like
period of spiritual dearth. Having reproved his master one day, he was
dispatched on his apprentice-pilgrimage somewhat sooner than he had
anticipated. It has been truthfully said of him that his characteristic
lay in his pneumatic realism. His was ecstacy of the loftiest type; but
with him it was something almost tangible, real, and akin to actual
life. A late author, the lamented Vaughan, thus fancies him: "Behold him
early in his study, with bolted door. The boy must see to the shop
to-day, no sublunary care of awl or leather, customers and groschen,
must check the rushing flood of thought. The sunshine streams in emblem,
to his high-raised phantasy, of a more glorious light. As he writes, the
thin cheeks are flushed, the gray eye kindles, the whole frame is damp,
and trembling with excitement. Sheet after sheet is covered. The
headlong pen, too precipitate for calligraphy, for punctuation, for
spelling, for syntax, dashes on. The lines which darken down the waiting
page are, to the writer, furrows, into which heaven is raining a driven
shower of celestial seed. On the chapters thus fiercely written the eye
of the modern student rests, cool and critical, wearily scanning
paragraphs, digressive as Juliet's nurse, and protesting, with
contracting eyebrow, that this easy writing is abominably hard to
read."[15]

He was four times in ecstacy. He writes of himself: "I have never
desired to know anything of divine mystery; much less have I wished to
seek or find it. I sought only the heart of Jesus Christ, that there I
might hide myself from the anger of God and the grasp of the devil. And
I have besought God to grant me his grace and Holy Spirit, that he would
lead me and take from me everything that would tend to alienate me from
him; that I might lose my own will in his, and that I might be his child
in his son Jesus Christ. While in this earnest seeking and longing, the
door has opened before me, so that I have seen and learned more in a
quarter of an hour than I could have gained in many years at great
schools.... When I think why it is that I write as I do, I learn that my
spirit is set on fire of this spirit about which I write. If I would set
down other things, I cannot do it: a living fire seems to be kindled up
within me. I have prayed God many hundreds of times, weeping, that if my
knowledge did not contribute to his honor and the improvement of my
brethren, he would take it away from me, and hold me only