|75| One more German Christmas hymn must be mentioned, Gerhard Tersteegen's "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Choere." Tersteegen represents one phase of the mystical and emotional reaction against the religious formalism and indifference of the eighteenth century. In the Lutheran Church the Pietists, though they never seceded, somewhat resembled the English Methodists; the Moravians formed a separate community, while from the "Reformed" or Calvinistic Church certain circles of spiritually-minded people, who drew inspiration from the mediaeval mystics and later writers like Boehme and Madame Guyon, gathered into more or less independent groups for religious intercourse. Of these last Tersteegen is a representative singer. Here are three verses from his best known Christmas hymn:-- "Jauchzet, ihr Himmel, frohlocket, ihr englischen Choere, Singet dem Herrn, dem Heiland der Menschen, zur Ehre: Sehet doch da! Gott will so freundlich und nah Zu den Verlornen sich kehren. |76| Koenig der Ehren, aus Liebe geworden zum Kinde, Dem ich auch wieder mein Herz in der Liebe verbinde; Du sollst es sein, Den ich erwaehle allein, Ewig entsag' ich der Suende. Treuer Immanuel, werd' auch in mir neu geboren; Komm doch, mein Heiland, und lass mich nicht laenger verloren; Wohne in mir, Mach mich ganz eines mit dir, Den du zum Leben erkoren."[32]{35} The note of personal religion, as distinguished from theological doctrine, is stronger in German Christmas poetry than in that of any other nation--the birth of Christ in the individual soul, not merely the redemption of man in general, is a central idea. * * * * * We come back at last to England. The great carol period is, as has already been said, the fifteenth, and the first half of the sixteenth, century; after the Reformation the English domestic Christmas largely loses its religious colouring, and the best carols of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are songs of |77| feasting and pagan ceremonies rather than of the Holy Child and His Mother. There is no lack of fine Christmas verse in the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, but for the most part it belongs to the oratory and the chamber rather than the hall. The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation, for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, in which, all alike and all together, the serious and the frivolous could rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken as a matter of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun on the just and on the unjust.