George Cross · 16 of 40

A. A Sketch of Schleiermacher’s Life. · CLOSING YEARS

One word more must be added concerning his family life. He paid the greatest attention to the education of his children, stepchildren, and adopted children. He shared their pranks and frolics and their holiday making and imparted his own freedom and spontaneity to their studies. In 1820 he was greatly elated over the birth of a son, and on that occasion writes, “My first prayer to God was to be inspired with wisdom and power from above to educate this child to his glory.” This child inherited the religious precocity of his father and exhibited very early the influence of the peculiar Moravian attitude to Jesus of which deep traces still remained in Schleiermacher. It is related by Auberlen (Studien und Kritiken, 1860) that on one occasion when the boy was only four years old his father asked him: “Nathaniel, dost thou love me?” and the child replied, “Yes, I love thee, but I love the Savior still better.” But his death when only nine years of age was so deeply felt by his father that he said it drove the nails into his own coffin. He himself pronounced the funeral oration and went on with his regular work that very day, but with a sore heart. He wrote to a friend wearily, “Life goes on in its old grooves, but more slowly and more heavily.” It is said that from the time of this bereavement there was a greater depth of sympathy in his preaching, and that he spoke more persistently of the love of God in Christ. The death in 1831 of his elder sister, the faithful Lotte, who had come to live in his home after Nanni’s marriage, was an added sorrow. He was not to survive her many years.

In 1828 he made his first and only visit to England and preached at the opening of a German church at the Savoy. He noticed with wonderment the commerce and wealth of London. On a visit to St. Paul’s he was disappointed with the worship and criticized the indifference with which the officiating minister conducted a funeral service which he attended.

In 1831 evidence was given of the reconciliation between him and the king in the tardy recognition of his services to the nation by conferring on him the decoration of the Order of the Red Eagle. Two years later he visited Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. His fame had preceded him, and ovations met him everywhere, especially at the schools of learning. But long-continued suffering had undermined his strength and the end was near. A slight cold contracted in the middle of the winter of the next year developed into pneumonia and after a few days of suffering it terminated fatally. He died at his home in Berlin on February 12, 1834. The friends who were present often spoke of the deathbed scenes. Some of his utterances may be recorded here. At one time, just after recovering from the effects of laudanum, calling his wife to his bedside, he said, “I am, in fact, in a state between consciousness and unconsciousness, but inwardly I enjoy heavenly moments. I feel constrained to think the profoundest speculative thoughts and they are to me identical with the deepest religious feelings.” Near the last, he said, “I have never clung to the dead letter, and we have the atoning death of Jesus Christ, his body, and his blood. I have ever believed, and still believe, that the Lord Jesus gave the communion in water and in wine.” (The physician had forbidden him to use wine.) After receiving the assent of the friends present he added, “Then let us take the communion: the wine for you, the water for me. . . . . Let no one take offense at the form.” Then he calmly gave to each the bread and wine with the usual words and, taking the bread and water for himself, said soliloquizingly: “On these words of the Scripture I rely; they are the foundation of my faith.” After pronouncing the benediction he said to his wife, “In this love and communion we are and ever will remain united,” and in a few moments expired. It is significant of his attitude in religion that his deep regard for the Supper and for the communion of believers appears at the very close of his life.

The news of his death caused profound sorrow everywhere and was regarded as a national calamity. He was buried like a Prince of the country. Thirty-six of his students shared among them the honor of bearing his body to the cemetery. The carriages of the king and the crown prince led the long procession of mourners, shop-windows were closed, and thou sands of Berlin’s weeping citizens lined the march. The sight was a tribute to his own simple greatness and at the same time a proof of that deep spiritual sympathy of the German people that has made so many of her university professors the teachers of the world.