“One night I had gone to bed early, according to my custom, and had fallen asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a bright and wonderful light, which shone all about me, and filled me with heavenly rapture. Shortly after I heard a voice, which pronounced distinctly these words, in the Sclavonian tongue; ‘Remain in the cloister!’ It was the voice of my departed mother. I was fully awake; yet saw nothing but the bright light, which disappeared, when the words had been spoken. Still it was broad daylight in my chamber. I thought I had slept beyond my usual hour. I looked at my watch. It was just one o’clock after midnight. Suddenly the daylight vanished, and it was dark. In the morning I arose, as if new-born, through the wonderful light, and the words of my mother’s voice. It was no dream. I knew it was the will of God that I should stay; and I could again give myself up to quiet study. I read the whole Bible through once more in theoriginal text; and went on with the Fathers, in chronological order. Often, after the apparition of the light, I awoke at the same hour; and though I heard no voice and saw no light, yet was refreshed with heavenly consolation.
“Not long after this an important event happened in the cloister. In the absence of the deacon of the Abbey, I was to preach the Thanksgiving sermon of Harvest-home. During the week the Prince-Abbot Berthold gave up the ghost; and my sermon became at once a Thanks-giving and Funeral Sermon. Perhaps it may not be unworthy of notice, that I was thus called to pronounce the burial discourse over the body of the last reigning, spiritual Prince Abbot in Germany. He was a man of God, and worthy of this honor.
“One year after this event, I was appointed Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics in Klagenfurt, and left the Abbey forever. In Klagenfurt I remained ten years, dwelling in the same house, and eating at the same table, with seventeen other professors. Their conversation naturally suggestednew topics of study, and brought to my notice books, which I had never before seen. One day I heard at table, that Maurus Cappellari, a monk of Camaldoli, had been elected Pope, under the name of Gregory Sixteenth. He was spoken of as a very learned man, who had written many books. At this time I was a firm believer in the Pope’s infallibility; and when I heard these books mentioned, there arose in me an irresistible longing to read them. I inquired for them; but they were nowhere to be had. At length I heard, that his most important work, The Triumph of the Holy See, and of the Church, had been translated into German and published in Augsburg. Ere long the precious volume was in my hands. I began to read it with the profoundest awe. The farther I read, the more my wonder grew. The subject was of the deepest interest to me. I could not lay the book out of my hand, till I had read it through with the closest attention. Now at length my eyes were opened. I saw before me a monk, who had been educated in an Italian cloister; who, indeed, had read much, and yet only what was calculated to strengthen him in the prejudices of his childhood; and who had entirely neglected those studies upon which a bishop should most rely, in order to work out the salvation of man. I perceived at the same time, that this was the strongest instrument for battering down the walls, which separate Christian from Christian. I saw, though as yet dimly, the way in which the union of Christians in the one true church was to be accomplished. I knew not whether to be most astonished at my own blindness, that, in all my previous studies, I had not perceived, what the reading of this single book made manifest to me; or at the blindness of the Pope, who had undertaken to justify such follies, without perceiving that at the same moment he was himself lying in fatal error. But since I have learned more thoroughly the ways of the Lord, I am now no more astonished at this, but pray only to Divine providence, who so mysteriously prepares all people to be united in one true church. I no longer believed in the Pope’s infallibility; nay, I believed even, that, to the great injury of humanity, he lay in fatal error. I felt, moreover, that now the time had fully come, when I should publicly show myself, and found in America a parish and a school, and become the spiritual guide of men, and the schoolmaster of children.
“It was then, and on that account, that I wrote in the Latin tongue my great work on Biblical Hermeneutics. But in Germany it cannot be published. The Austrian censor of the press cannot find time to read it, though I think, that if I have spent so many laborious days and sleepless nights in writing it, this man ought likewise to find time enough not only to read it, but to examine all the grounds of my reasoning, and point out to me any errors, if he can find any. Notwithstanding, the Spirit gave me no repose, but urged me ever mightily on to the perfection of my great work.
