A Twofold Life

by Wilhelmine von Hillern

Severinus recoiled a step in horror. "Stop, I implore you!"

But Cornelia's unfettered stream of eloquence would not allow itself to be repressed. "You go into the cloister, not because you have conquered, but because you fear to yield; you go there to fly from the battle, not to rest after the victory; but that which would have caused the conflict here will go with you, will disturb the peace of your devout solitude; and you must conquer it with anguish there as well as here, can succumb to it in the narrow convent-cell as well as in God's wide world."

Severinus's broad breast heaved painfully. "Oh, God! my God! let me withstand this last trial!" he prayed, fervently. "Cornelia, I do not retreat to the cloister on account of the danger, but to fly from the evil I abhor; that I may no longer see the world that stands between me and heaven, which I hate----"

"The world to you is mankind; if you detest the former it is for the sake of the latter. But why? What have men done to you? You are a servant of Christ. Does this humanity, which Christ so loved that he suffered and bled for it, deserve your love less than the Master's? Why do you scorn the race whose form a God did not hesitate to assume,--for which a God bore the tortures of life and death? Has it injured you more than him? It has not pressed upon your brow the crown of thorns; it has not nailed you to the cross; and yet he could forgive, while you cannot!"

"A God might do this,--but I am a man!"

"And do you know why you hate mankind? Because you dare not love like a human being. You curse your own earthly nature, because it always opposes your task. You are a man, and would fain be a god; you have human passions, and desire to practice a divine self-sacrifice. This is the fatality of your position, this the foul fiend you fear! Oh, I know my words fall upon you as the surges dash against a rock, but it seems as if a higher power urged me on to struggle again and again against the unhappy errors of your church!"

"Cornelia," cried Severinus, starting up, "my church does not err,--she is infallible!"

"But, I tell you, it is an error that Christ has required of his priests what the church demands from you. If Christ was God, it is presumption for you mortals to imitate his divine person, and attempt to give the world an example of what you do not attain yourselves. You are merely to announce it and show it in all its beauty in yourselves. But how can you do this,--shut off from life behind convent walls? Only when, like our ministers, in real life, before the eyes of a whole parish, oppressed by the same anxieties, pursued by the same enemies, assailed by the same temptations as all, you can practice the virtues you preach, will you become a true representative of the Christian religion, will you have a right to require of others what was not too difficult for yourself, and be what Christ desires, a true, perfect man!"

Severinus hastily approached the door: his whole manner betrayed tokens of violent emotion. "I dare not listen to you longer, terrible, dangerous woman! God sees my anguish that I cannot save your soul, make your noble powers useful to the good cause. In you all the hostile powers of the world assume a bodily form; in you I have convinced myself that I am no match for them, and only the repentance of a whole life can atone for the weakness!"

"Must I, then, lose you forever?"