Читать книгу The Pictures of German Life Throughout History - Gustav Freytag - Страница 17

Even the most enlightened Roman Catholics look with horror upon Luther and Zwinglius as originators of the schism in their old Church. It is to be hoped that such views may disappear in Germany. All sects have reason to thank Luther for whatever depth and spirituality now remains in their faith: The heretic of Wittenberg was as much the reformer of German Roman Catholics as of Protestants; not only, because in the struggle with him the teachers of the Roman Catholic Church were obliged to erect at Trent a firmer building on the ruins of the Church of the middle ages, but because he left the impress of his mind on the character of the people, in which we all equally partake. Some things for which the obstinate and pugnacious Luther contended, against both Reformers and Catholics, have been condemned by the free judgment of modern times. His doctrines, vehement and high strained, wrung from a soul full of reverence, were in some weighty points erroneous, and he was sometimes bitter, unjust, indeed harsh to his opponents; but such things should not lead Germans astray, for all the deficiencies of his nature and education disappear in the fullness of blessing, which streamed from his great heart into the life of his nation.

To few mortals has it been granted to exercise such an influence on his cotemporaries and on after times, as has fallen to the lot of Luther: his life may be divided into three periods. In the first, the character of the man was formed; it was powerfully influenced by the surrounding world, but from the depths of human nature, under the pressure of individual character, thoughts and convictions were gradually strengthened into resolutions which broke forth into action, and the individual commenced a struggle with the world. Then followed another period, one of more energetic action, of more rapid development and of greater triumph. Ever greater became the influence of the individual on the world; powerfully did he draw the whole nation along with him; he became their hero and model; the inward life of millions seemed concentrated in one man.

But a single individual, however powerful in character, however great his aims, could not long dominate over the spirit of a nation, the life, strength, and wants of which are manifold. The man is under the constraint of the logical consequences of his thoughts and actions; all the spirits of his own deeds force him into a fixed limited path; but the soul of a people requires for its life, incessant working with the most varied aims. Much that an individual cannot bring himself to receive, is taken up by others in opposition to him. The reaction of the world begins: it is first weak, and from many quarters, with various tendencies and little authority; then it becomes stronger and more victorious. Finally, the inward spirit of the individual life confines itself within its own system, and becomes only a single element in the formation of the people. The end of a great life is always full of secret resignation, mixed with bitterness and quiet suffering.

And thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods ended with the day on which he affixed his Theses; the second continued till his return from the castle of Wartburg; the third till the beginning of the Smalkaldic war and his death. It is not our intention to give his life here, but only to describe shortly how he became what he was. There was much in him which, only viewed from a distance, appears strange and unpleasing, but the more closely we examine his character, the greater and more amiable we find it.

Luther rose from the peasant class; his father left Möhra, a place amid the forests of the Thuringian mountains, which was half peopled by his kindred, to engage in mining in the district of Mansfeld; thus the boy was born in a cottage, where the terrors inspired by the spirits of the pine woods, and dark fissures which served as entrances to the mine in the mountains, were still strong and vivid. His mind was no doubt often occupied with the dark traditions of the heathen mythology; he was accustomed to perceive in the terrors of nature, as well as in the life of man, the work of the powers of darkness. When he became a monk, these recollections of his childhood blended themselves with the figure of the devil, and the busy tempter always wore the same aspect to his imagination as the mischievous hobgoblins that frequent the hearth and stable of the countryman.

His father was a man of concentrated and energetic character, firm and decided, and gifted with a full measure of strong common sense: he struggled hard to attain wealth; he kept strict discipline in his house, and in later years Luther remembered with grief the severe punishment he had received as a boy, and the sorrow it had inflicted on his childish heart. The influence of the old Hans Luther on the life of his son lasted till his death in 1530. When Martin went secretly into a monastery at the age of twenty-two, the old man was violently angry, as he had intended to provide for his son by a good marriage. At last friends succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between them, and when the supplicating son approached his father, confessing that he had been driven by a fearful apparition to take the monastic vows, he replied to him in the following words: "God grant that it may not have been a delusion of the devil." He agitated still more the heart of the monk by the angry question: "You thought you were listening to the command of God when you went into the cloister; have you never heard that it is a duty to be obedient to parents?" This made a deep impression on the son, and when, many years afterwards, he was residing at Wartburg, cast out of the Church, and proscribed by the Emperor, he wrote to his father these touching words: "Do you still wish to withdraw me from the thraldom of the monastery? You are still my father, I your son; you have on your side the power and commands of God; on my side there is only human error. Behold, that you may not boast yourself before God, He has anticipated you, and taken me out himself." From that time he was as it were restored to the old man. Hans had once reckoned upon having a grandson for whom he would work, and to this idea he stubbornly returned, regardless as to what the rest of world thought; he soon therefore admonished him earnestly, to marry, and his persuasions had a great share in determining Luther to do so. When the father, who at a great age had become councillor of Mansfeld, was about to draw his last breath, and the priest bending over him asked him whether he died in the pure faith of Christ and the Holy Gospel, old Hans collected himself once more, and said shortly: "He is a rogue who does not believe in it." When, afterwards, Luther was relating this, he added admiringly: "That was indeed a man of the olden time." The son received the account of his father's death, in the fortress of Coburg; and when he read the letter, which his wife had conveyed to him with the portrait of his youngest daughter, Magdalen, he spoke only these words to his companions: "God's will be done, my father is dead." He arose, took his psalter, went into his room, where he wept and prayed, and returned with a composed mind. The same day he wrote to Melancthon with deep emotion, of the heartfelt love of his father, and of the entire confidence that existed between them. "Never did I despise death so much as I do now: how often do we suffer death by anticipation before we really die! I am now the eldest of my race, and I have a right to follow him."

Such was the father from whom the son derived the groundwork of his character, veracity, a steadfast will, an honest understanding, and circumspection in the management of business and in his dealings with men. His childhood was full of hardships, and he had much that was disagreeable to endure at his Latin school, and as a chorister; but he experienced also much good-will and love, and he retained, what is more easily kept in the smaller circles of life, a heart full of trust in the goodness of human nature, and respect for the great people of the world. His father was able to support him comfortably at the university of Erfurt; he was then full of youthful vigour, and took great delight in joining his companions in vocal and instrumental music. Of his mental life at that time we know but little, only that when in peril of death, in a storm, "a fearful apparition called to him from heaven." In his terror he vowed to go to a monastery, and quickly and secretly carried out his resolution.

It is here that our accounts of the state of his mind begin. At variance with his father, full of terror at an incomprehensible eternity, frightened by the anger of God, he began, in a convulsive struggle, a life of self-denial, penance, and devotion. He found no peace. All the highest questions of life stormed with fearful power over his distracted soul, which had no anchor to rest on. Strongly did he feel the need of being in harmony with God and the world, and all that he derived from his faith was unintelligible and repulsive. The mysteries of the moral government of the world were to his mind matters of the deepest import. That the good should be tormented and the wicked made happy, that God should condemn the whole human race with the monstrous curse of sin, because an inexperienced woman had eaten an apple, and that on the other hand the same God should bear with our sins, in love and patience; that Christ should sometimes repel upright people with severity, and at others receive adulterers, publicans, and murderers,--about all this, the wisdom of man becomes foolishness. He complained in these words to his ghostly counsellor, Staupitz: "Dear doctor, our Lord God does indeed deal terribly with us; who can serve Him when He deals such blows on all?" To which the answer was: "How could He otherwise bow down the stiff-necked?" This ingenious argument was of no comfort to the youth. In his earnest strivings to find the incomprehensible God, he tormented himself in searching out all his thoughts and dreams. Every ebullition of youthful blood, every earthly thought, appeared to him a shocking iniquity; he began to despair, and wrestled with himself in endless prayer, fasting, and mortification. On one occasion the brothers were obliged to break into his cell, where he had been lying the whole day in a state not far removed from insanity. Staupitz observed with warm sympathy the agitation and torments of his soul, and endeavoured, though only by rough consolation, to give it rest. Once when Luther had written to him, "Oh my sins! my sins! my sins!" his ghostly counsellor answered him: "You wish to be without sin, and yet have no real sins. Christ is the forgiver of mortal sins, such as the murder of parents, &c., &c. If you would have the help of Christ, you must have mortal sins to record, and not come to Him with such trifles and peccadilloes, making a sin out of every little infirmity."

