LIFE OF PASTOR FLIEDNER.* IT almost seems as if it
were the Bethlehems of the world, its small, half-forgotten villages, which were destined to be the nurseries of ideas whose earlier growth would be stifled in the hot- house life of great cities. It would not be amiss if the busiest amongst us could find some quiet half-hour to glance at the little book now before us. It deals and deals practically with a problem the conditions of which will probably never be wholly solved in this stage of the world's history. Disease and misery and vice exist. I have no time, and less inclination to talk metaphysics about them, but my life shall be given to remedy the evil, and lessen the load which is crushing down into mere animalism the beings made in God's image.' Such was the real upshot of meditations which have placed the name of Theodore Fliedner side by side with John Howard and Caroline Fry.
Soberly and simply the narrative of his life is recorded in the pages before us. He was one of twelve children, his father, a quiet, practical, painstaking pastor in the little village of Eppstein, a man from whom the farmer got hints for his farm as well as for his soul ; and from whom the good house-mother learnt that vaccination was good for her children as well as reading : a man given to hospitality, in which his wife most heartily helped him, and was (as the writer simply narrates) reminded in after time that "thereby some have entertained angels unawares," for when early left a widow with a family, the ' strangers ' they had enter- tained proved themselves friends in need, and the two elder boys, one of whom is the subject of this notice, had their education and subsequent start in life secured by their aid.
As a child Fliedner was noticeable only as a fat, round-headed, red-cheeked little lad ; his father sitting chatting in his arbour with a friend one day, "the little Theodore, then seven years old,
• Lip of Patter Fliedner. Translated from the German, by Catherine Winkworth. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1867.
came running up. ' And what do you mean to be ?' asked the friend. replied the elder Fliedner, laughing, 'that is my good little fatty : he is to be an honest brewer.' The child turned scarlet, crept away, and cried bitterly." The sensitive nature for which people so rarely give fat children credit was deeply wounded. Fortunately in this case the child's vexation was not unobserved. His father soon after took him into his study, and finding him really quick-witted and studious, gave him ample opportunity to follow the bent of his own mind.
In after life a singularly pious man sustained in an outer life of incessant activity and laborious work by an inner life of com- munion with God, there was no unhealthy precocity in the boy's religion. When preparing for his confirmation he learned his texts and hymns correctly, and, as he himself records, "knelt down very carefully at the altar rails, that I might not dirty my beautiful new knee-breeches." His attention was drawn to the special work of his life (the re-establishing of an order of Deaconesses) by the state of the prisons in Germany, then (in 1825) in a deplorable condition :—" The convicts were crammed together in narrow dirty cells, often in damp cellars without light or air ; boys who had fallen into crime from thoughtlessness were mixed up with hoary cunning sinners ; young girls with the most corrupt old women. There was absolutely no classification ; even accused persons waiting for trial, who might soon be released again as innocent, were placed with criminals who might be under- going a lengthened term of imprisonment. There was as good as no supervision at all ; as long as the jailors allowed no one to escape they had fulfilled their duty."
For more than two years Fliedner tried to bridge the gulf which lay between this criminal class and the rest of the community, in his own person ; visiting, teaching, where possible reorganizing : but the strength of one man was vain against the giant evils, which met him on every side, and he saw that unless be could systematically organize superintendence for every branch of the work his own efforts would'have the effect only of damming up for a moment a tide which would roll back with increased violence as soon as the pressure of his personal presence was removed.
While endeavouring to find a matron for the women's ward in the Dusseldorf House of Correction, Fliedner found instead the wife who for fourteen years so diligently helped him, and if we demur, as we do, to the distinctly business-like manner in which Fliedner chose both this and his second most admirable wife, it yet adds but another proof to the success which attends men of one idea in the carrying out of their special project. He had long come to the con- clusion that to expect permanent improvement, at least for female prisoners, unless a refuge could be procured for them between their leaving prison and obtaining employment, was useless ; and finding the immense difficulty of making others see with his eyes till the working of his plan was before them, he began his first Home under the care of his wife's friend, Catherine Gael, in the summer- house of the parsonage garden. This was " the cradle of all Fliedner's institutions." Three years after he founded his earliest deaconesses' institution with the hospital attached, which proved their training school. Belonging to a strictly Protestant com- munion, he had no proselytizing schemes; patients were admitted to the hospital without distinction of creed, and the services of a Roman Catholic physician secured because he was more skilful than the Protestant doctors in the town.
How this grain of mustard seed grew into so large a tree that its branches took root in almost every land, sisters or deaconesses going into all the various countries of Europe, and many parts of Asia and elsewhere, as nurses, teachers, prison matrons, in truth, to be found wherever the cry of human bitterness and distress was loudest ; how all this was accomplished (as facts patent to us all prove that it was) is traced in a condensed form in this little narrative, which yet suggests thoughts we may not wholly pass by.
The brain that set the machine in motion, the hand that kept it going is cold, the lips which pleaded with such eager simpleness are silent, but his work is worthy to be analyzed. Hitherto, at least of late years, all the genius of Germany that has been adopted in England is the genius of thought ; but Fliedner's is that of action, and any international exchange of institutions is in itself not without a certain value.
