XVII.

October25, 1520.

More and more burning words from Dr. Luther. To-day we have been reading his new book on the Babylonish Captivity. "God has said," he writes in this, "'Whosoever shall believe and be baptized shall be saved.' On this promise, if we receive it with faith, hangs our whole salvation. If we believe, our heart is fortified by the divine promise; and although all should forsake the believer, this promise which he believes will never forsake him. With it he will resist the adversary who rushes upon his soul, and will have wherewithal to answer pitiless death, and even the judgment of God." And he says in another place, "The vow made at our baptism is sufficient of itself, and comprehends more than we can ever accomplish. Hence all other vows may be abolished. Whoever enters the priesthood or any religious order, let him well understand that the works of a monk or of a priest, however difficult they may be, differ in no respect in the sight of God from those of a countryman who tills the ground, or of a woman who conducts a household. God values all things by the standard of faith. And it often happens that the simple labour of a male or female servant is more agreeable to God than the fasts and the works of a monk, because in these faith is wanting."

What a consecration this thought gives to my commonest duties! Yes, when I am directing the maids in their work, or sharing Gottfried's cares, or simply trying to brighten his home at the end of the busy day, or lulling my children to sleep, can I indeed be serving God as much as Dr. Luther at the altar or in his lecture-room? I also, then, have indeed my vocation direct from God.

How could I ever have thought the mere publication of a book would have been an event to stir our hearts like the arrival of a friend! Yet it is even thus with every one of those pamphlets of Dr. Luther's. They move the whole of our two households, from our grandmother to Thekla, and even the little maid, to whom I read portions. She says, with tears, "If the mother and father could hear this in the forest!" Students and burghers have not patience to wait till they reach home, but read the heart-stirring pages as they walk through the streets. And often an audience collects around some communicative reader, who cannot be content with keeping the free, liberating truths to himself.

Already, Christopher says, four thousand copies of the "Appeal to the Nobility" are circulating through Germany.

I always thought before of books as the peculiar property of the learned. But Dr. Luther's books are a living voice,—a heart God has awakened and taught, speaking to countless hearts as a man talketh with his friend. I can indeed see now, with my father and Christopher, that the printing press is a nobler weapon than even the spears and broadswords of our knightly Bohemian ancestors.

Wittemberg,December10, 1520.

Dr. Luther has taken a great step to-day. He has publicly burned the Decretals, with other ancient writings, on which the claims of the court of Rome are founded, but which are now declared to be forgeries; and more than this, he has burnt the Pope's bull of excommunication against himself.

Gottfried says that for centuries such a bonfire as this has not been seen. He thinks it means nothing less than an open and deliberate renunciation of the papal tyranny which for so many hundred years has held the whole of western Christendom in bondage. He took our two boys to see it, that we may remind them of it in after years as the first great public act of freedom.

Early in the morning the town was astir. Many of the burghers, professors, and students knew what was about to be done; for this was no deed of impetuous haste or angry vehemence.

I dressed the children early, and we went to my father's house.

Wittemberg is as full now of people of various languages as the tower of Babel must have been after the confusion of tongues. But never was this more manifest than to-day.

Flemish monks from the Augustine cloisters at Antwerp; Dutch students from Finland; Swiss youths, with their erect forms and free mountain gait; knights from Prussia and Lithuania; strangers even from quite foreign lands,—all attracted hither by Dr. Luther's living words of truth, passed under our windows about nine o'clock this morning, in the direction of the Elster gate, eagerly gesticulating and talking as they went. Then Thekla, Atlantis, and I mounted to an upper room, and watched the smoke rising from the pile, until the glare of the conflagration burst through it, and stained with a faint red the pure daylight.

Soon afterwards the crowds began to return: but there seemed to me to be a gravity and solemnity in the manner of most, different from the eager haste with which they had gone forth.

"They seem like men returning from some great Church festival," I said.

"Or from lighting a signal-fire on the mountains, which shall awaken the whole land to freedom," said Christopher, as they rejoined us.

"Or from binding themselves with a solemn oath to liberate their homes, like the Three Men at Grütly," said Conrad Winkelried, the young Swiss to whom Atlantis is betrothed.

"Yes," said Gottfried, "fires which may be the beacons of a world's deliverance, and may kindle the death-piles of those who dared to light them, are no mere students' bravado."

"Who did the deed, and what was burned?" I asked.

"One of the masters of arts lighted the pile," my husband replied, "and then threw on it the Decretals, the false Epistles of St. Clement, and other forgeries, which have propped up the edifice of lies for centuries. And when the flames which consumed them had done their work and died away, Dr. Luther himself, stepping forward, solemnly laid the Pope's bull of excommunication on the fire, saying amidst the breathless silence, 'As thou hast troubled the Lord's saints, may the eternal fire destroy thee.' Not a word broke the silence until the last crackle and gleam of those symbolical flames had ceased, and then gravely but joyfully we all returned to our homes."

"Children," said our grandmother, "you have done well; yet you are not the first that have defied Rome."

"Nor perhaps the last she will silence," said my husband. "But the last enemy will be destroyed at last; and meantime every martyr is a victor."

I have read the whole of the New Testament through to Sister Beatrice and Aunt Agnes. Strangely different auditors they were in powers of mind and in experience of life; yet both met, like so many in His days on earth, at the feet of Jesus.

"He would not have despised me, even me," Sister Beatrice would say. "Poor, fond creature, half-witted or half-crazed they call me; but He would have welcomed me."

"DoesHe not welcome you?" I said.

"You think so? Yes, I think—I am sure he does. My poor broken bits and remnants of sense and love, He will not despise them. He will take me as I am."

One day when I had been reading to them the chapter in St. Luke with the parables of the lost money, the lost sheep, and the prodigal, Aunt Agnes, resting her cheek on her thin hand, and fixing her large dark eyes on me, listened with intense expectation to the end; and then she said,—

"Is that all, my child? Begin the next chapter."

