service than he who continued single, and only talked of population; from this motive I had scarcely
taken orders a year, before I chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy
face, but for such qualities as would wear well." Herder read this English classic four times, and
commended it to his bride as one of the best books in any language. Goethe, who himself tasted
the charm of a pastoral home in the days of his purest and strongest love to Friederike of Sesenheim,
praises the "Vicar of Wakefield," as "one of the best novels, with the additional advantage of being
thoroughly moral, yea in a genuine sense Christian," and makes the general assertion: "A Protestant
country pastor is perhaps the most beautiful topic for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedek,
as priest and king in one person. He is usually associated by occupation and outward condition
with the most innocent conceivable estate on earth, that of the farmer; he is father, master of his
house, and thoroughly identified with his congregation. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation,
rests his higher vocation: to introduce men into life, to care for their spiritual education, to bless,
to instruct, to strengthen, to comfort them in all the epochs of life, and, if the comfort for the present
is not sufficient, to cheer them with the assured hope of a more happy future."^617 In his idyl "Hermann
und Dorothea," he introduces a clergyman as an ornament and benefactor of the community. It is
to the credit of this greatest and most cultured of modern poets, that he, like Shakespeare and
Schiller, never disparaged the clerical profession.
In his "Deserted Village," Goldsmith gives another picture of the village preacher as
"A man who was to all the country dear,
And passing rich on forty pounds a year. ...
At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorned the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools who came to scoff remained to pray."
From a higher spiritual plane William Wordsworth, the brother of an Anglican clergyman
and uncle of two bishops, describes the character of a Protestant pastor in his "Ecclesiastical
Sonnets."
"A genial hearth, a hospitable board,
And a refined rusticity, belong
To the neat mansion, where, his flock among,
The learned Pastor dwells, their watchful lord.
Though meek and patient as a sheathèd sword
Though pride’s least lurking thought appear a wrong
To human kind; though peace be on his tongue,
Gentleness in his heart—can earth afford
Such genuine state, pre-eminence so free,
As when, arrayed in Christ’s authority,
He from the pulpit lifts his awful hand;
Conjures, implores, and labors all he can
For re-subjecting to divine command
(^617) From the tenth book of his Wahrheit und Dichtung. Herder directed his attention to the "Vicar," while they studied at Strassburg,
and read it to him aloud in German translation. In the same book Goethe describes in fascinating style his visits to the parsonage of
Sesenheim.