("With our might is nothing done "). He knew the might which gives to our lives both firmness and freedom; he knew that might, and he called it by its name, Belief. To him that meant no longer an obedient acceptance of ecclesiastical dogmas, it meant no knowledge, no deed, but simply

the personal and continual giving of the heart to God, a daily regeneration of man. That was his confession of faith, a living, busy, active thing, a sure trust, making one joyful and eager in the sight of God and man, something which makes us always ready to serve or to suffer. Despite all evil, yes, despite our sin and guilt, our life is hid in God, when we trust him as children trust their father. That was the vital thought and the vital power of Luther's life.

With equal certainty he perceived and experienced the other idea, the idea of "the freedom of a Christian." This freedom was to him no empty emancipation or the license for every whim. Freedom meant to Luther the liberation from every external or human authority in matters of belief and conscience. Christian freedom was to him the feeling of surety that, united with God, he was raised above the world, sin, death, and the devil. "If God be

for us, who can be against

the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians. Just because he was convinced that he was putting the old, dimmed Gospel again in the light, he was far from the thought of adding anything to it. Never had he another plan than that of restoring the old belief; never did he think to fight against the Church, but always for the Church against a false and soul-dangerous practice; never did he dream that the Gospel had been really lost-no, but it was to be freed from a captivity into which the Pope, the priests, and the theologians had led it.

us?" Every soul that has found God, and in him has recognized its refuge, is free-so proclaimed Luther.

Let it be here remarked that, in the same hymn, Luther asks:

In Jesus Christ alone Luther recognized God. of Christ he saw only a dark, frightful, and enigmatical Force. In Christ alone he saw the gracious God. Luther was no philosopher who would recognize God in the construction of the world; he was no mystic, who could raise God out of his own soul's secret depths. He was a faithful son of the Christian Church, convinced that she was in the right with her commission from Jesus Christ. He was a faithful disciple of Paul, and had learned from him that all knowledge of God lies locked up in the sentence, "God is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ." He was a faithful disciple of Christ himself, who said, "No man knoweth the Father save only the Son, and him to whom the Son will reveal Him."

Not only did Luther win God-knowledge in Jesus Christ, "the mirror of God's paternal heart," but also the fact that Jesus is the Redeemer, who through death has freed us from sin and blame. Paul's Gospel is also Luther's. Before the latter, no one in the Church really understood

Great, lasting reformations are made only by conservative men; not those who "destroy," but those who "fulfill," bring about.

a new era. Luther at the bottom of his heart the most conservative of men-has broken the medieval Catholic system in pieces for millions of souls, and thus freed the history of progressive humanity from the shackles of that system. In that he vindicated the new and yet old Gospel, in that he freed the conscience of the individual from priest and statute, he struck deadly blows against the Church of the Middle Ages. For, (1) he overturned her teaching as to salvation-salvation not being a thing brought about by donations and merits, but the free grace of God, which gives us the con

viction that we are his children. (2) He overturned the teaching as to Christian perfection-true Christian life does not consist in monasticism, but in an active life of fidelity to a calling, in humility, patience, and the service of love to our neighbor. (3) He overturned the teachings as regards the sacrament-God does not give us individual

WORMS CATHEDRAL

and different fragments of grace, but he gives us the forgiveness of sins and with it all grace, yes, he gives us himself as the Bread of our lives. (4) He overturned the priestly Church-system-God wills. that all his children shall be priests, and he has instituted but one office, the office of proclaiming the Gospel and of

THE WARTBURG CASTLE

distributing forgiveness. (5) Luther overturned the mediæval church services-God will not be honored by means of ceremonies, masses, oblations, etc., but only through praise and thanksgiving, pleading and prayer. Every church service must be spiritual, and at the same time innately bound with service to one's neighbor. (6) He overturned the false authorities of Roman Catholicism. Not the Pope, nor the Councils, not even the letter of the Bible (yet here, in regard to the Bible, Luther was himself not completely clear), has unerring authority, but only the Gospel, the power and truth of which the soul inwardly knows.

All these points have to do with religion alone. Luther determined to purify religion and to free it from every strange thing which does not belong to it.. Besides this he never had another independent interest; he did not care about bettering the world, or the State, or science, for themselves alone. Yet right here is revealed the truth of the saying: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." In that Luther thought out the Gospel in all its parts, proclaimed and applied it, all else fell into his lap; in that he liberated religion from mixture with that which is foreign to it, he also liberated the natural life and the natural order of things. He put everything in its right place, and gave everything freedom and room for develop ment. Everywhere he broke apart unnatural ties, he loosed old chains, he gave air and light.