I began about the rich man and the unjust steward; but before I had read many words,—

"That will do," she said in a disappointed tone.

"It is another subject. Then not one of the Pharisees came after all! If I had been there among the hard, proud Pharisees—as I might have been when he began, wondering, no doubt, that he could so forget himself as to eat with publicans and sinners—if I had been there, and had heard him speak thus, Eva, I must have fallen at his feet and said, 'Lord, I am a Pharisee no more—I am the lost sheep, not one of the ninety and nine—the wandering child, not the elder brother. Place me low, low among the publicans and sinners—lower than any; but only say thou camest also to seek me, evenme.' And, child, he would not have sent me away! But, Eva," she added, after a pause, wiping away the tears which ran slowly over her withered cheeks, "is it not said anywhere that one Pharisee came to him."

I looked, and could find it nowhere stated positively that one Pharisee had abandoned his pride, and self-righteousness, and treasures of good works, for Jesus. It seemed all on the side of the publicans. Aunt Agnes was at times distressed.

"And yet," she said, "Ihavecome. I am no longer among those who think themselves righteous, and despise others. But I must come in behind all. It is I, not the woman who was a sinner, who am the miracle of his grace; for since no sin so keeps men from him as spiritual pride, there can be no sin so degrading in the sight of the pure and humble angels, or of the Lord. But look again, Eva! Is there not one instance of such as I being saved?"

I found the history of Nicodemus, and we traced it through the Gospel from the secret visit to the popular teacher at night, to the open confession of the rejected Saviour before his enemies.

Aunt Agnes thought this might be the example she sought, but she wished to be quite sure.

"Nicodemus came in humility, to learn," she said. "We never read that he despised others, or thought he could make himself a saint."

At length we came to the Acts of the Apostles, and there, indeed, we found the history of one, "of the straitest sect a Pharisee," who verily thought himself doing God service by persecuting the despised Nazarenes to death. And from that time Aunt Agnes sought out and cherished every fragment of St. Paul's history, and every sentence of his sermons and writings. She had found the example she sought of the "Pharisee who was saved"—in him who obtained mercy, "that in him first God might show forth the riches of his long-suffering to those who thereafter, through his word, should believe."

She determined to learn Latin, that she might read these divine words for herself. It was affecting to see her sitting among the novices whom I taught, carefully spelling out the words, and repeating the declensions and conjugations. I had no such patient pupil; for although many were eager at first, not a few relaxed after a few weeks' toil, not finding the results very apparent, and said it would never sound so natural and true as when Sister Ave translated it for them in German.

I wish some learned man would translate the Bible into German. Why does not some one think of it? There is one German translation from the Latin, the prioress says, made about thirty or forty years ago; but it is very large and costly, and not in language that attracts simple people. I wish the Pope would spend some of the money from the indulgences on a new translation of the New Testament. I think it would please God much more than building St. Peter's.

Perhaps, however, if people had the German New Testament they would not buy the indulgences; for in all the Gospels and Epistles I cannot find one word about buying pardons; and, what is more strange, not a word about adoring the Blessed Virgin, or about nunneries or monasteries. I cannot see that the holy apostles founded one such community, or recommended any one to do so.

Indeed there is so much in the New Testament, and in what I have read of the Old, about not worshipping any one but God, that I have quite given up saying any prayers to the Blessed mother, for many reasons.

In the first place, I am much more sure that our Lord can hear us always than his mother, because he so often says so. And I am much more sure he can help, because I know all power is given to him in heaven and in earth.

And in the next place, if I were quite sure that the Blessed Virgin and the saints could hear me always, and could help or would intercede, I am sure also that no one among them—not the Holy Mother herself—is half so compassionate and full of love, or could understand us so well, as He who died for us. In the Gospels, he was always more accessible than the disciples. St. Peter might be impatient in the impetuosity of his zeal. Loving indignation might overbalance the forbearance of St. John the beloved, and he might wish for fire from heaven on those who refused to receive his Master. All the holy apostles rebuked the poor mothers who brought their children, and would have sent away the woman of Canaan; but he tenderly took the little ones into his arms from the arms of the mothers the disciples had rebuked. His patience was never wearied; He never misunderstood or discouraged any one. Therefore I pray to Him and our Father in heaven alone, andthroughHim alone. Because if he is more pitiful to sinners than all the saints, which of all the saints can be beloved of God as he is, the well-beloved Son? He seems everything, in every circumstance, we can ever want. Higher mediation we cannot find, tenderer love we cannot crave.

And very sure I am that the meek Mother of the Lord, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the apostle who determined to know nothing among his converts save Jesus Christ, and him crucified, will not regret any homage transferred from them to Him.

Nay, rather, if the blessed Virgin, and the holy apostles have heard how, through all these years, such grievous and unjust things have been said of their Lord; how his love has been misunderstood, and he has been represented as hard to be entreated,—He who entreats sinners to come and be forgiven;—has not this been enough to shadow their happiness, even in heaven?

A nun has lately been transferred to our convent, who came originally from Bohemia, where all her relatives had been slain for adhering to the party of John Huss, the heretic. She is much older than I am, and she says she remembers well the name of my family, and that my great-uncle, Aunt Agnes' father, died aheretic! She cannot tell what the heresy was, but she believes it was something about the blessed sacrament and the authority of the Pope. She had heard that otherwise he was a charitable and holy man.

Was my father, then, a Hussite?

I have found the end of the sentence he gave me as his dying legacy:—"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." And instead of being in a book not fit for Christian children to read, as the priest who took it from me said, it is in the Holy Scriptures!

Can it be possible that the world has come round again to the state it was in when the rulers and priests put the Saviour to death, and St. Paul persecuted the disciples as heretics?

Nimptschen, 1520.

