XXVI.
Fritz's Story.
_December_ 31, 1522.
We are betrothed. Solemnly in the presence of our family and friends Evahas promised to be my wife; and in a few weeks we are to be married. Ourhome (at all events, at first) is to be in the Thuringian forest, in theparsonage belonging to Ulrich von Gersdorf's castle. The old priest istoo aged to do anything. Chriemhild has set her heart on having us toreform the peasantry, and they all believe the quiet and the pure air ofthe forest will restore my health, which has been rather shattered byall I have gone through during these last months, although not as muchas they think. I feel strong enough for anything already. What I havelost during all those years in being separated from her! How poor andone-sided my life has been! How strong the rest her presence gives me,makes me to do whatever work God may give me!
Amazing blasphemy on God to assert that the order in which he hasfounded human life is disorder, that the love which the Son of Godcompares to the relation between himself and his Church sullies orlowers the heart.
Have these years then been lost? Have I wandered away wilful and deludedfrom the lot of blessing God had appointed me, since that terrible timeof the plague, at Eisenach? Have all these been wasted years? Has allthe suffering been fruitless, unnecessary pain? And, after all, do Ireturn with precious time lost and strength diminished just to the pointI might have reached so long ago!
For Eva I am certain this is not so; every step of her way, the lovingHand has led her. Did not the convent through her become a home or a wayto the Eternal Home to many? But for me? No, for me also the years havebrought more than they have taken away! Those who are to help theperplexed and toiling men of their time, must first go down into theconflicts of their time. Is it not this which makes even Martin Lutherthe teacher of our nation? Is it not this which qualifies weak andsinful men to be preachers of the gospel instead of angels from heaven?
The holy angels sang on their heavenly heights the glad tidings of greatjoy, but the shepherds, the fishermen, and the publican spoke it in thehomes of men! The angel who liberated the apostles from prison said, asif spontaneously, from the fulness of his heart, "Go speak to the peoplethe words _of this life_." But the trembling lips of Peter who haddenied, and Thomas who had doubted, and John who had misunderstood, wereto speak the life-giving words to men, denying, doubting, misconceivingmen, to tell what they knew, and how the Saviour could forgive.
The voice that had been arrested in cowardly curses by the look ofdivine pardoning love, had a tone in it the Archangel Michael's couldnever have!
And when the Pharisees, hardest of all, were to be reached, God took aPharisee of the Pharisees, a blasphemer, a persecutor, one who couldsay, "I might also have confidence in the flesh," "I persecuted theChurch of God."
Was David's secret contest in vain, when slaying the lion and the bear,to defend those few sheep in the wilderness, he proved the weapons withwhich he slew Goliath and rescued the host of Israel? Were MartinLuther's years in the convent of Erfurt lost? Or have they not been theschool-days of his life, the armoury where his weapons were forged, thegymnasium in which his eye and hand were trained for the battle-field?
He has seen the monasteries from within; he has felt the monastic lifefrom within. He can say of all these internal rules, "I have provedthem, and found them powerless to sanctify the heart." It is this whichgives the irresistible power to his speaking and writing. It is thiswhich by God's grace enables him to translate the Epistles of Paul thePharisee and the Apostle as he has done. The truths had been translatedby the Holy Spirit into the language of his experience, and graven onhis heart long before; so that in rendering the Greek into German healso testified of things he had seen, and the Bible from his pen readsas if it had been originally written in German, for the German people.
To me also in my measure these years have not been time lost. There aremany truths that one only learns in their fulness by proving the bitterbondage of the errors they contradict.
Perhaps also we shall help each other and others around us better forhaving been thus trained apart. I used to dream of the joy of leadingher into life. But now God gives her back to me enriched with all thoseyears of separate experience, not as the Eva of childhood, when I sawher last, but ripened to perfect womanhood; not merely to reflect mythoughts, but to blend the fulness of her life with mine.