The way in which Luther raised himself out of this despair decided the whole tenour of his life. The God whom he served appeared then as a God of terror, whose anger was only to be appeased by the means of grace given by the old Church, especially by continual confession, for which endless forms and directions were given, which were but cold and empty to the spirit. By the prescriptions of the Church and the practice of so-called good works, young Luther had not attained the feeling of true reconciliation and inward peace. At last a sentence from his spiritual adviser pierced him like an arrow: "There is no true repentance that does not begin by the love of God; the love of God, and the reception of it in the soul, does not follow, but precedes the means of grace enjoined by the Church." This teaching which came from Tauler's school became for him the foundation of a new, genial, and moral relation with God; it was a holy discovery to him. The change in his own spirit was the main point for which he must labour; repentance, penance, and expiation must proceed from the inward feelings of the heart. It was by his own efforts alone that man could raise himself to God. For the first time he experienced what direct prayer was. In the place of a distant God, whom hitherto he had sought in vain, by hundreds of forms and childish confessions, he beheld the image of an all-loving protector, with whom he could hold communion at every hour, whether in joy or sorrow, before whom he could lay every grief and doubt, who incessantly sympathized with, and cared for him, and, like a good father, either granted or denied the requests of his heart. Thus he learned to pray, and how ardent his prayers became! Now he was able to live in tranquillity, being daily and hourly in communion with his God, whom he had at last found; his intercourse with the Highest became more confidential than with those dearest to him on earth. When he poured out his whole soul before Him, he obtained rest, holy peace, and a feeling of inexpressible happiness; he felt himself a portion of God, and this sense of intimate communion with Him he preserved during the whole remainder of his life. He needed no longer the distant paths of the old Church; with his God in his heart he could defy the whole world. He already ventured to believe, that teaching must be false which laid such great weight on works of penance; that besides these there remained only cold satisfaction and ceremonious confession; and when later he learned from Melancthon that the Greek word for penance, "Metanoia," denotes literally "a change of heart," it appeared to him as a wonderful revelation. On this foundation was built that confidence of faith, with which he brought forward the words of Scripture in opposition to the prescriptions of the Church.

It was in this way that Luther, whilst still in the monastery, attained to inward freedom. The whole of his later teaching, his struggle against the indulgences, his unshaken firmness, and his method of scriptural exposition, all rest on the inward process by which as a monk he had found his God; and one may truly say that the new period of German history began with Luther's cloister prayers. Life soon placed him under its hammer, to harden the pure metal of his soul.

Luther unwillingly took the Professorship of Dialectics in the new university of Wittenberg, in 1508; he would rather have taught that new theology which he already began to consider the truth. It is known that in the year 1510 he went to Rome on the business of his order; how devoutly and piously he lingered in the holy city, and with what dismay he was seized on observing the heathenish character of the people of Rome, and the worldliness and corrupt morals of the ecclesiastics. But deeply as he was shaken by the depravity of the hierarchy, he felt that his whole life was still enclosed in it; out of it there was nothing: The exalted idea of the Roman Catholic Church, and its triumphant reign of 1500 years, fettered even the most powerful minds; and when the German in the dress of a Romish priest, and in danger of his life, contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome, and stood in amazement before the gigantic pillars of the temples, which, according to tradition, had once been destroyed by the Goths little did the valiant man from the mountains of the old Hermunduren then think, that it would be his own fate to destroy the temples of the Rome of the middle ages, more completely than the brethren of his ancestors had done in the olden time. Luther returned from Rome still a faithful son of the great Mother, holding all heretical proceedings, as for example those of the Bohemians, in detestation. He sympathized warmly in Reuchlin's dispute with the Cologne inquisitor, and about 1512 had sided with the Humanitarians. But even then he began to find something in their teaching which separated him from them. When some years later he was at Gotha, he did not visit the worthy Mutianus Rufus, though he wrote him a very civil letter of excuse. Soon after, he was much wounded by the coldness and worldly tone of Erasmus's dialogues, in which theological sinners are turned into ridicule. The profane worldliness of the Humanitarians did not suit the earnest faith of Luther; it aroused that pride which had already taken root in his soul, and caused him afterwards to wound the sensitive Erasmus in a letter intended to be conciliatory. Even the form of literary moderation adopted by Luther at this time, gives us the impression of being wrung by the pressure of Christian humility from a stubborn spirit.

He felt himself already strong and secure in his faith: in 1506 he wrote to Spalatinus, who was the connecting link between him and the Elector, Frederic the Wise, that the Elector was of all men most knowing in secular wisdom, but in things pertaining to God and the salvation of souls, he was struck with sevenfold blindness.

Luther had reason for the opinion here expressed, for the domestic disposition of this sober-minded prince showed itself in his anxiety to provide for his home the means of grace bestowed by the old Church. Amongst other things he had a particular fancy for relics, and Staupitz, vicar-general of the Augustine monks in Germany, was at that time engaged in collecting these treasures for the Elector. This absence of his superior was very important to Luther, for he had to fill his place. He was already a man of high repute in his order; but though a professor at Wittenberg, he continued to reside in his monastery, and generally wore his monk's dress. He visited the thirty monasteries of his congregation, deposed priors, delivered strong rebukes on account of lax discipline, severely admonished criminal monks, and had become in 1517 a man of fully developed character and commanding powers; yet he still preserved somewhat of the trusting simplicity of the monastic brother.

Thus, when he had affixed the Theses against Tetzel to the church door, he writes confidingly to the Archbishop Albrecht of Maintz, the protector of the trader in indulgences. Full of the popular faith in the good sense and the good will of the governing powers, Luther thought--he often said so later--nothing was necessary but to represent straightforwardly to the princes of the Church the injurious effects and immorality of these malpractices.^[27] But how childish did this zeal of the monk appear to the smooth and worldly prince of the Church! That which had roused such deep indignation in the upright man, had from the archbishop's point of view long been a settled question. The sale of indulgences was a much lamented evil in the Church, but unavoidable, as are to politicians many regulations not good in themselves, but necessary to preserve some great interests. The greatest interest of the archbishops and the guardians of the Romish Church was their dominion, which was to be won and maintained by such means of acquiring money. The greatest interest of Luther and the people was truth; here, therefore, their paths separated.

Thus Luther entered into the struggle, full of faith, still a true son of the Church, and with all the German devotedness to authority; but yet his firm connection with his God worked in him strongly against this authority. He was then thirty-four years of age, in the full vigour of his strength, of middle size, thin, but strongly made, so that he appeared tall by the side of the small delicate boyish figure of Melancthon. Fiery eyes, whose intense brilliancy was almost overpowering, glowed in a face in which one could perceive the effects of night watches and inward struggles. Though a man of great repute, not only in his order, but in the university, he was no great scholar; he first began to learn Greek with Melancthon, and soon afterwards Hebrew; he possessed no great compass of book learning, and never had any ambition to shine as a Latin poet. But he was astonishingly well read in the Holy Scriptures and some of the Fathers, and whatever he took up he worked out profoundly. He was unwearied in his care for the souls of his congregation, a zealous preacher, and a warm friend; he had a certain frank gaiety, together with a self-possessed demeanour, and much courteous tact; the certainty of his convictions appeared in his social intercourse, and gave a cheerful radiance to his countenance. He was irritable, and easily moved to tears; the trifling events of the day excited and disturbed him; but when he was called upon for any great effort, and had subdued the first agitation of his nerves--which, for instance, had overcome him on his first entrance at the Imperial Diet at Worms--he then attained a wonderful composure and confidence. He did not know what fear was; indeed, his lion nature took pleasure in the most dangerous situations. The malicious snares of his enemies, and the dangers to which his life was occasionally exposed, he seemed to consider hardly worth speaking about. The foundation of this more than human heroism--if one may venture to call it so--was the firm personal union between him and his God. For a long period, with smiles and inward gladness, he desired to serve truth and God by becoming a martyr. A fearful struggle still lay before him, but it was not caused by the opposition of men; he had to contend constantly for years against the devil himself; he overcame also the terror of hell, which threatened to obscure his reason. Such a man might be destroyed, but could hardly be conquered.

The period of struggle which now follows, from the beginning of the dispute about indulgences to his departure from Wartburg, the time of his greatest triumph and greatest popularity, is that of which perhaps most is known, and yet it appears to us that his character even then is not rightly judged.

Nothing in this period is more remarkable than the way in which Luther gradually became estranged from the Romish Church. He was sober-minded and without ambition, and clung with deep reverence to the high idea of the Church, that community of believers fifteen hundred years old; yet in four short years he departed from the faith of his fathers, and shook himself free of the soil in which he had been so firmly rooted. During this whole time he had to maintain the struggle alone, or at least with very few faithful confederates: after 1518 Melancthon was united with him. He overcame all the dangers of fierce encounters, not only against enemies, but against the anxious dissuasions of honest friends and patrons. Three times did the Romish party try to silence him by the authority of Cajetan, the persuasive eloquence of Miltitz, and the unseasonable assiduity of the pugnacious Eckius; three times he addressed the Pope in letters which are among the most valuable documents of that century. Then came the separation: he was anathematized and excommunicated; he burnt--according to the old university custom--the enemy's challenge, and with it the possibility of return. With joyful confidence he went to Worms, where the princes of his nation were to decide whether he should die, or henceforth live amongst them, without Pope or Church, by the precepts of the Holy Scriptures alone.

