"It has been alleged that the Pope, the bishops, the priests, and the
monks and nuns form the estate spiritual or ecclesiastical; while the
princes, nobles, burgesses, and peasantry form the secular estate or
laity. Let no man, however, be alarmed at this. _All Christians
constitute the spiritual estate: and the only difference among them is
that of the functions which they discharge._ We have all one baptism,
one faith, and it is this which constitutes the spiritual man."
If this is indeed true, how many of my old difficulties it removes with
a stroke! All callings, then, may be religious callings; all men and
women of a religious order. Then my mother is truly and undoubtedly as
much treading the way appointed her as Aunt Agnes; and the monastic life
is only one among callings equally sacred.
When I said this to my mother, she said, "I as religious a woman as Aunt
Agnes! No, Else! whatever Dr. Luther ventures to declare, he would not
say that. I do sometimes have a hope that for His dear Son's sake God
hears even my poor feeble prayers; but to pray night and day, and
abandon all for God, like my sister Agnes, that is another thing
altogether."
But when, as we crossed the street to our home, I told Gottfried how
much those words of Dr. Luther had touched me, and asked if he really
thought we in our secular calling were not only doing our work by a kind
of indirect permission, but by a direct vocation from God, he replied,--
"My doubt, Else, is whether the vocation which leads men to abandon home
is from God at all; whether it has either his command or even his
permission."
But if Gottfried is right, Fritz has sacrificed his life to a delusion.
How can I believe that? And yet if he could perceive it, how life might
change for him! Might he not even yet be restored to us? But I am
dreaming.
_October_ 25, 1520.
More and more burning words from Dr. Luther. To-day we have been reading
his new book on the Babylonish Captivity. "God has said," he writes in
this, "'Whosoever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved.' On this
promise, if we receive it with faith, hangs our whole salvation. If we
believe, our heart is fortified by the divine promise; and although all
should forsake the believer, this promise which he believes will never
forsake him. With it he will resist the adversary who rushes upon his
soul, and will have wherewithal to answer pitiless death, and even the
judgment of God." And he says in another place, "The vow made at our
baptism is sufficient of itself, and comprehends more than we can ever
accomplish. Hence all other vows may be abolished. Whoever enters the
priesthood or any religious order, let him well understand that the
works of a monk or of a priest, however difficult they may be, differ in
no respect in the sight of God from those of a countryman who tills the
ground, or of a woman who conducts a household. God values all things by
the standard of faith. And it often happens that the simple labour of a
male or female servant is more agreeable to God than the fasts and the
works of a monk, because in these faith is wanting."
What a consecration this thought gives to my commonest duties! Yes, when
I am directing the maids in their work, or sharing Gottfried's cares, or
simply trying to brighten his home at the end of the busy day, or
lulling my children to sleep, can I indeed be serving God as much as Dr.
Luther at the altar or in his lecture-room? I also, then, have indeed my
vocation direct from God.
How could I ever have thought the mere publication of a book would have
been an event to stir our hearts like the arrival of a friend! Yet it is
even thus with every one of those pamphlets of Dr. Luther's. They move
the whole of our two households, from our grandmother to Thekla, and
even the little maid, to whom I read portions. She says, with tears, "If
the mother and father could hear this in the forest!" Students and
burghers have not patience to wait till they reach home, but read the
heart-stirring pages as they walk through the streets. And often an
audience collects around some communicative reader, who cannot be
content with keeping the free, liberating truths to himself.
Already, Christopher says, four thousand copies of the "Appeal to the
Nobility" are circulating through Germany.
I always thought before of books as the peculiar property of the
learned. But Dr. Luther's books are a living voice,--a heart God has
awakened and taught, speaking to countless hearts as a man talketh with
his friend. I can indeed see now, with my father and Christopher, that
the printing press is a nobler weapon than even the spears and
broadswords of our knightly Bohemian ancestors.
WITTEMBERG, _December_ 10, 1520.
Dr. Luther has taken a great step to-day. He has publicly burned the
Decretals, with other ancient writings, on which the claims of the court
of Rome are founded, but which are now declared to be forgeries; and
more than this, he has burnt the Pope's bull of excommunication against
himself.
Gottfried says that for centuries such a bonfire as this has not been
seen. He thinks it means nothing less than an open and deliberate
renunciation of the papal tyranny which for so many hundred years has
held the whole of western Christendom in bondage. He took our two boys
to see it, that we may remind them of it in after years as the first
great public act of freedom.
Early in the morning the town was astir. Many of the burghers,
professors, and students knew what was about to be done; for this was no
deed of impetuous haste or angry vehemence.