A wonderful book of Dr. Luther's appeared among us a few weeks since, on the Babylonish Captivity; and although it was taken from us by the authorities, as dangerous reading for nuns, this was not before many among us had become acquainted with its contents. And it has created a great ferment in the convent. Some say they are words of impious blasphemy; some say they are words of living truth. He speaks of the forgiveness of sins being free; of the Pope and many of the priests being the enemies of the truth of God; and of the life and calling of a monk or nun as in no way holier than that of any humble believing secular man or woman,—a nun no holier than a wife or a household servant!

This many of the older nuns think plain blasphemy. Aunt Agnes says it is true, and more than true; for, from what I tell her, there can be no doubt that Aunt Cotta has been a lowlier and holier woman all her life than she can ever hope to be.

And as to the Bible precepts, they certainly seem far more adapted to people living in homes than to those secluded in convents. Often when I am teaching the young novices the precepts in the Epistles, they say,—

"But sister Ave, find some precepts for us. These sayings are for children, and wives, and mothers, and brothers, and sisters; not for those who have neither home nor kindred on earth."

Then if I try to speak of loving God and the blessed Saviour, some of them say,—

"But we cannot bathe his feet with tears, or anoint them with ointment, or bring him food, or stand by his cross, as the good women did of old. Shut up here, away from every one, how can we show him that we love him?"

And I can only say, "Dear sisters, you are here now; therefore surely God will find some way for you to serve him here."

But my heart aches for them, and I doubt no longer, I feel sure God can never have meant these young, joyous hearts to be cramped and imprisoned thus.

Sometimes I talk about it with Aunt Agnes; and we consider whether, if these vows are indeed irrevocable, and these children must never see their homes again, the convent could not one day be removed to some city where sick and suffering men and women toil and die; so that we might, at least, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit and minister to the sick and sorrowful. That would be life once more, instead of this monotonous routine, which is not so much death as mechanism—an inanimate existence which has never been life.

October, 1520.

Sister Beatrice is very ill. Aunt Agnes has requested as an especial favour to be allowed to share the attending on her with me. Never was gentler nurse or more grateful patient.

It goes to my heart to see Aunt Agnes meekly learning from me how to render the little services required at the sick-bed. She smiles, and says her feeble blundering fingers had grown into mere machines for turning over the leaves of prayer-books, just as her heart was hardening into a machine for repeating prayers. Nine of the young nuns, Aunt Agnes, Sister Beatrice, and I, have been drawn very closely together of late. Among the noblest of these is Catherine von Bora, a young nun, about twenty years of age. There is such truth in her full dark eyes, which look so kindly and frankly into mine, and such character in the firmly-closed mouth. She declines learning Latin, and has not much taste for learned books; but she has much clear practical good sense, and she, with many others, delights greatly in Dr. Luther's writings. They say they are not books; they are a living voice. Every fragment of information I can give them about the doctor is eagerly received, and many rumours reach us of his influence in the world. When he was near Nimptschen, two years ago, at the great Leipsic disputation, we heard that the students were enthusiastic about him, and that the common people seemed to drink in his words almost as they did our Lord's when he spoke upon earth; and what is more, that the lives of some men and women at the court have been entirely changed since they heard him. We were told he had been the means of wonderful conversions; but what was strange in these conversions was, that those so changed did not abandon their position in life, but only their sins, remaining where they were when God called them, and distinguished from others, not by veil or cowl, but by the light of holy works.

On the other hand, many, especially among the older nuns, have received quite contrary impressions, and regard Dr. Luther as a heretic, worse than any who ever rent the Church. These look very suspiciously on us, and subject us to many annoyances, hindering our conversing and reading together as much as possible.

We do, indeed, many of us wonder that Dr. Luther should use such fierce and harsh words against the Pope's servants. Yet St. Paul even "could have wished that those were cut off" that troubled his flock; and the very lips of divine love launched woes against hypocrites and false shepherds severer than any that the Baptist or Elijah ever uttered in their denunciations from the wilderness. It seems to me that the hearts which are tenderest towards the wandering sheep will ever be severest against the seducing shepherds who lead them astray. Only we need always to remember that these very false shepherds themselves are, after all, but wretched lost sheep, driven hither and thither by the great robber of the fold!

1521.

Just now the hearts of the little band among us who owe so much to Dr. Luther are lifted up night and day in prayer to God for him. He is soon to be on his way to the Imperial Diet at Worms. He has the Emperor's safe-conduct, but it is said this did not save John Huss from the flames. In our prayers we are much aided by his own Commentary on the Book of Psalms, which I have just received from Uncle Cotta'a printing-press.

This is now Sister Beatrice's great treasure, as I sit by her bed-side and read it to her.

He says that "the mere frigid use of the Psalms in the canonical hours, though little understood, brought some sweetness of the breath of life to humble hearts of old, like the faint fragrance in the air not far from a bed of roses."

He says, "All other books give us the words and deeds of the saints, but this gives us their inmost souls." He calls the Psalter "the little Bible." "There," he says, "you may look into the hearts of the saints as into Paradise, or into the opened heavens, and see the fair flowers or the shining stars, as it were, of their affections springing or beaming up to God, in response to his benefits and blessings."

March, 1521.

News had reached me to-day from Wittemberg which makes me feel indeed that the days when people deem they do God service by persecuting those who love him, are too truly come back. Thekla writes me that they have thrown Fritz into the convent prison at Mainz, for spreading Dr. Luther's doctrine among the monks. A few lines sent through a friendly monk have told them of this. She sent them on to me.

"My beloved ones," he writes, "I am in the prison where, forty years ago, John of Wesel died for the truth. I am ready to die if God wills it so. His truth is worth dying for, and his love will strengthen me. But if I can I will escape, for the truth is worth living for. If, however, you do not hear of me again, know that the truth I died for is Christ's, and that the love which sustained me is Christ himself. And likewise that to the last I pray for you all, and for Eva; and tell her that the thought of her has helped me often to believe in goodness and truth, and that I look assuredly to meet her and all of you again.—Friedrich Schönberg Cotta."

