Pine Needles Part 6

(The chronicle names Ingelheim, and not Aix-la-Chapelle.) "They went through the city, admiring the handsome houses and magnificent streets, till they came to a large house, the largest of all they had hitherto seen. 'This must be Charlemagne's dwelling,' said they; 'for certainly he is the greatest man among his people!' They went in--they heard singing, that sounded as if it came down from heaven. They went further in; there stood up in the chancel a man in a white dress (it was a priest in white church robes) who was speaking: 'Hear, you who believe the glad message; the great G.o.d in heaven loves you. He loves you so much that He sent His dear Son Jesus Christ to you. Jesus Christ came down from heaven; G.o.d's Son became your brother, so little and poor that He lay in a manger in the stall for cattle. When He was grown up, He preached everywhere and said, Sinners, turn, and I will save you. He made the lame to go and the blind to see, and healed the sick, and raised up the dead that lay in their graves. He shed His blood for sinners; sinners put Him to death. He was still kind to them in His death, and prayed for His murderers, Father, forgive them! for they know not what they do. They buried Him. But can G.o.d stay in the grave? Lo!

after three days the earth quaked and the rocks rent; Jesus rose up out of the grave, Jesus went up to heaven, and sits now again upon the throne of His Father, G.o.d. He reigns; He commands: Repent, and I will save you, you shall come into my heaven and reign with me.

"'"So preached the priest. There stood the two heroes in astonishment, but they were to be yet more astonished. Lo! a tall man steps forward through the church up to the altar, where the priest was standing; and a crown was upon his head. It was the King Charlemagne. The two heroes knew him, and yet they did not know him. Was this the mighty hero, whose flas.h.i.+ng sword in battle struck and slew? Was this the man whose eyes blazed with the fire of battle? He wears no sword here; his eyes sparkle peacefully; as he stands before the altar, he humbly takes his crown off and sets it on the ground; then he bows his knee upon the steps of the altar and prays to Jesus Christ, the G.o.d of the Christians, and all the people fall upon their knees, and the heavenly music of them who are singing praises swells out again--'Glory to G.o.d in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men.' Then Charlemagne rises and sits down in a chair, and the man in white clothing preaches of Jesus, who came to save sinners, and Charlemagne bows his high head so often as the name of Jesus is named. Then the priest blesses the congregation--the service is over.

"'"It was not Charlemagne's house in which they were; it was G.o.d's house, in which Charlemagne had been praying. G.o.d is greater than Charlemagne, and so must G.o.d's house be the biggest in the city. The brothers in arms went forth of the church. Before the church door there was a great crowd of beggars, in garments like their own. Gentle and kind, Charlemagne goes to the poor people, giving each one a piece of money and saying, 'G.o.d bless it to you, my children; pray for me too.'

'Is that King Charlemagne?' the heroes asked each other by their astonished looks. Then the king steps up to them, looks at them graciously, and says--'You have never been here before, my friends; come into my house, and I will give you your portion.' He goes on and they follow him. They come into his house, which was smaller than G.o.d's house. They go into his apartment; there he dismisses the attendants, goes up to Wittekind and Albion, offers them his hand like a brother and says: 'Welcome to my citadel, you brave Saxon heroes! G.o.d has heard my prayer; my foes are becoming my friends. Put off your rags. I will dress you as princes should be dressed!' And he had princely robes put upon them, and said further--'Now you are my guests; and soon, I hope, the guests of the Lord my G.o.d also.' The two heroes had not expected this, that Charlemagne should know them in their disguise; much less that he would treat them so n.o.bly and brotherly. Fourteen days later, the priest in white garments baptized them in the name of G.o.d the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; and they swore allegiance to the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

"'"You men, this is the way that your heroes have led the way for you.

Saxons, will you forsake your dukes? The curse of sin has been cleared away from them. Now I have come to you; I too am a priest of Jesus Christ; I would gladly teach you and clear the curse of sin away from you, that you may be saved and come to heaven. Say, shall I preach among you? or will you kill me too, as you killed the two Ewalds? Here I am; but in the midst of you I am also in G.o.d's hand."

"'Landolf ceased. The whole a.s.sembly had heard him in silence; even the heathen priests had listened. Then the Billing lifted up his voice and spoke: "Landolf, my guest and friend, thou hast spoken well, and thou hast been a good man in my house; I will hear thee further. Brothers, let us decide that Landolf shall be free to go about in our country and preach. It is no dishonour to bow the knee before that G.o.d who is Charlemagne's G.o.d and the G.o.d of the Christians; it is no shame to pray to that G.o.d who has conquered our brave heroes. Decide!"

