Firmly resolved to be a teacher of the people, in the true sense of the expression, not in that assigned to it by the Church—resolved to speak the truth, without respect of persons, and to become no hypocrite, I entered on my office at Grottkau. Being unacquainted in my sphere of labour, some time elapsed before I came to know my field of action, or was enabled efficiently to discharge the practical duties of my station. I found my school to be the field best adapted to the measure of my capacity. Independently of the natural love I have for children. I was always happiest in this holy garden of the Lord, where youthful minds expand, which is brightened by thoughts as swift and radiant as the lightning, and where the lovely innocence of childhood exhales its sweetest fragrance. In school I was free from the espionage by which I knew my pulpit to be surrounded—which oppressed my heart, and nearly stopped my utterance; free from the humiliating feeling which the Confessional aroused within me, where I seemed to be an idol, or a judge set over the thoughts and consciences of my fellow-men. When the pressure of the priestly yoke at times became too much for me, I have fled for refuge to the youth and innocence of the school, and have never failed to leave it with my strength renewed. These children little knew the infinite service which they rendered me! Notwithstanding that I laboured with all my might, as well in the school and the confessional, as in the pulpit, most resolutely to oppose and counteract the superstition, the hypocrisy, and all the consequences of priestly oppression and dissembling, the result could be but small, on account of the mighty barriers interposed by the hierarchy to every step in the direction of spirituality.

Within these fearful barriers, and under such restraint, and fettered thus in mind and body, with watchful care to sow and plant, what, after all, might be doomed to suffocation in the choke-damp of superstition, became from week to week less bearable; and all the less so, the more clearly I perceived the terrible effects of Popish despotism on the people, and the depth of moral degradation to which many of my brethren had sunk, bringing the danger all the nearer to myself. I saw it now to be my duty, openly to declare against the abuses and the soul-killing tenets of the Church of Rome,—rather to die a bodily than a spiritual death.