In prison and in peril of life! Death itself cannot, I know, more completely separate Fritz and me than we are separated already. Indeed, of the death even of one of us, I have often thought as bringing us a step nearer, rending one veil between us. Yet, now that it seems so possible,—that perhaps it has already come,—I feel there was a kind of indefinable sweetness in being only on the same earth together, in treading the same pilgrim way. At least we could help each other by prayer; and now, if he is indeed treading the streets of the heavenly city, so high above, the world does seem darker.

But, alas! he maynotbe in the heavenly city, but in some cold earthly dungeon, suffering I know not what!

I have read the words over and over, until I have almost lost their meaning. He has no morbid desire to die. He will escape if he can, and he is daring enough to accomplish much. And yet, if the danger were not great, he would not alarm Aunt Cotta with even the possibility of death. He always considered others so tenderly.

He says I have helped him,himwho taught and helped me, a poor ignorant child, so much! Yet I suppose it may be so. It teaches us so much to teach others. And we always understood each other so perfectly with so few words. I feel as if blindness had fallen on me, when I think of him now. My heart gropes about in the dark and cannot find him.

But then I look up, my Saviour, to thee. "To thee the night and the day are both alike." I dare not think he is suffering; it breaks my heart. I cannot rejoice as I would in thinking he may be in heaven. I know not what to ask, but thou art with him as with me.Keep him close under the shadow of thy wing.There we aresafe, and there we aretogether. And oh, comfort Aunt Cotta! She must need it sorely.

Fritz, then, like our little company at Nimptschen, loves the words of Dr. Luther. When I think of this I rejoice almost more than I weep for him. These truths believed in our hearts seem to unite us more than prison or death can divide. When I think of this I can sing once more St. Bernard's hymn:—

SALVE CAPUT CRUENTATUM.Hail! thou Head, so bruised and wounded,With the crown of thorns surrounded,Smitten with the mocking reed,Wounds which may not cease to bleedTrickling faint and slow.Hail! from whose most blessed browNone can wipe the blood-drops now;All the bloom of life has fled,Mortal paleness there insteadThou before whose presence dreadAngels trembling bow.All thy vigor and thy lifeFading in this bitter strife;Death his stamp on thee has set,Hollow and emaciate,Faint and drooping there.Thou this agony and scornHast for me a sinner borne!Me, unworthy, all for me!With those wounds of love on thee,Glorious Face, appear!Yet in this thine agony,Faithful Shepherd, think of meFrom whose lips of love divineSweetest draughts of life are mine;Purest honey flows;All unworthy of thy thought,Guilty, yet reject me not;Unto me thy head incline,—Let that dying head of thineIn mine arms repose.Let me true communion knowWith thee in thy sacred woe,Counting all beside but dross,Dying with thee on thy cross;—'Neath it will I die!Thanks to thee with every breathJesus, for thy bitter death;Grant thy guilty one this prayer:When my dying hour is near,Gracious God, be nigh!When my dying hour must be,Be not absent then from me;In that dreadful hour, I pray,Jesus come without delay;See, and set me free.When thou biddest me depart,Whom I cleave to with my heart.Lover of my soul, be near,With thy saving cross appear,—Show thyself to me!

SALVE CAPUT CRUENTATUM.

Hail! thou Head, so bruised and wounded,With the crown of thorns surrounded,Smitten with the mocking reed,Wounds which may not cease to bleedTrickling faint and slow.Hail! from whose most blessed browNone can wipe the blood-drops now;All the bloom of life has fled,Mortal paleness there insteadThou before whose presence dreadAngels trembling bow.

All thy vigor and thy lifeFading in this bitter strife;Death his stamp on thee has set,Hollow and emaciate,Faint and drooping there.Thou this agony and scornHast for me a sinner borne!Me, unworthy, all for me!With those wounds of love on thee,Glorious Face, appear!

Yet in this thine agony,Faithful Shepherd, think of meFrom whose lips of love divineSweetest draughts of life are mine;Purest honey flows;All unworthy of thy thought,Guilty, yet reject me not;Unto me thy head incline,—Let that dying head of thineIn mine arms repose.

Let me true communion knowWith thee in thy sacred woe,Counting all beside but dross,Dying with thee on thy cross;—'Neath it will I die!Thanks to thee with every breathJesus, for thy bitter death;Grant thy guilty one this prayer:When my dying hour is near,Gracious God, be nigh!

When my dying hour must be,Be not absent then from me;In that dreadful hour, I pray,Jesus come without delay;See, and set me free.When thou biddest me depart,Whom I cleave to with my heart.Lover of my soul, be near,With thy saving cross appear,—Show thyself to me!

Wittemberg,April2, 1521.

Dr. Luther is gone. We all feel like a family bereaved of our father.

The professors and chief burghers, with numbers of the students, gathered around the door of the Augustinian Convent this morning to bid him farewell. Gottfried Reichenbach was near as he entered the carriage, and heard him say, as he turned to Melacthon, in a faltering voice, "Should I not return, and should my enemies put me to death, O my brother, cease not to teach and to abide steadfastly in the truth. Labour in my place, for I shall not be able to labour myself. If you be spared it matters little that I perish."

And so he drove off. And a few minutes after, we, who were waiting at the door, saw him pass. He did not forget to smile at Elsè and her little ones, or to give a word of farewell to our dear blind father as he passed us. But there was a grave steadfastness in his countenance that made our hearts full of anxiety. As the usher with the imperial standard who preceded him, and then Dr. Luther's carriage, disappeared round a corner of the street, our grandmother, whose chair had been placed at the door that she might see him pass, murmured, as if to herself,—

"Yes, it was with just such a look they went to the scaffold and the stake when I was young."

