borers who
will be something more than bare teachers of wisdom and virtue. More
than this, Help yourselves!"

The counsel given by Herder to others was practised first by himself. He
lived among critical minds, who spurned humble pastoral work, but he
felt it his duty, and therefore discharged it to the best of his
ability. His preaching was richly lucid, and not directed to the most
intelligent portion of his auditors. He took up a plain truth and strove
to make it plainer. Yet, while the masses were most benefited by his
simplicity of pulpit conversation, those gifted men who thought with him
arose from their seats profoundly impressed with the dignity and value
of the gospel. A witty writer of the time, Sturz, gives an account of
Herder's preaching that throws some light upon the manner in which the
plain, earnest exposition of God's word always affected the indifferent
auditor. "You should have seen," says this man, "how every rustling
sound was hushed and each curious glance was chained upon him in a very
few minutes. We were as still as a Moravian congregation. All hearts
opened themselves spontaneously; every eye hung upon him and wept
unwonted tears. Deep sighs escaped from every breast. My dear friend,
nobody preaches like him. Else religion would be to every one just what
it should be, the most valuable and reliable friend of men. He explained
the gospel of the day without fanaticism, yet with a grand simplicity
which needed not to ransack the world for its wisdom, its figures of
speech, or its scholastic arts. It was no religious study, hurled in its
three divisions at the heart of stony sinners; nor was it what some
would call a current article of pulpit manufacture. It was no cold,
heathen, moral lecture, which sought nothing but Socrates in the Bible,
and would therefore teach that we can do without both Christ and the
Scriptures. But he preached the faith which works by love, the same
which was first preached by the God of love, the kind which teaches to
suffer and bear and hope, and which, by its rest and contentment,
rewards bountifully and independently of all the joys and sorrows of the
world. It seems to me that the scholars of the apostles must have
preached thus, for they did not tie themselves down to the hard
dogmatics of their faith, and therefore did not play with technical
terms, as children with their counting pennies." William von Humboldt
said of Herder's sermons that they were "very attrac