Friedrich's Story.
ST. SEBASTIAN, ERFURT, _January_ 20, 1510.
The irrevocable step is taken. I have entered the Augustinian cloister.
I write in Martin Luther's cell. Truly I have forsaken father and
mother, and all that was dearest to me, to take refuge at the foot of
the cross. I have sacrificed everything on earth to my vocation, and yet
the conflict is not over. I seem scarcely more certain of my vocation
now than while I remained in the world. Doubts buzz around me like
wasps, and sting me on every side. The devil, transforming himself into
an angel of light, perplexes me with the very words of Scripture. The
words of Martin Luther's father recur to me, as if spoken by a divine
voice, "Honour thy father and thy mother!" echoes back to me from the
chants of the choir, and seems written everywhere on the white walls of
my cell.
And, besides the thunder of these words of God, tender voices seem to
call me back by every plea of duty, not to abandon them to fight the
battle of life alone. Else calls me from the old lumber-room, "Fritz'
brother! who is to tell me now what to do?" My mother does not call me
back; but I seem ever to see her tearful eyes, full of reproach and
wonder which she tries to repress, lifted up to heaven for strength; and
her worn, pale face, growing more wan every day. In one voice and one
face only I seem never to hear or see reproach or recall; and yet,
Heaven forgive me, those pure and saintly eyes which seem only to say,
"Go on, Cousin Fritz, God will help thee, and I will pray!"--those
sweet, trustful, heavenly eyes, draw me back to the world with more
power than anything else.
Is it, then, too late? Have I lingered in the world so long that my
heart can never more be torn from it? Is this the punishment of my
guilty hesitation, that, though I have given my body to the cloister,
God will not have my soul, which evermore must hover like a lost spirit
about the scenes it was too reluctant to leave? Shall I evermore, when I
lift my eyes to heaven, see all that is pure and saintly there embodied
for me in a face which it is deadly sin for me to remember?
Yet I have saved her life! If I brought the curse on my people by my
sin, was not my obedience accepted? From the hour when, in my room
alone, after hearing that Eva was stricken, I prostrated myself before
God, and not daring to take His insulted name on my lips, approached him
through His martyred saint, and said, "Holy Sebastian, by the arrows
which pierced thy heart, ward off the arrows of pestilence from my home,
and I will become a monk, and change my own guilty name for
thine,"--from that moment did not Eva begin to recover, and from that
time were not all my kindred unscathed? "Cadent a latere tuo mille, et
decem millia a dextris tuis; ad te autem non approprinquabit." Were not
the words literally fulfilled; and while many still fell around us, was
one afterwards stricken in my home?
Holy Sebastian, infallible protector against pestilence, by thy firmness
when accused, confirm my wavering will; by thy double death, save me
from the second death; by the arrows which could not slay thee, thou
hast saved us from the arrow that flieth by day; by the cruel blows
which sent thy spirit from the circus to paradise, strengthen me against
the blows of Satan; by thy body rescued from ignominious sepulture and
laid in the catacombs among the martyrs, raise me from the filth of sin;
by thy generous pleading for thy fellow sufferers amidst thine own
agonies, help me to plead for those who suffer with me; and by all thy
sorrows, and merits, and joys, plead--oh plead for me, who henceforth
bear thy name!
ST. SCHOLASTICA, _February_ 10.
I have been a month in the monastery. Yesterday my first probation was
over, and I was invested with the white garments of the novitiate.
The whole of the brotherhood were assembled in the church, when,
kneeling before the prior, he asked me solemnly whether I thought my
strength sufficient for the burden I purposed to take on myself.
In a low, grave voice, he reminded me what those burdens are--the rough
plain clothing; the abstemious living; the broken rest and long vigils;
the toils in the service of the order; the reproach and poverty; the
humiliations of the mendicant; and, above all, the renunciation of
self-will and individual glory, to be a member of the order, bound to do
whatever the superiors command, and to go whithersoever they direct.
"With God for my help," I could venture to say, "of this will I make
trial."