When first he published in print the "Theses against Tetzel," he was astounded at the prodigious effect they produced in Germany, at the venomous hatred of his enemies, and at the tokens of friendly approbation which he received from all sides. Had he done anything so very unprecedented? The opinions he expressed were entertained by all the best men in the Church. When the Bishop of Brandenburg sent the Abbot of Lehnin to him, with a request that he would withdraw from the press his German sermon upon indulgences and grace, however right its contents might be, the poor Augustine friar was deeply moved that so great a man should hold such friendly and cordial intercourse with him, and he felt inclined to give up the publication rather than make himself a lion disturbing the Church. He zealously endeavoured to refute the report that the Elector had induced him to engage in the dispute with Tetzel. "They wish to involve the innocent Prince in the odium that belongs to me only." He desired as much as possible to preserve peace with Miltitz before Cajetan; only one thing he would not do: he would not retract what he had said against the unchristian sale of indulgences. But this retraction was the only thing that the hierarchy required of him. Long did he continue to wish for peace, reconciliation, and a return to the peaceful occupations of his cell; but some false assertion of his opponents always reinflamed his blood, and every contradiction was followed by a new and sharper stroke of his weapons.

The heroic confidence of Luther is striking; even in his first letter to Leo X., dated the 30th May, 1518, he is still the faithful son of the Church; he still concludes by laying himself at the feet of the Pope; offers him his whole life and being, and promises to respect his voice as the voice of Christ, whose representative he is as sovereign of the Church. But in the midst of all this submission, which became him as a monastic brother, these impassioned words burst forth: "If I have deserved death, I do not refuse to die." And in the letter itself, how strong are the expressions with which he describes the insolence of the indulgence vendors! Honest, too, are his expressions of surprise at the effect of his Theses, which were difficult to understand, being, according to the old custom, composed of enigmatical and involved propositions. Good humour pervades the manly words, "What shall I do? I cannot retract. I am only an unlearned man, of narrow capacity, not highly cultivated, in a century full of intellect and taste, which might even put Cicero into a corner. But necessity has no law; the goose must cackle among the swans."

The following year all who esteemed Luther endeavoured to bring about a reconciliation. Staupitz, Spalatinus, and the Elector scolded, entreated, and urged. Even the Pope's chamberlain, Miltitz, praised his opinions, whispered to him that he was quite right, entreated, drank with, and kissed him; though Luther indeed had reason to believe that the courtier had a secret commission to take him if possible a prisoner to Rome. The mediators happily hit on a point in which the refractory man heartily agreed with them; it was, that respect for the Church must be maintained and its unity not destroyed; Luther therefore promised to keep quiet and to leave the disputed points to the decision of three eminent bishops. Under these circumstances he was pressed to write a letter of apology to the Pope; but this letter of the 3rd of March, 1519, though undoubtedly approved by the mediators and wrung from the writer, shows the advance that Luther had already made. Of the humility which our theologians discover in it, there is little; it is, however, thoroughly cautious and diplomatic in its style. Luther regrets that what he has done to defend the honour of the Romish Church has been attributed to him as a want of respect; he promises henceforth to be silent on the subject of indulgences,--provided his opponents would be the same, and to address a letter to the people admonishing them loyally to obey the Church,^[28] and not estrange themselves from it, because his opponents had been insolent and he himself harsh. But all these submissive words could not conceal the chasm which already separated his spirit from that of the Romish Church. With what cold irony he writes: "What shall I do, most holy father? All counsel fails me; I cannot bear your anger, and yet know not how to avoid it. It is desired that I should retract; if by this what they aim at could be effected, I would do so without delay, but the opposition of my opponents has spread my writings further than I had ever hoped, and they have laid too deep hold on the souls of men. There is now much talent, education, and free judgment in our Germany: were I to retract, I should, in the opinions of my Germans, cover the Church with still greater shame; but it is my opponents who have brought disgrace in Germany upon the Romish Church." He concludes his letter politely. "Do not doubt my readiness to do more, if it should be in my power. May Christ preserve your Holiness. M. Luther."

There is much concealed behind this measured reserve. Even if the conceited Eckius had not immediately after stirred up the indignation of the whole university of Wittenberg, this letter could hardly have availed at Rome as a sign of repentant submission.

The thunderbolt of excommunication was launched; Rome had spoken. Luther, now restored to himself, wrote once more to the Pope; it was the celebrated letter, which, at the request of the indefatigable Miltitz, he antedated, the 6th of September, 1520, in order to ignore the bull of excommunication. It is the noble expression of a determined spirit which contemplates its opponent from its elevated position, grand in its uprightness and noble in its sentiments! He speaks with sincere sympathy of the Pope, and of his difficult position; but it is the sympathy of a stranger: he still mourns over the Church, but it is evident that he has already passed out of it. It is a parting letter written with cutting sharpness and confidence, but in a tone of quiet sorrow, as of a man separating himself from one whom he had once loved, but found unworthy.

Luther had in the course of these years become quite another man; he had acquired caution and confidence in intercourse with the great, and had gained a dear-bought insight into the political and private character of the governing powers. To the peaceful nature of his own sovereign nothing could be more painful than this bitter theological strife, which, though sometimes advantageous to him politically, always disquieted his spirit. Continual endeavours were made at court to restrain the Wittenbergers, but Luther was always beforehand with them. Whenever the faithful Spalatinus warned him against the publication of some new aggressive writing, he received for answer, that it could not be helped; that the sheets were already printed, already in many hands, and could not be withdrawn.^[29] In intercourse also with his opponents Luther acquired the confidence of an experienced combatant. He was very indignant when in the spring of 1518, Jerome Emser had inveigled him at Dresden to a supper, at which he was obliged to contend with angry enemies; and still more when he heard that a begging Dominican had listened at the door, and had the following day reported all over the town that Luther had been put down by the number of his opponents, and that the listener had with difficulty restrained himself from springing into the room and spitting in his face. At the first interview with Cajetan, he placed himself humbly at the feet of the Prince of the Church; but after the second, he permitted himself to say that the Cardinal was as well suited to his business as an ass to play on the harp. He treated the polite Miltitz with corresponding civility; the Romanist had hoped to tame the German Bear, but the courtier himself was soon put in his proper position, and was made use of by Luther; in the disputation at Leipsic with Eckius, the favourable impression produced by Luther's unembarrassed, honest, and self-composed demeanour, was the best counterbalance to the self-sufficient confidence of his dexterous opponent.

But Luther's inward life demands a higher sympathy. It was a fearful period for him; he experienced together with a sense of elevation and victory, mortal anguish, tormenting doubts, and terrible temptations. He, with a few others, stood against the whole of Christendom, always opposed by the most powerful and implacable enemies; and these comprised all that he had from his youth considered most holy. What if he should be in error? He was answerable for every soul that he carried away with him. And whither was he taking them? What was there beyond the pale of the Church?--Destruction, temporal and eternal ruin. Opponents and timid friends cut his heart with reproaches and warnings, but incomparably greater was one pain, that secret gnawing and uncertainty which he dared not confess to any one. In prayer, indeed, he found peace; when his glowing soul soared up to God, he received abundance of strength, rest, and cheerfulness; but in his hours of relaxation, when his irritable spirit writhed under any obnoxious impressions, he felt himself embarrassed, torn asunder, and under the interdict of another power which was inimical to his God. From his childhood he had known how busily evil spirits hover around men, and from the Scriptures he had learned that the devil labours to injure even the purest. On his own path lurked busy devils seeking to weaken and entice him, and to make countless numbers miserable through him. He saw them working in the angry mien of the Cardinal, the sneering countenance of Eckius, and indeed in his own soul; and he knew how powerful they were in Rome. In his youth he had been tormented by apparitions, and now they had returned to him. Out of the dark shadows of his study rose the tempter as a spectre, clutching at his reason, and when praying, the devil approached him, even under the form of the Saviour, radiant as king of heaven, with his five wounds as the old Church represented him. But Luther knew that Christ only approaches weak man in his word, or in humble form, as He hung upon the cross; so by a violent effort he collected himself and cried out to the apparition: "Away with thee, thou vile devil!" then the spectre vanished.^[30] Thus again and again for years did the stout heart of the man struggle with wild excitement. It was a gloomy conflict between reason and delusion; he always came out as conqueror, the primitive strength of his healthy character gained the victory. In long hours of prayer the stormy waves of excitement were calmed; his solid understanding and his conscience led him always from doubt to security, and he felt this expansion of his soul as a gracious inspiration from his God. It was after such experiences, that he, who had been so anxious and timid, became firm as steel, indifferent to the judgment of men, intrepid and inexorable.

He appeared quite another person in his conflicts with earthly enemies; in these he almost always showed the confidence of superiority, and especially in his literary disputes.

