THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH CONGRESS.
The second annual Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States was held at Philadelphia during the early part of November. Church congresses are new things in this country, and the Episcopalians are not yet quite at home in them. Their first experiment, made at New York in 1874, was not wholly successful. Some of their leading bishops and presbyters treated it rather cavalierly, apparently in the fear that it was going to weaken the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline, and open vexatious questions which the church for years had been expending all its learning and ingenuity in trying not to answer. But church congresses seemed to be very proper and respectable things for every denomination which laid claim to antiquity: they are common in the mother-church of England; they are efficient and interesting organizations in what our Anglican friends are pleased to call the Roman branch of the church of Christ; Dr. Döllinger has them regularly in the Old-Catholic “branch”; and so the originators of the movement in the American “branch” have persevered in their attempt to establish them here. The meeting in Philadelphia appears to have been all that its promoters could have reasonably expected. The denominational papers of various shades of opinion concur in believing that the permanency of the Congress as an annual institution is now nearly secured; and we find one of these journals rejoicing that the meeting passed off with “entire cordiality,” and that nothing in the proceedings “elicited prejudice or excited hostile action.” This indeed was something to boast of. Perhaps it would have been still more gratifying had not the same paper explained that this unexpected peaceableness of the Congress arose “from the fact that no resolutions were adopted, no legislation proposed, no elections held. When any of these are distinctly in view, those who participate range themselves into parties, and it is almost impossible not to resort to measures to ensure victory which generate unkind feelings and provoke exaggerated statements.” All which gives us a queer idea of the manner in which the Holy Ghost is supposed to operate in the councils of the Protestant Episcopal Church. But no matter. Let us be glad, for the sake of propriety, that this was merely a meeting for talk, and not for action. The strict rules applicable to conventions, synods, and other business meetings were not in force. The topics of discussion were not so much points of doctrine as minor questions of discipline and methods of applying the machinery of the church to the every-day work of religion. And with the knowledge that no vote was to be taken upon any subject whatever, the Congress unanimously agreed to let every man say what he pleased. The great variety of irreconcilable things which it accordingly pleased the gentlemen to say seems to have attracted remark, and denominational papers point to it with pride as a proof of the large toleration allowed within the bosom of the church. If they like it, far be it from us to interfere with their enjoyment.
The Episcopal Church is one of the largest and richest of the Protestant sects. Its clergy are popularly supposed to boast of more general culture and enjoy fuller opportunities for study than those of the other religious bodies, and its people are found in large numbers among the educated and well-to-do classes. A congress of this church, gathered from all parts of the country, representing all shades of opinion, and possessing almost unbounded facilities for talk and deliberation, ought therefore to have elicited a great deal that was worth remembering. The programme of the sessions was stated in an alluring manner by Bishop Clarke, of Rhode Island, who made the introductory address. “We come,” said he, “to consider how the doctrine and organization of the church can be brought most effectually to sanctity”; and then he went on to speak briefly of the particular things, in our daily experience, which the church ought to purify and bless—our business affairs, our amusements, our care of the poor, our family relations, the marriage tie—practical points all of them, and points, too, in which the church and the state are more or less in contact.
Well, having laid out this plan of work, how did the Congress address itself to it? The first session gave a rather curious illustration of the practical spirit of the assemblage; for the reverend gentlemen, by way of “bringing the doctrine and organization of the church most effectually to sanctity,” rushed straightway with hot haste into the subject of “ultramontanism and civil authority,” and pounded upon the doors of the Vatican the whole afternoon. The Rev. Francis Wharton, D.D., of Cambridge, Mass., was careful in the outset to distinguish between ultramontanism and the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. The mass of us, he believes, have always been loyal to the territory of whose population we form a part, but our loyalty has no connection with our religion. If we followed the teachings of our church, Dr. Wharton thinks we should be a dangerous set of people. “Ultramontanism teaches that the Pope, a foreign prince, deriving his support from a foreign civilization, is entitled to set aside governments which he considers disloyal, and to annul such institutions as he does not approve.” We confess that we do not know what Dr. Wharton means by the Pope deriving his support from a foreign civilization. If he means his physical support, then the doctor is both wrong and right; for that is derived from the faithful of the whole world. If he means that his authority is derived from a foreign civilization, then the doctor is apparently irreverent; for the papal authority is derived from the institution of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and surely a respectable Cambridge divine would not call that a foreign civilization.
As for the distinction which is drawn between American and ultramontane Catholics, let us repudiate it with all possible warmth before we go any further. Ultramontanism is an objectionable word, because it was invented to localize a school of religious doctrine which is the only catholic school—the school acknowledged all over the world; but if it be understood as defining that spirit of faith and piety which yields all love and obedience to the Vicar of Christ, accepts all the Vatican decrees gladly and without reserve, is not afraid of paying too much respect to the Holy See, or showing too much humility before God, or believing one little particle more than we are commanded to believe under pain of anathema, then the Catholics of America are ultramontane Catholics to a man. Probably there are no Catholics in any country of the world less disposed to compromise in matters of religious duty, and more thoroughly imbued with filial reverence and love for the Head of God’s church on earth, than the Catholics of the United States. The spirit of the church in Rome is the spirit of the church in America; and when Dr. Wharton asserts that “the political tenets of ultramontanism are repudiated by the leading Catholic statesmen of our land,” he makes an utterly erroneous statement, against which American Catholics will be the first to protest. It is very true that with the fictitious ultramontanism conceived of his fears and prejudices neither Americans nor any other sensible people have the slightest sympathy. But show us what Rome teaches, and there you have precisely what the church in the United States accepts. If it is true, therefore that the Pope claims authority “to set aside governments which he considers disloyal, and to annul such institutions as he does not approve,” it must be true that America upholds his pretensions. Dr. Wharton may live in the fear that His Holiness will some day send the Noble Guard to set aside the government of Gen. Grant whenever it becomes “disloyal”; while he may well feel an absolute certainty that our common-school system, our constitutional prohibition of the establishment of a state church, our laws against sectarian appropriations, and various other wicked and heretical provisions found on our statute-books, will sooner or later be “annulled” by a decree from the Vatican. He need not flatter himself that any superior enlightenment among the Catholics of America will save the Protestant community from the miserable fate in store for it. We are not a bit wiser or better than the Pope.
The possible interference of the Vatican with our Congresses and ballot-boxes Dr. Wharton evidently regards as a very remote danger. There are points, however, he thinks, where the Vatican clashes every day with the civil power, and where it ought to be resisted with all the energy at our command. And just at this part of the reverend doctor’s address we should like very much to have seen the face of Bishop Clarke. In his introductory remarks Bishop Clarke told the Congress that one of the most important subjects for churchmen to consider was the influence or authority of the church over the family relations. “The Gospel obtained hold of the family before it touched the state. How does the condition of the marriage bond stand to-day? In some of our States it is as easy to solve it as it is to join it. Is this the religion of which we have made such boast?” But here, before the echoes of the bishop’s words have fairly died away, is the Rev. Dr. Wharton on his feet denouncing as a crime the very interference which Bishop Clarke inculcated as a duty. It is one of the usurpations of ultramontanism, says the Cambridge doctor, to annul civil marriages which the state holds binding, and to treat as invalid divorces which the state holds good. This is one of the most serious conflicts between the state and the Vatican, and it is one, if we understand aright the somewhat imperfect report of his remarks, in which Protestant Episcopalians must prepare themselves to take an earnest part, remembering that, while their church is free, it is “a free church within a free sovereign state, and that this state, in its own secular sovereignty, is supreme.” Here, then, we have a distinct declaration that the family relation is not a proper subject of religious regulation. If the state sees fit to make it as easy to loose the marriage bond as to tie it, the church has no right to object; it is a secular matter, and the free sovereign state is supreme in its own secular sovereignty. If the state sanctions an adulterous connection, the Protestant Episcopal Church must revise its Bible and bless the unholy tie; it is a secular matter, and the free sovereign state is supreme in its own secular sovereignty. The sanctity of the family relation is under the protection of the church, says Bishop Clarke. No such thing, replies Dr. Wharton—that is an insolent ultramontane pretension; the Protestant Episcopal Church knows its place, and does not presume to interfere with the legislature. “The Gospel obtained hold of the family before it touched the state,” says the bishop. “Oh! well, we have changed all that,” rejoins the doctor; the glory of the Protestant Episcopal gospel nowadays is that it lets the family alone. In point of fact, Episcopalianism is not quite so bad as this hasty advocate would have us believe; for it does censure, in a mild way, the laxity of some of the divorce laws, and does not always lend itself to the celebration of bigamous marriages. But Dr. Wharton is correct in his main position—that his church leaves to the state the control of the family relation; and if she shrinks from the logical consequences of her desertion of duty, that is only because a remnant of Catholic feeling remains to her in the midst of her heresies and contradictions. The time must come, however, when these illogical fragments of truth will be thrown away, and the Protestant Episcopal Church will take its place beside the other Protestant bodies in renouncing all right to be heard on one of the most important points of contact between the law of God and the concerns of every-day life. It is impossible to allow the civil power to bind and loose the family tie at pleasure, without admitting that the subject is entirely outside the domain of ecclesiastical supervision. The attempt of the Episcopal Church to compromise on adultery is an absurdity, and in the steady course of Protestant development it will surely be abolished.
