THE PARSONAGE.
"The Lord thy Shepherd is--
Dread not nor be dismayed--
To lead thee on through stormy paths,
By ways His hand hath made."
On the morning of the day that we have written of, the young Protestant
pastor of Dringenstadt was seated in a room of the small house which
went by the name of "Das Pfarrhaus."
He was meditating more than studying just then. He felt his work there
an uphill one. Almost all the people in that little town were Roman
Catholics. His own flock was a little one indeed, and only that morning
he had received a letter telling him that it had been settled that no
regular ministry would be continued there, as funds were not
forthcoming, and the need in one sense seemed small. He had come there
only a few months before, knowing well that he might only be allowed to
remain a short time; but now that the order for his removal elsewhere
had come, he felt discouraged and sad. Was it right, he was asking
himself, to withdraw the true gospel light from the people, and to leave
the few, no doubt very few, who loved it to themselves? Karl Langen was
a true Christian, longing to lead souls to Jesus, and was much perplexed
by the order he had received. Suddenly a knock at the door roused him,
and the woman who took charge of his house on entering told him that a
man from the Forest wished to speak to him. Telling her to send him in
at once, he awaited his entry.
Johann Schmidt was shown into the room, and told his sorrowful tale in a
quiet, manly way.
The pastor was much moved, and repeated with amazement the words, "A
child lost in the Black Forest, and the father dead, you say? Certainly
I will come and see. But why, my friend, should you think the man was an
Evangelisch?" Then Johann told of the words he had repeated, of the
child's prayer and her little brown book.
Suddenly a light seemed to dawn on the mind of the young pastor. "Oh!"
he said, "I believe you are right. I think I have seen both the father
and the child. Last Sunday there came into our church a gentleman and a
lovely little girl, just such a one as you describe the child you speak
of to be. I tried to speak to them after worship, but ere I could do so
they had gone. And no one could tell me who they were or whither they
had gone. I will now see the Buergermeister about the funeral, and make
arrangements regarding it. I think through some friends of mine I can
get money sufficient to pay all expenses."
Johann thanked him warmly, and hastened back to tell what had been
agreed on, and then got off to his work.
Late in the afternoon Pastor Langen took his way to the little hut in
the Black Forest.
The Forest by the road he took was not well known to him, and the solemn
quiet which pervaded it struck him much and raised his thoughts to God.
It was as if he had entered the sanctuary and heard the voice of the
Lord speaking to him. It was, as a poet has expressed it, as if
"Solemn and silent everywhere,
The trees with folded hands stood there,
Kneeling at their evening prayer."
Only the slight murmuring of the breeze amongst the leaves, or the
flutter of a bird's wing as it flew from branch to branch, broke the
silence. All around him there was
"A slumberous sound, a sound that brings
The feeling of a dream,
As when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow echo rings
O'er meadow, lake, and stream."
As he walked, he thought much of the child found in the Forest, and he
wondered how he could help her or find out to whom she belonged. Oh, if
only, he said to himself, he had been able to speak to the father the
day he had seen him, and learned something of his history! Johann had
told him that if no clue could be found to the child's relations,
Wilhelm Hoerstel had determined to bring her up; but Johann had added,
"We will not, poor though we be, let the whole expense of her upbringing
fall on the Hoerstels. No; we will go share for share, and she shall be
called the child of the wood-cutters."
As he thought of these words, the young pastor prayed for the kind,
large-hearted men, asking that the knowledge of the loving Christ might
shine into their hearts and bring spiritual light into the darkness
which surrounded them. The afternoon had merged into evening ere he
entered the wood-cutters' Dorf. As he neared Johann's hut, Gretchen came
to the door, and he greeted her with the words, "The Lord be with you,
and bless you for your kindness to the poor man in the time of his
need."