I could see little, my eyes were so blinded with tears; and when our grandmother said this, I could bear it no longer, but ran up to my room, and here I have been ever since. My mother and Elsè and all of them say I have no control over my feelings; and I am afraid I have not. But it seems to me as if every one I lean my heart on were always taken away. First, there was Eva. She always understood me, helped me to understand myself; did not laugh at my perplexities as childish, did not think my over-eagerness was always heat of temper, but met my blundering efforts to do right. Different as she was from me (different as an angel from poor bewildered blundering Giant Christopher in Elsè's old legend), she always seemed come down to my level and see my difficulties from where I stood, and so helped me over them; whilst every one else sees them from above, and wonders any one can think such trifles troubles at all. Not, indeed, that my dear mother and Elsè are proud, or mean to look down on any one; but Elsè is so unselfish, her whole life is so bound up in others, that she does not know what more wilful natures have to contend with. Besides, she is now out of the immediate circle of our every-day life at home. Then our mother is so gentle; she is frightened to think what sorrows life may bring me with the changes that must come, if little things give me such joy or grief now. I know she feels for me often more than she dares let me see; but she is always thinking of arming me for the trials she believes must come, by teaching me to be less vehement and passionate about trifles now. But I am afraid it is useless. I think every creature must suffer according to its nature; and if God has made our capacity for joy or sorrow deep, we cannot fill up the channel and say, "Hitherto I will feel; so far, and no further." Thewaters are there,—soon they will recover for themselves the old choked-up courses; and meantime they will overflow. Eva also used to say, "that our armour must grow with our growth, and our strength with the strength of our conflicts; and that there is only one shield which does this, the shield of faith,—a living, daily trust in a living, ever-present God."

But Eva went away. And then Nix died. I suppose if I saw any child now mourning over a dog as I did over Nix, I should wonder much as they all did at me then. But Nix was not only a dog to me. He was Eisenach and my childhood; and a whole world of love and dreams seemed to die for me with Nix.

To all the rest of the world I was a little vehement girl of fourteen; to Nix I was mistress, protector, everything. It was weeks before I could bear to come in at the front door, where he used to watch for me with his wistful eyes, and bound with cries of joy to meet me. I used to creep in at the garden gate.

And then Nix's death was the first approach of Death to me, and the dreadful power was no less a power because its shadow fell first for me on a faithful dog. I began dimly to feel that life, which before that seemed to be a mountain-path always mounting and mounting through golden mists to I know not what heights of beauty and joy, did not end on the heights, but in a dark unfathomed abyss, and that however dim its course might be, it has, alas, no mists, or uncertainty around the nature of its close, but ends certainly, obviously, and universally in death.

I could not tell any one what I felt. I did not know myself. How can we understand a labyrinth until we are through it? I did not even know it was a labyrinth. I only knew that a light had passed away from everything, and a shadow had fallen in its place.

Then it was that Dr. Luther spoke to me of the other world, beyond death, which God would certainly make more full and beautiful than this;—the world on which the shadow of death can never come, because it lies in the eternal sunshine, on the other side of death, and all the shadows fall on this side. That was about the time of my first communion, and I saw much of Dr. Luther, and heard him preach. I did not say much to him, but he let down a light into my heart which, amidst all its wanderings and mistakes, will, I believe, never go out.

He made me understand something of what our dear heavenly Father is, and that willing but unequalled Sufferer—that gracious Saviour who gave himself for our sins, even for mine. And he made me feel that God would understand me better than any one, because love always understands, and the greatest love understands best, and God is love.

Elsè and I spoke a little about it sometimes, but not much. I am still a child to Elsè and to all of them, being the youngest, and so much less self-controlled than I ought to be. Fritz understood it best; at least, I could speak to him more freely,—I do not know why. Perhaps some hearts are made to answer naturally to each other, just as some of the furniture always vibrates when I touch a particular string of the lute, while nothing else in the room seems to feel it. Perhaps, too, sorrow deepens the heart wonderfully, and opens a channel into the depths of all other hearts. And I am sure Fritz has known very deep sorrow. What, I do not exactly know; and I would not for the world try to find out. If there is a secret chamber in his heart, which he cannot bear to open to any one, when I think his thoughts are there, would I not turn aside my eyes and creep softly away, that he might never know I had found it out?

The innermost sanctuary of his heart is, however, I know, not a chamber of darkness and death, but a holy place of daylight, for God is there.

Hours and hours Fritz and I spoke of Dr. Luther, and what he had done for us both; more, perhaps, for Fritz than even for me, because he had suffered more. It seems to me as if we and thousands besides in the world had been worshipping before an altar-picture of our Saviour, which we had been told was painted by a great master after a heavenly pattern. But all we could see was a grim, hard, stern countenance of one sitting on a judgment throne; in his hands lightnings, and worse lightnings buried in the cloud of his severe and threatening brow. And then, suddenly we heard Dr. Luther's voice behind us saying, in his ringing, inspiring tones, "Friends, what are you doing? That is not the right painting. These are only the boards which hide the master's picture."

And so saying, he drew aside the terrible image on which we had been hopelessly gazing, vainly trying to read some traces of tenderness and beauty there. And all at once the real picture was revealed to us, the picture of the real Christ, with the look on his glorious face which he had on the cross, when he said of his murderers, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do;" and to his mother, "Woman, behold thy son?" or to the sinful woman who washed his feet, "Go in peace."

Fritz and I also spoke very often of Eva. At least, he liked me to speak of her while he listened. And I never weary of speaking of our Eva.

But then Fritz went away. And now it is many weeks since we have heard from him; and the last tidings we had were that little note from the convent-prison of Mainz!

And now Dr. Luther is gone—gone to the stronghold of his enemies—gone, perhaps, as our grandmother says, to martyrdom!