The activity he displayed from this period as a writer was gigantic. Up to the year 1517, he had published little; but after that he became not only the most copious, but the most popular writer of Germany. By the energy of his style, the power of his arguments, the fire and vehemence of his convictions, he carried all before him. No one had as yet spoken with such power to the people. His language adapted itself to every voice and every key; sometimes brief, terse, and sharp as steel; at others, with the rich fullness of a mighty stream his words flowed upon the people; and a figurative expression or a striking comparison made the most difficult things comprehensible. He had a wonderful creative power, and pre-eminent facility in the use of language; when he took his pen, his spirit seemed to emancipate itself: one perceives in his sentences the cheerful warmth that animated him, and they overflow with the magic creations of the heart. This power is very visible in his attacks upon individual opponents, and was closely allied to rudeness, which caused much perplexity to his admiring cotemporaries. He liked also to play with his opponents: his fancy clothed them in a grotesque mask, and he rallied, derided, and hit at this fantastic figure, in expressions by no means measured, and not always very becoming. But the good humour which shone out from the midst of these insults had generally a conciliatory effect, though not upon those whom they touched. Scarcely ever do we perceive any small enmities, but frequently inexhaustible kindness of heart. Sometimes forgetting the dignity of the reformer, he played antics like a German peasant child, or rather like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he buffeted his adversaries! now with the blows of an angry giant's club, now with the rod of a buffoon. He delighted in transforming their names into something ridiculous; thus they were known in the Wittenberger's circle by the names of beasts and fools: Eckius became Dr. Geek,^[31] Murner^[32] was called Katerkopf^[33] and Krallen; Emser, who had his crest (the head of a horned goat) engraved on every controversial writing, was insulted by being changed into Bock;^[34] the Latin name of the apostate Humanitarian, Cochläus, was translated back into German, and Luther greeted him as Schnecke (the snail) with impenetrable armour, and--it grieves one to say--sometimes as Rotzlöffel.^[35] Still more annoying, and even shocking in the eyes of his cotemporaries, was the vehement recklessness with which he broke forth against hostile princes; the Duke George of Saxony, cousin to his own sovereign, was the only one he was occasionally obliged to spare. The profligate despotism of Henry VIII. of England was abhorrent to the soul of the German reformer, who abused him terribly, and he dealt with Henry of Brunswick as a naughty school-boy. It cannot, we fear, be denied that it was this alloy to the moral dignity of his character that acted as the salt, which made his writings so irresistible to the earnest Germans of the sixteenth century.

In the autumn of 1517, he had a controversy with the reprobate Dominican; in the winter of 1520, he burnt the papal bull; in the spring of 1518, he still laid himself at the feet of the Pope as the vicegerent of Christ; but in the spring of 1521, he declared before the Emperor, princes, and papal nuncios at the Imperial Diet at Worms, that he did not trust either in the Pope or the councils alone, but only in the witness of the Holy Scripture and the convictions of his own reason. He had now become a free man, but the papal interdict and the ban of the empire hung over him; he was inwardly free, but he was free like the wild beast of the forest, with the bloodthirsty hounds giving tongue after him. He had now arrived at the acme of his life: the powers against which he had revolted, and even the thoughts which he had excited in the people, began now to work against his life and doctrines.

It appears that already at Worms, Luther was warned that he must disappear for a time. The habits of the Franconian knights, among whom he had many faithful adherents, gave rise to the idea of carrying him off by armed men. The Elector Frederic planned the abduction with his confidential advisers; yet it was quite in the style of this Prince to arrange that he himself should not know the place of his confinement, that in case of necessity he might be able to affirm his ignorance. It was not easy to make this plan acceptable to Luther, for his valiant heart had long overcome all earthly fear, and with ecstatic pleasure, in which there was much enthusiasm and some humour, he watched the attempts of the Romanists who wished to take away his life; this, however, was under the disposal of another and higher power, which spoke through his mouth.^[36] He unwillingly submitted; but however cleverly the abduction was arranged, it was not easy to keep the secret. In the beginning, Melancthon was the only one of the Wittenbergers who knew the place of Luther's concealment; but Luther was not the man to accommodate himself, even to the most well-meaning intrigue, and soon messengers were actively passing to and fro between the Wartburg and Wittenberg, so that whatever circumspection was employed in the care of the letters, it was difficult to prevent the spreading of reports. Luther in the castle, learned what was going on in the great world sooner than the Wittenbergers; he received accounts of all the news of his university, and endeavoured to raise the courage of his friends and to guide their politics. It is touching to see how he tried to strengthen Melancthon, whose unpractical nature caused him to feel bitterly the absence of his stronger friend. "Things must go on without me," Luther writes to him. "Only take courage and you will no longer need me; if, when I come out, I cannot return to Wittenberg, I must go out into the world. You are the men to maintain, without me, the cause of the Lord against the devil." His letters are dated from the "aerial regions," from "Patmos," from the "wilderness," "from among the birds who sing sweetly among the branches, and praise God day and night with all their powers." Once he endeavoured to be cunning: writing to Spalatinus, he enclosed a crafty letter, saying, that it was believed without foundation that he was at Wartburg. That he was living among faithful brothers, and that it was remarkable no one thought of Bohemia; it concluded with a not ill-natured thrust at Duke George of Saxony, his keenest enemy. This letter, Spalatinus, with pretended negligence, was to lose, that it might come into the hands of his enemies; but in such diplomacy Luther was by no means consistent, for no sooner was his lion nature roused by any intelligence, than he made a hasty decision to burst forth to Erfurt or Wittenberg. He bore with difficulty the tedium of his residence; he was treated with the greatest consideration by the commander of the castle, and this care showed itself chiefly, as was then the custom, in providing him with the best food and drink. The good living, the absence of excitement, the fresh air on horseback, which the theologian enjoyed, worked both on soul and body. He had brought with him from Worms, a bodily ailment from which arose hours of dark despondency, which made him incapable of work.

Two days successively he went out hunting; but his heart was with the poor hares and partridges, which were hunted by a host of men and dogs into a net. "Innocent little creatures! thus do the papists hunt." To preserve the life of a little hare he concealed it in the sleeve of his coat; then came the hounds and broke the limbs of the little animal within the protecting coat. "Thus does Satan gnash his teeth against the souls I seek to save." Luther had enough to do to defend himself and his from Satan; he had thrown off all the authorities of the Church, and now stood shuddering alone, only one thing remained to him, the Scriptures. The old Church had been continually expounding Christianity; traditions which were concurrent with the Scriptures, councils and decrees of the Pope, had kept the faith in constant agitation. Luther placed in its stead the word of Scripture, which while it brought deliverance from a wilderness of erroneous soulless conceptions, gave threatenings of other dangers. What was the Bible? There were about two centuries between the oldest and the newest writings of the holy book. The New Testament itself was not written by Christ, nor even always by those who had received his holy teaching from himself; it had been compiled long after his death, portions of it might have been delivered incorrectly; all was written in a foreign language that Germans could with difficulty understand. Expounders of the greatest discernment were in danger of interpreting falsely if not enlightened by the grace of God as the Apostles had been. The old Church had brought to its assistance that sacrament which gave to the priest's office this enlightenment; indeed the holy father assumed so much of the omnipotence of God, that he considered himself in the right even where his will was contrary to the Scripture. The reformer had nothing but his weak human understanding and his prayers.

It was indeed imperative that Luther should use his reason, for a certain degree of criticism upon the Holy Scriptures was necessary. He did not set an equal value upon all the books of the New Testament: it is known that he had doubts about the Revelations of St. John, and he did not much value the Epistle of St. James; but objections to particular parts never disturbed his faith in the whole; his belief in the verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures (with the exception of a few books) could not be shaken; they were to him what was dearest on earth, the groundwork of his whole knowledge; he was so thoroughly imbued with their spirit, that he lived as it were under their shadow. The more deeply he felt his responsibility, the more intense was the ardour with which he clung to the Scriptures.^[37] A powerful instinct for what was rational and judicious helped him over many dangers; his penetration had nothing of the hair-splitting sophistry of the old teachers; he despised unnecessary subtleties, and with admirable tact he left undecided what appeared to him not essential. But if he was not to become a frantic or godless man, nothing remained to him but to ground his new doctrines on the words which were spoken and written fifteen hundred years before him, and he fell in some case into what his opponent Eckius called "Black-letter style."

Under these restraints his method was formed. If he had a question to solve, he collected all the passages in Scripture which appeared to him to contain an answer; he examined each passage to understand their mutual bearing, and thus arrived at his conclusions. By this mode of proceeding, he brought the Scriptures within the compass of an ordinary understanding; for example, in the year 1522, he undertook, out of the Holy Scriptures, to place marriage on a new moral foundation; he severely criticised the eighteen reasons given by ecclesiastical law, forbidding and dissolving marriages, and condemned the unworthy favouring of the rich in preference to the poor.

It was this same system which made him so pertinacious in his transactions with the Reformers in the year 1529, when he wrote on the table before him: "This is my body;" and looked gloomily on the tears and outstretched hands of Zwinglius. Never had that formidable man shown more powerful convictions, convictions won in vehement wrestling with his doubts and the devil. It may be considered by some as an imperfect system; but there was a genial strength in it, that made his own view more available to the cultivation and heart-cravings of his time, than even he himself anticipated.

Besides these great trials, the proscribed monk at the Wartburg was exposed to smaller temptations: he had long, by almost superhuman spiritual activity, overcome, what great self-distrust led him to consider as merely sensual inclinations; still nature stirred powerfully in him, and he many times begged of his dear Melancthon to pray for him concerning this.

It happened providentially, that just at this time at Wittenberg the restless spirit of Karlstadt took up the subject of the marriage of priests, in a pamphlet in which he decided that vows of celibacy were not binding upon priests and monks. The Wittenbergers were in general agreed on this question, especially Melancthon, who was perfectly unbiassed, as he himself had never entered into holy orders, and had been married two years.

