Else's Story.
_October_, 1521.
Christopher has just returned from a journey to Halle. They have dared
once more to establish the sale of indulgences there, under the
patronage of the young and self-indulgent Archbishop Albert of Mainz.
Many of the students and the more thoughtful burghers are full of
indignation at seeing the great red cross once more set up, and the
heavenly pardons hawked through the streets for sale. This would not
have been attempted, Gottfried feels sure, had not the enemy believed
that Dr. Luther's voice is silenced for ever. Letters from him are,
however, privately handed about among us here, and more than one of us
know that he is in safe keeping not very far from us.
_November_.
Gottfried has just brought me the letter from Luther to the Archbishop
of Mainz; which will at least convince the indulgence-mongers that they
have roused the sleeping lion.
He reminds the Archbishop-Elector that a conflagration has already been
raised by the protest of one poor insignificant monk against Tetzel; he
warns him that the God who gave strength to that feeble human voice
because its spoke his truth, "is living still, and will bring down the
lofty cedars and the haughty Pharoahs, and can easily humble an Elector
of Mainz although there were four Emperors supporting him." He solemnly
requires him to put down that avaricious sale of lying pardons at Mainz,
or he will speedily publish a denunciation (which he has already
written) against "The New School at Halle." "For Luther," he says, "is
not dead yet."
We are in great doubt how the Archbishop will bear such a bold
remonstrance.
_November_ 20.
The remonstrance has done its work. The Prince Archbishop has written a
humble and apologetic letter to Dr. Luther, and the indulgences are once
more banished from Halle.
At Wittemberg, however, Dr. Luther's letters do not at all compensate
for his absence. There is great confusion here, and not seldom there are
encounters between the opposite parties in the streets.
Almost all the monks in the Augustinian Convent refused some weeks since
to celebrate private masses or to adore the host. The gentle Dr.
Melancthon and the other doctors at first remonstrated, but were at
length themselves convinced, and appealed to the Elector of Saxony
himself to abolish these idolatrous ceremonies. We do not yet know how
he will act. No public alterations have yet been made in the Church
services.
But the great event which is agitating Wittemberg now is the abandonment
of the cloister and the monastic life by thirteen of the Augustinian
monks. The Pastor Feldkirchen declared against priestly vows, and
married some months since. But he was only a secular priest; and the
opinions of all good men about the marriage of the priests of the
parochial churches have long been undivided amongst us.
Concerning the monks, however, it is different. For the priests to marry
is merely a change of state; for the monks to abandon their vows is the
destruction of their order, and of the monastic life altogether.
Gottfried and I are fully persuaded they are right; and we honour
greatly these men, who, disclaiming maintenance at other people's
expense, are content to place themselves among the students at the
university. More especially, however, I honour the older or less
educated brethren, who, relinquishing the consideration and idle plenty
of the cloister, set themselves to learn some humble trade. One of these
has apprenticed himself to a carpenter; and as we passed his bench the
other day, and watched him perseveringly trying to train his
unaccustomed fingers to handle the tools, Gottfried took off his cap and
respectfully saluted him, saying,--
"Yes, that is right. Christianity must begin again with the carpenter's
home at Nazareth."
In our family, however, opinions are divided. Our dear, anxious mother
perplexes herself much as to what it will all lead to. It is true that
Fritz's second imprisonment has greatly shaken her faith in the monks;
but she is distressed at the unsettling tendencies of the age. To her it
seems all destructive; and the only solution she can imagine for the
difficulties of the times is, that these must be the latter days, and
that when everything is pulled down, our Lord himself will come speedily
to build up his kingdom in the right way.
Deprived of the counsel of Fritz and her beloved Eva, and of Dr.
Luther--in whom lately she had grown more to confide, although she
always deprecates his impetuosity of language--she cannot make up her
mind what to think about anything. She has an especial dread of the
vehemence of the Archdeacon Carlstadt; and the mild Melancthon is too
much like herself in disposition for her to lean on his judgment.
Nevertheless, this morning, when I went to see them, I found her busily
preparing some nourishing soup; which, when I asked her, she confessed
was destined for the recusant monk who had become a carpenter.