And who will keep that glorious revelation of the true, loving, pardoning God open for us,—with a steady hand keep open those false shutters, now that he is withdrawn? Dr. Melancthon may do as well for the learned, for the theologians; but who will replace Dr. Luther tous, to the people, to working men and eager youths, and to women and to children? Who will make us feel as he does that religion is not a study, or a profession, or a system of doctrines, but life in God; that prayer is not, as he said, an ascension of the heart as a spiritual exercise into some vague airy heights, but the lifting of the heartto God, to a heart which meets us, cares for us, loves us inexpressibly? Who will ever keep before us as he does the "Our Father," which makes all the rest of the Lord's Prayer and all prayer possible and helpful? No wonder that mothers held out their children to receive his blessing as he left us, and then went home weeping, whilst even strong men brushed away tears from their eyes.

It is true, Dr. Bugenhagen, who has escaped from persecution in Pomerania, preaches fervently in his pulpit; and Archdeacon Carlstadt is full of fire, and Dr. Melancthon full of light; and many good, wise men are left. But Dr. Luther seemed the heart and soul of all. Others might say wiser things, and he might say many things others would be too wise to say, but it is through Dr. Luther's heart that God has revealed His heart and His word to thousands in our country, and no one can ever be to us what he is.

Day and night we pray for his safety.

April15.

Christopher has returned from Erfurt, where he heard Dr. Luther preach.

He told us that in many places his progress was like that of a beloved prince through his dominions, of a prince who was going out to some great battle for his land.

Peasants blessed him; poor men and women thronged around him and entreated him not to trust his precious life among his enemies. One aged priest at Nüremberg brought out to him a portrait of Savonarola, the good priest whom the Pope burned at Florence not forty years ago. One aged widow came to him and said her parents had told her God would send a deliverer to break the yoke of Rome, and she thanked God she saw him before she died. At Erfurt sixty burghers and professors rode out some miles to escort him into the city. There, where he had relinquished all earthly prospects to beg bread as a monk through the streets, the streets were thronged with grateful men and women, who welcomed him as their liberator from falsehood and spiritual tyranny.

Christopher heard him preach in the church of the Augustinian Convent, where he had (as Fritz told me) suffered such agonies of conflict. He stood there now an excommunicated man, threatened with death; but he stood there as victor, through Christ, over the tyranny and lies of Satan. He seemed entirely to forget his own danger in the joy of the eternal salvation he came to proclaim. Not a word, Christopher said, about himself, or the Diet, or the Pope's bull, or the Emperor, but all about the way a sinner may be saved, and a believer may be joyful. "There are two kinds of works," he said; "external works, our own works. These are worth little. One man builds a church; another makes a pilgrimage to St. Peter's; a third fasts, puts on the hood, goes barefoot. All these works are nothing, and will perish. Now, I will tell you what is the true good work.God hath raised again a man, the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that he may crush death, destroy sin, shut the gates of hell. This is the work of salvation.The devil believed he had the Lord in his power when he beheld him between two thieves, suffering the most shameful martyrdom, accursed both of Heaven and man. But God put forth his might, and annihilated death, sin, and hell. Christ hath won the victory. This is the great news! And we are saved by his work, not by our works. The Pope says something very different. I tell you the holy Mother of God herself has been saved, not by her virginity, nor by her maternity, nor by her purity, nor by her works, but solely by means of faith, and by the work of God."

As he spoke the gallery in which Christopher stood listening cracked. Many were greatly terrified, and even attempted to rush out. Dr. Luther stopped a moment, and then stretching out his hand said, in his clear, firm voice, "Fear not, there is no danger. The devil would thus hinder the preaching of the gospel, but he will not succeed." Then returning to his text, he said, "Perhaps you will say to me, 'You speak to us much about faith, teach us how we may obtain it.' Yes, indeed, that is what I desire to teach you. Our Lord Jesus Christ has said, 'Peace be unto you. Behold my hands.' And this is as if he said, 'O man, it is I alone who have taken away thy sins, and who have redeemed thee, and nowthou hast peace, saith the Lord.'"

And he concluded,—

"Since God has saved us, let us so order our works that he may take pleasure therein. Art thou rich? Let thy goods be serviceable to the poor. Art thou poor? Let thy services be of use to the rich. If thy labours are useless to all but thyself, the services thou pretendest to render to God are a mere lie."

Christopher left Dr. Luther at Erfurt. He said many tried to persuade the doctor not to venture to Worms; others reminded him of John Huss, burned in spite of the safe-conduct. And as he went, in some places the papal excommunication was affixed on the walls before his eyes; but he said, "If I perish, the truth will not."

And nothing moved him from his purpose. Christopher was most deeply touched with that sermon. He said the text, "Peace be unto you; and when he had so said Jesus showed unto them his hands and his side," rang through his heart all the way home to Wittemberg, through the forests and the plain. The pathos of the clear true voice we may never hear again writes them on his heart; and more than that. I trust the deeper pathos of the voice which uttered the cry of agony once on the cross for us,—the agony which won the peace.

Yes; when Dr. Luther speaks he makes us feel we have to do with persons, not with things,—with the devil who hates us, with God who loves us, with the Saviour who died for us. It is not holiness only and justification, or sin and condemnation. It is we sinning and condemned, Christ suffering for us, and God justifying and loving us. It is all I and thou. He brings us face to face with God, not merely sitting serene on a distant imperial throne, frowning in terrible majesty, or even smiling in gracious pity, but coming down to us close, seeking us, and caring, caring unutterably much, that we, even we, should be saved.

I never knew, until Dr. Luther drove out of Wittemberg, and the car with the cloth curtains to protect him from the weather, which the town had provided, passed out of sight, and I saw the tears gently flowing down my mother's face, how much she loved and honoured him.

