The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler...

The Dominicans in general quitted the city, and Koenigshofen relates in his Chronicle, that they left their convent standing empty for more than two years; but no doubt many of the democratical Franciscans, who had always supported the Emperor, remained behind. They were, however, as we shall see, exceptions in these Orders to the general rule, which shows to how great an extent the brethren must have been guided by their individual conscience rather than their corporate organization.

Such were the scenes amidst which Tauler was called to labour as a Christian minister and Dominican monk. Of the manner in which he fulfilled his work, and the vicissitudes of his personal career, history has preserved but a small number of facts, but these, though few, are significant. All the testimonies that have come down to us respecting him, concur in bearing witness to the universal affection and esteem with which he was regarded. Even so far distant as Italy his name was known as a teacher of high repute, who insisted on inward piety. The famous Brother Venturini, of Bergamo, who was residing at that time under disgrace in a convent at Marveges, names him in a letter which he writes to another Dominican in Strasburg, Egenolph von Ehenheim, calling him his beloved John Tauler, and wishing to enter into correspondence with him, because he perceives that “through him and others the name of Christ will be spread abroad, ever more and more, throughout Germany.” Egenolph himself was one of these “others,” who were fellow-workers with Tauler. His early friend, Johann von Dambach was also here at this time.

But the most remarkable trait in this period of Tauler’s life is that he not only, unlike most of his Order, sided with the Emperor in his whole contest with the Pope, but did not suspend his activity when, in 1338, the great struggle came between the absolutely contradictory commands of his temporal and spiritual lords, and, as we have seen, his brethren quitted the town, and left their convent deserted for two years. By the departure of nearly all the clergy from Strasburg, Tauler found a still wider field of labour; and from allusions to him in letters of his contemporaries, it appears that he did not confine his exertions to that city, but preached from time to time at various places, from Cologne to Basle. Before the close of 1338 he seems to have made a somewhat lengthened visit to the latter city, where the state of things was very similar to that in Strasburg. The Bishop of Basle belonged to the opponents of Louis of Bavaria, and made common cause with the Bishop of Strasburg in attacking the adherents of the Emperor in 1339. The citizens again, like those of Strasburg, had remained faithful to Louis, and had even gone so far in their hostility to the Pope, that when, in 1330, John XXII. despatched an envoy to publish his bull against the Emperor, the incensed mob hurled him, although a priest and a dignitary, from the citadel into the river; and, when he tried to save himself by swimming, put out in boats after him and slew him.

During the Interdict, however, most of the clergy, and especially the monks, had forsaken the churches, so that in many places the Sacrament had not been administered for fourteen years; and on the magistrates ordering them to resume their functions the greater part had refused to do so. About this time, however, the people of Basle by some means prevailed on the Pope to relax the severity of the Interdict for the space of a year.

In Basle, Tauler met with an old friend, Henry of Nordlingen, from whose letters most of the scanty notices of Tauler during this period are derived. He was a priest from Constance, which city he had been obliged to leave on account of his refusal to preach; for though a Bavarian by birth, and intimately connected with Tauler and others of similar views, he did not recognize Louis as the lawful Emperor. He is principally known by his correspondence with a very remarkable woman, Margaretha Ebner, a nun at the Convent of Maria Medingen, in the diocese of Augsburg. Her sister Christina was Abbess of the Convent of Engenthal, near Nuremberg. Both were distinguished by their mental endowments as well as their earnest piety, and were evidently held in great respect by Tauler, Suso, and others of that party. They seem also to have taken up a very decided position amidst the ecclesiastical commotions of their age, and were zealous partizans of Louis. Christina, famous for her visions, in one of her trances sees the Romish Church in the likeness of a magnificent Cathedral, the doors of which are, however, closed by reason of the Interdict. The singing of the priests within is heard; a crowd of people are standing round, but dare not enter. On a sudden a man in the garb of a preaching friar comes up to the nun, and tells her that he will give her words wherewith to console the forsaken multitude; and this man is Christ.

