"Yet think well, darling, before you accept him. We are not poor now,
and we need no stranger's wealth to make us happy. Heaven forbid that
our child should sacrifice herself for us. Herr Reichenbach, is, no
doubt, a good and wise man, but I know well a young maiden's fancy. He
is little, I know--not tall and stalwart, like our Fritz and
Christopher; and he is a little bald, and he is not very young, and
rather grave and silent, and young girls--"
"But, mother," I said, "I am not a young girl, I am six-and-twenty; and
I do not think Herr Reichenbach old, and I never noticed that he was
bald, and I am sure to me he is not silent."
"That will do, Else," said the grandmother, laughing from her corner by
the stove. "Son and daughter, let these two settle it together. They
will arrange matters better than we shall for them."
And in the evening Herr Reichenbach came again, and everything was
arranged.
"And that is what the consultation was about!" said the children, not
without some disappointment. "It seems such an ordinary thing," said
Atlantis, "we are so used to seeing Herr Reichenbach. He comes almost
every day."
"I do not see that that is any objection," said Chriemhild; "but it seems
hardly like being married, only just to cross the street. His house is
just opposite."
"But it is a great deal prettier than ours," said Thekla. "I like Herr
Reichenbach; no one ever took such an interest in my drawings as he
does. He tells me where they are wrong, and shows me how to make them
right, as if he really felt it of some consequence; which it is, you
know, Else, because one day I mean to embroider and help the family,
like you. And no one was ever so kind to Nix as he is. He took the dog
on his knee the other day, and drew out a splinter which had lamed him,
which Nix would not let any one else do but me. Nix is very fond of Herr
Reichenbach, and so am I. He is much wiser, I think, than Ulrich, who
teases Nix, and pretends never to know my cats from my cows; and I do
not see that he is much older; besides, I could not bear our Else to
live a step further off."
And Thekla climbed up on my lap and kissed me, while Nix stood on his
hind legs and barked, evidently thinking it was a great occasion. So
that two of the family at least have given their consent.
But none of the family know yet what Herr Reichenbach said to me when we
stood for a few minutes by the window, before he left this evening. He
said--
"Else, it is God who gives me this joy. Ever since the evening when you
all arrived at Wittemberg, and I saw you tenderly helping the aged and
directing the young ones, and never flurried in all the bustle, but
always at leisure to thank any one for any little kindness, or to help
any one out of any little difficulty, I thought you were the light of
this home, and I prayed God one day to make you the light of mine."
Ah! that shows how love veils people's faults; but he did not know
Fritz, and not much of Eva. They were the true sunshine of our home.
However, at all events, with God's help, I will do my very best to make
Herr Reichenbach's home bright.
But the best of all is, I am not afraid to accept this blessing. I
believe it is God, out of his inexpressible love, as Dr. Luther says,
who has given it me, and I am not afraid He will think me too happy.
Before I had Dr. Luther for my confessor, I should never have known if
it was to be a blessing or a curse; but now I am not afraid. A chain
seems to have dropped from my heart, and a veil from my eyes, and I can
call God Father, and take everything fearlessly from him.
And I know Gottfried feels the same. Since I never had a vocation for
the higher religious life, it is an especial mercy for me to have found
a religion which enables a very poor every-day maiden in the world to
love God and to seek his blessing.
_June._
Our mother has been full of little tender apologies to me this week, for
having called Gottfried (Herr Reichenbach says I am to call him so) old,
and bald, and little, and grave.
"You know, darling, I only meant I did not want you to accept him for
our sakes. And after all, as you say, he is scarcely bald; and they say
all men who think much lose their hair early; and I am sure it is no
advantage to be always talking; and every one cannot be as tall as our
Fritz and Christopher."
"And after all, dear mother," said the grandmother, "Else did _not_
choose Herr Reichenbach for your sakes; but are you quite sure he did
not choose Else for her father's sake? He was always so interested in
the steam-pump!"
My mother and I are much cheered by seeing the quiet influence Herr
Reichenbach seems to have over Christopher, whose companions and late
hours have often caused us anxiety lately. Christopher is not
distrustful of him, because he is no priest, and no great favourer of
monks and convents; and he is not so much afraid about Christopher as we
timid, anxious women were beginning to be. He thinks there is good metal
in him; and he says the best ore cannot look like gold until it is
fused. It is so difficult for us women, who have to watch from our quiet
homes afar, to distinguish the glow of the smelting furnace from the
glare of a conflagration.
WITTEMBERG, _September_, 1513.
This morning, Herr Reichenbach, Christopher, and Ulrich von Gersdorf
(who is studying here for a time) came in full of excitement, from a
discussion they had been hearing between Dr. Luther and some of the
doctors and professors of Erfurt.
