The Mother's Story.
I do not think there is another old man and woman in Christendom who
ought to be so thankful as my husband and I.
No doubt all parents are inclined to look at the best side of their own
children; but with ours there is really no other side to look at, it
seems to me. Perhaps Else has sometimes a little too much of my anxious
mind; but even in her tender heart, as in all the others, there is a
large measure of her father's hopefulness. And then, although they have,
perhaps, none of them quite his inventive genius, yet that seems hardly
a matter of regret; because, as things go in the world, other people
seem so often, at the very goal, to step in and reap the fruit of these
inventions, just by adding some insignificant detail which makes the
invention work, and gives them the appearance of having been the real
discoverers.
Not that I mean to murmur for one instant against the people who have
this little knack of just putting the finishing touch and making things
succeed; that also, as the house-father says, is God's gift, and
although it cannot certainly be compared to these great, lofty thoughts
and plans of my husband's, it has more current value in the world. Not,
again, that I would for an instant murmur at the world. We have all so
much more in it than we deserve (except, perhaps, my dearest husband,
who cares so little for its rewards!) It has been quite wonderful how
good every one has been to us. Gottfried Reichenbach, and all our
sons-in-law, are like sons to us; and certainly could not have prized
our daughters more if they had had the dowry of princesses! although I
must candidly say I think our dear daughters without a kreutzer of dowry
are worth a fortune to any man. I often wonder how it is they are such
housewives, and so sensible and wise in every way, when I never
considered myself at all a clever manager. To be sure their father's
conversation was always very improving; and my dear blessed mother was a
store-house of wisdom and experience. However, there is no accounting
for these things. God is wonderfully good in blessing the humblest
efforts to train up the little ones for him. We often think the poverty
of their early years was quite a school of patience and household
virtues for them all. Even Christopher and Thekla, who caused us more
anxiety at first than the others, are the very stay and joy of our old
age; which shows how little we can foresee what good things God is
preparing for us.
How I used at one time to tremble for them both! It shocked Else and me
so grievously to see Christopher, as we thought, quite turning his back
on religion, after Fritz became a monk; and what a relief it was to see
him find in Dr. Luther's sermons and in the Bible the truth which bowed
his heart in reverence, yet left his character free to develop itself
without being compressed into a mould made for other characters. What a
relief it was to hear that he turned, not from religion, but from what
was false in the religion then taught, and to see him devoting himself
to his calling as a printer with a feeling as sacred as Fritz to his
work as a pastor!
Then our Thekla, how anxious I was about her at one time! how eager to
take her training out of God's hands into my own, which I thought, in my
ignorance, might spare her fervent, enthusiastic, loving heart some
pain.
I wanted to tame down and moderate everything in her by tender warnings
and wise precepts. I wanted her to love less vehemently, to rejoice with
more limitation, to grieve more moderately. I tried hard to compress her
character into a narrower mould. But God would not have it so. I can see
it all now. She was to love and rejoice, and then to weep and lament,
according to the full measure of her heart, that in the heights and
depths to which God led her, she might learn what she was to learn of
the heights and depths of the love which extends beyond all joy and
below all sorrow. Her character, instead of becoming dwarfed and
stunted, as my ignorant hand might have made it, was to be thus braced,
and strengthened, and rooted, that others might find shelter beneath her
sympathy and love, as so many do now. I would have weakened in order to
soften; God's providence has strengthened and expanded while softening,
and made her strong to endure and pity as well as strong to feel.
No one can say what she is to us, the one left entirely to us, to whom
we are still the nearest and the dearest, who binds our years together
by the unbroken memory of her tender care, and makes us young in her
child-like love, and brings into our failing life the activity and
interest of mature age by her own life of active benevolence.
Else and her household are the delight of our daily life; Eva and Fritz
are our most precious and consecrated treasures, and all the rest are
good and dear as children can be; but to all the rest we are the
grandmother and the grandfather. To Thekla we are "father" and "mother"
still, the shelter of her life and the home of her affections. Only,
sometimes my old anxious fears creep over me when I think what she will
do when we are gone. But I have no excuse for these now, with all those
promises of our Lord, and his words about the lilies and the birds, in
plain German in my Bible, and the very same lilies and birds preaching
to me in colours and songs as plain from the eaves and from the garden
outside my window.
Never did any woman owe so much to Dr. Luther and the Reformation as I.
Christopher's religion; Fritz and Eva's marriage; Thekla's presence in
our home, instead of her being a nun in some convent-prison; all the
love of the last months my dear sister Agnes and I spent together before
her peaceful death; and the great weight of fear removed from my own
heart!
And yet my timid, ease-loving nature, will sometimes shrink, not so much
from what has been done, as from the way in which it has been done. I
fancy a little more gentleness might have prevented so terrible a breach
between the new and the old religions; that the peasant war might have
been saved; and somehow or other (how, I cannot at all tell) the good
people on both sides might have been kept at one. For that there are
good people on both sides, nothing will ever make me doubt. Indeed, is
not one of our sons--our good and sober-minded Pollux--still in the old
Church? And can I doubt that he and his devout, affectionate little
wife, who visits the poor and nurses the sick, love God and try to serve
him?
