"I will _never_ leave him," she replied, with a calmness which was more
like principle than passion. "He has sacrificed life for me; but for me
he might have been a great and honoured man. And do you think I would
leave him to bear his blighted life alone?"
Ah! it was no dread of scorn or discipline which kept her from the
convent.
For some time I was silenced. I dared neither to reproach nor to
comfort. At length I said, "Life, whether joyful or sorrowful, is very
short. Holiness is infinitely better than happiness here, and holiness
makes happiness in the life beyond. If you felt it would be for _his_
good, you would do anything, at any cost to yourself, would you not?"
Her eyes filled with tears. "You believe, then, that there is some good
left, even in me!" she said. "For this may God bless you!" and silently
she left the room.
Five hundred years ago these two lives might have been holy, honourable,
and happy; and now!--
I left that house with a heavy heart, and a mind more bewildered than
before.
But that pale, worn face; those deep, sad, truthful eyes; and that brow,
that might have been as pure as the brow of a St. Agnes, have haunted me
often since. And whenever I think of it, I say,--
"God be merciful to them and to me, sinners!"
For had not my own good, pure, pious mother doubts and scruples almost
as bitter? Did not she also live too often as if under a curse? Who or
what has thrown this shadow on so many homes? Who that knows the
interior of many convents dares to say they are holier than homes? Who
that has lived with, or confessed many monks or nuns, can dare to say
their hearts are more heavenly than those of husband or wife, father or
mother? Alas! the questions of that priest are nothing new to me. But I
dare not entertain them. For if monastic life is a delusion, to what
have I sacrificed hopes which were so absorbing, and might have been so
pure?
Regrets are burdens a brave man must cast off. For my little life what
does it matter? But to see vice shamefully reigning in the most sacred
places, and scruples, perhaps false, staining the purest hearts, who can
behold these things and not mourn? Crimes a pagan would have abhorred
atoned for by a few florins; sins which the Holy Scriptures scarcely
seem to condemn, weighing on tender consciences like crimes! What will
be the end of this chaos?
* * * * *
The next night I spent in the castle of an old knight in the Thuringian
Forest, Otto von Gersdorf. He welcomed me very hospitably to his table,
at which a stately old lady presided, his widowed sister.
"What is all this talk about Dr. Luther and his theses?" he asked;
"only, I suppose, some petty quarrel between the monks! And yet my
nephew Ulrich thinks there is no one on earth like this little Brother
Martin. You good Augustinians do not like the Black Friars to have all
the profit; is that it?" he asked laughing.
"That is not Dr. Luther's motive, at all events," I said; "I do not
believe money is more to him than it is to the birds of the air."
"No, brother," said the lady; "think of the beautiful words our
Chriemhild read us from his book on the Lord's Prayer."
"Yes; you, and Ulrich, and Chriemhild, and Atlantis," rejoined the old
knight, "you are all alike; the little friar has bewitched you all."
The names of my sisters made my heart beat.
"Does the lady know Chriemhild and Atlantis Cotta?" I asked.
"Come, nephew Ulrich," said the knight to a young man who just then
entered the hall from the chase; "tell this good brother all you know of
Frauelein Chriemhild Cotta."
We were soon the best friends and long after the old knight and his
sister had retired, Ulrich von Gersdorf and I sat up discoursing about
Dr. Luther and his noble words and deeds, and of names dearer to us both
even than his.
"Then you are Fritz!" he said musingly after a a pause; "the Fritz they
all delight to talk of, and think no one can ever be equal to. You are
the Fritz that Chriemhild says her mother always hoped would have wedded
that angel maiden Eva von Schoenberg, who is now a nun at Nimptschen;
whose hymn-book "Theologia Teutsch" she carried with her to the convent.
I wonder you could have left her to become a monk," he continued; "your
vocation must have been very strong."
At that moment it certainly felt very weak. But I would not for the
world have let him see this, and I said, with as steady a voice as I
could command, "I believe it was God's will."
"Well," he continued, "it is good for any one to have seen her, and to
carry that image of purity and piety with him into cloister or home. It
is better than any painting of the saints, to have that angelic,
child-like countenance, and that voice sweet as church music, in one's
heart."
"It is," I said, and I could not have said a word more. Happily for me,
he turned to another subject and expatiated for a long time on the
beauty and goodness of his little Chriemhild, who was to be his wife, he
said, next year; whilst through my heart only two thoughts remained
distinct, namely, what my mother had wished about Eva and me, and that
Eva had taken my "Theologia Teutsch" into the convent with her.
It took some days before I could remove that sweet, guileless, familiar
face, to the saintly, unearthly height in my heart, where only it is
safe for me to gaze on it.
But I believe Ulrich thought me a very sympathizing listener, for in
about an hour he said,--
"You are a patient and good-natured monk, to listen thus to my romances.
However, she is your sister, and I wish you would be at our wedding.
But, at all events, it will be delightful to have news for Chriemhild
and all of them about Fritz."
