Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 64

"Thekla, come and see my wife. She says you can comfort her, for you can comprehend sorrow."

Of course I went. I do not think I said anything to comfort her. I could do little else but weep with her, as I looked on the little, innocent, placid, lifeless face. But when I left her she said I had done her good, and begged me to come again.

So, perhaps, G.o.d has some blessed services for me to render him, which I could only have learned as he has taught me; and when we meet hereafter, Bertrand and I, and hear that dear divine and human voice that has led us through the world, we _together_ shall be glad of all this bitter pain that we endured and felt, and give thanks for it for ever and for ever!

x.x.xII.

Else's Story.

WITTEMBERG, _May_, 1530.

Of all the happy homes G.o.d has given to Germany through Dr. Luther, I think none are happier than his own.

The walls of the Augustine convent echo now with the pattering feet and ringing voices of little children, and every night the angels watch over the sanctuary of a home. The birthdays of Dr. Luther's children are festivals to us all, and more especially the birthday of little Hans the first-born was so.

Yet death also has been in that bright home. Their second child, a babe, Elizabeth, was early taken from her parents. Dr. Luther grieved over her much. A little while after her death he wrote to his friend Hausmann:

"Grace and peace. My Johannulus thanks thee, best Nicholas, for the rattle, in which he glories and rejoices wondrously.

"I have begun to write something about the Turkish war, which will not, I hope, be useless.

"My little daughter is dead; my darling little Elizabeth. It is strange how sick and wounded she has left my heart, almost as tender as a woman's, such pity moves me for that little one. I never could have believed before what is the tenderness of a father's heart for his children. Do thou pray to the Lord for me, in Whom fare-thee-well."

Catherine von Bora is honoured and beloved by all. Some indeed complain of her being too economical; but what would become of Dr. Luther and his family if she were as reckless in giving as he is? He has been known even to take advantage of her illness to bestow his plate on some needy student. He never will receive a kreuzer from the students he teaches, and he refuses to sell his writings, which provokes both Gottfried and me, n.o.ble as it is of him, because the great profits they bring would surely be better spent by Dr. Luther than by the printers who get them now. Our belief is, that were it not for Mistress Luther, the whole household would have long since been reduced to beggary, and Dr. Luther, who does not scruple to beg of the Elector or of any wealthy person for the needs of others (although never for his own), knows well how precarious such a livelihood is.

His wife does not, however, always succeed in restraining his propensities to give everything away. Not long ago, in defiance of her remonstrating looks, in her presence he bestowed on a student who came to him asking money to help him home from the university, a silver goblet which had been presented to him, saying that he had no need to drink out of silver.

We all feel the tender care with which she watches over his health, a gift to the whole land. His strength has never quite recovered the strain on it during those years of conflict and penance in the monastery at Erfurt. And it is often strained to the utmost now. All the monks and nuns who have renounced their idle maintenance in convents for conscience' sake; all congregations that desire an evangelical pastor; all people of all kinds in trouble of mind, body, or estate, turn to Dr.

Luther for aid or counsel, as to the warmest heart and the clearest head in the land. His correspondence is incessant, embracing and answering every variety of perplexity, from counselling evangelical princes how best to reform their states, to directions to some humble Christian woman how to find peace for her conscience in Christ. And besides the countless applications to him for advice, his large heart seems always at leisure to listen to the appeal of the persecuted far and near, or to the cry of the bereaved and sorrowful.

Where shall we find the spring of all this activity but in the _Bible_, of which he says, "There are few trees in that garden which I have not shaken for fruit;" and in _prayer_, of which he, the busiest man in Christendom, (as if he were a contemplative hermit) says, "Prayer is the Christian's business (Das Gebet ist des Christen Handwerk)."

Yes, it is the leisure he makes for prayer which gives leisure for all besides. It is the hours pa.s.sed with the life-giving word which make sermons, and correspondence, and teaching of all kinds to him simply the out-pouring of a full heart.

Yet such a life wears out too quickly. More than once has Mistress Luther been in sore anxiety about him during the four years they have been married.

Once, in 1527, when little Hans was the baby, and he believed he should soon have to leave her a widow with the fatherless little one, he said rather sadly he had nothing to leave her but the silver tankards which had been presented to him.

"Dear doctor," she replied, "if it be G.o.d's will, then I also choose that you be with him rather than me. It is not so much I and my child even that need you as the mult.i.tude of pious Christians. Trouble yourself not about me."

What her courageous hopefulness and her tender watchfulness have been to him, he showed when he said,--

"I am too apt to expect more from my Kathe, and from Melancthon, than I do from Christ, my Lord. And yet I well know that neither they nor any one on earth has suffered, or can suffer, what he hath suffered for me."

But although incessant work may weigh upon his body, there are severer trials which weigh upon his spirit. The heart so quick to every touch of affection or pleasure cannot but be sensitive to injustice or disappointment. It cannot therefore be easy for him to bear that at one time it should be perilous for him to travel on account of the indignation of the n.o.bles, whose relatives he has rescued from nunneries; and at another time equally unsafe because of the indignation of the peasants, for whom, though he boldly and openly denounced their made insurrection, he pleads fervently with n.o.bles and princes.

