In a letter written in the year 1793, Pestalozzi says, "Wavering between feelings, which drew me toward religion, and opinions, which led me away from it, I went the dead way of my time; I let the essential part of religion grow cold in my inmost heart, without really deciding against religion."

That is the judgment which he pronounced upon himself in his forty-eighth year; at the time of Robespierre, when the earthy political element reigned to such a degree in the minds of men, that no quiet abode remained for the religious element.

The " 'Evening Hour of a Hermit," written thirteen years earlier, when the world was more tranquil, and as yet not off its hinges, contains passages which are penetrated with true christian unction. To these belongs especially the concluding passage of the whole, already quoted, in which Pestalozzi speaks of Christ as "the Son of God, who with suffering and death has restored to mankind the universally lost feeling of filial love toward God-the Redeemer of the World -the sacrificed Priest of the Lord-the Mediator between God and sinful mankind;" and of his doctrine as "the revelation of God the Father to the lost race of his children."

But other passages of this paper, enticing as they sound, are at variance with essential doctrines of christianity. Thus the one in which Pestalozzi says, "Faith in God, thou art the pure sense of simplicity-the ear of innocence listening to the voice of nature, which proclaims that God is father."

Where is the ear of innocence to be found? The Scripture saith: "There is none righteous, no not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one." (Romans iii., 10, 11, 12.)

Where is the ear of innocence? If it were to be found among men, then it might certainly hear a voice of nature, proclaiming that God is father. In that case, the heathen might also have prayed, "Our Father." But nowhere do we find the slightest evidence that the ancients loved their gods, not to say God, with filial love.

And, could man by nature love God, to what purpose were Christ the restorer of the lost filial love of mankind? But this very expression itself appears to me to be almost a euphemism for "The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isaiah liii., 6.)

We saw, in considering the book, "How Gertrude teaches her Children," how deep an influence Pestalozzi's notion of the innocence of children exercised upon his educational theory; like Rousseau, he wanted to gather figs of thistles. Did he retain this notion to the end of his life? We shall answer this question in the negative.

In "Leonard and Gertrude," all the stress is laid upon active christianity, love is occasionally placed almost in opposition to faith: a dead, hypocritical faith not being always distinguished with sufficient exactitude from true faith, which is active in love. The clergyman in Leonard and Gertrude is an honest man, but strongly inclined to mere moralizing; his care of his flock is more that of a faithful personal friend, than of one acting in the spirit and strength of a church.

In the "Researches," christianity is styled a religion of moralityan effort to make the spirit subdue the flesh. If, according to the letter cited, Pestalozzi wavered between feelings, which drew him toward religion, and opinions, which led him away from it, both feeling and christianity give place, in the work just mentioned, to this belabored product of the intellect.

In the book, "How Gertrude teaches her children," the educational theory is, as we have seen, extremely weak on the religious side; it is more a rhetorical theory of intellectual developments estranged from Christ.

But in this book, also, Pestalozzi's feelings repeatedly glances through; there stand forth the aim and yearning desire of his toilsome life, the depth of a love which brought upon the poor helpless man countless sorrows and almost drove him to despair. From the depths of his necessity, he then cries to God, praying, hoping, offering up his thanks: "Friend," he writes to Gesner, "let me now for a moment forget my aim and my labors, and abandon myself entirely to the feeling of melancholy which comes over me, when I remember that I still live, though I am no longer myself. I have lost every thing, I have lost myself; nevertheless, thou, O Lord, hast preserved in me the desires of my life, and hast not shattered to pieces before my eyes the aim of my suffering, as thou hast shattered the aim of thousands of men, who corrupted themselves in their own ways. Thou hast preserved to me the work of my life, in the midst of my own ruin, and hast caused to arise upon me, in my hopeless declining age, an evening brightness, the sight of whose loveliness outweighs the sufferings of my life. Lord, I am not worthy of the mercy and faithfulness which thou hast shown toward me. Thou, thou alone, hast had mercy on the trampled worm; thou alone hast not broken the bruised reed; thou alone hast not quenched the smoking flax; and hast not, to the latest period of my life, turned away thy face from the offering, which from childhood I have desired to bring to the forsaken in the land, but have never been able to bring."

