Faith victorious, being an account of the life and labors, and the times of the venerable Dr. Johann Ebel ... Drawn from authentic sources

Front matter

«»SS^JW am

M^^BBBM

Hi¥h

Preface

This work presents :

i. The biography of a Lutheran clergyman, but little known outside of Germany, but whose commanding intellect, interesting history, and apostolical zeal in the maintenance and vindication of pure and true evangelical doctrine in opposition to the skepticism and deadness of German Christianity in the first third of this century, entitle him to the gratitude, love and veneration which all lovers of the Lord Jesus Christ owe to the champions and martyrs of the faith once delivered to the saints.

2. An account of a phase of religious life in Germany, the existence of which is not generally known, and frequently doubted, in countries of English speech, illustrative of the inherent power of Christianity to purify, develop and ennoble the natural endowments of the soul to the loftiest self-consecration. Acquaintance with the noble characters introduced cannot fail to interest and benefit all Christian readers.

4 PREFACE.

3. A contribution to Church History, by unfolding the authentic data of the famous Religious Suit of Konigsberg.

The uses contemplated affect the clergy and laity alike ; the clergy, by laying open the springs and methods of a singularly useful, effective and blessed ministry ; the laity, by holding up the illustrious example of so many devoted Christians to their admiration, encouragement and edification.

The production, in an Appendix, of an interesting and original conception of the origin and government of the world, it is hoped, will be welcomed as a contribution to the literature of philosophical and theological thought.

The author trusts and prays that this work and labor of love may be blessed to his brethren in the ministry, and to the vastly greater number of his brethren of the household of faith, fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the commonwealth of God.

Contents

PAGE

Preface 3

Chapter I. — Early Years 7 " II. — Early Ministry 30

" III. — Frederic College 70

IV.— The Old-Town Church 84

V. — Schonherr and False Friends 107

" VI. — Noble Christians 131

" VII.— The Religious Suit 151

" VIII.— Rest 191

Appendices :

A. Sermons of Ebel 218

1. The Great Change, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27 218

2. A Paradox, 2 Cor. xii. 10 236

3. Fidelity in the Least, Luke xvi. 10-13 248

B. Notice of Schonherr 258

Extracts from his Writings, Remains, the works of

others, Analyses, etc 262

C. Miscellaneous 293

Index 313

Illustrations :

I. View of the Old-Town Church Frontispiece.

II. Ebel's Autographs 188, 200

CHAPTER I.

The subject of this memoir, Johannes Wilhelm Ebel, was born March 4, 1784, at Passenheim, in East Prussia. He was the first child of the Reverend Johann Jacob Ebel, the Lutheran minister of the place, by his wife, Louise Wilhelmine, daughter of the municipal councillor, Holdschuhe. True, earnest, simple piety marked the life of his parents, who, though poor as to this world, were rich towards God.« The mother, like Mary, had chosen the good part, and like Hannah, had consecrated her first-born to the peculiar service of God, from the moment of his birth. To her early vow, intermingled with the ardent longing of her soul, fed and animated by constant prayer, and to her godly example, and precepts drawn from the Word of God, the world is, under God, indebted for a large share of the pure piety, triumphant faith, and love of the Scriptures, which peculiarly stamped the life and graced the ministry of Johannes, or as we shall call him, of John Ebel.

