, no, they cried, not that ; they meant that they only respected him. In 185 1, the missionaries could report that divine service was well attended, and that if in the course of but six months they had lost three faithful workers, from three to four hundred heathen had been sent them in exchange. " We are now seven years," wrote Brother Batsch, " in this land, 312 Prayi7ig and Working. and since others have followed us almost every year, we have been able to establish three stations, where the Word of the Cror- was preached without interrup- tion. But through these long years it was but trial of our patience and endurance. The Word was received either with mocking and scorn, or with the deadest stupidity and want of concern. Everything seemed to be in vain, and many said the mission was useless. Then the Lord himself kindled a fire before our eyes; and it seized not only single souls but spread from village to village, and from every side the question was borne to us. What shall we do % Ho>v shall we be saved ? . . . Many are now baptized, several are candidates for baptism, others are learning in order to be received on probation. The chapel, or our house, which holds about 125 persons, is not sufficient for the worshippers, and we are compelled to think of building a church." On the 1 8th November 185 1, the foundation-stone of the church was laid with some ceremony, in the presence of many natives and the English residents. It was completed after some years, and is a hand- some Gothic structure, capable of accommodating close upon a thousand people. It was built by men who knew nothing either of architecture or building, and remains a monument, and with every prospect of being a lasting monument, to the perseverance, and readiness, and skill, of Father Gossner's work- men. A lady of the royal family asked one of the John Evangelist Gossner. 3 1 3 native Christians, " How many people have become Christians now? " " Oh," he said, " very many in Benares, Calcutta, Burdwar," &c. " No," she rephed, "how many in Nagpore?" "Very many, and every day there are more." " Have any of our royal family become Christians ? " " Some attend divine service ; but none have yet been baptized." " I know, I know," she added, "that the whole land will be Christian, and we too." Events followed quickly that seemed to shew she was right. In 1856, at the times arranged for bap- tism, it was no longer one or two who came fonvard, but forty, fifty, and as many as seventy-five at once. " What a blessed joy it was to see them," writes one at the time. " Hundreds of Christian Kohls filled the spacious lighted pillared church, and the seventy-five candidates stood up, to praise and confess God before them all; and I thought it was no more a heathen land I was in, but a Christian, and at home." The number of inquirers still continued to increase. They no longer came singly, and, like Nicodemus, by night, but commonly many houses together, and sometimes an entire village, or more than one. The gospel continued to spread ^\^th amazing power, and the few missionaries felt the burden of their labours almost intolerable, under the pressure of so many in- quirers. Just, however, when there was the most life and hope for the future, the rebellion broke out ; the missionaries escaped with some difficulty; and for months the Kohls were left as sheep without a shep- 314 Praying and Workmg, herd. It was a time of intense anxiety ; and so soon as the way became safe, the missionaries returned. They found a sad picture. The stations were in ruins, the books were torn and burnt, the property plundered, and the converts were scattered abroad. Then they came slowly dropping in, each with a tale of heavy sorrow. They had suffered incredible hardships ; had been driven out almost naked into the swamps ; had been tortured with a fiendish barbarity, — stripped of everything they possessed ; and now they came, home- less, wounded, wasted, lame, sickly sufferers, with wounds scarcely healed, with diseases caught in the swamps ; but with the Word of God faster than ever in their hearts. They had not betrayed the name of Jesus, but, by the grace of God, had glorified Him in their hungerings and persecution. One by one they dropped in, and the scattered church was again gath- ered together. Singularly enough, it was found that the number of converts had largely increased in the time of trial. The persecution purified and chastened those whom it overtook ; they acted on others with greater singleness of purpose and more devotion and spirituality. The work of God in this countiy has progressed at even a more rapid speed than before, and there are at present between 800 and 1000 villages where there are Christian families, where there is family and social prayer, and where the elder converts are daily instructing the younger, and preaching the un- searchable riches of Christ John Eva7igelist Gossner. 3 1 5 This is the outhne of a soHtary, often suffering worker, whose labours did not begin till age is bid- ding other men cease.* " One-m-hand," somebody styled him. " It 's quite true," he said, laughing, when it came to his ears ; " and yet old ' One-in-hand ' carries more passengers than your Four." And he was right. This unselfish, unconscious, unpretending clergyman, with his few friends, and quiet ways, and simplicity like a child's, was doing a work at which the world must marvel. Call him Pietist, Methodist, what you will, there is what he did, the patient, brave, honest effort. Brilliant as other works of the centuiy have been, humbly, self-sacrificingly, faithfully as they have been wrought in science and elsewhere, there are few worthy to be placed beside it. And as you look closer it grows all the nobler, it is invested with a kind of grandeur, for his missionary income never exceeded £1000. It is true that he was at no ofiice expense, that, as he merrily said, he was inspector, director, secretaiy, packhorse, all in one. It is true that, as most of the missionaries w^ere artisans, they were able to do something for their own support ; — that brother D did not think it derogatory to mend watches, nor brother G to paint a room — that brother S could turn an honest penny at job-printing, and brother E make Uchihilder as delicately as they do in Berlin itself; — but any one who knows the scanty * He undertook his first mission at sixty-five. 3i6 Praying a7id Working. time the missionary must afford to work like this, the loss of broken hours, the difference in the value of money, will conceive that the help would not be very gre^t. It is further true that many of those sent out have been either in connexion with other missionary societies, or have afterwards joined them. But when it is remembered that, with few exceptions, the outfit and travelling expenses of the missionaries fell upon Gossner, and that there were never less than twenty dependent on him for support, and against that is set his poor £1000 a-year, and that itself not collected in any ordinary and certain way, but as people were moved to give, it will be seen that much remains un- explained, and, indeed, incredible to our common notions. A clear head and a wise heart, energy, per- severance, system, economy, knowledge of character, go a good way, — and he had them in a remarkable degree, — for the true worker must have working gifts. No one will feel that this is a solution ; since, besides the maintenance of the missionaries, — and it is their own testimony that none of them ever came to want, — there were critical periods of the mission history; there were dissensions that might have broken up the stations; there were questions to be decided in the pastor's study that concerned the welfare of God's kingdom in Java and Nagpore ; there was a unity of thought and action to be maintained among a hundred men at the most opposite points, and, perhaps, of the most opposite opinions; an unbroken yohii Evangelist Gossner. 3 1 7 connexion to be kept by letters with every settlement ; the mission paper had to be edited ; the training school at home to be diligently watched ; nay, the very in- come itself was uncertain, for it was left to the private thoughts of Christian brethren. Whose head would not be puzzled, if left to its own wit in such a tangle 1 What nicely-balanced calculations would not be often rudely overturned ? What pecuhar doctrine of chances would cover with a uniform and calculable success the venture of twenty years ? What known human power can determine that when a man receives £20, he will be kept as comfortably as if he had £ioo1 Yet push fonvard such questions, and the world will set busily to answer them. It does not beheve in our day that there is anything which it cannot do ; it must account for all phenomena upon its own principles. It is a monstrously clever world. Steam, and telegraph, and photography, and planets discovered before they are seen, Great Easterns, and St La^vrence Bridges are very fair credentials. But there is a kingdom into which none enter but children, in which the children play with infinite forces, v/here the child's little finger becomes stronger than the giant world ; a wide king- dom, where the world exists only by sufferance ; to which the world's laws and developments are for ever subjected ; in which the world lies like a fool- ish, wilful dream in the solid truth of the day. Gossner had been brought into that kingdom ; these questions were nothing to him : it was enou.p'h 3i8 Prayiizg and Working. that he could kneel down and pray. Standing by his open grave, one said of him, and it was not hyperbole, — " He prayed up the walls of an hospital and the hearts of the nurses ; he prayed mission- stations into being, and missionaries into faith; he prayed open the hearts of the rich, and gold from the most distant lands." And as for his sermons, the power of the words did not lie so much in the thoughts or in the art of the preacher, as in prayer. Prayer was his atmosphere ; he could not live without it. So soon as he came to Berhn, he gathered a few round him for prayer. They continued in prayer while he lived. He could not be present where it was ex- cluded. The Bible Society had determined to open its committee meetings only with silent prayer ; he protested, and the protest shewed how deeply his heart was sunk in the heart of Christ. " A Bible Society that does not begin with prayer is to my mind a syma- goga p?vfa7i:rum. . . I do not despise a short, silent prayer ; but it is too Httle at a Bible Society, and no more than if a nurse said to a child, Make a curtsey, and it made it, and that was all. ... If I w^ent to the meeting and sought prayer, and it was forbidden, I would take my hat and stick and run out as if a mad dog had bitten me. ... If I could raise the dead, I would go to Wittenberg and call Luther out of his grave, and Spener, and Arndt, and Andrea, and bring them to the Bible Society at Berlin, and let them decide." That was the spirit in which he under- Jolm Evangelist Gossner. 3 1 9 took the mission ; that was the guidance by which it was ruled; and whatever letters, or questions, or threatenings, or difficulties, whatever private or public sorrows reached him from any quarter of the mission- field, they were direcdy put before God. "Here I sit," he would say, " in my httle room : I cannot go here and there to an-ange and order everything ; and if I could, who knows if it would be well done? but the Lord is there, who know^s and can do eveiything, and I give it all over to Him, and beg Him to direct it all, and order it after His holy will ; and then my heart is light and joyful, and I believe and trust Him that He will cany it all nobly out." He dedicated to this intercourse the latter part of his hfe ; retiring not only from pubhc interests, but from his acquaintances, and incurring the charge of being unsocial and unlov- ing. And he was so guided by the hand of God, and his prayers were so answered, that the universal feel- ing of the missionaries at his death was, " Who will now lift up his hands to Heaven in prayer for the scattered children 1" And so, almost in prayer, he died j not, however, for the missions alone. When he came to Eerhn there were no hospitals, there was no visiting of the poor, no inner hfe stirring in the Church. Germany was just recovering from the paralysis of dead, coarse unbehef, and the materialism of a veiy false philosophy. For years after he v/as a rallying-point for the scattered, struggling, feeble, and despised piety. Home missions occupied his mind. 320 Praying and Working. He established a society for visiting the sick. It was confined to men. The women begged him to form and direct one for them. The necessity of an hospital soon became manifest; and in 1837 a house for forty was erected, and in 1838 enlarged for twenty, more. Thirteen Deaconesses remain in the hospital ; as need arises, some are draughted elsewhere, and new candi- dates supply their place. The training is intensely Christian ; the organisation just as simple. Many of the Deaconesses have gone to heathen mission-stations. In all, 160 have passed through it, and 7000 sick been received. The Elizabeth Hospital was a favourite haunt of Gossner's. As in the mission, he was fac- totum — chaplain, director, friend. Early on the Sun- day morning his figure might be seen rapidly advanc- ing up Potsdam Street till it vanished in the hospital doonvay. He was on his way to hold a brief lecture for the inmates able to attend. The room used as a chapel would hold about fifty ; it was always crowded. He sat in a low pulpit at the upper end, a genial- looking, lively old man. His white hair peeped out behind under the httle black skull-cap ; his eyes still shot keen, searching glances from below the massive, close-knit brows ; he had the high cheek- bones of the country, as high as Luther's, but in proportion to a longer face ; a sweet gentle expres- sion played about his mouth ; the features altogether were prominent, seamed with deep lines, almost rugged. His exposition was simple, naive, personal yohn Evangelist Gossner. 321 The homeliest Bavarian stones would be dropped in to illustrate it. The Scripture was pictured from the life of the present day. If he found the Bap- tist preaching in the wilderness of Judah, he could not help bringing him into the Thier-Garten of Berlin, and drawing the doctors of the law and the soldiers and students out to him through the Bran- denburg gate. Gleams of the playfullest humour lighted up the most commonplace truths and views ; and, after an hour of close personal conversation, he would cease. His infant-schools occupied some of his time ; the Sunday evenings were given up to visits from young men, many of whom could date their faitb and peace from the words he spoke in those quiet hours. He wrote much to the very last. At seventy he learned English, and translated some ot Ryle's tracts when he was upwards of eighty. His writings, at present numbering forty-six, occupy a separate Book and Tract Society; and many volumes of posthumous papers are announced. Those already published possess an unusual popularity, some having run through annual or semi-annual editions for many years. Up till the spring of 1858, he corrected proofs and continued his qorrespondence. The summer pre- vious he was still able to train his vines. By the end of March he had fought the good fight and finished the course — a young old man of eighty-five. He had seen the stately hospital Bethanien spring up in the Koppnicker fields ; he had seen new churches, 322 Praying and Workings new preachers, almost a new, and that the very old- est, gospel ; he had seen the network of the Inner Mission covering the great cities, religious feeling penetrating everywhere, throwing up its growths on the surface of every society. He had lived through the great religious crises of modern times — through Illuminism, Rationalism, Ecclesiasticism — through the throes of the new life and the growth of the re- baptized Church — through a rare epoch of thought, and science, and progress. They had touched him in turn, but only as the ripple of distant storms runs round a solitary rock. His life was single — the hfe of a heart, and went out from its own centre — the life of an Abraham, going out and knowing not whiflier, following the word of the Lord — the life of faith, from which the events of the vrorld for the time being fall back into shadow, supreme in its own interest and divine companionship. By faith he preached Christ crucified in the Church of Rome ; by faith he resigned his cure in Dirlewang rather than give up one jot of the truth ; by faith he Hved at Munich, and spread the good news of the kingdom; by faith he went to Peters- burg j by faith he was led to Berlin ; by faith he sus- tained the hearts of one hundred missionaries, and bore the iDurden of twenty stations, and builded an hospital, and wrote Jesus upon thousands of lives. By faith — by prayer — that is his teaching. He was long in the school, learning and unlearning ; it was the time of an ordinary life. But he left it ready for his yohn Evangelist Goss7ier. 323 calling ; and such a teacher never dies. The tedious- ness of pupilage is no waste when the workman need- eth not to be ashamed. From humble little Hausea and the unnoticed struggles of a country priest, to the Father Gossner oi a reverent religious Germany; from Feneberg's little parlour and the simple talk of the parish, to the furthest ends of heathendom, and a name that is lovingly spoken on every continent of the globe, is a mighty stride. Neither brilliant talents nor the tide of fortune helped him. Whoever seeks tlic way to it, will find it to . be that plain, old-fashioned one of faith and prayer. LOUIS HARMS * I. AT HOME. ' I '^HE railway from Hanover to Harburg runs through a dull, uniform level, where one look from the carriage window reveals the same scenery as another — fields of thin grass, clumps of trees, a sandy soil ploughed lightly in narrow furrows, and occasional tracts of moor or do"\\Ti. However, railway judgment is here manifestly in error ; for many a choice little bit of landscape Hes a few miles off on either side, and about tvvo hours from Hanover, there is a wide range of country known as the Liineburger Heath, with a peculiar ^^ild beauty of its o^\^l, and proverbial for the strong home-love of its peasantry. It is Hke neither heath, nor moor, nor down of ours. Some- times the rich purple bloom rolls away, in long swelhng lines, unbroken for miles ; sometimes the path leads * See He7%annsburger Missionsblatt, 1854-61 ; Predigten von Pastor Harms, 1861. 