Else's Story.
WITTEMBERG, _May_, 1530.
Of all the happy homes God has given to Germany through Dr. Luther, I
think none are happier than his own.
The walls of the Augustine convent echo now with the pattering feet and
ringing voices of little children, and every night the angels watch over
the sanctuary of a home. The birthdays of Dr. Luther's children are
festivals to us all, and more especially the birthday of little Hans the
first-born was so.
Yet death also has been in that bright home. Their second child, a babe,
Elizabeth, was early taken from her parents. Dr. Luther grieved over her
much. A little while after her death he wrote to his friend Hausmann:
"Grace and peace. My Johannulus thanks thee, best Nicholas, for the
rattle, in which he glories and rejoices wondrously.
"I have begun to write something about the Turkish war, which will not,
I hope, be useless.
"My little daughter is dead; my darling little Elizabeth. It is strange
how sick and wounded she has left my heart, almost as tender as a
woman's, such pity moves me for that little one. I never could have
believed before what is the tenderness of a father's heart for his
children. Do thou pray to the Lord for me, in Whom fare-thee-well."
Catherine von Bora is honoured and beloved by all. Some indeed complain
of her being too economical; but what would become of Dr. Luther and his
family if she were as reckless in giving as he is? He has been known
even to take advantage of her illness to bestow his plate on some needy
student. He never will receive a kreuzer from the students he teaches,
and he refuses to sell his writings, which provokes both Gottfried and
me, noble as it is of him, because the great profits they bring would
surely be better spent by Dr. Luther than by the printers who get them
now. Our belief is, that were it not for Mistress Luther, the whole
household would have long since been reduced to beggary, and Dr. Luther,
who does not scruple to beg of the Elector or of any wealthy person for
the needs of others (although never for his own), knows well how
precarious such a livelihood is.
His wife does not, however, always succeed in restraining his
propensities to give everything away. Not long ago, in defiance of her
remonstrating looks, in her presence he bestowed on a student who came
to him asking money to help him home from the university, a silver
goblet which had been presented to him, saying that he had no need to
drink out of silver.
We all feel the tender care with which she watches over his health, a
gift to the whole land. His strength has never quite recovered the
strain on it during those years of conflict and penance in the monastery
at Erfurt. And it is often strained to the utmost now. All the monks and
nuns who have renounced their idle maintenance in convents for
conscience' sake; all congregations that desire an evangelical pastor;
all people of all kinds in trouble of mind, body, or estate, turn to Dr.
Luther for aid or counsel, as to the warmest heart and the clearest head
in the land. His correspondence is incessant, embracing and answering
every variety of perplexity, from counselling evangelical princes how
best to reform their states, to directions to some humble Christian
woman how to find peace for her conscience in Christ. And besides the
countless applications to him for advice, his large heart seems always
at leisure to listen to the appeal of the persecuted far and near, or to
the cry of the bereaved and sorrowful.
Where shall we find the spring of all this activity but in the _Bible_,
of which he says, "There are few trees in that garden which I have not
shaken for fruit;" and in _prayer_, of which he, the busiest man in
Christendom, (as if he were a contemplative hermit) says, "Prayer is the
Christian's business (Das Gebet ist des Christen Handwerk)."
Yes, it is the leisure he makes for prayer which gives leisure for all
besides. It is the hours passed with the life-giving word which make
sermons, and correspondence, and teaching of all kinds to him simply the
out-pouring of a full heart.
Yet such a life wears out too quickly. More than once has Mistress
Luther been in sore anxiety about him during the four years they have
been married.
Once, in 1527, when little Hans was the baby, and he believed he should
soon have to leave her a widow with the fatherless little one, he said
rather sadly he had nothing to leave her but the silver tankards which
had been presented to him.
"Dear doctor," she replied, "if it be God's will, then I also choose
that you be with him rather than me. It is not so much I and my child
even that need you as the multitude of pious Christians. Trouble
yourself not about me."
What her courageous hopefulness and her tender watchfulness have been to
him, he showed when he said,--
"I am too apt to expect more from my Kaethe, and from Melancthon, than I
do from Christ, my Lord. And yet I well know that neither they nor any
one on earth has suffered, or can suffer, what he hath suffered for me."
