The incarnation of the Son of God was the indissoluble union of Spirit with form as the basis of true religion. Thenceforth, Spirit was no more to be dissociated from matter, authority from a visible Church, grace from a sacramental sign, morality from a fixed law. All the great revolts against Catholicism in the middle-ages, were more or less revolts against this principle and were reversions to pure spiritualism. The Reformation was taken advantage of for the mystic aspirations of men to run riot. Individual emotion became the supreme and sole criticism of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, and sole authority to which submission must be tendered.
In the autumn of 1817, Margaretta of Wildisbuch met a woman who was also remarkable in her way, and the head of another revivalist movement. This was Julianne von Krüdner; about whom a word must now be said.
Julianne was born in 1766, at Riga, the daughter of a noble and wealthy family. Her father visited Paris and took the child with him, where she made the acquaintance of the rationalistic and speculative spirits of French society, before the Revolution. In a Voltairean atmosphere, the little Julianne grew up without religious faith or moral principle. At the age of fourteen she was married to a man much older than herself, the Baron von Krüdner, Russian Ambassador at Venice. There her notorious immoralities resulted in a separation, and Julianne was obliged to return to her father's house at Riga. This did not satisfy her love of pleasure and vanity, and she went to St. Petersburg and then to Paris, where she threw herself into every sort of dissipation. She wrote a novel, "Valérie," in which she frankly admitted that woman, when young, must give herself up to pleasure, then take up with art, and finally, when nothing else was left her, devote herself to religion. At the age of forty she had already entered on this final phase. She went to Berlin, was admitted to companionship with the Queen, Louise, and endeavoured to "convert" her. The sweet, holy queen required no conversion, and the Baroness von Krüdner was obliged to leave Berlin. She wandered thenceforth from place to place, was now in Paris, then in Geneva, and then in Germany. At Karlsruhe she met Jung-Stilling; and thenceforth threw herself heart and soul into the pietistic revival. Her mission now was--so she conceived--to preach the Gospel to the poor. In 1814 she obtained access to the Russian Court, where her prophecies and exhortations produced such an effect on the spirit of the Czar, Alexander I., that he entreated her to accompany him to Paris. She did so, and held spiritual conferences and prayer meetings in the French capital. Alexander soon tired of her, and she departed to Basel, where she won to her the Genevan Pastor Empeytaz and the Basel Professor Lachenal. Her meetings for revival, which were largely attended, caused general excitement, but led to many domestic quarrels, so that the city council gave her notice to leave the town. She then made a pilgrimage along the Rhine, but her proceedings were everywhere objected to by the police and town authorities, and she was sent back under police supervision first to Leipzig, and thence into Russia.