Tauler occasionally visited both these nuns, and was in correspondence with Margaretha14, whom he urges to write down her visions respecting the state of Christendom and the friends of God. For him they had a deep veneration, and constantly call him “our dear Father Tauler.” Christina learns, in one of her revelations, that he is “the holiest of God’s children now living on earth,” that “the spirit of God breathes through him, as sweet music through a lute;” Margaret speaks, too, sometimes of the joy that she has had in the presence of this great friend of God, and how hard it has been to part with him. She appears to have stood rather in the relation of a wise Christian friend and counsellor, than of a spiritual child, to Henry of Nordlingen, who from his letters seems to have been a man of gentle, pious spirit, more fitted for a quiet contemplative life than for the energetic activity required by the troublous times in which his lot was cast. He, like Tauler, was filled with anguish at the sight of the distress of those around him; but while Tauler’s grief stirred him up to vigorous efforts in their behalf, and his courage and energy rose with the emergency, the timid and hesitating Henry was unable to surmount the difficulties in which he found himself involved, and the greater the pressure of the times, the greater was his perplexity and longing for peace. Yet, when his scrupulous conscience allowed him to preach, his labours appear to have been fruitful in result.

When the Pope allowed public worship to be celebrated for a year at Basle, Henry’s friends, without his knowledge, procured him permission to preach, and give a forty days’ indulgence; and he then ventured to appear in public, encouraged by Tauler’s influence and counsel. Thus he says:—“Afterwards I came to Basle, to my and thy dear faithful Father Tauler (who was with me at thy house), and he helped me in every way he could with all fidelity.” He then writes: “The great mercy has been granted us that we may celebrate mass in public, with the Pope’s permission; and now do the hungry souls come with great desire to receive the Lord’s body, which they have not been able to enjoy for fourteen years in Christian obedience. And now I entreat you, with special earnestness, that you pray to God for all those whom I feed with His Body, that we may receive His Holy Sacrament in His love, and administer it to His eternal glory, and the consolation of all Christian souls.” He now preached every day, and often twice a day, besides performing mass daily; and so many of all classes streamed to confess to him that he was overwhelmed with his duties, and writes to his friend: “If I could manage it, I would gladly come to you; but I am not my own. I am the property of the whole Chapter, and the most important parishes. The people at Basle are not willing that I should leave them, neither, indeed, should I have courage to travel openly about the country; for I should be at the mercy of any ruffian or thief, and if aught befell me, no complaint would be laid against him.

Still I trust in the Lord that He will suffer me to see thee, my heart’s true consolation.” But some months later he writes: “Methought I clung too much and with too carnal feelings to the ease, the luxurious and pleasant society, and the earthly comforts that I enjoyed at Basle. In truth I knew not that I did so while I had them, but felt it fully when I forsook them. Besides, I perceived in my heart, through many suggestions and admonitions, that my labours might be more needed elsewhere than at Basle, and so I ventured my departure for the sake of Christ and his flock, and have exchanged the marvellously holy and pleasant and acceptable society there for all manner of discomfort to my inward and outward man, by night and by day; so that now I must perforce retreat into myself, and take refuge in my only consolation, Christ Jesus, if I were unwilling to do so before.”

By the persuasion of Tauler, Henry appears now for a time to have preached even in places which still lay under the Interdict, but afterwards, terrified by the violent censure of the clergy for his conduct, to have submitted again to the papal prohibition, and resumed his wanderings. Tauler, on the contrary, waited for no papal permission to do that which he considered to be the bounden duty of a clergyman, and after his visit to Basle it appears from Henry’s letters that he travelled more than once as far as Cologne. In this city, where Master Eckart had spent the latter years of his life, numerous preachers had gone forth from his school, who continued to promulgate his doctrines with more or less ability and originality. Nicolas of Strasburg, too, was at this time lecturing at Cologne, probably driven from Strasburg by the troubles to which his papal politics would expose him at this period. This was the case also with Tauler’s old friend, Johann von Dambach, who had not only declared that during the Interdict it was the duty of a pious Christian to submit unconditionally to the Church, but even composed several tractates to prove the justifiableness of the Interdict from the Canon Law.

