Eva's Story.
I have read the whole of the New Testament through to Sister Beatrice
and Aunt Agnes. Strangely different auditors they were in powers of mind
and in experience of life; yet both met, like so many in His days on
earth, at the feet of Jesus.
"He would not have despised me, even me," Sister Beatrice would say.
"Poor, fond creature, half-witted or half-crazed they call me; but He
would have welcomed me."
"_Does_ He not welcome you?" I said.
"You think so? Yes, I think--I am sure he does. My poor broken bits and
remnants of sense and love, He will not despise them. He will take me as
I am."
One day when I had been reading to them the chapter in St. Luke with the
parables of the lost money, the lost sheep, and the prodigal, Aunt
Agnes, resting her cheek on her thin hand, and fixing her large dark
eyes on me, listened with intense expectation to the end; and then she
said,--
"Is that all, my child? Begin the next chapter."
I began about the rich man and the unjust steward; but before I had read
many words,--
"That will do," she said in a disappointed tone.
"It is another subject. Then not one of the Pharisees came after all! If
I had been there among the hard, proud Pharisees--as I might have been
when he began, wondering, no doubt, that he could so forget himself as
to eat with publicans and sinners--if I had been there, and had heard
him speak thus, Eva, I must have fallen at his feet and said, 'Lord, I
am a Pharisee no more--I am the lost sheep, not one of the ninety and
nine--the wandering child, not the elder brother. Place me low, low
among the publicans and sinners--lower than any; but only say thou
camest also to seek me, even _me_.' And, child, he would not have sent
me away! But, Eva," she added, after a pause, wiping away the tears
which ran slowly over her withered cheeks, "is it not said anywhere that
one Pharisee came to him."
I looked, and could find it nowhere stated positively that one Pharisee
had abandoned his pride, and self-righteousness, and treasures of good
works, for Jesus. It seemed all on the side of the publicans. Aunt Agnes
was at times distressed.
"And yet," she said, "I _have_ come. I am no longer among those who
think themselves righteous, and despise others. But I must come in
behind all. It is I, not the woman who was a sinner, who am the miracle
of his grace; for since no sin so keeps men from him as spiritual pride,
there can be no sin so degrading in the sight of the pure and humble
angels, or of the Lord. But look again, Eva! Is there not one instance
of such as I being saved?"
I found the history of Nicodemus, and we traced it through the Gospel
from the secret visit to the popular teacher at night, to the open
confession of the rejected Saviour before his enemies.
Aunt Agnes thought this might be the example she sought, but she wished
to be quite sure.
"Nicodemus came in humility, to learn," she said. "We never read that he
despised others, or thought he could make himself a saint."
At length we came to the Acts of the Apostles, and there, indeed, we
found the history of one, "of the straitest sect a Pharisee," who verily
thought himself doing God service by persecuting the despised Nazarenes
to death. And from that time Aunt Agnes sought out and cherished every
fragment of St. Paul's history, and every sentence of his sermons and
writings. She had found the example she sought of the "Pharisee who was
saved"--in him who obtained mercy, "that in him first God might show
forth the riches of his long-suffering to those who thereafter, through
his word, should believe."
She determined to learn Latin, that she might read these divine words
for herself. It was affecting to see her sitting among the novices whom
I taught, carefully spelling out the words, and repeating the
declensions and conjugations. I had no such patient pupil; for although
many were eager at first, not a few relaxed after a few weeks' toil, not
finding the results very apparent, and said it would never sound so
natural and true as when Sister Ave translated it for them in German.
I wish some learned man would translate the Bible into German. Why does
not some one think of it? There is one German translation from the
Latin, the prioress says, made about thirty or forty years ago; but it
is very large and costly, and not in language that attracts simple
people. I wish the Pope would spend some of the money from the
indulgences on a new translation of the New Testament. I think it would
please God much more than building St. Peter's.
Perhaps, however, if people had the German New Testament they would not
buy the indulgences; for in all the Gospels and Epistles I cannot find
one word about buying pardons; and, what is more strange, not a word
about adoring the Blessed Virgin, or about nunneries or monasteries. I
cannot see that the holy apostles founded one such community, or
recommended any one to do so.
Indeed there is so much in the New Testament, and in what I have read of
the Old, about not worshipping any one but God, that I have quite given
up saying any prayers to the Blessed mother, for many reasons.
In the first place, I am much more sure that our Lord can hear us always
than his mother, because he so often says so. And I am much more sure he
can help, because I know all power is given to him in heaven and in
earth.
And in the next place, if I were quite sure that the Blessed Virgin and
the saints could hear me always, and could help or would intercede, I am
sure also that no one among them--not the Holy Mother herself--is half
so compassionate and full of love, or could understand us so well, as He
who died for us. In the Gospels, he was always more accessible than the
disciples. St. Peter might be impatient in the impetuosity of his zeal.
Loving indignation might overbalance the forbearance of St. John the
beloved, and he might wish for fire from heaven on those who refused to
receive his Master. All the holy apostles rebuked the poor mothers who
brought their children, and would have sent away the woman of Canaan;
but he tenderly took the little ones into his arms from the arms of the
mothers the disciples had rebuked. His patience was never wearied; He
never misunderstood or discouraged any one. Therefore I pray to Him and
our Father in heaven alone, and _through_ Him alone. Because if he is
more pitiful to sinners than all the saints, which of all the saints can
be beloved of God as he is, the well-beloved Son? He seems everything,
in every circumstance, we can ever want. Higher mediation we cannot
find, tenderer love we cannot crave.
And very sure I am that the meek Mother of the Lord, the disciple whom
Jesus loved, the apostle who determined to know nothing among his
converts save Jesus Christ, and him crucified, will not regret any
homage transferred from them to Him.
Nay, rather, if the blessed Virgin, and the holy apostles have heard
how, through all these years, such grievous and unjust things have been
said of their Lord; how his love has been misunderstood, and he has been
represented as hard to be entreated,--He who entreats sinners to come
and be forgiven;--has not this been enough to shadow their happiness,
even in heaven?
A nun has lately been transferred to our convent, who came originally
from Bohemia, where all her relatives had been slain for adhering to the
party of John Huss, the heretic. She is much older than I am, and she
says she remembers well the name of my family, and that my great-uncle,
Aunt Agnes' father, died a _heretic_! She cannot tell what the heresy
was, but she believes it was something about the blessed sacrament and
the authority of the Pope. She had heard that otherwise he was a
charitable and holy man.
Was my father, then, a Hussite?
I have found the end of the sentence he gave me as his dying
legacy:--"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
_that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life_." And instead of being in a book not fit for Christian children to
read, as the priest who took it from me said, it is in the Holy
Scriptures!
Can it be possible that the world has come round again to the state it
was in when the rulers and priests put the Saviour to death, and St.
Paul persecuted the disciples as heretics?