The Wanderers

by Mary Johnston

“Some hunter,” said Conrad Devilson. “He would find a cave and bring lightning from a stricken tree, and build himself a hearth, and lay fire and cook his game and be at home! The early man.”

“Ah, much we owe the early man!” said Walther von Langen.

“He is at the base,” said Albrecht.

The wind whistled, the bare cherry boughs tapped upon the wall. Thekla left the great chair and the fire and going to the smaller room brought back a dish of red apples and a jug of ale.

A week and Martin Luther came to Hauptberg. All that great moiety of the town that would presently be named “Protestant” flocked and crowded to hear him, who was the most famous man in Germany. On a windy, wintry day, to a great throng, preached Martin Luther. Two hours he preached and touched on many things. Great was his power in preaching, great his power to make and guide opinion, wide the magnetic field in which he moved.

That was the first day. Came the second, and came again the flocking and the thronging. He preached the revolt of thought, and he drew Martin Luther’s lines around that revolt, and within the line was blessing and without the line was cursing. One thought of revolt infected another thought with revolt, one question led to other questions.... Martin Luther knew not how to help that, but he could preach against the thought with which he did not travel, the question which did not come to him to be asked.... He could preach with a great, plain heat and power. He could knock down and render without seeming life a thought or question. If, after a time, it revived, got again to its feet, that doubtless was a trick learned of Satan....

He travelled with religious revolt, but by no means with political, economic, and social revolt—save only as all society, through religious revolt, somewhat changed its hue. He allowed that; where society had been dark of hue it was to become light and bright of hue. He thought that his definition of religion was the whole definition. He carried a great lantern and it sent a bright ray into many a dark corner. But it was a great lantern and not a sun.

He preached against the seething discontent among the peasants and the artisans. He preached against economic revolt. It was a wide subject, and there were other revolts also that to-day he lacked time thoroughly to destroy. Between two and three hours he preached. He left economic and class revolt breathless, hurt with many a wound, seemingly done to death. And there was yet to-morrow in which to finish these and other serpents who raised their heads from the dust in the tumult of the times....

On the morrow he preached the third time. Hauptberg that would hear Luther thronged together under a grey sky, came through fast-falling snowflakes. They fell so thick, they fell so fast, they were so large and white that the world seemed moving in a veil. Martin Luther preached again upon the revolts outside the line that he drew, and he shook anathemas upon them, and he laid hands upon the Bible before him and he interpreted its words according to his own inner and strong feeling. “Slaves, obey your masters!” he preached. “Render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s and unto God that which is God’s!” he preached. “The poor ye have always with you!” he preached. He preached of men and women. “Are you made for abstinence? No! You are made, as God says, to increase and multiply! But in marriage, not without. Therefore, let a man early find work and take to wedlock in God’s name! A boy at the latest at twenty, a girl at fifteen or eighteen.... Let God take care how they and their children are to be supported. God creates children and will certainly support them.... If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that mattereth not! Let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it!”

He preached the subjection of woman. “The woman’s will, as saith God, shall be subject to the man and he shall be master; which is to say, the woman shall not live according to her free will, as it would have been had Eve not sinned, for then she had ruled equally with Adam, the man, as his colleague! Now, however, that she has sinned and seduced the man, she has lost the governance, and must neither begin nor complete anything without the man! Where he is there must she be, and bend before him as before her master, whom she shall fear, and to whom she shall be subject and obedient!”