I had intended to go on to Wittemberg for a few days, but after that
conversation I did not dare to do so at once. I returned to the
university of Tuebingen, to quiet my mind a little with Greek and Hebrew,
under the direction of the excellent Reuchlin, it being the will of our
Vicar-General that I should study the languages.
At Tuebingen I found Dr. Luther's theses the great topic of debate. Men
of learning rejoiced in the theses as an assault on barbarism and
ignorance; men of straightforward integrity hailed them as a protest
against a system of lies and imposture; men of piety gave thanks for
them as a defence of holiness and truth. The students enthusiastically
greeted Dr. Luther as the prince of the new age; the aged Reuchlin and
many of the professors recognized him as an assailant of old foes from a
new point of attack.
Here I attended for some weeks the lectures of the young doctor, Philip
Melancthon (then only twenty one, yet already a doctor for four years),
until he was summoned to Wittemberg, which he reached on the 25th of
August, 1518.
On business of the order, I was deputed about the same time on a mission
to the Augustinian convent at Wittemberg, so that I saw him arrive. The
disappointment at his first appearance was great. Could this little
unpretending-looking youth be the great scholar Reuchlin had recommended
so warmly, and from whose abilities the Elector Frederick expected such
great results for his new university?
Dr. Luther was among the first to discover the treasure hidden in this
insignificant frame. But his first Latin harangue, four days after his
arrival, won the admiration of all; and very soon his lecture-room was
crowded.
This was the event which absorbed Wittemberg when first I saw it.
The return to my old home was very strange to me. Such a broad barrier
of time and circumstance had grown up between me and those most familiar
to me!
Else, matronly as she was, with her keys, her stores, her large
household, and her two children, the baby Fritz and Gretchen, was in
heart the very same to me as when we parted for my first term at Erfurt,
her honest, kind blue eyes, had the very same look. But around her was a
whole new world of strangers, strange to me as her own new life, with
whom I had no links whatever.
With Chriemhild and the younger children, the recollection of me as the
elder brother seemed struggling with their reverence for the priest.
Christopher appeared to look on me with a mixture of pity, and respect,
and perplexity, which prevented my having any intimate intercourse with
him at all.
Only my mother seemed unchanged with regard to me, although much more
aged and feeble. But in her affection there was a clinging tenderness
which pierced my heart more than the bitterest reproaches. I felt by the
silent watching of her eyes how she had missed me.
My father was little altered, except that his schemes appeared to give
him a new and placid satisfaction, in the very impossibility of their
fulfilment, and that the relations between him and my grandmother were
much more friendly.
There was at first a little severity in our grandmother's manner to me,
which wore off when we understood how much Dr. Luther's teaching had
done for us both; and she never wearied of hearing what he had said and
done at Rome.
The one who, I felt, would have been entirely the same, was gone for
ever; and I could scarcely regret the absence which left that one image
undimmed by the touch of time, and surrounded by no barriers of change.
But of Eva no one spoke to me, except little Thekla, who sang to me over
and over the Latin hymns Eva had taught her, and asked if she sang them
at all in the same way.
I told her yes. They were the same words, the same melodies, much of the
same soft, reverent, innocent manner. But little Thekla's voice was deep
and powerful, and clear like a thrush's; and Eva's used to be like the
soft murmuring of a dove in the depth of some quiet wood--hardly a voice
at all--an embodied prayer, as if you stood at the threshold of her
heart, and heard the music of her happy, holy, child-like thoughts
within.
No, nothing could ever break the echo of that voice to me.
But Thekla and I became great friends. She had scarcely known me of old.
We became friends as we were. There was nothing to recall, nothing to
efface. And Cousin Eva had been to her as a star or angel in heaven, or
as if she had been another child sent by God out of some beautiful old
legend to be her friend.
Altogether, there was some pain in this visit to my old home. I had
prayed so earnestly that the blank my departure had made might be filled
up; yet now that I saw it filled, and the life of my beloved running its
busy course, with no place in it for me, it left a dreary feeling of
exile on my heart. If the dead could thus return, would they feel
anything of this? Not the holy dead, surely. They would rejoice that the
sorrow, having wrought its work, should cease to be so bitter--that the
blank should, not, indeed, be filled (no true love can replace another),
but veiled and made fruitful, as time and nature veil all ruins.
But the holy dead would revisit earth from a home, a father's house; and
that the cloister is not, nor can ever be.
Yet I would gladly have remained at Wittemberg. Compared with
Wittemberg, all the world seemed asleep. There it was morning, and an
atmosphere of hope and activity was around my heart. Dr. Luther was
there; and, whether consciously or not, all who look for better days
seem to fix their eyes on him.
But I was sent to Mainz. On my journey thither I went out of my way to
take a new book of Dr. Luther's to my poor priest Ruprecht in Franconia.
His village lay in the depths of a pine forest. The book was the
Exposition of the Lord's Prayer in German, for lay and unlearned people.
