In the fourteenth century we find a most remarkable band of devout believers who called themselves “Friends of God,” to signify that they had reached that stage of Christian life when Christ, according to His promise, would call them “no longer servants but friends.” They were composed of persons from all classes of society, and from all the religious orders. Most prominent among these were Master Eckhart—styled “Doctor Ecstaticus”—vicar-general of the Dominican order, a man of uncommon purity of life and great excellence of character, one of the profound thinkers of the Middle Ages; Henry Suso, who has been called “the Minnesinger of Divine Love,” and who was wont to say, “A man of true self-abandonment must be _un_built from the creature, _in_built with Christ, and _over_built into the Godhead” (he was prior of the Dominican convent at Ulm, where he died in 1365); Nicholas of Basle; and John Tauler. Nicholas was a layman who wielded a powerful pen and was also a great preacher; thoroughly devoted to religion from his earliest days. He traveled much through Germany, propagating his opinions in a quiet, unostentatious manner, and gradually there grew up around him a society of Christians composed of men and women likeminded with himself, who loved to honor him as their spiritual father. It seems to have been largely his personal influence which held them together, for they fell to pieces after he was burned at the stake for heresy, near Poitiers, about 1382. John Tauler—“Doctor Illuminatus”—born at Strasburg, 1290, and dying there in 1361, was still more distinguished, although indebted to Nicholas for being led out into the light. This took place when he was over fifty years of age. Nicholas, coming to Strasburg to hear the famous preacher, speedily detected his deficiency in spiritual experience, and the lack of true power attending the Word on this account. With rare humility, Tauler, a learned theologian, received this rebuke from the uneducated layman, and so profited by it that he was able, though not without long struggle, to enter into complete freedom. Then he preached in a very different manner, and the first time he opened his mouth in public fourteen persons fell as if dead under the Word, and nearly thirty others were so deeply moved that they remained sitting in the churchyard long after the congregation was dismissed, unwilling to move away. For eighteen years after this second conversion he made great progress in the divine life, rising to a place of highest esteem with his brethren, and being rightly reckoned among the chief of God’s children on earth.