Pine Needles Read online

  CHAPTER VII.

  "Is that all?" said Maggie.

  "All in this place, about Hermann Billing."

  "I like him very much!" said Maggie drawing a deep sigh.

  "Notwithstanding he was such an incorruptible judge!"

  "Notwithstanding he was such a hard, cruel man, you should say," saidFlora. "Ditto, you are ridiculous!"

  "It is a great mistake, you must remember, to judge a man of one time bythe lights or laws of another."

  "There's a law of nature," said Flora, "in _some_ people, which makesthem dislike to kill their relations."

  "There is a higher law than the law of nature. Nature did not preventAbraham from making preparations to offer up Isaac. It did not hinderMoses"----

  "I do not know what unnatural thing Moses did," said Flora; "but Iconfess to you, I think Abraham acted much more like a heathen than likea Christian in that event of his life."

  "Which only shows, that if you had been in his place you would havefailed to manifest Abraham's faith, and so would have entirely missedAbraham's blessing. 'Because thou hast done this thing, saith the Lord,and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son;' then the Lord went on toheap blessing upon him."

  "I don't see how Abraham could do it."

  "Because he trusted God. It is not _trust_, Flo, that will not go anyfurther than it sees why."

  "Ditto, what are you going to read next?" said Maggie.

  "We'll see. Next thing, I think, will be the description Pastor Harmsgives of that old church which Hermann Billing built; Hermann the duke,I mean. Don't you want to hear it?"

  "Oh, yes. The description of it as it is now?"

  "As it is now. But what a wonderful sort of a church is this we are in!"said Meredith looking up.

  "Here, this bank, do you mean?"

  "This bank; and these pillars of tree-stems; and these wonderful Gothicwindows of tree-branches, through which the light comes broken bytransom and mullion. And the incense which fills nature's cathedral. Andthe stillness. And the preaching."

  "Don't get highfaluten, Meredith," said his sister.

  "No; that would be a pity, here."

  "I never heard of silent preaching before."

  "The strongest of all."

  "Is it? Well, go on and read. My work gets on best then."

  "It is too lovely to do anything but look and breathe. The air is mostdelicious. And nature seems so wide and free. I have an odd feeling thatI am floating with those clouds yonder, and flowing softly with theriver, and hovering about generally, like those eagles. Do you see thoseeagles?"

  "Highfaluten again, Meredith," said his sister.

  "Well, one good poet has been highfaluten then before me. Don't youremember, Maggie, something your uncle was repeating one day? I havenever forgotten it--

  "'My soul into the boughs does glide.'

  "It is an odd feeling--but it makes me very rich for the present. Thisis the loveliest place! And now you shall have the Hermannsburg church.So Pastor Harms writes:

  "'It is a great thing indeed, and a beautiful thing, to know somewhat ofthe origin and of the history of the church in which one worships andserves God. When I step into our church, whether it be for holdingdivine service or that I may pray there alone, every time, I feel mywhole inmost soul stirred. The very walk to the church through thechurchyard is edifying to me. The church at the beginning was situatedupon a little eminence, so that it was needful to mount several steps toget to the church doors. Now one must go _down_ several steps from thechurchyard to reach the entrance of the church. How comes that! Sincethe year 972 the churchyard has been the place of burial. The dust ofthose laid within it has raised the ground-level, till now the churchlies lower than the churchyard. A hill has grown out of the dust of thedead, and over this hill I go into the church. Does not this walk ofitself preach in the most impressive way: "Put thine house in order, Oman, for thou must die!" Then, when I step inside the church, what a newsermon I get! Since 972 years after Christ, therefore since 880 yearsago, men have worshipped there the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost;have sung in his honour the church's songs of praise; have thitherbrought their children to be baptized; have heard the preaching of theDivine Word there, have eaten and drunk the emblems of the Body andBlood of the Lord there, have bowed their knees there, where now I bowmine! It always seems to me, then, as if the veil were parted whichdivides the church up yonder from the church down below. Where I am,here have those who are fallen asleep once been and worshipped; andwhere they are now, thither shall I go also. So in blessed faith I cancry out, "A holy Christian church!" Not a place in the world is so dearto me as the church, my beloved church. I have no paternal mansion; forI am the son of a pastor, and pastors leave no inheritance for theirchildren; and yet I have a Father's house, the best there is in theworld, my beloved church; truly that is God's house, and God is myFather, and so it is justly and truly my home.

