Else's Story.
_March_, 1546
It is all over. The beloved, revered form is with us again, but Luther
our Father, our pastor, our friend, will never be amongst us more. His
ceaseless toil and care for us all have worn him out,--the care which
wastes life more than sorrow,--care such as no man knew since the
apostle Paul, which only faith such as St. Paul's enabled him to sustain
so long.
This morning his widow, his orphan sons and daughter, and many of the
students and citizens went out to the Eastern Gate of the city to meet
the funeral procession. Slowly it passed through the streets, so
crowded, yet so silent, to the city church where he used to preach.
Fritz came with the procession from Eisleben, and Eva, with Heinz and
Agnes, are also with us, for it seemed a necessity to us all once more
to feel and see our beloved around us, now that death has shown us the
impotence of a nation's love to retain the life dearest and most needed
of all.
Fritz has been telling us of that mournful funeral journey from
Eisleben.
The Counts of Mansfeld, with more than fifty horsemen, and many princes,
counts, and barons, accompanied the coffin. In every village through
which they passed the church-bells tolled as if for the prince of the
land; at every city gate magistrates, clergy, young and old, matrons,
maidens, and little children, thronged to meet the procession, clothed
in mourning, and chanting funeral hymns?--German evangelical hymns of
hope and trust, such as he had taught them to sing. In the last church
in which it lay before reaching its final resting-place at Wittemberg,
the people gathered around it, and sang one of his own hymns, "I journey
hence in peace," with voices broken by sobs and floods of tears.
Thus day and night the silent body was borne slowly through the
Thuringian land. The peasants once more remembered his faithful
affection for them, and everywhere, from village and hamlet, and from
every little group of cottages, weeping men and women pressed forward to
do honour to the poor remains of him they had so often misunderstood in
life.
After Pastor Bugenhagen's funeral sermon from Luther's pulpit,
Melancthon spoke a few words beside the coffin in the city church. They
loved each other well. When Melancthon heard of his death he was most
deeply affected, and said in the lecture-room,--
"The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of faith in the Son of God,
has not been discovered by any human understanding, but has been
revealed unto us by God _through this man_ whom he has raised up."
In the city church, beside the coffin, before the body was lowered into
its last resting-place near the pulpit where he preached, Dr. Melancthon
pronounced these words in Latin, which Caspar Creutziger immediately
translated into German,--
"Every one who truly knew him, must bear witness that he was a
benevolent, charitable man, gracious in all his discourse, kindly and
most worthy of love, and neither rash, passionate, self-willed, or ready
to take offence. And, nevertheless, there were also in him an
earnestness and courage in his words and bearing such as become a man
like him. His heart was true and faithful, and without falsehood. The
severity which he used against the foes of the doctrine in his writings
did not proceed from a quarrelsome or angry disposition, but from great
earnestness and zeal for the truth. He always showed a high courage and
manhood, and it was no little roar of the enemy which could appall him.
Menaces, dangers, and terror dismayed him not. So high and keen was his
understanding, that he alone in complicated, dark, and difficult affairs
soon perceived what was to be counselled and to be done. Neither, as
some think, was he regardless of authority, but diligently regarded the
mind and will of those with whom he had to do. His doctrine did not
consist in rebellious opinions made known with violence; it is rather an
interpretation of the divine will and of the true worship of God, an
explanation of the word of God, namely of the gospel of Christ. Now he
is united with the prophets of whom he loved to talk. Now they greet him
as their fellow-labourer, and with him praise the Lord who gathers and
preserves his Church. But we must retain a perpetual, undying
recollection of this our beloved father, and never let his memory fade
from our hearts."
His effigy will be placed in the city church, but his living portrait is
enshrined in countless hearts. His monuments are the schools throughout
the land, every hallowed pastor's home, and above all, "the German Bible
for the German people!"
WITTEMBERG, _April_, 1547.
We stand now in the foremost rank of the generations of our time. Our
father's house on earth has passed away for ever. Gently, not long after
Dr Luther's death, our gentle mother passed away, and our father entered
on the fulfilment of those never-failing hopes to which, since his
blindness, his buoyant heart has learned more and more to cling.
Scarcely separated a year from each other, both in extreme old age,
surrounded by all dearest to them on earth, they fell asleep in Jesus.
And now Fritz, who has an appointment at the university, lives in the
paternal house with his Eva and our Thekla, and the children.
Of all our family I sometimes think Thekla's life is the most blessed.
In our evangelical church, also, I perceive, God by his providence makes
nuns; good women, whose wealth of love is poured out in the Church;
whose inner as well as whose outer circle is the family of God. How many
whom she has trained in the school and nursed in the seasons of
pestilence or adversity, live on earth to call her blessed, or live in
heaven to receive her into the everlasting habitations!
And among the reasons why her life is so high and loving, no doubt one
is, that socially her position is one not of exaltation but of
lowliness.
She has not replaced, by any conventional dignities of the cloister,
God's natural dignities of wife and mother. Through life hers has been
the _lowest_ place; therefore, among other reasons, I oft think in
heaven it may be the _highest_. But we shall not grudge it her, Eva and
Chriemhild and Atlantis and I.
With what joy shall we see those meek and patient brows crowned with the
brightest crowns of glory and immortal joy!
The little garden behind the Augustei has become a sacred place.
