to say a few lifeless prayers
at appointed hours. And yet this was the usual Christianity of both
ecclesiastics and laity: a dead faith, a mere outward form of
godliness, the letter without the spirit. Little did the baptism of
children signify without conversion on arriving at maturity, little
also did communionship with the church avail, by which the laity only
received passively the gifts of salvation: each individual ought to
establish the priesthood of the Lamb in his own heart. Such was the
feeling of thousands. Of the many in Germany that followed this
tendency of the heart, none exercised for many years so great an
influence as Jacob Spener, between 1635 and 1705. Born in Alsace, where
for more than a century the doctrines of Luther and of the Swiss
reformers flourished conjointly and contended together, where the
learning of the Netherlands and even the pious books of England were
harboured, his pious heart early imbibed a steadfast faith through the
earnest teaching of schools, and under the protection accorded to him
by ladies of distinction in difficult times. Even as a boy he had been
severe upon himself and when he had once ventured to a dance he felt
obliged to leave it from qualms of conscience. He had been a tutor at a
prince's court, and also studied at Basle. At Geneva he saw with
astonishment how Jean de Labadie, by his sermons on repentance, had
emptied the wine-houses, caused gamblers to give back their gains, and
stamped upon the hearts of the children of Calvin the doctrines of
inward sanctification and of following after Christ with entire
self-renunciation. From thence Spener went to Frankfort-on-the-Maine as
pastor, and by his labours there produced a rich harvest of blessing,
which assumed ever-increasing proportions, and soon procured him
followers throughout Germany. Happily married, in prosperous
circumstances, peace-loving and prudent, with calm equanimity and
tender feelings, a loving, modest nature, he was specially adapted to
become the counsellor and confidant of oppressed hearts. Over women
especially this refined, kind-hearted, dignified man had great
influence. He established meetings of pious Christians in a private
dwelling; they were the far-famed _Collegia pietatis_, in which the
books of the holy Scriptures were explained and commented upon by the
men, whilst the women listened silently in a space set apart for them.
When later he had to deliver these discourses in the church,