I had heard so much of him, and always thought of him as the man nearest God on earth, great with a majesty surpassing infinitely that of the Elector or the Emperor. And now it was a great delight to see him in his home, in the dark wainscoted room looking on his garden, and to see him raise his head from his writing and smile kindly at us as he sat at the great table in the broad window, with Mistress Luther sewing on a lower seat beside him, and little Margaretha Luther, the youngest child, quietly playing beside them, contented with a look now and than from her father.
I should like to have seen Magdalen Luther. She must have been such a good and loving child. But that will be hereafter in heaven!
I suppose my feeling for Dr. Luther is different from that of my mother and father. They knew him during the conflict. We only know him as the conqueror, with the palm, as it were, already in his hand.
But my great friend at Wittemberg is Aunt Thekla. I think, on the whole, there is no one I should more wish to be like. She understands one in that strange way, without telling, like my mother. I think it is because she has felt so much. Aunt Elsè told me of the terrible sorrow she had when she was young.
Our dear mother and father also had their great sorrows, although they came to the end of their sorrow in this life, and Aunt Thekla will only come to the end of hers in the other world. But it seems to have consecrated them all, I think, in some peculiar way. They all, and Dr. Luther also, make me think of the people who, they say, have the gift, by striking on the ground, of discovering where the hidden springs lie that others may know where to dig for the wells. Can sorrow only confer this gift of knowing where to find the hidden springs in the heart? If so, it must be worth while to suffer. Only there are just one or two sorrows which it seems almost impossible to bear!
But, as our mother says, our Saviour has all the gifts in His hands; and "the greatest gift" of all (in whose hands the roughest tools can do the finest work) "is love!" And that is just the gift every one of us may have without limit.
XXXVI.
Thekla's Story.
Wittemberg, 23d January, 1548.