About 1346 he returned to Strassburg, and was devoted in his ministrations during the “black death” in 1348.  He appears to have been strongly influenced by one of the Friends of God, a mysterious layman, who has been identified, probably wrongly, with Nicholas of Basel,[264] and, according to some, dated his “conversion” from his acquaintance with this saintly man.  Tauler continued to preach to crowded congregations till his death in 1361.

Tauler is a thinker as well as a preacher.  Though in most points his teaching is identical with that of Eckhart,[265] he treats all questions in an independent manner, and sometimes, as for instance in his doctrine about the uncreated ground of the soul,[266] he differs from his master.  There is also a perceptible change in the stress laid upon certain parts of the system, which brings Tauler nearer than Eckhart to the divines of the Reformation.  In particular, his sense of sin is too deep for him to be satisfied with the Neoplatonic doctrine of its negativity, which led Eckhart into difficulties.[267]

The little book called the German Theology, by an unknown author, also belongs to the school of Eckhart.  It is one of the most precious treasures of devotional literature, and deserves to be better known than it is in this country.  In some ways it is superior to the famous treatise of a Kempis, On the Imitation of Christ, since the self-centred individualism is less prominent.  The author thoroughly understands Eckhart, but his object is not to view everything sub specie oeternitatis, but to give a practical religious turn to his master’s speculations.  His teaching is closely in accordance with that of Tauler, whom he quotes as an authority, and whom he joins in denouncing the followers of the “false light,” the erratic mystics of the fourteenth century.

The practical theology of these four German mystics of the fourteenth century—­Ruysbroek, Suso, Tauler, and the writer of the German Theology, is so similar that it is possible to consider it in detail without taking each author separately.  It is the crowning achievement of Christian Mysticism before the Reformation, except in the English Platonists of the seventeenth century, we shall not find anywhere a sounder and more complete scheme of doctrine built upon this foundation.

The distinction drawn by Eckhart between the Godhead and God is maintained in the German Theology, and by Ruysbroek.  The latter, as we have seen,[268] does not shrink from following the path of analysis to the end, and says plainly that in the Abyss there is no distinction of Divine and human persons, but only the eternal essence.  Tauler also bids us “put out into the deep, and let down our nets”; but his “deep” is in the heart, not in the intellect.  “My children, you should not ask about these great high problems,” he says; and he prefers not to talk much about them, “for no teacher can teach what he has not lived