Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 45

And when I ceased, the mountain stream which dashed over the rocks beside me, the whispering gra.s.ses, the trembling wild-flowers, the rustling forests, the lake with its ripples, the green hills and solemn snow-mountains beyond--all seemed to take up the chorus.

There is a wonderful, invigorating influence about Ulrich Zwingle, with whom I have spent many days lately. It seems as if the fresh air of the mountains among which he pa.s.sed his youth were always around him. In his presence it is impossible to despond. While Luther remains immovably holding every step of ground he has taken, Zwingle presses on, and surprises the enemy asleep in his strongholds. Luther carries on the war like the Landsknechts, our own firm and impenetrable infantry; Zwingle, like his own impetuous mountaineers, sweeps down from the heights upon the foe.

In Switzerland I and my books have met with more sudden and violent varieties of reception than anywhere else; the people are so free and unrestrained. In some villages, the chief men, or the priest himself, summoned all the inhabitants by the church bell, to hear all I had to tell about Dr. Luther and his work, and to buy his books; my stay was one constant _fete_, and the warm-hearted peasants accompanied me miles on my way, discoursing of Zwingle and Luther, the broken yoke of Rome, and the glorious days of freedom that were coming. The names of Luther and Zwingle were on every lip, like those of Tell and Winkelried and the heroes of the old struggle of Swiss liberation.

In other villages, on the contrary, the peasants gathered angrily around me, reviled me as a spy and an intruding foreigner, and drove me with stones and rough jests from among them, threatening that I should not escape so easily another time.

In some places they have advanced much further than among us in Germany.

The images have been removed from the churches, and the service is read in the language of the people.

But the great joy is to see that the light has not been spread only from torch to torch, as human illumination spread, but has burst at once on Germany, France, and Switzerland, as heavenly light dawns from above. It is this which makes it not an illumination merely, but morning and spring! Lefevre in France and Zwingle in Switzerland both pa.s.sed through their period of storms and darkness, and both, awakened by the heavenly light to the new world, found that it was no solitude--that others also were awake, and that the day's work had begun, as it should, with matin songs.

Now I am tending northwards once more. I intend to renew my stores at my father's press at Wittemberg. My heart yearns also for news of all dear to me there. Perhaps, too, I may yet see Dr. Luther, and find scope for preaching the evangelical doctrine among my own people.

For better reports have come to us from Germany and we believe Dr.

Luther is in friendly keeping, though where, is still a mystery.

THE PRISON OF A DOMINICAN CONVENT, FRANCONIA, _August_.

All is changed for me. Once more prison walls are around me, and through prison bars I look out on the world I may not re-enter. I counted this among the costs when I resolved to give myself up to spreading far and wide the glad tidings of redemption. It was worth the cost; it is worth whatever man can inflict--for I trust that those days have not been spent in vain.

Yesterday evening, as the day was sinking, I found my way once more to the parsonage of Priest Ruprecht in the Franconian village. The door was open, but I heard no voices. There was a neglected look about the little garden. The vine was hanging untwined around the porch. The little dwelling, which had been so neat, had a dreary, neglected air. Dust lay thick on the chairs, and the remains of the last meal were left on the table. And yet it was evidently not unoccupied. A book lay upon the window-sill, evidently lately read. It was the copy of Luther's German Commentary on the Lord's Prayer which I had left that evening many months ago in the porch.

I sat down on a window seat, and in a little while I saw the priest coming slowly up the garden. His form was much bent since I saw him last. He did not look up as he approached the house. It seemed as if he expected no welcome. But when I went out to meet him, he grasped my hand cordially, and his face brightened. When, however, he glanced at the book in my hand, a deeper shade pa.s.sed over his brow; and, motioning me to a chair, he sat down opposite me without speaking.

After a few minutes he looked up, and said in a husky voice, "That book did what all the denunciations and terrors of the old doctrines could not do. It separated us. She has left me."

He paused for some minutes, and then continued,--"The evening that she found that book in the porch, when I returned I found her reading it.

'See!' she said, 'at last some one has written a religious book for me!

It was left here open, in the porch, at these words: "If thou dost feel that in the sight of G.o.d and all creatures thou art a fool, a sinner, impure, and condemned, ... there remaineth no solace for thee, and no salvation, unless in Jesus Christ. To know him is to understand what the apostle says,--'Christ has of G.o.d been made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.' He is the bread of G.o.d--our bread, given to us as children of the heavenly Father. To believe is nothing else than to eat this bread from heaven." And look again. The book says, "It touches G.o.d's heart when we call him Father,"--and again, "_Which art in heaven._" "He that acknowledges he has a Father who is in heaven, owns that he is like an orphan on the earth. Hence his heart feels an ardent longing, like a child living away from its father's country, amongst strangers, wretched and forlorn. It is as if he said, "Alas! my Father, thou art in heaven, and I, thy miserable child, am on earth, far from thee amid danger, necessity, and sorrow." 'Ah, Ruprecht,' she said, her eyes streaming with tears, 'that is so like what I feel,--so lost, and orphaned, and far away from home.'

And then, fearing she had grieved me, she added, 'Not that I am neglected. Thou knowest I could never feel that. But oh, can it be possible that G.o.d would take me back, not after long years of penance, but _now_, and _here_, to his very heart?"

