of Christ and light from above, were watched
with hearty sympathy, and they found trusty advisers and loving friends
among refined and honorable men. The new conception of faith, which laid
less stress on book-learning than on a pure heart, worked on women like
a charm."

Jacob Spener was the great apostle of Quietism in Germany. He introduced
and practised a refined mysticism that won him hosts of followers among
women. Personal holiness was the constant theme of Spener's teaching.

Just as the marvellous subjective songs of Keats and Shelly were born of
emotional Methodism in England, so, also, lyric poetry in Germany sprang
from Quietism. The soul struggles of individual seekers after God
ripened into a rich literary harvest by which the world will long
continue to be nourished.

Two autobiographies of Quietists, by Johann Peterssen and his wife
Johanna (born Von Merlau), are of extreme interest.

As in the case of all children in that militant age, Johanna's earliest
recollections are of war. One day her mother was alone in the house
except for her three little children a girl of seven, a babe, and
Johanna, aged four. Suddenly a regiment was heard marching down the
road. The mother knew, only too well, what horror that might mean for
herself and her little girls. Very hastily she knelt and prayed that
they might be saved. Then she led her little ones to a tall field of
corn near the house, bidding them lie down between the rows and to keep
quite still. Suckling the babe, she, too, lay down in the corn. They
were not discovered. When the last military straggler had passed, mother
and children hurried to the nearest town for safety. As soon as they
were well within the gates, Frau Merlau bade the children kneel down and
thank God for their deliverance. The oldest girl objected to the delay.
She wanted her supper. "What is the use of praying now?" she asked. "We
are safe here." At that moment Johanna's religious experience began. She
writes: "Then was I grieved to the heart at this ungrateful speech of my
sister, that she would not thank God. I rebuked her for it."

From that day the little maid thought and dreamed almost wholly of
spiritual mysteries. Soon after, believing that the midwife brought
babies from heaven, she sent by that functionary a greeting to Jesus. At
the age of nine Johanna lost her good mother. Her father, a stern,
saturnine man, hired a housekeeper, a captain's wife.

"But she was an unchri