Before I consider the religious character of Pestalozzi's later works, I will first look at that of his institution. It is best delineated by Ramsauer. He entered the institution at Burgdorf in 1800, as

a boy of ten years; he left it at the age of twenty-six, as head teacher, when he went from Yverdun to Würzburg. Thus he had, both as a learner and as a teacher, become acquainted with the religious tendency of the institution. When, in later years, the deep truth and solemn sanctity of christianity dawned upon his awakened conscience, which impelled him to self-knowledge, then first did he learn to form a just estimate of that religious tendency. He narrates as follows:"In Burgdorf, an active and entirely new mode of life opened to me; there reigned so much love and simplicity in the institution, the life was so genial-I could almost say patriarchal; not much was learned, it is true, but Pestalozzi was the father, and the teachers were the friends of the pupils; Pestalozzi's morning and evening prayers had such a fervor and simplicity, that they carried away every one who took part in them; he prayed fervently, read and explained Gellert's hymns impressively, exhorted each of the pupils individually to private prayer, and saw that some pupils said aloud in the bedrooms, every evening, the prayers which they had learned at home, while he explained, at the same time, that the mere repeating of prayers by rote was worthless, and that every one should rather pray from his own heart. Such exhortations became more and more rare at Yverdun, and the praying aloud ceased altogether, like so much else that had a genial character. We all felt that more must be learned than at Burgdorf; but we all fell, in consequence, into a restless pushing and driving, and the individual teachers into a scramble after distinction. Pestalozzi, indeed, remained the same noble-hearted old man, wholly forgetting himself, and living only for the welfare of others, and infusing his own spirit into the entire household; but, as it arose not so much from the religious arrangements and from Pestalozzi's principles, as from his personal character, that so genial a life had prevailed at Burgdorf, that spirit could not last long, it could not gain strength and elevate itself into a christian spirit. On the other hand, so long as the institution was small, Pestalozzi could, by his thoroughly amiable personal character, adjust at once every slight discordance; he stood in much closer relation with every individual member of the circle, and could thus observe every peculiarity of disposition, and influence it according to necessity. This ceased when the family life was transformed in the institution into a constitutional state existence. Now the individual was more easily lost in the crowd; thus there arose a desire, on the part of each, to make himself felt and noticed. Egotism made its appearance every day in more pointed forms. Envy and jealousy rankled in the breasts of many. The instruction, calculated only for the development of the mind, nourished feelings of selfishness and pride; and the counterpoise, which only the fear of God could have given, was not known. Instead of being told that only that teacher could labor with God's blessing who had attained to the knowledge and the belief of the highest truths, and had thus come to see that he was nothing of himself, but that he had to thank God for whatever he was enabled to be or to do, and that every christian, but especially the educator, had daily cause to pray to God for patience, love, and humility, and for wisdom in doing and avoiding; instead of this, we heard day after day that man could do every thing that he wished, that he could do every thing of himself, and that he alone could help himself. Had the otherwise so noble Pestalozzi made the Bible the foundation of all moral and religious education, I verily believe that the institution would still have been in existence, even as those institutions are still in existence and working with success which were founded by Franke, upward of one hundred years ago, with small means, but in full reliance on God. But, instead of making the pupils familiar with the Bible, Pestalozzi, and those of his assistants who gave the so-called religious instruction, or conducted the so-called morning and evening prayers, fell more and more in each succeeding year into a mere empty moralizing; and hence it may be understood how it could happen that I grew up in this institution, was confirmed there, and for sixteen years led a very active and morally good life, without acquiring even the slightest acquaintance with the word of God. I did, indeed, many a time hear the Bible named, and even heard

Pestalozzi complain that nobody read it, and say that in his youth things had been better in this respect; at the domestic worship on Sundays, and during my confirmation instruction, I also frequently heard individual texts read and arbitrarily explained; but neither I nor any other of the young men obtained any idea of the sacredness and connection of God's word. Just as Pestalozzi, by the force of his personal character, attached most of his assistants to himself for years, so that they forgot themselves as he forgot himself, when good was to be done, so also, and much more, might he have inspired them for the Gospel, and the blessing of God would then have rested on him and them, and the institution would have become a christian seminary. It would not have been necessary on this account to hang out a sign-board with the words "Christian Educational Institution," displayed upon it; on the contrary, the more quietly and modestly Pestalozzi and his assistants had conducted themselves, the more effectively would they have worked, and even the most noisy blusterer would soon have come to perceive how very little he could be and do of himself, and thus would have become capable of learning something from strangers. Perhaps some person or other may be disposed to reproach me with one-sidedness, injustice, or even ingratitude, toward Pestalozzi, and to oppose to my testimony the fact that at Yverdun Pestalozzi employed every Friday morning principally in representing Jesus to us as the great exemplar of love and self sacrifice; or I may be asked whether I have quite forgotten the zeal with which Niederer often gave the confirmation instruction. But, in reply to this, I can only refer to the facts which I have just detailed."

