Product Details

1721 German Pietist Prayer Book | John McVickar–Columbia Provenance | Rare Listing Description Printed in Darmstadt in 1721, this remarkable German Lutheran devotional volume is Friedrich Wilhelm Berchelmann’s Wahrer Christen geistliches Rauch-Opfer (“True Christians’ Spiritual Incense Offering”), a substantial prayer book of [16], 672 pages ending SOLI DEO GLORIA. Berchelmann moved within the German Pietist world and corresponded with August Hermann Francke. What makes this copy exceptional is its documented American history. A manuscript record dated October 29, 1868—the day prominent Episcopal theologian and longtime Columbia professor Rev. John McVickar died—records the book’s testamentary connection to Rev. Dr. Samuel Roosevelt Johnson, later Professor of Systematic Divinity at General Theological Seminary. Further Johnson-family correspondence from 1907 preserves an extraordinary mystery: the family itself questioned why McVickar had specifically selected this German book for