THE travels of Tersteegen now took up a great part of his time. " In journeyings often " included in those days much of the " weariness and painfulness " of which Paul the apostle speaks.
Neither roads, vehicles, nor inns were much improved since the time when William Penn journeyed through Northern Germany and the Rhine provinces. " We travelled two hundred miles," he wrote, " in three days and nights without lying down or sleeping, otherwise than in the waggon, which was only covered with an old ragged sheet."
Many years later, in 1768, an Englishman travelled through the very country so often traversed by Tersteegen on his missionary journeys. A short account of the Englishman's experiences may give us some idea of what these journeys must have been to a man so inured to a quiet life, and so constantly ill and suffering, as Gerhardt Tersteegen. Nor had he, as the English traveler had, a long purse, which in some measure supplied the deficiencies of the journey. Nor could he choose his road ; for where there was a call he went, and found no place for rest, being everywhere surrounded as soon as he arrived by those who desired to talk with him, or to collect a meeting at which he should preach.
Let us hear the tale of the Englishman, and then picture to ourselves Tersteegen, thirty years before, travelling over the same country.
The Englishman on arriving at Cologne had such a description of the roads and inns he might expect to find between that place and Osnabruck, that he bought a chaise, roomy enough to be well stocked with provisions. He also took the precaution of stowing away in his chaise sheets, pillows, and a mattress and counterpane. He sent on his chaise to Duisburg, whither he himself went by water. At Duisburg he was assured that no better fare would be found at any inn between that town and Osnabruck than a slice of bacon and a piece of black barley-bread. He therefore laid in a stock of bread, cold fowls, ham, beef, and half a dozen bottles of wine.
"The first night," he says, "I stopped at a house here called an inn, but which was in reality a small farmhouse, standing alone in the fields. I arrived at this mansion about five in the afternoon, and immediately took a survey of the premises. What I had taken for a house I found to be no more than a large barn, which served for parlour, kitchen, bedchamber, stable, cowhouse, and hog-stye. A man very readily came out, and unharnessing the horses, conducted them to a rack and manger, but nobody took the least notice of myself."
The poor Englishman stood dismayed. Meanwhile his servant went to the landlord, who was working in the fields, to ask for some separate room or shed in which his master might sleep. The landlord however replied, his master must do as other travelers did at his inn, or he might, if he pleased, go seek a better. It was evident the room which was destined to so many uses was the only one.
"We fixed," reports poor John Bull, " upon a part of it, the least offensive from unsavoury smells, and spreading a napkin on the ground, began to devour a part of the provisions we had brought. One table, which was the ground, served both master and man, and served us also for chairs,"
A couple of fowls, a piece of beef, and some slices of ham had disappeared, when the landlord came forward and offered an addition to the repast in the shape of dried tongues and brandy. John Bull and his man continued to devour several tongues, and a piece of hung beef, in addition to their first course. Their host meanwhile kept them company by drinking the brandy, during which process he described to them his farming operations, especially recommending to them the fattening of hogs upon baked potatoes.
The servant then went out to collect fern, of which he made a layer on the ground in the cleanest spot he could find in the one apartment. Over this he placed a layer of straw, then the mattress. John Bull would have slept sweetly, despite his ample supper, had he not been nervous lest one of the seven oxen, ranged to their racks within three feet of him, should break his halter, and invade the space allotted to the bed. On the other side was a cow, and a large sow with a litter of pigs. But the near neighbourhood of these quadrupeds was preferable to that of the landlord, his wife, and family, the post-boy, and a labourer, who were crowded at the other end of the room. " The animals," thought John Bull, "are the cleanest, and the least unsavoury."
Another traveler had arrived, who preferred human companionship. Our traveler writes, "In the middle of the night, having fallen comfortably asleep, I was suddenly awaked with a great weight dropping at once upon me. I supposed it was nothing less than my friend the ox, and directly belaboured his bones with a large cane ; immediately a voice, not less sonorous than that of the ox, resounded through the apartment, and all was in confusion, oxen and cows bellowing, the sows grunting„ the horses neighing, the pigs squeaking, the women shrieking, the landlord cursing and swearing." Nor was the discord quieted till the case was explained by the wounded traveler, who, having found his companions undesirable, had wandered to the other end of the room, and taken refuge upon the inviting mattress.
John Bull found it best after this to picnic by the roadsides, and spread his mattress wherever he could find a promising spot. Sometimes he slept in his chaise, and when golden opportunities offered themselves, he replenished his stock of provisions. He appears to have led this gipsy life perforce, till he reached Hamburg, where he procured a good bed and tolerable fare for a guinea and a half a day.
Such was wayfaring life in the Rhine provinces in the last year of the life of Tersteegen. We have to imagine it from thirty to forty years earlier. Amongst other places Tersteegen visited, in 1737, Count Casimir in his castle of Berleburg, and the good old Countess Hedwig Sophie, who died in the following year. At the desire of Tersteegen, the Countess put up a simple monument on the tomb of Ernest von Hochmann, so dear to them both. Many other friends delighted in Tersteegen's visits, so that we may hope that his experience of German inns was only an occasional dark page in his history. Many hospitable houses, great and small, were open to him, and his many letters still preserved are a proof to us of the great number of his friends.
Thus, between preaching, travelling, writing, and doctoring his patients, the time was amply filled up till the year 1740. In that year, by order of the government, all conventicles were forbidden in the territories of Cleve, Mark, and Meurs, and this order was renewed two years later by Frederick II. of Prussia. The extravagances, and abandoned lives of some who classed themselves amongst the "awakened," were the main cause of this interference on the part of the government. But it was not amongst those taught by Hoffmann and Tersteegen that these sins and follies had sprung up. It was scarcely to be expected that those in authority should distinguish between wild fanatics and other separatists from the Established Churches. The evil was laid at the door of all conventicles alike, and the preaching was stopped for ten long years.
During this time Tersteegen had more time for teaching from house to house, and for writing books and letters. By this means his work continued without interruption, and more were reached than could have been brought within the sound of his preaching.
His special mission was one which needed times of quiet and solitude. For the message with which he was entrusted was given to him in those still hours when alone with God. It was the message of God to His beloved people, to whom the most precious and glorious truths of His Word had become a dead letter ; to whom His inner sanctuary was a strange place ; to whom the depths of His heart were as a land unexplored, or rather unknown.
As Protestants, they had been taught to retain the great truths still held by Catholic Christians ; and in addition, the way of salvation by the blood of Jesus, had been taught them even in their catechisms and formularies. They had been taught that moral lives and good works were to be looked for in those who were born again. And beyond this, all thought of the supernatural intercourse of the soul with God, of the fulness of joy that is in His presence, a blessedness, not future only, but present, was spoken of as "enthusiasm," or "fanaticism," or "mysticism." Any name would serve the purpose, if vague enough to mean some indescribable folly.
It is true that the extraordinary and disgraceful follies of the vile and the mad fanatics who had crept in amongst the Pietists gave ample ground for all accusations of their enemies. And according to the common custom described in German talk as emptying out the child with the bath, all the highest and most sacred privileges of the children of God, all thoughts of actual intercourse with Him, and of spiritual sight and knowledge and joy, were cast away with the dreams and delusions and insane wickedness of the men and women who claimed to be prophets and prophetesses, and to have been set free from all law but that of their evil hearts. Tersteegen came from his hours of intercourse with God to tell that there was a true communion with Him, not for a select few, but for all who believe in Jesus. Let him tell this in his own words.