Is there any particular in which the Protestant Episcopal Church fairly takes hold of the family? We have seen that she abandons to politicians the sacred tie between the parents; what has she to do with the next domestic concern—the education of the child? Dr. Wharton holds it to be one of her distinguishing claims to public favor that she abandons this duty also to the secular power. The right to control education, according to him, is, like the right to sanction the marriage tie, one of the insolent pretensions of the Vatican usurper. The state, he thinks, is bound not only to educate all its subjects, but to decide what points a secular education shall cover, while the church may only add to this irreligious training such pious instruction as the child may have time and strength to receive after the more serious lessons are over. “The church,” he says, “concedes to the state the right and duty to require a secular education from all, while for itself it undertakes, as a free church in a free state, the right and duty to give a religious education to all within its reach.” Expressed in somewhat plainer English, this means that thirty hours a week ought to be given to the dictionary and multiplication table, and one hour to the catechism and the ten commandments. Send your children to schools all the week where they will hear nothing whatever of religion, where that most vital of all concerns will be a forbidden subject, where the idea will be practically, if not in so many words, impressed upon their tender minds that it is of no consequence whether they are Christians, or Jews, or infidels, so long as they master the various branches of worldly knowledge which promote success in the secular affairs of life; and then get them into Sunday-school if you can, for a wild and ineffectual attempt to counteract the evil tendencies of the previous six days’ teachings. This is trying to give a Christian education without the corner-stone of Christian doctrine; building a house upon the sand, and then running around it once a week with a hatful of pebbles and a trowel of mud to put a foundation under the finished structure. Dr. Wharton seems to embody in his own person a surprising variety of the inconsistencies for which the Protestant Episcopal Church has such a peculiar celebrity. For here, after he has claimed credit for his church as the champion of a secular education, he tells the Congress that secularism is one of the great dangers of the age, against which the church must fight with all her strength. “The battle with secularism has to be fought out.” It must be fought “by the church, and eminently by our own church. Our duty therefore is to fit ourselves for the encounter, and we must do this with the cause of religion, undertaking in its breadth and embracing all branches of religious, spiritual, and ethical culture.” Well, but, dear sir, you have just said that during the most important period of man’s intellectual development, when the mind is receiving impressions which are likely to last through life, the church ought to stand aside and let the state teach secularism without hindrance. Are you going to cultivate secularism in the young until it becomes firmly rooted, and then fight against it with sermons and essays which your secularized young men will not listen to? How do you expect to impart religious, spiritual, and ethical culture when you have formally renounced your inestimable privilege and your sacred duty as a guide and teacher of children? You propose to wait until your boys have come to man’s estate before you attempt to exercise any influence upon them; and then, when they have grown up with the idea that religious influence ought to be avoided as one avoids pestilence, you wonder and complain that they are indifferent to the church and will not hear you. “The battle with secularism has to be fought out.” Your way of fighting is to abandon the outposts, leave front and rear and flanks unprotected, and throw away your arms.
It was one of the peculiarities of the Congress that whatever error was promulgated in the essays and debates, somewhere in the course of the sessions an antidote was sure to be furnished—this being an illustration, we suppose, of the extreme toleration of opinion to which Bishop Clarke referred as “somewhat singular” in a church “so fixed in its doctrines.” Hence we need not be surprised to find in the second day’s proceedings a refutation of the educational theories propounded during the first. Dr. Wharton made use of the principle of secular schooling as a weapon of offence against the Vatican. But when the delegates had relieved their minds and vindicated their Protestant orthodoxy by giving the poor Pope about as much as he could stagger away with, they turned their attention to their own condition, and one of their first subjects of inquiry was what secular education had done for them. The topic of consideration on the second morning was “The Best Methods of Procuring and Preparing Candidates for the Ministry.” Dr. Schenck of Brooklyn began by stating that the supply of candidates for holy orders was not only inadequate to the needs of the church, but it was falling off—a smaller number offering themselves to-day than six or seven years ago. This, said he, should excite the gravest concern of the church; and nobody seemed disposed to contradict him. Dr. Edward B. Boggs indeed presented some uncomfortable statistics which tell the whole story. In 1871, the number of resident presbyters of the Episcopal Church in the United States was 2,566; in 1874, it was only 2,530. Here, then while the population increases the clergy are diminishing. A great many reasons were suggested for the phenomenon. One thought the question of salary was at the bottom of the evil. Another blamed mothers for not giving their boys a taste for the ministry while they were young. A third believed the trouble was too little prayer and too much quarrelling over candles and ecclesiastical millinery. And more than one hinted in the broadest terms that the ministry was discredited by having too many fools in it.[174] The truth, however, which had been vaguely suggested by some of the earlier speakers, was plumply told by Dr. Edward Sullivan of Chicago. “The church,” said he, “must learn to supply the ranks of the ministry from her own material”—that is to say, by giving the children of the church a Christian education. He lamented the exclusion of the Bible from some of the common schools as a national calamity—not, if we understand him, because he has any overweening faith in the efficacy of Bible-reading per se, but because he knows that when positive religious teaching is banished from the school, the children can hardly fail to grow up without any religious feeling whatever. “Until we establish parochial church schools,” he continued, “we can never solve this problem.” And he might have added that if the teaching of secularism is to be continued for a generation or two longer, the problem will solve itself: there will be no need of preachers when there cease to be congregations.
If such an alarming phenomenon as an actual falling off in the numbers of the clergy were noticed in our own holy church, it would perhaps occur to good Catholics to inquire whether the bishops were doing all that they ought to do for the souls of their people. But the Episcopal Congress at Philadelphia seems to have been vexed with the idea that the bishops were doing entirely too much. Looking at the assemblage from the outside, we cannot pretend to see the under-currents of opinion, or to comprehend the denominational politics; but it was plain both from the tone of the addresses in the session set apart for considering the “Nature and Extent of Episcopal Authority” and from the manner in which some of the remarks of the speakers were received, that a jealousy of episcopal authority prevailed with considerable bitterness. Dr. Vinton of Boston drew a parallel between the government of the church and the government of the state; both were ruled by executives appointed by law and controlled by law, and in each case the chief officer acted by the assumed authority of those he governed. The bishops therefore, we infer, have just as much power as the people choose to give them, and we see no reason why the congregations should not enlarge and restrict that power at pleasure—make a new constitution, if they wish, every year, and treat their prelates as the savage treats his idol, which he sets upon an altar for worship in the morning, and if things go not well with him, kicks into the kennel at night. Indeed, since the foundation of the Anglican Church the episcopate has always been treated with scant ceremony. Dr. Vinton tells us that it is a reflex of the political organization, and as that has varied a great deal in England and America, and is not unlikely in the course of time to vary a great deal more, we must not be surprised to find the system undergoing many strange modifications and holding out the promise of further change indefinitely. In the primitive church, the episcopacy was a despotism. In the Anglican Church, it is “merely an ecclesiastical aristocracy.” In the Protestant Episcopal Church of America, where the exigencies of politics have to be considered, it is—well, that is just what the Congress tried in vain to determine. For one thing, Dr. Vinton and other speakers after him laid great stress upon the fact that its authority was carefully circumscribed by statute, and that the church was a corporation—though whence it derived its charter nobody was good enough to tell us. In truth, we did not find the day’s proceedings edifying. Dr. Vinton declared that an organic evil of the church constitution, “boding more of mischief and sorrow to the body of Christ than any or all of the evils besides that our age makes possible,” was the liability of bishops to grow arrogant of power, to make their authority troublesome, to put on idle pomp, and set themselves “in conspicuous difference from the taste, the traditions, the educated and intelligent convictions which the providence of God has caused to rule in this land.” Dr. Fulton of Indianapolis inveighed with warmth against any bishop who ventured to intrude into another man’s diocese, and remarked that “some bishops were never at home unless they were abroad.” A bishop, continued the doctor, is subject to civil law. He should be tried for violation of the ninth commandment if he wilfully slander a clergyman either in or out of his own diocese. Bishops must not affect infallibility in doctrinal utterances. They must remember that in more than one respect they and their presbyters are equals. A bishop who would be respected must respect the rights of other bishops—not being an episcopal busybody in other men’s sees. Dr. Goodwin of Philadelphia thought that what our Lord meant to have was “a moderate episcopate.” Dr. Washburn of New York believed that even the powers granted to the apostles were not exclusive, and that ever since the apostolic age these powers had been gradually more and more distributed, until now, we should think, they must be so finely divided that no fragment of them is anywhere visible in the Episcopal Church.