“One morning I sat writing, under peculiar influences of the Spirit, upon the Confusion of Tongues, the Division of the People, and the importance ofthe study of Comparative Philology, in reference to their union in one church. So wrapped was I in the thought, that I came late into my lecture-room; and after lecture returned to my chamber, where I wrote till the clock struck twelve. At dinner, one of the Professors asked if any one had seen the star, about which so much was said. The Professor of Physics, said, that the student Johannes Schminke had come to him in the greatest haste, and besought him to go out and see the wonderful star; but, being incredulous about it, he made no haste, and, when they came into the street, the star had disappeared. When I heard the star spoken of, my soul was filled with rapture; and a voice within me seemed to say, ‘The great time is approaching; labor unweariedly in thy work.’ I sought out the student; and like Herod, inquired diligently what time the star appeared. He informed me, that, just as the clock was striking eight, in the morning, he went out of his house to go to the college, and saw on the square a crowd looking at a bright star. It was the veryhour, when I was writing alone in my chamber on the importance of Comparative Philology in bringing about the union of all nations. I felt, that my hour had come. Strangely moved, I walked up and down my chamber. The evening twilight came on. I lighted my lamp, and drew the green curtains before the windows, and sat down to read. But hardly had I taken the book into my hand, when the Spirit began to move me, and urge me then to make my last decision and resolve. I made a secret vow, that I would undertake the voyage to America. Suddenly my troubled thoughts were still. An unwonted rapture filled my heart. I sat and read till the supper bell rang. They were speaking at table of a red glaring meteor, which had just been seen in the air, southeast from Klagenfurt; and had suddenly disappeared with a dull, hollow sound. It was the very moment at which I had taken my final resolution to leave my native land. Every great purpose and event of my life, seemed heralded and attended by divine messengers; the voices of thedead; the bright morning star, shining in the clear sunshine; and the red meteor in the evening twilight.
“I now began seriously to prepare for my departure. The chamber I occupied, had once been the library of a Franciscan convent. Only a thick wall separated it from the church. In this wall was a niche, with heavy folding-doors, which had served the Franciscans as a repository for prohibited books. Here also I kept my papers, and my great work on Biblical Hermeneutics. The inside of the doors was covered with horrible caricatures of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and other great men. I used often to look at them with the deepest melancholy, when I thought that these great men likewise had labored upon earth, and fought with Satan in the church. But they were persecuted, denounced, condemned to die. So perhaps will it be with me. I thought of this often; and armed myself against the fear of death. I was in constant apprehension, lest the police should search my chamber during my absence, and, by examining my papers, discover my doctrine and designs. But the Spirit said to me; ‘Be of good cheer; I will so blind the eyes of thy enemies, that it shall not once occur to them to think of thy writings.’
“At length, after many difficulties and temptations of the Devil, I am on my way to America. Yesterday I took leave of my dearest friend, Gregory Kuscher, in Hallstadt. He seemed filled with the Spirit of God, and has wonderfully strengthened me in my purpose. All the hosts of heaven looked on, and were glad. The old man kissed me at parting; and I ascended the mountain as if angels bore me up in their arms. Near
the summit, lay a newly fallen avalanche, over which, as yet, no footsteps had passed. This was my last temptation. ‘Ha!’ cried I aloud, ‘Satan has prepared a snare for me; but I will conquer him with godly weapons.’ I sprang over the treacherous snow, with greater faith than St. Peter walked the waters of the Lake of Galilee; and came down the valley, while the mountain peaks yetshone in the setting sun. God smiles upon me. I go forth, full of hopeful courage. On Christmas next, I shall excommunicate the Pope.”
Saying these words, he slowly and solemnly took his leave, like one conscious of the great events which await him, and withdrew with the other priest into the church. Flemming could not smile as Berkley did; for in the solitary, singular enthusiast, who had just left them, he saw only another melancholy victim to solitude and over-labor of the brain; and felt how painful a thing it is, thus to become unconsciously the alms-man of other men’s sympathies, a kind of blind beggar for the charity of a good wish or a prayer.
The sun was now setting. Silently they floated back to Saint Gilgen, amid the cool evening shadows. The village clock struck nine as they landed; and as Berkley was to depart early in the morning, he went to bed betimes. On bidding Flemming good night he said;
“I shall not see you in the morning; so good bye, and God bless you. Remember my partingwords. Never mind trifles. In this world a man must either be anvil or hammer. Care killed a cat!”
“I have heard you say that so often,” replied Flemming, laughing, “that I begin to believe it is true. But I wonder if Care shaved his left eyebrow, after doing the deed, as the ancient Egyptians used to do!”
“Aha! now you are sweeping cobwebs from the sky! Good night! Good night!”
A sorrowful event happened in the neighbourhood that night. The widow’s child died suddenly. “Woe is me!” — thus mourns the childless mother in one of the funeral songs of Greenland; “Woe is me, that I should gaze upon thy place and find it vacant! In vain for thee thy mother dries the sea-drenched garments!” Not in these words, but in thoughts like these, did the poor mother bewail the death of her child, thinking mostly of the vacant place, and the daily cares and solicitudes of maternal love. Flemming saw a light in her chamber, and shadows moving toand fro, as he stood by the window, gazing into the starry, silent sky. But he little thought of the awful domestic tragedy, which was even then enacted behind those thin curtains!