The priest's house was empty; but I laid the book on a wooden seat in
the porch, with my name written in it, and a few words of gratitude for
his hospitality. And as I wound my way through the forest, I saw from a
height on the opposite side of the valley a woman enter the porch, and
stoop to pick up the book, and then stand reading it in the door-way. As
I turned away, her figure still stood motionless in the arch of the
porch, with the white leaves of the open book relieved against the
shadow of the interior.
I prayed that the words might be written on her heart. Wonderful words
of holy love and grace I knew were there, which would restore hope and
purity to any heart on which they were written.
And now I am placed in this Augustinian monastery at Mainz in the
Rhineland.
This convent has its own peculiar traditions. Here is a dungeon in
which, not forty years ago (in 1481), died John of Wesel--the old man
who had dared to protest against indulgences, and to utter such truths
as Dr. Luther is upholding now.
An aged monk of this monastery, who was young when John of Wesel died,
remembers him, and has often spoken to me about him. The inquisitors
instituted a process against him, which was earned on, like so many
others, in the secret of the cloister.
It was said that he made a general recantation, but that two accusations
which were brought against him he did not attempt in his defence to
deny. They were these: "That it is not his monastic life which saves any
monk, but the grace of God;" and "That the same Holy Spirit who inspired
the Holy Scriptures alone can interpret them with power to the heart."
The inquisitors burned his books; at which, my informant said, the old
man wept.
"Why," he said, "should men be so inflamed against him? There was so
much in his books that was good, and must they be all burned for the
little evil that was mixed with the good? Surely this was man's
judgment, not God's--not His who would have spared Sodom at Abraham's
prayer, for but ten righteous, had they been found there. O God," he
sighed, "must the good perish with the evil?"
But the inquisitors were not to be moved. The books were condemned and
ignominiously burned in public; the old man's name was branded with
heresy; and he himself was silenced, and left in the convent prison to
die.
I asked the monk who told me of this, what were the especial heresies
for which John of Wesel was condemned.
"Heresies against the Church, I believe," he replied. "I have heard him
in his sermons declare that the Church was becoming like what the Jewish
nation was in the days of our Lord. He protested against the secular
splendours of the priests and prelates--against the cold ceremonial into
which he said the services had sunk, and the empty superstitions which
were substituted for true piety of heart and life. He said that the salt
had lost its savour; that many of the priests were thieves and robbers,
and not shepherds; that the religion in fashion was little better than
that of the Pharisees who put our Lord to death--a cloak for spiritual
pride, and narrow, selfish bitterness. He declared that divine and
ecclesiastical authority were of very different weight; that the outward
professing Church was to be distinguished from the true living Church of
Christ; that the power of absolution given to the priest was
sacramental, and not judicial. In a sermon at Worms, I once heard him
say he thought little of the Pope, the Church, or the Councils, as a
foundation to build our faith upon. 'Christ alone,' he declared, 'I
praise. May the word of Christ dwell in us richly!'"
"They were bold words," I remarked.
"More than that," replied the aged monk; "John of Wesel protested that
what the Bible did not hold as sin, neither could he; and he is even
reported to have said, 'Eat on fast days, if thou art hungry.'"
"That is a concession many of the monks scarcely need," I observed. "His
life, then, was not condemned, but only his doctrine."
"I was sorry," the old monk resumed, "that it was necessary to condemn
him; for from that time to this, I never have heard preaching that
stirred the heart like his. When he ascended the pulpit, the church was
thronged. The laity understood and listened to him as eagerly as the
religious. It was a pity he was a heretic, for I do not ever expect to
hear his like again."
"You have never heard Dr. Luther preach?" I said.
"Doctor Luther who wrote those theses they are talking so much of?" he
asked. "Do the people throng to hear his sermons, and hang on his words
as if they were words of life?"
"They do," I replied.
"Then," rejoined the old monk softly, "let Dr. Luther take care. That
was the way with so many of the heretical preachers. With John of Goch
at Mechlin, and John Wesel whom they expelled from Paris, I have heard
it was just the same. But," he continued, "if Dr. Luther comes to Mainz,
I will certainly try to hear him. I should like to have my cold, dry,
old heart moved like that again. Often when I read the holy Gospels John
of Wesel's words come back. Brother, it was like the breath of life."
The last man that ventured to say in the face of Germany that man's word
is not to be placed on an equality with God's, and that the Bible is the
only standard of truth, and the one rule of right and wrong--this is how
he died!
How will it be with the next--with the man that is proclaiming this in
the face of the world now?
The old monk turned back to me, after we had separated, and said, in a
low voice--
"Tell Dr. Luther to take warning by John of Wesel. Holy men and great
preachers may so easily become heretics without knowing it. And yet," he
added, "to preach such sermons as John of Wesel, I am not sure it is not
worth while to die in prison. I think I could be content to die, if I
could _hear_ one such again! Tell Dr. Luther to take care; but
nevertheless, if he comes to Mainz I will hear him."
The good, then, in John of Wesel's words, has not perished, in spite of
the flames.