Dr. J. V. Lewis convulsed the house with laughter by a speech in which he declared that the bishops had been so “tied hand and foot by conventions and canons that it was wonderful they had time to do anything but find out what they must not do”; and he called upon the church to “cut those bands and let the bishops loose.” We quote from the report of his remarks in the Church Journal: “What will they do? He would tell them what they would do. He had at home in his yard six chickens about half-grown. He had placed among them a turkey big enough to eat any of them up. But they all flew at him. One little fellow pecked him and spurred him savagely. The turkey looked on in perfect astonishment, apparently; but at length he spread out his wings and literally sat down upon him. From that day to this, whenever that turkey stirs, these chickens cannot be kept from following him. And this is just what will happen in the church, if we will only let our bishops loose.” All this was the cause of much innocent hilarity among the brethren; but we fear that it was to Dr. Lewis that the Churchman referred the next week in the following solemn strain: “It is a sad circumstance that the ministry has in it, here and there, a professional joker and cheap story-teller and anecdote-monger, one of the most tedious and least estimable types of foolishness that try Christian endurance and vex religious families. It is to be hoped no such melancholy-moving buffoon will ever propose himself as clown to the Church Congress; and, short of that, will it be wise to confer the award of the heartiest and loudest applause on a sort of comic pleasantry and ‘jesting not convenient’ which, at best, is outdone in its own line in whole columns of daily newspapers? We may smile, because it cannot be helped, but we can surely reserve our plaudits—if they must be given at all—for that species of superiority which manifests a chaste refinement and suits tastes that are intellectual rather than jovial.”
Clearly there was a great deal more in these essays on the limitations of episcopal authority than met the profane eye. Who are the trespassers upon other men’s sheepfolds, and the busybodies, and the slanderers, and the pompous bishops, and the infallible bishops, and the bishops who think themselves better than their presbyters, it is not for us to inquire. Neither perhaps would it be decorous to ask how the ten or twelve bishops in the Congress—none of whom opened their mouths during the debate—enjoyed the session. But there is excellent reason to believe that the presbyters had a very pleasant day, singing the opening hymn in the morning, “Come, gracious Spirit, heavenly dove,” with peculiar unction, and joyously dismissing their right reverend fathers in the afternoon with the verses, “Go forth, ye heralds, in my name.”
If the bishops are in disrepute and the inferior clergy are falling away, it can hardly be necessary to tell us that the church has no real hold upon the people; that follows as a matter of course. Accordingly, the most interesting of the debates were on the best methods of giving vitality to the work of the church—on ministrations to the laboring classes, on free churches and free preaching, on the abuses of the new system, and on the need of something equivalent to the preaching Orders and Congregations of our own church. Of all the papers read at the Congress the only one which was received with what we may fairly call enthusiasm was an essay by Mr. Francis Wells, editor of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, on the “Parochial System and Free Preaching,” at the close of which one of the reverend delegates jumped upon a bench and led the assembly in three cheers. We have seen no report which gives a fair abstract of Mr. Wells’ paper, or even explains what practical suggestions he had to offer, so that it is impossible to understand what it was that moved the feelings of the Congress. But if he drew a faithful picture of the average Episcopal Church of our day he may well have startled his audience. “The chief trouble,” he said, “lies in the spirit of exclusiveness which eyes the fashion of the dress and warns off strangers with a cold stare.” He was quite right in holding that the renting of pews and the expenditure of large sums of money for the adornment of the house of God are not necessarily obstacles to the influence of the church over the masses. Our own experience proves that. What poor and ragged sinner was ever repelled from a Catholic Church by imposing architecture, or gorgeous windows, or the blazing magnificence of lighted altars, or the strains of costly music? The rich have their pews—at least in this country, where it is only by pew-rents that we can meet the necessary expenses of the parish—but the most wretched beggar feels that he is welcome at all times in the splendid temple, and he may kneel there, feasting the senses, if he pleases, as well as refreshing the soul, without fear that his more comfortable neighbor will stare at his humble garments. Whatever the character of our churches, it is always the poor who fill them. It never occurs to a Catholic that the people who pay pew-rents acquire any proprietorship in the house of God, or have any better right there than those who pay nothing. The sermons are never made for the rich, and the Holy Sacrifice is offered for all indiscriminately. But in the Episcopal Church how different it is!
Imagine the feelings of a mechanic who approaches one of the luxurious Fifth-Avenue temples in his patched and stained working trowsers and threadbare coat. Carriages are setting down the haut ton at the door, every lady dressed in the extreme of fashion, every gentleman carefully arrayed by an expensive tailor. A high-priced sexton, with rather more dignity than an average bishop, receives the distinguished arrivals just inside the lobby, and scrutinizes strangers with the air of an expert who has learned by long experience in the highest circles just what kind of company every casual visitor has probably been in the habit of keeping. The interior of the church somehow suggests a Madison-Avenue parlor, furnished in the latest style of imitation antique. The upholstery is a marvel of comfort. The pleasantly subdued light suits the eyes and softens the complexions of Christians who have been up late dancing. A decorous quiet pervades the waiting congregation, broken only by the rustle of five-dollar silks sweeping up the aisles. Such a handsome display of millinery can be seen nowhere else for so little money. What is a working-man to do in such a brilliant gathering as this? He looks timidly at the back seats, and he finds there perhaps two or three old women, parish pensioners, Sunday-school boys, or young men who keep near the door in order to slip out quietly when they are tired of the services, but nobody of his class. The prosperous people all around him listen to the choir, and the reader, and the preacher, with an indescribable air of proprietorship in all of them. The sermon is an elaborate essay addressed to cultivated intellects, not to his common understanding. He goes away with the uncomfortable consciousness that he has been intruding, and feels like a shabby and unkempt person who has strolled by mistake into the stockholders’ row at the Italian Opera, and been turned out by a high-toned box-keeper. “It is indeed hard to imagine,” said The Nation the other day, “anything more likely to make religion seem repelling to a poor man than the sight of one of the gorgeous edifices in which rich Christians nowadays try to make their way to heaven. Working out one’s salvation clothed in the height of the fashion, as a member of a wealthy club, in a building in which the amplest provision is made for the gratification of all the finer senses, must seem to a thoughtful city mechanic, for instance, something in the nature of a burlesque. Not that the building is too good for the lofty purpose to which it is devoted, for nobody ever gets an impression of anything but solemn appropriateness from a great Catholic cathedral, but that it is the property of a close corporation, who, as it might be said, ‘make up a party’ to go to the Throne of Grace, and share the expenses equally, and fix the rate so high that only successful businessmen can join.”
But we heed not enlarge upon the prevalence of this evil. The speakers at the Congress recognized it frankly, and they are undoubtedly aware, though they may not have deemed it prudent to confess, that the case is growing more and more serious all the time. As wealth concentrates in the large cities and habits of luxury increase, the Protestant Episcopal Church is continually becoming colder and colder towards the poor. No remedy that has been proposed holds out the faintest promise of stopping this alarming decline. No remedy proposed even meets the approbation of any considerable number of the Episcopal clergy. One speaker proposes a greater number of free congregations, and is met by the obvious objection that the result would be a still more lamentable separation between rich and poor, with a different class of churches for each set. Another recommends the bishops to send missionary preachers into every parish where there seems to be need of their labor, but does not tell us where the missionaries are to be found, and forgets that almost every parish in the United States would have to be supplied in this way before the evil could be cured. A third advises the rich and poor to meet together, and fraternize and help each other; and a fourth calls for more zeal all around. All these proposals are merely various ways of stating the disease; they do not indicate remedies. Perhaps it may occur to some people that if the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church correspond so closely in their outward operations, both striving to celebrate divine worship with all possible splendor, both building costly churches and supporting them by pew-rents, both employing highly paid choirs, both keeping up a system of parishes, and if all the while the one gathers people of every rank and condition into her fold, offering health and consolation to all alike, while the other is constantly losing the affections of the multitude and becoming a lifeless creature of forms and fashions, the explanation of the difference after all may be that the Holy Ghost lives and works in the one, while the other is only the device of man.
YULE RAPS.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
We once saw a picture of a wide, undulating snow-landscape, overspread with a pale rosy tint from the west, and we thought it a fancy picture of an Arctic winter. It hung in a pretty room in a Silesian country-house. The weather was lovely, warm but temperate; it was mid-June, and the woods were full of wild strawberries, and the meadows of forget-me-nots. Yet that landscape was simply Silesia in the winter; the same place, six months later, becomes a wilderness of snow. What shall we say of Mecklenburg, then, so much farther to the north of Silesia? But even there winter brings merriment; and as in these snow-bound countries there is less work to be got through in the winter, their people associate the ideas of pleasure and holiday with the cold rather than the warm weather. In Mecklenburg spring, summer, and autumn mean work—ploughing, sowing, haying, harvesting; winter means fun and frolic, peasants’ dances, farmers’ parties, weddings, christenings, harvest-homes, Christmas, New Year’s, and Epiphany presents, gatherings of friends, fireside talk, innocent games, and general merriment.