To this general characterization, we now add some particulars shedding light on the influences that presided over the early life and culture of the child John, as he was being trained in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. His father was a man of considerable attainments, a good classic and theologian. Though devout and believing, profoundly convinced of the divine origin of Holy Scripture, and the necessity of a holy life, rendered efficacious through intimate personal relation to the Saviour, he was not altogether free from the dominant neological thought of the period at the commencement of his ministry. As he advanced in years, his abandonment of neological views, and adoption of strictly biblical theology became more pronounced. But there is no trace of neological tendency in the pure, translucent piety of the mother, who, early orphaned, and exposed to harsh treatment at the hands of a step-mother, had turned in touching simplicity to the protecting care of the Father in heaven, and was wont to hold all things in Him, and Him in all things. The correspondence of the betrothed gives evidence of the deep piety of both, and shows that their union, so happy through life, began, continued, and ended in God ! The grand principle which those godly parents imprinted in indelible characters on the mind of John was this, that it is our duty to live on earth for heaven j that principle was their rule of life, which they applied to everything, and of course, to the education of their children. Family worship at the beginning and close of every day, grace at meajs, the solemn celebration of the Lord's Supper on high festivals, belonged to the conduct of a Christian home, in which prayer was the native element. In weal and woe, in seasons of want, which were the rule, and seasons of plenty, which were the exception, their wants and necessities, their joys and griefs, were carried to the throne of grace, and the never-failing providence of God was ever sought in believing, hopeful trust. Religion was a reality, and interpenetrated every, even the most ordinary, part of daily life. Under such influences, augmented by judicious religious instruction and Bible history enforced by direct application, John grew up in the fear of God, and cherished the thought to become a minister. He loved to pray, and early acquired the faculty of committing hymns and making the hymns texts of sermons, which, when he could command no other audience, he would deliver to an imaginary congregation, consisting of dolls, carved for the purpose out of wood.

Naturally endowed with a tender, kind, and sympathetic disposition, the boy was a universal favorite, and when in his seventh year he was sent to school, the shortcomings of fellow pupils, especially when they led to punishment, gave him unspeakable pain. Scrupulous veracity, unselfishness, confidential intercourse with his mother as to all matters relating to his own early troubles and trials and temptations, were some of the engaging traits of the young child. One of the greatest secrets of earthly happiness he learned from intercourse with that sweet and saintly mother, the secret which St. Paul so eloquently commends to the Philippians ; " Rejoice in the Lord always," the joy which is the outcome of personal holiness, and the testimony of a good conscience. That secret, connected with habitual prayer and thanksgiving, which he learned from his mother, he never forsook in after life ; it was perhaps the most distinctive feature of his character and ministry.

The rather primitive school at Passenheim, and private instruction in Latin at home, supplied until his eleventh year the means of his education. In 1795 tne even ten o r of the good people's life was interrupted by a call to become assistant minister in the Polish congregation at Konigsberg, extended to the hard-worked and ill-paid servant of Christ, which, while it brought change, was hardly a promotion, for the emoluments of the position at Konigsberg were not better than those connected with that at Passenheim, and keeping the wolf from the door was the ever-pressing concomitant of his sacred office. But the change from quiet Passenheim to busy stirring Konigsberg, with its splendid scholastic institutions and famous university, brought sunshine into the mind of John, and his lively imagination fell quickly to work to portray a future of golden prospects. Whatever occurred, occurred for the best ; God sent it all, and every momentary joy, every the least ministration of human kindness, was sent from on high, and viewed as a link in the mysterious chain of providential direction shaping his earthly course for a high and celestial vocation. John was sent to the Latin school of the Altstadt at Konigsberg, where he continued, with a brief interruption to be presently narrated, until he entered the university. The master of that school was Hamann, one of the most distinguished educators of the period. It was his plan, in order to become personally acquainted with, all the pupils, even the most youthful, to teach every week a few hours in every class. This enabled him not only to study the character and mark the intellectual calibre of every pupil, but also to establish direct personal relations with them. John was an uncommonly bright, quick, studious and conscientious pupil. His record in every class was most enviable ; quick in perception and grasp, diligent and careful in the preparation and pursuit of his lessons, obedient to his teachers, kind and sympathetic to his fellow-pupils, and withal uniformly modest and

EARLY YEARS. II

pleasant, he was honored with the affection and confidence of the former, and rendered happy by the good will of the latter.

John's great merits had not escaped the penetrating eye of Hamann, who neglected no opportunity to inflame the zeal and fire the ambition of his pupils. One day he came into John's class (the Tertia, i. e. the third downward), accompanied by a former teacher in the school, who, after passing a brilliant examination at Berlin, had just been appointed military chaplain. Hamann addressed the class and exhorted them to take encouragement from his example to aim at high and noble ends ; while speaking he stood near John, and affectionately stroked his cheeks ; the former teacher, well acquainted with him, and noticing the caress, said to Hamann, " That boy will never be common."

