Pine Needles Part 25

"How would the answer come, Mr. Murray?" asked Flora.

"He will know when he gets it. Come, Meredith--read."

"About the man with the catechism?" said Maggie.

"If you like. It will be a change from the Saxon times," said Meredith.

And he wheeled about a little and reclined upon the rock, so as to turn his face towards his hearers. "But what a delicious place to read and talk, Mr. Murray!"

"Nothing can be better."

"This story begins with Pastor Harms's account of part of one of the Mission festivals that used to be held at Hermannsburg every year."

"Will that be interesting?" said Flora.

"Listen and see. I pa.s.s over the account of the first day."

CHAPTER XIV.

"'The first day's celebration of our Mission festival was at an end. It was then not early, but still on until late in the night the sounds of the songs of praise and thankfulness were to be heard in the houses, from the parsonage out to the furthest outlying houses of the peasants, and so it was also in the surrounding villages; for the parish village could by no means accommodate all the guests who had come to the festival, albeit not only the chambers and dwelling-rooms, but also the haylofts were made lodging-places for the sleepers. And that was a blessed evening, when so many brethren and sisters from far and near could refresh themselves with one another's company and pour out their hearts together. I thank G.o.d that so many pastors and teachers were come, too, and also our faithful superintendent was not wanting. It is right that the heads of the Church should not be missing at such a festival.

"'The next day--and we had prayed the Lord to give us good weather for it--we were to go to a place in the midst of the lonely heath, called Tiefenthal."'

"What does that mean?" Maggie interrupted.

"_Tief_ means deep. _Thal_ means valley."

"'Deep valley,'" said Maggie. "But I do not understand what a _heath_ is."

"Naturally. We do not have them in this country, that ever I heard of,"

said Meredith.

"Neither here nor in England," said Mr. Murray. "For miles and miles the Luneburger heath is an ocean of purple bloom; that is, in the time when the heather is in blossom. But there are woods also in places, and in other places lovely valleys break the spread of the purple heather, where gra.s.s and trees and running water make lovely pictures. Sometimes one comes to a hill covered with trees; and here and there you find solitary houses and bits of farms, but scattered apart from each other, so that great tracts of the heath are perfectly lonely and still. You see nothing and hear nothing living, except perhaps some lapwings in the air, and a lizard now and then, and humming beetles, and maybe here and there some frogs where there happens to be a wet place, and perhaps a landrail; elsewhere a general, soft, confused humming and buzzing of creatures that you cannot see, and the purple waves of heather, only interrupted here and there by a group of firs or a growth of bushes along the edge of a ditch."

"O Uncle Eden!" cried Maggie, "have you been there? And do you know the village, too?"

"_The_ village? Pastor Harms's village--do you mean, Hermannsburg? Yes.

It is like many others. Two long lines of cottages, the little river Oerze cutting it in two, beautiful old trees shading it,--that is the village. The cottages are not near each other; gardens and fields lie between; and at the gable of every house is a wooden horse or horse's head; from the old Saxon times, you know. No dirt and no squalor and no beggars nor misery to be seen in Hermannsburg. That, I suppose, is much owing to Pastor Harms's influence."

"Thank you, Uncle Eden," said Maggie with a sigh of intense interest.

"Now you can go on, Ditto. They were going out into the heath. All the people?"