In a little village in this province the house of Emanuel Köhler was famous for its jollity. Here were old customs well kept up, yet always with decorum and a regard to higher matters. Emanuel was virtually master of the estate of Stelhagen, the absentee owner of which was a gay young officer who never wrote to his agent, except for a new supply of money. Clever and enlightened an agriculturist as old Köhler was, it was sometimes difficult for him to send the required sums, and yet have enough to farm the estate to his satisfaction. In the language of the country, he was called the inspector, and his house, also according to the local custom, was a kind of informal agricultural school. At the time of our story he had four young men under him—who were in all respects like the apprentices of the good old time—and two of his own relatives, his son and his nephew. His only daughter was busy helping her mother, and learning to be as efficient a housekeeper as the young men to be first-rate farmers; and this nucleus of young society, added to the good Köhler’s hearty joviality and the known good-cheer always provided by Frau Köhler, naturally made the large, cosey, rambling house a pleasant rendezvous for the neighborhood. The Köhler household was a host in itself, yet it always loved to be reinforced on festive occasions by the good people of the village and farms within ten miles round. So also the children, whether poor or pretty well off, were all welcome at old Emanuel’s, and knew the way to the Frau Inspectorin’s pantry as well as they knew the path to the church or the school. All the servant-girls in the neighborhood wanted to get a place in this house, but there was scarcely ever a vacancy, unless one of the dairy-maids or the house-girls married. Frau Köhler and her daughter did all the kitchen work themselves, and the latter, a thoughtful girl, though she was only fifteen, studied books and maps between-whiles. But her studies never interfered with the more necessary knowledge that a girl should have when, as Rika,[175] she has to depend upon herself for everything. In the country, in the Mecklenburg of even a very few years ago, everything was home-made, and a supply of things from the large town twenty or thirty miles off was the event of a life-time. Such things came as wedding-gifts; and though fancy things came every Christmas, even they were carefully and sacredly kept as tokens of that miraculous, strange, bewildering world outside, in which people wore their silk dresses every day, and bought everything they wanted at large shops a few steps from their own houses. Frau Köhler often wondered what other women did who had no farm-house to manage, no spinning, or knitting, or cooking, or dairy-work to do; and when her daughter Rika suggested that they probably read and studied, she shrugged her shoulders and said: “Take care, child; women ought to attend to women’s work. Studying is a man’s business.”
The honest soul was a type of many an old-fashioned German house-mother, of whose wisdom it were well that some of our contemporaries could avail themselves; and when Rika gently reminded her of the story of Martha and Mary, she would energetically reply:
“Very well; but take my word for it, child, there was a woman more blessed than that Mary, and one who was nearer yet to her Lord; and we do not hear of her neglecting her house. I love to think of that house at Nazareth as just a model of household cleanliness and comfort. You know, otherwise, it could not have been a fitting place for Him; for though he chose poverty, he must needs have surrounded himself with spotless purity.”
And Rika, as humble and docile as she was thoughtful, saw in this reverent and practical surmise a proof that it is not learning that comes nearest to the heart of truth, but that clearer and directer knowledge which God gives to “babes and sucklings.”
This particular Christmas there was much preparation for the family festival. The kitchen was in a ferment for a week, and mighty bakings took place; gingerbread and cake were made, and various confectionery-work was done; for Frau Köhler expected a friend of her own early home to come and stay with her this last week of the year. This was the good old priest who had baptized her daughter; for neither mother nor daughter were natives of Mecklenburg, though the latter had grown up there, and had never, since she was six months old, gone beyond the limits of the large estate which her father administered. Frau Köhler was a Bavarian by birth, and had grieved very much when her Mecklenburg husband had taken her to this northern land, where his position and wages were so good as to make it his duty to abide and bring up his family. But the worthy old creature had done a wonderful deal of good since she had been there, and kept up her faith as steadfastly as ever she had at home. Frederika had been her treasure and her comfort; and between the mother’s intense, mediæval firmness of belief, and the child’s naturally deep and thoughtful nature, the little farm-maiden had grown up a rare combination of qualities, and a model for the young Catholic womanhood of our stormy times. The old priest whom Frau Köhler had looked up to before her marriage as her best friend, and whom Rika had been taught to revere from her babyhood, had been very sick, and was obliged to leave his parish for a long holiday and rest. His former parishioner was anxious that he should see Christmas kept in the old-fashioned northern style, more characteristic than the Frenchified southern manners would now allow, even in her remote native village. Civilization carries with it the pick-axe and the rule; and when young girls begin to prefer Manchester prints and French bonnets to homespun and straw hats, most of the old customs slip away from their homes.
In the sturdy Mecklenburg of twenty years ago, even after the temporary stir of 1848, things were pretty much as they had been for centuries, and it was Emanuel’s pride that his household should be, if needful, the last stronghold of the good old usages. He heartily acquiesced in his wife’s invitation to the southern guest, and resolved to have the best Christmas that had been known in the country since he had undertaken the care of the Stelhagen estate. In truth, he lived like a patriarch among his work-people; his laborers and their families were models of prosperity and content, and the children of all the neighborhood wished he were their grandfather. Indeed, he was godfather to half the village babies born during his stay there.
The sleighs of the country were the people’s pride. Some were plain and strong, because their owners were not rich enough to adorn them, but others were quite a curiosity to the visitor from the south. They partook of the same quaintness as the old yellow family coaches that took the farmers to harvest-homes and weddings before the early snows came on. Lumbering, heavy-wheeled vehicles these were, swinging on high like a cradle tied to a couple of saplings in a storm; capacious as the house-mother’s apron-pockets on a baking day; seventy years old at least, barring the numerous patchings and mendings, new lining or new wheel, occasionally vouchsafed to the venerable representative of the family dignity. The sleighs were much gayer and a little less antiquated, because oftener used, and therefore oftener worn out; besides, there were fashions in sleighs even in this remote place—fashions indigenous to the population, each individual of which was capable of some invention when sleighs were in question. On Christmas Eve, long before it grew dark, many of these pretty or curious conveyances clattered up to the farm-house door. Some were laden with children two rows deep, all wrapped in knitted jackets, blankets, boas, etc., and here and there covered with a fur cap or furred hood; for knitting in this neighborhood supplied all with warm winter wraps, even better than woven or machine-made stuffs do nowadays. There were no single sleighs, no tiny, toy-like things made to display the rich toilet of the occupant and the skill of the fast driver by her side; here all were honest family vehicles, full of rosy faces like Christmas apples; hearty men and women who at three-score were almost as young as their grandchildren on their bridal day; and young men and maidens who were not afraid to dance and move briskly in their plain, loose, home-spun and home-made clothes, nor to fall in love with German downrightness and honest, practical intentions. Most of these sleighs were red, picked out with black, or black liberally sprinkled with red; some were yellow and black, some yellow and blue, and in most the robe and cushions were of corresponding colors. Some of these robes had eagles embroidered in coarse patterns and thick wool, while others were of a pattern something like those used for bed-quilts; and some bore unmistakable witness to the thrift of the house-mother, and were skilfully pieced together out of carpet, curtain, blanket, and dress remnants, the whole bordered with some inexpensive fur. One or two sleighs bore a sort of figure-head—the head of a deer, or a fox, or a hawk—carved and let into the curling part of the front; while one party, who were gazed upon with mingled admiration and disapproval, went so far as to trail after them, for three or four feet behind the sleigh, and sweeping up the snow in their wake, a thick scarlet cloth of gorgeous appearance, but no very valuable texture. This was the doing of a young fellow who had lately been reading one or two romances of chivalry, and been much pleased with the “velvet housings of the horses, sweeping the ground as the knight rode to the king’s tournament.” His indulgent old mother and admiring sisters had but faintly remonstrated, and this was the consequence. The horses were not less bedecked than the vehicles. Silver bells hung from their harness and belted their bodies in various places; shining plates of metal and knobs driven into the leather made them as gay as circus-horses; while horse-cloths of variegated pattern were rolled up under the feet of their masters, ready for use whenever they stopped on the road.
Emanuel himself had gone to the nearest town at which a stage-coach stopped, to welcome his wife’s friend and special guest, and entertained him with a flow of agricultural information and warm eulogy of the country through which they were speeding on their way home. He arrived at Stelhagen before the rush of country visitors, and was triumphantly taken through every part of the well-kept farm, while his meal was being prepared by Rika and the maids. But more than all, Frau Köhler, in her delight, actually made him “free” of the sacred, secret chamber where stood the Christbaum, already laden but unlighted, among its attendant tables and dishes. The old man was as innocently charmed as a seven-year-old child; it reminded him so of his own Christmas-tree in days when the simple customs of Germany were still unimpaired, and when it was the fashion to give only really useful things, with due regard to the condition and needs of the recipients.