It is not to be wondered at that John was happy at school. Good, faithful, conscientious, manly and diligent boys always are ; unhappy boys at school, with very rare exceptions, are deficient in one or other, in some or more, and occasionally in all the qualities named. John's exemplary conduct bore immediate good fruit ; the praise of his teachers, the thankful approbation of his parents, the good will of his fellow-pupils made him glad and contented ; the report of his good behavior spread over the town, and the parents of the best scholars sought for them the companionship of so good a boy as John.

The sunny memories of that happy school-life had always a tender place in the heart of Ebel. When many years later he wrote an admirable pamphlet on education,* he alluded to them, and affords us a view of a

* Die gedeihliche Erziehung, p. 132 sqq.

happy band of youth of whom he was the spring and centre and motive power. Childhood and youth, to a very large extent, are passed, as far as real enjoyment and pleasure are concerned, almost entirely in the pleasure-lands of imagination. The brightest children have generally the liveliest imagination, and invest the unreal or fictitious with a surprising degree of reality ; they deliberately invent unreal situations, place themselves in them as actors, and derive happiness from the consistency and perseverance with which they sustain their part. Such an ideal, imaginary estate was elaborated by John, for his companion and friends. It was nothing less than a sort of church and state ; the latter, it would seem, reduced to the slender proportions of a provincial municipality ; but there was a church and a school, with a full complement of preachers and masters ; there were services and sermons ; there were lessons and recitations, public examinations conducted by imaginary scholastic functionaries, public debates solemnly argued on Saturday afternoons, and for which an elaborately prepared programme was duly circulated ; prizes were likewise awarded, and commendatory mention was made of peculiarly meritorious pupils. As the young people engaged in the general conduct of these ideal establishments were rather limited in number, our ingenious friend John manufactured a very large public in the shape of small wands with carved heads, and the names of the respective functionaries duly inscribed thereon, and he likewise supplied the exchequer with funds in the shape of stones of a designated value. The entire commonwealth, embracing ministers and congregations, professors and pupils, the magistracy, the parents and citizens in general, with an ample store of the circulating medium, was divided among the members of the ideal establishment on equitable principles, who persevered in their unquestionably useful and improving work for a considerable period of time.

It has already been intimated that John's father had cherished the thought that he should enter one of the learned professions ; he now changed his views on grounds sufficiently striking to justify their consideration. As applied to the learned professions in general, excluding theology, the question was one of means. The slender income of the assistant minister imperatively dictated a diminution, not an increase of expenditure; he could not affoi-d the necessary outlay, for he had not got it, and therefore he ruled it wise to convert a consumer into a producer by the most expeditious and remunerative course. He felt convinced that John, so kind, affectionate and unselfish, would certainly be the stay and staff of the younger children if he were once placed in circumstances favoring his natural promptings; and he decided that instead of entering the ministry, he should go to a merchant's office. That was reasonable and judicious enough, but what about theology? for that was the secret yearning, the daily prayer of his wife, and that was ever uppermost in the heart and mind of John. Why then did he propose, for propose he certainly did, that what he knew would give pain and sorrow all around ? The pecuniary argument did not apply here, for friends and assistance, to say nothing of faith in God, would certainly have been found, as eventually they were found. What then were the reasons, which he, as a clergyman, had to oppose to the darling desire of his wife and of his son ? He lived in sad times; he was not only half starved, but he felt in bitterness of soul that the ministry was scorned and despised, like Christianity itself, by a skeptical, free-thinking, rationalistic but irrational generation.

