The Poor Man of Toggenburg - Autobiography of Ulrich Bräker

Meanwhile I still read industriously in the Bible [...]. Yet my uneasiness continued to grow, though I sought by many means to distract myself, and, what was worst of all, I never had the courage to reveal any of these matters to the pastor, or even to my father.

From time to time I was still much astonished by the opinions of my father and the pastor, concerning this or that Bible text or pious tract. The pastor came often to our house, even in midwinter when he often stuck fast in the snow. I was very attentive to all their discourse, and soon perceived that mostly they were far from being of the same opinion. At first it was incomprehensible to me that father could be so bold as to contradict the pastor. Then again I thought: But father and the "Flüchtige Pater" together are certainly no fools and they draw their arguments, just as he does, from the very same Bible. These thoughts went to and fro in my mind, until I forgot them again and gave myself up to other fantasies.

In the same year I went to this pastor, Heinrich Näf of Zürich

, to be instructed in preparation for my first communion. He taught me very well and thoroughly, and I was sincerely fond of him. Often I repeated to father what he had said to me, for hours at a time, and expected him to be as much moved by it as I. Sometimes he pretended to be so, to please me, but I soon perceived that it did not really go to his heart. Yet I saw too that he was indeed well pleased at my sentiments and my readiness to learn. [...] But what I can least forgive myself at this time is the hypocrisy which was then my besetting sin, and that, even at times when nothing very grave lay upon my conscience, I still wanted always to appear better than I felt myself to be in reality. And moreover it seemed to me - I know not if perhaps even this was only a trick played me by my poor sinful heart - that for example even when I was quite alone at work I sang the few hymns that I had learnt from mother with even greater pleasure than profane songs, but often I wished that father could hear me, since usually he caught only my empty tra-la-la. O, how good it would be for parents and children, if they were together more often, as often as possible.

24. New companions:

To resume: the pastor had only one other boy besides me for instruction in his little home in Krinau in the said year 1752. This boy was called H.B., a great fool with foxy red hair. When the pastor asked him a question, the lad always bent an ear for me to prompt him. What he was told a hundred times, he as many times forgot. On Christmas Eve, when we were presented to the congregation

, he was completely dumbfounded. So I had to answer almost continuously from two o'clock until five. In the previous year, however, another boy, J.W., had been instructed, a truly clever boy who knew the whole of the Bible and the catechism. I became acquainted with him at this time. In appearance he was indeed rather ugly, the smallpox had done him lamentable damage, but otherwise a child after my own heart. He had a talkative father from whom he had learned much, but his father was not altogether a good man and was especially famous as a liar. [...]. His young son J. had inherited none of his faults, least of all his untruthfulness. Everyone loved him, to me he was the apple of my eye.

We began to exchange little notes about all sorts of things

, asking riddles of one another, or one would send the other verses from the Bible, without specifying their context, and the other

Heinrich Näf was pastor in Krinau from 1747 to 1756.

Young people preparing for their first communion were examined on the catechism (a summary of Christian faith) before the whole congregation.

This shows that Bräker's habit of writing, as well as reading, began at an early age. Writing as a means of examining one's own personality was an established literary genre, and self-examination was also encouraged by the Pietists. Even at this age Bräker was reading secular as well as religious books. [Voellmy, v 1 p 11].

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