VIII.

March25.

I have just been looking at two letters addressed to Father Johann Braun, one of our Eisenach priests, by Martin Luther. They were addressed to him as "the holy and venerable priest of Christ and of Mary." So much I could understand, and also that he calls himself Brother Martin Luther, not Brother Augustine, a name he assumed on first entering the cloister. Therefore certainly, I may call our Fritz, Brother Friedrich Cotta.

March29, 1510.

A young man was at Aunt Ursula Cotta's this evening, who told us strange things about the doings at Annaberg.

Dr. Tetzel has been there two years, selling the papal indulgences to the people; and lately, out of regard, he says, to the great piety of the German people, he has reduced their price.

There was a great deal of discussion about it, which I rather regretted the boys were present to hear. My father said indulgences did not mean forgiveness of sins, but only remission of certain penances which the Church had imposed. But the young man from Annaberg told us that Dr. John Tetzel solemnly assured the people, that since it was impossible for them, on account of their sins, to make satisfaction to God by their works, our Holy Father the Pope, who has the control of all the treasury of merits accumulated by the Church throughout the ages, now graciously sells those merits to any who will buy, and thereby bestows on them forgiveness of sins (even of sins which no other priest can absolve), and a certain entrance into eternal life.

The young man said, also, that the great red cross has been erected in the nave of the principal church, with the crown of thorns, the nails, and spear suspended from it, and that at times it has been granted to the people even to see the blood of the Crucified flow from the cross. Beneath this cross are the banners of the Church, and the papal standard, with the triple crown. Before it is the large, strong iron money chest. On one side stands the pulpit, where Dr. Tetzel preaches daily, and exhorts the people to purchase this inestimable favour while yet there is time, for themselves and their relations in purgatory,—and translates the long parchment mandate of the Lord Pope, with the papal seals hanging from it. On the other side is a table, where sit several priests, with pen, ink, and writing desk, selling the indulgence tickets, and counting the money into boxes. Lately he told us, not only have the prices been reduced, but at the end of the letter affixed to the churches, it is added, "Pauperibus dentur gratis."

"Freely to the poor!" That certainly would suit us! And if I had only time to make a pilgrimage to Annaberg, if this is the kind of religion that pleases God, it certainly might be attainable even for me.

If Fritz had only known it before, he need not have made that miserable vow. A journey to Annaberg would have more than answered the purpose.

Only, if the Pope has such inestimable treasures at his disposal, why could he not always give them "freely to the poor," always and everywhere?

But I know it is a sin to question what the Lord Pope does. I might almost as well question what the Lord God Almighty does. For He also, who gave those treasures to the Pope, is He not everywhere, and could He not give them freely to us direct? It is plain these are questions too high for me.

I am not the only one perplexed by those indulgences, however. My mother says it is not the way she was taught, and she had rather keep to the old paths. Eva said, "If I were the Lord Pope, and had such a treasure, I think I could not help instantly leaving my palace and my beautiful Rome, and going over the mountains and over the seas, into every city and every village; every hut in the forests, and every room in the lowest streets, that none might miss the blessing, although I had to walk barefoot, and never saw holy Rome again."

"But then," said our father, "the great church at St. Peter's would never be built. It is on that, you know, the indulgence money is to be spent."

"But Jerusalem the Golden would be built, Uncle Cotta!" said Eva; "and would not that be better?"

"We had better not talk about it, Eva," said the mother. "The holy Jerusalemisbeing built; and I suppose there are many different ways to the same end. Only I like the way I know best."

The boys, I regret to say, had made many irreverent gestures during this conversation about the indulgences, and afterwards I had to speak to them.

"Sister Elsè," said Christopher, "it is quite useless talking to me. I hate the monks, and all belonging to them. And I do not believe a word they say—at least, not because they say it. The boys at school say this Dr. Tetzel is a very bad man and a great liar. Last week Reinhardt told us something he did, which will show you what he is. One day he promised to show the people a feather which the devil plucked out the wing of the archangel Michael. Reinhardt says he supposes the devil gave it to Dr. Tetzel. However that may be, during the night some students in jest found their way to his relic-box, stole the feather, and replaced it by some coals. The next day, when Dr. Tetzel had been preaching fervently for a long time on the wonders of this feather, when he opened the box there was nothing in it but charcoal. But he was not to be disconcerted. He merely said, 'I have taken the wrong box of relics, I perceive; these are some most sacred cinders—the relics of the holy body of St. Laurence, who was roasted on a gridiron.'"

"Schoolboys' stories," said I.

"They are as good as monks' stories, at all events," rejoined Christopher.

I resolved to see if Pollux was as deeply possessed with this irreverent spirit as Christopher, and therefore this morning, when I found him alone, I said, "Pollux, you used to love Fritz so dearly, you would not surely take up thoughts which would pain him so deeply if he knew of it."

"I do love Fritz," Pollux replied, "but I can never think he was right in leaving us all; and I like the religion of the Creeds and the Ten Commandments better than that of the monks."

Daily, hourly I feel the loss of Fritz. It is not half as much the money he earned; although, of course, that helped us; we can do and struggle on without that. It is the influence he had over the boys. They felt he was before them in the same race and when he remonstrated with them about anything, they listened. But if I blame them, they think it is only a woman's ignorance, or a woman's superstition.—and boys, they say, cannot be like women. And now it is the same with Fritz. He is removed into another sphere, which is not theirs; and if I remind them of what he did or said, they say, "Yes, Fritz thought so; but you know he has become a monk; but we do not intend ever to be monks, and the religion of monks and laymen are different things."