I do not know that I quite clearly understand what it was about; but
they seemed to think it of great importance.
Our house has become rather a gathering place of late; partly, I think,
on account of my father's blindness, which always insures that there
will be some one at home.
It seems that Dr. Luther attacks the old methods of teaching in the
universities, which makes the older professors look on him as a
dangerous innovator, while the young delight in him as a hero fighting
their battles. And yet the authorities Dr. Luther wishes to re-instate
are older than those he attacks. He demands that nothing shall be
received as the standard of theological truth except the Holy
Scriptures. I cannot understand why there should be so much conflict
about this, because I thought all we believed was founded on the Holy
Scriptures. I suppose it is not; but if not, on whose authority? I must
ask Gottfried this one day when we are alone.
The discussion to-day was between Dr. Andrew Bodenstein, Archdeacon of
Wittemberg, Dr. Luther, and Dr. Jodocus of Eisenach, called Trutvetter,
his old teacher. Dr. Carlstadt himself, they said, seemed quite
convinced; and Dr. Jodocus is silenced and is going back to Erfurt.
The enthusiasm of the students is great. The great point of Dr. Luther's
attack seems to be Aristotle, who was a heathen Greek. I cannot think
why these Church doctors should be so eager to defend him; but Herr
Reichenbach says all the teaching of the schools and all the doctrine of
indulgences are in some way founded on this Aristotle, and that Dr.
Luther wants to clear away everything which stands as a screen between
the students and the Bible.
Ulrich von Gersdorf said that our doctor debates like his uncle, Franz
von Sickingen, fights. He stands like a rock on some point he feels firm
on; and then, when his opponents are weary of trying to move him, he
rushes suddenly down on them, and sweeps them away like a torrent.
"But his great secret seems to be," remarked Christopher, "that he
believes every word he says. He speaks, like other men work, as if every
stroke were to tell."
And Gottfried said, quietly, "He is fighting the battle of God with the
scribes and Pharisees of our days; and whether he triumph or perish, the
battle will be won. It is a battle, not merely against falsehood, but
for truth, to keep a position he has won."
"When I hear him," said Ulrich, "I wish my student days over, and long
to be in the old castle in the Thuringian Forest, to give everything
good there a new impulse. He makes me feel the way to fight the world's
great battles is for each to conquer the enemies of God in his own heart
and home. He speaks of Aristotle and Augustine; but he makes me think of
the sloth and tyranny in the castle, and the misery and oppression in
the peasant's hut, which are to me what Aristotle and the schoolmen are
to him."
"And I," said Christopher, "when he speaks, think of our printing press,
until my daily toil there seems the highest work I could do; and to be a
printer, and wing such words as his through the world, the noblest thing
on earth."
"But his lectures fight the good fight even more than his disputations,"
remarked Gottfried. "In these debates he clears the world of the foe;
but in his explanations of the Psalms and the Romans, he carries the
battle within, and clears the heart of the lies which kept it back from
God. In his attacks on Aristotle, he leads you to the Bible as the one
source of truth; in his discourses on justification by faith he leads
you to God as the one source of holiness and joy."
"They say poor Dr. Jodocus is quite ill with vexation at his defeat,"
said Christopher; "and that there are many bitter things said against
Dr. Luther at Erfurt."
"What does that matter," rejoined Ulrich, "since Wittemberg is becoming
every month more thronged with students from all parts of Germany, and
the Augustinian cloister is already full of young monks, sent hither
from various convents, to study under Dr. Luther? The youth and vigour
of the nation are with us. Let the dead bury their dead."
"Ah, children," murmured the grandmother, looking up from her knitting,
"that is a funeral procession that lasts long. The young always speak of
the old as if they had been born old. Do you think our hearts never
throbbed high with hope, and that we never fought with dragons? Yet the
old serpent is not killed yet. Nor will he be dead when we are dead, and
you are old, and your grandchildren take their place in the old fight,
and think they are fighting the first battle the world has seen, and
vanquishing the last enemy."
"Perhaps not," said Gottfried; "but the last enemy will be overcome at
last, and who knows how soon?"
WITTEMBERG, _October_, 1513.
It is a strong bond of union between Herr Reichenbach and me, our
reverence and love for Dr. Luther.
He is lecturing now on the Romans and the Psalms, and as I sit at my
spinning-wheel, or sew, Gottfried often reads to me notes from these
lectures, or tells me what they have been about. This is a comfort to me
also, because he has many thoughts and doubts which, were it not for his
friendship with Dr. Luther, would make me tremble for him. They are so
new and strange to me; and as it is I never venture to speak of them to
my mother.