In truth, I cannot help half counting it among our mercies that we have
one son still adhering to the old religion; although my children, who
are wiser than I, do not think so; nor my husband, who is wiser than
they; nor Dr. Luther, who is, on the whole, I believe, wiser than any
one. Perhaps I should rather say, that great as the grief is to us and
the loss to him, I cannot help seeing some good in our Pollux remaining
as a link between us and the religion of our fathers. It seems to remind
us of the tie of our common creation and redemption, and our common
faith, however dim, in our Creator and Redeemer. It prevents our
thinking all Christendom which belongs to the old religion quite the
same as the pagans or the Turks; and it also helps a little to prevent
their thinking us such hopeless infidels.
Besides, although they would not admit it, I feel sure that Dr. Luther
and the Reformation have taught Pollux and his wife many things. They
also have a German Bible; and although it is much more cumbrous than Dr.
Luther's, and, it seems to me, not half such genuine, hearty German,
still he and his wife can read it; and I sometimes trust we shall find
by-and-by we did not really differ so very much about our Saviour,
although we may have differed about Dr. Luther.
Perhaps I am wrong, however, in thinking that great changes might have
been more quietly accomplished. Thekla says the spring must have its
thunder-storms as well as its sunshine and gentle showers, and that the
stone could not be rolled away from the sepulchre, nor the veil rent in
the holy place without an earthquake.
Else's Gottfried says the devil would never suffer his lies about the
good and gracious God to be set aside without a battle; and that the
dear holy angels have mighty wars to wage, as well as silent watch to
keep by the cradles of the little ones. Only I cannot help wishing that
the Reformers, and even Dr. Luther himself, would follow the example of
the archangel Michael in not returning railing for railing.
Of one thing, however, I am quite sure, whatever any one may say; and
that is that it is among our great mercies that our Atlantis married a
Swiss, so that through her we have a link with our brethren the
evangelical Christians who follow the Zwinglian Confession. I shall
always be thankful for the months her father and I passed under their
roof. If Dr. Luther could only know how they revere him for his noble
work, and how one they are with us and him in faith in Christ and
Christian love!
I was a little perplexed at one time how it could be that such good men
should separate, until Thekla reminded me of that evil one who goes
about accusing God to us, and us to one another.
On the other hand, some of the Zwinglians are severe on Dr. Luther for
his "compromise with Rome," and his "unscriptural doctrines," as some of
them call his teaching about the sacraments.
These are things on which my head is not clear enough to reason. It is
always so much more natural to me to look out for points of agreement
than of difference; and it does seem to me, that deep below all the
differences good men often mean the same. Dr. Luther looks on holy
baptism in contrast with the monastic vows, and asserts the common glory
of the baptism and Christian profession which all Christians share,
against the exclusive claims of any section of priests or monks. And in
the holy Supper, it seems to me simply the certainty of the blessing,
and the reality of the presence of our Saviour in the sacrament, that he
is really vindicating, in his stand on the words, "This is my body."
Baptism represents to him the consecration and priesthood of all
Christians, to be defended against all narrow privileges of particular
orders; the holy Supper, the assured presence of Christ, to be defended
against all doubters.
To the Swiss, on the other hand, the contrast is between faith and form,
letter and spirit. This is, at all events, what my husband thinks.
I wish Dr. Luther would spend a few months with our Atlantis and her
Conrad. I shall always be thankful _we_ did.
Lately, the tone of Dr. Luther's preaching has often been reproachful
and full of warning. These divisions between the evangelical Christians
distress him so much. Yet he himself, with that resolute will of his,
keeps them apart, as he would keep his children from poison, saying
severe and bitter things of the Zwinglians, which sometimes grieve me
much, because I know Conrad Winkelried's parish and Atlantis' home.
Well, one thing is certain: if Dr. Luther had been like me, we should
have had no Reformation at all. And Dr. Luther and the Reformation have
brought peace to my heart and joy to my life, for which I would go
through any storms. Only, to leave our dear ones behind in the storms is
another thing!
But our dear heavenly Father has not, indeed, called us to leave them
yet. When he does call us, he will give us the strength for that. And
then we shall see everything quite clearly, because we shall see our
Saviour quite clearly, as He is, know his love, and love him quite
perfectly. What that will be we know not yet!
But I am quite persuaded that when we do really see our blessed Lord
face to face, and see all things in his light, we shall all be very much
surprised, and find we have something to unlearn, as well as infinitely
much to learn; not Pollux, and the Zwinglians, and I only, but Dr.
Philip Melancthon, and Dr. Luther, and all!
For the Reformation, and even Dr. Luther's German Bible, have not taken
all the clouds away. Still, we see through a glass darkly.
But they have taught us that there is nothing evil and dark behind to be
found out; only, much to be revealed which is too good for us yet to
understand, and too bright for us yet to see.