"Poor creatures," she said apologetically, "they were accustomed to live
well in the cloister, and I should not like them to feel the difference
too suddenly."
Our grandmother is more than eighty now. Her form is still erect,
although she seldom moves from her arm-chair; and her faculties seem
little dimmed, except that she cannot attend to anything for any length
of time. Sometimes I think old age to her is more like the tender days
of early spring, than hard and frosty winter. Thekla says it seems as if
this life were dawning softly for her into a better; or as if God were
keeping her, like Moses, with undimmed eyes and strength unabated, till
she may have the glimpse of the Promised Land, and see the deliverance
she has so long waited for close at hand.
With our children she is as great a favourite as she was with us; she
seems to have forgotten her old ways of finding fault; either because
she feels less responsibility about the third generation, or because she
sees all their little faults through a mellowed light. I notice, too,
that she has fallen on quite a different vein of stories from those
which used to rivet us. She seems to pass over the legendary lore of her
early womanhood, back to the experiences of her own stirring youth and
childhood. The mysteries of our grandfather's history, which we vainly
sought to penetrate, are all opened to Gretchen and the boys. The saints
and hermits, whose adventures were our delight, are succeeded by stories
of secret Hussite meetings to read the Scriptures among the forests and
mountains of Bohemia; of wild retreats in caves, where whole families
lived for months in concealment; of heart-rending captures or marvellous
escapes.
The heroes of my boys will be, not St. Christopher and St. George, but
Hussite heretics! My dear mother often throws in a warning word to the
boys, that those were evil times, and that people do not need to lead
such wild lives now. But the text makes far more impression on the
children than the commentary.
Our grandmother's own chief delight is still in Dr. Luther's writings. I
have lately read over to her and my father, I know not how many times,
his letter from the Wartburg, "to the little band of Christ at
Wittemberg," with his commentary accompanying it on the 37th
Psalm--"Fret not thyself because of evildoers."
Our dear father is full of the brightest visions. He is persuaded that
the whole world is being rapidly set right, and that it matters little,
indeed, that his inventions could not be completed, since we are
advancing at full speed into the Golden Age of humanity.
Thus, from very opposite points and through very different paths, he and
my mother arrive at the same conclusion.
We have heard from Thekla that Ulrich has visited Dr. Luther at the
Wartburg, where he is residing. I am so glad to know where he is. It is
always so difficult to me to think of people without knowing the scene
around them. The figure itself seems to become shadowy in the vague,
shadowy, unknown world around it. It is this which adds to my distress
about Fritz. Now I can think of Dr. Luther sitting in that large room in
which I waited for the Elector with my embroidery, so many years
ago--looking down the steep over the folded hills, reaching one behind
another till the black pines and the green waving branches fade into
lovely blue beneath the golden horizon. And at sunset I seem to see how
the shadows creep over the green valleys where we used to play, and the
low sun lights up the red stems of the pines.
Or in the summer noon I see him sitting with his books--great folios,
Greek, and Hebrew, and Latin--toiling at that translation of the Book of
God, which is to be the blessing of all our people; while the warm
sunbeams draw out the aromatic scent of the fir-woods, and the breezes
bring it in at the open window.
Or at early morning I fancy him standing by the castle walls, looking
down on the towers and distant roofs of Eisenach, while the bell of the
great convent booms up to him the hour; and he thinks of the busy life
beginning in the streets, where once he begged for bread at Aunt Ursula
Cotta's door. Dear Aunt Ursula, I wish she could have lived till now, to
see the rich harvest an act of loving-kindness will sometimes bring
forth.
Or at night, again, when all sounds are hushed except the murmur of the
unseen stream in the valley below, and the sighing of the wind through
the forest, and that great battle begins which he has to fight so often
with the powers of darkness, and he tries to pray, and cannot lift his
heart to God, I picture him opening his casement, and looking down on
forest, rook, and meadow, lying dim and lifeless beneath him, glance
from these up to God, and re-assure himself with the truth he delights
to utter--
"_God lives still!_" feeling, as he gazes, that night is only hiding the
sun, not quenching him, and watching till the grey of morning slowly
steals up the sky and down into the forest.