Thus a web of thoughts and moral problems was cast from the outer world upon Luther's soul, the threads of which enclosed the whole of his later life. Whatever joy of heart and earthly happiness was vouchsafed to him henceforth, rested on the answer to this question. It was the happiness of his home that made it possible for him to bear the trials of his later years; by that the full blossom of his rich heart was first unfolded. So graciously did Providence send to him, just in the time of his loneliness, the message which was to bind him anew, and more firmly than ever to his people. Again, the way in which Luther treated this problem is quite characteristic; his pious spirit and the conservative tendency of his character strove against the hasty and superficial way in which Karlstadt reasoned. It may be assumed, that his own feelings made him suspicious as to whether this critical question was not made use of by the devil, to tempt the children of God; and yet the constraint upon the poor monks in the monasteries grieved him much. He examined the Scriptures, and easily made up his mind as to the marriage of priests; but there was nothing in the Bible about monks: "Where the Scripture is silent, man is unsafe." It appeared to him, withal, a laughable idea that his friends could marry, and he wrote to the cautious Spalatinus: "Good God, our Wittenbergers wish also to give wives to the monks! now they shall not so encumber me;" and he warns him ironically: "Have a care that you also do not get married;" yet this problem occupied him incessantly. Men live fast in great times. Gradually, by Melancthon's reasoning, and we may add by fervent prayer, he arrived at certainty. What, almost unknown to himself, brought about the decision, was the perception that it had become wise and necessary for the moral foundation of social life, that the monasteries should be opened. For nearly three months this question had been struggling in his mind; on the 1st November, 1521, he wrote the afore-mentioned letter to his father.

Unbounded was the effect of his words on the people; they produced a general excitement: out of almost all the cloister doors monks and nuns slipped away; it was at first singly and by stealth, but soon whole monasteries and convents dissolved themselves. When Luther in the following spring returned to Wittenberg, his heart full of anxious cares, the fugitive monks and nuns caused him a great deal of trouble. Secret letters were forwarded to him from all quarters, chiefly from excited nuns who had been placed as children in convents by harsh parents, and being now without money or protection, looked to the great Reformer for help; it was not unnatural that they should throng to Wittenberg. Nine nuns came from the foundation for noble ladies at Nimpschen, amongst them were a Staupitz, two Zeschau, and Catherine von Bora; besides these there were sixteen other nuns to take care of, and so forth. He was much grieved for these poor people, and hastened to place them under the protection of worthy families. Sometimes, indeed, it became too much of a good thing, and the crowd of runaway monks especially annoyed him. He complains: "They desire immediately to marry, and are unfit for every kind of work." He gave great scandal by his bold solution of this difficult question; and there was much that was very painful to his feelings; for amongst those who now returned in tumult to social life, though there were some high-minded men, others were coarse and dissolute. Yet all this did not for one moment make him turn aside; he became, according to his nature, more decided from opposition. When, in 1524, he published the history of the sufferings of a nun, Florentina von Oberweimar, he repeated in the dedication what he had so often preached: "God often testifies in the Scriptures that He desires no compulsory service, and no one can become his, who is not so in heart and soul. God help us! Is there nothing in this that speaks to us? Have we not ears and understanding? I say it again, God will not have compulsory service; I say it a third time, I say it a hundred thousand times, God will have no compulsory service."^[38]

Thus Luther entered the last period of his life. His disappearance in the Thuringian forest had made an immense sensation. His opponents, who were accused of his murder, trembled before the indignation which was roused against them, both in city and country. The interruption, however, of his public activity was pregnant with evil to him; as long as he was at Wittenberg, the centre of the struggle, his word and his pen could dominate the great spiritual movement both in the north and south, but in his absence it worked arbitrarily in different directions, and in many heads. One of Luther's oldest associates began the confusion, and Wittenberg itself was the scene of action of a wild commotion. Luther could no longer bear to remain at the Wartburg; he had already been once secretly to Wittenberg; he now returned there publicly, against the will of the Elector. Then began an heroic struggle against old friends, and against conclusions drawn from his own doctrines. His activity was superhuman; he thundered incessantly from the pulpit, and his pen flew over the pages, in his cell. But he was not able to bring back all the erring minds, neither could he prevent the excitement of the people from gathering into a political storm. What was more, he could not hinder the spiritual freedom which he had won for the Germans, from producing, even in pious and learned men, an independent judgment upon faith and life, which was often opposed to his own convictions. Then came the dark years of the Iconoclastic and Anabaptist struggle, the Peasant war; and the sad dispute about the Sacrament. How often at this time did the figure of Luther arise gloomy and powerful above the disputants! how often did the perversity of men and his own secret doubts, fill him with anxious cares about the future of Germany!

In this wild time of fire and sword, the spiritual struggle was carried on more nobly and purely by him than by any one else. Every interference of earthly power was hateful to him; he did not choose to be protected even by his own sovereign, and would not have any human support for his teaching. He fought with a sharp pen, alone against his enemies; the only pile that he lighted was for a paper: he hated the Pope as he did the devil, but he had always preached toleration and Christian forbearance towards papists; he suspected many of having a secret compact with the devil, but he never burnt a witch. In all the Roman Catholic countries the stake was lighted for the confessors of the new faith, and even Hutten was strongly suspected of having cut off the ears of some monks; but so benevolent were Luther's feelings, that he had heartfelt compassion for the humbled Tetzel, and wrote him a consolatory letter. His highest political principle was obedience to the authorities ordained by God, and he never rose in opposition to them except when necessary for the service of God. On his departure from Worms, although on the point of being declared free from interdict, he was forbidden to preach; he did not, however, desist from doing so, but suffered great anxiety lest it should be imputed to him as disobedience. His conception of the unity of the Empire was quite primitive and popular; the reigning princes and electors, according to the laws of the Empire, owed the same obedience to the Emperor that their own subjects did to them.

During the whole course of his life he took a heartfelt interest in Charles V., not only in that early period when he greeted him as the "Dear youth," but even later, when he knew well, the Spanish Burgundian only tolerated the German reformation for political reasons: he said of him, "He is good and quiet; he does not speak as much in one year as I do in a day; he is the favourite of fortune:" he had pleasure in extolling the Emperor's moderation, discretion, and long sufferance; and after he had begun to condemn his policy, and to distrust his character, he still insisted upon his companions talking with reverence of the sovereign of Germany; for he said, apologetically, "A politician cannot be as candid as we ecclesiastics." In 1530 he gave it as his opinion, that it would be wrong in the Elector to arm in opposition to the Emperor: it was not till 1537 that he unwillingly adopted a more enlarged view; but even then, the threatened Prince was not to take up arms first. So strongly in this man of the people still dwelt the honourable tradition of a firm well-ordered state, at a time when the proud edifice of that old Saxon and Frank empire was crumbling into ruin; but there was no trace of servile feeling in this loyalty: when the Elector on one occasion desired him to write a plausible letter, his truthful feeling revolted against the Emperor's title of "Most Gracious Sovereign," for the Emperor was not graciously disposed towards him; and in his intercourse with people of rank he showed a careless frankness that shocked the courtiers. To his own sovereign he had with all submission spoken truths as only a great character can speak, and to which only a good heart will listen. He had in general a poor opinion of the German princes, though he esteemed individuals among them; frequent and just are his complaints of their incapacity, licentiousness, and other vices:^[39] the nobles too he treated with irony; the coarseness of most of them displeased him extremely.^[40] He felt a democratic aversion to the hard and selfish lawyers who conducted the affairs of the princes, courted favour, and tormented the poor; to the best of them he allowed only a doubtful prospect of the grace of God: his whole heart, on the other hand, was with the oppressed: he blamed the peasants sometimes for their obduracy and their usuriousness, but he commended their class, regarded their vices with heartfelt compassion, and remembered that he sprang from them. These were his views on worldly government, but he served the spiritual: he held firmly the popular idea, that there should be two ruling powers,--the Church, and the princes, and he thought he was justified in proudly placing the domination of the former above that of worldly politics. He strove indignantly to prevent the governing powers from assuming the control in matters pertaining to the care of souls and to the autonomy of his communities. He estimated all politics with reference to the interests of his faith and according to the laws of his Bible. When the Scripture seemed to be endangered by worldly politics, he raised his voice, indifferent where it hit: it was not his fault that he was strong and the princes weak, and it ought to be no reproach to him, the monk, the professor, and the shepherd of souls, if the allied Protestant princes withstood the cunning statesmancraft of the Emperor, like a herd of deer; he himself was so conscious that politics were not his business, that when on one occasion the active Landgrave of Hesse would not follow ecclesiastical advice, he was the more esteemed for it by Luther: "He has a good head of his own; he will be successful; he thoroughly understands the world."