April2.

The spring is come again. I wonder if it sends the thrill of joy into Fritz's cell at Erfurt that it does into all the forests around us here, and into my heart!

I suppose there are trees near him, and birds—little happy birds—making their nests among them, as they do in our yard, and singing as they work.

But the birds are not monks. Their nests are little homes, and they wander freely whither they will, only brought back by love. Perhaps Fritz does not like to listen to the birds now, because they remind him of home, and of our long spring days in the forest. Perhaps, too, they are part of the world he has renounced; and he must be dead to the world!

April3.

We have had a long day in the forest, gathering sticks and dry twigs. Every creature seemed so happy there! It was such a holiday to watch the ants roofing their nests with fir twigs, and the birds flying hither and thither with food for their nestlings; and to hear the wood-pigeons, which Fritz always said were like Eva, cooing softly in the depths of the forest.

At mid-day we sat down in a clearing of the forest, to enjoy the meal we had brought with us. A little quiet brook prattled near us, of which we drank, and the delicate young twigs on the topmost boughs of the dark, majestic pines trembled softly, as if for joy, in the breeze.

As we rested, we told each other stories. Pollux began with wild tales of demon hunts, which flew with the baying of demon dogs through these very forests at midnight. Then, as the children began to look fearfully around, and shiver, even at mid-day, while they listened, Christopher delighted them with quaint stories of wolves in sheeps' clothing politely offering themselves to the farmer as shepherds, which, I suspect, were from some dangerous satirical book, but, without the application, were very amusing.

Chriemhild and Atlantis had their stories of Kobolds, who played strange tricks in the cow-stall; and of Rübezahl and the misshapen dwarf gnomes, who guarded the treasures of gold and silver in the glittering caves under the mountains; and of the elves, who danced beside the brooks at twilight.

"And I," said loving little Thekla, "always want to see poor Nix, the water-sprite, who cries by the streams at moonlight, and lets his tears mix with the waters, because he has no soul, and he wants to live for ever. I should like to give him half mine."

We should all of us have been afraid to speak of these creatures, in their own haunts among the pines, if the sun had not been high in the heavens. Even as it was, I began to feel a little uneasy, and I wished to turn the conversation from these elves and sprites, who, many think, are the spirits of the old heathen gods, who linger about their haunts. One reason why people think so is, that they dare not venture within the sound of the church bells; which makes some, again, think they are worse than poor, shadowy, dethroned heathen gods, and had, indeed, better be never mentioned at all. I thought I could not do better than tell the legend of my beloved giant Offerus, who became Christopher and a saint by carrying the holy child across the river.

Thekla wondered if her favourite Nix could be saved in the same way. She longed to see him and tell him about it.

But Eva had still her story to tell, and she related to us her legend of St. Catharine.

"St. Catharine," she said, "was a lady of royal birth, the only child of the king and queen of Egypt. Her parents were heathens, but they died and left her an orphan when she was only fourteen. She was more beautiful than any of the ladies of her court, and richer than any princess in the world; but she did not care for pomp, or dress, or all her precious things. God's golden stars seemed to her more magnificent than all the splendour of her kingdom, and she shut herself up in her palace, and studied philosophy and the stars until she grew wiser than all the wise men of the East.

"But one day the Diet of Egypt met, and resolved that their young queen must be persuaded to marry. They sent a deputation to her in her palace, who asked her, if they could find a prince beautiful beyond any, surpassing all philosophers in wisdom, of noblest mind and richest inheritance, would she marry him? The queen replied, 'He must be so noble that all men shall worship him, so great that I shall never think I have made him king, so rich that none shall ever say I enriched him, so beautiful that the angels of God shall desire to behold him. If ye can find such a prince, he shall be my husband and the lord of my heart.' Now, near the queen's palace there lived a poor old hermit in a cave, and that very night the holy Mother of God appeared to him, and told him the King who should be lord of the queen's heart was none other than her Son. Then the hermit went to the palace and presented the queen with a picture of the Virgin and Child; and when St. Catharine saw it her heart was so filled with its holy beauty that she forgot her books, her spheres, and the stars; Plato and Socrates became tedious to her as a twice-told tale, and she kept the sacred picture always before her. Then one night she had a dream:—She met on the top of a high mountain a glorious company of angels, clothed in white, with chaplets of white lilies. She fell on her face before them, but they said, 'Stand up, dear sister Catharine, and be right welcome.' Then they led her by the hand to another company of angels more glorious still, clothed in purple with chaplets of red roses. Before these, again, she fell on her face, dazzled with their glory; but they said, 'Stand up, dear sister Catharine; thee hath the King delighted to honour.' Then they led her by the hand to an inner chamber of the palace of heaven, where sat a queen in state; and the angels said to her, 'Our most gracious sovereign Lady, Empress of heaven, and Mother of the King of Blessedness, be pleased that we present unto you this our sister, whose name is in the Book of Life, beseeching you to accept her as your daughter and handmaid.' Then our blessed Lady rose and smiled graciously, and led St. Catharine to her blessed Son; but he turned from her, and said sadly, 'She is not fair enough for Me.' Then St. Catharine awoke, and in her heart all day echoed the words, 'She is not fair enough for Me;' and she rested not until she became a Christian and was baptized. And then, after some years, the tyrant Maximin put her to cruel tortures, and beheaded her because she was a Christian. But the angels took her body, and laid it in a white marble tomb on the top of Mount Sinai, and the Lord Jesus Christ received her soul, and welcomed her to heaven as his pure and spotless bride; for at last he had made her 'fair enough for him.' And so she has lived ever since in heaven, and is the sister of the angels."