But bitterer than all other things to him, are the divisions among evangelical Christians. Every truth he believes flashes on his mind with such overwhelming conviction that it seems to him nothing but incomprehensible wilfulness for any one else not to see it. Every conviction he holds, he holds with the grasp of one ready to die for it--not only with the tenacity of possession, but of a soldier to whom its defence has been intrusted. He would not, indeed, have any put to death or imprisoned for their misbelief. But hold out the hand of fellowship to those who betray any part of his Lords trust, he thinks,--how dare he? Are a few peaceable days to be purchased at the sacrifice of eternal truth?

And so the division has taken place between us and the Swiss.

My Gretchen perplexed me the other day, when we were coming from the city church, where Dr. Luther had been preaching against the Anabaptists and the Swiss, (whom he will persist in cla.s.sing together,) by saying,--

"Mother, is not Uncle Winkelried a Swiss, and is he not a good man?"

"Of course Uncle Conrad is a good man, Gretchen," rejoined our Fritz, who had just returned from a visit to Atlantis and Conrad. "How can you ask such questions?"

"But he is a Swiss, and Dr. Luther said we must take care not to be like the Swiss, because they say wicked things about the holy sacraments."

"I am sure Uncle Conrad does not say wicked things," retorted Fritz, vehemently. "I think he is almost the best man I ever saw. Mother," he continued, "why does Dr. Luther speak so of the Swiss?"

"You see, Fritz," I said, "Dr. Luther never stayed six months among them as you did; and so he has never seen how good they are at home."

"Then," rejoined Fritz, st.u.r.dily, "if Dr. Luther has not seen them, I do not think he should speak so of them."

I was driven to have recourse to maternal authority to close the discussion, reminding Fritz that he was a little boy, and could not pretend to judge of good and great men, like Dr. Luther. But, indeed, I could not help half agreeing with the child. It was impossible to make him understand how Dr. Luther has fought his way inch by inch to the freedom in which we now stand at ease; how he detests the Zwinglian doctrines, not so much for themselves, as for what he thinks they imply.

How will it be possible to make our children, who enter on the peaceful inheritance so dearly won, understand the rough, soldierly vehemence, of the warrior race, who re-conquered that inheritance for them?

As Dr. Luther says, "It is not a little thing to change the whole religion and doctrine of the Papacy. How hard it has been to me, they will see in that Day. Now no one believes it!"

G.o.d appointed David to fight the wars of Israel, and Solomon to build the temple. Dr. Luther has had to do both. What wonder if the hand of the soldier can sometimes be traced in the work of peace!

Yet, why should I perplex myself about this? Soon, too soon, death will come, and consecrate the virtues of our generation to our children, and throw a softening veil over our mistakes.

Even now that Dr. Luther is absent from us at Coburg, in the castle there, how precious his letters are; and how doubly sacred the words he preached to us last Sunday from the pulpit, now that to-morrow we are not to hear him.

He is placed in the castle at Coburg, in order to be nearer the Diet at Augsburg, so as to aid Dr. Melancthon, who is there, with his counsel.

The Elector dare not trust the royal heart and straightforward spirit of our Luther among the prudent diplomatists at the Diet.

Mistress Luther is having a portrait taken of their little Magdalen, who is now a year old, and especially dear to the Doctor, to send to him in the fortress.

_June_, 1530.

Letters have arrived from and about Dr. Luther. His father is dead--the brave, persevering, self-denying, truthful old man, who had stamped so much of his own character on his son. "It is meet I should mourn such a parent," Luther writes, "who through the sweat of his brow had nurtured and educated me, and made me what I am." He felt it keenly, especially since he could not be with his father at the last; although he gives thanks that he lived in these times of light, and departed strong in the faith of Christ. Dr. Luther's secretary writes, however, that the portrait of his little Magdalen comforts him much. He has hung it on the wall opposite to the place where he sits at meals.

Dr. Luther is now the eldest of his race. He stands in the foremost rank of the generations slowly advancing to confront death.

To-day I have been sitting with Mistress Luther in the garden behind the

Augustei, under the shade of the pear-tree, where she so often sits beside the Doctor. Our children were playing around us--her little Hanschen with the boys, while the little Magdalen sat cooing like a dove over some flowers, which she was pulling to pieces, on the gra.s.s at our feet.

She talked to me much about the Doctor; how dearly he loves the little ones, and what lessons of divine love and wisdom he learns from their little plays. He says often, that beautiful as all G.o.d's works are, little children are the fairest of all; that the dear angels especially watch over them. He is very tender with them, and says sometimes they are better theologians than he is, for they trust G.o.d. Deeper prayers and higher theology he never hopes to reach than the first the little ones learn--the Lord's Prayer and the Catechism. Often, she said, he says over the Catechism, to remind himself of all the treasures of faith we possess.

It is delightful too, she says, to listen to the heavenly theology he draws from birds and leaves and flowers, and the commonest gifts of G.o.d or events of life. At table, a plate of fruit will open to him a whole volume of G.o.d's bounty, on which he will discourse. Or, taking a rose in his hand, he will say, "A man who could make one rose like this would be accounted most wonderful; and G.o.d scatters countless such flowers around us! But the very infinity of his gifts makes us blind to them."