Since Luther's return to Wittenberg a democratic agitation had been fermenting amongst the people. Luther had opened the cloisters, and now people desired to be delivered from many other social evils, such as the destitution of the peasants, the ecclesiastical imposts, the malversation of the benefices, and the bad administration of justice. The honest heart of Luther sympathized with this movement, and he exhorted and reproved the landed proprietors and princes; but when the wild waves of the Peasant war poured over his own country, when deeds of bloody violence wounded his spirit, and he found that factious men and enthusiasts exercised a dominion over the multitudes which threatened his doctrines with destruction, he threw himself with the deepest indignation into the struggle against the rough masses. Wild and warlike was his appeal to the princes; he was horrified at what had taken place: the gospel of love had been disgraced by the headstrong wilfulness of those who had called themselves its followers. His policy was right; there was in Germany, unfortunately, no better power than that of the princes; on them, in spite of everything, rested the future of the father-land, for which neither the peasant serfs, nor the rapacious noblemen, nor the dispersed cities of the empire, which stood like islands in the midst of the surging sea, could give a guarantee: he was entirely in the right; but in the same headstrong unbending way, which had hitherto made his struggle against the hierarchy so popular, he now turned against the people. A cry of dismay and horror was raised among the masses. He was a traitor. He, who for eight years had been their hero and darling, suddenly became the most unpopular of men: again his life and liberty were threatened; even five years afterwards it was dangerous for him to visit his sick father at Mansfeld, on account of the peasants. The anger of the multitude worked also against his teaching; the field preachers and new apostles treated him as a lost, corrupt man.

He was excommunicated and outlawed by the higher powers, and cursed by the people; even many well-meaning men had been displeased with his attack on celibacy and monastic life. The nobility of the country threatened to waylay the outlaw on the high-roads, because he had destroyed the convents in which, as in foundling hospitals, the respectable daughters of poor nobles were thrown in early childhood. The Romish party triumphed; the new heresy was deprived of that which had hitherto made it powerful; Luther's life and doctrines seemed doomed to destruction.

It was at this time that Luther determined to marry. Catherine von Bora had lived at Wittenberg for two years in the house of Reichenbach, the town clerk, afterwards burgomaster. She was a fine young woman of stately manners, the deserted daughter of a noble family of Meissen. Twice had Luther endeavoured to obtain a husband for her, as with fatherly care he had already done for many of her companions; at last Catherine declared that she would not marry any man, unless it were Luther himself, or his friend Amsdorf. Luther was astonished, but he came to a rapid decision. Accompanied by Lucas Kranach, he went to woo her, and was married to her on the spot. He then invited his friends to his marriage feast, begged for venison from the court, which it was the habit of the prince to present to the professors on their wedding days, and received from the city of Wittenberg, as a bridal present, wine for the feast. We would fain understand what passed through Luther's soul at that time; his whole being was strained to the uttermost; his strong and wild primitive nature was excited on all sides; he was deeply shaken by the evils arising up everywhere around him, the burning villages and slaughtered men. If he had been a mere fanatic he would have ended in despair; but above the stormy disquiet, which is perceptible in him up to his marriage, a bright light shone; the conviction that he was the guardian of the divine law amongst the Germans, and that in order to protect social order and morals, he was bound to guide and not to follow the opinions of men. However eagerly and warmly he might declaim in individual cases, he appears now decidedly conservative and more firmly self-contained than ever. He had, moreover, the impression that it was ordained that he should not live much longer, and many were the hours in which he looked forward with a longing to martyrdom. He concluded his marriage in full harmony with his convictions. He had entered fully into the necessity of marriage and its conformity with Scripture, and he had for some years pressed all his acquaintances to marry, at last even his own opponent the Archbishop of Mentz. He himself gives two reasons for his decision. He had robbed his father for many years of his son; it would be to him a kind of expiation, in case he should die first, to leave old Hans a grandson. Besides this, it was also an act of defiance; his opponents triumphed that Luther was humbled, all the world was offended with him, and by this he would give them still more offence.

He was a man of strong passions, but there was no trace of coarse sensuality; and we may assume that the best reason, which he did not, however, avow to any of his friends, was yet the most decisive, and that was, that there had long been gossip amongst people, and he himself knew that Catherine was favourably disposed towards him. "I am not passionately in love, but am very fond of her," he writes to one of his dearest friends. And this marriage, concluded contrary to the opinion of his cotemporaries, and amidst the derision of his opponents, was an act to which we Germans owe as much, as we do to all the years in which, as an ecclesiastic of the old Church, he had by deeds supported his theology. For from henceforth the father, husband, and citizen became also the reformer of the domestic life of his nation; and that which was the blessing of his earthly life, in which Roman Catholics and Protestants to this day have an equal interest, arose from a marriage contracted between an outcast monk and a fugitive nun. He had still, for one-and-twenty laborious years, to carry out the moulding of his nation. His greatest work, the translation of the Bible, which he had now brought to a conclusion, in union with his Wittenberger friends, gave him an entire mastery over the language of the people, a language, the richness and power of which first became practically known by this book. We know in how noble a spirit he undertook the work: he wished to produce a book for the people, for that purpose he studied assiduously the forms of speech, proverbs, and technical expressions used by them. The Humanitarians still continued to write clumsy and involved German, a bad resemblance to the Latin style. The nation now obtained for its daily reading a work which in simple words and short sentences gave expression to the deepest wisdom and the highest spiritual treasures. The German Bible, together with Luther's other writings, became the groundwork of the new German language; and this language, in which our whole literature and spiritual life have found expression, is an indestructible possession, which, though marred and spoilt, has even in the worst times reminded the different branches of the German race that they belong to one family. Individuals are now discarding their native dialects, and the language of education, poetry, and science which was created by Luther is the bond by which the souls of all Germans are united. Not less was done by this same man for the social life of Germany. Private devotion, marriage, the education of children, corporate life, school life, manners, amusements, all feelings of the heart, all social pleasures were consecrated by his teachings and writings; everywhere he endeavoured to place new boundary stones and to dig deeper foundations. There was no sphere of human duty over which he did not constrain his countrymen to meditate. By his numerous sermons and essays he worked on the public; by countless letters in which he gave counsel and comfort to inquirers he worked on individuals. He urged incessantly upon all the necessity of self-examination, and the duty of being well assured what was owing from the father to the child, from the subject to the sovereign, and from the chief magistrate to his community; the progress he thus made was important in this respect, that he freed the consciences of people; and in the place of outward pressure, against which egotism had haughtily rebelled, he substituted everywhere a genial self-control. How beautifully he comprehended the necessity of cultivating the minds of children by school instruction, especially in the old languages! How he recommended his beloved music to be introduced into the schools! How great his views were when he advised the magistrates to establish city libraries; and, again, how conscientiously he endeavoured to secure freedom of choice in matrimony! He had overthrown the old sacrament of marriage; but higher, nobler, and freer, he established the inward relation of man and wife. He had attacked the unwieldy monastic schools; everywhere in village and city, as far as his influence reached, flourished better institutions for the education of youth; he had removed the mass and the Latin chantings; he gave instead, to both disciples and opponents, regular preaching and the German chorale.

His desire to find something divine in all that was lovely, good, and amiable, which the world presented to him, always kept increasing. With this feeling he was ever pious and wise, whether in the fields, or in decorous gaiety among his companions, in his playfulness with his wife, or when holding his children in his arms. He rejoiced when standing before a fruit tree at the splendour of the fruit: "If Adam had not fallen, we might thus have admired all trees." He would take a large pear admiringly in his hands, and exclaim: "See, six months ago it was deeper under the earth than its own length and breadth, and has come from the extreme end of the roots; these smallest, and least thought of things are the most wonderful of God's works. He is in the smallest of his creations, even to the leaf of a tree or a blade of grass." Two little birds had made a nest in his garden, and flew about in the evening, being frightened by the passersby: he thus addressed them: "Ah, you dear little birds, do not fly away. I wish you well from my heart, if you could only trust me--though I own we do not thus trust our God." He had great pleasure in the companionship of true-hearted men; he enjoyed drinking wine with them, and conversation flowed pleasantly on both great and small matters; he sang, or played the lute, and arranged singing-classes. He delighted in the art of music, as it yielded innocent enjoyment. He was lenient in his judgment about dancing, and spoke with indulgence--fifty years before Shakespeare--of plays: "For they teach," said he, "like a mirror how every one should behave himself."^[41]

Once when sitting with Melancthon, the mild and learned master Philip prudently moderated the too bold assertions of his vehement friend. Rich people were the subject of conversation, and Frau Kate could not resist remarking, eagerly, "If my husband had held such opinions he would have become very rich." Then Melancthon replied decidedly: "That is impossible, for those who thus strive after the good of the community cannot attend to their own interest." There was one subject, however, on which both men liked to argue. Melancthon was a great lover of astrology; Luther looked on this science with sovereign contempt; on the other hand, by his method of Biblical exegesis, and also by his secret political views, he had come to the conviction that the end of the world was near; and that appeared very doubtful to the sagacious Melancthon. When therefore the latter began with his signs and aspects of the heavens, and explained that Luther's success was owing to his having been born under the sign of the sun, Luther exclaimed: "I have no faith in your Sol. I am the son of a peasant; my father, grandfather, and ancestors have all been thorough peasants." "Yes," answered Melancthon, "but even in a village you would have become the leader, the magistrate, or the head labourer over all others." "But," exclaimed Luther, triumphantly, "I became a Baccalaureus, a master, and a monk; that was not written in the stars: after that, I quarrelled with the Pope, and he with me. I have taken a nun for my wife, and have had children by her; who has seen that in the stars?" Again Melancthon--continuing his astrological exposition--began to explain about the Emperor Charles; how he was destined to die in the year 1584. Then Luther broke out vehemently: "The world will not last so long, for when we have driven away the Turks, the prophecy of Daniel will be fulfilled, and the end of all things come, then assuredly the last day is at hand."