"'Then stepped forth an old man with white hair, who was the oldest man in the a.s.sembly, and spoke: "Cast the lot!"

"'The young men made ready seven little sticks, square-cornered, of oak wood, marked on the upper side with sacred signs. One of the heathen priests, the chronicle calls him Walo, shook them in his hands and then threw them up in the air. During this time, Landolf was upon his knees, crying, "Lord, Lord, give the victory, that this n.o.ble people may come to know Thee!" Then the sticks fall to earth, and behold! six of them lie with the signs up, and only one with the signs down. This is announced, and then the whole a.s.sembly cries out--"The Christian's G.o.d has won!" and the Billing shakes Landolf by the hand and says, "Now go in and out through the whole land; n.o.body will hinder you from preaching the name of your G.o.d. But do not pa.s.s my house by; come back with me; I will become a Christian." And now the a.s.sembly broke up; everybody went home to his house, Landolf accompanying the Billing. When they were again pa.s.sing the stone of sacrifice at the Deep Moor, Landolf said--"Billing, that is your altar-stone; is it not?" "It belongs to me and my house." "There my first church shall stand," said Landolf, glad and strong in faith. "May I build it?" "Build it my brother," answered the Billing; "and when it is ready I will be the first to be baptized in it. But the stone of sacrifice we will throw into the moor, that the remembrance of it may be lost."

"'Now did Landolf go to work joyfully; by day he wrought, and at night he preached, and taught in the Billing's house, and in all the country round. No longer than three months after, the little wooden church was done--the first in this whole region; and the same day that Landolf consecrated it, Harm the Billing with five sons and three daughters, and the greater part of the friends of his family and of his farm servants, received holy baptism, the water for which was fetched out of the neighbouring Oerze. Now, of course, that church is no longer standing; it was burnt down afterwards by the heathen Wends, and in its place the large stone church in Hermannsburg was built. But to this day the field where that first church stood belongs to the Hermannsburg parsonage, and is still called _the cold church_.

"'This was the foundation of the Christian Church in our valley of the Oerze; and as Landolf had come from Minden, the whole Oerze valley was attached to the see of Minden, while the rest of the Luneburg country came to belong to the see of Verden.

"'Now the faithful Landolf laboured on indefatigably. He sent one of his new converts to Minden and Munster, to get more helpers from thence for his work. Twelve came, who were put under Landolf; and now for the first time the work could be taken hold of vigorously. Landolf must have lived and laboured until 830 or 840, and so blessed was his agency that the whole country of the Horzsahzen was converted to Christianity. It is brought forward as a proof of this, that at the great May diets held at the stone-houses the following laws were unanimously enacted: no more horse's flesh to be eaten; no more human sacrifices to be brought; no more dead to be burned; and all Woden's oaks to be hewn down. And in truth these laws do show the dominance of Christianity, for precisely these things named were the peculiar marks of heathenism. Of the interior condition of Christianity, little is told; only it is remarked that the entire change in the country was so great and manifest, that the bishops Willerich of Bremen and Helingud of Verden sent priests to convince themselves with their own eyes whether what they had heard with their ears was true; and these messengers had found not a single heathen left in the whole region. As a good general, Landolf moreover understood how everywhere to seize the right points where with the most effect heathenism might be grappled with and overthrown. He always went straight to the heart of the old religion. We have already seen how his first church was built by the Billing's sacrifice stone. Westward from Hermannsburg is what is called the Winkelberg, upon which was the burying-place of the heathen priests, for the most part cultivated land now, but the twice seven so-called Huhnen graves are still to be seen there. At the foot of this hill he established what was called the _Pfarrwohrt_, where the spiritual courts should be holden; and close by this place he laid the foundation-stone of the Quanenburg, a house surrounded with a moat, in which the young girls of the country might be taught and educated (Quane or Kwane meant a young girl). Both places, Pfarrwohrt and Quanenburg, are arable fields now, still belonging to the parsonage.

"'An hour above Hermannsburg the two rivers Oerze and Wieze flow into each other. At that place, in an oak wood, the idol Thor was wors.h.i.+pped.

There Landolf was equally prompt to build a chapel, that the idol wors.h.i.+p might be banished. As he had consecrated the church in Hermannsburg to Peter and Paul, so he consecrated this chapel to Lawrence. Around this chapel the village Muden sprang up, so called because the two rivers there flow into one another, or Munden. Then he went further up the Oerze and erected a cloister and a chapel at a place which was sacred to the G.o.ddess Freija. At that time a cloister was called a munster. The village of Munster grew up around this cloister.