  "'And how wonderfully God has guarded this house of His. What wars haveraged since this house has been standing, and it has remained uninjured.Since the Thirty Years' War, Hermannsburg has been four times burneddown; this house has remained standing. Twice lightning has struck thetower, and so shattered the foundations that only a little turretstands now upon the riven walls instead of the slender one hundred andeighty feet high spire which was there before; but the church remaineduntouched. The interior has been altered; the many-coloured paintings onthe arched vault of the ceiling are gone; the many-coloured gallerieshave disappeared; in the body of the church itself gallery over gallerymounts up to the vaulted ceiling, to give accommodation for the hearers,but the church itself has remained unchanged. And when I think of theblessings that have gone forth from this house, what churches, chapels,and cloisters have sprung from here, in Bergen, in Wiezendorf, inMunster, in Mueden, and the chronicle mentions many more; yes, when Iremember how from the castles founded by Hermann on the Oerze and Wieze,the castellans of Oerze and Wiezendorf marched out so early as with DukeBernhard, to help bring the heathen people of Lauenburg and Mechlenburgto Christianity; must not then the zeal of my forefathers kindle my ownzeal to bring the Lord's blessing, His Word and His sacraments, to theheathen, to the very ends of the earth? And now that seems no longerstrange to me which seems strange to so many, that we from this placeshould have undertaken to send out a peasant mission. It has not beenour own doing; it has come from our church and our history. Did thepeasant's son Hermann become Duke of Saxony? Was the blessing ofChristianity carried from here into all the region round about, eveninto the countries on the other side of the Elbe? Why should notHermann's peasant church preach among the heathen the Saviour who hasbeen their own so long? May such a primeval blessing only make us rightthankful, right humble, right kind and loving, only zealous and ferventin spirit. We see well enough that the Lord can use little things;therefore let nobody despise us because we are small, and let us havethe joy of serving the Lord with our insignificant gifts and strength,as well as we can. It is written in the Scriptures, "Destroy it not, fora blessing is in it!"'"

  Meredith ceased reading, and there was a silent pause of a few minutes.Crochet needles worked busily, Maggie sat pondering, Meredith lay backon his elbow on the moss and looked down at the river. Here and therethe soft-pointed top of a young cedar rose up between, not hindering,only as it were embellishing the view. In the silence, when the strokesof the woodcutters halted, little sweet sounds broke in, every one ofthem coming like a caress or a murmur of rest; two crows slowly flyingover and calling to each other, some crickets chirruping nearer by, alittle gentle rustle and lapping of the water, then a bugle-call fromthe post opposite. Clouds hardly moved, winds were asleep, the air,fragrant with the breath of the evergreens, scarcely stirred,luxuriously warm and still. The colouring, too, in which all nature haddressed herself, gave another touch of delight through every objectwhich the eye rested on.

  "What a sky!" said Meredith. "And what air! It's wonderful."

  "Ditto," began Maggie, "have they
a _mission_ in Hermannsburg?"

  "Yes. They have a mission in Africa."

  "Why is it a 'peasant mission,' and what does that mean?"

  "Why, you see, Maggie, the whole people of Hermannsburg are just aparcel of peasants, part in the village, and part, I believe, farming ithere and there on the Lueneburg heath. They are poor people; smallfarmers, and the like. They have not much money to give; but when PastorHarms had been with them a while and proposed to them to set aboutmission work, a dozen men offered themselves to go. They were already sofilled with his own spirit."

  "And did they go?"

  "They had to be put to school first. They were too ignorant to instructthe heathen or anybody. So they were set to study under Pastor Harms'brother for three years. While they were studying Pastor Harms undertookbuilding a ship which should carry them to Africa. The ship and the menwere ready together about the same time."

  "They could not have been a very poor people, I should think," saidFlora.

  "They were, though; but you see, they began by giving themselves to theLord; and when people do that, I guess they generally find that there isa good deal else to give. Oh, they were poor enough; but it would cost agreat deal, you know, to pay their passage in a ship belonging to otherpeople, and the freight on all the goods they must carry, for they weregoing out not merely to preach, but to establish a colony and live amongthe heathen. And then, whenever new recruits for the mission were sentout, the expense would have to be incurred over again, so they thoughtthe cheapest way in the end would be to build their own ship."

  "And they did build it?" said Maggie.

  "Certainly. The good ship 'Candace.' And everybody helped in some way.The shoemakers made shoes, and the tailors made clothes, to go out withthe mission; the women knitted and sewed. Do you want to hear whatPastor Harms says about it?"

  "Oh, yes, Ditto, please!"

  "Yes, read on--anything," said Flora.