How amiable he was as the father of a family! When his little children were standing at the table watching eagerly the peaches and other fruit, he said, "Whoever wishes to see a picture of one who rejoices in hope, will see it truly portrayed here. Oh, that we could look as joyfully for the last day. Adam and Eve must have had far better fruits: ours are in comparison only like crabs. The serpent was then, I have no doubt, the most beautiful of creatures, amiable and lovely; it still has its crest, but after the curse it lost its feet and beautiful body." Looking at his little son, just three years old, who was playing and talking to himself, he said, "This child is like a drunken man; he does not know that he lives, and yet he enjoys life in security, jumping and skipping about." He drew the child towards him, and thus addressed him: "Thou art our Lord's little innocent, not under the law, but under the covenant of grace and forgiveness of sins; thou fearest nothing, but art secure and without cares, and what thou doest is pure." He then continued: "Parents always love their youngest children best; my little Martin is my dearest treasure: the little ones have most need of care and love, therefore the love of parents naturally descends. What must have been the feeling of Abraham when he had to sacrifice his youngest and dearest son? he could not have told Sarah about it; this journey must have been a bitter one to him." His beloved daughter Magdalen lay dying; he laments thus: "I love her very much, but, dear Lord, as it is thy will to take her to thee, I am content to know that she is with thee. Magdalen, my little daughter, thou wouldst willingly remain with thy father here, yet gladly goest to thy Father yonder." The child then said, "Yes, dear father, as God wills it." As she was dying, he fell on his knees by the bed, weeping bitterly, and praying that God would redeem her. She then passed away in her father's arms. When the people came to bury her, he addressed them as was usual, saying, "I am joyful in spirit, but the flesh is weak; parting is beyond measure grievous. It is a wonderful thing, that, though feeling assured of all being well with her, and that she is at peace, one should yet feel so sorrowful." His dominus, or Herr Kate, as he used to call his wife in his letters to his friends, had soon become an apt and thrifty housewife. She had great troubles; many children, her husband frequently an invalid, a number of boarders (masters and poor students), always open house--as it seldom happened that they were without learned or distinguished guests, and in addition to all, a scanty income and a husband who preferred giving to taking; and who once during his wife's confinement got hold in his zeal of the baby's christening plate to give in alms.^[42] From the way in which Luther treated her, we see how happy his family life was, and when he made allusions to the glib chattering of women, he had no right to do so, for he was by no means a man who was himself scanty in words. Once, when his wife appeared much delighted at being able to serve up different kinds of fish from the pond in their little garden, the doctor was heartily pleased to see her joy, and did not fail to take the opportunity of making a pleasant remark upon the happiness of contentment. Another time, when he had been reading to her too long in the Psalter, and she said that she heard enough upon sacred subjects, that she read much daily, and could talk about them, "God only grant that she might live accordingly," the doctor sighed at this sensible answer, and said, "Thus begins a weariness of the word of God; new trifling books will come in the place of the Scriptures, which will again be thrown into a corner." But this close union between these two excellent persons was still for many years disturbed by a secret sorrow. We only learn what was gnawing at the soul of the wife, by finding, that when as late as the year 1527, Luther, being dangerously ill, took a last leave of her, he spoke these words:--"You are my true wedded wife, of that you may feel certain."

Luther's spiritual life was as much a reality to him as his earthly one. All the holy personages of the Bible were to him as true friends; through his lively imagination he saw them in familiar forms, and with the simplicity of a child he liked to picture to himself the various circumstances of their life. When Veit Dietrich asked him what kind of person he thought the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, "He was an insignificant, lean little man, like Philip Melancthon." He formed a pleasing image of the Virgin Mary: he used to say, admiringly, "She was a pretty, delicate maiden, and must have had a charming voice."

He preferred thinking of the Redeemer as a child with his parents; how he took his father's dinner to the timber-yard, and how when he had been absent too long, Mary asked him, "Where have you been so long, little one?"

The Saviour should be thought of, not as in his glory, nor as the fulfiller of the law, conceptions too high and terrible for man; but only as a poor sufferer, who lived among and died for sinners.

His God was to him entirely as father and head of the family. He liked to meditate on the economy of nature: he was filled with astonishment at the quantity of wood which God must always be creating. "No one can reckon what God requires to nourish merely sparrows and useless birds: in one single year they cost Him more than the income of the King of France; and then think of all that remains." "God understands all trades: as a tailor He can make a coat for the deer, which might last a hundred years; as a shoemaker He gives him shoes to his feet, and by means of the dear sun He is a cook. He could become rich indeed, if He chose, if He were to withhold the sun and air, and threatened the Pope, Emperor, bishops, and doctors with death, if they did not pay Him a hundred thousand gulden on the spot. He does not do this, yet we are thankless miscreants." He seriously reflected whence came the means of nourishment for so many men. Old Hans Luther had maintained that there were more men than sheaves of corn; the doctor indeed thought that there were more sheaves than men, but that there were more men than shocks. "A shock of corn, however, hardly yields a bushel, and that will not nourish one man a whole year." Even a dung-heap was a subject of pleasant reflection to him. "God is obliged to clear away as well as to create; if He had not continually done so, the world would long ago have become too full." "When God chastises the godly more severely than the godless, He deals with him as a strict father of a family with his son, whom he more frequently punishes than the bad servant: but he secretly collects treasures as an inheritance for his son, whilst he finally casts the servant off." Luther comes joyfully to this conclusion: "If God can forgive me for having during twenty years offended Him by saying mass, He can also excuse my having sometimes had a good drink to his honour--let the world think what it will."

It surprised him much that God should be so very wrath with the Jews. "For fifteen hundred years they have prayed fervently with great zeal and earnestness, as their little prayer-books show; and He has not revealed himself to them during the whole time by the smallest word. I would give two hundred florins' worth of books if I could pray as they do. It must be a great and unspeakable anger. Ah! dear Lord, punish me with pestilence, rather than be thus silent!"

Luther prayed like a child morning and evening, and often during the day, even indeed, during his meals. He repeated again and again with fervent devotion those prayers which he knew by heart. His favourite was the Lord's Prayer, and then he repeated the short catechism; he always carried the Psalter with him as a little prayer-book. When he was in extreme trouble his prayer became like a storm, a wrestling with God, the power, the greatness, and the holy simplicity of which can hardly be compared with any other human emotion. He was then the son who despairingly lies at the feet of his father, or the faithful servant who supplicates his prince. For nothing could shake his conviction that we may influence God's decisions by prayer and supplication. Thus overflowing feelings alternated in his prayers with complaints and even remonstrances. It is often related how, in the year 1540, he restored to life the dying Melancthon at Weimar. When Luther arrived he found "Magister Philippus" at the point of death, unconscious and with closed eyes. Luther, struck with terror, said, "God forbid! how has this organ of God been marred by the devil!" Then he turned his back on those assembled, and went to the window as he was wont to do when he prayed. "Now," said Luther, "must the Lord God stretch forth his hand to me, for I have brought the matter home to Him, and dinned in his ears all his promises as to the efficacy of prayer, which I could repeat from the Holy Scripture, so that He must hearken to me if I am to trust his promises." Then he took Melancthon by the hand, saying, "Be comforted, Philip, you will not die:" and Melancthon, under the spell of his powerful friend, began at once to breathe again, and recovered his consciousness. He was restored.

As God was to Luther the source of all good, so was the devil the producer of all evil and wickedness. He considered that the devil interfered destructively with the course of nature by illness or pestilence, deformity and famine. All that this deep-thinking man preached so firmly and joyfully had formerly pressed with fearful weight upon his conscience; especially when awaking in the night, the devil stood full of malice by his bed, whispering horrors in his ear; then his spirit wrestled for freedom, often for a length of time in vain. It is extraordinary what this son of the sixteenth century went through in these inward struggles. Every fresh inquiry into the Scriptures, every important sermon upon a new theme, threw him again into this strife of conscience: then he reached such a state of excitement that his soul became incapable of systematic thought, and for whole days he trembled with anguish. When he was occupied with the question of monks and nuns, a text of the Bible startled him, which he thought, in his excitement, placed him in the wrong: his heart died within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. At this time Bugenhagen visited Luther, who showed him the threatening text.^[43] Bugenhagen, probably infected by the eagerness of his friend, began also to doubt, unconscious of the greatness of the misery which it occasioned Luther. Now was Luther indeed terrified, and again passed a fearful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came back. "I am very angry," he said; "I have now, for the first time, understood the text rightly; it has quite another sense." "And it is true," said Luther later, "it was a ridiculous argument; ridiculous indeed for one who is in his right mind, and not under temptation."