To study theology, to preach Christian doctrine as taught in the New Testament, and to enter the church, were in the public estimate to study, preach and practise hypocrisy. This sentiment was so universally held, that the poor assistant minister, who was half starved to death, and had to toil like a slave, felt himself daily and hourly insulted in the thought and speech of his contemporaries. It was a galling thought, and he felt that though such torture and excruciating agony might be borne by him, yet as far as he might be able to prevent it, it should not be endured by his noble, pure, true, sensitive and scrupulously conscientious John, and therefore he told him, "You must not become a minister; it would kill you; the world is too corrupt; and you are too conscientious to submit to the hardships of the ministry." It was a sore trial to them all, when against the wishes of the good mother, against the entreaties of Director Hamann, and against the boy's own deep and invincible yearnings, he was removed from the Secunda (the second class) to a merchant's office, and had to study French and Polish in place of the classics. But John was not to be a merchant ; the work did not agree with him, he grew sickly and the good assistant minister became convinced that it was an intimation of Providence to cease his opposition to the desire and entreaties of all concerned, and thus he consented to his return to school and the prosecution of his preparatory studies in Prima (i. e. the highest class).

There Hamann taught almost exclusively. His method was singularly lucid and stimulative, and his influence magnetic. In the class-room, he taught, and understood to inspire his pupils with an enthusiastic thirst for knowledge. There was no slavish, mechanical committal of the dull, packed sections and paragraphs of text books, alike suicidal to independent thought and the mastering of a subject, alike injurious to teacher and taught. His method was oral instruction of an uncommonly well-informed, original mind, conveyed in warm, earnest, convincing strains to eager, ambitious students. He urged them to go beyond the prescript curriculum and read conjointly at home selected portions of classical authors, and of German writers. This advice was not neglected by John, who derived great benefit from the judicious and diligent improvement of his spare time.

In his parental home Sunday was kept, neither according to the prevailing spirit of desecration, nor according to the Mosaic literalness of Puritanic sabbath observance. His father recommended and practised a middle course; all work proper was rigidly forbidden, i. e. all regular work ; work belonging to the week days, which included of course school work, was relegated to week-days. First came public worship, and then social intercourse ; the two were not treated as incompatibles, but as complementaries ; and while social intercourse admitted of pastime and recreation, it allowed likewise private reading or the study of favorite authors ; the latter was John's way of filling the leisure hours of the Lord's Day. Gellert's Moral Prelections, and J. P. Miller's Moral Delineations* he found peculiarly attractive. Works of a philosophical and religious tone seemed to charm him most. As Hamann's views of Christianity were decidedly negative, and the prevailing sentiment at Konigsberg in general, and in the Latin school in particular,

* Schaffhausen, 1779.

ran in the same direction, there was a good deal of religious, or more truly, of irreligious controversy among the pupils. Among them was one who loved to fire the salvos of Voltaire and Rousseau at Christianity, and provoked John, who even then clung to his religious conviction with that intensity of persistence which is almost always allied to natures whom the French call entier, to vindicate it from the aspersions he cast upon it. This prompted him to ransack the well-stocked and carefully selected library of his father for apologetic works, and to master their arguments against scoffers and skeptics. Thus he became, at a comparatively early period, familiar e. g. with Lilienthal's Gute Sache* and many other thoughtful works, whose persual led him to think and form independent opinions in a field of theological inquiry for which he appeared to be peculiarly fitted, and in which he speedily earned golden laurels. He read fast, and acquired the useful habit of keeping the run of, and acquaintance with new publications, especially periodical literature, to which he devoted his leisure moments at meals. The books he studied were of a weighty sort, on topics connected with philosophy and theology ; and as he was wont to take notes and extracts as he went along, every department of human knowledge was made to contribute to his intellectual outfit. At that time his memory was more tenacious of facts, and the true essence of any matter he might have in hand, than of literal technicalities.

Hamann, the head of the Latin School, was the son of a very remarkable man, Johann Georg Hamann, who, from his own nom de plume, is known in literature as the

* Konigsberg, 1760.

"Magus of the North." As a writer he is humorous, rather cynical, but all his sentiments are dipped in Christianity ; his philosophy is essentially Christian and biblical. Herder said that " every thought of his is an unstrung pearl, wrapped in the very words without which it could neither have been thought nor spoken."