"I could say little to teach her, but from that time this book was her constant companion. She begged me to find out all the pa.s.sages in my Latin Gospels which speak of Jesus suffering for sinners, and of G.o.d as the Father. I was amazed to see how many there were. The book seemed full of them. And so we went on for some days, until one evening she came to me, and said, 'Ruprecht, if G.o.d is indeed so infinitely kind and good, and has so loved us, we must obey him, must we not?' I could not for the world say No, and I had not the courage to say Yes, for I knew what she meant."

Again he paused.

"I knew too well what she meant, when, on the next morning, I found the breakfast laid, and everything swept and prepared as usual, and on the table, in printed letters on a sc.r.a.p of paper, which she must have copied from the book, for she could not write, 'Farewell. We shall be able to pray for each other now. And G.o.d will be with us, and will give us to meet hereafter, without fear of grieving him, in our Father's house."

"Do you know where she is?" I asked.

"She has taken service in a farm-house several miles away in the forest," he replied. "I have seen her once. She looked very thin and worn. But she did not see me."

The thought which had so often suggested itself to me before, came with irresistible force into my mind then,--"If those vows of celibacy are contrary to the will of G.o.d, can they be binding?" But I did not venture to suggest them to my host. I only said, "Let us pray that G.o.d will lead you both. The heart can bear many a heavy burden if the conscience is free!"

"True," he said. And together we knelt down, whilst I spoke to G.o.d. And the burden of our prayer was neither more nor less than this, "Our Father which art in heaven, not our will, but thine be done."

On the morrow I bade him farewell, leaving him several other works of Luther's. And I determined not to lose an hour in seeking Melancthon and the doctors of Wittemberg, and placing this case before them.

And now, perhaps, I shall never see Wittemberg again!

It is not often that I have ventured into the monasteries, but to-day a young monk, who was walking in the meadows of this abbey, seemed so interested in my books, that I followed him to the convent, where he thought I should dispose of many copies. Instead of this, however, whilst I was waiting in the porch for him to return, I heard the sound of angry voices in discussion inside, and before I could perceive what it meant, three or four monks came to me, seized my pack, bound my hands, and dragged me to the convent prison, where I now am.

"It is time that this pestilence should be checked," said one of them.

"Be thankful if your fate is not the same as that of your poisonous books, which are this evening to make a bonfire in the court."

And with these words I was left alone in this low, damp, dark cell, with its one little slit high in the wall, which, until my eyes grew accustomed to it, seemed only to admit just light enough to show the iron fetters hanging from the walls. But what power can make me a captive while I can sing:--

Mortis portis practis, fortis Fortior vim sustulit; Et per crucem regem trucem, Infernorum perculit.

Lumen clarum tenebrarum Sedibus resplenduit; Dum salvare, recreare Quod creavit, voluit.

Hinc creator, ne peccator, Moreretur, moritur; Cujus morte, nova sorte, Vita n.o.bis oritur.[10]

[Footnote 10:

Lo, the gates of death are broken, And the strong man armed is spoiled, Of his armour, which he trusted, By the stronger Arm despoiled.

Vanquished is the Prince of h.e.l.l; Smitten by the cross, he fell.

That the sinner might not perish, For him the Creator dies; By whose death, our dark lot changing, Life again for us doth rise,]

Are not countless hearts now singing this resurrection hymn, to some of whom my hands brought the joyful tidings? In the lonely parsonage, in the forest and farm, hearts set free by love from the fetters of sin--in village and city, in mountain and plain!

And at Wittemberg, in happy homes, and in the convent, are not my beloved singing it too?

_September_.

Yet the time seems long to lie in inaction here. With these tidings, "The Lord is risen," echoing through her heart, would it not have been hard for the Magdalene to be arrested on her way to the bereaved disciples before she could tell it?

_October_.

I have a hope of escape. In a corner of my prison I discovered, some days since, the top of an arch, which I believe must belong to a blocked-up door. By slow degrees--working by night, and covering over my work by day--I have dug out a flight of steps which led to it. This morning I succeeded in dislodging one of the stones with which the door-way had been roughly filled up, and through the s.p.a.ce surveyed the ground outside. It was a portion of a meadow, sloping to the stream which turned the abbey mills. This morning two of the monks came to summon me to an examination before the Prior, as to my heresies; but to-night I hope to dislodge the few more stones, and this very night, before morning dawn, to be treading with free step the forest covered hills beyond the valley.

My limbs feel feeble with insufficient food, and the damp, close air of the cell; and the blood flows with feverish, uncertain rapidity through my veins; but, doubtless, a few hours on the fresh, breezy hills will set all this right.

And yet once more I shall see my mother, and Else, and Thekla, and little Gretchen, and all--all but one, who, I fear, is still imprisoned in convent walls. Yet once more I trust to go throughout the land spreading the joyful tidings.--"The Lord is risen indeed;" the work of redemption is accomplished, and He who once lived and suffered on earth, compa.s.sionate to heal, now lives and reigns in heaven, mighty to save.

XX.

Thekla's Story.

TUNNENBERG, _May_, 1521