326 Praying a7id Working. through a wood, and then again the wood opens to let in reaches of bright green meadow ; or the heath sinks suddenly down into a quiet valley, with meadows and patches of timber, and a clear stream winding through it, or it stops at the edge of a rocky path, or the ground rises rapidly up to an eminence crowned with huge and knotty oaks, and then the heath stretches on again, fold after fold of purple glorious with light and shadow from the broad sky above. There is not a sound, nor a bird on the wing ; yet it is not lonely, but soleipn and still, with the sense of an almost personal companionship, and a touch of that mystery and joy of nature that the broad, free, silent spaces bring. The country is thinly peopled, and almost entirely by small yeomen and peasants. They live, for the most part, in little scattered hamlets that are perched upon the hilly parts, and clustered round with trees, and overlook the tillage grounds which extend to some distance from them into the heath. Sometimes, instead of these clearings, on which the stranger stumbles with much suddenness and surprise, and which are often exceedingly picturesque in situa- tion, there is a little village lying down in the valley, and' with woods, and water, and meadows so charm- ingly disposed about it, as to make one think it had been done for effect. The people are as character- istic as their country. They retain more of the old Saxon element than perhaps will be foujjj^ elsewhere in Germany; they have a sturdy, independent, self- Louis Harms. 327 reliant spirit, a very marked family, as distinguished from the common continental social life, much of the primitive English strength and honesty, and a local attachment as powerful as that of a Highlander or a Swiss. One of these villages, called Hermannsburg, may be taken for a picture of the rest. It consists of an irregular street of pretty cottages, divided into two parts by the little river Oerze, well sheltered by noble trees, and crowned by the wooden spire of its church. The cottages lie far apart, with their gardens betw^een, little by-paths running from one to the other. Every house has the galloping horse of the old Saxons, or at least his head, perched upon the gable j within there is roominess and comfort, and that indefinable homeli- ness which is so rare out of Great Britain. In this particular village there are none of those miserable hovels at the outskirts that offend the eye elsewhere, there are no beggars, no rough or vagrant loungers about the streets, nor any ragged children toddling out of sunk doorways to hunt up the strangers. So far, however, it is exceptional, and owes its immunity to a more powerful agency than local character. About twelve years ago a new clerg)^man came to the parish, and it is since then that people have begun to talk of the Liineburger Heath. He was a Hermannsburger himself, and the son of its former pastor. Bred upon the Heath, it seems to have exerted the same influence over him as over the rest, 328 Praying and Working, and his character has all the freedom, sturdiness, and powrr of self-reliance of the district, as well as other traits as marked. When a boy, his great plea- sure was to roam over the downs, and through the deep woods, Tacitus in hand, and to read his v'v-rA descriptions of the old German tribes and their wl^,. s, recalling about him on the spot every feature of the past. Many stories are told of his independence when a student, and even as a candidat, and the difficulty he sometimes got into with professors and ecclesiastical boards, by his bold and to him necessary self-assertion. He was a hard reader, and an honest and steady thinker, — a man to succeed and be held in esteem, and to whom university life must have been dear; but, as he says, "I am a Liineburger, body and soul, and there is not a country in the world that I would put before the Liineburger Heath; and next to being a Liineburger, I am a Hermanns- burger, and I hold that Hermannsburg is the best and prettiest village in the Heath." And so before his father died, he came to assist him in his cure. It was only a year or two, when, in 1848, he was left alone. From this time he entered with all his heart on the singular labours which have occupied him incessantly ever since. He would have made an admirable antiquarian English rector. A book-worm by nature, his delight is to root out the moth-eaten parchments of some village church, and pore through them for a hint of the old doings in his pansh, Lotizs Harms. 329 or any parish in the district. He is indefatigable in his exhumations, and there is now scarcely a spot with which he has not connected some, story out of the ninth and tenth centuries. He would also have made, like most antiquaries, an excellent church- man. His church is as dear and sacred to him as his mother; he lives for its order and purity; he loves to restore its ancient old usages, such as the ciirrejtde, or singing-boys, who are trained in the village school and go round the neighbourhood chanting Christmas and Easter hymns at every house. A scholar and a man of courtesy and refinement, he also considers himself one of the people, never raises himself above their capacity, speaks with them, and even preaches in their own dialect, and lives among them as a brother or a father. He is an original thinker and an eloquent speaker ; eloquent by saying the true thing in the right phrases, and with the proper feeling ; not by words, but by simplicity and truth. And he has a healthy and overflowing humour that is quite irre- pressible, delightfully quaint, iia'ive, and shrewd. I mention these traits, because they help one to a better understanding of his work, of the self-sacrifice and qualifications that it required. But that which alone qualified him for it in any fit sense Avas his exceeding faith in God. The nearness and perfect confidence of his relation to God ; the character of his spiritual intercourse, which is a perpetual and most deep communion with Jesus ; the profoundness 330 Praying and Working, and humility of his spiritual knowledge; the utter earnestness and consecration of the man, are the real strength and beauty of his life. Like any other child of God, he has become a power in the world by giving himself up to the power of God ; for in pro- portion as Christ is in the beUever, so is He the power of God in him. He found the village and the neighbourhood very different from what they are now. There was always considerable orthodoxy in Hanover, but it was ortho- doxy of the Church, and not of the Spirit : it was quite as powerless for good, and quite as hurtful to the people, as the rationalism which was dominant else- where. It was only one phase of the common death that had overspread Germany. When the ministry is frigid and careless, it is natural that the people will be frigid and careless, and live without much thought but how to make the best of the world that lies next them. There is little Christian life in Hanover even yet ; it may be imagined what it was twenty years ago. Like a true pastor, Mr Harms recognised that his first duty lay within his own parish, and it was there he sought for Christian refonn. Two disadvantages told against him. That it was his native parish is not so great a hindrance in Germany as it is regarded elsewhere; pastorates that remain in the family as many as four or five generations are not uncommon, and are re- garded as strengthening the affections and respect of the people. But 1848 was a time of storm and con- Lotus Harms, 331 fuiion, vvhen even in this country men's minds were disturbed, and wlien outward circumstances might be supposed to take the place of everything else. He did not delay for that. In prayer, in preaching, in visiting, in example, he laboured for this end ; and the end he has reached is that Hermannsburg is now a Christian parish, the like of which is probably not to be found the world over. There is not a house in the village where there is not regular family worship morning and evening; there is no one absent from church unless by sickness. The population is small, and yet there are 11,000 communicants in the year; so that, with veiy rare exceptions, every adult must be a communicant, and every communicant be a fre- quent participator. The services in the week are as well attended as on the Lord's Day. The labourers have prayer in the fields ; instead of country ballads — and we know in this country what they are — the ploughboy or the weeding-girl is singing one of the grand old hymns ; the people are like one Christian family, and their influence and conversation have already acted on the surrounding districts. Their houses are neater, drunkenness is unknov/n; so, it has been already mentioned, is poverty. They are found to be kind-hearted, with few quarrels, good farmers, and good peasants. Whatever formalism may grow up among them, — and where there is so general a public opinion, the temptation to formalism is great, — he is the first to detect and expose it ; and a proof will 332 Praying and Working. be mentioned presently that the change produced is a healthy one, founded on the personal change of the heart by the Spirit of God. It would be Avrong to put these results forward as if they spmng from the mere pastoral work. It was a powerful agent, and so was the entire individuality of the pastor ; but Mr Harms would be the first to deny that they are his work, or that they could be the work of any but that Divine "Worker who divideth to every man severally as He will ; and if he traced them to one thing more than another, I believe it would be to call them an answer to prayer. While the people were rejoicing in their spiritual life, a mission to the heathen was suggested. It was a time of strong faith and self-sacrifice, and the sug- gestion was adopted. They would go out themselves as missionaries, wherever it might please God to shew them the greatest need. This was in 1849. Twelve persons offered ; a house was set apart for their resi- dence and training, and a brother of Mr Harms, also a clergyman, took charge of it. The course of in- struction extended over four years, and embraced — Introduction to both Testaments, Exegesis, Dogmatics, Histoiy of the Church, History of Doctrines, History of Missions, Homiletics, and Catechetics, — a sufficiently formidable course, as will be admitted, to simple peasant men ; and yet it included more, for there was a daily course of work through which they went. This was partly, as they were told, "for your bodily Louis Harms. 333 health, partly that you may, to some extent, earn your own bread, and partly that you may remain humble, and be no more ashamed of your work than Peter was of his fishing, or Paul of his tent-making." And as for the spirit in which they were to study, a sentence from Harms's address is veiy clear : — " Be dili- gent ; but also remember Luther's saying. Well-prayed is more than half-learned. Therefore pray diligently. I do not mean your common prayer alone, but pray diligently in your own room, daily, daily, for the Holy Spirit." Men who came fonvard out of living faith, and were met by a spirit so devout and practical as this, were likely to be good missionaries. There was one point to be settled further, and that was their destination. The east coast of Africa was fixed on, and then the tribes of the Gallas, lying north-west of the Zanzibar. The choice seems to have been more enthusiastic than prudent. These Gallas were only known as the terror of the whole east coast ; a strong, hardy, savage race, of whom one of themselves said, " We Gallas are men, it is true, but we are not human ;" they were robbers and murderers by profes- sion ; they were difficult of access ; a missionaiy with them was completely isolated j but no one had ever tried them before, and this somewhat Quixotic reason outweighed ever}'thing. At all events the point was a test of Christian devotedness ; and it is not unreason- able to suppose that we have few parishes where twelve men would have come forward under the circumstances. 334 Praying and Working, And here, before following out the stoiy, it is well to have a distinct impression of the circumstances. A poor country clergyman, in a remote district, with a con- gregation almost entirely composed of peasants, pro- poses that as a congregation it shall send out mission- aries to the heathen. The missionaries, as is natural, must be of their own body, peasants like the rest. As many as twelve come forward, and the clergyman, in the name of the congregation, and without any means, accepts the entire burden of training, sending, and supporting these men. Has anything Uke that been seen since the days when the Church of Antioch sent out her Barnabas and Saul % A year or two had slipped past in preparation and in regular parish w^ork, when some young sailors of the German fleet sought admission to the Hermanns- burg emigration. They were recent converts, and in their zeal proposed to found a colony near Boney, in Western Africa, and by Christian influences assist in putting do^vn the slave-trade. Christian mission- aries could superintend them, but what society w^ould furnish these? They sought for guidance in this matter, and were directed to Harms by the Young Men's Society of Bremen, and laid their plans before him. They declared it was all one on which coast they settled ; and that they were ready, as he wished, to stay for some months under his eye. An entirely new element was thus introduced, and has since de- termined the character of the mission — colonisation. Lottis Harms. 335 Peasants who had no missionary gifts pleaded to be taken out as settlers. Out of sixty who offered, eight were chosen. The sailors settled down to their work, and the scheme at once assumed a magnitude that had not been contemplated. However, these sailors gradually melted away under the tediousness of the work and the length of the probation, until only t^vo were left. This was a discouraging beginmng, and was met ^vith a manly quiet and faith. "Without these sailors," wrote Harms, "we would never have been colonists; for we honest, but somewhat stupid Heath people would never have dreamt of sending any but real missionaries." And now came a new trouble. How were all these persons to be sent out^ Where would the money come fromi "Then I knocked diligently on the dear God in prayer; and since the pra)dng man dare not sit with his hands m his lap, I sought among the shipping agents, but came no speed; and I turned to Bishop Gobat in Jeru- salem, but had no answer; and then I mote to the missionary Krapf in Mombaz, but the letter was lost. Then one of the sailors who remained said, 'Why not build a ship, and you can send out as many and as ofcen as you will V The proposal was good : but, the money 1 That was a time of great conflict, and I wrestled with God. For no one encouraged me, but the reverse ; and even the truest friends and brethren hinted that I was not quite in my senses. When Duke George of Saxony lay on his deathbed, and was yet in 336 Praying and Working. doubt to whom he should flee with his soul, whether to the Lord Christ and His dear merits, or to the Pope and his good works, there spoke a trusty courtier to him : ' Your Grace, straightfoi-ward maJzes the best rimner' That word had lain fast in my soul. I had knocked at men's doors, and found them shut ; and yet the plan was manifestly good and for the gloiy of God. What was to be done ? Straightforward makes the best rwuier. I prayed fervently to the Lord, laid the matter in His hand, and as I rose up at midnight from my knees I said, with a voice that almost startled me in the quiet room, Forward Jiow, in God's name I From that moment there never came a thought of doubt into my mind." No one will regret so long an extract, for the clear glimpse it gives into a soul so pure, and transparent, and faithful. Moreover, it is the picture of one of those crises which leave the distinctest mark upon the future of our lives. His purpose now became his life-purpose, to be carried out with all the intensity of his heart and all the in- flexibility of his will ; and the way to it, once revealed tlirough struggle, was never after to be lost. Arrangements were at once made for the building of a brig at Harburg ; it was well and quickly done, and there was only one misliap, which in the end proved harmless — it cost more than 2000 crowns above, the estimate. With a landsman's ignorance Harms had not recognised the difference bet^yeen copper-fastened and copper-sheathed until the little Lottis Harms. 