Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family Part 71

_February_ 17th.

Good news for us all at Wittemberg! Mistress Luther has received a letter from the doctor, dated the 14th February, announcing his speedy return:--

"To my kind dear wife Katharin Lutherin von Bora, at Wittemberg.

"Grace and peace in the Lord, dear Kathe! We hope this week to come home again, if G.o.d will. G.o.d has shown us great grace; for the lords have arranged all through their referees, except two or three articles--one of which is that Count Gebhard and Count Albrecht should again become brothers, which I undertake to-day, and will invite them to be my guests, that they may speak to each other, for hitherto they have been dumb, and have embittered one another with severe letters.

"The young men are all in the best spirits, make excursions with fools' bells on sledges--the young ladies also--and amuse themselves together; and among them also Count Gebhard's son.

So we must understand G.o.d is _exauditor prec.u.m_.

"I send to thee some game which the Countess Albrecht has presented to me. She rejoices with all her heart at the peace.

Thy sons are still at Mansfeld. Jacob Luther will take good care of them. We have food and drink here like n.o.blemen, and we are waited on well--too well, indeed--so that we might forget you at Wittemberg. I have no ailments.

"This thou canst show to Master Philip, to Doctor Pomer, and to Doctor Creuzer. The report has reached this place that Doctor Martin has been s.n.a.t.c.hed away (_i. e._, by the devil), as they say at Magdeburg and at Leipzig. Such fictions these countrymen compose, who see as far as their noses. Some say the emperor is thirty miles from this, at Soest, in Westphalia; some that the Frenchman is captive, and also the Landgrave. But let _us_ sing and say, we will wait what G.o.d the Lord will do.--Eisleben, on the Sunday Valentini. M. LUTHER, D."

So the work of peace-making is done, and Dr. Luther is to return to us this week--long, we trust, to enjoy among us the peace-maker's beat.i.tude.

x.x.xVII.

Fritz's Story.

EISLEBEN, 1546.

It has been quite a festival day at Eisleben. The child who, sixty-three years since, was born here to John Luther, the miner, returns to-day the greatest man in the empire, to arbitrate in a family dispute of the Counts of Mansfeld.

As Eva and I watched him enter the town to-day from the door of our humble happy home, she said,--

"He that is greatest among you shall be as he that doth serve."

These ten last years of service have, however, aged him much!

I could not conceal from myself that they had. There are traces of suffering on the expressive face, and there is a touch of feebleness in the form and step.

"How is it," I said to Eva, "that Else or Thekla did not tell us of this? He is certainly much feebler."

"They are always with him," she said, "and we never see what Time is doing, love; but only what he has done."

Her words made me thoughtful. Could it be that such changes were pa.s.sing on us also, and that we were failing to observe them?

When Dr. Luther and the throng had pa.s.sed, we returned into the house, and Eva resumed her knitting, while I recommenced the study of my sermon; but secretly I raised my eyes from my books and surveyed her. If time had indeed thus been changing that beloved form, it was better I should know it, to treasure more the precious days he was so treacherously stealing.

Yet scarcely, with the severest scrutiny, could I detect the trace of age or suffering on her face or form. The calm brow was as white and calm as ever. The golden hair, smoothly braided under her white matronly cap, was as free from grey as even our Agnes', who was flitting in and out of the winter suns.h.i.+ne, busy with household work in the next room.

There was a roundness on the cheek, although, perhaps, its curve was a little changed; and when she looked up, and met my eyes, was there not the very same happy, child-like smile as ever, that seemed to overflow from a world of suns.h.i.+ne within?

"No!" I said; "Eva, thank G.o.d, I have not deluded myself! Time has not stolen a march on you yet."

"Think how I have been s.h.i.+elded, Fritz," she said. "What a sunny and sheltered life mine has been, never encountering any storm except under the shelter of such a home and such a love. But Dr. Luther has been so long the one foremost and highest, on whose breast the first force of every storm has burst."

Just then our Heinz came in.

"Your father is trying to prove I am not growing old," she said.

"Who said such a thing of our mother?" asked Heinz, turning fiercely to Agnes.

"No one," I said; "but it startled me to see the change in Dr. Luther, and I began to fear what changes might have been going on un.o.bserved in our own home."

