this man once lived.  The whole tone of the picture in the foreground was dark and brownish; but in the background was a landscape, and on the horizon the first gleams of daybreak appeared.  I could discover nothing special in the picture, and yet it produced a feeling of such satisfaction that one might have tarried to look at it for hours at a time.  “There is nothing like a genuine human face,” said I; “Raphael himself could not have imagined a face like this.”

“No,” said she.  “But now I will tell you why I wished to have the picture.  I read that no one knew the artist, nor whom the picture represents.  But it is very clearly a philosopher of the Middle Ages.  Just such a picture I wanted for my gallery, for you are aware that no one knows the author of the ‘German Theology,’ and moreover, that we have no picture of him.  I wished to try whether the picture of an Unknown by an Unknown would answer for our German theologian, and if you have no objections we will hang it here between the ‘Albigenses’ and the ‘Diet of Worms,’ and call it the ‘German Theologian.’”

“Good,” said I; “but it is somewhat too vigorous and manly for the Frankforter.”

“That may be,” replied she.  “But for a suffering and dying life like mine, much consolation and strength may be derived from his book.  I thank him much, for it disclosed to me for the first time the true secret of Christian doctrine in all its simplicity.  I felt that I was free to believe or disbelieve the old teacher, whoever he may have been, for his doctrines had no external constraint upon me; at last it seized upon me with such power that it seemed to me I knew for the first time what revelation was.  It is precisely this fact that bars so many out from true Christianity, namely:  that its doctrines confront us as revelation before revelation takes place in ourselves.  This has often given me much anxiety; not that I had ever doubted the truth and divinity of our religion, but I felt I had no right to a belief which others had given me, and that what I, had learned and received when a child, without comprehending, did not belong to me.  One can believe for us as little as one can live and die for us.”

“Certainly,” said I; “therein lies the cause of many hot and bitter struggles; that the teachings of Christ, instead of winning our hearts gradually and irresistibly, as they won the hearts of the apostles and early Christians, confront us from the earliest childhood as the infallible law of a mighty church, and demand of us an unconditional submission, which they call faith.  Doubts arise sooner or later in the breast of every one who has the power of thinking and reverence for the truth; and then even when we are on the right road, to overcome our faith, the terrors of doubt and unbelief arise and disturb the tranquil development of the new life.”