"Sculpta quidem Pauli, viva est atque imago Gerhardti,
Cujus in ore, fides, spes, amor usque fuit.
Hic docuit nostris Assaph redivivus in oris
Et cecinit laudes, Christe benigne, tuas.
Spiritus aethereis veniet tibi sedibus hospes,
Haec ubi saepe canes Carmina Sacra Deo."[8]
It is not known what became of his son, and nothing is known of his
posterity.
The editor of the Selection of Gerhardt's Songs--Bremen, 1817--states in
his preface: "There is at present living in Bremen a great-granddaughter
of Gerhardt's, eighty-one years of age, a simple Christian soul. Her
father was, as she says, an advocate in Oldenburg; of her ancestor the
poet she has neither written nor oral information."
There are three of Gerhardt's sermons extant in the library of the
gymnasium of the Grey Cloister in Berlin; and the titles and texts of
three more are known. They are all funeral sermons. We would close this
notice of the life of Gerhardt with a few extracts from Wackernagel's
preface to his edition of Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs.
"Paul Gerhardt," he says, "may be viewed in a one-sided manner, from two
quite opposite points of view, in relation to the spiritual contents of
his songs. His poems appear to mirror the transition character of his
age, when the personal life of the feelings, the subjective tendency,
began to assert itself beside the Christian consciousness of the
congregation. He may therefore be regarded as the last and the most
perfect of those poets who were grounded in the
ecclesiastico-confessional faith, and with him the line of the strict
ecclesiastical poets closes. He may also be regarded as beginning the
line of those in whose songs, praise and adoration of the revealed God
recede before the expression of the feelings that master the soul in
contemplating its relation to God revealing Himself to it as its
salvation. The true view is, that Gerhardt stood in the fore front of his
age and united in himself in the most lively manner both tendencies.
Though he did not write so expressly for the congregation, so immediately
in the interest of the church, as Luther, but from personal necessity, in
personal temptations, yet the pulsation of his inner life was the common
ecclesiastical confession; and his experiences, however personal they
might be, were only waves of the flood of baptism and life which every
other member of the church breathed and shared. His sorrow, and God's
love, the soul's questions, and God's answers in him and in his songs,
become one--so one as can only be when the experience is not only true
for the individual, but also for the people and the church.
"For this reason Paul Gerhardt's are people's songs. They remind us
sometimes of Friedrich Spee; above all, the glorious song,
'Go forth, my heart, and seek delight.'
But how much richer and more many-sided is the Evangelical than the
Catholic poet, and at the same time better known and more familiar to the
people! The Catholic congregations know nothing now of Friedrich Spee;
but where is the Evangelical congregation that does not know Paul
Gerhardt; in what churches are not his holy songs heard? What the pious
Catherine Zell of Strasburg says of beautiful spiritual songs in her
hymn-book is true of him:--'The journeyman mechanic at his work, the
servant-maid washing her dishes, the ploughman and vine-dresser in the
fields, the mother by her weeping infant in the cradle, sing them.' High
and low, poor and rich alike, find them equally consoling, equally
edifying; in all stations, among young and old, there are examples to be
found where some song of Gerhardt at particular periods in the history of
the inner life was engraven for ever on the soul, and subsequently became
the centre point of the dearest reminiscences. Winckleman's favourite
song, even in Italy, after he had passed over to the Catholic Church,
was,
'I sing to thee with heart and mouth.'
And once when he ordered a song-book from Germany, he was vexed, yea,
exasperated, when he found that it did not contain this song.
"Schiller's mother nurtured the young mind of her son with the songs of
our poet, with whom the song
'Now spread are evening shadows'
was a favourite,--the same song concerning which Johann Falk narrates
that a beggar boy was preserved amid many temptations by singing to
himself the stanza commencing
'O Jesus! be my cover.'
"Books devoted to the exposition of spiritual songs, or to facts
concerning pious persons, relate how many of Gerhardt's hymns have
quickened many hearts in heavy affliction and anxiety, and have quietly
composed their minds in the hour of death, and led them to peace....
"Above all, it was the mothers who fostered the domestic spiritual song,
and handed down the old songs to the new generation. The noble picture of
such a mother, even of his own, is sketched by T. F. Hippel, and the
words in which she described the peculiarity of the poet to her son serve
to portray herself as well as Gerhardt:--
"'After Luther, I must confess, I know no better hymn-poet than Gerhardt.
He, Rist, and Dach form a trefoil, but the chosen instrument, Luther, was
the root. Gerhardt wrote during the ringing of the church bells, so to
speak. A certain impressiveness, a certain sorrowfulness, a certain
fervour, were peculiar to him; he was a guest on earth, and everywhere in
his one hundred and twenty-three songs sunflowers are sown. This flower
ever turns to the sun, so does Gerhardt to a blessed eternity.'
"The love with which the contemporaries of Gerhardt, as far as the bell
of an evangelical church was heard, turned to his song, has only one
precedent--the veneration, the devotion, with which Luther's songs were
regarded. The songs of no other poet, either before or since, have ever
produced so mighty an effect or obtained so speedy and so wide a
circulation."
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[1]Wetzlar's "Analecta Hymnica."
[2]One qualified and authorized to preach, but not ordained, ordination
taking place only when the candidate is placed over a congregation as
a pastor.
[3]The Elector Sigismund had gone over to the Reformed Confession in
1613, and the position of the Lutherans and Reformed in the Mark in
relation to the court had since been reversed.
[4]Wackernagel says, that it was his official duty to sketch the writings
in attack and defence, that they display great tact and acuteness, and
furnish a new proof that critical acumen may be combined with a
poetical temperament.
[5]Since writing this sketch, the writer observes that currency has been
given to this apocryphal story in a recent work, "Our Hymns: their
Authors and their Origin. By the Rev. Josiah Miller."
[6]In the reference to the Syncretists.
[7]A Theologian experienced in the sieve of Satan.
[8]
A graven, indeed, yet living image of Paul Gerhardt,
In whose mouth, faith, hope, love have ever been.
Here Asaph returned to life, taught in our coasts, and sang thy
praises, O Gracious Saviour!
The Spirit will come to thee as a guest, from the heavenly seats
wherever thou shalt sing these Sacred Songs to God.