Yet, as we have seen Tauler and the Ebners in undisturbed friendship with Henry of Nordlingen, in spite of differences which entered so deeply into the life of those times, so, notwithstanding Dambach’s antagonistic opinions, and his removal to the distant Prague16, the connection between him and Tauler was not broken off, as is proved by the circumstance, that, after 1350 he sent his book, “De sensibilibus deliciis paradisi” to their Alma Mater, the College of St Jacques, in Paris, in their joint names.

We now arrive at the date when that great change was produced in Tauler with which the foregoing “History” has acquainted us. Till recently, little was known of the “History,” beyond the fact that it was found attached to some mss. of Tauler’s sermons, and many have doubted of its genuineness. Quétif and Echard, for instance, have treated it as a mere allegory. By dint of laborious researches among the old mss. of the libraries of Strasburg and Sarnen, and ingenious combinations of the results thence obtained, Professor Schmidt has not only established, in a way that it seems to me must be satisfactory to any one who goes through the evidence, that this Tractate is a perfectly genuine and truthful production, the work of the layman who professes to have written it, but also has succeeded in identifying this layman with a mysterious personage, called the Great Friend of God, in the Oberland, the head of a secret religious association; and the latter again, with a certain Nicolas of Basle, whose name, however, only occurs twice; once in the account of his own martyrdom, once in that of one of his disciples.

The most important of the mss. examined by Professor Schmidt is a large folio volume, only recently discovered in the archives of Strasburg, and formerly belonging to the Convent of the Knights of St John in that city, called a Briefbuch [book of letters], and is for the most part a collection of letters and papers left by Rulman Merswin, the founder of the convent. This Rulman Merswin was a friend of Tauler (who was for some time his confessor), and, in the latter part of his life, of the “Layman,” Nicolas, by whose advice he built a house for the Brethren of St John, on an island at Strasburg called the Gruenen-Worth (green meadow), and with whom he was in constant correspondence up to the time of his death in 1382. Several portions of this extremely curious Briefbuch were carefully copied into the archives of the convent, forming what is called its Memorial,17 but the codex itself did not belong to the public archives of the house, being kept secret from all but a few, on account of the private letters and notes contained in it, and therefore treasured up with peculiar care. So late as the seventeenth century, this was still the case, and a reader of that period has traced on the outer covering of the Codex the words: “liber iste religiose custodiendus.”

The documents of which it consists were arranged, and most of them copied out, by Nicolas von Laufen, who (according to a few notices of himself, which he has inserted at the close of the Briefbuch) seems to have accompanied Rulman Merswin as his secretary, on taking possession of the newly-built Gruenen-Worth in 1366, and a few years later to have become a priest of the order of St John. The codex contains among other less important matter, a ms called “The Book of the Five Men,” being an account of Nicolas and his four companions, in the handwriting of Nicolas himself; twenty-two of his letters, apparently copied by Nicolas von Laufen, and the original ms. of Rulman Merswin’s account of the first four years of his religious history, in his own handwriting. Thus, after a lapse of five hundred years, we are able to learn more about this extraordinary half-mythical “Friend of God in the Oberland,” than his very contemporaries knew.

