Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs

This is a religion book. Paul Gerhardt was born in Graefenhainichen in Electoral Saxony, where his father, Christian Gerhardt, was Burgomaster. There is some doubt as to the precise year of his birth, owing to the destruction of the church books when the place was burnt by the Swedes on the 16th of April, 1637. According to some, the event took place in the year 1606; according to others, in 1607. The probability is in favour of the former date, for General Superintendent Goltlob Stolze, of Lübben, says that he died, in the 70th year of his age, in the year 1676. There is no information concerning his youth and education. He was still very young when the Thirty Years' War broke out, and his preparation for his profession and entrance on it took place in those troublous times, which may account for his late settlement in a ministerial sphere. In the year 1651, when in his forty-fifth year, we find him still only a candidate of theology, and resident as a tutor in the family of Andreas Bertholdt, Chancery Advocate in Berlin, whose daughter he subsequently married. In that year a vacancy occurred in the ministry at Mittenwald, by the death of Probst Caspar Göde. The magistracy of that place applied to the clergy of Berlin to recommend a suitable man to them for the office. Paul Gerhardt was their unanimous choice. They recommended him as an honourable, estimable, and learned man, whose diligence and erudition were known, of good parts and incorrupt doctrine, of a peace-loving disposition and blameless Christian life, which qualities had procured for him the love of all classes, high and low, in Berlin.