When I was

I could add but little to this statement of Ramsauer. in the institution, the religious instruction was given by Niederer, but no stranger was allowed to be present at it. We may form a tolerably correct notion, however, of the manner in which he gave it, from what is said on the subject in the "Report to the Parents."*

"All the elder pupils, (says the report,) receive positive religious instruction twice a week. The guiding thread that is used for this purpose is the course of the religious development of the human race, as described in the Holy Scriptures, from the Mosaic records downward, and, based on this, the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ, as he announced them in his Gospel. We base the teaching of moral duties chiefly on Christ's sermon on the mount, and the teaching of doctrines chiefly on St. John's Gospel. The latter is read connectedly and explained from itself and from Christ's eternal fundamental view of God and of himself, as the visible image and representative of the god-head and the godlike, of the relation of mankind to God, and of the life in God. We seek, by the example of Christ, and by the manner in which he viewed and treated men and things and their relations, to awaken in the children an intuitive leaning toward the life and conduct, the belief and hope, which are founded in the unchangeable nature of religion, and to render these things habitual to them, and by the development of those graces through which the Father shone in Him, to raise them to such a mind and mode of life, that God may shine in them also. We do not combat religious error, but endeavor to impart only religious truth. We seek the ground of all dogmas and the source of all religious views in the nature of religion, in the nature of man, and in his propensities, powers, wants, and relations, in order that the child may learn to distinguish the truth in every garb and the substance in every form. The course pursued for the attainment of the last-named object, or the elementary religious instruction, preparatory to the positive doctrines of revelation, is based specially on the solution of the following questions: 1. What is the original religious capability in human nature, or what are the elements of all religious development and education, in so far as they exist in man himself, and proceed from him as something implanted in him by God? These elements are perceptions and feelings. 2. By what means and in what manner must these primitive religious perceptions and feelings necessarily be excited and brought to consciousness in him? Here it is especially the relation to father and mother, to nature, and to society, that is There is no doubt that this passage is from Niederer's pen.

regarded as a means of religious excitation and education. 3. By what means and in what manner does man originally and necessarily express the religious perceptions and feelings excited in him? And to what does all this lead man? We find here principally the expression of the religious disposition as a gesture; the expression of the religious notion as a word; the expression of the religious contemplation as an image. The first develops itself as ceremony, the second as instruction and doctrine, the last as symbol and image-worship. With the course of this development is connected the development of what utters itself unchangeably in human nature as veritable and eternal religion, every where operative, and of what, as sensual degeneracy, errors of the passions, and personal depravity, leads to superstition and infidelity, to idolatry and image-worship, to hypocritical self-delusion and deception of others, and lastly, to the contemptuous rejection of all that is divine and sacred. The pupil finds the key to the clear comprehension of this in the intuitive consciousness of the awaking and course of his own feelings, in the impressions which things make on his own mind, and in the religious arrangements by which he is surrounded. As matter of fact, the whole is exemplified in the history of the religious culture of mankind. The indication thereof, or the thread to which the explanation must be attached, in giving the instruction, exists in the language of every nation. The most important results to be accomplished by the instruction are: That the pupil shall lay hold of the true and the eternal in their origin; that he shall look upon the human race as essentially religious, and as an organic whole, developing itself according to necessary and divine laws; that, understanding also in its origin and in its consequences the fall from God and the god-like, he shall all the more earnestly and faithfully follow the way of return to God and to the life in Him, so that, being thus prepared, he may comprehend the worship of God in spirit and in truth, the significance of the eternal Gospel; so that he may attain to an inward godly existence, as he lives outwardly in an intelligent existence."

I have quoted the whole of this passage, because it shows how far the religious instruction was removed from all believing fervor and childlike simplicity, from christian simplicity, as we meet with it in Luther's small catechism. But this passage characterizes only the religious instruction in the institution, and by no means Pestalozzi's religious views and practice.

Still it is clear that at Yverdun he also had in view much less moral education than intellectual. He wished, by means of the latter, to lay before the world striking results of the method; but how shall he show passing strangers the results of moral education, a humble mind and a loving heart, or shall he even expose them rudely to public gaze by an examination? To which was added, that in the multitude of boys he despaired of being able to take each one individually to his heart as a father would do, who never loves his children only en

masse.

I now return to Pestalozzi's writings, and come to those which he wrote in his old age.

In several of his addresses to the inmates of his house, there are passages which bear witness that even during the years which he passed at Yverdun, christianity still lived in his inmost soul; peaceful Sabbath and festival tones soar above the restless and noisy week-day work. So in his Christmas address of 1810.

"I have been told by old people, (he said,) and I have partly seen myself,