Else's Story.
_January_ 23.
It is too plain now why Fritz would not look back as he went down the
street. He thought it would be looking back from the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God, then, is the cloister, and the world, _we_ are
that!--father, mother, brothers, sisters, friends, home, that is the
world! I shall never understand it. For if all my younger brothers say
is true, either all the priests and monks are not in the kingdom of God,
or the kingdom of God is strangely governed here on earth.
Fritz was helping us all so much. He would have been the stay of our
parents' old age. He was the example and admiration of the boys, and the
pride and delight of us all; and to _me_! My heart grows so bitter when
I write about it, I seem to hate and reproach every one. Every one but
Fritz; I cannot, of course, hate him. But why was all that was gentlest
and noblest in him made to work towards this last dreadful step?
If our father had only been more successful, Fritz need not have entered
on that monastic foundation at Erfurt, which made his conscience so
sensitive; if my mother had only not been so religious, and taught us to
reverence Aunt Agnes as so much better than herself, he might never have
thought of the monastic life; if I had been more religious he might have
confided more in me, and I might have induced him to pause, at least, a
few years before taking this unalterable step. If Eva had not been so
wilful, and insisted on braving the contagion from me, she might never
have been stricken, and that vow might not yet, might never have been
taken. If God had not caused him so innocently to bring the pestilence
among us! But I must not dare to say another word of complaint, or it
will become blasphemy. Doubtless it is God who has willed to bring all
this misery on us; and to rebel against God is a deadly sin. As Aunt
Agnes said, "The Lord is a jealous God," he will not suffer us to make
idols. We must love him best, first, alone. We must make a great void in
our heart by renouncing all earthly affections, that he may fill it. We
must mortify the flesh, that we may live. What, then, is the flesh? I
suppose all our natural affections, which the monks call our fleshly
lusts. These Fritz has renounced. Then if all our natural affections are
to die in us, what is to live in us? The "spiritual life," they say in
some of the sermons, and "the love of God." But are not my natural
affections my _heart_; and if I am not to love God with my heart, with
the heart with which I love my father and mother, what am I to love him
with?
It seems to me, the love of God to us is something quite different from
any human being's love to us.
When human beings love us they like to have us with them; they delight
to make us happy; they delight in our being happy, whether they make us
so or not, if it is a right happiness, a happiness that does us good.
But with God's love it must be quite different. He warns us not on any
account to come too near Him. We have to place priests, and saints, and
penances between us and Him, and then approach Him with the greatest
caution, lest, after all, it should be in the wrong way, and He should
be angry. And, instead of delighting in our happiness, He is never so
much pleased as when we renounce all the happiness of our life, and make
other people wretched in doing so, as Fritz, our own Fritz, has just
done.
Therefore, also, no doubt, the love God requires we should feel for Him
is something entirely different from the love we give each other. It
must, I suppose, be a serious, severe, calm adoration, too sublime to
give either joy or sorrow, such as had left its stamp on Aunt Agnes's
grave impassive face. I can never, never even attempt to attain to it.
Certainly at present I have no time to think of it.
Thank Heaven, thou livest still, mother of mercy! In _thy_ face there
have been tears, real, bitter, human tears; in _thine_ eyes there have
been smiles of joy, real, simple, human joy. Thou wilt understand and
have pity. Yet oh, couldst not thou, even thou, sweet mother, have
reminded him of the mother he has left to battle on alone? thou who art
a mother, and didst bend over a cradle, and hadst a little lowly home at
Nazareth once?
But I know my own mother would not even herself have uttered a word to
keep Fritz back. When first we heard of it, and I entreated her to write
and remonstrate, although the tears were streaming from her eyes, she
said, "Not a word, Else, not a syllable. Shall not I give my son up
freely to Him who gave him to me. God might have called him away from
earth altogether when he lay smitten with the plague, and shall I grudge
him to the cloister? I shall see him again," she added, "once or twice
at least. When he is consecrated priest, shall I not have joy then, and
see him in his white robes at the altar, and, perhaps, even receive my
Creator from his hands!"
"Once or twice!--O mother!" I sobbed, "and in church, amongst hundreds
of others! What pleasure will there be in that?"
"Else," she said softly, but with a firmness unusual with her, "my
child, do not say another word. Once I myself had some faint inclination
to the cloister, which, if I had nourished it, might have grown into a
vocation. But I saw your father, and I neglected it. And see what
troubles my children have to bear! Has there not also been a kind of
fatal spell on all your father's inventions? Perhaps God will at last
accept from me in my son what I withheld in myself, and will be pacified
towards us, and send us better days; and then your father's great
invention will be completed yet. But do not say anything of what I told
you to him!"