She seems almost as anxious about him as about Fritz; and she did not reprove me that night when she came in and found me weeping by my bed. She only drew me to her and smoothed down my hair, and said, "Poor little Thekla! God will teach us both how to have none other gods but himself. He will do it very tenderly; but neither thy mother nor thy Saviour can teach thee this lesson without many a bitter tear."

Ebernburg,April2, 1526.

A chasm has opened between me and my monastic life. I have been in the prison, and in the prison have I received at last, in full, my emancipation. The ties I dreaded impatiently to break have been broken for me, and I am a monk no longer.

I could not but speak to my brethren in the convent of the glad tidings which had brought me such joy. It is as impossible for Christian life not to diffuse itself as that living water should not flow, or that flames should not rise. Gradually a little band of Christ's freedmen gathered around me. At first I did not speak to them much of Dr. Luther's writings. My purpose was to show them that Dr. Luther's doctrine wasnothis own, but God's.

But the time came when Dr. Luther's name was on every lip. The bull of excommunication went forth against him from the Vatican. His name was branded as that of the vilest of heretics by every adherent of the Pope. In many churches, especially those of the Dominicans, the people were summoned by the great bells to a solemn service of anathema, where the whole of the priests, gathered at the altar in the darkened building, pronounced the terrible words of doom and then, flinging down their blazing torches extinguished them on the stone pavement, as hope, they said, was extinguished by the anathema for the soul of the accursed.

At one of these services I was accidentally present. And mine was not the only heart which glowed with burning indignation to hear that worthy name linked with those of apostates and heretics, and held up to universal execration. But, perhaps, in no heart there did it enkindle such a fire as in mine. Because I knew the source from which those curses came, how lightly, how carelessly those firebrands were flung; not fiercely, by the fanaticism of blinded consciences, but daintily and deliberately, by cruel, reckless hands, as a matter of diplomacy and policy, by those who cared themselves neither for God's curse nor his blessing. And I knew also the heart which they were meant to wound; how loyal, how tender, how true; how slowly, and with what pain Dr. Luther had learned to believe the idols of his youth a lie; with what a wrench, when the choice at last had to be made between the word of God and the voice of the Church, he had clung to the Bible, and let the hopes, and trust, and friendships of earlier days be torn from him; what anguish that separation still cost him; how willingly, as a humble little child, at the sacrifice of anything but truth and human souls, he would have flung himself again on the bosom of that Church to which, in his fervent youth, he had offered up all that makes life dear.

"They curse, but bless Thou."

The words came, unbidden into my heart, and almost unconsciously from my lips. Around me I heard more than one "Amen;" but at the same time I became aware that I was watched by malignant eyes.

After the publication of the excommunication, they publicly burned the writings of Dr. Luther in the great square. Mainz was the first city in Germany where this indignity was offered him.

Mournfully I returned to my convent. In the cloisters of our Order the opinions concerning Luther are much divided. The writings of St. Augustine have kept the truth alive in many hearts amongst us; and besides this, there is the natural bias to one of our own order, and the party opposition to the Dominicans, Tetzel and Eck, Dr. Luther's enemies. Probably there are few Augustinian convents in which there are not two opposite parties in reference to Dr. Luther.

In speaking of the great truths, of God freely justifying the sinner because Christ died, (the Judge acquitting because the Judge himself had suffered for the guilty), I had endeavoured to trace them, as I have said, beyond all human words to their divine authority. But now to confess Luther seemed to me to have become identical with confessing Christ. It is the truth which is assailed in any age which tests our fidelity. It is toconfesswe are called, not merely toprofess. If I profess, with the loudest voice and the clearest exposition, every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle-fields besides is mere flight and disgrace to him if he flinches at that one point.

It seems to me also that, practically, the contest in every age of conflict ranges usually round the person of one Faithful, Godsent man, whom to follow loyally is fidelity to God. In the days of the first Judaizing assault on the early Church, that man was St. Paul. In the great Arian battle, this man was Athanasius—"Athanasius contra mundum." In our days, in our land, I believe it is Luther; and to deny Luther would be for me who learned the truth from his lips, to deny Christ. Luther, I believe, is the man whom God has given to his Church in Germany in this age. Luther, therefore, I will follow—not as a perfect example, but as a God-appointed leader. Men can never be neutral in great religious contests; and if, because of the little wrong in the right cause, or the little evil in the good man, we refuse to take the side of right, we are, by that very act, silently taking the side of wrong.

When I came back to the convent I found the storm gathering. I was asked if I possessed any of Dr. Luther's writings. I confessed that I did. It was demanded that they should be given up. I said they could be taken from me, but I would not willingly give them up to destruction, because I believed they contained the truth of God. Thus the matter ended until we had each retired to our cells for the night, when one of the older monks came to me and accused me of secretly spreading Lutheran heresy among the brethren.

I acknowledged I had diligently, but not secretly, done all I could to spread among the brethren the truths contained in Dr. Luther's books, although not in his words, but in St. Paul's. A warm debate ensued, which ended in the monk angrily leaving the cell, saying that means would be found to prevent the further diffusion of this poison.

The next day I was taken into the prison where John of Wesel died; the heavy bolts were drawn upon me, and I was left in solitude.

As they left me alone, the monk with whom I had the discussion of the previous night said. "In this chamber, not forty years since, a heretic such as Martin Luther died."

The words were intended to produce wholesome fear: they acted as a bracing tonic. The spirit of the conqueror who had seemed to be defeated there, but now stood with the victorious palm before the Lamb, seemed near me. The Spirit of the truth for which he suffered was with me; and in the solitude of that prison I learned lessons years might not have taught me elsewhere.

No one except those who have borne them knows how strong are the fetters which bind us to a false faith, learned at our mother's knee, and riveted on us by the sacrifices of years. Perhaps I should never have been able to break them. For me, as for thousands of others, they were rudely broken by hostile hands. But the blows which broke them were the accolade which smote me from a monk into a knight and soldier of my Lord.

