He could obtain no help from outside; but at last one day, when he was on a journey to a neighboring city, he received such an internal manifestation of the goodness of God and the sufficiency of the Saviour, that all doubts and troubles vanished in a moment. Henceforward he had peace and joy, and an intense power of realizing the unseen which, combined with the experience he had lately gone through, gave him a wonderful faculty of touching and strengthening other hearts." "People came to him from England, Holland, Sweden, and Switzerland; sick persons would send for him, and he would pass hours or whole nights by their bedside; if he went into the neighboring country for rest, people would watch for him by the roadside, and carry him off to the nearest barn, where a congregation would immediately assemble. He had an immense correspondence, and new editions of his hymns and other religious works were constantly demanded. To his quiet temperament this incessant labor and absence of solitude was most uncongenial, but he accepted it willingly as his appointed task. 'I love most to be with the Father, but I am glad to be with the children,' he said. His intercourse with those who came to see him seems to have been marked by a most searching insight into character, yet by a gentleness and affectionateness, an anxiety to cherish even the faintest spark of spiritual life, which nothing could tire out." "Tersteegen was a mystic of the purest type. In his earlier days, as he himself tells us, he laid too much stress on bodily exercises and violent emotions, but in later life he was singularly free from extravagance or intolerance. 'My religion is this,' he says, 'that as one reconciled to God by the blood of Christ, I suffer myself to be led by the spirit of Jesus, through daily dying, suffering, and prayer, out of myself and all created things, that I may live alone to God in Christ; and clinging to this my God by faith and love, I hope to become one spirit with Him, and through His free mercy in Christ to attain eternal salvation. And I feel myself to be of the same faith with every one who believes thus, of whatever class or nation or creed he may be." " One other German hymn remains to be considered in a final word; an Easter hymn, beginning: 122 Jesus lives! thy terrors now. This hymn, translated by Miss Cox, was written by CHRISTIAN FÜRCHTEGOTT GELLERT, a man of much distinction, numbering Goethe and Lessing amongst his pupils at Leipsic. His hymns are said, on competent authority, to have met the requirements of his time, to have won universal admiration, and to have speedily passed into the hymn books in use over all Germany, Roman Catholic as well as Lutheran. In the account of the funeral of the Right Rev. Dr. Hopkins, first Bishop of Vermont, we read, "After the blessing of peace, the procession formed once more; and, as the body was lifted, the strains of the triumphant hymn, 'Jesus Lives,' were heard, every verse ending with an Alleluia." In the account of the funeral of Dr. Edward Steere, third Missionary Bishop in Central Africa, we read: "When in our places, the service was for a time drowned, as was also the sound of the organ, by the sobs and wailing of the densely packed congregation. At length we were able to get a comparative quiet, and the service proceeded. And so we laid the wise master-builder to rest within the temple that his love and skill combined to raise, and we returned home singing: Jesus lives! no longer now. Can thy terrors, death, appall us. Jesus lives! by this we know Thou, O grave, canst not enthrall us. This is the language of a sturdy faith, and so fitted for the burial service of sturdy Christian men. Such a man was Bishop Hopkins; such a man was Bishop Steere; such men were Luther and Rinkart and Gerhardt, and Gellert, and many others of whom the world was not worthy. Let us believe strongly as they believed, and then, in the darkest hour, we too can exultingly shout, Alleluia! I'll praise my Maker with my breath, Praise shall employ my nobler powers: ISAAC WATTS. "Live while you live," the epicure would say, I live in pleasure, when I live to Thee. People of the living God, PHILIP DODDRIDGE. I have sought the world, around, Peace and comfort nowhere found. Brethren, where your altar burns, JAMES MONTGOMERY. "Tis what I know of Thee, my Lord and God, HORATIUS BONAR. My soul, bear thou thy part; RICHARD BAXTER. |