CHAPTER VIII. FOOT-PRINTS OF ANGELS.
It was Sunday morning; and the church bells were all ringing together. From all the neighbouring villages, came the solemn, joyful sounds, floating through the sunny air, mellow and faint and low, — all mingling into one harmonious chime, like the sound of some distant organ in heaven. Anon they ceased; and the woods, and the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air itself seemed to pray, so silent was it everywhere.
Two venerable old men, — high priests and patriarchs were they in the land, — went up the pulpit stairs, as Moses and Aaron went up Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation, — for the pulpit stairs were in front, and very high.
Paul Flemming will never forget the sermon he heard that day, — no, not even if he should live to be as old as he who preached it. The text was, “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” It was meant to console the pious, poor widow, who sat right below him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all in black, and her heart breaking. He said nothing of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as mere circumstances to which the imagination mainly gives importance, he told his hearers of the innocence of childhood upon earth, and the holiness of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful Lord Jesus was once a little child, and now in heaven the spirits of little children walked with him, and gathered flowers in the fields of Paradise. Good old man! In behalf of humanity, I thank thee for these benignant words! And, still more than I, the bereaved mother thanked thee, and from that hour, though she wept in secret for her child, yet
“She knew he was with Jesus,
And she asked him not again.”
After the sermon, Paul Flemming walked forth alone into the churchyard. There was no one there, save a little boy, who was fishing with a pin hook in a grave half full of water. But a few moments afterward, through the arched gateway under the belfry, came a funeral procession. At its head walked a priest in white surplice, chanting. Peasants, old and young, followed him, with burning tapers in their hands. A young girl carried in her arms a dead child, wrapped in its little winding sheet. The grave was close under the wall, by the church door. A vase of holy water stood beside it. The sexton took the child from the girl’s arms, and put it into a coffin; and, as he placed it in the grave, the girl held over it a cross, wreathed with roses, and the priest and peasants sang a funeral hymn. When this was over, the priest sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy water; and then they all went into the church, each one stopping as he passed the grave to throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it with holy water.
A few moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard saying mass in the church, and Flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child, with his clouted shoes. He approached him, and asked the age of the deceased. The sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and shrugging his shoulders replied;
“Only an hour or two. It was born in the night, and died this morning early?”
“A brief existence,” said Flemming. “The child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone.”
The sexton went on with his work, and made no reply. Flemming still lingered among the graves, gazing with wonder at the strange devices, by which man has rendered death horrible and the grave loathsome.
In the Temple of Juno at Elis, Sleep and his twin-brother Death were represented as children reposing in the arms of Night. On various funeral monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death issculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an inverted torch, in the attitude of repose, his wings folded and his feet crossed. In such peaceful and attractive forms, did the imagination of ancient poets and sculptors represent death. And these were men in whose souls the religion of Nature was like the light of stars, beautiful, but faint and cold! Strange, that in later days, this angel of God, which leads us with a gentle hand, into the “Land of the great departed, into the silent Land,” should have been transformed into a monstrous and terrific thing! Such is the spectral rider on the white horse; — such the ghastly skeleton with scythe and hour-glass; — the Reaper, whose name is Death!
One of the most popular themes of poetry and painting in the Middle Ages, and continuing down even into modern times, was the Dance of Death. In almost all languages is it written, — the apparition of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all business, and leading men away into the “remarkable retirement” of the grave. Itis written in an ancient Spanish Poem, and painted on a wooden bridge in Switzerland. The designs of Holbein are well known. The most striking among them is that, where, from a group of children sitting round a cottage hearth, Death has taken one by the hand, and is leading it out of the door. Quietly and unresisting goes the little child, and in its countenance no grief, but wonder only; while the other children are weeping and stretching forth their hands in vain towards their departing brother. A beautiful design it is, in all save the skeleton. An angel had been better, with folded wings, and torch inverted!
And now the sun was growing high and warm. A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness. He went in. There was no one there. The walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets. There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion; but in that hour the heart of Flemming was weak, — weak as a child’s. He bowed hisstubborn knees, and wept. And oh! how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love, were in those tears, through which he read on a marble tablet i
n the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription;
“Look not mournfully into the Past. It comes not back again. Wisely improve the Present. It is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.”
It seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consolation, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken. In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still. The stone was rolled away from the door of his heart; death was no longer there, but an angel clothed in white. He stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears; and, looking into the bright, morning heaven, he said;
“I will be strong!”
Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painfullongings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance, that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the Past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished as he gazed. They, too, were dust. And thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the Past shut behind him as the Divine Poet did the gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him the way up the Holy Mountain; and to him likewise was it forbidden to look back.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 171