Luther's widow and children still live there. Those who knew him, and
therefore loved him best, find a sad pleasure in lingering under the
shadow of the trees which used to shelter him, beside the fountain and
the little fish-pond which he made, and the flowers he planted, and
recalling his words and his familiar ways; how he used to thank God for
the fish from the pond, and the vegetables sent to his table from the
garden; how he used to wonder at the providence of God, who fed the
sparrows and all the little birds, "which must cost him more in a year
than the revenue of the king of France;" how he rejoiced in the "dew,
that wonderful work of God," and the rose, which no artist could
imitate, and the voice of the birds. How living the narratives of the
Bible became when he spoke of them!--of the great apostle Paul whom he
so honoured, but pictured as "an insignificant-looking, meagre man, like
Philip Melancthon;" or of the Virgin Mary, "who must have been a high
and noble creature, a fair and gracious maiden, with a kind sweet
voice;" or of the lowly home at Nazareth, "where the Saviour of the
world was brought up as a little obedient child."
And not one of us, with all his vehemence, could ever remember a jealous
or suspicious word, or a day of estrangement, so generous and trustful
was his nature.
Often, also, came back to us the tones of that rich, true voice, and of
the lute or lyre, which used so frequently to sound from the
dwelling-room with the large window, at his friendly entertainments, or
in his more solitary hours.
Then, in twilight hours of quiet, intimate converse, Mistress Luther can
recall to us the habits of his more inner home life--how in his
sicknesses he used to comfort her, and when she was weeping would say,
with irrepressible tears, "Dear Kaethe, our children trust us, though
they cannot understand; so must we trust God. It is well if we do; all
comes from him." And his prayers morning and evening, and frequently at
meals, and at other times in the day--his devout repeating of the
Smaller Catechism "to God"--his frequent fervent utterance of the Lord's
prayer, or of psalms from the Psalter, which he always carried with him
as a pocket prayer-book. Or, at other times, she may speak reverently of
his hours of conflict, when his prayers became a tempest--a torrent of
vehement supplication--a wrestling with God, a son in agony at the feet
of a father. Or, again, of his sudden wakings in the night, to encounter
the unseen devil with fervent prayer, or scornful defiance, or words of
truth and faith.
More than one among us knew what reason he had to believe in the
efficacy of prayer. Melancthon, especially, can never forget the day
when he lay at the point of death, half unconscious, with eyes growing
dim, and Luther came and exclaimed with dismay,--
"God save us! how successfully has the devil misused this mortal frame!"
And then turning from the company towards the window, to pray, looking
up to the heavens, he came (as he himself said afterwards), "as a
mendicant and a suppliant to God, and pressed him with all the promises
of the Holy Scriptures he could recall; so that God must hear me, if
ever again I should trust his promises."
After that prayer, he took Melancthon by the hand, and said, "Be of good
cheer, Philip, you will not die." And from that moment Melancthon began
to revive and recover consciousness, and was restored to health.
Especially, however, we treasure all he said of death and the
resurrection, of heaven and the future world of righteousness and joy,
of which he so delighted to speak. A few of these sayings I may record
for my children.
"In the Papacy, they made pilgrimages to the shrines of the saints--to
Rome, Jerusalem, St. Jago--to atone for sins. But now, we in faith can
make true pilgrimages which really please God. When we diligently read
the prophets, psalms, and evangelists, we journey towards God, not
through cities of the saints, but in our thoughts and hearts, and visit
the true Promised Land and Paradise of everlasting life.
"The devil has sworn our death, but he will crack a deaf nut. The kernel
will be gone."
He had so often been dangerously ill that the thought of death was very
familiar to him. In one of his sicknesses he said, "I know I shall not
live long. My brain is like a knife worn to the hilt; it can cut no
longer."
"At Coburg I used to go about and seek for a quiet place where I might
be buried, and in the chapel under the cross I thought I could lie well.
But now I am worse than then. God grant me a happy end! I have no desire
to live longer."
When asked if people could be saved under the Papacy who had never heard
his doctrine of the gospel, he said, "Many a monk have I seen, before
whom, on his death-bed, they held the crucifix, as was then the custom.
Through faith in His merits and passion, they may, indeed, have been
saved."
"What is our sleep," he said, "but a kind of death? And what is death
itself but a night sleep? In sleep all weariness is laid aside, and we
become cheerful again, and rise in the morning fresh and well. So shall
we awake from our graves in the last day, as though we had only slept a
night, and bathe our eyes and rise fresh and well.
"I shall rise," he said, "and converse with you again. This finger, on
which is this ring, shall be given to me again. All must be restored.
'God will create new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness.' There all will be pure rapture and joy. Those heavens
and that earth will be no dry, barren sand. When a man is happy, a tree,
a nosegay, a flower, can give him gladness. Heaven and earth will be
renewed, and we who believe shall be everywhere _at home_. Here it is
not so; we are driven hither and thither, that we may have to sigh for
that heavenly fatherland."
"When Christ causes the trumpet to peal at the last day, all will come
forth like the insects which in winter lie as dead, but when the sun
comes, awake to life again; or as the birds who lie all the winter
hidden in clefts of the rocks, or in hollow banks by the river sides,
yet live again in the spring."
He said at another time, "Go into the garden, and ask the cherry-tree
how it is possible that from a dry, dead twig, can spring a little bud,
and from the bud can grow cherries. Go into the house and ask the matron
how it can be that from the eggs under the hen living chickens will come
forth. For if God does thus with cherries and birds, canst thou not
honour him by trusting that if he let the winter come over thee--suffer
thee to die and decay in the ground--he can also, in the true summer,
bring thee forth again from the earth, and awaken thee from the dead?"
"O gracious God!" he exclaimed, "come quickly, come at last! I wait ever
for that day--that morning of spring!"
And he waits for it still. Not now, indeed, on earth, "in what kind of
place we know not," as he said; "but most surely free from all grief and
pain, resting in peace and in the love and grace of God."
We also wait for that Day of Redemption, still in the weak flesh and
amidst the storm and the conflict; but strong and peaceful in the truth
Martin Luther taught us, and in the God he trusted to the last.