"Come in, sir," she said, "and see the corpse. Oh, but he's been a
fine-looking man, and he so young too. It was a sight to see his bit
child crying beside him and begging him to say one word to her--just one
word. Then she folded her hands, and looking up said, 'O kind Jesus, who
made Lazarus come to life, make dear fader live again.' Oh, 'twas
pitiful to see her! Who think you, sir, was the man she spoke of called
Lazarus? When I asked her she said it was all written in her little
brown book, which she would bring along and read to me some day, bless
the little creature."
The pastor said some words about the story being told by the Lord Jesus,
and recorded in the Holy Scriptures. He did not offer her a Testament,
as he knew if the priest heard (as it was likely he would) of his having
been there, he would ask if they had been given a Bible, and so trouble
would follow. But he rejoiced that the little child had it in her heart
to read the words of life to the kind woman, and he breathed a prayer
that her little brown Bible might prove a blessing to those poor
wood-cutters.
Pastor Langen at once recognized the features of the dead man as those
of the stranger whom he had seen with the lovely child in the little
church. He then made arrangements for the funeral the next day, and
departed.
* * * * *
On the morrow a number of wood-cutters met at the house of Johann
Schmidt to attend the funeral of the stranger gentleman. Wilhelm
Hoerstel, and his wife, Hans, and little Frida, were there also. The
child was crying softly, as if she realized that even the corpse of her
father was to be taken from her.
Presently the young pastor entered, and the moment Frida saw him she
started forward, saying in her child language, "O sir, I've seen you
before, when fader and I heard you preach some days ago." All this was
said in the pure German language, which the people hardly followed at
all, but which was the same as the pastor himself spoke. He at once
recognized the child, and sought to obtain from her some information
regarding her father. She only said, as she had already done, that he
was going to England to see some friends of her mother's. When
questioned as to their name, she could not tell. All that she knew was
that they were relations of her mother's. Yes, her father loved his
Bible, and had given her such a nice little brown one which had belonged
to her mother.
Could she speak any English, the pastor asked.
"Yes, I can," said Frida. "Mother taught me a number of words, and I
can say 'Good-morning,' and 'How are you to-day?' Also mother taught me
to say the Lord's Prayer in English. But I do not know much English, for
father and mother always spoke German to each other."
No more could be got from the child then, and the simple service was
gone on with; and when the small procession set off for Dringenstadt,
the kindly men took it by turns to carry the little maiden in their
arms, as the walk through the forest was a long one for a child.
In the churchyard of the quiet little German town they laid the mortal
remains of Friedrich Heinz, to await the resurrection morning.
Tears rose to the eyes of many onlookers as Frida threw herself,
sobbing, on the grave of her father. Wilhelm and Elsie strove in vain to
raise her, but when Pastor Langen drew near and whispered the words,
"Look up, Frida; thy father is not here, he is with Jesus," a smile of
joy played on the child's face, and rising she dried her tears, and
putting her hand into that of Elsie she prepared to leave the "God's
acre," and the little party set off for their home in the Black Forest.
Darkness had fallen on all around ere they reached the Dorf, and strange
figures that the trees and bushes assumed appeared to the superstitious
mind of Elsie and some of the others as the embodiment of evil spirits,
and they wished themselves safe under the shelter of their little huts.
That night the little stranger child mingled her tears with her prayers,
and to Elsie's amazement she heard her ask her Father in heaven to take
greater care of her now than ever, because she had no longer a father on
earth to do it. Little did the kneeling child imagine that that simple
prayer was used by the Holy Spirit to touch the heart of the
wood-cutter's wife.
And from the lips of Elsie ere she fell asleep that night arose a cry to
the Father in heaven for help. True, it was but
"As an infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry."
But still there was a felt need, and a recognition that there was One
who could meet and satisfy it.
At all events Elsie Hoerstel clasped her blind babe to her heart that
night, and fell asleep with a feeling of rest and peace to which she had
long been a stranger.
Ah! God had a purpose for the little child and her brown Bible in that
little hut of which she as yet had no conception. Out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings He still perfects praise.