After Eva's legend we began our work again; and in the evening, as we returned with our faggots, it was pleasant to see the goats creeping on before the long shadows which evening began to throw from the forests across the green valleys.

The hymns which Eva sang as we went, seemed quite in tune with everything else. I did not want to understand the words; everything seemed singing in words I could not help feeling,—

"God is good to us all. He gives twigs to the ants, and grain to the birds, and makes the trees their palaces, and teaches them to sing; and will He not care for you?"

Then the boys were so good! They never gave me a moment's anxiety, not even Christopher, but collected faggots twice as large as ours in half the time, and then finished ours, and then performed all kinds of feats in climbing trees and leaping brooks, and brought home countless treasures for Thekla.

These are the days that always make me feel so much better; even a little religious, and as if I could almost love God! It is only when I come back again into the streets, under the shadow of the nine monasteries, and see the monks and priests in dark robes flitting silently about with downcast eyes, that I remember we are not like the birds or even the ants, for they have never sinned, and that, therefore, God cannot care for us and love us as he seems to do the least of his other creatures, until we have become holy, and worked our way through that great wall of sin which keeps us from him and shadows all our life.

Eva does not feel thus. As we returned she laid her basket down on the threshold of St. George's Church, and crossing herself with holy water, went softly up to the high altar, and there she knelt while the lamp burned before the Holy Sacrament. And when I looked at her face as she rose, it was beaming with joy.

"You are happy, Eva, in the church and in the forest," I said to her as we went home; "you seem at home everywhere."

"Is not God everywhere?" she said; "and has He not loved the world?"

"But oursins!" I said.

"Have we not the Saviour?" she said, bowing her head.

"But think how hard people find it to please him," I said. "Think of the pilgrimages, the penances, the indulgences!"

"I do not quite understand all that," she said; "I only quite understand my sentence and the crucifix which tells us the Son of God died for man. Thatmusthave been for love, and I love him; and all the rest I am content to leave."

"But to-night as I look at her dear child-like face asleep on the pillow, and see how thin the cheek is which those long lashes shade, and how transparent the little hand on which she rests, a cold fear comes over me lest God should even now be making her spirit "fair enough for him," and so too fair for earth and for us."

April4.

This afternoon I was quite cheered by seeing Christopher and Pollux bending together eagerly over a book, which they had placed before them on the window sill. It reminded me of Fritz, and I went to see what they were reading.

I found, however, to my dismay, it was no church-book or learned Latin school-book; but, on the contrary, a German book full of woodcuts, which shocked me very much. It was called Reinecke Fuchs, and as far as I could understand made a jest of everything. There were foxes with monk's frocks, and even in cardinal's hats, and wolves in cassocks with shaven crowns. Altogether it seemed to me a very profane and perilous book; but when I took it to our father, to my amazement he seemed as much amused with it as the boys, and said there were evils in the world which were better attacked by jests than by sermons.

April, St Mark's Day.

I have just heard a sermon about despising the world, from a great preacher, one of the Dominican friars, who is going through the land to awaken people to religion.

He spoke especially against money, which he called "delusion, and dross, and worthless dust, and a soul-destroying canker." To monks no doubt it may be so; for what could they do with it? But it is not so to me. Yesterday money filled my heart with one of the purest joys I have ever known, and made me thank God as I hardly ever thanked him before.

The time had come round to pay for some of the printing materials, and we did not know where to turn for the sum we needed. Lately I have been employing my leisure hours in embroidering some fine Venetian silk Aunt Ursula gave me; and not having any copies, I had brought in some fresh leaves and flowers from the forest and tried to imitate them, hoping to sell them.

When I had finished, it was thought pretty, and I carried it to the merchant, who took the father's precious models, long ago.

He has always been kind to us since, and has procured us ink and paper at a cheaper rate than others can buy it.

When I showed him my work he seemed surprised, and instead of showing it to his wife, as I had expected, he said smiling,—

"These things are not for poor honest burghers like me. You know my wife might be fined by the sumptuary laws if she aped the nobility by wearing anything so fine as this. I am going to the Wartburg to speak about a commission I have executed for the Elector-Frederick, and if you like I will take you and your embroidery with me."

I felt dismayed at first at such an idea, but I had on the new dress Fritz gave me a year ago, and I resolved to venture.

It was so many years since I had passed through that massive gateway into the great court-yard; and I thought of St. Elizabeth distributing loaves, perhaps, at that very gate, and inwardly entreated her to make the elector or the ladies of his court propitious to me.

I was left standing what seemed to me a long time in an ante-room. Some very gaily-dressed gentlemen and ladies passed me and looked at me rather scornfully. I thought the courtiers were not much improved since the days when they were so rude to St. Elizabeth.

But at last I was summoned into the Elector's presence. I trembled very much, for I thought—If the servants are so haughty, what will the master be? But he smiled on me quite kindly, and said, "My good child, I like this work of thine; and this merchant tells me thou art a dutiful daughter. I will purchase this at once for one of my sisters, and pay thee at once."

I was so surprised and delighted with his kindness that I cannot remember the exact words of what he said afterwards, but the substance of them was that the elector is building a new church at his new university town of Wittemberg which is to have choicer relics than any church in Germany. And I am engaged to embroider altar-cloths and coverings for the reliquaries. And the sum already paid me nearly covers our present debt.