The son did not in any way share the religious convictions of his sire, but deemed them foolishness, and had a very reprehensible way of ridiculing and sneering at the dogmas of the Christian verity. His innuendoes, often thrust at John, neither shook his faith, nor weakened the affectionate relations which marked his intercourse with Hamann. When he left school in 1801, the official testimonial, here produced, reflects the opinion which had been formed of him by his teachers : " Johannes Wilhelm Ebel, of Passenheim in Prussia, has been for six years a pupil of this school. Throughout that period he has been continuously diligent and unremittingly devoted to his studies. Having utilized every moment of his time r his progress in scientific knowledge has been so satisfactory, that in the unanimous and commendatory judgment of the officially appointed examiners, he has been found qualified to frequent the free halls of academical learning, it being his intention to study theology. His disposition is so singularly friendly and amiable that we cannot part with him without sorrow ; and we may confidently predict that in this respect he will remain unchanged. Our cordial wishes for prosperity in all his efforts and undertakings accompany him."

Before following him to the university, the extraordinary diligence and application referred to in the testimonial, need an explanatory word. Besides his regular school duties, he was obliged to supervise and help a younger brother and several boarders in his father's family, in the preparation of their school exercises. His own statement, made at a subsequent period, sheds light on this matter : " As the child of poor parents, I was compelled, since my fifteenth year, to contribute to my own support by giving private lessons ; and after my eighteenth year to assist in the maintenance of my father's family by spending simultaneously with my academical studies, daily, five hours in a public school, as my father's substitute, who on account of sickness, was unable to do the work."

The relations to his fellow-students were most cordial and pleasant. Of a peaceful temperament, he had no quarrels of his own, but was successful in composing those of others. Fond of mirth and harmless pleasures, and averse to exclusiveness, he- bore his part in the public social gatherings of the students, who liked his frank and cheerful demeanor. The same diligence and application which had marked his course at school characterized his progress at the university. The circle of his acquaintance was quite extensive, and he enjoyed the esteem and affection of his fellow-students ; but he had not found among them a really intimate or truly congenial friend. Nor is this matter of surprise, if we bear in mind the deep, strong religious convictions which colored all his efforts and inspirations, and contrast them with the frivolity and irreligion which animated the academic youth of the period. They simply reflected the prevalent sentiment that religion was hypocrisy, and would often tease him with the jocose inquiry, how he would ever manage to get along as spriest (Pfaffe), as he was not cut out for a hypocrite. The contemptuousness of the word Pfaffe which they used, does not attach to the English priest ; it is generally employed with a liberal infusion of envenomed hatred and derision.

Soon after entering the university, John had the great sorrow to lose his good mother after a fortnight's illness. She died as a true Christian. After taking leave of all the rest, she beckoned John to her side, and poured into his ears her deep and intense love ; she told him how it had been the ardent, never-dying yearning of her soul that he should be a minister of the Word ; that that had been her prayer before he was born ; that her husband's opposition had caused her unspeakable pain, and almost made her uncertain as to what might be the will of God , in the matter; but that now everything seemed to point so clearly in one direction, that she felt sure that her prayer would be heard, and that he would not study law, as his father seemed to desire. Then she blessed him, adding in great tenderness: " If all my prayers for you are heard, my child, you will be the happiest of the children of men." Her last words were : " Indeed you will and must needs prosper, for you have caused us nothing but joy." That sainted mother's life-long prayers and dying benediction were ratified on high, for the child of so many prayers grew to become a man of prayer, ever ineffably happy in the love of Christ, and impressing all that knew him with the placid serenity that was mirrored in his mind and life, though storms of trials and tempests of adversity beat upon his soul.

