Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family

by Elizabeth Rundle Charles

For the convent is certainly not heaven; I never expected it would be. It is not nearly so much like heaven, I think, as Aunt Cotta's home; because love seems to me to be the essential joy of heaven, and there is more love in that home than here.

I am not at all disappointed. I did not expect a haven of rest, but only a sphere where I might serve God better, and, at all events, not be a burden on dear Aunt Cotta. For I feel sure Uncle Cotta will become blind; and they have so much difficulty to struggle on, as it is.

And the world is full of dangers for a young orphan girl like me; and I am afraid they might want me to marry some one, which I never could.

I have no doubt God will give me some work to do for him here, and that is all the happiness I look for. Not that I think there are not other kinds of happiness in the world which are not wrong; but they are not for me.

I shall never think it was wrong to love them all at Eisenach as much as I did, and do, whatever the confessor may say. I shall be better all my life, and all the life beyond, I believe, for the love God gave them for me, and me for them, and for having known Cousin Fritz. I wish very much he would write to me; and sometimes I think I will write to him. I feel sure it would do us both good. He always said it did him good to talk and read the dear old Latin hymns with me; and I know they never seemed more real and true than when I sang them to him. But the father confessor says it would be exceedingly perilous for our souls to hold such a correspondence; and he asked me if I did not think more of my cousin than of the hymns when I sang them to him, which, he says, would have been a great sin. I am sure I cannot tell exactly how the thoughts were balanced, or from what source each drop or pleasure flowed. It was all blended together. It was joy to sing the hymns, and it was joy for Fritz to like to hear them; and where one joy overflowed into the other I cannot tell. I believe God gave me both; and I do not see that I need care to divide one from the other. Who cares, when the Elbe is flowing past its willows and oaks at Wittemberg, which part of its waters was dissolved by the sun from the pure snows on the mountains, and which came trickling from some little humble spring on the sandy plains? Both springs and snows came originally from the clouds above; and both, as they flow blended on together, make the grass spring and the leaf-buds swell, and all the world rejoice.

The heart with which we love each other and with which we love God, is it not the same? Only God is all good, and we are all His, therefore we should love Him best. I think I do, or I should be more desolate here than I am, away from all but him.

That is what I understand by my "Theologia Germanica," which Elsè does not like. I begin with my father's legacy—"God so loved the world, that he gave his Son;" and then I think of the crucifix, and of the love of Him who died for us; and, in the light of these, I love to read in my book of Him who is the Supreme Goodness, whose will is our rest, and who is himself the joy of all our joys, and our joy when we have no other joy. The things I do not comprehend in the book, I leave, like so many other things. I am but a poor girl of seventeen, and how can I expect to understand everything? Only I never let the things I do not understand perplex me about those I do.

Therefore, when my confessor told me to examine my heart, and see if there were not wrong and idolatrous thoughts mixed up with my love for them all at Eisenach, I said at once, looking up at him—

"Yes, father, I did not love them half enough, for all their love to me."

I think he must have been satisfied; for although he looked perplexed, he did not ask me any more questions.