No! whatever that Dominican preacher might say nothing would ever persuade me that these precious guldens, which I took home yesterday evening with a heart brimming over with joy and thankfulness, which made our father clasp his hands in thanksgiving, and our mother's eyes overflow with happy tears, are mere delusion, or dross, or dust.

Is not money whatwemake it? Dust in the miser's chests; canker in the proud man's heart; but golden sunbeams, streams of blessing earned by a child's labour and comforting a parent's heart, or lovingly poured from rich men's hands into poor men's homes.

April20.

Better days seem dawning at last. Dr. Martin, who preaches now at the elector's new university of Wittemberg, must, we think, have spoken to the elector for us, and our father is appointed to superintend the printing-press especially for Latin books, which is to be set up there.

And sweeter even than this, it must be from Fritz that this boon comes to us. Fritz, dear, unselfish Fritz, is the benefactor of the family after all. It must have been he who asked Dr. Martin Luther to speak for us. There, in his lonely cell at Erfurt, he thinks then of us! And he prays for us. He will never forget us. His new name will not alter his heart. And, perhaps, one day, when the novitiate is over, we may see him again. But to see him as no more our Fritz, but Brother Sebastian!—his home, the Augustinian cloister!—his mother, the church!—his sisters, all holy women!—would it not be almost worse than not seeing him at all?

We are all to move to Wittemberg in a month, except Pollux, who is to remain with Cousin Conrad Cotta, to learn to be a merchant.

Christopher begins to help about the printing.

There was another thing also in my visit to the Wartburg, which gives me many a gleam of joy when I think of it. If the elector whose presence I so trembled to enter, proved so much more condescending and accessible than his courtiers,—oh, if it could only be possible that we are making some mistake about God, and that He after all may be more gracious and ready to listen to us than His priests, or even than the saints who wait on Him in His palace in heaven!

Erfurt, Augustinian Convent,April1.

I suppose conflict of mind working on a constitution weakened by the plague, brought on the illness from which I am just recovering. It is good to feel strength returning as I do. There is a kind of natural irresistible delight in life, however little we have to live for, especially to one so little prepared to die as I am. As I write, the rooks are cawing in the church-yard elms, disputing and chattering like a set of busy prosaic burghers. But retired from all this noisy public life, two thrushes have built their nest in a thorn just under the window of my cell. And early in the morning they wake me with song. He flies hither and thither as busy as a bee, with food for his mate, as she broods secure among the thick leaves, and then he perches on a twig, and sings as if he had nothing to do but to be happy. All is pleasure to him, no doubt—the work as well as the singing. Happy the creatures for whom it is God's will that they should live according to their nature, and not contrary to it.

Probably in the recovering from illness, when the body is still weak, yet thrilling with reviving strength, the heart is especially tender, and yearns more towards home and former life than it will when strength returns and brings duties. Or, perhaps, this illness recalls the last,—and the loving faces and soft hushed voices that were around me then.

Yet I have nothing to complain of. My aged confessor has scarcely left my bed-side. From the first he brought his bed into my cell, and watched over me like a father.

And his words minister to my heart as much as his hands to my bodily wants.

If my spirit would only take the comfort he offers, as easily as I receive food and medicine from his hands!

He does not attempt to combat my difficulties one by one. He says—

"I am little of a physician. I cannot lay my hand on the seat of disease. But there is One who can." And to Him I know the simple-hearted old man prays for me.

Often he recurs to the declaration in the creed, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." "It is the command of God," he said to me one day, "that we should believe in the forgiveness of sins; not of David's or Peter's sins, but ofours, our own, the very sins that distress our consciences." He also quoted a sermon of St. Bernard's on the annunciation.

"The testimony of the Holy Ghost given in thy heart is this, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee.'"

Yes, forgiven to allpenitents! But who can assure me I am a true penitent?

These words, he told me, comforted Brother Martin, and he wonders they do not comfort me. I suppose Brother Martin had "the testimony of the Holy Ghost in his heart;" but who shall give that to me? to me who resisted the vocation of the Holy Ghost so long; who in my deepest heart obey it so imperfectly still!

Brother Martin was faithful, honest, thorough, single-hearted,—all that God accepts; all that I am not!

The affection and compassion of my aged confessor often, however, comfort me, even when his words have little power. They make me feel a dim hope now and then that the Lord he serves may have something of the same pity in his heart.

Erfurt,April15.

The Vicar-General, Staupitz, has visited our convent. I have confessed to him. He was very gentle with me, and to my surprise proscribed me scarcely any penance, although I endeavored to unveil all to him.

Once he murmured, as if to himself, looking at me with a penetrating compassion, "Yes, there is no drawing back. But I wish I had known this before." And then he added to me, "Brother, we must not confuse suffering with sin. It is sin toturnback. It may be anguish tolookback and see what we have renounced, but it is not necessarily sin, if we resolutely press forward still. And if sin mingles with the regret, remember we have to do not with a painted, but a real Saviour; and he died not for painted, but for real sins. Sin is never overcome by looking at it, but by looking away from it to Him who bore our sins, yours and mine, on the cross. The heart is never won back to God by thinking we ought to love him, but by learning what he is, all worthy of our love. True repentance begins with the love of God. The Holy Spirit teaches us to know, and, therefore, to love God. Fear not, but read the Scriptures, and pray. He will employ thee in his service yet, and in his favour is life, and in his service is freedom."

This confession gave me great comfort for the time. I felt myself understood, and yet not despaired of. And that evening, after repeating the Hours, I ventured in my own words to pray to God, and found it solemn and sweet.

