Trials make our faith sublime,
Trials give new life to prayer,
Lift us to a holier clime,
Make us strong to do and bear.
Cowper.
THE OLD PASTOR AND HIS SON.
FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL RICHTER.
In the little village of Heim, Gottreich Hartmann resided with his old father, who was a curate. The old man had wellnigh outlived all those whom he had loved, but he was made happy by his son. Gottreich discharged for him his duties in the parish, not so much in aid of his parent’s untiring vigor, as to satisfy his own energy, and to give his father the exquisite gratification of being edified by his child and companion.
In Gottreich there thrilled a spirit of true poetry; and his father also had, in his youth, a poet’s ardor, of like intensity, but it had not been favored by the times. Son and father seemed to live in one another; and on the site of filial and paternal love there arose the structure of a rare and peculiar friendship. Gottreich not only cheered his father by the new birth of his own lost poet-youth, but by the still more beautiful similarity of their faith. The father found again his old Christian heart sending forth new shoots in the bosom of Gottreich, and moreover the best justification of the convictions of his life and of his love.