"I suppose so. 'To a place in the midst of the heath solitudes called Tiefenthal. Why? I had not told them that; I wanted to tell it to them first of all on the spot. I had another reason besides, though; I wanted to have the sun beat a little in African fas.h.i.+on on the heads of the guests at our festival, so that our brethren in Africa might not be the only ones hot. So at nine o'clock the next morning the great crowd of those who were to make the pilgrimage with us from Hermannsburg, were a.s.sembled at the Mission-house under the banner of the cross, which fluttered joyously from the high flagstaff. It was hard for me not to be able to walk with the rest, but I was only just recovered from a severe illness. A pilgrimage is the pleasantest going on earth to me. One can sing by the way so joyfully with the hosts that are moving along; one can talk so cordially and so familiarly about the kingdom of G.o.d in the crowd of the brethren; and now and then one gets a chance by a shallow ditch to tumble one of one's fellow pilgrims over, especially one of the children. I had to do without all that and get into a waggon. When I came to the Mission-house, the procession set itself in motion towards the high grounds of the heath. With sounding of trumpets and amid songs of praise the crowds travelled on, for nearly two hours long, all the while mounting higher and higher, and truly, for G.o.d had heard our prayer, under a burning suns.h.i.+ne. Many a one had to sweat for it soundly; even I in the waggon. It was a picturesque procession; a whole long row of carriages and these crowds of people; the solitary heath had become all alive. At last a not inconsiderable height was reached, where the ground fell off suddenly into a steep, precipitous dell. This was Tiefenthal. It is a very narrow valley, or rather a cut between two hills, one of which is bare, the other covered with a luxuriant growth of evergreens. Below stands an empty bee enclosure, called the Pastor's Beefield, because it as well as the wood-covered hill belongs to the pastor of Hermannsburg. From all the farms round about hosts of pilgrims were coming at the same time with us, travelling along; and like the brooks which after a thunder-shower plunge down from the hills to the lower ground, even so the waves of humanity rolled towards Tiefenthal.

At last, then, I took my stand on the slope of the bare hill, surrounded by the brethren who bore the trumpets in their hands, the blast of which sounded mightily through the dell and broke in a quivering echo upon the opposite hill. Countless hosts lay upon the two slopes and in the bottom of the dell, and out of many thousand throats the song of praise to the Lord rose into the blue dome of the sky.

"'First was sung, with and without accompaniment of the trumpets, the lovely hymn--

"Rejoice, ye Christians all, His Son by G.o.d is given," &c.

to the glorious melody, "Aus meines Herzens Grund!" Then, when the mighty sounds died away, followed the preaching, upon Hebrews xi.

32-40.'"

"Read that pa.s.sage, Maggie," said her uncle.

Maggie read:

"'And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: and others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being dest.i.tute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy;) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.'--Uncle Eden, that was a great while ago, wasn't it?"

"_That_ was."

"But I mean, people don't do so now, do they?"

"Not here, just now, in America. But nothing is changed in human nature or the relations of the two parties, since the Lord said to the serpent, 'I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.'"

"But does that mean _that_, Uncle Eden? I thought the seed of the woman was Christ?"

"It is. But the devil fights against Christ in the persons of his people; and the 'seed of the serpent,' the children of the devil, hate the children of G.o.d, from Cain's time down. 'If they have persecuted me they will also persecute you,' the Lord said."

"There is no persecution here, though, in this country, Mr. Murray?"

said Flora.

"Not persecution with fire and sword. But nothing is changed, Miss Flora. It will be fire and sword again, just so soon as the devil sees his opportunity. So all history a.s.sures us. Go on, Meredith; let us see what Pastor Harms made of his text--or doesn't he tell?"

"I'll go on, sir, and you'll see. 'As you have just heard out of the Holy Scriptures, so it has been, my dear friends, with the faithful witnesses and martyrs of the truth; hacked to pieces, run through the body, slain with the sword, or left to wander in the deserts, on the mountains, in dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy. Even in the New Testament we read how Peter and Paul had to suffer imprisonment, how Stephen was stoned, James beheaded with the sword; how the Jews persecuted all the confessors of the most blessed Saviour, dragged them out of their houses, threw them into prisons, and took joy in stoning them. And even as the Jews began it, the heathen have carried it on; and not hundreds or thousands, but many hundred thousands of Christians in the ten great Christian persecutions sealed their belief in the Lord Jesus and their faithful confession of His holy name with their blood. In our last year's Mission festival in Muden, I told you how the holy apostles Peter and Paul met their death like heroes and martyrs; our beloved Hermannsburg church is named after them; and I told you about Saint Lawrence, after whom the church in Muden is called. "And to-day," you are questioning, "to-day are you going to tell us about martyrs again? We conclude so, from the text you have chosen!