From these documents we are able to obtain a general idea of the character and work of Nicolas, though the actual course of his history, especially during the earlier part of his life, is still almost entirely shrouded from view. All that we can discover respecting the commencement of his career is, that about the year 1328 or 1330, he was a youth of good family at Basle18, wealthy, universally esteemed, and possessed of abilities that ensured him success in all that he undertook. Nevertheless, he was unhappy, from the consciousness of his sinfulness and ignorance of divine things. Being, as a layman, uninstructed in Holy Scripture, he sought to master religious truths by the exercise of his reason; but his efforts to obtain satisfaction were in vain. For years he struggled with his own intellectual difficulties and the temptations of the world. One day, as he was meditating on the transitory nature of all earthly things and the rapid flight of time, the thoughtlessness, sinfulness, and thorough forgetfulness of God in all those around him were presented in such vivid colours to his mind, that it seemed inconceivable to him how man could take any delight in this vain world; and then, as the thought of his own wasted time rose to his remembrance, he was filled with such bitter remorse that he resolved from that moment to renounce the world and dedicate his life to God. To this end, as we have seen19, he read the lives of the saints and imitated their austerities.

This discipline he had carried on for five years before he found peace in the way he describes in the “History.” He afterwards set himself to study the Scriptures (no doubt in Latin), and says that in a space of thirty weeks he had come to be able to understand it as thoroughly, and “speak as good grammar, as if he had studied all his days in the best Universities;” which extraordinary facility of acquisition he refers to special divine assistance. We know no more of him till we find him at the head of a society of “Friends of God,” who live with him in utter seclusion from the world, and form the secret centre of a wide circle of religious activity, unconnected with any recognized order, but yet not overstepping the pale of the Church.

The title of “Friends of God” is one which meets us continually in the writings of those who are termed mystics in the fourteenth century, and is used in various connections. Sometimes it seems to denote those who were partakers of a spiritual in opposition to a formalistic piety; sometimes to denote the members of a particular body. Among those called “Friends of God” we find the names of individuals widely differing from each other in rank, vocation, opinion, and career; for they counted among their members Dominicans, such as Eckart, Tauler, Suso of Constance, and Henry of Nordlingen, and Franciscans, such as Otto of Passau; Knights married and single; nuns like Christina and Margaretha Elmer, and a Queen, Agnes the widow of King Andrew of Hungary; the rich banker, Rulman Merswin, and Conrad, the Abbot of Kaisersheim in Bavaria, who boasts, in a letter to Henry of Nordlingen, that he has not accepted the Bishop of Augsburg’s absolution either for himself or his monastery; Conrad Brunsberg, again, the Grand-Master of the Knights of St John in Germany, besides the layman, Nicolas of Basle, and the great mystical author of the Netherlands, Ruysbroek. The appellation common to all these, with numbers of less distinguished persons, would seem to have been used among themselves to denominate those who could not but feel that they were more alive to the realities of religion and its spiritual nature than was the case with the multitude around them.

That those possessing common sympathies on the subjects of highest import, should instinctively seek out and cling to each other, and thus an association should spontaneously grow up, even without any definite plan, is a natural and inevitable process, where a real, deep religious life has arrived at self-consciousness; and from a comparison of the passages in which Tauler and Henry of Nordlingen use the term “Friends of God,” it appears to me that in the first instance the sense of having entered into a living, personal union with God, bringing with it a yearning pity for sinners, and a fervent desire to bring them to the same blessed state, was the sole distinction and bond of the “Friends of God.”

It is at all events clear that their union for common action was utterly independent of the attitude they assumed towards the great conflicting questions of the day; for, as we have seen in the Abbot of Kaisersheim, and Henry of Nordlingen, those are called “Friends of God,” and treat each other as brethren, who are as far asunder in their politics as the Chartists and High Tories of our own days. Neither did they form a sect, but, on the contrary, repudiated the idea, as is shown by the following passage from Tauler’s sermon on the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity, which I think, too, confirms this view of their origin. “The prince of this world has nowadays been sowing brambles among the roses in all directions, insomuch that the roses are often choked, or sorely torn by the brambles. Children, there must needs be a flight or a distinction; some sort of a separation, whether within the cloisters or without, and it does not make them into a sect, that the ‘Friends of God’ profess to be unlike the world’s friends.”