He thinks there is great need of reformations and changes in the Church.
He even thinks Christopher not far from right in his dislike of many of
the priests and monks, who, he says, lead lives which are a disgrace to
Christendom.
But his chief detestation is the sale of indulgences, now preached in
many of the towns of Saxony by Dr. Tetzel. He says it is a shameless
traffic in lies, and that most men of intelligence and standing in the
great cities think so. And he tells me that a very good man, a professor
of theology--Dr. John Wesel,--preached openly against them about fifty
years ago at the University of Erfurt, and afterwards at Worms and
Mainz; and that John of Goch and other holy men were most earnest in
denouncing them.
And when I asked if the Pope did not sanction them, he said that to
understand what the Pope is one needs to go to Rome. He went there in
his youth, not on pilgrimage, but on mercantile business, and he told me
that the wickedness he saw there, especially in the family of the
reigning Pope, the Borgia, for many years made him hate the very name of
religion. Indeed, he said it was principally through Dr. Luther that he
had begun again to feel there could be a religion, which, instead of
being a cloak for sin, should be an incentive to holiness.
He says also that I have been quite mistaken about "Reineke Fuchs;" that
it is no vulgar jest-book, mocking at really sacred things, but a
bitter, earnest satire against the hypocrisy which practices all kinds
of sin in the name of sacred things.
He doubts even if the Calixtines and Hussites are as bad as they have
been represented to be. It alarms me sometimes to hear him say these
things. His world is so much larger than mine, it is difficult for my
thoughts to follow him into it. If the world is so bad, and there is so
much hypocrisy in the holiest places, perhaps I have been hard on poor
Christopher after all.
But if Fritz has found it so, how unhappy it must make him!
Can really religious people like Fritz and Eva do nothing better for the
world, but leave it to grow more and more corrupt and unbelieving, while
they sit apart to weave their robes of sanctity in convents. It does
seem time for something to be done. I wonder who will do it?
I thought it might be the Pope; but Gottfried shakes his head, and says,
"No good thing can begin at Rome."
"Or the prelates?" I asked one day.
"They are too intent," he said, "on making their courts as magnificent
as those of the princes, to be able to interfere with the abuses by
which their revenues are maintained."
"Or the princes?"
"The friendship of the prelates is too important to them, for them to
interfere in spiritual matters."
"Or the emperor?"
"The emperor," he said, "has enough to do to hold his own against the
princes, the prelates, and the pope."
"Or the knights?"
"The knights are at war with the all world," he replied; "to say nothing
of their ceaseless private feuds with each other. With the peasants
rising on one side in wild insurrection, the great nobles contending
against their privileges on the other, and the great burgher families
throwing their barbarous splendour into the shade as much as the city
palaces do their bare robber castles, the knights and petty nobles have
little but bitter words to spare for the abuses of the clergy. Besides,
most of them have relations whom they hope to provide for with some good
abbey."
"Then the peasants!" I suggested. "Did not the gospel first take root
among peasants?"
"_Inspired_ peasants and fishermen!" he replied, thoughtfully. "Peasants
who had walked up and down the land three years in the presence of the
Master. But who is to teach our peasants now? They cannot read!"
"Then it must be the burghers," I said.
"Each may be prejudiced in favour of his order," he replied, with a
smile; "but I do think if better days dawn, it will be through the
cities. There the new learning takes root; there the rich have society
and cultivation, and the poor have teachers; and men's minds are
brightened by contact and debate, and there is leisure to think and
freedom to speak. If a reformation of abuses were to begin, I think the
burghers would promote it most of all."
"But who is to begin it?" I asked. "Has no one ever tried?"
"Many have tried," he replied sadly; "and many have perished in trying.
While they were assailing one abuse, others were increasing. Or while
they endeavoured to heal some open wound, some one arose and declared
that it was impossible to separate the disease from the whole frame, and
that they were attempting the life of our Holy Mother the Church."
"Who, then, will venture to begin?" I said. "Can it be Dr. Luther? He is
bold enough to venture anything; and since he has done so much good to
Fritz, and to you, and to me, why not to the whole Church?"
"Dr. Luther is faithful enough, and bold enough for anything his
conscience calls him to," said Gottfried, "but he is occupied with
saving men's souls, not with reforming ecclesiastical abuses."
"But if the ecclesiastical abuses came to interfere with the salvation
of men's souls," I suggested, "what would Dr. Luther do then?"
"We should see, Else," said Gottfried. "If the wolves attacked one of
Dr. Luther's sheep, I do not think he would care with what weapon he
rescued it, or at what risk."