that of its own accord and of its own
free will seeks out flowers, cares for them, and protects them, so that
in due time he can weave a garland or make a nosegay with them for his
parents or his teacher, can never become a bad child, a wicked man. Such
a child can easily be led towards love, towards thankfulness, towards
recognition of the fatherliness of God, who gives him these gifts and
permits them to grow that he, as a cheerful giver in his turn, may
gladden with them the hearts of his parents.

That time of conflict contained within it an element of special and
peculiar meaning to myself. It brought before me my past life in its
many various stages of development; and especially the chief events
which had formed and influenced it, with their causes and their effects.
And it always seemed to me of particular importance to go back upon the
very earliest occurrences in my life. But of the actual matters of fact
of my earliest years very few traces now remained; for my mother, who
could have kept them in her memory for me, and from whom I could now
have learnt them, had died even before my life had really awakened.
Amongst the few relics remaining to me was a written address from my
godmother (the so-called Baptismal Letter), which she had sent me
immediately after my baptism, according to the Thuringian custom of the
time, as a sort of portion or dowry for my entrance into life. It had
come into my possession after the death of my father. This letter, of a
simple, Christian, tenderly religious, womanly soul, expressed in plain
and affecting terms the true relation of the young Christian to that to
which by his baptism he had become bound. Through these words the inner
life of both mind and soul, of my boyhood and of my youth, was brought
before me with all its peace and blessedness; and I could not help
seeing how much that I then longed for had since come to pass. My soul,
upon this thought, regained that original inspiriting, enlightening, and
quickening unity of which I stood so much in need. But at the same time
all the resolutions of my boyhood and youth also rushed back upon me,
and made it manifest how much more had yet to happen before they, too,
were accomplished; and with them they brought the memory of those types
and ideals with which the feeble boyish imagination had sought to
strengthen itself. But my life had been far too much an inward and
strictly personal life to have been able, or even to have dar