The remark that the “Friends of God” were not a sect, would seem to prove that this accusation was brought against them; but, indeed, proof of this would seem superfluous, for then, as in all other times, it would infallibly happen that the unworldly and spiritual-minded, who recognized a nobler sort of religion than that comprised in the due observance of religious rites and decent moral conduct, should be charged with sectarianism and suspected of heresy, even if they broached no new dogmas, and went no farther than to bring out in their teaching and practice the real significance of the Church’s ordinances.

But the greater the sinfulness and deadness to religion in a particular age, the more strongly marked must be the line of demarcation between the careless and the earnest; for the religious are thus obliged to abstain from pleasures and occupations which, innocent in themselves, have become corrupt. At the same time, too, the danger of enthusiasm, and mistaking one’s own natural emotions for direct Divine influence, will be greatest when such influences known to be real by the pious, are altogether denied by the world in general. Illustrations will instantly suggest themselves to the mind of the reader from the experience of our own Church in the times of Wesley and Whitfield; and in like manner, amidst the universal deadness of the Lutheran Church in the seventeenth century, arose the Pietistic movement of Spener and Franke. Thus the great wickedness, especially of the clergy, the contentions and dreadful catastrophes which mark the first half of the fourteenth century, would impel the pious to come out from the world, and stimulate them to specially earnest and direct efforts to enkindle the religious life of the people. And so, during the terrors of the Interdict, they seem to have formed an association with no declared boundary, yet whose boundaries would be most distinctly recognized by all who were within the line. To the name they adopted, the text John xv. 15 seems to have given occasion; for Tauler says: “Then said our Lord to His disciples, ‘From henceforth I call you not servants, but friends.’

The ‘henceforth’ that he spoke was from the time when they had forsaken all things and followed Him. Then were they his friends, and not servants; and therefore he who will be a true friend of God must leave all things and follow after Him.” From this passage, in the spirit of which many others concur, we see at once in what the right to this title consisted—namely, in the thorough self-surrender to God, the forsaking all things to follow God alone.

But while this principle, which surely we must recognize as that which does really constitute the friends of God in all ages, was brought out into peculiar prominence by these German Gottesfreunde, their views could not fail to be coloured by the modes of thought and the circumstances of their age. Thus, in order to this entire devotedness to God, we find a renunciation, so far as may be, of all earthly cares and ties recommended by them; thus, too, we see that their faith in God’s direct, personal dealings with the individual soul is apt to be accompanied by a superstitious regarding of insignificant phenomena, or even the mere effects of an over-active fancy, as a positive intimation of His will. Some of us, too, would be inclined to think that their continual insisting on the duty of passively yielding up the soul to divine influences, and their exhortations to take all outward things as from God, would involve a danger of falling into an indolent quietism. But the fact, far from justifying our expectations, would afford another proof that when we leave off trying to do the work that God will do Himself, we shall find our energies all the more vigorous to accomplish that which He has set us to do; for instead of regarding the events around them with passive indifference, like many of the earlier ascetics, they believed themselves called to exercise a very positive influence on the course of events.

This was in a special sense the case with Nicolas of Basle and his immediate companions, whom we find, from the recently discovered documents, to have entertained plans for the extension of religion and the reform of Christendom of a wider nature than it was safe to disclose even to their brethren indiscriminately, at a time when the Dominican inquisitors (who, moreover, were of the Papal, while most of the “Friends of God” were of the Imperial party) were actively engaged in hunting out heretics, especially those who might betray any leaning to the democratic and reformatory tendencies of the Spiritual Franciscans and their cognate sects. Thus the knot of men who gathered round Nicolas as their centre, seem, as compared with the Gottesfreunde at large, to have formed a church within a church, having secret schemes into which the others were not initiated.