  "Two men of the first twelve had died, and two others had proved false.Eight left, to whom another eight joined themselves, who would go out ascolonists. Now I will read:--

  "'So by God's grace, everything was ready. And now one should have seenthe busy industry, the lively expectation, the gleesome bustle, as thelast hand, I may say, was put to everything. In the Mission-house, whatlearning and counselling and arranging; in the workshops belonging toit, what smithwork and cabinetwork and tailoring; how our women andgirls sewed! Our village shoemaker worked with his might at thefoot-gear to be taken along; our village cooper did the same at thegreat water casks for the ship; my brother went out with the Missionpupils in leisure hours and picked berries which were to be taken along.Here people brought dried apples, pears and plums; there buckwheat andbuckwheat groats; here rye, flour, peas, wheat; there sides of bacon,hams, and sausages. Then again house-furnishing articles, tools, heatherbrooms, trumpets and horns, even live hogs and poultry, and evenpotatoes were hauled along--and all was to go. Even a fir-tree with itsroots was planted in a large pot filled with earth, in order that on theocean the travellers might light up a Christmas-tree. Then again camepackages of linen made up, and of stuff. And there was a great deal thatnever came to Hermannsburg. Whatever was prepared on the other side ofthe Elbe, in Hamburg, Luebeck, Haide, &c., was kept in Hamburg, and wenever saw it at all. In Hamburg alone there were handed over from femalefriends of the Mission, one hundred and twenty-eight cotton shirts, allfinished and ready; from Haide forty striped shirts for the natives;from Luebeck and Mechlenburg, besides beautiful under-linen, all sorts ofpictures and little things for the heathen; from some children here camewriting boxes, pens, and writing books for the heathen children. Alsofrom here, from Osnabrueck, Schaumburg, Lueneburg, Bremen, andneighbourhood, whole rolls of linen cloth. There was a stir and springof love that moved people's hearts. Every one of the emigrants was totake a gun with him, for in East Africa there are a great many wildbeasts, lions, elephants, serpents, &c. Scarcely had this become known,when guns, rifles, double-barrelled rifles, pistols, and daggers camein, till we had enough to leave some for a future party that might besent out. Then would come our harbourmaster, or our captain, fromHarburg, to arrange this or that; then our pupils journeyed to Harburgto bring money for the ship. One hardly knew where his head was.'"

  "Well, did they go to Africa, Ditto?"

  "The colonists and missionaries; yes, sixteen of them."

  "Whereabouts in Africa?"

  "The east coast, about Natal."

  "I haven't the least idea where Natal is."

  "You would do well to look it out on the map."

  "And are they there yet, Ditto?"

  "They went in the year 1853. It is not likely they are all there now.But others followed them, Maggie, year after year, till now there are, Ibelieve, between twenty and thirty stations where they are settled."

  "All from Hermannsburg! Ditto, it is very curious! So many years ago,Hermann's castles sent out soldiers to bring heathen Mechlenburg to theChristian religion; and now Mechlenburg gives shirts and pictures forHermannsburg to send to other heathen in Africa."

  "What sort of heathen people are those they went to?" Esther asked.

  "Quite a good sort. Here is a description of them, written by one of thebrethren who sailed in that first trip of the 'Candace':--

  "'I cannot make it out how the heathen can be as they are, although theyare day and night before my eyes. They are powerful, muscular men, withopen faces and sparkling eyes; they all go either quite naked or with avery slight covering. A late law obliges them, however, to put a shirton when they are going into a city. They live in houses which resemblebeehives, into which you must creep. The whole stock of valuables whichyou find in these huts is an assaghai (javelin), a club, a mat, a bit ofwood for a pillow, and a great horn for smoking. I have seen nothingelse in them. The people have almost no wants. So many wives as a manhas, so many huts has he also, one for each wife, and then one besidesfor himself. The women are bought; paid for with cows and oxen; ten andtwenty oxen for a wife. These become then the man's slaves, and the man,when he has got a good many wives, hardly does any more work himself.The women must cultivate the maize and sweet potatoes, which is almostall the people live upon. Once in a while they kill an ox; and then somany come together to eat it that it is all disposed of at one meal. OurGerman brethren aver that ten Caffres in twenty-four hours will eat up awhole ox, skin and entrails and all, which they roast at the fire; thatafterwards, however, they can go fasting four days at hard labour. Theyare fond of adorning themselves with coral and rings, and snuff-boxesare to be seen in the hands of both men and women. They cork up thesnuff in their nostrils with a hollowed-out bit of wood, till the tearsrun down their cheeks. The women are so hardly used that a mother with alittle five-days-old baby must go out to work in the hot sun with thebaby on her back, and the father does not concern himself at all aboutthe child. Of twins, one is almost always killed at once. In short, theyare not much above the beasts in their way of life; and the worst of allis, they are almost inaccessible to the truth, and laugh at everythingsacred.'"