And once when he ordered a song-book from Germany, he was vexed, yea, exasperated, when he found that it did not contain this song.
“Schiller's mother nurtured the young mind of her son with the songs of our poet, with whom the song
‘[Now spread are evening shadows]'
was a favourite,—the same song concerning which Johann Falk narrates that a beggar boy was preserved amid many temptations by singing to himself the stanza commencing
“Books devoted to the exposition of spiritual songs, or to facts concerning pious persons, relate how many of Gerhardt's hymns have quickened many hearts in heavy affliction and anxiety, and have quietly composed their minds in the hour of death, and led them to peace....
“Above all, it was the mothers who fostered the domestic spiritual song, and handed down the old songs to the new generation. The noble picture of such a mother, even of his own, is sketched by T. F. Hippel, and the words in which she described the peculiarity of the poet to her son serve to portray herself as well as Gerhardt:—
“‘After Luther, I must confess, I know no better hymn-poet than Gerhardt. He, Rist, and Dach form a trefoil, but the chosen instrument, Luther, was the root. Gerhardt wrote during the ringing of the church bells, so to speak. A certain impressiveness, a certain sorrowfulness, a certain fervour, were peculiar to him; he was a guest on earth, and everywhere in his one hundred and twenty-three songs sunflowers are sown. This flower ever turns to the sun, so does Gerhardt to a blessed eternity.'
“The love with which the contemporaries of Gerhardt, as far as the bell of an evangelical church was heard, turned to his song, has only one precedent—the veneration, the devotion, with which Luther's songs were regarded. The songs of no other poet, either before or since, have ever produced so mighty an effect or obtained so speedy and so wide a circulation.”
[1]Wetzlar's “Analecta Hymnica.”