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Updated: June 14, 2025
The tendency in human nature, which often gives a bigot a rake for a daughter, and makes a frivolous woman the mother of a narrow pietist; that rule of contraries, which, in all probability, is the "resultant" of the law of similarities, drew Victurnien to Paris by a desire to which he must sooner or later have yielded.
If people, however, understand by the word 'saint' a Pietist, one of those who lay their hands on their laps and expect that Providence will do their work for them, and who, instead of striving in their vocation to press on towards perfection, talk of a heavenly calling being incompatible with an earthly one, and are incapable of loving with their whole hearts any human being, or anything on earth, then God be praised! such a one I am not, and hope never to become, so long as I live; and though I am sincerely desirous to live piously, and really to be so, I hope this does not necessarily entail the other character.
Now, Dr. Cumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic pietist: within a certain circle—within the mill of evangelical orthodoxy—his intellect is perpetually at work; but that principle of sophistication which our friends the Methodists derive from the predominance of their pietistic feelings, is involved for him in the doctrine of verbal inspiration; what is for them a state of emotion submerging the intellect, is with him a formula imprisoning the intellect, depriving it of its proper function—the free search for truth—and making it the mere servant-of-all-work to a foregone conclusion.
"And I continue to pray for him, though on this side of the grave we shall probably never meet again. But, after all, one of those poor words of mine may spring up in his heart as a good seed some day." Now, as always, Clare's father was sanguine as a child; and though the younger could not accept his parent's narrow dogma, he revered his practice and recognized the hero under the pietist.
Of all the influences wrought in the human soul, the work of piety is the most harmonizing and divine. It subdues the flesh and the world, and calls down Heaven to bless the happy pietist. It is the constant, ever-speaking voice of the Father uttering in sublime and beautiful impressions the holy eloquence of his everlasting love.
He knew but little, if anything at all, of the old Church of the Brethren; he had never been a member of that Church himself; he had no special interest in her welfare; and the emigrants whom he had brought to Herrnhut were mostly evangelical folk who had been awakened by the preaching of the Pietist pastor, Steinmetz, of Teschen.
A short time afterwards young T. received a most kind reply from the baron, inviting him to come to Berlin; but, before this letter arrived, the young student had heard that Baron von K. was a pietist or mystic, as true believers are contemptuously called in Germany; and as young T. was of a highly philosophical turn of mind, reasoning about everything, questioning the truth of revelation, yea, questioning, most sceptically, the existence of God, he much disliked the prospect of going to the old baron.
He took off his hat as though he was about to greet some important person, or to receive sentence in a court. Instinctively he felt the little book of philosophy which he always carried now in his breast-pocket, as a pietist would finger his beads in moments of fear or anxiety.
He was more devout in his daily life than ever, prayed to Christ with the foil in his hand, studied the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, spent whole nights in prayer, fasted the livelong day on Sundays, and was, in a word, so Methodistic in his habits that he could truly describe himself as a "rigid Pietist."
He took off his hat as though he was about to greet some important person, or to receive sentence in a court. Instinctively he felt the little book of philosophy which he always carried now in his breast-pocket, as a pietist would finger his beads in moments of fear or anxiety.
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