“What is it, Robert? One request is very moderate indeed; isn’t that so, Emily?”
As she spoke Katrina’s friend turned to Mrs. Shaler with a smile.
“It is that you and mother will promise not to spend the whole time in the Elizabethan Gallery, but will allow me to see just one other room.” In the young man’s gray eyes was the suspicion of a twinkle, even in spite of the earnestness of his wish.
“And what room do you want to see, my son?”
“I want to see the one in which Martin Luther stayed.”
At this Katrina gave a little start. She recalled what her mother had told her only the night before about Martin Luther having been a prisoner at the Wartburg. How much she, too, would love to see that room!
“Yes, Robert, we must surely see it,” said Katrina’s friend. “No pilgrim to the Wartburg would ever be satisfied to go away without a visit to that room where the great Reformer accomplished some of his grandest work for mankind.” And as she spoke, the lady, under some sudden impulse, laid her white hand upon the little silver cross she wore.
“There is a question I have sometimes asked myself,” said Robert Shaler, “and have never been able to answer to my satisfaction; so I will put it to you and mother. Which of all the influences brought to bear on Luther’s life seems to you to have been the strongest? In other words, which did the most in directing him toward the path he chose?”
“I should say,” Mrs. Shaler answered, “that it was the fact of his being born of such good and honest parents as were Hans and Margaret Luther. No,” she added, after a moment of reflection, “it must have been when his dear friend Alexis, as they walked one day in the woods together, and were overtaken by a storm, was struck by a bolt of lightning and fell dead beside him. It was a bitter grief to Martin Luther, and the event is said by some to have changed the whole current of his life.”
“It seems to me,” said Katrina’s friend in her gentle, yet forceful way, and again her hand sought the little silver cross,—“it seems to me that it might be traced to the day when, in searching through the library of his university, Luther found a Bible, opened it, and, for the first time, read the Book of Samuel. In those days, my dear,” she said in explanation to Katrina, “even students were permitted to read only certain portions of the Scriptures. This story of how the boy Samuel had been taken to the Temple by his mother, and dedicated to the service of the Lord, impressed him very deeply. Then there took root within his own ardent nature a purpose that was steadfast—to know the way of life from God’s sacred Word itself. And was not this, after all, the message that he left us?”