Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands Part 11

"He confessed to having read and disseminated the writings of Wycliffe.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN HUSS.]

"He was required to denounce the English reformer as one of the souls of the lost.

"'If he be lost, then I could wish my soul were with his,' he said firmly.

"This was p.r.o.nounced to be heresy.

"The emperor declared that he was not obliged to keep his word to heretics, and that his promise to protect the life of the Bohemian was no longer binding.

"He was condemned to death. He was stripped of his priestly robes, and the cup of the sacrament was taken from his hands with a curse.

"'I trust I shall drink of it this day in the kingdom of heaven,' he said.

"'We devote thy soul to the devils in h.e.l.l,' was the answer of the prelates.

"He was led away, guarded by eight hundred hors.e.m.e.n, to a meadow without the gates. Here he was burned alive, and triumphed in soul amid the flames.

"Such was the end of John Huss, the Savonarola of Constance.

"We made an excursion upon the lake. The appearance of the old city from the water is one of the most beautiful that can meet the eye. It seems more like an artist's dream than a reality,--floating towers in a crystal atmosphere.

"'Girt round with rugged mountains, The fair Lake Constance lies.'

"The lake is walled with mountains, and wears a chain of castle-like towns, like a necklace.

"It would be delightful to spend a summer there. Excursions on the steamers can be made at almost any time of the day. One can visit in this way five different old countries,--Baden, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland."

Mr. Beal's succinct account of the old city led to a discussion of the gains of civilization from martyrdoms for principle and progress. He was followed by Master Lewis, who gave the Cla.s.s some account of

BISMARCK AND THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT.

In the eyes of the mult.i.tude, Bismarck is a great but unscrupulous statesman, intent upon uniting Germany and making it the leading nation of Europe. As a man, he seems hard-headed, self-willed, and iron-handed. As a ruler, he is looked upon as the incarnation of the despotic spirit,--a believer in force, an infidel as to moral suasion.

Many persons who sympathize with his policy censure the means by which he executes it. They do not consider that so long as that policy is threatened from within and without, the Chancellor must trust in force; nor do they read the lesson of the centuries,--_Force_ must rule until _Right_ reigns.

The fact is not apprehended by the unthinking mult.i.tude, that the work of grafting a statesman's policy into the life of a nation requires, like grafting a fruit-tree, excision, incision, pressure, and time.

But it is not of Bismarck's policy I would first speak, but of that which few credit him with possessing,--his moral convictions.

Strange as it may seem to those who know only the Chancellor, Bismarck is not only a religious man, but his religion is the foundation of his policy.

Dr. Busch, one of the statesman's secretaries, in a recent book, "Bismarck in the Franco-German War," narrates incidents and reports private conversations which justify this a.s.sertion.

On the eve of his leaving Berlin to join the army, the Chancellor partook of the Lord's Supper. The solemn rite was celebrated in his own room, that it might not appear as an exhibition of official piety.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISMARCK.]

One morning Bismarck was called suddenly from his bed to see a French general. Dr. Busch, on entering the bedroom just after the chief had left it, found everything in disorder. On the floor was a book of devotion, "Daily Watchwords and Texts of the Moravian Brethren for 1870." On the table by the bed was another, "Daily Refreshment for Believing Christians."

"The Chancellor reads in them every night," said Bismarck's valet to Dr. Busch, seeing his surprise.

One day, while dining with his staff, several of whom were "free-thinkers," Bismarck turned the conversation into a serious vein. A secretary had spoken of the feeling of duty which pervaded the German army, from the private to the general.

Bismarck caught the idea and tossed it still higher. "The feeling of duty," he said, "in a man who submits to be shot dead on his post, alone, in the dark, is due to what is left of belief in our people.

He knows that there is Some One who sees him when the lieutenant does not see him."

"Do you believe, Your Excellency," asked a secretary, "that they really reflect on this?"

"Reflect? no: it is a feeling, a tone, an instinct. If they reflect they lose it. Then they talk themselves out of it.

"How," Bismarck continued, "without faith in a revealed religion, in a G.o.d who wills what is good, in a Supreme Judge, and in a future life, men can live together harmoniously, each doing his duty and letting every one else do his, I do not understand."

There was a pause in the conversation, and the Chancellor then gave expression to his faith.

"If I were no longer a Christian," he said, "I would not remain for an hour at my post. If I could not count upon my G.o.d, a.s.suredly I should not do so on earthly masters.

"Why should I," he continued, "disturb myself and work unceasingly in this world, exposing myself to all sorts of vexations, if I had not the feeling that I must do my duty for G.o.d's sake? If I did not believe in a Divine order, which has destined this German nation for something good and great, I would at once give up the business of a diplomatist. Orders and t.i.tles have no charm for me."

There was another pause, for the staff were silent before this revelation of their chief's inner life. He continued to lay bare the foundations of his statesmanship.

"I owe the firmness which I have shown for ten years against all possible absurdities only to my decided faith. Take from me this faith, and you take from me my fatherland. If I were not a believing Christian, if I had not the supernatural basis of religion, you would not have had such a Chancellor.

"I delight in country life, in the woods, and in nature," he said, in the course of the conversation. "Take from me my relation to G.o.d, and I am the man who will pack up to-morrow and be off to Varzin [his farm] to grow my oats."

The surprise with which these revelations of a statesman's inner life are read is due to their singularity. Neither history nor biography is so full of instances of statesmen confessing their faith in G.o.d and in Christianity, at a dinner-table surrounded by "free-thinkers," as to prevent the reading of these revelations from being both interesting and stimulating.

"I live among heathen," said the Chancellor, as he concluded this acknowledgment that his religion was the basis of his statesmanship.

"I don't seek to make proselytes, but I am obliged to confess my faith."

Prince von Bismarck was born in 1813. His political history is similar to Emperor William's, which I related at our last meeting.

The Emperor and his Chancellor, in matters of state, have been as one man. Each has aimed to secure the unity of the German empire.

Each has sought to disarm, on the one hand, that branch of the Catholic party who give their allegiance to Rome rather than the government, the so-called Ultramontanes; and the Socialists, on the other hand, who would overthrow the monarchy. The two strong men have ruled with a firm hand, but with much wisdom. Germany could hardly have a more liberal government, unless she became a republic.

The stories of the evening were chiefly selected from Hoffman. They were too long and terrible to be given here. Among them were "The Painter" and "The Elementary Spirit." In introducing these stories, Mr. Beal related some touching and strange incidents of their author.

HOFFMAN.

Hoffman died in Berlin. His career as a musical artist had been a.s.sociated with the Prussian-Polish provinces, where he seems to have acquired habits of dissipation in brilliant but gay musical society.

Hoffman had exquisite refinement of taste, and sensitiveness to the beautiful in nature and art, but the exhilaration of the wine-cup was to him a fatal knowledge. It made him in the end a poor, despised, inferior man.

As he lost his self-mastery, he also seemed to lose his self-respect. He mingled with the depraved, and carried the consciousness of his inferiority into all his a.s.sociations with better society.