337 item in the bill brought it prominently before him. But all passed off well ; and one bright autumn day a special train carried the clerg)'man and some hundreds of his parishioners to Harburg, where they found that the shipping was dressed with flags in honour of the new vessel; and having held a simple service on board, they dedicated the Candace to its work of carr3dng the gospel to the Ethiopians. At Hermannsburg there was a ceaseless industry. Smiths, tailors, carpenters, shoemakers, coopers, were preparing for their ship. A water-butt or a suit of clothes were not to be had at any price. The women and girls knitted ^vith a rapidity that was marvellous to look upon. The farmers came in with loads of buck-wheat and rye. The orchards were stripped. Pigs and hens accumulated to the proportions of an agricultural show. The very heath was bared for besoms. Nor did a Christmas tree fail, but one was carefully planted in a huge tub to be in readiness against crossing the line. Then the mission pupils had to pass their examination before being or- dained by the Consistory. There were only eight now, for two had died, and two had proved unworthy — a scandal which has never been reproduced ; those that were left passed with credit and compliments from the dignified Board of Examiners. The colonists had to be got ready. They all knew something of agriculture, but by more definite profession they were : two smiths, a tailor, a butcher, a dyer, and three labourers. The captain was chosen and the crew ; the cargo was on .50 8 Praying and Wo7^kmg. board ; and at last the leaving-time came. A service was held in the church; people poured in from the neighbourhood, and thronged outside ; the younger Harms preached a farewell semion, and then the six- teen stood up together and sang as their parting hymn, Einfeste Burg ist tpiser Gott. Leave-taking^ like every- thing else in Hermannsburg, is peculiar. But it was a pious thought to part with such a song. There is no music so rousing and sublime as that masterpiece of Luther, sung with tlie proper four parts, and at firm marching step ; it is a very hero-psalm ; and there is something noble in those humble men setting their faces towards the savages in Africa and flinging back their lofty music out of brave, composed hearts. The next day they went to Hamburg, and, on the 28th October 1853, the anchor was lifted, and the Candace floated down to Cuxhaven. One or two things must not be omitted, and the less as they belong to every embarkation alike. There is the pretty sight of the long train of waggons winding through the pleasant street of Hermannsburg in the early morning, and bearing off all the good things the good people have packed up, while the villagers keep pace for a little over the heath singing their favourite hymns. At Hamburg there is the service on board, a novelty that took the irreligious folk of that city by surprise when they first marked the line of country folk filing through their streets and making for the harbour, and the pastor at their head. The deck is Louis Harms. 339 crowded, the rigging and bulwarks of the neighbouring vessels are well filled ; the quay porters and other loungers look on in w^onder ; the captain and sailors are gathered round a table on the quarter-deck, and a regular open-air ser\dce is begun, and hitherto under fine weather. The sermon is thoroughly to the pur- pose, and in the affectionateness and plainness of its exhortations and warnings, in the practical turn of every doctrine, in the solemnity of its charge, it carries the hearers back to apostolic times. The sailors, the officers, the colonists, the missionaries, each receive some needed and homely truths for themselves. Two rules are expressly insisted on — the reading of the Word of God and prayer. "I beg you with my whole heart that every morning you will pray, you have such high reason to thank the Lord who kept you through the night, who can keep and strengthen and bless you through the day. And eveiy evening pray. You would be the most unthankful of men if you did not thank the Lord for all the benefits which He has shewed you. And you must pray every even- ing for the forgiveness of sins, for there is not a day without sin, and where there is no forgiveness there is no blessing. Begin all your work with prayer ; and when the storm-wind rises, pray; and v/hen the bil- lows rave round the ship, pray ; and when sin comes, pray ; and when the devil tempts you, pray. So long as you pray, it will go vrell with you, body and soul." Through the voyage regular ser^nces are maintained. 340 Praying and Working, twice upon the Lord's Day, and these though the cap- tain and crew should be alone. There is also a weekly service, and every morning and evening they meet together for a simpler worship as the members of one household. The children are taught, and the school is opened before they have left the river; study is diligently continued ; the tradesmen ply their crafts ; and the inner life of that trim brig, the Candace., is so pleasant to look upon that I cannot forbear quoting from a letter wTitten on a later voyage. The writer had been a soldier, and is now a preacher to the heathen ; and one day shortly before Christmas he sought a quiet spot where he might con over his Christmas sermon. But "in the forepart the sailors and some of the brethren were working at their clothes, the carpenter was hammering at his boards, and the cook was fussing through the cuddy. In one of the boats sat Prytz, with the children about him, and gave them lessons in counting. Some, brethren were read- ing, and others busy at their sermons, between the boats and the cabin the women sat v.dth their knitting and sewing, some of the men with books, others smok- ing their pipes. The cabin-boys were busy in the cabin ; but 1 thought there would be a free place about the stern. Alas ! on one side sat the tailor, winking at the sea with both his arms, and on the other, Schulenburg was teaching the elder children English. At last I went up on the cabin roof and leant against the railing, but I was hardly there till ,07ns Harms. 341 the mate sat down beside me, and began a conversa- tion. It was hopeless, so I sought out some work hke the rest, and put the sermon off to a better opportunity." Then came Christmas. The fir-tree proved a failure, and had to be thrown out. But they made up a sub- stitute ; one had waxlights, another apples, others nuts, gingerbread, toys, Bible pictures, presents ; eveiything had been provided and put away in special chests marked for Weihnacht. They had their singing and great blowing of trumpets out over the Atlantic, and kept the first day and the second as faithfully ' as if they had been at home. Then at last after eighty days they reached Cape Town, and presently sailed round to Natal, and went in search of their long-looked-for Gallas. They had been well furnished with papers. The Hanoverian minister in London had procured them letters from the Duke of Newcastle. The Church Missionary Society furnished them with a warm intro- duction to Krapf in Rahba Mopia, and Major Hamer-' ton in Zanzibar. They carried letters with them from Dr Barth of the Cahver Mission. They had their church constitution clearly written out. And there we may leave them for the present, coasting up the strange sea. beyond INIadagascar. When the hurry of departure was over, and the parish life returned into its old channel, it felt some- what dull. The first brood had gone, and the nests were empty, as Harms says. The old places were vacant, the children missed their teachers, and the 342 Priyiiig and Working. peasants looked in vain for the kindly men who walked across the moor to read the Bible in their cottages. This did not last long. Three weeks were spent in putting things to rights, and by that time twelve new candidates were waiting to enter the house. There were two tailors, four carpenters, and six yeomen or peasants ; and one of them had a his- tory of his own, which has so connected itself with the progress of the mission, and is so intelligible a sign of the place, that it cannot be omitted. In the first days of his conversion, about eight years before, one Behrens had a very eager wish to go over to the heathen. Harms dissuaded him, for he was an eldest son and heir to the family farm ; and when his desire grew only stronger, he counselled him to ask permission of his parents, and not to leave without their blessing. They would not part with him, and he submitted. It was not long till his father lay dying, and, confessing his fear that he had sinned in restraining his son, begged of the minister to see that if the like desire should again spring up in his family it should not be hindered. Behrens, however, having entered into possession, conceived that he had no right to leave this new calling, and repressed the Vvush, which was still strong in him. It would not be repressed ; and when he talked it over with his wife, he found that she was of the same mind. While he was undecided, his only son died, and his ties being now broken, he resisted no longer, but presented him- Louis Har7ns. 343 self at the Mission-house. He was warned of the im- portance of the step, and of the difficulty of his posi- tion, that he could no longer be considered as a man of property, but simply a scholar Hke the rest. He was prepared for that, and for much more. He came with his property in his hand, to make it over to the service of God. It astonished him to find that it was not received with the same readiness; that, instead, he was entreated to consider his duties to his mother. She, when asked, gave him full permission, and there ^^*as now no plea for refusing so self-denying a gift. Harms still insisted, to Behrens' continued surprise, on one condition, that if either he or his children v.'ished at any time to retire from Africa and their connexion with the Mission, a sum of money should be paid them equivalent to the value of the farm. On this condition the transference was made, and the Mission became possessed of a house and garden, meadow land, arable land, and bog, which bore henceforth the name of the Mission Farm, and, by skilful labour and reclamation of the waste ground, Vv'ould suffice for the sustenance of the missionaries at home. It is not wonderful that a congregation which produced such men as Behrens should be full of holy life, or that a minister who shewed himself so honest and sensible in the most delicate relations with his people, should be loved and honoured by them as their father. It was about this time that the Hcrviannsbiirs: Mis- 344 Praying and Working. sionary Magazine^ was begun, as a means of com- municating missionary intelligence from the African colonists to the people, to the surrounding districts, and to some, more distant friends of the undertaking. It .is unique in missionary literature as well by its form, as by the circumstances under which it ap- peared. The quaintness of the beginning is very original : — " When it is said that we shall publish a . Missionary Magazine, it is not meant to be a kind of royal speech, we by the grace of God, and yet there is only one; nor, as our writers say, as if they had learned it from the kings, ive have been informed, in 0117' opinion, and the man is speaking all the while of himself Our tve means literally we, my brother and me, for he will help me. And now I think I hear many a sigh, and words like these — So many missionary magazines already, and here is another I what folly 1 Dear friend, believe me, if you sigh once over this new magazine, I sigh ten times. For you need only read it, or if you will not do that, lay it aside; or if you have ordered it, countermand it, and all your trouble and sighing are at an end. But I must write it, every month a new one, although I am burdened with w^ork enough already. Believe me, I would much rather let the whole matter drop if I dare. You will say, Why dare you not % My answer is, the love of Christ constraineth me. Ever since our Mission was established I have been besought to publish * Henna nil sburprer Missionsblaii. Louis Harms. 345 a missionary paper, and"! shook off" these petitions as one might shake the rain-drops off a wet cloak. But when you shake and shake, and it only rains the harder, you are presently wet through. And so, that the rain may cease, I publish the magazine. And in truth I would have no love for the Lord Christ, and for the people who ask it of me, if I hesitated longer. So then, in our God's name, let it be begmi, and may our faithful Lord say thereto. Yea, and amen ; and grant new strength for the nevv' work ! " This was in 1854, and since then it has appeared regularly, month by month. It is marked with all the individuality of the editor. Each number begins with a prayer in very simple form, but out of the depths of a heart divinely taught. The rest is filled with extracts from the mis- sionaries' letters when they come ; and when they fail, v.ith narratives of the INIission progress at home, of the work of God in the congregation ; sometimes with a ser- mon ; or perhaps one of those stories out of the olden time vvdiich have been the fruit of much labour of the eyes and endurance of dust, up in the very top of some rude church upon the heath. There is no formality about it. A father might address his children, or a Christian speak frankly over his position with a friend, just as the magazine is written. It is thoroughly natu- ral and personal, and with the air of one v/ho assumes an interest among his audience in all the details of his vrork. And to those who turn away from the statisti- cal hardness, the manifest effort to be interesting, the 34^ Praying and Working. want of connexion, the official atmosphere, of many of our own missionary papers, (those ™tten for chil- dren being often the best, for adults, because less for- mal,) it is a joyful and unexpected rehef to meet with anything so fresh and graphic and easy, which puts you so completely in connexion with what is doing that you feel the warmth of a personal interest, and sends you into the world with stronger faith and bet- ter thoughts, energy, and love. Something must be set down to the peculiarity of the entire Mission, to the intimacy of relation betv/een Harms and the mis- sionaries, which gives their letters, and his comments, the unreserved and charming minuteness of detail that would belong to the correspondence of a family circle; something also to the true romance, if the word may be used in a Christian sense, of the whole undertak- ing ; but much more than this is the higher region in which the narrative moves, the living faith of the nar- rators, so that the reader has not only information of the kingdom of God, but feels its motive-power. This seems to be the key to the otherwise puzzling fact of the rapid and, for Germany, marvellous success of the paper.-' It was begun in obscurity among peasants, * Its circulation in 1S54 was 2500; in 1857, 10,000; in 1858, 13,000; in 1859, 14,000. The first year is already in the fourth, and the second in the third editions. Now, the circulation of the Kolnische Zcihtng, the Times of North Gei-many, is only 14,000 ; and of the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeihmg, the Times of South Germany, only 10,000. And if the same test is applied to the religious papers, Hengstenberg's journal in Berlin had Louis Harms, 347 and in that part of the Continent where there is httle spiritual Hfe. It has now become a source of income for the Mission, and in i860 brought in more than 2000 crowns' profit, though it costs less than a penny a number. It was not long established till it suggested the necessity of a Hermannsburg printing-press. It was desirable that the mission- aries should learn t^-pe-setting, and other mysteries of the printing art, so that they might be able to supply books aftenvards to the heathen in their own tongues. Many Bibles, Catechisms, and Hymn-books were needed ; and Catechisms and Hymn-books that had not been tampered with by the Rationahsts were rare. There was, besides, great inconvenience, often delay, in having the paper printed in the distant tovvn. So now the village prints its own history to all the world, and the printing-press never rests. In the second year of the Herma7inshurger Missions- hlatt it was obliged to chronicle the death of a young Nonvegian in the mission-house. He was one of the last twelve, and the favourite with his companions ; but his wish to be a missionary was cut short by con- sumption. "God has greatly blessed us this year,'' Harms wrote in September. - " Above all. He has blessed us with afilictionr. Christoffersen's death, bitter as it was for us, has been a rich, and perhaps only 1500 subscribers in its palmy days; the well-known paper of the Society at Basel reckons 2500; and Dr Earth's excellent Calwer Magazine only 10,000. 34^ Praying and Working, the richest blessmg for all." His notion of blessing would seem whimsical and contradictory to most. "The first joyful tidings I have to-day," he says at another time, "are of the happy 'death of our dear' vSarah." In the second year also the Candace re- turned. Sinister reports had been spread by the Hamburg papers. It was said the Mission ship was lost ; that it was worthless and worm-eaten ; that it would never sail back into the Elbe. These reports, from the highest commercial authorities, were not hidden from the people ; but they were bid to wait in faith for more certain intelligence. When the ship returned, not even the average repairs, after so long a voyage, were necessaiy. As no mission work would be undertaken before the next year, it was prudently resolved to ship a cargo for Vera Cruz, and thus help to pay the expenses of the crew; and, in the spring of 1856, the preparations for a new African voyage were completed. Four brides were sent out to as many of the missionaries, nor were bridal wreaths forgotten in the great chests. A tailor, a shoemaker, a smith, a tanner, and a wheeh\Tight went out as colonists, the latter with his wife and five sons. There were the usual busy days, and the quiet farewells in the church, the service on tJie quarter-deck, and then the dropping do^vn the river, the last letter from Gux- haven, and the long sea over which, in storm and calm, the daily prayer followed them from their home, and guided them to the shore. Louis Harms. 