“But at the feasts to which my people ask me now,” said he, “I see children regaled with a multitude of unwholesome, colored bonbons in boxes that cost quite as much as the contents, and servants given cheap silks or paste jewelry, and the friends or the master and mistress themselves loaded with pretty but useless knick-knacks, gilded toys that cost a great deal and make more show than their use warrants. Times are sadly changed, Thekla, even since you were married.”
“Well, Herr Pfarrer, I have had little chance, and less wish, to see the change; and up here I think we still live as Noah’s sons after they came out of the ark,” said good Frau Köhler, with a broad smile at her own wit. As the day wore on, she and Rika left the Pfarrer (curé) to Emanuel’s care, and again busied themselves about the serious coming festivity. She flew around, as active as a fat sparrow, with a dusting-cloth under her arm, whisking off with nervous hand every speck of dust on the mantel-piece or among the few books which lay conspicuously on the table in the best room; giving her orders to the nimble maids, welcoming the families of guests, and specially petting the children. Emanuel took the men under his protection, and gave them tobacco and pipes, and talked farming to them, while his own young home-squad whispered in corners of the coming tree and supper.
At last Rika came out from the room where the mystery was going on, and, opening the door wide, let a flood of light into the dark apartment beyond. There was a regular blaze. The large tree stood on a low table, and reached nearly up to the ceiling. There were only lights, colored ribbons, and gilded walnuts hung upon it, but it quite satisfied the expectation of the good folk around it. Round the room were tables and stands of all kinds, crowded together, and barely holding all the dishes apportioned to each member of the party. The guests had secretly brought or sent their mutual presents; one family generally taking charge of its neighbor’s gifts, and vice-versa, that none might suspect the nature of their own. The tree, too, was a joint contribution of the several families; all had sent in tapers and nuts, and this it was that made it so full of bright things and necessitated its being so tall.
On the middle table, under the tree itself, were dishes for the Köhler household, each one having a liberal allowance of apples, nuts, and gingerbread. Besides these, there were parcels, securely tied, laid by the dishes, and labelled with the names of their unconscious owners. Köhler was seized upon by his wife and daughter before anyone else was allowed to go forward—for in this old-fashioned neighborhood the head of the house is still considered in the light of an Abraham—and a compact parcel was put into his hands by Rika, while Thekla kissed him with hearty loudness. Next came the guest, whom Rika led to the prettiest china dish, and presented with a small, tempting-looking packet. Leaving him to open it at his leisure, she joined her young friends, and a good-natured scramble now began, each looking for his own name in some familiar handwriting, finding it, and opening the treasure with the eagerness of a child. It would be impossible to describe every present that thus came to view; but though many were pretty and elaborate, none were for mere show. Presently Frau Köhler was seen to take possession of her husband, and, pulling off his coat, made him try on the dressing-gown he had just drawn from his parcel. She turned him round like a doll, and clapped her hands in admiration at the perfect fit; then danced around to the other end of the room, and called out to the maids:
“Lina! Bettchen! it is your turn now; you have not been forgotten. Those are your dishes where the silver dollars are sticking in the apples.” The maids opened their parcels, and each found a bright, soft, warm dress, crimson and black. Then came George, the man who did most of the immediate work round the house, and found a bright red vest with steel buttons in his parcel. Frau Köhler was busy looking at other people’s things, when her husband slipped a neat, long packet on her dish, and, as she turned and saw the addition, she uttered an exclamation of joy. Rika helped her to unfold the stiff, rustling thing, when it turned out to be a black silk dress. Not every housewife in those days had one, and her last was nearly worn out. Then the old priest came forward to show the company his Christmas box; and what do you think it was? There was no doubt as to where it came from. It was a set of missal-markers, and in such taste as was scarcely to be expected in that time and neighborhood. Rika had designed it, and her mother had worked it; but many an anxious debate had there been over it, as the Frau Inspectorin had been at first quite vexed at what she called its plainness. It was composed of five thick gros-grain ribbons, two inches wide and fifteen long. There was a red, a green, a white, a purple, and a black ribbon; and on each was embroidered a motto—on the red and green, in gold; on the white, in red; and on the black and purple, in silver. The letters were German, though the mottoes were in Latin, and each of the five referred to one of these events: our Lord’s birth, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, and the Coming of the Holy Ghost. At the end of each ribbon, instead of fringe or tassels, hung a cross of pure silver, into the ring of which the ribbon was loosely gathered. Every one crowded round this novel Christmas gift, and examined it with an admiration equally gratifying to the giver and the receiver. But Emanuel’s jolly voice soon broke the spell by saying:
“These fine presents are very delightful to receive, no doubt, and the women-folk would not have been happy without some such thing; but we are all mortal, and I have not forgotten that my guest has feet and hands, and needs warmth and comfort as much as we of grosser clay.”
And with this he thrust a large parcel into the Pfarrer’s arms. Every one laughed and helped him to open it; every one was curious to see its contents. They were, indeed, of a most substantial and useful kind: a foot-muff of scarlet cloth, lined and bordered with fur, and a pair of huge sealskin gloves.
Scarcely had the parcel been opened when a hum of measured sound was heard outside, and presently a Christmas carol was distinctly audible. Everyone knew the words, and many joined in the song before the singers became visible. Then the door opened, and a troop of children came in, dressed in warm white furs and woollen wrappings, and carrying tapers and fir-branches in their hands. They sang a second carol, quaint and rustic in its words, but skilfully set to anything but archaic music, and then, in honor of their southern guest, they began the song of the evening, a few stanzas from the “Great Hymn” to the Blessed Virgin, by the Minnesinger, Gottfried of Strasburg, the translation of which, according to Kroeger, runs thus:
XXV.
“God thee hath clothed with raiments seven;
On thy pure body, drawn from heaven,
Hath put them even
When thou wast first created.
The first one Chastity is named;
The second is as Virtue famed;
The third is claimed
As Courtesy, well mated;
The fourth dress is Humility;
The fifth is known as Pity;
The sixth one, Faith, clings close to thee;
The seventh, noble Modesty,
Leads gratefully
Thee in the path of duty.
XXVII.
“Thou sun, thou moon, thou star so fair,
God took thee from his own side there,
Here to prepare
The birth of Christ within thee.
For that his loved Child and thine,
Which is our life and life’s sunshine,
Our bread and wine,
To stay chaste, he did win thee;
So that sin’s thorns could never touch
Thy fruitful virtue’s branches.
His burning love for thee did vouch,
He kept thee from all sins that crouch:
A golden couch,
Secured by his love’s trenches.
XLVII.
…
“Rejoice now, thou salvation’s throne,
That thou gavest birth to Him who won
Our cause, thy Son,
Our Saviour and our blessing.
…
XLVIII.
“Rejoice now, O thou sunshine mild,
That on thy blessed breasts there smiled
God’s little Child—
Its earthly destination.
Rejoice that then drew near to thee
From foreign lands the wise kings three,
Noble and free,
To bring their adoration
To thee and to that blessed Child,
With many a graceful off’ring.
Rejoice now, that the star beguiled
And to that place their pathway smiled
Where, with thy Child,
They worshipped thy sweet suff’ring.”
“You are not so utterly unknowing of all gentle and learned pursuits as you would have had me believe,” said the Pfarrer to Frau Köhler. “It is not every child in Bavaria that could sing so well this Old-World poem, so graceful in its rhyming and so devout in its allusions. Our old XIIth-century poetry, the most national—i.e., peculiar to our country—is too much superseded by noisy modern rhymes or sentimental ballads copied from foreign models. Have you any unknown scholar among your farmers and agents, who, you told me, made up a hearty but not a learned society here?”
“Well,” said Frau Köhler, “there is the school-master, Heldmann, who is always poring over old useless books, but never can have a good dinner unless his friends send it to him, poor man! He is a bachelor, and cannot afford to have a housekeeper. And then there is one of our young gentlemen, who Köhler says is always in the clouds, and who spends all his spare time with Heldmann, while the other boys spend theirs with their pretty, rosy neighbors. By the way, Heldmann is coming to-night; but he said he could not come till late, as he had some important business which would detain him for an hour or two.”
“You forget our Rika, mother,” said Emanuel, not heeding the last part of his wife’s sentence; “she is as wise as any of them, though she says so little. She knows all the old legends and poetry, and more besides, I warrant.”
“Rika designed that missal-marker,” said the Frau Inspectorin proudly (she had found out, since it had been so admired, that her daughter’s instinct had guided her aright in the design).
But Rika, hearing her name mentioned, had slipped away among the white-wrapped children, and was laying their tapers and fir-branches away, preparatory to giving them cakes and fruit. This was quite a ceremony, and when they were ready Frau Köhler, handing the large dish of nuts to the Pfarrer, begged him to distribute them, while she took charge of the gingerbread and Rika of the apples.
