The Following of Christ

“If this little volume does not proceed from Tauler himself, it proceeds from one of that remarkable group of German mystics—‘Friends of God,’ as they called themselves, amongst whom the great Dominican preacher of Strasburg lived and worked. The contents of the little book, notwithstanding its forms and repetitions, are full of value. Therefore we may well say in this case with the Imitation,—which itself, also, issued from the deep religious movement felt in the Germanic lands along the Rhine in the fourteenth century—‘Ask not who wrote it, but attend to what it says.’ Mr. Morell’s translation is on the whole a sound and good one, with the signal merit of reproducing the plain and earnest tone characteristic of the original.

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“The reader will recognise the strain of homage which from age to age successive generations of mystics have ever loved to uplift to ‘the eternal word’! I will not say that it is entirely satisfying, but at least it is always refreshing, consoling, and ennobling. Whoever turns to the little volume which Mr. Morell has translated, will find plenty in this strain to give him refreshment. But he will find more than this. He will find sentences fitted to abide in the memory, to be a possession for the mind and soul, to form the character.”

MATTHEW ARNOLD

(In the Nineteenth Century).