349 In 1857, the Mission sustained a severe loss in the removal of Theodore Harms, hitherto the superintend- ent of the mission-house, to the pastorate of Miiden. But the appointment of a successor, who has proved as faithful, gifted, and devoted, was no mean gain. Harms"s account of him is this : "A true, simple, able man, just such as we need, not of lofty v/ords nor lofty nature, although, by the body, he belongs to the high people of this world; one who knows how to deal with plain peasant folk, and, as you may believe, heartily devoted to our dear Church." The ordination of the twelve missionaries by the Consistory of Han- over quickly followed. The King and Queen, with their children, were present ; the ministers of the tov/n ail took part ; the next day they were sent for to the palace, where the King entered freely into conversation with each of them, delighted them by the interest he took, and assured them that they vv'ould be remembered by himself and his family in prayer. In the autumn of this year the Candace was ready for another mission-journey, and was so crowded that the captain and the shipping agent were in despair. No less than forty-four persons left the old Hermanns- burg for the new, twelve of them missionaries, four- teen colonists, and again four brides, the rest being women and children. By their calling, the colonists were : two tailors, two weavers, tv/o ropemakers, a saddler, a turner, a joiner, a carpenter, a wheelwright, a smith, a shepherd, and a sailor,- -variety enough to 350 Praying and Working. found another Rome, though, if the legend tell truth, a vastly more honest and useful variety. While these vrere writing merrily from the mouth of the Elbe about their necessary closeness of contact and unity of con- duct, the old house that they had left was filled in ever}^ corner by one-and-twenty young men, who had taken possession of it for the next course of training/"' As the mission-house had not been planned for so large a number, and as others came till there were twenty-four, additions were made, and at present it is capable of accommodating as many, though by no means after English notions of comfort, as the Church Missionaiy Training School at Islington. Such work as this, and growing so rapidly under his hands, might seem sufi'icient to most people ; but exceptional persons are found who refuse to be bound by any well-understood rule of worldly prudence, and from whom the wisest sayings about too many irons in the fire, and the like, fall off harmless. There is a vitality of faith that quickens a man's whole moral and intellectual being, by virtue of which his powers are strung to a higher tension, and bear a greater strain. It would be absurd to suppose that a principle of such energy could be introduced, and act entirely apart. * "I will tell you who they are," says Hanns ; and he men- tions them byname. " Now pray for them all." When this paper falls into the hands of a Christian reader, let the request be understood. Pray for them, and pray for the work, that it may be blessed and kept from evil. L Olds Harms. 351 And if a man has shrewdness, insight, practical gifts, power of organisation, it is only natural to expect that in the life of faith he will become more shrewd and practical, keep a clearer head, and be equal to more work. There w^as a burden pressing on Harms which is pressing on very many. We catch the thief and ptit him in prison. On the whole, our machinery, so far, is admirable. But when the prison door lets him out again into the world, our machinery ceases. It is simply the opening and closing of a trap. We are trying to better this in many ways; tiying to care something for the creature that we catch, to remem- ber that it has a human soul. The first step was to remember that it had a human body. Festering chains were struck off, cells were cleansed, light and air were m.ade available, prison fare was reformed till prison cookery had made a name for itself Then chaplains w^ere introduced and Christian visitors ; there was some pains to teach, there were kind and warning voices. Reformatories were begun. They are doing their work ; they are more capable of limiting the number of the vicious and criminal than had been even sanguinely supposed. But the older criminal had no place in them. He was turned out of the prison ; he had heard good things of a better life ; he ho.d perhaps learnt to value these better things, and dreamt that he might live honest and without reproach. He found every man's hand against him ; suspicions, abuse, selfishness. His old companions were still true oo- Praymg and Working. to him. He was driven back to his former ways. "Every honest work was denied us^ we could not staiTe ; we were forced to steal." These were the miserable words which earnest and painstaking prison chaplains had been hearing for years. And as the bm*- den of these pressed sore upon Harms, he determined to join in connexion with the mission a refuge for discharged convicts. He felt rightly that there were peculiar facilities about him ; the quietness and country character of the neighbourhood, the Christian life that it had pleased God to quicken and sustain, and the presence of the future missionaries, who would find as great advantage in teaching and helping these convicts as the convicts would find from them. A farm was purchased, of sufficient extent to afford the men con- stant employment. The farm-house was fitted up for their reception ; a pious yeoman of the parish was appointed superintendent — is not the German word housefather better I — and they waited in stillness for any who would voluntarily come. Thus waiting, they closed the year 1857. A year slipped past ; by the end of it. Harms was chained to his desk for twelve hours a day, and did his parish duty as before. When the stress was over he could work no more, but lay sick for months. He was never very strong, rather feeble, and latterly delicate and suffering ; so much, that he somxCtimes writes as if he were soon to die. By the midsummer of 1859 he was recovered, and arranged Louis Harms, 353 what was needful for a fourth voyage to the Cape. There were four colonists, — a mason, a bricklayer, a shoemaker, and a miller, some of them with wife and child ; four Christian women ; one missionary, whose course of study at Gottingen was reckoned to him by the Board, and who was thus enabled to leave at once ; and, of more importance to the mission than an entire emigration, Hardeland, the Bornese missionary, ^^^th his wife, two adopted children, and a little Indian girl from Chili, who had strayed in among the Heath people. Hardeland had been a pioneer in missionary enterprises at Borneo. It was as trying a mission-field as could be found. At last about 15,000 of the Dyaks were gathered together; Christian famifies of them were made centres for the rest; a time of reaping promised, and the latest tidings are the murder of the missionaries. Three years before the last event, Har- deland left the island and finally the Netherlands Society, first completing a grammar and lexicon in the language of the Dyaks. Just then it became imperative to have a tried and able man at the head of the mis- sions in Africa. The stations were spreading wide, new openings were occurring, every year there were fresh workers, and there was no one v/ith either sufticient time or the necessary gifts to superintend the rest, and lay out the future plans. Finding his health permitted it, Hardeland accepted the office. In the autumn of i860 the ship w^ent on a fifth voyage, well z. 354 Prayi7ig mid Working. laden as before; and in 1861 returned for twenty- two missionaries. Every year the June and July numbers of the Mis- sloiisblatt are occupied with the sayings and doings of the Hermannsburg Missionary Festival ; eveiy year that festival is held for two days in the leafy month of June. It is a middle point for the Mission interest ; the point of attraction for strangers ; the ecclesiastical date of the country round. The children divide their affections between it and Christmas. It represents the picturesque side of Heath life, and the joyousness of Christian feeling ; and it is peculiar, without a counterpart in this country, like a picture from the out-of-door Hfe of England two centuries ago, or a covenanters' meeting among the hills of Scotland. A visit to Hermannsburg would be little if it were not in the long lights of midsummer, and if it did not include the two days of festival. The day before is marked by a not unnatural commotion in the village, for along every road and bridle-path, and over the moor where there is no path at all, the strangers are dropping in, in waggons or carts, or on horseback, or most of them on foot. What be- comes of them you can scarcely say, for as soon as they drop into the street they disappear. But Use hospitality is a precept which admits here of a sur- prising elasticity, and when seventy or one hundred people are found in one house, and in the vicarage still more, the wonder ceases. Every corner is full , Louis Harms. 355 the hay-lofts are crowded with guests ; a bam, an out- house, a lobby; anywhere that there is shelter, there is room and content. The strangers cannot be at a loss, for on till late in the night the Mission students act as stewards, until no place is found but beneath the moon. The majority are peasants; "people ot station never come, of clergymen a few, of school- masters several, of the people an incredible multi- tude." Students drop in from Gottingen ; perhaps there is a famous preacher from Berhn ; a hot Lutheran finds his next bed-fellow in the hay-loft is a leader of the Reformed ; a genial pietist from Wiir- temberg is sitting beside a dry orthodox divine from Pomerania. They cannot help it. Harms attracts them all ; and they have Hterally no room to display their differences. The next morning all is - hushed till the bell rings for prayer. In the house and out on the streets, and away over the fields where the bell rings faint, there is but one thought, written in the ancient words, O Christy thou Lamb of God, have mercy upon tis ! one sweet undersong of prayer that Luther wrote, Veiieih uns Frieden gnddizhch. Then from every house there bursts forth a peal of morn- ing psalms, and up on the hill before their doors the Mission students blov/ chorales on their long trumpets. And when the householder has assembled his friends for morning worship and they have breakfasted, the street is crowded and lively with greetings of neigh- bours and friends unexpectedly met, until the bell 356 Praying and Working, rings out again for service at ten. The church is soon filled, the men on one side, the women on the other, as the old-fashioned way is ; the passages ad- mit no more ; and the rest gather outside about the open windows, for there are more than 6000 people. There is not a flower in the building, nor a wreath of green boughs, though that is the German custom on festive days, and Harms is a true churchman. But his churchism never comes in the way of his piety or good sense, and to every petition for the flowers he has replied quietly. No theatre wares. The singing is in somewhat quicker time than usual, firm and strong and full, so exquisite for harmony and expression that, as a visitor once said, he must be a daring preacher who will venture into the pulpit after that. Harms stands before the communion-table, and salutes the congregation with the blessing. The Lord be with you : they answer by one voice, those within and without, Ajid with thy spirit. After a brief liturgical service, in which the pastor's free prayer seizes on the whole soul, the Gospel is read with brief comment, Harms walking backwards and forwards in his energy, to the scandal of every dry-as-dust ecclesiastic ; and with the interval of a hymn, the sermon follows. It would be impossible, without transcribing the whole, to give a right conception of what is preached and how ; it would be impossible thus to convey a sense of the fervour, and (there is no better word for it) holiness of the speaker, his utter simpleness, the Louis Harjns. 357 directness of his country phrases, his fire, and that love and perfect faith which colour all his words. Of his other qualities as a preacher, the year's course of sermons recently pubhshed enable any one to judge. He has a mastery of exposition, of unfold- ing the meaning in the fewest and plainest words, in lucid order, and with a natural reference to the peo- ple. He never pretends to flights of eloquence ; it vrould be unsuited to his position, and probably to the character of his mind. He is content with the Word itself, as it appeals to the heart, with broad and positive statements of doctrine. He has much of that plainness of doctrine and homehness of illustra- tion which the ultra-Lutheran party affect but never reach. He has also a sharpness and roughness of idiom which would offend fastidious hearers. But he has eminently that merit which Luther pronounces the highest, of making you forget the preacher and hear the Word. After the benediction, a great number of the young people come forward and sing over many of the best known hymns. Liturgical responses follow, as. brief as at the opening, and the service is concluded with free prayer " to the living, present Lord Jesus, not as sitting up in heaven, or hovering in the blue depths of the ether, but in our midst, and with whom we speak as a man with his friend." It is now half-past two, and for the next hour the people separate for dinner. The afternoon service follows ; hymns are sung again, some- 35B Praying and Working. times by tlie congregation, and then by the men, or the women, or the children — a mode of church music much cultivated among the Moravians. The inspector preaches, and reports upon the mission, so far as under his control ; Haniis comes after, with the re- port of the entire work for the year, and it is far on in the evening before the people separate. Even then many of the strangers crowd round the vicarage. Probably they are rewarded by a short service and address in Piatt Deutsche Harms standing before the door, and the audience, mostly from the neighbouring villages, clustered about him in the evening light. At nine, he has an open family worship, and before the stars are clear the village is hushed for another night. The next day is knowai by the march of the pilgrims. Some spot in the neighbourhood, a few miles distant, and in another parish, is selected ; practical reasons, of course, guide the choice, but beauty of situation does not seem unconsidered. About nine, the people assemble in front of his house, the students blow a chorale, there is a prayer, and the procession sets off over the Heath; the aged and deHcate in waggons, the rest on foot. This is a gay and pretty sight. It is hoHday with every one, hoHday dress and holiday talk. Little family groups wind over the Heath ; its great silence is broken by the murmur of a thousand voices ; its level sombre shades are brightened by an endless variety of colour ; it seems all in motion, for other groups are advancing from other directions 10 Louis Harms. 359 the place of rendezvous ; and occasionally the pil- grims lift up a mighty psalm that goes echoing over the moor, and is caught up by the distant stragglers, and sent joyously back from band to band. Arrived at their destination, they settle themselves for the day. Turning down into a valley, they spread up the side, over the mingled meadow and heath, or climb the trees, while some rock below serves as pulpit, and the blue summer sky is roof sufficient ; and the wide- spreading oaks, and wall of giant firs, cresting the ridge, throw a grateful shade. Nothing can be more picturesque than the grouping, or more cheerful than the universal feeling. And when the service is begun with the singing of so many thousand blended voices, it is no wonder to see aged eyes that fill with tears of joy. Twenty years ago no one could have prophesied that the population of a district would assemble at a missionary meeting. At that time the churches were closed against the mission; a hall might be hired in some town, but the few who did that were said by everybody to be out of their right mind ; and if a meeting were held, those who came were followed through the street, and pointed at as a nine days' marvel, and if an asso- ciation was estabhshed, it was happy to receive 200 crowns. And those who remember how recent that was. bless God, like Simeon, that they have been spared to see His salvation. When Harms has preached, the clergyman of the parish bids the as- sembly welcome. Other addresses are made until 360 Praying and Working. one, and an hour is then left for picnicking, which proceeds with the same disregard of conventional rule and the same intense satisfaction that belong to it elsewhere. Further addresses, and much singing of hymns and prayer succeed ; extracts are read from recent letters of the missionaries ; the story of the place where they sit is recalled from the past, and information is given of the various labours of mission societies. It is not till the summer twilight has stolen do^vn that the pilgrims catch sight of the scattered houses and church spire of Hermannsburg. As they enter, the bell rings for evening prayer. There is a sudden silence along the straggling line, broken only by the audible murmur 01 some more urgent petition. In a few minutes, the train moves again, and the divided households unite, each under its own roof, with thanksgiving to the Lord,^r He is good; for His mercy endureth for ever. It is undoubtedly peculiar. There is the strenuous order of the church, but it is burst through at every moment by the freedom of the spiritual life. There is the stress on the liturgical form and the fixing of hours of prayer, but without the slightest approach to formalism. Eveiything is characteristic of the man, and penetrated with his vitality and warmth. And if these two days are eagerly looked for, and if the interest of the mission centres itself much in them, is it not natural % Where can two days be better spent? And what better means can be used to deepen the value and blessing Lotiis Harms. 361 of missions in the minds of the people % What better signs of a missionar}^ people than that such meetings have been created by their own wants, and are crowded for their own pleasure % It is only seven years since their first missionaries sailed for Africa j and in these seven years this is the fruit of their labours. There are 100 settlers spread over the Eastern provinces at eight stations; there are dwelling-houses and workshops at every station \ there are about 40,000 acres of land; 50 heathens have been baptized ; their influence reaches from the Zulus on the coast, to the Bechuanas in the centre, and from the Orange River to Lake Ngami. At home, they have the mission house and farm, with 45 persons living in them ; the Refuge Farm, with 20 persons; they have their own ship, and print their own books ; and they continue with one accord in breaking of bread and in prayer. This is no common success. It is wonderful. And what to some would explain the wonders, to most would seem more won- derful than all. For the question must have started in your mind long since, Where did they get the money % A ship is costly, and a farm is not bought for nothing, and the daily maintenance of 200 people is no trifle, nor can buildings be put up at eight different settlements with- out expense, although it be among the Kaffirs. And yet this parish is a plain peasant parish, and Mr Harms is only a clergyman's son, and his income is scanty 362 Praying and Working. enough. Beyond a doubt the Mission costs some- thing. The ship cost 15,000 crowns, and 4000 more to outfit it ; and the passengers landed in Africa with 3000 crowns. The printing-press and house cost 3600 crowns ; the Refuge Farm was bought for 4000 ; Africa needed in one year 7000, in another 21,000; the annual home expenses are about 6000. Or, let it be put in another form. The expenditure for 1854 was 14,950 crowns. 