Schulz and Hasse were foremost among the theologians whom John heard. The views of the former were orthodox, 1. e. biblical, those of the latter neological. While his sympathies went out to the first, he could not withhold his admiration from the straightforward, outspoken frankness and native truthfulness of the second, and he attended almost all his prelections on the theology, pedagogics and the Oriental languages. Hasse's hetorodoxy did not in any way contaminate the strong biblical bias of our young theological student, who very judiciously sought for breadth of view, and toiled and struggled to find the true and trusty foundation of the love of Jesus, in the conflict of philosophical and theological opinions which must often have seemed to him a veritable Babel for confusion and contradiction. He was passing through the great ordeal which was to test the purity, strength and sincerity of his religious convictions. Such an ordeal to true and conscientious minds is harder intellectually and emotionally than the material ordeal of fire and water of which we read in history. There is a crisis in the theological culture of every student when he must form opinions based on the study of the Scriptures, and where the ipse dixit of the professor is rarely satisfactory. He must think for himself ; he wants reasons for his belief ; reasons for his convictions ; and the question comes sometimes with irresistible force : Which is stronger ? where are the strongest proofs ? what am I to believe ? am I to follow the promptings of personal inclination ? or must I sacrifice personal inclination to the superior experience of my teacher, and the still higher claims of truth ? And what is truth ? In English and American theological seminaries the difficulties are not anything as great as those which beset the path of a student in a German university, where professors of almost every diversity of theological belief or unbelief are at liberty to unfold their respective views, while the students are not compelled to attend the lectures of men all of the same stripe, but at liberty to hear whom they choose. In the midst of such a chaos of conflicting opinions stood young Ebel, doubtful, hesitating, swayed hither and thither, humble-minded and in danger of losing his self-reliance ; eager and strong in long-cherished feelings, and in danger of sacrificing truth to inclination ; he weighed and balanced thought with thought, referred what he heard and read to the word of God, and sought for light and direction in habitual intercourse with God in prayer. The possession of the truth, no matter from which quarter it came to him, grasped in faith, held conscientiously and in charity, that was his aim, and in the congenial soil of such an aim rooted the impartiality and conscientiousness which are conspicuous traits of his character.

Thoroughly unsettled on matters where doubt and perplexity mean unhappiness, and where indecision makes confusion worse confounded, Ebel was wondering where the solution might lie — whether after all that good mother's prayers, and her prophetic utterances, after all, and notwithstanding all his own most cherished feelings, it were not wiser and better, whether it were not right for him to abandon theology and turn pedagogue, or whether he should persevere and struggle on, determined to succeed ? Just at that critical moment the matter was decided for him in a way which is best given in his own words :

" I was eighteen years old, when I heard a friend of our family state incidentally that he had become acquainted with a man (Johann Heinrich Schonherr) who had successfully established a perfect agreement of the whole Bible, even as to its verbal declarations, by proofs of reason, with a force of conviction simply irresistible, and all but unanswerable by scoffing unbelievers. Like a light from heaven this glorious news shed its gladsome beams into my heart of hearts, and joy unspeakable took hold of my being. It seemed as if all the dreadful questionings, which rose unbidden, and which I trembled to formulate, were answered, as if all darkness were dispelled, and that a sweet presentiment overcame me, whispering the fulfilment of my deepest longings. From a child brought up in reverence of the word of God, the doubts of its truth and the contradiction of its declarations, vociferously uttered all around me by my teachers and fellow-students, could not fail to disquiet my heart, and to hold it in anxious', painful suspense. When I tried to meet and oppose them, I would, after long and idle contendings, retire to a corner of my attic room, shed bitter tears, and pour out my heart before God, accusing and condemning myself, and bewailing my inability to save His word from defamation, and to vindicate its declarations from the foul aspersions and criticisms of the rationalists. This anxious and agonizing pain were all the greater because I cherished the desire to study theology ; but that darling wish, I felt, must be abandoned, as far as I felt myself unable to grapple with the adversaries, and shrunk from the thought of appearing in the pulpit with the Bible in my hand, and thoughts inimical or conflicting with its truths in my mind — in other words, of preaching in opposition to conviction. ... In the midst of this soul-struggle, in the midst of fears and longings, that blessed beam brought light. The good news of my friend, that reason and revelation were in agreement, and that the man who had succeeded to establish that agreement, was still in the land of the living."*