But since then my old fear has recurred. Did I indeed confess completely even to the Vicar-General? If I had, would not his verdict have been different? Does not the very mildness of his judgment prove that I have once more deceived myself—made a false confession, and, therefore, failed of the absolution! But it is a relief to have his positive command as my superior to study the Holy Scriptures, instead of the scholastic theologians, to whose writings my preceptor had lately been exclusively directing my studies.

April25.

I have this day, to my surprise, received a command, issuing from the Vicar-General, to prepare to set off on a mission to Rome.

The monk under whose direction I am to journey I do not yet know.

The thought of the new scenes we shall pass through, and the wonderful new world we shall enter on,—new and old,—fills me with an almost childish delight. Since I heard it, my heart and conscience seem to have become strangely lightened, which proves, I fear, how little real earnestness there is in me.

Another thing, however, has comforted me greatly. In the course of my confession I spoke to the Vicar-General about my family, and he has procured for my father an appointment as superintendent of the Latin printing press, at the Elector's new University of Wittemberg.

I trust now that the heavy pressure of pecuniary care which has weighed so long on my mother and Elsè will be relieved. It would have been sweeter to me to have earned this relief for them by my own exertions. But we must not choose the shape or the time in which divine messengers shall appear.

The Vicar-General has, moreover, presented me with a little volume of sermons by a pious Dominican friar, named Tauler. These are wonderfully deep and heart-searching. I find it difficult to reconcile the sublime and enrapt devotion to God which inspires them, with the minute rules of our order, the details of scholastic casuistry, and the precise directions as to the measure of worship and honour, Dulia, Hyperdulia, and Latria to be paid to the various orders of heavenly beings, which make prayer often seem as perplexing to me as the ceremonial of the imperial court would to a peasant of the Thuringian forest.

This Dominican speaks as if we might soar above all these lower things, and lose ourselves in the One Ineffable Source, Ground, Beginning, and End of all Being; the One who is all.

Dearer to me, however, than this, is an old manuscript in our convent library, containing the confessions of the patron of our order himself, the great father Augustine.

Straight from his heart it penetrates into mine, as if spoken to me to-day. Passionate, fervent, struggling, wandering, trembling, adoring heart, I feel its pulses through every line!

And was this the experience of one who is now a saint on the most glorious heights of heaven?

Then the mother! Patient, lowly, noble, saintly Monica; mother, and more than martyr. She rises before me in the likeness of a beloved form I may remember, without sin, even here, even now. St. Monica speaks to me with my mother's voice; and in the narrative of her prayers I seem to gain a deeper insight into what my mother's have been for me.

St. Augustine was happy, to breathe the last words of comfort to herself as he did, to be with her dwelling in one house to the last. This can scarcely be given to me. "That sweet habit of living together" is broken for ever between us; broken by my deliberate act. "For the glory of God!" may God accept it; if not, may he forgive!

That old manuscript is worn with reading. It has lain in the convent library for certainly more than a hundred years. Generation after generation of those who now lie sleeping in the field of God below our windows have turned over those pages. Heart after heart has doubtless come, as I came, to consult the oracle of that deep heart of old times, so nearly shipwrecked, so gloriously saved.

As I read the old thumbed volume, a company of spirits seems to breathe in fellowship around me, and I think how many, strengthened by these words, are perhaps, even now, like him who penned them, amongst the spirits of the just made perfect.

In the convent library, the dead seem to live again around me. In the cemetery are the relics of the corruptible body. Among these worn volumes I feel the breath of the living spirits of generations passed away.

I must say, however, there is more opportunity for solitary communion with the departed in that library than I could wish. The books are not so much read, certainly, in these days, as the Vicar-General would desire, although the Augustinian has the reputation of being among the more learned orders.

I often question what brought many of these easy comfortable monks here. But many of the faces give no reply to my search. No history seems written on them. The wrinkles seem mere ruts of the wheels of Time, not furrows sown with the seeds of thought,—happy at least if they are not as fissures rent by the convulsions of inward fires.

I suppose many of the brethren became monks just as other men become tailors or shoemakers, and with no further spiritual aim, because their parents planned it so. But I may wrong even the meanest in saying so. The shallowest human heart has depths somewhere, let them be crusted over by ice ever so thick, or veiled by flowers ever so fair.

And I—I and this unknown brother are actually about to journey to Italy, the glorious land of sunshine, and vines, and olives, and ancient cities—the land of Rome, imperial, saintly Rome, where countless martyrs sleep, where St. Augustine and Monica sojourned, where St. Paul and St. Peter preached and suffered,—where the vicar of Christ lives and reigns?

May1.

The brother with whom I am to make the pilgrimage to Rome, arrived last night. To my inexpressible delight it is none other than Brother Martin—Martin Luther! Professor of Theology in the Elector's new University of Wittemberg. He is much changed again since I saw him last, toiling through the streets of Erfurt with the sack on his shoulder. The hollow, worn look, has disappeared from his face, and the fire has come back to his eyes. Their expression varies, indeed, often from the sparkle of merriment to a grave earnestness, when all their light seems withdrawn inward; but underneath there is that kind of repose I have noticed in the countenance of my aged confessor.

Brother Martin's face has, indeed, a history written on it, and a history, I deem, not yet finished.

Heidelberg,May25.

I wondered at the lightness of heart with which I set out on our journey from Erfurt.

The Vicar-General himself accompanied us hither. We travelled partly on horseback, and partly in wheeled carriages.