But although incessant work may weigh upon his body, there are severer
trials which weigh upon his spirit. The heart so quick to every touch of
affection or pleasure cannot but be sensitive to injustice or
disappointment. It cannot therefore be easy for him to bear that at one
time it should be perilous for him to travel on account of the
indignation of the nobles, whose relatives he has rescued from
nunneries; and at another time equally unsafe because of the indignation
of the peasants, for whom, though he boldly and openly denounced their
made insurrection, he pleads fervently with nobles and princes.
But bitterer than all other things to him, are the divisions among
evangelical Christians. Every truth he believes flashes on his mind with
such overwhelming conviction that it seems to him nothing but
incomprehensible wilfulness for any one else not to see it. Every
conviction he holds, he holds with the grasp of one ready to die for
it--not only with the tenacity of possession, but of a soldier to whom
its defence has been intrusted. He would not, indeed, have any put to
death or imprisoned for their misbelief. But hold out the hand of
fellowship to those who betray any part of his Lords trust, he
thinks,--how dare he? Are a few peaceable days to be purchased at the
sacrifice of eternal truth?
And so the division has taken place between us and the Swiss.
My Gretchen perplexed me the other day, when we were coming from the
city church, where Dr. Luther had been preaching against the Anabaptists
and the Swiss, (whom he will persist in classing together,) by saying,--
"Mother, is not Uncle Winkelried a Swiss, and is he not a good man?"
"Of course Uncle Conrad is a good man, Gretchen," rejoined our Fritz,
who had just returned from a visit to Atlantis and Conrad. "How can you
ask such questions?"
"But he is a Swiss, and Dr. Luther said we must take care not to be like
the Swiss, because they say wicked things about the holy sacraments."
"I am sure Uncle Conrad does not say wicked things," retorted Fritz,
vehemently. "I think he is almost the best man I ever saw. Mother," he
continued, "why does Dr. Luther speak so of the Swiss?"
"You see, Fritz," I said, "Dr. Luther never stayed six months among them
as you did; and so he has never seen how good they are at home."
"Then," rejoined Fritz, sturdily, "if Dr. Luther has not seen them, I do
not think he should speak so of them."
I was driven to have recourse to maternal authority to close the
discussion, reminding Fritz that he was a little boy, and could not
pretend to judge of good and great men, like Dr. Luther. But, indeed, I
could not help half agreeing with the child. It was impossible to make
him understand how Dr. Luther has fought his way inch by inch to the
freedom in which we now stand at ease; how he detests the Zwinglian
doctrines, not so much for themselves, as for what he thinks they imply.
How will it be possible to make our children, who enter on the peaceful
inheritance so dearly won, understand the rough, soldierly vehemence, of
the warrior race, who re-conquered that inheritance for them?
As Dr. Luther says, "It is not a little thing to change the whole
religion and doctrine of the Papacy. How hard it has been to me, they
will see in that Day. Now no one believes it!"
God appointed David to fight the wars of Israel, and Solomon to build
the temple. Dr. Luther has had to do both. What wonder if the hand of
the soldier can sometimes be traced in the work of peace!
Yet, why should I perplex myself about this? Soon, too soon, death will
come, and consecrate the virtues of our generation to our children, and
throw a softening veil over our mistakes.
Even now that Dr. Luther is absent from us at Coburg, in the castle
there, how precious his letters are; and how doubly sacred the words he
preached to us last Sunday from the pulpit, now that to-morrow we are
not to hear him.
He is placed in the castle at Coburg, in order to be nearer the Diet at
Augsburg, so as to aid Dr. Melancthon, who is there, with his counsel.
The Elector dare not trust the royal heart and straightforward spirit of
our Luther among the prudent diplomatists at the Diet.
Mistress Luther is having a portrait taken of their little Magdalen, who
is now a year old, and especially dear to the Doctor, to send to him in
the fortress.
_June_, 1530.
Letters have arrived from and about Dr. Luther. His father is dead--the
brave, persevering, self-denying, truthful old man, who had stamped so
much of his own character on his son. "It is meet I should mourn such a
parent," Luther writes, "who through the sweat of his brow had nurtured
and educated me, and made me what I am." He felt it keenly, especially
since he could not be with his father at the last; although he gives
thanks that he lived in these times of light, and departed strong in the
faith of Christ. Dr. Luther's secretary writes, however, that the
portrait of his little Magdalen comforts him much. He has hung it on the
wall opposite to the place where he sits at meals.
Dr. Luther is now the eldest of his race. He stands in the foremost rank
of the generations slowly advancing to confront death.