It was funny to see the solemn expectancy with which the children brought out dishes, mugs, pitchers, etc., in which to receive these Christmas gifts. Some of the girls held out their aprons, as more convenient and capacious receptacles than anything else they could lay hands on. One boy brought a large birthday cup, and another a wooden milk-bowl; another a small churn, while a fourth had carried off his father’s peck-measure, and a fifth calmly handed up a corn-sack, which he evidently expected to get filled to the brim. As Frau Köhler came to one of the children, she said:
“Fritz, I saw you in the orchard last autumn stealing our apples. Now, naughty boys must not expect to get apples at Christmas if they take them at other times; so, Rika, don’t give him any. He shall have one piece of gingerbread, though.” A piteous disclaimer met this sentence; but the Pfarrer thrust a double quantity of nuts into the culprit’s basket, and passed on. Then once again Frau Köhler stopped and said; “Johann, didn’t I see you fighting with another boy in the churchyard two weeks ago, and told you that Santa Claus would forget you when he came to fill the stockings on Christmas night? I shall not give you any gingerbread.”
“Franz knows we made it up again,” whined the boy, and Franz, with a roguish look, peeped out from his place in the row and said: “Yes, we did, Frau Inspectorin”; so both got their gingerbread. At last, this distribution being over, the children, laden with their gifts, went home to their own various firesides, not without many thanks to the “stranger within the gates” and his parting reminder, as he showed them the stars:
“Look up at God’s own Christmas-tree, lighted up with thousands of tapers, children, and at the smooth, white snow spread over the fields. That is the white table-cloth which he has spread for the beautiful gifts which spring, and summer, and autumn are going to bring you, all in his own good time.”[176]
Then came another batch of visitors—the old, sick, and infirm people of the village; the spinning-women, the broom-tyers, the wooden bowl and spoon carvers, and the makers of wooden shoes; and some who could no longer work, but had been faithful and industrious in their time. They had something of the old costume on: the men wore blue yarn stockings and stout gray knee-breeches (they had left their top-boots outside; for the snow was deep and soft, and they needed them all the winter and through most of the spring); and the women had large nodding caps and black silk handkerchiefs folded across their bosoms. Each of these old people got a large loaf of plain cake and some good stout flannel; and these things, according to the local etiquette, the inspector himself delivered to them as the representative of his young master. This distribution was an old custom on the Stelhagen estate, and, though the present owner was careless enough in many things, he wished this usage to be always kept up. Even if he had not, it is not likely that as long as Köhler was inspector the old people would not have been able to rely on the customary Christmas gift. After this some bustle occurred, and two or three people went and stationed themselves outside the door. Presently the expectant company within were startled by a loud rap, and the door flew open, a parcel was flung in, and a voice cried out:
“Yule rap!”
This was a pair of slippers for the inspector. No one knew where they came from; no one had sent them. Yule raps are supposed to be magical, impersonal causes of tangible effects; so every one looked innocent and astonished, as became good Mecklenburgers under Christmas circumstances.
“Yule rap!” again, and the door opened a second time; a smoking-cap, embroidered with his initials, was evolved out of a cumbrous packet by one of the young apprentices, and scarcely had he put it on than another thundering knock sounded on the door.
“Yule rap!” was shouted again, and in flew a heavy package. It was a book, with illustrations of travel scenes in the East, and was directed to Rika.
“Yule rap!”
This time it was only a little square envelope, with a ticket referring Frau Köhler to another ticket up in the bureau drawer in her bedroom; but when one of the boys found it, that referred again to another ticket in the cellar; and when another boy brought this to light, it mysteriously referred her to her husband’s pocket. Here, at last, the hidden thing was revealed—an embroidered collar, and a pair of larger cuffs to match. Köhler had no idea what sprite had put it there, so he said.
“Yule rap!” and this time it was for the guest—a black velvet skull-cap, warm and clinging. Then came various things, all heralded by the same warning cry of “Yule rap!” and a knock at the door, generally in George’s strong voice. The two maids got the packages ready, and peeped in at the keyhole to see when it was time to vary the sensation by throwing in another present. Again, a breakfast-bell came rolling in, ringing as it bounded on, with just a few bands of soft stuff and silver paper muffling its sound. Once a large meerschaum pipe was laid gently at the threshold of the door, and one of the apprentices fetched it as carefully. Then a violin was pushed through the half-open door, and the eager face of the one for whom it was intended peeped anxiously over his neighbor’s shoulder, wondering if any one else were the happy destined one, and as much surprised as delighted when he found it was himself. That violin has since been heard in many a large and populous town, and, though its owner did not become as world-known as Paganini or Sivori, he did not love his art less faithfully and exclusively. We cannot enumerate all the gifts which Yule brought round this year; but before the evening was over, a different voice cried out the magic words, “Yule rap!” and the door being slightly opened and quickly closed again, a tiny, white, silky dog stood trembling on the carpet. Rika jumped up and ran to take it in her arms; then pulling open the door, “Herr Heldmann! Herr Heldmann!” she cried. “I know it is you!”
The schoolmaster came forward, his rough face glowing with the cold through which he had just come.
“I promised you a dog, Rika,” he said rather awkwardly, “but they would not let me have it till this very day, and I had no time to go for it but this evening. I kept it under my coat all the time; so it is quite warm. It is only two months old.”
Rika was in ecstasies. She declared this was worth all her Christmas presents, and then rewarded Herr Heldmann by telling him how well the children had done their part, and how delightfully surprised the Pfarrer had been. The two men were soon in a deep conversation on subjects dear and familiar to both, and the company gradually dissolved again into little knots and groups. Many took their leave, as their homes were distant and they did not wish to be too late; but for all an informal supper was laid in the vast kitchen, and by degrees most of the good things on the table were sensibly diminished. The host’s wife and daughter, and the Herr Pfarrer, with half a dozen others and a few children, did not leave the Christmas-tree, whose tapers were constantly attended to and replaced when necessary. Other “Christmas candles” were also lighted—tall columns of yellow wax, made on purpose for this occasion. As the household and its inmates were left to themselves, the children began asking for their accustomed treat—the stories that all children have been fond of since the world began. No land is so rich in the romance of childhood as Germany, both north and south. There everything is personified, and as an English writer lately said, wonderful histories are connected with the fir-trees in the forests, the beloved and venerated Christbaum. “Though it be yet summer, the child sees in fancy the beautiful Weihnachtsbaum, adorned with sparkling things as the Gospel, is adorned with promises and hopes; rich in gifts as the three kings were rich; pointing to heaven as the angel pointed; bright as those very heavens were bright with silver-winged messengers; crowned with gold as the Word was crowned; odorous like the frankincense: sparkling like the star; spreading forth its arms, full of peace and good-will on every side, holding out gifts and promises for all.”
Weihnacht, the blessed, the hallowed, the consecrated night, is the child-paradise of Germany. That land of beautiful family festivals has given Christmas a double significance, and merged into its memories all the graceful, shadowy legends of the dead mythology of the Fatherland. The German child is reared in the midst of fairy-tales, which are only truths translated into child-language. Besides the old standard ones, every neighborhood has its own local tales, every family its own new-born additions or inventions. Every young mother, herself but a step removed from childhood, with all her tender imaginations still stirring, and her child-days lifted into greater beauty because they are but just left behind, makes new stories for her little ones, and finds in every flower a new fairy, in every brook a new voice.
And yet the old tales still charm the little ones, and the yearly coming of King Winter brings the old, worn stories round again. So Emanuel Köhler told the fairy-tale which the children had listened to every Christmas with ever-new delight, about the journey of King Winter from his kingdom at the North Pole, and how he put on his crown with tall spikes of icicles, and wrapped himself in his wide snow-mantle, which to him is as precious and as warm as ermine.
“And now,” said the host, “there is some one here who can tell you a far more beautiful story than mine. Some One, greater than the Winter-King, comes too every year—a snow-Child, the white Christ whom our ancestors, the old Norse and Teutonic warriors, learned to see and adore, where they had only seen and worshipped the God of War and the God of Thunder before. Ask him to tell you a story.”
