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 Lübden, 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,