"Is Dr. Luther much changed?" said Heinz. "I think I never saw a n.o.bler face, so resolute and true, and with such a keen glance in his dark eyes. He might have been one of the emperor's greatest generals--he looks so like a veteran."

"Is he not a veteran, Heinz?" said Eva. "Has he not fought all our battles for us for years? What did you think of him, Agnes?"

"I remember best the look he gave my father and you," she said. "His face looked so full of kindness; I thought how happy he must make his home."

That evening was naturally a time, with Eva and me, for going over the past. And how much of it is linked with Dr. Luther! That our dear home exists at all is, through G.o.d, his work. And more even than that: the freedom and peace of our hearts came to us chiefly at first through him.

All the past came back to me when I saw his face again; as if suddenly flashed on me from a mirror. The days when he sang before Aunt Ursula Cotta's door at Eisenach--when the voice which has since stirred all Christendom to its depths sang carols for a piece of bread. Then the gradual pa.s.sing away of the outward trials of poverty, through his father's prosperity and liberality--the brilliant prospects opening before him at the university--his sudden, yet deliberate closing of all those earthly schemes--the descent into the dark and bitter waters, where he fought the fight for his age, and, all but sinking, found the Hand that saved him, and came to the sh.o.r.e again on the right side; and not alone, but upheld evermore by the hand that rescued him, and which he has made known to the hearts of thousands.

Then I seemed to see him stand before the emperor at Worms, in that day when men did not know whether to wonder most at his gentleness or his daring--in that hour which men thought was his hour of conflict, but which was in truth his hour of triumph, after the real battle had been fought and the real victory won.

And now twenty years more had pa.s.sed away; the Bible has been translated by him into German, and is speaking in countless homes; homes hallowed (and, in many instances, created) by his teaching.

"What then," said Eva, "has been gained by his teaching and his work?"

"The yoke of tradition, and of the Papacy, is broken," I said. "The gospel is preached in England, and, with more or less result, throughout Germany. In Denmark, an evangelical pastor has consecrated King Christian III. In the low countries, and elsewhere, men and women have been martyred, as in the primitive ages, for the faith. In France and in Switzerland evangelical truth has been embraced by tens of thousands, although not in Dr. Luther's form, nor only from his lips."

"These are great results," she replied; "but they are external--at least, we can only see the outside of them. What fruit is there in this little world, around us at Eisleben, of whose heart we know something?"

"The golden age is, indeed, not come," I said, "or the Counts of Mansfeld would not be quarrelling about church patronage, and needing Dr. Luther as a peace-maker. Nor would Dr. Luther need so continually to warn the rich against avarice, and to denounce the selfishness which spent thousands of florins to buy exemption from future punishment, but grudges a few kreuzers to spread the glad tidings of the grace of G.o.d.

If covetousness is idolatry, it is too plain that the Reformation has, with many, only changed the idol."

"Yet," replied Eva, "it is certainly something to have the idol removed from the Church to the market, to have it called by a despised instead of by a hallowed name, and disguised in any rather than in sacred vestments."

Thus we came to the conclusion that the Reformation had done for us what sunrise does. It had wakened life, and ripened real fruits of heaven in many places, and it had revealed evil and noisome things in their true forms. The world, the flesh and the devil remain unchanged; but it is much to have learned that the world is not a certain definite region outside the cloister, but an atmosphere to be guarded against as around us everywhere; that the flesh is not the love of kindred or of nature, but of _self in these_, and that the devil's most fiery dart is distrust of G.o.d. For us personally, and ours, how infinitely much Dr. Luther has done; and if for us and ours, how much for countless other hearts and homes unknown to us!

_Monday_, _February_ 15, 1543.

Dr. Luther administered the communion yesterday, and preached. It has been a great help to have him going in and out among us. Four times he has preached; it seems to us, with as much point and fervour as ever.

To-day, however, there was a deep solemnity about his words. His text was in Matt. xi., "Fear not, therefore; for there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hid that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light; and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye on the house-tops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in h.e.l.l. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered." He must have felt feebler than he seemed, for he closed with the words--

"This, and much more, may be said from the pa.s.sage; but I am too weak, and _here we will close_."

Eva seemed very grave all the rest of the day; and when I returned from the school on this morning, she met me with an anxious face at the door, and said--

"Is the doctor better?"