Now the doctrine of Tauler is nowhere more in contrast with that just uttered than in its tenderness of Christian sympathy and adaptation, as compared with the dreary and repellent pride of the philosopher. Instead of overwhelming the applicant by absurdly demanding, as the first step, a sublimity of self-sacrifice which only the finished adept may attain, Tauler is not too proud to begin at the beginning. Disinterested love is, with him, a mountain to which he points in the distance, bright with heavenly glory. Disinterested love, with Teufelsdröckh, is an avalanche hurled down right in the path of the beginner. Tauler does not see, in the unhappiness of the man, so much mere craven fear, or thwarted selfishness. He sees God’s image in him; he believes that that hunger of his soul, which he vainly tries to satisfy with things earthly, is a divine craving, a proof that he was born to satisfy it with things heavenly. He does not talk grandiloquently about Duty, and the glory of moral Freedom. He tells him that the same Saviour who died upon the cross is pleading and knocking at his heart, and doth passionately long to bless him. He sends him away to think over this fact, till it shall become more real to him than house and home, or sun and stars. He does not think that he can improve on ‘the low morality’ of the gospel by disdaining to appeal to hope and fear in order to snatch men from their sins. If so to plead be to speak after the flesh, after the flesh he will speak, to save a brother. There will be time enough, he thinks, if God sees fit to lead the man to the heights of absolute self-loss; and God will take His own way to do it. All Tauler has to do is to declare to him the truth concerning a Saviour, not to prescribe out of his own experience a law beyond that which is written. In this way, instead of striking him into despair, or bidding him bury care in work, he comforts and strengthens him. He does not despise him for keeping the law simply out of love to Him who gave it. He does not think it unmanly, but true manhood rather, when he sees him living, a suppliant, dependent on a life higher than his own—on a Person, whose present character and power were attested of old by history and miracle, as well as now by the ‘witness of the Spirit.’ I think the candid reader of Tauler’s sermons, and of _Sartor Resartus_, will admit that a difference in substance such as I have pointed out, does exist between them. If so, those who follow the philosophy of Teufelsdröckh cannot claim Tauler—have no right to admire him, and ought to condemn in _him_ that which they condemn in the Christianity of the present day. Footnote 127: Preface to Tauler’s _Life and Sermons_ by Susanna Winkworth. Footnote 128: