Problematic Characters: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"But why do you walk all the way to church if you do not believe in anything?" asked Oswald.

"Who says that?" said the matron, almost indignant; "I believe in God, like every good Christian; and everybody ought to be upright and pious; that has nothing to do with the resurrection; and we must do our duty, that no one need be told. And now, young master, make haste and get away, or you'll be too late. I'll turn back again. Goodby!" And so she got up, seized an oak stick which had been leaning by her side against the stone, offered Oswald her withered, trembling hand, which the latter pressed, not without a feeling of reverence, and set out to walk back slowly the way she had come.

"That is a remarkable woman," said the young man to himself, walking on rapidly. "I must inquire about her. Who would have imagined that the doctrines of modern philosophers--doctrines which, to be sure, are only ancient coins with a new image and superscription--are current even among these classes of the people? Well, well, when even the poor in spirit and the simple in heart begin to remember that they have eyes to see and ears to hear, the last day of lying prophets must be near at hand."

CHAPTER IX.

The village of Fashwitz is an experiment made at the expense of the government. Originally the estate had been, like the whole larger part of the island, the property of a noble family, and had lapsed back into the possession of the crown when that family had become extinct. The government, desirous to obtain a nucleus of small landowners or independent farmers, which are here almost entirely wanting, had established here and on other estates genuine farmers' colonies, by laying them out in small parcels and selling these to all who chose to buy for merely nominal prices. The community at Fashwitz had a church built for them, and a minister was sent there; it was surely not the fault of the government if the good people of Fashwitz did not prosper.

It seemed, however, highly desirable that they should avail themselves of their other privileges and prerogatives a little more zealously than they seemed to do of the opportunity to obtain spiritual food on Sundays. For when Oswald obtained admittance to the church through a side-door--the great door was locked--he found that the devout listeners consisted of a few Sunday-school children, who were there ex officio, a handful of old women, faithful to the old traditions of their youth, and the families of some landowners in the neighborhood who tried to set their tenants and dependents a good example. The interior of the church formed a large, well-lighted hall, with a flat ceiling, in which pulpit, altar, and benches were discreetly arranged--everything bran new, perfectly practical, and very unattractive. There were no small stained window-panes, no pictures on the walls or over the altar, no angels of wood or bronze blowing their trumpets with swelling cheeks, no votive tablets, no faded wreaths, in fine, none of those means by which the Catholic, to whom the church is but the antechamber to heaven, gives expression to his longings for a higher life. The only poetical feature in the church were the shadows cast by the linden-trees before the windows, which waved to and fro on the bright wall opposite, and the broad bands of light which fell diagonally across the building, and formed so many golden bridges on which the thoughts could escape from the unattractive interior to the summer morning, which, outside, lay warm and fragrant on meadows, fields, and forests. No one in the audience, however, seemed to stand in need of such a road, or to find it at all practicable, except, perhaps, a pretty little girl about ten years old, with long golden curls, who seemed to have a strong longing after the bright flowers and white butterflies in the garden of her father, a stout old gentleman nodding devoutly by her side, and who, on that account, was frequently admonished by her governess to sit still and behave herself properly. The majority of the people looked as if they had left their minds carefully at home, and a few bore the infliction with the resignation of well-bred men.

And, indeed, it would have been strange if the congregation could have been edified by such a sermon and such a minister. Oswald, who had found a seat opposite the pulpit, and behind the pew of the great nobleman, discovered at the first glance at the preacher, and after a few words of his sermon, that there was about as much sympathy between the minister and the congregation as between a learned missionary and a tribe of good-natured savages. The minister, a small, lean man of about forty, with his dried-up, withered face, seemed to feel this himself very clearly, for he had scarcely seen Oswald when he began to address himself to him almost exclusively, as the only one capable of appreciating the precious pearls which an unwise government forced him to cast here before the swine.

"Oh, my devout brethren," he exclaimed, fixing his eyes through his spectacles upon Oswald, who tried to hide as well as he could behind the golden curls of the little girl, "Oh, my devout hearers, you see how weak our reason is in face of these momentous questions. And yet, and yet, oh, much beloved, there are misguided brethren and sisters who still rely on the dim rushlight of reason long after the sun has risen for them also. Alas! this little stump of a farthing candle seems to them bright enough in the days of feasting, frolicking, and jubileeing, but not so in the days of old age with its solemn thoughts and grave anxieties. Therefore, abandon your faith in reason, and hold fast on faith! Abandon your idle trust in sound common-sense, as you call it! Oh, my devout hearers, this sound common-sense is a sick, very sick sense, is a device of the devil's, and a will-o'-the-wisp which leads you inevitably into the pool of perdition."

Oswald was strangely, but by no means pleasantly affected by this sermon, which continued for half an hour more, richly larded with quotations from Holy Writ. He was deeply impressed with the contrast between the simple, childlike submission of the old woman to the great, eternal laws of nature, and her modest but solemn way of stating them, and the arrogant self-assurance with which the man in the pulpit decided on the most solemn questions, and condemned every sound sentiment and natural impulse of our heart as empty show and deceitful delusion. The unadorned wisdom of the matron was fresh and fragrant, like a flower on the heath; the boastful knowledge of the preacher, like a plant grown in the hot, oppressive air of a greenhouse, luxuriant in leaves and stalk, but without sap and strength and flowers. Oswald was glad when the learned preacher came at last to say amen! after having once more denounced the morality and anathematized the souls of all who thought differently from himself.

"That is most assuredly not so," he said to himself, as he tried on tiptoe to reach the little side-door by which he had come in. And when, outside, the blue sky once more rose high above him, and the fragrance of the linden greeted him, he breathed deeply, like one who comes from the hot, stifling atmosphere of a sick-room into the balsamic air of a garden.