1855 „ 9,642 >» 1856 „ 14,878 »» 1857 „ 14,781 ») 1858 „ 30,993 »> 1859 » 30,432 >» 115,676 f» The income for the s ame period was- — 1854, . 15,000 crowns. 1855, . 9,722 »> 1856, . 14,978 »» 1857, . . 14,796 ,, 1858, . . 31,133 9» 1859, • 33,065 »» 118,694 „ Where did he get these 118,000 crowns? Did lie send begging letters ? Did he go to Holland, or cross to England, or ask a subsidy from the State % He is a foe to beggars. He will not tolerate them in his parish ; his doctrine is that no Christian dare be a beggar, nor ask from any but God. No one acts so rigorously on these principles as himself. His scruples Louis Harms. 363 are almost prohibitory. Beyond the barest outHne of accounts, he excludes money matters and money diffi- culties from his paper ; he will neither mention the Slims that have been given (unless incidentally, as an illustration of some truth) nor the names of any who give ; though the people are prepared with alms at the annual festival, he never speaks of his wants, nor asks a donation ; when he is in urgent difficulty about money, he persists in silence. This may look singular and absurd. But is it not more singular that he has never found this course of conduct to mislead or dis- ■ appoint him ; that he has found his straightforward asking of God abundantly sufficient ? When a man makes that discovery, who can blame him for using it % He has one or two pretty certain sources of income. Each of the 1 1,000 annual communicants lays a gift on the communion-table, as the custom is. This is called the Beichtpfemiig^ and in most churches is so small a coin that it would be puzzling to reckon it in our money. Suppose that it were a groschen in Her- mannsburg, that would raise 370 crowns; the Con- sistory grants him a share of the regular missionary collection ; that amounts to another 200. Among uncertain sources are the mission collections, which average from 2000 to 3000 crowns. But these added together do not make one-tenth part of the amount. The congregation is liberal. There are plain yeomen who have handed him 500 crowns. There are per- sons who have stripped themselves of all to give. 364 Praying mid Working. But he has no control over these people. No one will be so bold as to assert that because a clergyman is full of missionary zeal, and has a happy way of in- spiring the interest of others, that his people will give up all they have to his schemes. The reverse hap- pens every day. If there are persons who give so largely in that particular community, it is but reason- able to say that it is God who moves their hearts to this liberality. If it is found that their giving is in accurate proportion to a need of which they can have no precise information, it is not only more reverent and scriptural, but more rational, to say that they have been guided invisibly by God, than that they did it by chance, which is equivalent to confessing our in- ability to know how it was done. And if there has been a child of God praying all the while for this very blessing to his Father who seeth in secret, is it not rational to go back a step farther, and connect the giving with the prayer % Before his own paper was estabhshed. Harms put a brief report of his proceedings in two of the country newspapers. The unlikelihood of that report reaching far is self-evident, but almost simultaneously contribu- tions came from New Orleans, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Odessa, and Narva. Harms has no doubt how they came. God put it into men's hearts. This is a cardinal point of his faith. "It is wonderful when one has nothing, and 10,000 crowns are laid in his hand by the dear Lord. I know from whom it all comes. Louis Harms, 365 When I remarked to my brother that he was such a master in the art of taking, I thought within myself, Let him take, thou wilt receive. And I went to my God, and prayed diligently to Him, and received what I needed." When the printing-shop was debated there v^^as no money to bear the expense. " I can assure you," says Harms, " that to the question. Shall we print % we did not answer, Certainly we can ; but we cried to the Lord, Grant it to us. And He granted it, for we immediately received 2000 cro^vns, although the thought had not been made known to any one ; we had only to take and be thankful." "A short time ago I had to pay a merchant in behalf of the missions 550 crowns, and when the day was near I had only 400. Then I prayed to the Lord Jesus that He would provide me with the deficiency. On the day before, three letters were brought, one from Schwerin with 20, one from Biicksburg with 25, and one from Berhn with 100 crowns. The donors were anonymous. On the evening of the same day, a labourer brought me 10 crowns, so that I had not only enough, but five over." "I must tell you what brought the tears into my eyes, and con- firmed me anew in that word, Befojr they call I will aiiswei'. A medicine chest was urgently wanted for the mission. I reckoned up to see if there was enough left to supply it. Before I had finished, and when I had not yet well begun to commend this matter to the Lord, a letter was brought, in which the 366 Praying and Working, anonymous wiiter stated that for some time he had been collectmg for the mission, and had determined to purchase a medicine chest. The chest accom- panied the letter; he only begged it might soon be sent out for the heathen." When the Refuge was projected, the great obstacle was want of money. After prayer, a pious farmer met him and asked him to mention any way in which he could assist the work, " I took it as a sign from the Lord, and mentioned to him what was in my heart. He sent me, through his wife, who was of one mind with him, 500 crowns. Immediately after a merchant sent me 10, a pastor 100, and then came anonymously 100 cro^vns. Mean- while I had not made my intention known." " The year before," he wrote in 1858, "I needed for the mission 15,000 crowns, and the Lord gave me that and 60 over. This year I needed double, and the Lord has given me double and 140 over." I have placed these extracts loosely together because they shew with great clearness what Mr Harms believes about his missions, and to what he attributes their suc- cess. There is nothing he insists upon with greater earnestness than that, be the expenses what they may, let them increase ever so suddenly, he has never begged. There is nothing he has more delight in tell- ing than that he has prayed for every want, or that with- out special prayer he has received in reply to his Hfe of faith alone. The difficulties that lay in the way are conceivable enough. He has displayed remarkab," 5-i'm- Louis Harms, 367 ness and wisdom in removing them. Are firmness and wisdom sufficient to account for it ? have they helped others w^ho possessed and used them to anything hke the same resuks I His mission agency has flourished beyond all precedent. Does it account for that to say that he has a remarkable personality ; that he has the powder of attracting people to his views, of drawing them in to work out his plans ; that he has a con- gregation filled with the primitive zeal? Does not every one feel that these are no more than auxiliaries, that of themselves they are not explanatory ? Are we not driven to one of two solutions, either that Mr Harms is right, that God has guided him throughout, that it has been a continuous answer to prayer; or that he has been thoroughly deceived, that it is a series of curious coincidences wiiich may at any time be broken, that the appearance of an order and law in it are delusive, that it has been only ten years of happy mistake ? These conclusions may be left to the care- ful thought of those who interest themselves in the subject 368 Praying and Wor^king, II. NEW HERMANNSBURG. TT is now high time to return to the Candace^ which was left cruising up the eastern coast of Africa in search of the Gallas. A storm drove it out into the Indian Ocean, and it was not till after much patience had been spent that the anchor was dropped at Zanzibar. Zanzibar was the key of the position. The coast, from Cape Delgado to Cape Gardafui, is ruled by a certain powerful and despotic Imaum of Muscat, and without his permission the mission could have no beginning, for tfte Gallas being an interior tribe, the way to them led through the Imaum's terri- tory. This Imaum himself was absent, but from his son a verbal permission was obtained to settle on the Island of Mombaz, about 150 miles farther up, and to wait there an order for a visit inland. The missionaries requested this permission in writing, but he informed them with so much courtesy that it was unnecessary — he had even sent a swift ship with directions for their reception — he was so polite, and his court so very courtly, that they, good, simple-minded men, would not L 07 CIS Harms, 369 venture a doubt, and set off with all convenient speed. Then the ven^ sea fought against them ; and five times as they approached within sight of the harbour, a strong current hurried them irresistibly out of their course. When this difficulty was conquered others remained. Mombaz is an island, and they wished a footing on the mainland ; the Governor could give them no help without a written order, and as they learned after- Yfards the swift ship had borne strict orders against their residence even in the town. They had letters to Krapf, well-known by his explorations in Eastern Africa; and in his absence they sought the mis- sionary, Rebmann, who was settled fifteen miles off among the Wanika. Such a visit would not be tole- rated; but a compromise was effected by which a native messenger v/as sent for Rebmann, who came at once to Mombaz, and remained for three weeks. He could obtain no relaxation from the Governor, and counselled a return to Port Natal. The mis- sionaries heard this with heavy hearts. They could not lightly give up their cherished project and let tidings of failure be brought back to Hermannsburg. They knew how their pastor would feel. He says himself the first news lay like an Alp upon his heart, day and night, for many days. And with an incredible boldness and some want of prudence, for they had no guide, knew nothing of the country, and had the Imaum against them, three of them determined to penetrate to a border tribe called 2 A 370 Praying and Wo7^king. the Pakalo, and effect a settlement there. After wan- dering some days they found it was too distant, man- aged to make out Rebmann, and returned to the ship. The result was an immediate order for all to leave ; and as the wind was contrary, boats were sent to help them out of the harbour, while the Arabs in triumph screamed at the pitch of their voices. One of them, Meyer, gives a lively picture of the island. He had some knowledge in medicine, proved useful to the Governor, was allowed to practise in the neigh- bourhood, and made good use of his pecuhar faci- lities for observation. He is lost in wonder at the beauty of the tropic scenery ; the noble forests of cocoa-palms where the trees rise a hundred feet with- out a branch ; the oak-like breadth and leafiness of the mangoes ; the huge cactuses with their flowers of flame ; the dense underwood starry with various blooms ; the masses of colour that met the eye from plants that creep over the ground, and wreath in trellis-work from tree to tree and swing their heavy perfume through the air ; and the giant grass, where a man is hidden, and where the green is fresh and vivid as corn-fields in summer. He makes shrewd, farmer- like comments on the agriculture, and is indignant that instead of ploughing the land, it is only scraped to the depth of an inch and a half "A lazy people," he says ; " they eat and drink, and smoke tobacco : that is the occupation of a gentleman." To this he attri- butes the misery of the population. The only healthy Lotiis Harms. ^tJ^ people are the slaves ; the rest are lame, weak-eyed, full of sores, with limbs that rot off from disease, a growing unhealthiness of the entire body from child- hood to maturity. As Mohammedans they fast, and their fasts are thus : " they eat nothing by day, but make up for it by gluttony all night, so that in the Ramadan a stranger can get neither butter nor meat/' A physician's practice in such a neighbourhood could be no sinecure, and Meyer, who was accompanied on his visits by a great retinue of people, and some- times by the Governor and his suite, found the streets thronged with the diseased, begging him to heal them, till with the ship the doctor was banished also. On the 2d August 1854, the ship reached Port Natal. There were now three courses open, — either to place themselves under the Bishop of Natal, to which they had sound objections ; or to settle on government land; or to purchase ground for a colony. The se- cond, as the less expensive, was adopted ; and their difficulties began again. The first time they touched at Port Natal a report had preceded them that it was a ship full of Jesuits, that the people must beware. But as in the early m.orning they blew a Gernian chorale on their long trumpets — as their fashion is — a German, who stood on shore, cried out that these v/ere no Jesuits, but Lutherans, and the suspicion was dissipated. And now when they went to the Governor for permission to settle, he declared that he would never allow them an inch of the royal domains, and 372 Praying and Working. that the sooner they left the country the better. This blow fell on them sadly and incomprehensibly, for they had brought letters of recommendation from the English Government. It was explained later. The captain, who turned out badly, had informed the Governor that they were revolutionary demagogues ; and he, it seems, was nothing loath to beheve it. No squatting being permitted, they were driven to the third course, of a regular purchase, and not very far from Peter Moritzburg, they secured a property of 6018 acres for £630. A tolerable river flows through it j there is lime, and coal, and stone ; much of it is arable, and the rest pasture ; but the wood was scanty, and timber for building was not to be had within four hours' journey. The position of the settlement as a mission fortress and centre was good. It was under English protection ; it was not inconveniently distant from the sea ; it touched on the most important tribes of Southern Africa ; and by penetrating northward from tribe to tribe, it was still possible to reach the Gallas. Within the Natal colony there were as many as 100,000 Zulu Kaffirs ; above it there was the largest body of the Zulus under the chieftainship of Umpanda ; further on were the Matabele, ruled by the fierce Moselekatse; the Boers of the Orange River lay to the west, and beyond them the large tribe of the Bechuanas. In their immediate neighbourhood were five-and-twenty Germans, who had been sent out to grow cotton and sugar-cane, and among whom one of Gossner's mis- Lo7iis Harms. 373 sionaries was settled. And the religious state of the population, white and black, was pitiful. A Dutch peasant being asked of what religion he was, replied, " he supposed as he was an African, his religion must be the same." Isolated among the heathen, and re- moved from every Christian influence, the heathenism of the so-called Christian is the result. The morals were often on a par. Two farmers who lived within easy distance had the one a daughter and the other a wife ; to equalise matters, they effected an exchange : the former married the latter's wife, and the latter married the former's daughter. Such an incident may have occurred, as Livingstone, in writing of the Boers, suggests, from their intense desire for children, and he quotes an illustration from his own experience, where a childless farmer followed the example of Abraham. But it is nevertheless a sign of a low enough morality ; and when the dominant white race acts thus, there cannot be much expected from the savage. Having secured their purpose, the next step of the colonists was to build ; and a house was hastily put together till a more permanent structure could be undertaken. Permission to fell wood in the Govern- ment domains was granted for a pound a month. Some of the brethren went there, and to save time camped on the spot. One of those who remained was set over the farming, another combined the call- ings of gardener and thatcher ; a third got the bricks 374 Praying and Working. ready ; one superintended the housekeeping ; and the dyer was elected cook, no light responsibility where there were one-and-twenty persons to dine. And out of this imperious necessity of eating, it came that the first structure was a kitchen^ in which the cook luxu- riated, till the smith seized one corner for his anvil and bellows, and speedily burnt off the roof This was intolerable, and the offender was turned out into a house by himself; but one night the rain washed it away, whereupon, to the intense satisfaction of the cook, the brethren swiftly rebuilt it, saying quietly, that mistakes were good teachers. The settlement was thoroughly at work. The ccok was not the only busy man in the community. The smith was encroaching on him, and the forge was never idle. Sometimes a waggon was wanted, and sometimes a team of cattle — expensive things in a land where a pound steriing did not go as far as the German thaler; and of money there was an apostolic scar- city. But the smith paid them back in work, and the barter proved every way satisfactory. Then twenty acres were cleared and brought under the plough — flax was sown, maize was plentiful, wheat was tried, cattle were herded over the pastures, sheep were bought, and there was soon a tolerable farm-yard, noisy with cackling of hens and cock-crowing, and lowing of. cattle, and the deep bark of two famous watch-dogs. The river had to be angled for fish, and an occasional shot brought down a buck or a pea- Louis Harms. 