It would be difficult to describe my thoughts and emotions as I went home. The soul cannot at once translate itself perfectly in words, and there are "thoughts without words," which in every man are the prelude of supreme joy and suffering. It was neither joy nor pain, only an indescribable bewilderment which I felt; thoughts flew through my innermost being like meteors, which shoot from heaven towards earth but are extinguished before they reach the goal. As we sometimes say in a dream, "I am dreaming," so I said to myself "thou livest"—"it is she." I tried again to reflect and calm myself, and said, "She is a lovely vision—a very wonderful spirit." At another time, I pictured the delightful evenings I should pass during the holidays. But no, no, this cannot be. She is everything I sought, thought, hoped and believed. Here was at last a human soul, as clear and fresh as a spring morning. I had seen at the first glance what she was and how she felt, and we had greeted and recognized one another. And my good angel in me, she answered me no more. She was gone and I felt there was no place on earth where I should find her again.
Now began a beautiful life, for I was with her every evening. We soon realized that we were in truth old acquaintances and that we could only call each other Thou. It seemed also as if we had lived near and with one another always, for she manifested not an emotion that did not find its counterpart in my soul, and there was no, thought which I uttered to which she did not nod friendly assent, as much as to say: "I thought so too." I had previously heard the greatest master of our time and his sister extemporize on the piano, and scarcely comprehended how two persons could understand and feel themselves so perfectly and yet never, not even in a single note, disturb the harmony of their playing. Now it became intelligible to me. Yes, now I understood for the first time that my soul was not so poor and empty as it had seemed to me, and that it had been only the sun that was lacking to open all its germs, and buds to the light. And yet what a sad and brief spring-time it was that our souls experienced! We forget in May that roses so soon wither, but here every evening reminded us that one leaf after another was falling to the ground. She felt it before I did, and alluded to it apparently without pain, and our interviews grew more earnest and solemn daily.
One evening, as I was about to leave, she said: "I did not think I should grow so old. When I gave you the ring on my confirmation day I thought I should have to take my departure from you all, very soon. And yet I have lived so many years, and enjoyed so much beauty—and suffered so very much! But one forgets that! Now, while I feel that my departure is near, every hour, every minute, grows precious to me. Good night! Do not come too late to-morrow."
One day as I went into her room, I met an Italian painter with her. She spoke Italian with him, and although he was evidently more artisan than artist, she addressed him with such amiability and modesty, with such respect even, one could not avoid recognizing that nobility of soul which is the true nobility of birth. When the painter had taken his leave, she said to me: "I wish to show you a picture which will please you. The original is in the gallery at Paris. I read a description of it, and have had it copied by the Italian." She showed me the painting, and waited my opinion. It was a picture of a man of middle age, in the old German costume. The expression was dreamy and resigned, and so characteristic that no one could doubt this man once lived. The whole tone of the picture in the foreground was dark and brownish; but in the background was a landscape, and on the horizon the first gleams of daybreak appeared. I could discover nothing special in the picture, and yet it produced a feeling of such satisfaction that one might have tarried to look at it for hours at a time. "There is nothing like a genuine human face," said I; "Raphael himself could not have imagined a face like this."
"No," said she. "But now I will tell you why I wished to have the picture. I read that no one knew the artist, nor whom the picture represents. But it is very clearly a philosopher of the Middle Ages. Just such a picture I wanted for my gallery, for you are aware that no one knows the author of the 'German Theology,' and moreover, that we have no picture of him. I wished to try whether the picture of an Unknown by an Unknown would answer for our German theologian, and if you have no objections we will hang it here between the 'Albigenses' and the 'Diet of Worms,' and call it the 'German Theologian.'"
"Good," said I; "but it is somewhat too vigorous and manly for the
Frankforter."
"That may be," replied she. "But for a suffering and dying life like mine, much consolation and strength may be derived from his book. I thank him much, for it disclosed to me for the first time the true secret of Christian doctrine in all its simplicity. I felt that I was free to believe or disbelieve the old teacher, whoever he may have been, for his doctrines had no external constraint upon me; at last it seized upon me with such power that it seemed to me I knew for the first time what revelation was. It is precisely this fact that bars so many out from true Christianity, namely: that its doctrines confront us as revelation before revelation takes place in ourselves. This has often given me much anxiety; not that I had ever doubted the truth and divinity of our religion, but I felt I had no right to a belief which others had given me, and that what I, had learned and received when a child, without comprehending, did not belong to me. One can believe for us as little as one can live and die for us."
"Certainly," said I; "therein lies the cause of many hot and bitter struggles; that the teachings of Christ, instead of winning our hearts gradually and irresistibly, as they won the hearts of the apostles and early Christians, confront us from the earliest childhood as the infallible law of a mighty church, and demand of us an unconditional submission, which they call faith. Doubts arise sooner or later in the breast of every one who has the power of thinking and reverence for the truth; and then even when we are on the right road, to overcome our faith, the terrors of doubt and unbelief arise and disturb the tranquil development of the new life."
"I read recently in an English work," she interrupted, "that truth makes revelation, and not revelation truth. This perfectly expressed what I found in reading the 'German Theology.' I read the book, and I felt the power of its truths so overwhelmingly that I was compelled to submit to it. The truth was revealed to me; or rather, I was revealed to myself, and I felt for the first time what belief meant. The truth which had long slumbered in my soul belonged to me, but it was the word of the unknown teacher which filled me with light, illuminated my inner vision, and brought out my indistinct presentiments in fuller clearness before my soul. When I had thus experienced for the first time how the human soul can believe, I read the Gospels as if they, too, had been written by an Unknown man, and banished the thought as well as I could that they were an inspiration from the Holy Ghost to the apostles, in some wonderful manner; that they had been endorsed by the councils and proclaimed by the church as the supreme authority of the alone-saving belief. Then, for the first time, I understood what Christian faith and revelation were."
"It is wonderful," said I, "that the theologians have not broken down all religion, and they will succeed yet, if the believers do not seriously confront them and say: 'Thus far but no farther.' Every church must have its servants, but there has been as yet no religion which the Priests, the Brahmins, the Schamins, the Bonzes, the Lamas, the Pharisees, or the Scribes have not corrupted and perverted. They wrangle and dispute in a language unintelligible to nine-tenths of their congregations, and instead of permitting themselves to be inspired by the apostles, and of inspiring others with their inspiration, they construct long arguments to show that the Gospels must be true, because they were written by inspired men. But this is only a makeshift for their own unbelief. How can they know that these men were inspired in a wonderful manner, without ascribing to themselves a still more wonderful inspiration? Therefore they extend the gift of inspiration to the fathers of the church; they attribute to them those very things which the majority have incorporated in the canons of the councils; and there again, when the question arises how we know that of fifty bishops twenty-six were inspired and twenty-four were not, they finally take the last desperate step, and say that infallibility and inspiration are inherent in the heads of the church down to the present day, through the laying on of hands, so that infallibility, majority and inspiration make all our convictions, all resignation, all devout intuitions, superfluous. And yet, notwithstanding all these connecting links, the first question returns in all its simplicity: How can B know that A is inspired, if B is not equally, or even more, inspired than A? For it is of more consequence to know that A was inspired than for one's self to be inspired."