But wherefore always about martyrs?" My beloved, I have a special love to the martyrs; and I do not know how it happens, at every Mission festival they come with special vividness before my mind. I believe it arises from this: that I am persuaded the ever-growing zeal for missions among all earnest Christians is a token that before long the Church of Christ will have to take her flight out of Europe; and so the unconscious efforts of Christians is towards preparing a place for the Church among the wilds of heathenism. And therefore I believe that the times of martyrdom will cease to be far-off times for us any longer; that the kingdom of Antichrist is drawing near with speedier and speedier steps, is becoming daily more powerful; the apostasy from Christ is becoming constantly greater and more decided; Christianity is growing more and more like a putrid carca.s.s, and where the carca.s.s is, there the eagles are gathered together. And therefore missions are becoming more evidently the banner around which all living Christians rally; for what is written in the Revelation xii. 14-17, will soon receive its fulfilment. And when I see such great crowds of Christians singing praise and keeping holy day, then the thought always comes to me, How would it be if persecution were to break loose now? would all these be true witnesses and martyrs, and rather bear suffering, and yield up the last drop of their blood and endure any torments, than fall away and deny Christ? Oh, and when I reflect how mightily in those times of b.l.o.o.d.y persecution the Christian Church gave her testimony and fought and suffered; what a power of Faith, Hope, and Love made itself known, that could shout for joy at the stake; and when I think how cold, how lukewarm, how loveless Christianity is now--I could almost wish for a mighty persecution to come, to break up the rotten peace of Christians, who have grown easy and luxurious and to arouse again the right heroism of the soldiers of G.o.d.

"'It is not only in the times of the Jews and the Romans, at the first founding of the Christian Church, that such mighty battles of heroes have been fought; the dear and blessed time of the Reformation has had its martyrs, who for the pure Word and true sacrament of our beloved Lutheran Church staked their persons and lives. Who does not know those two faithful disciples, who amid songs of praise were burned at the stake at Cologne on the Rhine? that Heinrich von Zutphen who had to give up his life in Ditmarsh? those thousands who were murdered or burned by the Catholic Inquisition? those thousands who had to pine away in the prisons and cloisters of the Catholics? without reckoning the hundreds of thousands in the religious wars stirred up by the Catholics, who made the battle-fields fat with their blood, and have died for the faith of their Church? And now I will tell you why I have brought you here to-day to this Tiefenthal. We stand upon holy ground here, upon ground of the martyrs. Hear what your fathers suffered for the sake of the pure, true Word and sacrament.

"'The story that I am going to tell you must have been acted out somewhere between 1521 and 1530. For in the chronicle where I have read the story mention is made of the Diet at Speier, but nothing is said of the Diet at Augsburg.'"

"Stop, Ditto, please," said Maggie. "What's a _diet_?"

"The supreme council of the German Empire, composed of princes and representatives of independent cities of the empire. The famous Diet of Augsburg was held in 1530."

"What was it famous for?"

"Famous for an open, bold confession and declaration of the Protestant faith by a few Protestant princes in the midst of the crowd of Catholics a.s.sembled at the Diet."

"Well, Meredith!"

"'Nothing is said of the Diet at Augsburg. And certainly some mention would have been made of it if it had already taken place, since our beloved princes the Dukes Ernst and Francis of Luneburg had their share in the precious confession of faith. At that time there was in Hermannsburg a young Catholic pastor, descended from a n.o.ble patrician family; he was called Christopher Grunhagen, and was a kind-hearted man.

One day'"----

"Stop a minute, Ditto. Some people were Catholics then, and some were Protestants?"

"Why, that is how they are now, Maggie," said her sister.