We spent some hours in Nüremberg. The quaint rich carvings of many of the houses were beautiful. There also we saw Albrecht Dürer's paintings, and heard Hans Sachs, the shoemaker and poet, sing his godly German hymns. And as we crossed the Bavarian plains, the friendliness of the simple peasantry made up to us for the sameness of the country.
Near Heidelberg again I fancied myself once more in the Thuringian forest, especially as we rested in the convent of Erbach in the Odenwald. Again the familiar forests and green valleys with their streams were around me. I fear Elsè and the others will miss the beauty of the forest-covered hills around Eisenach, when they remove to Wittemberg, which is situated on a barren, monotonous flat. About this time they will be moving!
Brother Martin has held many disputations on theological and philosophical questions in the University of Heidelberg; but I, being only a novice, have been free to wander whither I would.
This evening it was delightful to stand in the woods of the Elector Palatine's castle, and from among the oaks and delicate birches rustling about me, to look down on the hills of the Odenwald folding over each other. Far up among them I traced the narrow, quiet Neckar, issuing from the silent depths of the forest; while on the other side, below the city, it wound on through the plain to the Rhine, gleaming here and there with the gold of sunset or the cold grey light of the evening. Beyond, far off, I could see the masts of ships on the Rhine.
I scarcely know why, the river made me think of life, of mine and Brother Martin's. Already he has left the shadow of the forests. Who can say what people his life will bless, what sea it will reach, and through what perils? Of this I feel sure, it will matter much to many what its course shall be. For me it is otherwise. My life, as far as earth is concerned, seems closed,—ended; and it can matter little to any, henceforth, through what regions it passes, if only it reaches the ocean at last, and ends, as they say, in the bosom of God. If only we could be sure that God guides the course of our lives as he does that of rivers! And yet, do they not say that some rivers lose themselves in sandwastes, and others trickle meanly to the sea through lands they have desolated into untenantable marshes?
Black Forest, May 14, 1510.
Brother Martin and I are now fairly on our pilgrimage alone, walking all day, begging our provisions and our lodgings, which he sometimes repays by performing a mass in the parish church, or by a promise of reciting certain prayers or celebrating masses on the behalf of our benefactors, at Rome.
These are, indeed, precious days. My whole frame seems braced and revived by the early rising, the constant movement in the pure air, the pressing forward to a definite point.
But more, infinitely more than this, my heart seems reviving. I begin to have a hope and see a light which, until now, I scarcely deemed possible.
To encourage me in my perplexities and conflicts, Brother Martin unfolded to me what his own had been. To the storm of doubt, and fear, and anguish in that great heart of his my troubles seem like a passing spring shower. Yet to me they were tempests which laid my heart waste. And God, Brother Martin believes, does not measure his pity by what our sorrows are in themselves, but what they are to us. Are we not all children, little children, in his sight?