The conversation turned much on the prospects of the new university, and the importance of finding good professors of the ancient languages for it. Brother Martin himself proposed to make use of his sojourn at Rome, to improve himself in Greek and Hebrew, by studying under the learned Greeks and rabbis there. They counsel me also to do the same.

The business which calls us to Rome is an appeal to the Holy Father, concerning a dispute between some convents of our Order and the Vicar-General.

But they say business is slowly conducted at Rome, and will leave us much time for other occupations besides those which are most on our hearts, namely, paying homage at the tombs of the holy apostles and martyrs.

They speak most respectfully and cordially of the Elector Frederick, who must indeed be a very devout prince. Not many years since, he accomplished a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and took with him the painter Lucas Cranach, to make drawings of the various holy places.

About ten years since, he built a church dedicated to St. Ursula, on the site of the small chapel erected in 1353, over the Holy Thorn from the Crown of Thorns, presented to a former elector by the king of France.

This church is already, they say, through the Elector Frederick's diligence, richer in relics than any church in Europe, except that of Assisi, the birth-place of St. Francis. And the collection is still continually being increased.

They showed me a book printed at Wittemberg a year or two since, entitled "A Description of the Venerable Relics," adorned with one hundred and nineteen woodcuts.

The town itself seems to be still poor and mean compared with Eisenach and Erfurt; and the students, of whom there are now nearly five hundred, are at times very turbulent. There is much beer-drinking among them. In 1507, three years since, the Bishop of Brandenburg laid the whole city under interdict for some insult offered by the students to his suite, and now they are forbidden to wear guns, swords, or knives.

Brother Martin, however, is full of hope as to the good to be done among them. He himself received the degree of Biblicus (Bible teacher) on the 9th of March last year; and every day he lectures between twelve and one o'clock.

Last summer, for the first time, he was persuaded by the Vicar-General to preach publicly. I heard some conversation between them in reference to this, which afterwards Brother Martin explained to me.

Dr. Staupitz and Brother Martin were sitting last summer in the convent garden at Wittemberg together, under the shade of a pear tree, whilst the Vicar-General endeavoured to prevail on him to preach. He was exceedingly unwilling to make the attempt. "It is no little matter," said he to Dr. Staupitz, "to appear before the people in the place of God." "I had fifteen arguments," he continued in relating it to me, "wherewith I purposed to resist my vocation; but they availed nothing." At the last I said, "Dr. Staupitz, you will be the death of me, for I cannot live under it three months." "Very well," replied Dr. Staupitz, "still go on. Our Lord God hath many great things to accomplish, and he has need of wise men in heaven as well as in earth."

Brother Martin could not further resist, and after making a trial before the brethren in the refectory, at last, with a trembling heart, he mounted the pulpit of the little chapel of the Augustinian cloister.

"When a preacher for the first time enters the pulpit," he concluded, "no one would believe how fearful he is; he sees so many heads before him. When I go into the pulpit, I do not look on any one. I think them only to be so many blocks before me, and I speak out the words of my God."

And yet Dr. Staupitz says his words are like thunder-peals.Yet!do I say? Is it notbecause? He feels himself nothing; he feels his message everything; he feels God present. What more could be needed to make a man of his power a great preacher?

With such discourse the journey seemed accomplished quickly indeed. And yet, almost the happiest hours to me were those when we were all silent, and the new scenes passed rapidly before me. It was a great rest to live for a time on what I saw, and cease from thought, and remembrance, and inward questionings altogether. For have I not been commanded this journey by my superiors, so that in accordance with my vow of obedience, my one duty at present is to travel; and therefore what pleasure it chances to bring I must not refuse.

We spent some hours in Nüremberg. The quaint rich carvings of many of the houses were beautiful. There also we saw Albrecht Dürer's paintings, and heard Hans Sachs, the shoemaker and poet, sing his godly German hymns. And as we crossed the Bavarian plains, the friendliness of the simple peasantry made up to us for the sameness of the country.

Near Heidelberg again I fancied myself once more in the Thuringian forest, especially as we rested in the convent of Erbach in the Odenwald. Again the familiar forests and green valleys with their streams were around me. I fear Elsè and the others will miss the beauty of the forest-covered hills around Eisenach, when they remove to Wittemberg, which is situated on a barren, monotonous flat. About this time they will be moving!

Brother Martin has held many disputations on theological and philosophical questions in the University of Heidelberg; but I, being only a novice, have been free to wander whither I would.

This evening it was delightful to stand in the woods of the Elector Palatine's castle, and from among the oaks and delicate birches rustling about me, to look down on the hills of the Odenwald folding over each other. Far up among them I traced the narrow, quiet Neckar, issuing from the silent depths of the forest; while on the other side, below the city, it wound on through the plain to the Rhine, gleaming here and there with the gold of sunset or the cold grey light of the evening. Beyond, far off, I could see the masts of ships on the Rhine.

I scarcely know why, the river made me think of life, of mine and Brother Martin's. Already he has left the shadow of the forests. Who can say what people his life will bless, what sea it will reach, and through what perils? Of this I feel sure, it will matter much to many what its course shall be. For me it is otherwise. My life, as far as earth is concerned, seems closed,—ended; and it can matter little to any, henceforth, through what regions it passes, if only it reaches the ocean at last, and ends, as they say, in the bosom of God. If only we could be sure that God guides the course of our lives as he does that of rivers! And yet, do they not say that some rivers lose themselves in sandwastes, and others trickle meanly to the sea through lands they have desolated into untenantable marshes?

Black Forest,May14, 1510.