375 cock. Some time and skill were spent in oxen- taming, in which two of the brethren acquired a repu- tation, and even got the use of a team for a year and a-half by breaking them into draught. The wood- cutters were toiling without pause, and then trying their hand at Kaffrarian round the camp-fire. And indeed the learning of the language became the most formidable work of all. For they did not spend their energy in mere outward arrangements. They kept steadily before them the purpose of their colony, and every spare moment practised the native tongue. If a man got knocked up in the woods, he recruited himself by a month's study of Kaffir with Posselt* The structure of the language is simpler than German, they say, but the pronunciation is hard; "yet the Lord will help." " I have seen them," says Posselt, writing to Harms, " struggling with these clicks and clacks till their eyes turned round in their head. It is a hard nut for them to crack ; but they are indefatigable, and they never flinch; real martyrs in the cause." The language is a lamentation in their letters for years — they were only simple peasants of the heath ; elderly men some of them, more used to a spade than a grammar ; and it is to their credit that they manfully overcame the difficulties in their way, instead of fall- ing back upon pastoral duty among the scattered Germans. Meanwhile their hearts were burning within them for some speech with the natives, and * The Berlin missionary. 37<^ Praying and Working. until able directly, they spoke as they could through interpreters. Nor were they slow to practise with any natives who might be at hand, though they sometimes fell into odd blunders. One of them was seen one day in a lively dialogue with a Kaffir. They both grew warmer, and with' manifest diversity of sentiment. "What are you saying?" said a bystander. "Oh, the man wants work from us ; but he asks eight shill- ings a month, and I won't give him so much." A Kaffir woman, who knew something of Dutch, passed soon after. "What does the man want?" cried the perplexed missionary. " He wants you to pay him a shilling that is owing for maize ; he wouldn't work an hour." Such misconceptions must have led to great puzzles in religious conversation, and urged on the missionaries with all the more eagerness to master the language ; so that with lexicons, building, farming, study, cookery, tailoring, some exploration of the neighbourhood, missionary tours among the whites, and the necessary services of their own worship, to say nothing of the practice of chorales on the long tmmpets, they had no spare time upon their hands. Harms, careful and thoughtful at home, warned them of the African laziness, of a " lady-and-gentleman existence." They wrote him in reply — " A bell rings us up at half-past five ; we have worship at six ; after coffee ever}'- one hurries off to his work \ for breakfast we have bread and milk ; the bell rings from work to dinner at twelve ; at half-past one there is coffee, and Louis Harms. 377 then to v\^ork again as long as our dear God lets the sun shme." The Vv^ork embraced everything — mission teaching and handicraft, the household and the church. The fate of the first smithy had delayed the erec- tion of a permanent and suitable dwelling till the dry Aveather. It was accomplished, however, with entire success and on a large scale, and formed a range of building 120 feet long by 40 wide. This became the nucleus of the African Mission, and received the name of New Hermannsburg. Other houses rose up about it ; Kaffir huts were dotted round ; the stores of the settlers were kept at it; the arable ground reached out from it into the jungle ; and it became a place of some importance, sufficient to attract the attention of a friendly English magistrate, and through him of the Government. The tax on the timber was remitted, so was the ground-rent of their property; messages were despatched to the neighbouring Kaffir kraals, urging that the children should be sent to the brothers' school ; and at last a despatch arrived from Lord Clarendon, recognising the admirable character of the mission, and recommending it to special care, while 3000 acres additional, out of the Government land, were allocated to the settlement. With the arrival of Sir G. Grey came still brighter prospects. He is re- ported to have said, that if he were not a governor he would be a missionary. Whatever truth may be in tins, liis interest in missions is well known. His kiniiliarity with their working, and his experience of 37^ Praying and Working. the relations between European and savage races, led him to a higher estimate of their value than is at all common to colonial rulers. He recognised in them the true pioneers of civilisation ; the true security of the countiy, and the certainty of its development not only from the European but from the native side. And with these views he made grants to any new mission station of 6000 acres, grants of which the Hermannsburgers soon availed themselves. They were rapidly increasing. The old parish at home sent out a continuous stream of emigrants. Their organisation was firmly established; and while Her- mannsburg remained as the centre, and as a school 01 preparation for mission life, the emigrants founded new stations. They had now a service in Kaffrarian, well attended and blessed with happy results. They had converts settled round them and learning indus- trious habits. They had many more, not converts, but in some way attracted to them, willing to be taught reading in the school, and helping them at work. The white families near them shewed a won- derful change. Drunkards became sober and diligent ; gamblers threw away their cards ; where the Bible had never been opened, there was a daily confession of Christ; there were entire families that blessed God for what had been wrought in their households ; and these persons had before been incredibly degraded, and almost without a sense of religion. This progress was made within a circle immediately Louis Harms. 379 round their chief station. The Kaffirs there were under British rule. They were mostly fugitives, and every new war swelled their numbers. They lived in scattered kraals, and had headmen, but no king. There was no great difficulty in bringing the gospel to their doors, for there was perfect freedom to preach it. They were a peaceful race, and not altogether indisposed to work ; and from their want of any lead- ing authority and their unsettled habits, they were more easily attracted to a mission station. They were, of course, peculiar people to deal with. They struck the Germans as powerful muscular men, of an open countenance, and with fire in their eyes. Their houses they represent like bee-caps ; their household goods as an assagai, some clubs, a mat, a piece of wood for a pillow, and a great horn pipe. A man has as many huts as he has wives ; and a wife is bought for ten or twenty oxen. When an ox is killed, so many assemble that it is devoured at one meal. " Ten Kaffirs will eat an ox in four-and-twenty hours ; but after that they can fast for four days." They will work, but they must be punctually paid ; and if at the end of the month their wages are not forthcoming, they wall not move from the place. Credit, even for a day, is abhorrent to their notions, — a punctilious- ness that once or twice cost the missionaries no little trouble when they were unprovided with change. When they work, it is not continuously. They marvel at the untiring Saxon energy, and take a holiday after 380 Praying and Working. a few weeks of labour. They are intelligent ; very subtle thinkers, and skilled in fence of reasoning, though the mode of their procedure is singular. An intelligent English chaplain was one day debating with a Kaffir the existence of the invisible God. " Your God is up there ! " he retorted at last, pointing to the sky ; and then with great gravity picked up a stone," and flung it with all his force into the air. When he saw it come down again, he cried with disdain, " If your God was there, do you think that He could not have caught that stone % " and gathering his kaross about him, he went off with a triumphant laugh, swinging with great steps over the plain. Their rain-doctors are no easy antagonists in discussion, and play with words and sophisms quite as ably as if they belonged to our civiHsed society. Their nakedness, their morality, their dances, their marriage customs, were a great shock to people who had never seen a hea- then before. The horror of the missionaries can scarce find expression ; they write of every ceremony as the v.'ork of the devil ; they fight against it as such ; if they are invited to a feast, they soon rush out to wTestle in prayer against the kingdom of Satan ; their soul is moved within them, so that they cannot settle down in tolerance as spectators, but in their valiant, straight- fonvard faith, they directly challenge every evil. " We are often filled with such nausea and loathing, that we could run away if it were not that love and pity with- hold us." But these men have gentle and winning Louis Harms. 381 ways, and their good faith and simplicity give point to their words ; the heathen Kaffirs hke to hve near them, the children are diligent and affectionate in the school. There was one drawback, that the circum- stances of these natives precluded the hope of any great influence among them. They were so uncon- nected with each other, that it was only an isolated family here and there that came under missionary influence, and this influence remained isolated in that family. Further off lay the great tribes, lying densely together, and united as members of a common nation. If the gospel took hold among such a tribe, its likeli- hood of spreading would be enormously increased ; and from New Hermannsburg the missionaries looked wistfully westward and northward, not unmindful also of the Gallas, and praying that God would shew them the way. The first step fonvard was the founding of a new station among the people of a Natal chief called Somahasche. He was absent when Schroder and Hohls arrived, but came back with all haste, and began — " ' What beautiful present have you brought V We gave him two shirts. In a twinkling he had them both on. Then he commenced a melancholy story about the state of his feet, which had suffered so much on his journey to us ; we understood, and gave him a pair of brilliant white stockings, which he drew at once over his black legs, so that we could not but laugh." After begging the very counterpane under 382 Praying and Working. which they slept, he ceased, and ordered a cow to be killed. But as the salt in which the missionaries sought to preserve the meat was begged away, they were in imminent danger of starvation. Supphes came from Hermannsburg, and they were enabled to remain, the chief inviting them every afternoon to his hut, when he sat with beer beside him and the people of note all round, and where, " according to his notion, everything was thoroughly respectable ; though we dare not betray any emotion v/hen, as we lay in his neighbourhood, he would occasionally capture an insect from his head." Some weeks passed thus, and they returned with a marked improvement in their knowledge of Kaffrarian, and permission to com- mence a settlement. A much more important open- ing followed. Beyond the Dracken Hills some Dutch Boers have estabhshed themselves as a republic. They have a bad reputation in the colony, they notoriously oppress the natives, and they have led the Government into more than one needless and cruel war. Beyond them there is a branch of the Bechuanas, ruled by a chief Sechele. Sechele and his history are well known through Dr Livingstone. He was led by him to Christianity, was filled with a thirst for learning, took every means to commend the Bible to his people, and made personal sacrifices to the truth such as en- dangered his chieftainship. The Boers grew jealous of Livingstone's influence, and sought pretexts to Louts Harms. 383 demand his expulsion. The Bechuanas refused. The result was an attack in which many of the natives were killed, their villages destroyed, and the mission station sacked and burned. Sechele's attempted jour- ney to England for redress, his inability from want of means to go further than the Cape, his sorrowful re- turn, are familiar to all readers of Livingstone's book. His character inspires an unusual interest. There is a manliness and moral power in it that raises him very high above our notions of savage life in Africa. He always shews himself wise, gentle, and brave, and with a mind susceptible of very high culture and very large ideas. His steadfastness to the Bible and his sufferings for that, his efforts to make it the book of his race, his anxiety to live up to it, have won for him a general interest and sympathy; and most persons have closed Dr Livingstone's book with regret that nothing could be added to their knowledge of him, after his unsuccessful journey, beyond a few vague reports. In 1857, a message came from him to Her- mannsburg, through the Boers, who perhaps regarded these German missionaries as harmless. It was to the effect that he had begini to build a church, and that he longed eagerly for teachers, and besought them to come over and help him.' He had not forgotten Livingstone's lessons. Shortly before, a Boer passing through his territory had been seized and brought to him for judgment. " Your white brothers have killed my young men," he said; "they have stolen my wives, 384 Praying and Working. my children, and my cattle, and I did them no wrong. If I would act like your white brothers, I would shoot you dead, and seize your goods. But the good white man preached here the Word of God to the poor Bechuanas ; and I will follow that Word, and send you away with your life and your goods." It was a formidable journey of thirty days through regions of which strange stories were borne to them ; but the missionaries undertook it Avithout hesitation, in the faith that always led them. On the way they came to a former mission station, now utterly laid waste, the missionary Edwards having been driven off by the Boers, and the natives having fled for defence to Sechele. Soon after, they passed Livingstone's once pleasant station of Kolobeng, also in ruins, and finally reached Sechele's residence without mishap. Moffat stayed with them some days on his way to Mosele- katse, left them some Bibles, and gave them some lessons in the Bechuana tongue ; and then they found themselves alone. Their accommodation was not of the best, for they had occasionally to put up umbrellas in bed. But it was as good as could be given, and Sechele, whom they describe as friendly but reserved, was full of interest in their success, and " with great longing that the kingdom of the Lord should be established." He wrote a letter to Harms himself be- fore many days : — " I send friendship, that you may hear from me in my weakness. And I send two tusks and two karosses Louis Harms. 385 of skin, that you may know I have found teachers who are come out from you. I am very glad to see them, and therefore I send these things to you through them. And I say this that you may know I am very glad. Also there is a help which I need from you, which is that thing powder, which is a thing I can never get. And I need it greatly, for my cattle all die j therefore I need powder from you. I thank my God with great joy; for I had no teachers; and now I thank God that I see them with me and in the congregation. I greet you all ; and may the blessing of God be with you ! — I am, Sechele, lord of the Bechuanas." To this letter the scribe added on his own account : — " V/herefore, I, who have written Sechele's words, say, The name of the Lord be praised. Pray, there- fore, much for us, for we are in the wilderness. Sa- bated be all who are blessed of God. The blessing of God be with you all. Amen. — I am, Isaac." The prominent allusion to powder in the letter arose from Sechele's situation. His cattle were dying of disease, and the chief subsistence of his tribe was game. But the game could not be killed in sufficient numbers without fire-amis, and as the Boers refused the transit of powder or fire-arms through their terri- tory, Sechele sought everywhere for " that thing powder," the only thing that lay between his tribe and starvation.'" This difficulty has since been removed, * Upwards of loo died of hunger in 1858, and as many as 300 in 1S59. 2 B 386 Praying and Working. and through the mediation of the missionaries, Sechele has been allowed to purchase powder of the Boers. Their later letters describe him as " a brother to us ; he does nothing without our advice ; and he works with all his might for the glory of God." He holds an afternoon service, calls the people together as they go out of the church, (which is now regularly filled,) repeats what impressed him in the sermon, and be- seeches the people to flee to Christ. They are build- ing a new church ; many of his people have joined the mission ; and a sewing school has been opened for the women. Last year he reinstated a chief who had fled to him from the Bamangwatos, and who had been in constant intercourse with the missionaries. This chief has now demanded teachers, and a station has been opened among his people, who number 60,000. It is probable that another station will soon be established under Moselekatse, and thus a line of missionary settle- ments be traced out from Hermannsburg up to the Matabele and the river Zambesi. Work was opening in other directions. Early in 1858, the solitary missionary (Schreuder, a Norwegian) among the Zulu Kafftrs wrote to Hermannsburg that Umpanda the king was unusually well-disposed to missionaries, and begged that the brethren would set out in as great numbers as possible " to estabhsh sta- tion after station'' in that country. This was an un- expected summons, but none the less joyful. Two v/ere a^Dpointed to set out immediately and prepare Louis Harms. 