George Cross · 12 of 40

A. A Sketch of Schleiermacher’s Life. · THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE

Before we follow farther the career of Schleiermacher during the Napoleonic wars, we must turn aside to notice certain domestic events. The friendship between him and Ehrenfried von Willich has already been mentioned. Begun in the summer of 1801, it deepened with time. When the young pastor married, his home became Schleiermacher’s chief resort for the inspirations and consolations of human fellowship. Von Willich looked upon him as an elder brother, and the wife regarded him as a spiritual father. When their “Schleier,” as they familiarly called him, came to see them, there was always a free mutual outpouring of joys and sorrows. The love of friends like these he described as “my highest good, without which neither the world nor anything in it would have the smallest value in my eyes.” (We shall remember this when we come to the vital place he assigns to the Christian communion in his Glaubenslehre.) On the outbreak of the war von Willich was pastor at Stralsund. When the place was attacked he remained with his flock. A fever that became epidemic during the siege seized him and, in the be ginning of March, 1807, he died. The young widow, left with two infant children, writes a pathetic letter to Schleiermacher telling him the awful news. In her distress she beseeches him to give her some word of assurance that her husband was not lost to her altogether. The correspondence throws light on the state of Schleiermacher’s mind at the time. She urges him to tell her his inmost convictions on the question of the future state and adds, instinctively, that she is not without consolation, that in the midst of her anguish she has the rapture of feeling that “love is eternal and that God cannot possibly destroy it, because God himself is love.” She goes on to say, “I implore you, by all that you love and hold sacred, if you can, give me the certainty that I shall see him again, that I shall recognize him. . . . . Alas! it will be annihilation to me to lose this faith.” It would seem that she had been led to fear that Schleiermacher held to some sort of pantheism, for she asks, “Do you know when I feel my grief most poignantly? When I think that in the future life there will be nothing left of the old, . . . . and when I think that his soul is merged in the great all . . . . that the past will not be recognized--that all is over--Oh, Schleier! this I can not bear.” Schleiermacher’s reply, though gentle and tender, is without the certainty of possessing definite information on the point that concerned her most. There is even a tone of rebuke, which we find echoed in his Glaubenslehre, because of the emphasis she had placed on physical existence and her desire that the future life should be, in a degree at least, a reduplication of the conditions of the present. He says a good deal about the “eternal order of things and the necessity of submitting tranquilly to it, but confesses that he cannot undertake to settle her doubts by confirming the certainty of the images of the phantasy, which, he thought, would be to prefer our own desires to God’s own order. Yet, “There is the greatest certainty--and nothing would be certain if it were not so--that 1 for the soul there is no such thing as annihilation.” But immediately upon this follows the disappointing assertion, “Personal life is not the essence of spiritual being; it is only an outward presentment thereof. How this is repeated we know not--we can form no conception of it, we can only form poetic visions.” His idea of a merging in the great all was that it was not an unconscious condition, but “a living commingling--as the highest life.” He seems to have in mind a future life of fellowship without the personal separateness and mutual exclusiveness of the present. The poetic visions we have of the future life he held to be of value because they are anticipations of reality, but he seemed to think that the precise nature of that future reality is nowhere disclosed to men. Mrs. von Willich thanked him for his helpful words, but it seems to the writer that her consolations were mainly drawn from her own spiritual intuitions.

The correspondence continued. He finally visited Mrs. von Willich at her home on the island of Rügen and the personal interview resulted in a betrothal. In the year 1809, notwithstanding the extremely unsettled state of Prussia and the precariousness of Schleiermacher’s means of livelihood, they were married. He took as much care of her children as if they were his own. To them in course of time five others were added--two girls and a boy of his, and two adopted children. He reveled in the love and joys of the home life and found in his wife a companion who, though much his junior, entered heartily into his deepest religious experiences and his many trying labors.