I try to feel, "I am training them for eternity." But who can do that but God, who inhabiteth eternity, and sees the links which connect every moment of the little circles of time with the vast circumference of the everlasting future?
But I do my best. Catharine von Bora, a young girl of sixteen, who has lately entered the convent, interests me deeply. There is such strength in her character and such warmth in her heart. But alas! what scope is there for these here?
Aunt Agnes has not opened her heart in any way to me. True, when I was ill, she watched over me as tenderly as Aunt Cotta could; but when I recovered, she seemed to repel all demonstrations of gratitude and affection, and went on with that round of penances and disciplines, which make the nuns reverence her as so especially saintly.
Sometimes I look with longing to the smoke and lights in the village we can see among the trees from the upper windows of the convent. I know that each little wreath of smoke comes from the hearth of a home where there are father and mother and little children; and the smoke wreaths seem to me to rise like holy clouds of incense to God our Father in heaven.
But the alms given so liberally by the sisterhood are given at the convent-gate, so that we never form any closer connection with the poor around us than that of beggars and almoners; and I long to be their friend.
Sometimes I am afraid I acted in impatient self-will in leaving Aunt Cotta's home, and that I should have served God better by remaining there, and that, after all, my departure may have left some little blank it would not have been useless to fill. As the girls marry, Aunt Cotta might have found me a comfort, and, as "Cousin Eva," I might perhaps have been more of a help to Elsè's children than I can be to the nuns here as Sister Ave. But whatever might have been, it is impatience and rebellion to think of that now; and nothing can separate me from God and his love.
Somehow or other, however, even the "Theologia Germanica," and the high, disinterested communion with God it teaches, seemed sweeter to me, in the intervals of an interrupted and busy life, than as the business of this uninterrupted leisure. The hours of contemplation were more blessed for the very trials and occupations which seemed to hinder them.
Sometimes I feel as if my heart also were freezing, and becoming set and hard. I am afraid, indeed, it would, were it not for poor Sister Beatrice, who has had a paralytic stroke, and is now a constant inmate of the infirmary. She speaks at times very incoherently, and cannot think at any time connectedly. But I have found a book which interests her; it is the Latin Gospel of St. Luke, which I am allowed to take from the convent library and translate to her. The narratives are so brief and simple, she can comprehend them, and she never wearies of hearing them. The very familiarity endears them, and to me they are always new.
But it is very strange that there is nothing about penance or vows in it, or the adoration of the blessed Virgin. I suppose I shall find that in the other Gospels, or in the Epistles, which were written after our Lady's assumption into heaven. Sister Beatrice likes much to hear me sing the hymn by Bernard of Clugni, on the perpetuity of joy in heaven:[8]—
Here brief is the sighing,
And brief is the crying,
For brief is the life!
The life there is endless,
The joy there is endless,
And ended the strife.