387 the way for five others who were nominated to the post. They soon reached Zululand, and penetrated at once into the interior. "Now were we," their jour- nal begins, " in the land of the Zulus, the home of so many thousand naked heathen, who boast so loudly of their liberty and their heavenly origin. They are strong, tall, and well built. If you see one on the road, he carries a shield and three spears, and struts along with as haughty an air as if he were the proud- est officer in Germany." They did not see many, however, for from Wednesday till Saturday they did not meet a human being, and were near perishing of hunger. Preserved from this danger by falling in with Schreuder, they came to the royal kraal, which num- bered about 900 huts. An audience was granted after much delay. It was early one morning, and he sat outside his tent, a servant sheltering him from the sun by a shield. " His counsellors sat behind him, fifteen paces off. To the left, about sixty paces off, sat a rov/ of natives, who had some matter to bring before him ; the same on the right. We sat between them and the king, about thirty paces off. Umpanda had many charges to give about the oxen that pastured before him, and broke in with these upon the most serious conversation, so that we rejoiced when he ordered them to be driven away. We told him our heart was set on the Zululand — that there w^ere many of us who would teach his people, and that there was one of us v/ho could make a waggon. This last pleased him 388 Praying and Working. above all ; and he asked us where we would live. We begged for Ungoie. Then 2000 soldiers came up and paraded before him, and our interview was at an end. On Friday we received for answer, that we might build and live in whatever part of Ungoie we chose.^' Soon after the king requested a waggon-house to be lAiilt. It was a serious undertaking. It was to be •he greatest building in Zululand, and the workmen v.ere to be the laziest men in the world. The king gave over 150 of his soldiers to help. Laths were cut in the wood ; the men were to carry them to the site. So they rose up, spear and shield in the right hand, and a lath in the left, and marched on, one hundred and fifty, one behind the other; that was their first day's work. The next day they were to cut grass for thatching; so, with spear and shield, these 150 went into the jungle, and by sunset they had oilf barrow- load. After that they were released from further ser- vice. This incapacity for work is not an exclusively military trait ; it is natural. A man who was hired to cut reeds, went about it tenderly for two days, and then, out of weariness, ran off, and was no more seen. And finding that help was impossible, the missionaries built on alone. Queens, princesses, generals, and the entire aristocracy of the place, were onlookers ; all of them unfortunately masters in the art of begging. One princess, whose name deserves immortality, be- gan her petition thus : — " I love God — give me some- tiling." When everythi ag had been begged away, a Lo2iis Harms. 389 new species of begging was invented ; and as the good men sang their hymns while they worked, the Zulus were content to ask for a psalm, which was, no doubt, willingly given. In six weeks the house was finished, and held four large oxen-waggons, to the king's in- tense delight. Laziness seems admirably developed in this people. " Persons of rank, especially the queen and princesses, live with only one purpose, to eat and be filled ; and some of them have good success. We saw some who would weigh 300 lbs., especially a king's daughter, who was precisely as broad as she was long. Beer-drinking, snuffing, eating, and sleep- ing is their business. The common people, such as the soldiers, sit out in crowds in the sunshine broihng. The king lies almost the whole day in his hut." It may be supposed that divine service was not very in- telligible to natures like these. "As we had sung after the sermon," ™tes a missionary, " and as I was beginning, as our custom is, to go through the sermon again with the hearers, one of them cried out. Are you beginning again ? Don't you know we have a house to remove to-day?'' And even lazy as they were, they could not comprehend the self-denial of the Lutheran festivals ; and when they heard that Christmas had three days of holiday, they exclaimed in despair — "O men! how many Sundays I" For Her- mannsburg is stringent in observing the Lord's day.-' * Mr Harms is much in advance of his Church in this matter. A reverence for the Lord's day and its devout uses has shewed 390 Praying mid Working. The captain and arew of the Candace were strictly forbidden to do anything on board on Sunday except the necessary saihng of the ship. In Africa, the mis- sionaries were firm against every inroad of the day.* They would not permit any consideration to weigh with them against the plain sanctity of the day, and whether it threatened them loss of money or loss of influence they were inflexible. The natives looked on, marvelled, but said nothing. It was only when Chris- tians brought " three Sundays," one upon the other, that their astonishment burst out in the not unnatural murmur, O me?t, hoiv many Sundays ! There is a signi- ficant hint in this to those who would introduce com- plex church orders out of Europe among savage men. itself as part of the natural development of Christian life in his parish. It has often been the reproach of the Lutheran body that the festivals of the Church year were more strictly kept than the day of the Lord ; and while theatres and pleasure -gardens were open on Sunday afternoons, it was a popular saying in Mecklenburg that dogs were fined for barking on Good-Friday. It is pleasant to find a great improvement within the last few years, and that both by the governments and the Church, as well as by private individual effort, means are being taken to secure the Lord's day for its primitive purpose. * They were sometimes tried, and relate how once six Eng- lish officers rode past on a Sunday morning. One of their horses had lost a shoe, and they stopped to have another put on. ' ' We replied, it was Sunday, and we did not work. But, said one, the Saviour has said that if a man's ox or ass fall into a pit upon the Sabbath day it must be taken out forthwith. We re- plied, that a horse-shoe was not like an ox or an ass ; there was no absolute necessity ; and he had to be content and leave a Koffir behind with the horse." Louis Harms, 391 In 1858, a second attempt was made to reach the Gallas. Three missionaries,. and as many colonists, were set apart at home for the dangerous service. They carried out a large boat for exploring the river, and for refuge in case of need. Two young Kaffirs volunteered with them, and they sailed in good spirits for Formosa Bay. But after fruitless efforts to find a stream that could take them far up the country, after searching in vain for signs of human dwelling, and at last losing their health, they went farther north to try the Somali, who are a people of the same stem. Their efforts here proved fruitless also. They were then driven by contrary winds to the Mauritius, and after- wards reached Zanzibar. Rebmann received them with the news that both the former Imaum and the English Consul were dead. They waited to learn the Suacheli, which is the language of the East Coast, and had an audience of the new ruler. He infoimed them they might have permission to pass to the Gallas, if the new Consul would recommend them. The Consul refused. Three separate efforts were made to change his mind, but in vain. He said that missionaries did more harm than good ; and they had to turn sorrow- fully back to Natal, having lost a sailor overboard, and a missionary by fever. This was not the first time that English agents thwarted the efforts of the Mission. It is unfortunate that English officials should ever appear to foreigners as the great obstructions, to missionary effort. It is not creditable that a Cbrls- 392 Praying and Working. tian nation should have unchristian representatives, — that in districts where we possess the most influence, we should use that influence against the gospel. And it is with shame that one reads it was an Englishman who prevented the access to the Gallas which a Mo- hammedan was willing to permit. The Gallas will not be given up. Neither failure to reach them, nor sue cess elsewhere, casts them out of Mr Harms's plans. He is not lightly turned aside. When it was said the ship had gone down, and he was asked what they would do then, he replied, " Humble ourselves, con- fess our sins, pray for forgiveness, and build a new one'' That is both his temper and his faith ; and if a mission is to mn a footing in this wild tribe, it will be from the peasant church of the Liineburger Heath. Louis Harms, 393 III. THE MISSIONARY AT WORK. MISSION life is not wdthout its adventure. Few episodes in the history of the Church surpass in interest the missions of the Middle Ages. The labours of WilHams among the South Sea Islands have all the excitement and incident of a romance. The Central African Society appeals directly, and it is said not unsuccessfully, to the romantic element-the love of travel, the novelty of an unexplored country, the adventurous spirit of Englishmen, the chivalry of pur- suing a noble aim through peril and personal darmg. These are low motives enough compared with the sense of duty and the self-sacrifice of a Christian con- secration ; they must always maintain a very secondary place • but there are directions of missionary enterprise where they come at once into play, and where they find their proper use in sustaining and bracing the missionary under the shock of repeated disappoint- ments They take away from the hard, weaiy plain- ness of everydav routine ; they supply fresh materials for thought; and the free wandering under foreign .lies the new conditions of life imposed by constant 394 Praying and Working. intercourse with savages, the hardships, hairbreadth escapes, adventures, strange sights, and the joyful feehng of being the first to see, go to compensate for the pleasures and intercourse and helps of that social life from which the missionary is excluded. Now, it will be confessed that the aim of- the Hermanns- burg Mission is sufficiently romantic, but nothing of romance can be attributed to the missionaries. Though there is a continued romance .in their situa- tion in Africa, in their progress, in the histories of their separate stations, they seem thoroughly unaware of it, and nothing can well be more matter of fact than their letters. They sailed from Germany as certain simple, homely peasants, warmly attached to their native soil, not expecting anything but hard and faith- ful labour under untried and uncongenial circum- stances. They felt keenly the parting, the isolation, the entire amount of sacrifice.- There was no getting up of enthusiasm, there is not a trace of brilhant hopes or pleasant pictures of travel. They have taken to them a definite purpose which they have resolved to carry out, and in their singleness of heart they see no more than that, and expect no more. They observe and write as frank, honest Christians, who have strong attachments, strong faith, much natural shrewdness, and hearty common sense. Their letters are homely ; Uke the cheery fireside talk with which they would beguile the winter evenings on the Heath. They are the letters of mic^iioT^aries, but thev are first of all the Louis Harms. 395 letters of peasant men. They describe everything just as they see it, without study or reticence, with genuine unconventional feehng. Homely, certainly : they re- produce their woe at the sea-sickness with a ludicrous fidelity ; tell how their clothes had got too small by the end of their voyage j detail their little blunders and exploits ; discuss the relative strength of manures ; enter v/ith zest upon the cooking of sausages and their success in curing ham. Everything is novel, and their wonder is openly expressed. They hft up their hands in horror at a naked savage; they describe with a child's awe the roar of a lion ; they keep their old standards of judgment — compare a Kaffir kraal with Hermannsburg, and a native crowd with the Altona gate of Hamburg on a Sunday afternoon. This is not the usual style of mission letters, and these are not the usual things we hear. Perhaps for that very reason they are all the more welcome ; it is the little details that reproduce their life, the everyday work ; we like to realise the missionary in his new world, and that is impossible if we never meet him but in his official character. And from the correspondence of these missionaries, we learn at once to know what kind of men they are, and how they are qualified for their undertaking. Brother Schiitze has been out in the woods hewing timber, and details his experience on his return : — " The trees reach no great height, and will not make longer rafters than of thirty feet, but they each give 39^ Praying and Working. about four. And now, how and where do these trees grow ? Often just as if you thought of the roof of the Mission House, the bank rises up so steeply. At first, there was no httle trouble to get at the trunk, for the thorns, thistles, underwood, and parasite plants that stretched up from the ground to the crown of the tree, formed an impenetrable barrier through which WT had to cut our way mth the axe. And now, how is the tree to fall ? Best against the hill ; for it must be dragged up. . . . Then, pull hard; it must come down ! We feel we can hold no longer, and cry to those above that it is bent on going downw^ards. Now, then, all together. So, ' all together ! ho ! hup !* It goes. But in a t\\inkling, all seven men lie on their backs and stretch their legs. The rope had broken. No wonder that now the tree plunged do\vn with a frightful crash, and we saw how much better it could clear an opening in the thicket than we with our axes. Now we had to hew down every bush that was in the way, and build stages for cutting up our tree. But that is far more easily told than by our shoulders and hands it was brought to pass. Mean- while, there was not a breath of air ; we had to remove the beautiful shady trees in order to win room ; at mid-day, the sun burned straight do\vn upon our heads. Then there often rose a loud cry among us. Let us not build so large a house : when ^vill all the wood be ready? But we always answered, It will be well when every one has his o^vn room, for solitude Louis Harms. 397 is necessary to the Christian. When the wood was ready, we assembled all the brethren to draw it home. Over the steepest hills, which happily were not the longest, we managed thus : All the men placed them- selves so that they had the rafters between their legs : then the word was given, ' Wood away ! ' and so we went step by step till we got over. Over the longer hills we carried the rafters j eight men to each. This was all rough and dangerous work. To the Lord be praise and thanks, for He alone has given us joy in it and kept us from hurt, while we are only unprofitable servants. The greatest trial we had was from the African rains, that lasted three days, and drove us under the waggon for shelter. When we saw that the water poured through. Kohls and I seized a woollen counterpane, and while the rain rushed down under our feet like a mountain torrent, we held it up like poor criminals for two hours. Our position was none of the pleasantest, and I beUeve the drill is not harder on a recruit than holding the counterpane was on us. During these wet days we could not once light a fire, or get coffee or anything warm. Verily, bush-life in Africa needs a good constitution ; and we have had yet no opportunity of playing the gentleman and sit- ting in an arm-chair beside the stove." The smith has his own story to relate : — "Our bellows did not take kindly to their exposure on the sand at Tslombaz. For when we came into Port Natal and had raised up our smithy in the open air, the bellows 39^ Praying and Working. were sickly, and I had to patch them before they re covered their wind Arrived here, the brethren v.-Quld straightway plough, and came saying, Brother smith, you must make a plough and harrow. So when the kitchen was half ready, we set up our anvil in it. We hammered in one corner, the cook cooked in the other, Schroder plastered the walls, and Meyer sat upon the roof and thatched. Though the thatcher seldom felt at ease about the smith's fire below him, everything went well till the roof was finished and the harrow and plough were ready ; and after making a pair of fire-tongs for the cook, we intended removing. But the Lord would punish us for the folly of having a forge in a house with an unprotected straw roof The roof caught fire. We snatched the bellows, but it was too late, and we had to run out to avoid being burned. When the fire was got under, the leather was partly burned. What was to be done now % Without bellows we could not forge, and without forging we could have nothing ready. Three hours off there lived a farmer who had leather. But we had no money. Never mind, we said, we can pay in work. . . . We hammered away from morning till evening, and soon had earned more than .£50. We have now a tolerable workshop, with which the English magistrate expresses himself well pleased. He also expresses his delight that we are all such diligent workers, and that we try to win over the Kaffirs to work. For the last two months we have had a black Louis Harms. 