“Uttering these words with fury, they snatched me up, and whirled me, sorely beaten, across plains and deserts, over heights and precipices, and set me on a yet more dreadful peak, hurling at me abuse and threats, to make me do their will. And, as before, I was near succumbing, and was looking around for some aid from God, when that same man again stood near, and heartened me. ‘Do not yield; let your heart be comforted against its besiegers.’ And I replied: ‘Lord, I can no longer bear these perils. Stay with me, and aid, lest when you go away they torment me still more grievously.’ To which he said: ‘Their threats cannot prevail so long as you persevere in faith and hope in the Lord. Be comforted; the sharper the strife, the quicker will it end. If with constancy you wage the Lord’s battles, you shall have eternal rewards in the future, and in this world you shall be famous.’ “Then he vanished the second time, and the demons, who dared do nothing in his presence, raged and mocked more savagely, and kept me in anguish, until, the divine grace effecting it, the convent bell rang for early prayer. I heard it as I lay in bed, and gradually gaining my senses, I was conscious that I was living, and I no longer saw the vision of smoke. With gratitude I remembered what the man in my vision told me that my trial would soon be over. After this, though for many days I lay sick in body and soul, my spiritual temptations began to lessen; and I have learned that without the Grace of God I am, and always shall be, a thing of naught.” The struggle through which faith and peace came to Othloh became the fountain-head of his wisdom; it fixed the point of view from which he judged life, and set the categories in which he ordered his knowledge; it directed his thoughts and imparted purpose and unity to his writings. His gratitude to God incited him to write in order that others might share in the light and wisdom which God’s grace had granted him; and his writings chiefly enlarge upon those questions which the victory in his spiritual conflict had solved. I will refrain from drawing further from them, although they seem to me the most interesting works of a pious and doctrinal nature emanating from any German of this still crude and inchoate intellectual period.[405] III