He often lamented to his friends, over the terrors which these struggles with the devil occasioned him. "He has never been from the beginning so fierce and raging as now, at the end of the world. I feel him well. He sleeps much nearer to me than my Kate; that is to say, he gives me more disquiet than she does pleasure." Luther never ceased to abuse the Pope as antichrist, or the papal system as devilish. But whoever observes more accurately, will perceive behind this hatred of the devil, the indestructible reverence by which the loyal spirit of the man was bound to the old Church. What became to him temptations, were often only the pious recollections of his youth, which stood in striking contrast to the changes he had gone through as a man.

Indeed, no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new actions; our inward life consists of the sum of all the thoughts and feelings which we have ever had. He who has been chosen by fate to create the new by the destruction of the old, shatters in pieces at the same time a portion of his own life: he must violate lesser duties to fulfil greater ones. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels the rent which he has made in the order of the world, and also in his own inward nature. This is the secret sorrow, and even the regret, of every great historical character. Few mortals have felt this grief so deeply as Luther; and that which was so great in him, was his never being prevented by this feeling from acting with the utmost boldness.

This appears to us a tragical moment in his inward life; and equally so was the effect of his teaching upon the life of the nation. He had laid the foundation of a new Church upon the pure Gospel, and had given greater depth and substance to the minds and conscience of the people. Around him burst forth a new life, greater general prosperity, many new arts, improvements in painting and music, comfortable enjoyment, and more refined cultivation in the middle classes. Yet there was a something gloomy and ominous which pervaded the German atmosphere. Fierce discord raged amongst princes and governors. Foreign powers were arrayed against the people, the Emperor from Spain, the Pope from Rome, and the Turks from the Mediterranean; enthusiasts and factious spirits were powerful, the hierarchy had not yet fallen. Had his gospel given greater unity and power to the nation? The discord had become only greater, and the future of his Church seemed dependent on the worldly interests of individual German princes. And well he knew what even the best among them were. Something terrible seemed approaching, the Scripture would be fulfilled, the last day was at hand. But afterwards God would raise up a new world, more beautiful, more splendid, and more pure, full of peace and blessing; a world in which there would be no devil; where the soul of man would find more enjoyment in the flowers and fruit of the new heavenly trees, than the present race do in gold and silver; where music, the most beautiful of all arts, would give birth to tones more entrancing than the most splendid song of the best singers of this world; and where good men would find again all that they had loved and lost.^[44]

Ever more powerful became in him the longing of the creature after an ideal purity of existence. If he expected the end of the world, it was the dim traditions of the German people from the distant past which still veiled the heaven of the new Reformer; and yet it was at the same time a prophetic presentiment of what was at hand. It was not the end of the world which was approaching, but the Thirty years' war.

So he died. As the hearse bearing his corpse passed through the country of Thuringia, the bells tolled in every village and town, and the people pressed sobbing round his coffin. A large share of German popular strength was buried with this one man. Philip Melancthon, in the church of the castle at Wittenberg, standing before the corpse of Luther, said: "Every one who has known him well must bear witness that he was a truly good man; gracious in speech, friendly and lovable; not in the least insolent, violent, obstinate, or quarrelsome; and yet there was an earnestness and boldness in his words and bearing befitting such a man. His heart was true, and without guile; the harshness which appeared in his writings against the enemies of his doctrine, did not arise from a quarrelsome or bad spirit, but from his great earnestness and zeal for the truth. He showed great courage and manliness, and did not allow himself to be easily frightened. He was not dispirited by threatenings and danger. He possessed such a lofty and clear understanding, that in confused, dark, and difficult circumstances, he could see sooner than others what was to be counselled and done. He was not, as some perhaps have thought, so heedless as not to have remarked how it fared everywhere with the governments. He knew right well in what government consists, and paid assiduous attention to the opinions and will of the people with whom he had to do. Let us have a constant and undying remembrance of this our beloved father, and keep him ever in our hearts."^[45]

Such was Luther, a superhuman nature; his mind was ponderous and sharply defined, his will powerful and temperate, his morals pure, and his heart full of love. As besides him no other powerful spirit arose strong enough to become the leader of the nation, the German people have lost for centuries the supremacy over the world; their supremacy in the realm of mind rests however upon Luther. That he may in conclusion speak for himself, we will give a letter to the Elector Frederic the Wise, written at the time when Luther's whole powers were most strongly developed. The prudent prince had commanded him to remain at Wartburg, because he could not protect him at Wittenberg, as the anger of the Duke George of Saxony would lead him to insist immediately upon the carrying out of the ban of the empire against Luther. Luther then writes to his sovereign:--

"Most Serene Highness, Illustrious Elector, and Gracious Sovereign! Your Electoral Highness's letter and gracious remembrance of me, reached me on Friday evening, when I was preparing to leave on Sunday morning. I need truly neither proof nor witness that your Electoral Highness's intentions are for the best, for I am as fully convinced thereof as any human being can be.

"Yet in this matter, Gracious Sovereign, I must answer thus: your Electoral Highness knows, or if you do not know, permit me hereby to make you acquainted with it, that I have not received the gospel from man, but from heaven alone, through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that I may, and indeed from henceforth will, boast and sign myself a servant and evangelist. If I have presented myself for trial and judgment, it was not because I doubted the truth, but from overflowing humility, and to persuade others. I have done enough for your Electoral Highness in leaving my place vacant for a whole year for the sake of your Electoral Highness. The devil knows well that I have not done it from fear. He saw what a heart I had when I came to Worms; for if I had known that as many devils were lying in wait for me as there were tiles on the roofs, yet I would have rushed into the midst of them with joy.

"Now the Duke George is very unlike even a single devil. And since our Father, in his unfathomable mercy, has, by his gospel made us joyful lords over death and all devils, and has given us such a fullness of assurance that we may call Him 'Dearly beloved Father,' your Electoral Highness can yourself judge that it would be the greatest offence to such a Father if we did not so trust Him as to be above the anger of Duke George. For my part I know well, I would gladly ride into his own Leipzig--I hope your Electoral Highness will forgive my foolish jesting--even though it should rain, proud Duke Georges during nine following days, and every one should be ninefold more furious than this one. He considers my Lord Christ only a man of straw; this my Lord and I can well bear with for a time. But I will not conceal from your Electoral Highness that I have not once only, but often prayed and wept for Duke George, that God would enlighten him. I will still once more pray and weep for him, but after that never more. And I beg of your Electoral Highness to help and pray also that we may turn from him the evil, which, God help him, weighs incessantly upon him. I would at once strangle Duke George with a word if it could be thus removed.

"I have written thus to your Electoral Highness, with the intention of making known to you that I come to Wittenberg under a far higher protection than that of the Elector. I also do not intend to request the protection of your Electoral Highness, for indeed, I think I could better protect your Electoral Highness than you could protect me. So much so, that if I knew your Electoral Highness could protect me, and would do so, I would not come. It is not the sword which can counsel or help in this business; it is God alone who can act, without any human assistance; therefore he who has most faith will have most power to protect.

"As I therefore perceive that your Electoral Highness is as yet weak in faith, I can in no wise regard your Electoral Highness as the man to protect or deliver me.

"As your Electoral Highness desires to know what you shall do in this business, especially as you think that you have done too little, I answer, with all due submission, that your Electoral Highness has done too much, and should do nothing. For God will not allow of our cares and doings; He will have every doing left to himself, to himself and no other. May your Electoral Highness act accordingly.

"If your Electoral Highness believes this, you will have security and peace; if you do not, I do, and must leave your Electoral Highness in your unbelief, to torment yourself with the anxieties which all unbelievers deservedly suffer. As, therefore, I will not obey your Electoral Highness, you will be excused before God if I should be imprisoned or put to death. Towards men your Electoral Highness ought thus to conduct yourself. You should as Elector be obedient to the supreme authority, and should allow the Imperial majesty to rule in your towns and provinces, over persons and property, in conformity with the laws of the empire, and should not attempt to prevent or oppose, or make any hindrance or resistance to this power if it should seize and kill me. For no one should resist authority, he excepted by whom it has been established, otherwise it is revolt, and against God. But I hope that your Electoral Highness will be reasonable, and perceive that you are in too high a position to become my gaoler. If your Electoral Highness keeps the door open, and grants a free escort in case my enemies themselves or their emissaries should come to seize me, you will have done enough for obedience-sake. They cannot indeed demand more of your Electoral Highness, than to learn the residence of Luther in your Electoral Highness's dominions. And that, they shall do without any care, work, or danger on the part of your Electoral Highness; for Christ has not yet taught men to be Christians to the injury of others.

"If, however, they should be so unreasonable as to command your Electoral Highness to lay hands on me yourself, I will then tell you what is to be done: I will secure your Electoral Highness from injury and danger to person, property, and soul, in what concerns me. Your Electoral Highness may or may not believe this.

"Herewith I commend your Electoral Highness to God's grace; of anything further we will speak when it is needful. For I have written this in haste, that your Electoral Highness may not be troubled by the report of my arrival, for I must comfort and not injure any one if I would be a true Christian. I have to deal with quite a different man to Duke George: we know each other well. If your Electoral Highness would have faith, you would see the glory of God; but because you have not yet faith, you have not seen it. Love and praise be to God in eternity. Amen. Given at Borna by the messenger, Ash Wednesday, anno 1522.

"Your Electoral Highness's most obedient servant,

"Martin Luther."