Fliedner's institution at Kaiserswerth was, and is, a success, so also is the institution of St. Loup, of which one trustworthy witness writes, " the institution gives the idea of a family of which the good, kind, M. and Mme. Germond are the heads, and there is a second house destined for the home of the deaconesses in their old age." The sisters of St. Loup are bound by no promises, " M. Germond preferring to leave the will entirely free." Here is the keynote to a good deal of our failure, for failure to a certain extent these institutions in England are. The family life which prevails at St. Loup, and several other of the Continental homes, is in a great degree secured by the recognized headship of a pastor and his wife ; their place among ourselves is supplied by a Lady Superintendent and a Chaplain. It will be obvious to the most superficial observes that the two systems can scarcely produce the same results. The obedience which the Roman Catholic Church finds so essential in its economy, and secures by irrevocable vows, is secured with more personal freedom by the recognized family head. The pastor and his wife are the father and mother of the sisterhood under their roof ; if they tire of their allegiance, they are free to go. The life is simpler, is generally undertaken earlier than amongst ourselves, and it needs very little celestial light to enable us to discern that the barrack life of our English in- stitutions, officered by one sister promoted over the rest and a non- resident Chaplain whose duties are purely official, is no fit pro- vision for the life which of all others it is most necessary to render free from the deteriorating effects of small rivalries, petty yet galling rules, and the yoke of illegitimate authority.
We are not in the least insensible to the value of the sisterhoods amongst us, to the really practical work they are doing and the self-devotion which characterizes many of them. There is no physician in our great hospitals but will bear most hearty testimony to the skill, the tenderness, and the refining influence which through these institutions has superseded the drowsy ignorance of the paid nurses of even twenty years ago, and in many a crowded parish the overworked incumbent blesses the day when he was able to secure the services of some devoted deaconess, the value of whose untiring help it would be difficult to over-estimate; yet the mass of degradation, of ignorance, misery, dis- ease, and low brutality amongst us remains comparatively untouched, and it seems quite time that we inquire why, with no lack of material, so much effort runs to leaf, and not to fruit,—why, it is still next to impossible for the aged sick poor outside a hospital or a work- house to find an unpaid nurse or a skilful hand to put all straight. The district visitor speaks kindly words and gives the relief (which too often only helps to pauperize), but does not cook the potatoes or sweep the room. And there are lower depths, depths amongst childhood as well as in our adult population, into which few rays of light ever penetrate, which contain a living seething mass we call, but at a respectful distance, men and brothers. The fact is, much more might and would be done if the work were not encum- bered by such a heavy conventional machinery. Were the life rendered simpler, and consequently, happier, it would be under- taken earlier (an immense advantage), and by a large class who, we think wisely, decline to become inmates of institutions little better practically than convents. Where the life of a deaconess is undertaken by those who would otherwise have a distinct occupation in life, would, for instance, be governesses or engaged in some other remunerative work, it is fair enough to require that in return for an assured home, and provision for old age if they remain engaged in the work, they should supply definite service, and obey certain understood rules, as in any other engagement, and we are far from underrating the amount of actual good which would be, indeed is, accomplished by conscientious workers who, in their choice of this form of labour, may be actuated by the highest motives. For them it is most essential, if the necessary rest of a few hours of home life daily is to be secured to them after the fatigues of the day, that the institution to which they belong should have a family head rather than merely a superintending sister. But there remains the large class who, with means sufficient to render them altogether independent, would, through the absence of family ties or any other peculiarity of taste or position, gladly associate themselves with various homes for the carrying on of definite work, were there homes, as at St. Loup, under the headship of a clergyman and his wife (if he have a family, so much the better), and were the society in the hours of relaxation as wide as the neighbourhood or the taste of the head of the house would permit, and free from the deteriorating influence which is the inevitable result of a sisterhood occupied solely with their special work ; free, too, from all rules other than those to which the daughters in every well appointed household must submit. With such headship the oppressive rules which now exist would disappear, as concerning "Probationers," for instance, an absurdity where the labourer is free to leave ; or costume, which may be necessary in certain branches of deaconesses' work, but is clearly not required, and not advisable in many cases, the poor greatly appreciating the quiet freshness which characterizes the refined taste which the deaconess would be free to exercise were she leas a machine. The rules, again, as to health are most oppressive, not in writing, but in practical working ; useful possibly in the case of nurses, though not always then, the most delicate women having often the largest powers of endurance, but the mistake is glaring where the work to be done has a spiritual element in it. The crowd throng and press round many of these philanthropists, but it is given here and there, to one and another, to touch and quicken human souls ; and such feel that in the contact virtue has gone out of them ; they are unequal for the time to another effort, the very intensity of their sympathy has, for the moment, de- stroyed its elasticity. Are they worthless agents because their work has been compressed into moments, moments almost in- variably succeeded by physical languor? Yet this is the present system amongst us. The sister must be able to do a certain quantity of work, the quality cannot be weighed in the scales of this social machine. Nor is this want of spiritual discernment confined to English committees ; it banished many a helper from Fliedner's band. " Always in harness himself, he expected his associates to maintain the same degree of tension." " Tenderly strung minds found themselves badly off in his hands, and for the most part continued with him but a short time." Yet these are the minds we want to enlist, if any permanent good is to be done.
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