s ordained to this post November
18, 1651. Six years later he accepted the position of third assistant
pastor of the Church of St. Nicholas in Berlin. His hymns continued to
grow in popularity, and his fame as a preacher drew large audiences to
hear him.

The controversy between the Lutherans and Calvinists, which had continued
from the days of the Reformation, flared up again at this time as the
result of efforts on the part of Elector Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia to
unite the two parties. Friedrich Wilhelm, who was a Calvinist, sought to
compel the clergy to sign a document promising that they would abstain
from any references in their sermons to doctrinal differences. Gerhardt
was sick at the time, and, although he had always been moderate in his
utterances, he felt that to sign such a document would be to compromise
the faith. Summoning the other Lutheran clergymen of Berlin to his
bedside, he urged them to stand firm and to refuse to surrender to the
demands of the Elector.

Soon after this the courageous pastor was deposed from office. He was
also prohibited from holding private services in his own home. Though he
felt the blow very keenly, he met it with true Christian fortitude.

"This," he said, "is only a small Berlin affliction; but I am also
willing and ready to seal with my blood the evangelical truth, and, like
my namesake, St. Paul, to offer my neck to the sword."

To add to his sorrows, Gerhardt's wife and a son died in the midst of
these troubles. Three other children had died previous to this, and now
the sorely tried pastor was left with a single child, a boy of six years.
In May, 1669, he was called to the church at Luebden, where he labored
faithfully and with great success until his death, on June 7, 1676.

The glorious spirit that dwelt in him, and which neither trials nor
persecutions could quench, is reflected in the lines of his famous hymn,
"If God Himself be for me," based on the latter part of the eighth
chapter of Romans:

Though earth be rent asunder,
Thou'rt mine eternally;
Not fire, nor sword, nor thunder,
Shall sever me from Thee;
Not hunger, thirst, nor danger,
Not pain nor poverty,
Nor mighty princes' anger,
Shall ever hinder me.

Catherine Winkworth, who has translated the same hymn in a different
meter under the title, "Since Jesus is my Friend," has probably succeeded
best in giving expression to the triumphant faith and the note o