From hints of such private schemes scattered in the writings of Rulman Merswin and “the Layman,” it was formerly imagined that the latter at any rate was a secret Waldensian; but this idea is not confirmed by more extended research; on the contrary, the importance which he and his friends attach to the rites of the Church,—to obedience to ecclesiastical superiors,—their belief in transubstantiation and purgatory, &c., are quite inconsistent with it. Indeed, the views of Nicolas seem to have been much more in unison with the doctrine of the Church than those of Eckart and his school. The only peculiarity of his belief, that I can discover, is his strong confidence in the reality of the visions and miraculous revelations imparted to himself and his friends; and it must be remembered that even this peculiarity he not only shares in common with the great Luther, who lived two centuries later, and with the liberal and sagacious Wesley, almost in our own days, but that his spiritual childhood had been nurtured on the legends of the saints, with all their marvels; and that we see, from the history of his times, that miracles and revelations were of everyday occurrence, at all events among the Franciscans and sectarians. The secret of the extraordinary sway which Nicolas obtained, not only over laymen less instructed and priests less thinking than himself, but even over a man of such commanding intellect as Tauler, seems to me to lie in the intense glow of his piety, the utter self-devotion of his own life, his force of will, and his real spiritual insight.

Not only did he stand immeasurably below Tauler in point of learning, but his letters, while affording many traits of spiritual wisdom and acute practical sense, exhibit neither the reflective nor imaginative power of Tauler’s writings. Yet the accomplished scholar, the experienced pastor, the fearless politician, resigns himself implicitly to the guidance of the obscure layman as his incontestable superior.

The crisis which Nicolas was the means of bringing about in Tauler’s life is commonly termed a conversion; but from all that we have read of his previous life, it seems clear that it cannot be regarded as what is ordinarily meant by that term. Before it took place Tauler was already a sincere, God-fearing, active Christian minister, and recognized as their “Father” and leader by the “Friends of God” scattered up and down Switzerland, Bavaria, and the Rhenish states. Neither can I discover any conversion, properly speaking, in point of doctrinal opinions. Nicolas agrees to all he taught as very good, and blames, not his preaching, but his life. Surely, therefore, this notable change is to be regarded in the light in which Tauler himself regarded it; as the coming to a deeper, more real and practical experience of the things of God. It seems, that with all his sincere piety, and hatred of sin, and abhorrence of the evil world around him, Tauler had never come to a clear consciousness of all the depths of sin concealed in his own heart, or an apprehension of the full import of the utter self-surrender to God which he preached. Such a deficiency of self-knowledge is indeed more possible with a conscientious man of Tauler’s character, pure and gentle by nature, than with one of the opposite, or more stormy type. It is true that the task which God lays upon all is the same—the unceasing surrender of their own wishes to the higher aims which He sets successively before them.

But with men of passionate temperament and selfish habits, who are therefore at every turn exposed by circumstances to violent temptation, their natural wishes are, for the most part, so obviously sinful that, though the struggle of renouncing them may be hard, the duty of doing so is clear and pressing. And when such turn to God, their falls in attempting the Christian walk are often frequent enough, or at least their battles with temptation severe enough, to teach them the evil and weakness of their own heart. With men, on the other hand, of calm, pure, and affectionate disposition, and trained in conscientious habits, so many of their wishes are for things harmless, or even good in themselves, that it is less easy to see why and how they are to be given up. Such men, just, kindly, and finding much of their own happiness in that of others, live, for the most part, in harmonious relations with those around them, and have little to disturb their consciences, beyond the fear of falling short in the path of duty on which they have already entered. But they are exposed to many perils, more insidious, because less startling, than those which beset their more fiercely-tempted brethren.