Brother Martin and I are now fairly on our pilgrimage alone, walking all day, begging our provisions and our lodgings, which he sometimes repays by performing a mass in the parish church, or by a promise of reciting certain prayers or celebrating masses on the behalf of our benefactors, at Rome.

These are, indeed, precious days. My whole frame seems braced and revived by the early rising, the constant movement in the pure air, the pressing forward to a definite point.

But more, infinitely more than this, my heart seems reviving. I begin to have a hope and see a light which, until now, I scarcely deemed possible.

To encourage me in my perplexities and conflicts, Brother Martin unfolded to me what his own had been. To the storm of doubt, and fear, and anguish in that great heart of his my troubles seem like a passing spring shower. Yet to me they were tempests which laid my heart waste. And God, Brother Martin believes, does not measure his pity by what our sorrows are in themselves, but what they are to us. Are we not all children, little children, in his sight?

"I did not learn my divinity at once," he said, "but was constrained by my temptations to search deeper and deeper; for no man without trials and temptations can attain a true understanding of the Holy Scriptures. St. Paul had a devil that beat him with fists, and with temptations drove him diligently to study the Holy Scriptures. Temptations hunted me into the Bible, wherein I sedulously read; and thereby, God be praised, at length attained a true understanding of it."

He then related to me what some of these temptations were;—the bitter disappointment it was to him to find that the cowl, and even the vows and the priestly consecration, made no change in his heart; that Satan was as near him in the cloister as outside, and he no stronger to cope with him. He told me of his endeavours to keep every minute rule of the order, and how the slightest deviation weighed on his conscience. It seems to have been like trying to restrain a fire by a fence of willows, or to guide a mountain torrent in artificial windings through a flower-garden, to bind his fervent nature by these vexatious rules.

He was continually becoming absorbed in some thought or study, and forgetting all the rules, and then painfully he would turn back and retrace his steps; sometimes spending weeks in absorbing study, and then remembering he had neglected his canonical hours, and depriving himself of sleep for nights to make up the missing prayers.

He fasted, disciplined himself, humbled himself to perform the meanest offices for the meanest brother; forcibly kept sleep from his eyes wearied with study, and his mind worn out with conflict, until every now and then Nature avenged herself by laying him unconscious on the floor of his cell, or disabling him by a fit of illness.

But all in vain; his temptations seemed to grow stronger, his strength less. Love to God he could not feel at all; but in his secret soul the bitterest questioning of God, who seemed to torment him at once by the law and the gospel. He thought of Christ as the severest judge, because the most righteous; and the very phrase, "the righteousness of God," was torture to him.

Not that this state of distress was continual with him. At times he gloried in his obedience, and felt that he earned rewards from God by performing the sacrifice of the mass, not only for himself, but for others. At times, also, in his circuits, after his consecration, to say mass in the villages around Erfurt, he would feel his spirits lightened by the variety of the scenes he witnessed, and would be greatly amused at the ridiculous mistakes of the village choirs; for instance, their chanting the "Kyrie" to the music of the "Gloria."

Then, at other times, his limbs would totter with terror when he offered the holy sacrifice, at the thought that he, the sacrificing priest, yet the poor, sinful Brother Martin, actually stood before God "without a Mediator."

At his first mass he had difficulty in restraining himself from flying from the altar—so great was his awe and the sense of his unworthiness. Had he done so, he would have been excommunicated.

Again, there were days when he performed the services with some satisfaction, and would conclude with saying, "O Lord Jesus, I come to thee and entreat thee to be pleased with whatsoever I do and suffer in my order; and I pray thee that these burdens and this straitness of my rule and religion may be a full satisfaction for all my sins."

Yet then again, the dread would come that perhaps he had inadvertently omitted some word in the service, such as "enim" or "æternum," or neglected some prescribed genuflexion, or even a signing of the cross; and that thus, instead of offering to God an acceptable sacrifice in the mass, he had committed a grievous sin.

From such terrors of conscience he fled for refuge to some of his twenty-one patron saints, or oftener to Mary, seeking to touch her womanly heart, that she might appease her Son. He hoped that by invoking three saints daily, and by letting his body waste away with fastings and watchings, he should satisfy the law, and shield his conscience against the goad of the driver. But it all availed him nothing. The further he went on in this way, the more he was terrified.

And then he related to me how the light broke upon his heart; slowly, intermittently, indeed; yet it has dawned on him. His day may often be dark and tempestuous; but it is day, and not night.

Dr. Staupitz was the first who brought him any comfort. The Vicar-General received his confession not long after he entered the cloister, and from that time won his confidence, and took the warmest interest in him. Brother Martin frequently wrote to him; and once he used the words, in reference to some neglect of the rules which troubled his conscience, "Oh, my sins, my sins!" Dr. Staupitz replied, "You would be without sin, and yet you have no proper sins. Christ forgives true sins, such as parricide, blasphemy, contempt of God, adultery, and sins like these. These are sins indeed. You must have a register in which stand veritable sins, if Christ is to help you. You would be a painted sinner, and have a painted Christ as a Saviour. You must make up your mind that Christ is a real Saviour, and you a real sinner."

These words brought some light to Brother Martin, but the darkness came back again and again; and tenderly did Dr. Staupitz sympathize with him and rouse him—Dr. Staupitz, and that dear aged confessor, who ministered also so lovingly to me. Brother Martin's great terror was the thought of the righteousness of God, by which he had been taught to understand his inflexible severity in executing judgment on sinners.

Dr. Staupitz and the confessor explained to him that the righteousness of God is notagainstthe sinner who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, butforhim—not against us to condemn, but for us to justify.

