"Is your father anything else than a schoolmaster, Agnes?" she said.
"I am not ashamed of that for an instant, mother," I said; "you could not think it. I think it is much nobler to teach children than to hunt foxes, and buy and sell bales of silk and wool. But the world seems to me exceedingly hollow and crooked; and I never wish to see any more of it. Oh, mother, do you think it was all nonsense in me?"
"I think, my child, you have had an encounter with the world, the flesh, and the devil; and I think they are no contemptible enemies. And I think you have not left them behind."
"But is not our father's calling nobler than any one's, and our home the nicest in the world?" I said; "and Eisleben really as beautiful in its way as the Thuringian forest, and as wise as Wittemberg?"
"All callings may be noble," she said; "and the one God calls us to is the noblest for us. Eisleben is not, I think, as beautiful as the old forest-covered hills at Gersdorf; nor Luther's birth-place as great as his dwelling-place, where he preaches and teaches, and sheds around him the influence of his holy daily life. Other homes may be as good as yours, dear child, though none can be so to you."
And so I learned that what makes any calling noble is its being commanded by God, and what makes anything good is its being given by God; and that contentment consists not in persuading ourselves that our things are the very best in the world, but in believing they are the best for us, and giving God thanks for them.
That was the way I began to learn to know the world. And also in that way I began better to understand the Catechism, especially the part about the Lord's Prayer, and that on the second article of the Creed, where we learn of Him who suffered for our sins and redeemed us with his holy precious blood.
I have just returned from my second visit to Wittemberg, which was much happier than my first—indeed, exceedingly happy.
The great delight of my visit, however, has been seeing and hearing Dr. Luther. His little daughter, Magdalen, three years younger than I am, had died not long before, but that seemed only to make Dr. Luther kinder than ever to all young maidens—"the poor maiden-kind," as he calls them.
His sermons seemed to me like a father talking to his children; and Aunt Elsè says he repeats the Catechism often himself "to God" to cheer his heart and strengthen himself—the great Dr. Martin Luther!