Yes; there I learned that these vows which have bound me for so many years are bonds, not to God, but to a lying tyranny. The only true vows, as Dr. Luther says, are the vows of our baptism—to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, as soldiers of Christ. The only divine Order is the common order of Christianity. All other orders are disorder; not confederations within the Church, but conspiracies against it. If, in an army, the troops choose to abandon the commander's arrangement, and range themselves, by arbitrary rules, in peculiar uniforms, around self-elected leaders, they would not be soldiers—they would be mutineers.

God's order is, I think, the State to embrace all men, the Church to embrace all Christian men; and the kernel of the State and the type of the Church is the family.

He creates us to be infants, children—sons, daughters—husband, wife—father, mother. He says, Obey your parents, love your wife, reverence your husband, love your children. As children, let the Lord at Nazareth be your model; as married, let the Lord, who loved the Church better than life, be your type; as parents, let the heavenly Father be your guide. And if we, abandoning every holy name of family love he has sanctioned, and every lowly duty he has enjoined, choose to band ourselves anew into isolated conglomerations of men or women, connected only by a common name and dress, we are not only amiable enthusiasts—we are rebels against the Divine order of humanity.

God, indeed, may call some especially to forsake father and mother, and wife and children, and all things for his dearer love. But when he calls to such destinies, it is by the plain voice of Providence, or by the bitter call of persecution; and then the martyr's or the apostle's solitary path is as much the lowly, simple path of obedience as the mother's or the child's. The crown of the martyr is consecrated by the same holy oil which anoints the head of the bride, the mother, or the child,—the consecration of love and of obedience. There is none other. All that is not duty is sin; all that is not obedience is disobedience; all that is not of love is of self; and self crowned with thorns in a cloister is as selfish as self crowned with ivy at a revel.

Therefore I abandon cowl and cloister for ever. I am no more Brother Sebastian, of the order of the Eremites of St. Augustine. I am Friedrich Cotta, Margaret Cotta's son, Elsè and Thekla's brother Fritz. I am no more a monk. I am a Christian—I am no more a vowed Augustinian. I am a baptized Christian, dedicated to Christ from the arms of my mother, united to Him by the faith of my manhood. Henceforth I will order my life by no routine of ordinances imposed by the will of a dead man hundreds of years since. But day by day I will seek to yield myself, body, soul, and spirit to the living will of my almighty, loving God, saying to him morning by morning, "Give me this day my daily bread. Appoint to me this day my daily task." And He will never fail to hear, however often I may fail to ask.

I had abundance of time for those thoughts in my prison; for during the three weeks I lay there I had, with the exception of the bread and water which were silently laid inside the door every morning, but two visits. And these were from my friend the aged monk who had first told me about John of Wesel.

The first time he came (he said) to persuade me to recant. But whatever he intended, he said little about recantation—much more about his own weakness, which hindered him from confessing the same truth.

The second time he brought me a disguise, and told me he had provided the means for my escape that very night. When, therefore, I heard the echoes of the heavy bolts of the great doors die away through the long stone corridors, and listened till the last tramp of feet ceased, and door after door of the various cells was closed, and every sound was still throughout the building, I laid aside my monk's cowl and frock, and put on the burgher dress provided for me.

To me it was a glad and solemn ceremony, and, alone in my prison, I prostrated myself on the stone floor, and thanked Him who, by his redeeming death and the emancipating word of his free spirit, had made me a free man, nay, infinitely better,his freedman.

The bodily freedom to which I looked forward was to me a light boon indeed, in comparison with the liberty of heart already mine. The putting on this common garb of secular life was to me like a solemn investiture with the freedom of the city and the empire of God. Henceforth I was not to be a member of a narrow, separated class, but of the common family; no more to freeze alone on a height, but to tread the lowly path of common duty; to help my brethren, not as men at a sumptuous table throw crumbs to beggars and dogs, but to live amongst them—to share my bread of life with them; no longer as the forerunner in the wilderness, but, like the Master, in the streets, and highways, and homes of men; assuming no nobler name than man created in the image of God, born in the image of Adam; aiming at no loftier title than Christian, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and created anew, to be conformed to his glorious image. Yes, as the symbol of a freedman, as the uniform of a soldier, as the armour of a sworn knight, at once freeman and servant, was that lowly burgher's dress to me; and with a joyful heart, when the aged monk came to me again, I stepped after him, leaving my monk's frock lying in the corner of the cell, like the husk of that old lifeless life.

In vain did I endeavour to persuade my liberator to accompany me in my flight. "The world would be a prison to me, brother," he said with a sad smile. "All I loved in it are dead, and what could I do there, with the body of an old man and the helpless inexperience of a child? Fear not for me," he added; "I also shall, I trust, one day dwell in a home; but not on earth!"

And so we parted, he returning to the convent, and I taking my way, by river and forest, to this castle of the noble knight Franz von Sickingen, on a steep height at the angle formed by the junction of two rivers.

My silent weeks of imprisonment had been weeks of busy life in the world outside. When I reached this castle of Ebernburg, I found the whole of its inhabitants in a ferment about the summoning of Dr. Luther to Worms. His name, and my recent imprisonment for his faith, were a sufficient passport to the hospitality of the castle, and I was welcomed most cordially.

It was a great contrast to the monotonous routine of the convent and the stillness of the prison. All was life and stir; eager debates as to what it would be best to do for Dr. Luther; incessant coming and going of messengers on horse and foot between Ebernburg and Worms, where the Diet is already sitting, and where the good knight Franz spends much of his time in attendance on the Emperor.

Ulrich von Hutton is also here, from time to time, vehement in his condemnation of the fanaticism of monks and the lukewarmness of princes; and Dr. Bucer, a disciple of Dr. Luther's, set free from the bondage of Rome by his healthful words at the great conference of the Augustinians at Heidelberg.

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