399 helping in the smithy. He is at least three inches taller than our mighty Schiitze. He is the man to swing the great hammer ! We use every opportunity to speak with him about spiritual things. One day, I asked him to come and settle among us, "with wife and child, that they might all be taught. He repHed he was too stupid. I told him that was just the reason why he should learn, and that he might know the dear Saviour. A if^ days after, he said, ' Some- times his heart spoke to him, learn ; and then some- times it said no, he was too stupid ; and he did not know what kind of strife that was.' I explained it to him as well as I could. As yet, he learns nothing, but is clever enough. He can strike the great ham- mer better than one of the brethren The vrork is very various — waggons, axes, hatchets, spades, shovels, ploughs, harrows, and many a thing which I need not mention ; and even horse-shoeing, at which the Kaffirs have greatly marvelled, for they had never seen before that horses needed shoes You will perhaps think I have written too much of the black smithy. I had rather been silent, but the brethren said it was my duty. I commend myself to your prayers. I am often sorrowful and cast down by my sins, but I cling to Him who daily and richly forgives me, poor sinner, all my sins." Probably the reader will not be indisposed to add with Mr Harms, "That is also a genuine missionary work," or even to go farther with him when he says that he " honours 400 Praying and Working, the artisan and labourer who follows his calling with fresh and joyful heart as a calling given him by God, and for the gloiy of God, just as much as he honours the pastor in the pulpit, and the justice in the court." Their explorations in the interior brought the mis- sionaries into contact with every phase of African life, and they observe with watchful and intelligent eyes. A station was to be erected near the most powerful chief of Natal, one Umpagadi. Four of the brethren went to examine the locality and have an interview with the people. They wished a spot where they could conveniently build, where the ground was arable and would yield enough for their support, and where there were natives. For " we hold it our duty to spare expense, so that more missionaries may be sent. And besides, if the gospel is to flourish, the Kaffirs must work ; for there will be no Christendom among them as long as their life is a mere lying out in the sun, and drinking sour beer." '• We went over furze and hill j and the hills were long and steep. We had to make this journey without bread and meat. For you get nothing from the Kaffirs but kroik^ as they call it — a kind of sour beer made from maize — and here and there milk. When the night drew on, we chose a large hut, and asked permission to sleep. It was given with great and friendly readiness. Milk and kroik and a roasted head of maize were set before each of us. We seized the maize, Kaffir fashion, with both hands, and ate out the corns with our teeth. At Lotus Harms. 401 our evening worship, we sang as we always do. When tliey heard the singing, everybody in the kraal came running in ; and if we had sung of our own accord before, so now we had to sing. Next morning, we took our sour milk with joyful hearts, and went on. .... About evening, we came to the chiefs kraal, v/hich numbered thirty-nine huts, and was like a little village. I had heard before of this chiefs strength ; and when I saw him, I was a little startled. He came striding forward, loosely wrapped in a large red cloak, his servants behind him, and his face reminding one of the old kings. After change of greetings, he said, 'Where is the money with which you will buy'?' \Vhen we answered, ' V/e are not come to trade, but to teach thee and thy people,' he seemed somewhat to despise us. When we asked where we would find the most suitable place for building, he answered, 'You must know that best."' Near this place they met Umpagadi's son, who brought them to his hut, and said, " See, there is my house j it is also yours." " Then he told his people that we were teachers, who would tell them of the great God in heaven ; and said, ' I am so happy that teachers are come here, and will dwell among us.' On our way back, we came to the Kaffir with whom we had lodged before. All the neighbours crowded in to hear us, and the place waF so full that we could not move. They kept asking us to repeat our message again and again, and would liave been rejoiced if we could have settled among 2 c 402 Praying and Working, them at once, and told them more of these unheard-of tidings." Explorations like these were necessarily attended by much inconvenience and some danger. They re- quire an unlimited capacity of " roughing it." Some- times the missionary was left alone, and fell sick. vSometimes he was cast upon his own address and ready wit for his personal safety. It is the roughest and sternest side of missionaiy labour that is exposed to us throughout. Hohls was obliged once to reach the brethren, who were eight hours distant. He was unwell, and the way w^as severe — a continuous ascent up a bare hill, on which the sun beat, and where the stones pierced the feet. He was soon compelled to stop, and his illness assumed a dangerous form. *' There was not a human being near him ; but the Lord was there ; and as he cried to Him out of a full lieart, * Lord, leave not me a poor sinner ! the Lord kejDt His promise, Call upon me in the day of trouble; I laill deliver thee'' He was so far strengthened that before evening he reached the end of his journey. Wiese once found himself many days' journey from any human habitation, with a river before him which he could not ford, and with no prospect of food. "There were many wild animals in the neighbour- hood, especially hyenas, and a few paces off the holes of two large serpents. Crocodiles of from twelve to eighteen feet long haunted the river, and were dreaded in the neighbourhood, and I lay only a few Louis Ha^nns, 403 steps from the tall reeds that covered the banks, and which are a favourite resort of these beasts. As it was new moon, the evenings and nights were very dark. You may imagine that I prayed ferv^ently to the Lord ; yet on the two first evenings, I could not avoid fear, which plainly shewed my want of faith. On Thursday and Friday there came a great storm. And I had at last almost made up my mind to venture across the river, Avhen the noise of wag- gon wheels brought me to my knees to thank God." The waggon proved to be an Englishman's, and was the means of delivering the unfortunate missionary. Brothers Beneke and Schulenberg had another adven- ture : — " Our oxen had caught the prevalent disease, and we had to move leisurely. As we jogged slowly along, the sun far down behind the neighbouring hill and the dew already on the grass, our driver called out. Tail! bonau! tau ! tau ! i.e., lion! see! lion! As the oxen took fright and rushed on, we had no time to prepare, but passed immediately in front of the lion, who lay about ten paces from the path. He lay quiet, but as if he did not quite trust us, and we were without defence ; for though we had a small gun in the waggon, that is nothing against a lion. The lion is sometimes a thoroughly wicked beast, and we cannot thank the Lord enough that He has defended us." And to prove the wickedness of the lion, they add the following story, which proves much more, and that wickedness may not beveryremote from cowardice. 404 Praying and Workifig, It is worth telling : — " Just before Christmas, a farmer, named Viljoen, -^ith his son and son-in-law, were out hunting. Viljoen rode into the bush, out of sight of the others, started a herd of springbocks and. pursued them, when a lion, that had been concealed behind an ant-hill, sprang out on him, seized him in his teeth, and tore him from his horse. Once on the ground, the hon let him go to seize him again by the arm and breast At this moment the horse sprung aside, and the saddle and spurs, which had caught to his tail, made a noise that the hon did not recognise. He let the man go and withdrew six paces. Viljoen reached out for his gun, caught it, and thought to shoot; but from his wounds he was unable. The lion still remained quietly- looking. Viljoen then managed to crawl away to his horse about fifty paces oflf, mounted, and rejoined his companions, the Hon keeping his old place, and mak- ing no effort at pursuit."' Beneke wisely subjoins — " You see, if the Hon had attacked us, we might have come off but badly/"' Adventures of a pleasanter kind are also chronicled, and none more merrily than what befeU some too eager bridegrooms at Xatal. For when the first ship that carried out the brides reached the harbour, the brethren had been waiting with a natural anxiety ; and, to their dismay, contrary- -winds and low tides prevented her entrance. Six days they waited, making telescopic obser\-anons, until an English merchant, whose wife was a passenger on board, proposed sailing out to the Louis Harms. 405 Candace. As the ^vind blew from shore, the boat reached safely, and the brides and bridegrooms im- mediately set off in hope of a speedy landing. But, instead of returning, they disappeared in the offing. The wind had caught their boat and carried them out its own way. To add to their distress, the sea-sickness broke out afresh. "And had not the Cajidace made sail and captured these involuntary fjgitives, who knows where they would have drifted ? I said before, that brides and bridegrooms are strange people; is it not true? If they had just stayed quietly on board instead of making this wonderful journey out into the ocean ! " That the missionaries are men of the spirit of their pastor may be naturally supposed, — that they set, like him, the life of faith, the communion of prayer, above ever}thing in the Christian walk. They are in the habit not only of tracing, mth devout minds, the hand of the Lord in all their circumstances, but of appeal- ing to Him on occasions when most persons would say it was uncalled-for and unreasonable. Their simplicity of character is more manifest in nothing than in their simplicity of faith. " The first calm," write the first passengers, " was in the Bay of Biscay, and lasted Saturday and Sunday. As the missionaries sat with the mate upon the cabin roof, the latter said, \\ith a sailors roughness of expression, ' If we had but the bellows, we would make wind.' One brother, deeply grieved, said to him, ' Dear friend, that would 40b Praying a7td Working. not help us much. Rather let us say it to the Lord Jesus, and you will see if we have not wind before this day is over.' He had scarcely spoken the words when he felt himself uneasy, as he considered how much they meant. Then he went below, bent his knees before the Lord, and prayed : ' Dear Saviour, I have spoken in faith on Thee ; I humbly beg of Thee, let me not be put to shame. See, I have sought only Thy glory. When Thy day is over, give, I beseech Thee, favourable wind, that men may know Thou art a living Saviour.' So he prayed as a child, and when they woke the next morning, the wind was blowing freshly.'^ Another time, when the calm had lasted longer, they " confessed all their sins in the common prayer upon the quarter-deck, gave them- selves into the Lord's hand, begged for grace and forgiveness, and received boldness a?nd joy to pray for wind. And after some hours had passed, to the astonishment of the ship's company, they had so favourable a wind that they sailed ten miles in an hour." A third time, after long calm, a brother prayed thus to the Lord for favouring wind : " Lord, Thou givest them that fear Thee the desires of their heart, and dost help them ; help us now, that we may no longer be becalmed upon the sea; help us on our journey. Thou who ridest on the wings of the wind." He was so joyful over this word of the Lord, that he rose up, and said in his heart, " Now I have already that for which I prayed." After the prayer, one of Louis Ha7^ms, 407 the crew stepped over to the helmsman, and said, half mocking, half in earnest, " So we shall have wind : didn't you hear the prayer ? It doesn't look very like it !" So he said, and half an hour after there came so strong a blast that the waves broke over the ship. - These instances are all from one voyage. Others were furnished aftenvards. In 1858, Filter stood one evening by the captain in the cabin. The wind was against them, and very slight " The cap- tain was depressed by the length of the journey. Brother Bakeberg and I sought to comfort him, to give him courage, and point him to the arm of the Lord, which is not yet shortened. Evening prayer followed, and this day it fell to me. The day before I had held a Bible-hour on Acts iv. 23-37, and dwelt especially on the power of common prayer. Cast down, not so much by the length of the journey as by the captain's complaint, I first begged of the Lord if it were His will. It now seemed to me that for this time I could pray without limitation. He surely must soon carry us on ; He surely would not permit the world to say they must take longer time on the way than we. After prayer, I read between decks with the brethren and sisters ouf of H. Tvliiller's Heavenly Kiss of Love. When the reading was over, Brother Bakeberg came to say that the sailors expected a storm from the south-east. I looked out, and saw lightning in that direction. But, I thought, the Lord can well defend us; and I went down and said, I 4o8 Praying and Working, could see in the change of weather nothing but an answer to prayer. The storm kept off, and about half-past ten the wind was so favourable that we made 240 miles in 24 hours." An instance, under some- what different circumstances, is also lovingly recorded. Sailing up to Zanzibar, they struck on a coral reef, and the wind fell into a perfect calm. " What was to be done? What else than work and pray? Our brethren first joined in prayer, and begged the Lord for His gracious help. Then they left two in prayer, and the rest all sprang into the boats with the sailors in order to tow off the ship. Just as they were in the heat of their work, the wind rose off the land, and in an hour and a half the ship was got off the reef with- out injury." And to take but one more illustration of this spirit. A colonist writes : — " We were long with- out money, and had no more than tenpence among sixteen of us. During this time we had several Kaffirs employed, who demanded their wages at the end of the month. In these days we truly marked the bless- ing of the Lord, and had joy in our work ; for when the day came that a Kaffir had to be paid, the Lord had always sent us work, and as it was settled for at once, we were never brought to shame, but were always able to pay even though we had only received the money an hour before. In those days, we often marked how the Lord hears the prayers of His chil- dren and does not suffei them to be brought to shame. Louis Harms. 409 For we had ever more cause to thank and praise than even to pray." To some it may be curious to trace the influence of Hermannsburg Ufe and Hermannsburg teaching on the members of the successive emigrations ; to note how that influence colours their feehngs and actions, and prompts them in situations ahogether unhke those of their home. The pecuhar way in which this influ- ence asserts itself may seem to them childish, and by itself only fit to provoke a smile. But as illustrating the predominant power of a remarkable man, it is worth examination. There are others who may thank- Ailly recognise in it that secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him ; who will feel in these stories of faith not what is childish, but what is child-like ; who will regard them not as the mere copy of an- other's acts, the mere traces of the profound impres- sion made by a strong nature, but as the natural out- come of a common spiritual sense in their souls and his. The missions and the men are left to the consi- deration of both these classes. The one are likely to find something which their theory does not explain ; the others are sure to be confirmed in the comfort and reality of prayer. The direct work of the mission, its success, have not been dwelt on. There are obvious reasons. It IS only eight years planted in Africa, too short a time for the ripening of much fruit. It is, up to this date, 4IO Praying and Working. experimental, and is but now completing its organisa- tion. It has been the growth of circumstances, and its form is not due to any definite plan, but to the necessities that forced it in particular directions. And therefore it can scarcely be judged like an agency that has been wrought according to a previously fixed scheme. But the point of interest in it is not so much the work it is accomplishing, although that were as marv^ellous as among the Karens, or the Kohls, or the Fijians ; it is the origin and mode of the mis- sion which distinguish it. Its success is unequivocal. It has teachers among the Natal Kaffirs, the Zulus, the Bamangwatos, the Bechuanas, and minor tribes ; and the teachers occupy the highest position, and have the freest access, and each of them writes that the people receive the Word with gladness. It has at present as important openings as any other mis- sion of Southern Africa, invitations which must be refused ; welcome everywhere. It has gathered more than a hundred of the heathen into the Church, and has various rude churches filled with native audiences.* But these are results which it has in common with other missions, and these alone perhaps would scarcely justify a separate notice. It is not its records of con- version, it is its character that fixes our attention and * There are 3 stations, with 50 bapti2ed, in the colony of Natal ; 3 stations, with 45 baptized, among the Bechuanas ; 1 stations, with 15 baptized, among the Zulus; and another station, which is just now established. Louis Harms. 41 1 wonder. Whatever may throw hght on the character of the mission is welcome, and the more we know ot Mr Harms and his "children," the more light is thrown. It is a peasant mission, — a mere local and parochial mission. There can be nothing more hum- ble and unambitious than its origin, — the zeal of a plain, countiy clergyman labouring among secluded country people ; nothing less likely to account for it than its centre being at Hermannsburg on the Heath. The source of its extraordinary vitality and power and progress, and at the same time the hope of its suc- cess, is this, that it is a work of faith and a mission of prayer.* * A further proof of the earnestness of the people has just Dcen given. A hundred young persons have offered themselves to the heathen. A new mission-house will soon be finished, so tliat 48 candidates may be received in future, and a band of missionaries may sail to Africa eveiy tw^o years. " To God only wioe be glory, through Jesus Christ, for ever. Amen." THE END. Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 1 1012 01206 9235