and more celebrated than the one at Burgdorf, and had a still greater number of pupils and of visitors. Unfor- tunately dissensions arose among tlie teachers, in which Pestalozzi himself became implicated, and thus the lat- ter years of his life were imbittered. The number of pupils rapidly diminished, the establishment became a losing concern, and Pestalozzi was again involved in debt, which the proceeds of the completed edition of his works, Pestalozzi's Sdinmtliche Werke (Stuttgard and Tiibingen, 1819-26, 15 vols.), hardly sufficed to liquidate. (This edition was the result of a subscription got up in 1818 for the publication of his works, the names of the emperor of Russia, the king of Prussia, and the king of Bavaria standing at the head of the list.) In 1825 Pestalozzi retired from his laborious duties to Neuhof, where his grandson resided. Here he wrote his Schwa- nengesiing (1826), and Meine Lehenssehicksale uls Vorste- her meiner Erziehungsanstalten in Burgdorf und Iferten (ibid.), in which he recounts his disappointments in a most desponding mood. He died Feb. 17, 1827, at Brugg, in the canton of Aargau, and over his grave a monument was erected by a grateful generation, which, though it had always failed to reward him as he deserved in life, yet failed not to honor him when his work was done.
The great idea which lay at the basis of Pestalozzi's method of intellectual instruction was that nothing shoidd be treated of except in a concrete way. Objects themselves became in his hands the subject of lessons tending to the development of the observing and rea- soning powers — not lessons about objects. His special attention was directed to the moral and religious train- ing of the children, as distinct from their mere instuuc- TioN ; and here, too, graduation and a regard to the nat- ure and susceptibilities of children were conspicuous features of his system. His aim was to impart to the school the character of an educating family, into which the ease and pleasure of home should be introduced. Without books and without apparatus, he directed his attention to those natural elements which are found in the mind of every child. He taught numbers instead of figures; living sounds, instead of dead characters; deeds of faith and love, instead of abstruse creeds; sub- stance instead of shadow; realities instead of signs. Whatever may be thought of his system as a whole, the present generation cannot afford to ignore its great indebtedness to Pestalozzi for the fresher thoughts and experiments which his plans suggested. What Rous- seau (q. V.) attempted with a simulated pupil was real- ized, though with modifications, by Pestalozzi upon real men ; and that which was already existing in scatter- ed ideas was collected by him into a focus. Besides, it is the great distinction of Pestalozzi to be among the first benefactors of the poor — the first to claim for their squalid children the full advantage of all tliat is im- pressive in art and beautiful in nature — the first to share his bread with them, and to dwell among them as a poor man himself, in order, as he expressed it, that he might " teach those harassed with poverty to live as men."
It now remains for us to notice more distinctly Pes- talozzi's relation to Christianity, and especially to Prot- estantism. It was the practice in his day and country to teach the child the Catechism, and forget altogether the deeper lesson of real faith and true love. As one has aptly put it, the Christianity of Pestalozzi's gener- ation was " a lazy Christianity of memory and form," or, as Pestalozzi himself was accustomed to designate it, " a paper-science." Pestalozzi took issue with such a course. He was a Protestant, in whom the essence of Christianity took the place of the form, and in whom the spirit preponderated over the letter. True, he put revealed religion as auxiliary to natural religion, and only instructed his pupils in the latter when the former had been mastered; but whatever may be thought of the method, it is certain that Pestalozzi was a firm be- liever in the salvation of the world by Christianity. The humble man slirank from professions; he found that
PESTILENCE
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PESTLE
he might cause his pupils to stumble if they looked to him lor a pattern, and we do not wonder that in the midst of h.is trials with the world he is led to cry out, " I do not think that there are many men naturally fit- ted to be Christians;" and in shame and confusion con- fesses that he does not really think himself a Christian, because he does not find himself endowed with a capac- ity to arrive at religious excellence by the conquest of himself. His life will bear the closest scrutiny, and if ever there has been a striving after perfection, Pesta- lozzi sought for it in Christianity. In the hour of death his hope for salvation was in his Saviour. See Krlisi, Pestalozzi: his Life, Work, and Influence (Cincinnati, 1870); and the article in Kiddle and Schem's Cyclop, of Education, p. 693-95; also Hagenbach, C/i. Hist, of the 18th and l^th Centuries, ii, 15-i sq. ; Wuxst, Rational- ism, ^.\m &({. (J.H.W.)
Pestilence is the invariable rendering in the A. V. (except in Exod. ix, 3, " murrain," and in Hos. xiii, 14, ■' plagues") of the Heb. "iS^T, deber (Sept. usually Siava- toq), which originally seems to mean simply destruction, but is regularly applied to that common Oriental epi- demic the plague (q. v.). The same term is also used in the Hebrew Scriptures for all epidemic or contagious diseases (Lev. xxvi, 25). The writers everywhere at- tribute it either to the agency of God himself or of that legate or angel whom they denominate ~X3^, malak; hence the Sept. renders the word "im, deber, or pesti- lence, in Psa. xci, 6, by Saifioviov (.uaim^pivov, " the daemon of noonday," and Jonathan also renders the same word ill the Chaldee Targum (Hab. iii, 5) by the Chal-