In the same way he went further up the Weize, where there was a wood sacred to Hertha. In its neighbourhood he built a chapel which was consecrated to Bartholomew. Around this chapel Wiezendorf arose. About an hour and a half distant from Hermannsburg, there was a very large, magnificent wood of oaks and beeches; such a forest was then called a wohld. In this forest the heathen priests, the so-called Druids, were specially at home; there, too, they kept the white horses which were used in soothsaying. The wood extended for hours in length and breadth.

He could not give that the go-by; and that he might dash right into the midst of it, he built at the spot where it was narrowest a chapel on the one side to Mary _in valle_, and on the other side a chapel to Mary _in monte_. The first means Mary in the valley, the second, Mary on the hill. The villages Wohlde and Bergen have thence arisen. So he grappled with heathenism just there where its strongest points were, and always, by G.o.d's grace, got the victory; for the Lord indeed says: "My glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." And as once the Philistine's idol Dagon fell speechless upon the ground before the ark of the covenant of G.o.d, so in our Oerze valley everywhere fell the altars of the idols before the sign of the Cross.

"'Besides all this, Landolf and his companions were skilled husbandmen, who themselves shunned no manual labour nor painstaking, and who knew right well how to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. So they introduced agriculture universally, of which our forefathers at that time knew little or nothing; and thus they were not only the spiritual but also the material benefactors of the whole district. How much a single man can do, who is wholly given to the Lord, and who is moved by burning love to the Lord and to his fellows! G.o.d give all preachers and teachers, and especially all messengers to the heathen, such a mind, such a brave heart, such a single eye, such will to work! that some good may be done.

"'About the next hundred years I have found nothing said in the chronicle. Probably things went on in such a quiet way that there was nothing particular to say concerning them. But then comes the relation of a noteworthy occurrence.'"

Meredith shut up his book.

"Well, aren't you going on?" said Maggie.

"Presently. I want a run down to the sh.o.r.e and see how the water looks."

"Why, it always looks just the same way," said Esther.

"Does it? I am afraid something must be the matter with your eyes."

"Oh, of course sometimes it blows, and sometimes it is smooth; but what is that?"

"Just according to your eyes."

"Aren't all eyes alike?"

"Not exactly. Some see."

"What do you see in the water?"

"There is one peculiarity of eyes," said Meredith. "You cannot see through another person's. Come, Maggie, let us stretch ourselves a bit."

Taking hold of hands, the two ran and scrambled down the steep, rocky pitch of the hill, to the edge of the river. The wind was not blowing to-day; soft and still the water lay, with a mild gleam under the October sun, sending up not even a ripple to the sh.o.r.e. There was a warm, spicy smell in the woods; there was a golden glow here and there from a hickory; the hills were variegated and rich-hued in the distance and near by. Meredith sat down on a stone by the water and looked out on the view. But he was graver than Maggie liked.

"Ditto," she said after a while, "you are thinking of something."

"Of a good many things, Maggie. How good the world is! and men are not!"

"What then, Ditto?"

"One ought to do something to make them better."

"What can you do?"

"What could Landolf the Saxon? I do not know, Maggie; but one ought to be as ready as Landolf was to do anything. And I think I am."

"Then G.o.d will show you what to do, Ditto."

Meredith bent down and kissed the earnest little face, "You are the only friend I have got, Maggie, that thinks and feels as I do."

"O Ditto! Uncle Eden?"

"Well, I suppose Mr. Murray would do me the honour to let me call him my friend," said Meredith.

"And papa?"

"Mr. Candlish is very good to me; but you see, I do not know him so well, Maggie."

"Well, he thinks just as you do. And papa goes and preaches in the streets when he is in New York; in those dreadful places where the people live that never go to church."

"_That's_ like Landolf," said Meredith. "I almost envy men like that old monk."

"Why?"

"All his strength laid out for something worth while--all his life. And think how much he did! And I fret to be doing nothing, and yet I don't know what to do."

"You can ask Uncle Eden when he comes."

"I hope he'll come! Now don't think any more about it, Maggie. This is the prettiest place I ever saw in my life. I want to get out on that water."

"Now?"

"Not now. Some time."

"Oh, we'll all go," said Maggie joyfully. "We might go in the boat somewhere and take our book and our dinner, and have a grand time, Ditto!"

Meredith laughed and said it was all "grand times;" and then he got up and strolled along by the water, picking up flat stones and making ducks and drakes on the smooth, river surface. This was a new pastime to Maggie, and so pleasant to both that they forgot the book and the girls left on the height, and delighted their eye with the dimpling water and ricochetting stones time after time, and could not have enough. At last flat stones began to grow scarce, and Maggie and Meredith remounted to the rest of the party.