| |
|
Hebel did not leave behind an
autobiography in the usual sense, but he did summarise a handful of
messages about his life in a sermon text that he wrote around 1820, a
few years before his death. His intended self-introduction outlines his
career in typical Hebel style and is inspired by his unfulfilled desire
for a position as a pastor in his beloved Wiesental. This inaugural
sermon was never delivered - which is why it remained unfinished - and
is reproduced here in extracts:
|
| |
|
...Do not be surprised, my friends, if for the first time, as I appear
before you, I speak to you of myself....
I was born of poor but pious parents, and spent half of my childhood
either in a lonely village or in the noble houses of a famous city. I
learnt early on to be poor and to be rich. Although I was never rich; I
learnt to have nothing and have everything, to be happy with the happy
and sad with the weeping...
I lost my father in the second year of my life and my mother in the
thirteenth. But the blessing of her piety has never left me. She taught
me to pray; she taught me to believe in God, to trust in God, to think
of his omnipresence. The love of many people who wept at her grave and
honoured her from afar has become my best inheritance, and I have fared
well...
In place of my parents, God has given me benevolent counsellors for my
youth and faithful teachers of worldly wisdom and the spiritual
profession. They sleep in peace; but I fulfil a duty of gratitude by
remembering them. I received the consecration of the spiritual
profession.
To live and die as a pastor in a peaceful country place, among honest
people, was all that I desired, what I have always desired up to this
hour in the most cheerful and in the saddest moments of my life. But, O
God, by what a long diversions have you led me to the goal of my wishes!
For eleven years, until the thirty-first of my life, I waited in vain
for ministry and provision. All my fellow young people were provided for,
but not me. I was still standing there, as Isaiah says, ‘like a tree on
top of a mountain and a screen on top of a hill’...
But I was unexpectedly appointed to the residency, but not to a
pastorate. I rose from level to level, but never to a pastorate. I have
taught perhaps two thousand young men languages and sciences. Many of
them gladden my countenance when I see them again as pious, happy,
respected men and friends...
I have the love and respect of many good people, I have enjoyed the
trust and favour of our princes. I have become a member of the supreme
church authority. I have recently been honoured with a dignity never
before heard of in our patriotic church and have sat in council with
princes. Thus I have been led higher and higher by an invisible hand,
further and further away from the goal of my humble desires; and when I
thought I was furthest away, I was closest. What I hoped to attain soon
in the twentieth year of my life, God gave me in the sixtieth...
|