They are in danger of depending too much on the respect and love which others so readily yield them; of valuing themselves on a purity which, if ever one of struggle, has come to be one of taste; of prizing intellectual clearness above moral insight and vigour; of mistaking the pleasure they feel in the performance of duty, for real submission to the will of God; and above all, of shrinking from new truths which would, for the time, confuse their belief, and break up the calm symmetry of their lives. The greater danger to the Christian life arising from those hidden heart-sins, than even from sinful acts which instantly wound the conscience, is a truth which Tauler insists upon in his sermons so strongly and so often, nay, sometimes almost to exaggeration, that one could not but guess that he was speaking from his own experience, even had we not the certainty of it from the “History.” For, as he often declares, different natures require and receive a very different discipline from God. Sometimes it is by outward affliction that God speaks to souls thus sinking into the lethargy of formalism; and the loss of friends, or health, or influence suddenly seems to cut off, as it were, half their means of serving Him, and to rouse long-forgotten temptations to rise up against His will. Sometimes, on the other hand, He speaks to them inwardly, by opening their eyes to heights of holiness, which they had never before steadily contemplated.

They now suddenly perceive that many of the fancied duties which have till now occupied their lives, and satisfied their consciences, have long ceased to be duties, and have come to be mere habits or pleasures; and that while they have been thus living in self-love, unseen and unrepented-of, they might have been coming to the knowledge of the higher obligations to which they have been so blind, but which were all implied in their first belief, if they had but continued to read it with a single eye. Thus they are weighed down by present temptations to which they have long been strangers. For, in order to follow the new light granted to them, they must give up long-cherished aims; relinquish many opportunities of doing good, and even, it may seem, the very faculties for using them; and sacrifice, not only the good opinion of the world, but the trust and affection of many who are dearest to them. They shrink from such renunciation; and then come doubt and perplexity to add to the bitterness of the struggle. Can it be right to abandon so much that is good and worthy in itself, can it be the voice of God that summons them to do this, or is it not rather a self-willed fancy of their own? No: for conscience cannot be mistaken when it tells us of sin, though it is insufficient to reveal to us duty—and this fierce clinging to their own wishes, what is it but the same obstinate resistance to the will of God, which they have been accustomed to blame, nay, even wonder at, in the vicious and criminal, whom they have perhaps been seeking to reclaim?

Such a struggle, it seems, was that which Tauler had to pass through before he could fully apprehend or be fitted for the work which God had for him to do. And surely, without some such struggle, none can keep long in the right path. For the path to life does not stretch across the levels of habit, but winds up the heights of aspiration, and at every fresh step in the ascent a wider horizon of duty opens to the view.

I will not mar the impression of the touching narrative given by Tauler himself by translating the story it relates into any weaker words, but leave it to make its own way to the heart of those who have hearts to understand it. There may be some who are unable to find within the range of their own experience and observation any key which can make it sound to them like reality and common sense, yet considering the practical energy and clear judgment of Tauler in other parts of his life, it may surely be worth their pains to study what he considered of so much importance with reverent and self-distrustful diligence, rather than reject it at once as the mere product of a heated fancy.

It seems most likely that the attention of Nicolas had first been drawn to Tauler during the stay of the latter with Henry of Nordlingen, in Basle, in 1338; for, according to one of the best mss. of the “History,” the Layman says, “I have heard much of your doctrine in my own country.” Considering what we know of his previous history, and the accusation of Nicolas that he relied too much on his scholarship, it seems highly probable that Tauler may hitherto have been somewhat influenced by the cast of thought derived from his master Eckart, in whose writings the power of Knowing is so highly exalted that it sometimes is made to take precedence of the faculty of Love. That Nicolas should, after hearing Tauler preach a few times, have been able to penetrate his spiritual condition and detect its great imperfection, would not appear to imply anything miraculous, but to be merely a rare, though by no means singular, instance of the fine spiritual instinct sometimes found in men themselves of extraordinary religious attainments. Tauler shows us what he considers to have been the value of Nicolas to himself when he says, “Therefore for such as desire to live for the truth, it is a great assistance to have a Friend of God, to whom they submit themselves, and who guides them by the Spirit of God. . . . It were well worth their while to go a hundred leagues to seek out an experienced Friend of God, who knows the right path and can direct them in it.”20