He began to study the Bible with a new zest. He had had the greatest longing to understand rightly the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, but was always stopped by the word "righteousness" in the first chapter and seventeenth verse, where Paul says the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel. "I felt very angry," he said, "at the term, 'righteousness of God;' for, after the manner of all the teachers, I was taught to understand it in a philosophic sense, of that righteousness by which God is just and punisheth the guilty. Though I had lived without reproach, I felt myself to be a great sinner before God, and was of a very quick conscience, and had not confidence in a reconciliation with God to be produced by any work or satisfaction or merit of my own. For this cause I had in me no love of a righteous and angry God, but secretly hated him, and thought within myself, Is it not enough that God has condemned us to everlasting death by Adam's sin, and that we must suffer so much trouble and misery in this life? Over and above the terror and threatening of the law, must he needs increase by the gospel our misery and anguish, and, by the preaching of the same, thunder against us his justice and fierce wrath? My confused conscience ofttimes did cast me into fits of anger, and I sought day and night to make out the meaning of Paul; and at last I came to apprehend it thus: Through the gospel is revealed the righteousness which availeth with God—a righteousness by which God, in his mercy and compassion, justifieth us; as is it written, 'The just shall live by faith.' Straightway I felt as if I were born anew; it was as if I had found the door of Paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw the Scriptures altogether in a new light—ran through their whole contents as far as my memory would serve, and compared them—and found that this righteousness was the more surely that by which he makes us righteous, because everything agreed thereunto so well. The expression, 'the righteousness of God,' which I so much hated before, became now dear and precious—my darling and most comforting word. That passage of Paul was to me the true door of Paradise."

Brother Martin also told me of the peace the words, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins," brought to him, as the aged confessor had previously narrated to me; for, he said, the devil often plucked him back, and, taking the very form of Christ, sought to terrify him again with his sins.

As I listened to him, the conviction came on me that he had indeed drunk of the well-spring of everlasting life, and it seemed almost within my own reach; but I said—

"Brother Martin, your sins were mere transgressions of human rules, but mine are different." And I told him how I had resisted my vocation. He replied—

"The devil gives heaven to people before they sin; but after they sin, brings their consciences into despair. Christ deals quite in the contrary way, for he gives heaven after sins committed, and makes troubled consciences joyful."

Then we fell into a long silence, and from time to time, as I looked at the calm which reigned on his rugged and massive brow, and felt the deep light in his dark eyes, the conviction gathered strength—

"This solid rock on which that tempest-tossed spirit rests is Truth!"

His lips moved now and then, as if in prayer, and his eyes were lifted up from time to time to heaven, as if his thoughts found a home there.

After this silence, he spoke again and said—

"The gospel speaks nothing of our works or of the works of the law, but of the inestimable mercy and love of God towards most wretched and miserable sinners. Our most merciful Father, seeing us overwhelmed and oppressed with the curse of the law, and so to be holden under the same, that we could never be delivered from it by our own power, sent his only Son into the world, and laid upon him the sins of all men, saying, 'Be thou Peter, that denier; Paul, that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor; David, that adulterer; that sinner that did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief that hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be thou the person that hath committed the sins of all men, and pay and satisfy for them.' For God trifleth not with us, but speaketh earnestly and of great love, that Christ is the Lamb of God who beareth the sins of us all. He is just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."

I could answer nothing to this, but walked along pondering these words. Neither did he say any more at that time.

The sun was sinking low, and the long shadows of the pine trunks were thrown athwart our green forest-path, so that we were glad to find a charcoal-burner's hut, and to take shelter for the night beside his fires.

But that night I could not sleep; and when all were sleeping around me, I rose and went out into the forest.

Brother Martin is not a man to parade his inmost conflicts before the eyes of others, to call forth their sympathy or their idle wonder. He has suffered too deeply and too recently for that. It is not lightly that he has unlocked the dungeons and torture-chambers of his past life for me. It is as a fellow-sufferer and a fellow-soldier, to show me how I also may escape and overcome.

It is surely because he is to be a hero and a leader of men that God has caused him to tread these bitter ways alone.

A new meaning dawns on old words for me. There is nothing new in what he says, but it seems new to me, as if God had spoken it first to-day; and all things seem made new in its light.

God, then, is more earnest for me to be saved than I am to be saved!

"He so loved the world, that he gave his Son."

He loved not saints, not penitents, not the religious, not those who love him; but "theworld," secular men, profane men, hardened rebels, hopeless wanderers and sinners!

He gave not a mere promise, not an angel to teach us, not a world to ransom us, but his Son—his Only-begotten!

So much did God love the world, sinners, me! I believe this; I must believe it; I believe in him who says it. How can I then do otherwise than rejoice?

Two glorious visions rise before me and begin to fill the world and all my heart with joy.

I see the Holiest, the Perfect, the Son made the victim, the lamb, the curse, willingly yielding himself up to death on the cross for me.

I see the Father—inflexible in justice yet delighting in mercy—accepting him, the spotless Lamb whom he had given; raising him from the dead; setting him on his right hand. Just, beyond all my terrified conscience could picture him, he justifies me the sinner.

Hating sin as love must abhor selfishness, and life death, and purity corruption, he loves me—the selfish, the corrupt, the dead in sins. He gives his Son, the Only-begotten, for me; he accepts his Son, the spotless Lamb, for me; he forgives me; he acquits me; he will make me pure.

The thought overpowered me. I knelt among the pines and spoke to Him who hears when we have no words, for words failed me altogether then.

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