And the old, white-haired Pfarrer stroked the head of the child nearest to him, as the little one looked shyly up into his face, mutely endorsing Emanuel’s appeal. He told them that they must already know the story of the first Christmas night, and so he would only tell them how the news that the angels told the shepherds on the hills came long centuries after to others as pure-minded as the shepherds, and by means almost as wonderful. He repeated to them from memory the words of an English prose-poet, which he said he had loved ever since he came across them, and which made the picture he best loved to talk on at Christmas-time: “That little infant frame, white as a snow-drop on the lap of winter, light almost as a snow-flake on the chill night air, smooth as the cushioned drift of snow which the wind has lightly strewn outside the walls of Bethlehem, is at this moment holding within itself, as if it were of adamantine rock, the fires of the beatific light.… The little white lily is blooming below the greater one; an offshoot of its stem, and a faithful copy, leaf for leaf, petal for petal, white for white, powdered with the same golden dust, meeting the morning with the same fragrance, which is like no other than their own!”[177]
There was a more marvellous tale than any they had heard about talking-flowers. The Christkind was a flower, and his blessed Mother was a flower—holy lilies in the garden of God, blossoming rods like Aaron’s, fruitful roots, stately cedars, and fruit-giving palm-trees. It was a very happy thing to know and feel all this, as we do; but many millions of men know nothing of it, and centuries ago even our forefathers in these forests knew nothing of it. “But,” he continued, “there was a distant island, where men of our race lived, which did not receive the faith till long after Germany and France and Britain were Christian, and even had cathedrals and cloisters and schools in abundance. It was two hundred years after Charlemagne, who was a Frankish, and therefore a German, sovereign, founded the Palatine schools and conferred with the learned English monk, Alcuin. This distant, pagan island was Iceland. The Norsemen there were a wild, fierce, warlike people, free from any foreign government, and just the kind of heroes that their old mythology represented them as becoming in their future, disembodied life. They had their scalds, or saga-men, their bards, who were both poets and historians, who kept up their spirit by singing wild songs about their ancestors and the battles they had won. They were all pagans, and thought the forgiveness of injuries very mean. Well, one day, the eve of Yule-tide, when it was terribly cold and cheerless, an old scald sat in his rough hut, with a flickering light before him, chanting one of his wild, heathen songs, and his daughter, a beautiful girl, sat at the plank table near him, busy with some woman’s work. During an interval of his song she raised her eyes and said to him:
“‘Father, there must be something beyond all that—something greater and nobler.’
“‘Why, child,’ said the old man, with a kind of impatient wonder, ‘why should you think so? Many things different there may be, just as there are different kinds of men, and different kinds of beasts, and different kinds of plants; some for mastery and some for thraldom; some for the chase, and some for the kitchen or the plough; some for incantations and sacrifices, and some for common food. But anything nobler than our history there could not be; and as for our religion, if there were anything different, or even better, it would not suit our people, and so would be no concern of ours.’
“‘But if it were true, father, and ours not true, what then?’
“‘Why ask the question, child? What was good enough for the wise and brave Northmen who fled here that they might be free to fight and worship according to their fancy, is good enough for their descendants.’
“‘But you know yourself, father,’ persisted the maiden, ‘that those whom our poetical traditions call gods were men, heroes and patriots who taught our forefathers various arts, and guided them safely across deserts and through forests in their long, long migration—but still only men. Our chieftains of to-day might as well become gods to our great-grandchildren, if the old leaders have become so to us. Wise as they were, they could not command the frozen seas to open a way for their ships, nor make the sun rise earlier in the long winter, nor compel the cutting ice-wind to cease. If they could not do such things, they must have been very far from gods.’
“‘It is true,’ said the old man, ‘that those great chieftains were, in the dim ages we can scarcely count back to, men like us; but the gods who taught them those very arts took them up to live with them as long as their own heaven might last, and made them equal to themselves. You know even Paradise itself is to come to an end some day.’
“‘So our legends say, father; but that, too, makes it seem as if these gods were only another order of mortal beings, stronger but not better than we are, and hiding from us the true, changeless heaven far above them. For surely that which changes cannot be divine. And then our legends say that evil is to triumph when heaven and earth come to an end. True, they say there will be a renewal of all things after that, and that, no doubt, means that good will be uppermost; very likely all the things spoken of in our Eddas are only signs of other things which we could not understand.’
“The daughter continued these questionings and speculations, the scald answering them as best he could.
“He had listened with evident admiration and approval to her impassioned speech, but he was willing to test her faith in her own womanhood to the utmost. She now seemed wrapt in her own thoughts, but after a short pause said:
“‘It would not be another’s inspiration in which I should believe; it would be a message from Him who has put this belief already into my heart. Some One greater than all has spoken to my inmost heart, and I am ready to believe; but the messenger that is to put it into words and tell me what to do has not come.’
“There was a silence, and the wind and the sea roared without. The old man shaded the flickering light with his hand, and gazed at his daughter, who was sitting with her hands clasped in her lap. He thought that she herself must have received some divine illumination; for the Norsemen believed in the prophetic gifts of some of their women. His own mind, more cultivated than that of the warrior’s, saw through the symbolic character of many of the very myths he sang, and tended vaguely to belief in a higher and hidden circle of things infinite, true, and eternal. But then the northern mind was naturally simple, not prone to metaphysical distinctions, not analytical and subtle, dividing as with the sword that pierceth between soul and spirit; and the old man saw no use in raising theological problems for which he could offer no rational solution, save through the dreams of a young girl. Presently the old man rose, shaking off his meditations, and said:
“‘It is time for me to go to the Yule-night festival, and I shall have a stormy trudge of it to the castle. I must leave you alone here till to-morrow night. But, my child, I know that there is safety for the scald’s daughter wherever she may be; the very sea would not hurt her, and the wildest men would kneel before her; so farewell, and a father’s blessing be upon you.’
“His daughter rose and fetched his cloak and staff, wrapped the former around him, and fastened it over the rude musical instrument that answered the purpose of lyre and harp; but I am not very learned in such things, and cannot tell you exactly what it was. The young girl stood long on the threshold of the hut, shading the light, and looking out after her father into the darkness. The wind was sharp and icy, and blew from the frozen sea. As she held the light, she thought she heard a cry come from the direction of the sea. She lingered before closing the door, although the wind was very chill; for the cry seemed repeated, and she thought it was a human voice calling. A moment’s reflection told her it could not be so; for the whole sea was frozen for miles outward, and no boat or wreck could come so near land. She sat down again to her work, and mused on the conversation she had held with her father. He had studied their national books all his life, and she was not yet twenty. He must know best. Was she likely to be right? She had little experience of the way in which the old system worked; only her own dreams and fancies showed her any other possibility; and yet—she could not shake off the thought: she thirsted for another revelation. The far-off, unknown Godhead must have some means of communicating with men; why should he not speak to her, who so passionately and blindly longed for a message, a command, from him?
“The cry from the sea sounded again. Surely, this time there could be no mistake; the voice was human, and it had come nearer since she had left the door. She took up the light again, and went outside, shouting as loud as she could in return. She was answered, and a strange awe came upon her as she heard this cry. Was it that of a man or a spirit? The latter supposition seemed to her unsophisticated mind quite as likely as the former, but it did not frighten her, as it would most of her countrywomen. She went in again, wrapped a thick fur cloak around her, and, taking another on her arm, sallied out once more with another stronger light. It was barely possible to keep the resinous torch alight, and she looked anxiously out towards the sea, to try and catch some glimpse of a human figure. The cries came again at intervals; but she knew that in the clear air a seemingly near sound might yet be far distant. She had to walk briskly up and down the shore, in the beaten path between walls of snow, to keep herself warm, and occasionally she lifted the flaring torch and waved it as a signal. She could do no more, but she longed to see her unknown visitor, and to go out to meet him on the frozen waters. Was it some wrecked sailor, who had clambered from ice-floe to ice-floe, in the desperate hope of reaching land before he died of cold and hunger, or some unearthly messenger from an invisible world? If he were a mere man, from what coast could he have drifted. No Icelander would be out at this time and place; it was Yule-tide, and there were no wandering boats out among the ice-cliffs and floes. At last she thought she could discern a shadowy form, blacker than the surrounding darkness, but surely no human form; it was like a moving cross, one upright shape, and one laid across near the top, and both dark and compact. But the cry was repeated, though in a more assured and joyful tone, and the maiden waited with bated breath, wondering what this marvel could mean. A field of unbroken ice stretched between her and the advancing figure, which now hastened its steps, and came on like a swift-sailing bird, cleaving the darkness. She thought she could distinguish a human face above the junction of the two arms of the cross, and she held up the light, still uncertain what kind of visitant this approaching form might be. At last it flashed upon her that it was a man bearing a child. But why so rigid? Why did he not hug him close to his bosom to keep him warm, to keep him alive? Was the child dead? And a shuddering awe came upon her, as she thought of its dead white face upturned to heaven, and of the faithful man who had not forsaken it, or left it to the seals and wolves on the ice, or buried it in the chill waters beneath the ice-floes. What a cold it must have struck to the heart of the man carrying it; how his hands must be well-nigh frozen in supporting this strange burden!
“She hardly knew whether she was still imagining what might be, or witnessing real movements, when the figure came straight up to her, and, stooping, laid the child at her feet. She lowered the torch, and, as the glare fell on the little face, she saw that it was no breathing one; the man had sunk down beside it, hardly able to stir, now the supreme effort was over and his end was accomplished. She dropped the cloak she held over the little body, and caught up a handful of snow, wherewith she energetically rubbed the face and hands of the stranger, then half dragged, half supported him to the door of the hut. He had only spoken once, just as he dropped at her feet, but she did not understand him: he spoke in a foreign tongue. Once more she went out and brought in the stiffened, frozen body of the child, which she laid on a fur robe just outside the hut; for it was warm within the small, confined dwelling. It was an hour before the stranger’s eye told her that her simple, quick remedies had succeeded. He was not very tall, but immensely strong and powerful, and there was a fire in his dark gray eye that gave the clew to his strange, weird pilgrimage over the ice-floes. His hair was dark brown, with a reddish tinge, but already mixed with a few gray streaks; it had been shorn close to his head some time since, as appeared from its irregular growth at present. Beneath his cloak he wore a long black robe, with a leathern girdle round the waist. The child was very beautiful, even in death; his eyes were closed, but his black, curling hair hung round his neck, and the lips had a sweet though somewhat proud outline. The scald’s daughter set some simple food before her silent guest, and made him a sign to eat. He was evidently very hungry, but before he began he moved his lips and made the sign of the cross on his forehead, lips, and breast. She asked him in her own language what that ceremony meant, not hoping to make him understand her speech, but trusting to her inquiring looks for some explanatory sign that she might interpret as best she could to herself. To her surprise, he answered in a few, slow, labored words, not in Icelandic to be sure, but in some dialect akin to it; for she could make out the meaning. It was, in fact, the Norse dialect that was spoken in the Orkney Islands, but she did not know that. As he spoke, her guest pointed upwards, and she knew that he referred to God. A great longing came into her heart, and she asked again if his God were the same the Icelanders worshipped. He shook his head, and she eagerly questioned farther, but grew so voluble that he could not follow her, and the conversation ceased. Then the stranger rose and went out to the little corpse, which he addressed in impassioned terms in his own language, making over it the same sign that had drawn the maiden’s attention before. He then described to her—mostly in pantomime, and with a few Norse words to help him on, and a few slowly-pronounced questions on her part—how the boy and he had been in a boat that was wrecked many days’ journey from their own country, and how he had carried him and fed him for three or four days, and then seen him die in his arms. The boy was the only son of a great chief, and he was taking him to his uncle in the North of Scotland. His own country was south of Scotland, a large island like Iceland, but green and beautiful, and there was no ice there.
“The girl made him understand that she was alone for a day or two, but when her father came back he would help him. He evidently understood her better than she did him.
“The next morning, when she again set food before him, she imitated his sign of the cross, and said she wished to believe in the true God; and if his God were the true one, she would believe in him. She looked so earnest and anxious that he again began to try to explain; but the few words he could command, though they sufficed to hint at his worldly adventures, and made clear to her that he had been wrecked, were scarcely adequate to tell her of the new religion she longed to understand.
“But at noon that day another guest and traveller passed by the scald’s dwelling. He was hurrying to the same castle where the girl’s father had gone in his capacity of minstrel, but a violent snow-storm had come on that morning, and he had lost his way. He stopped a moment to refresh himself, and noticed the stranger. He was himself known as a great traveller, and the figure in the coarse black robe seemed not unfamiliar to him. He addressed the stranger in the latter’s language, guessing him at once to be an Irish monk. He said he had seen such men in the Scottish islands, where he had been storm-driven with his ship two years ago, and he had picked up a little of their speech. When the maiden discovered that in this stray guest she had found an interpreter, she pressed him, implored him, almost commanded him, to stay.
“‘I must ask him the questions my father could not solve yesterday,’ she said; ‘and my father’s friend will not refuse to speak in my name, for I believe that the unknown God has answered my prayer in sending this holy man over the sea to my very feet.’ And she told him how the stranger had come to her, out of the darkness, in the shape of a cross—the same sign he made to propitiate his God.
“‘Ask him to tell us what he believes,’ she said impetuously; and the interpreter, compelled by some instinct that he could not resist, began his office willingly.
“‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that yesterday, before he came, I was all day thinking that the high, true, unknown God had a message for me, and a truer faith to teach me, because he had put into my heart a longing for something higher than what our books and songs have taught us. And tell him that I believe God sent him in answer to my doubts and prayers.’
“‘The traveller faithfully translated all this. The monk’s face glowed as he replied, in his own language, which he used with the grace and skill of a poet:
“‘Tell the maiden that she is right; the true God did send me, and now I know why such things happened to me; why I was wrecked with my lord’s only son, a precious freight, a sacred deposit, which the Lord of lords has now taken upon himself to account for to the earthly father, bereaved of his one hope. But God sent me here because to this pure-hearted virgin I was to explain the faith he had already put into her heart. It is not I who bring her the true faith, but God himself who has spoken to her and inclined her to believe; me he has sent to put this message into practical form. Tell her that this is the birthday of the Lord, and that a thousand years ago, almost at the same hour when I set my dead burden at her feet, a living Child, God’s own Child, lay at the feet of a pure Virgin in a little village far away in the land of the rising sun. And as this maiden’s torch which I saw over the wild, frozen sea, and followed, was an emblem of the faith that dwelt already in her heart, so, too, a marvellous star led three wise men, the scalds of the East, to where this Child lay, and the star was the emblem of their firm faith, which led them to cross rivers and deserts to reach the Child. And tell her that the way in which this wonderful birth was celebrated was by a song which held all the essence of truth in it: “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good-will.”’
“All this the interpreter told the maiden, and both marvelled at it. The stranger told them more and more of that wonderful tale, so familiar to us, but which once sounded to our warlike forefathers like the foolishness of babes and sucklings, or at most like some Eastern myth good enough for philosophers to wrangle over, but unfit for sturdy men of the forest. To the Icelandic maiden it seemed but the fulfilment of her own dreams; and as she listened to the story of the Child, grown to be a wise but obedient Boy, and then a wandering, suffering Man, her soul seemed to drink in the hidden grandeur of the relation, to pierce beyond the human stumbling-blocks which confronted the wise and learned of other lands, and go at once to the heart of the great mystery of love, personified in the Man-God. All the rest seemed to her to be the fitting garment of the central mystery, the crown of leaves growing from the fruitful trunk of this one doctrine. All day long the three sat together, the two Icelanders hanging on the words of the stranger; and so the scald found them on his return. He, too, wanted to know the news which the monk had brought; for he said he had always believed that behind their national songs and hymns lay something greater, but perhaps not expedient for Norsemen to know. He shook his head sadly when he learned the monk’s precepts of love, peace, mercy, and forgiveness, and said he feared his countrymen would not understand that, but for his part it was not uncongenial to him. As the weather was such that no vessel could put to sea before the ice broke up, he constrained the monk to stay the rest of the winter with him, and in the spring promised to go over with him to the nearest Scottish coast, and carry the body of his little charge to the uncle to whom he had been on his way when he was wrecked.
“Before the New Year began, the monk baptized the first Icelandic convert, the daughter of the scald, and gave her the name of the Mother of the Babe of Bethlehem, Mary. Many others heard of the new religion before he left, but that does not belong to my story. The new convert and her father accompanied him to Scotland, and were present at the burial of the Irish chieftain’s son at the castle of his Scottish uncle. The latter’s son married the Norse maiden, but she never ceased to lament that it had not been given to her to convert many of her own countrymen, or at least shed her blood for her new faith. All her life long she helped to send missionaries to Iceland; and when her son grew up to manhood, the palm she coveted was awarded to him, for he went to his mother’s native country, founded a monastery there, labored among the people, converted many, and taught reading and the arts of peace as well as the faith to his pupils; became abbot of the monastery, and was finally martyred on the steps of the altar by a horde of savage heathen Norsemen.
“This is the best Christmas story I know, children,” concluded the Herr Pfarrer; “and you, Rika, I can wish you no better model than the fair maiden of Iceland.”
It was nearly midnight when the old priest finished his tale, and Frau Köhler, rising, and thanking him cordially for this unwonted addition to ordinary Christmas stories, led him to a door which had been locked till now. It opened into a room decked as a chapel, with an altar at the end, which was now decorated with evergreens. A few chairs and benches were ranged before it, and on a table at the side was everything in readiness for saying Mass.
“It is long since I have heard a midnight Mass,” said the good hostess, growing suddenly grave and reverential in her manner, “and my Rika never has; and you know, Herr Pfarrer, I told you I had a greater surprise in store for you yet, after all the local customs in which you were so much interested.”
So the beautiful Midnight Mass was said in the Mecklenburg inspector’s farm-house, and a more impressive one Frau Köhler had never heard in any southern cathedral; for though there was no music and no pomp, there brooded over the little congregation a spirit of reverence and peace, which comes in full perfection only through a deep silence. The hostess and her daughter received Communion together, and the attentive household could not help thinking of the beautiful Icelandic convert when she came back from the altar, her hands folded over her breast, and her long, fair hair plaited in two plain, thick tresses.
Herr Heldmann had stayed too, and from that day he never ceased his study of theological problems and his correspondence with the Herr Pfarrer, till he became a Catholic, and was married to Rika in this same little chapel-room a year later by the same kind old priest. One of the young apprentices of Emanuel Köhler had been his secret rival; but notwithstanding that Heldmann was ungainly, shy, and twice her age, Rika decidedly thought that she had the best of the bargain.
And it was true; he had a heart of gold, and she made him a model wife.