Theology through him is henceforth to be nothing else than the exposition of the Gospel, of how it has founded the Christian community and still keeps it together. The proof of theology is no longer derived from external authority or strange philosophical speculations, but by the simple fact of Christ's appearance, and by our inward experience.

Philosophy is no longer a feared servant or a seductive mistress of theology, but her independent sister. Languages and history are studied conscientiously and faithfully, in order to ascertain the right meaning of every word.

The State is no longer regarded as a half-sinful product of compulsion and need, and the creature of the Church, but as the God-willed, independent order of public social life.

Law does not longer pass as a dangerous middle course, something between the might of the stronger and the virtue of the Christian, but as the independent, God-given rule of intercourse, always maintained by the "powers that be."

Marriage is no longer thought of as a divine concession towards the weak, but as a free bond between the sexes, a bond instituted by God, and free from tutelage on the part of the Church, and as the school of the highest morality.

General benefactions, such as the care of the poor, are not now so much pursued because of any desire to assure one's own salvation; they have become a free service to one's neighbor, the final scope and only reward of which is effective relief.

Above all things, however, in civil (as opposed to ecclesiastical) callings, activity in house and farm, in trade and official position, is no longer looked upon suspiciously as if it led away from our spiritual vocation. Men now know that the one who guides a household well, educates children patiently and faithfully, fulfills the duties of a calling-even though that one be but a poor boy or a lowly maid—stands in the rightful spiritual place and is higher than all monks and nuns.

Over the great period which we call the Middle Ages, over the chaos of non-independent and intricate forms, there soared the spirit of belief, which had recognized its own. nature and therefore had also recognized its limits. Under its sway, all things that had a right to free existence now strove towards independent development. Before Luther, no one had ever separated so clearly and distinguishingly the great departments of life, and given to each its own right. Wonderful! this man would not teach the world other than what the being, the power, and the comfort of the Christian religion is; but in that he recognized this most important department in its own individuality, all other departments came to their own. Luther preached that the just man lives by faith, and that a child of God is a free master over all things. In that he so taught he indeed freed men

LUTHER AND KATHARINE BORA (Cranach, 1525)

He became the reformer. Beside him Zwingli and Calvin can claim but second places; they are dependent on him. Yes, we can. even say: He was the Reformation. He had experienced the Reformation in his own soul, when he struggled in the cloister with the creed of his Church. Everything which he afterwards said, wrote, and did, in Wittenberg, in Worms, and in Coburg, was only the natural consequence of that experience. Out of his breast, from the bottom of his heart, the Reformation streamed as a brook out of hidden springs in the rock. In one sense he did not give power and endurance to the Reformation: he did not set its bounds and aim, but the Reformation gushed from his

i5 42.

Mart Luther

spirit like a fruitful stream. "Here I stand; I can do no other," said he, before Emperor and Empire. When the lonely man thus spoke, it was decided that he, through his faith, like Abraham, should become the father of many thousands; it was decided that a great epoch in the history of mankind had finished its course, and a new was advancing.

But we must not forget that it was four hundred years ago that Luther taught. The convenient belief that he thought

edging the authority of the Church as supreme, but with the qualifying truth that Christ is Lord of all.

In 1519 Charles V. became Emperor of Germany. The Pope and he at once leagued against Luther, and in 1520 the bull of excommunication, which no man till then had ever successfully defied, was issued. Luther published his defiance in two pamphlets, an "Address to the Nobility of the German Nation" and "The Babylonish Captivity of the Church." Warlike documents were these. Luther told the German people that the civil power, not the spiritual, was supreme; the Pope was a usurper; they must curb him; stop tribute to Rome; there must be fewer pilgrimages, fewer convents; the priests should marry; if Hus was right, join him in resisting Rome. Luther never minced matters. His "words were battles."

Meanwhile the bull arrived in Germany. The Elector Frederic was called on to surrender Luther. He consulted with Erasmus. Said Erasmus, "Luther has committed two crimes: he has hit the Pope on the crown and the monks on the belly." But he advised that Luther should have a fair hearing, and that he should be urged to greater moderation. This was December 5, 1520. Luther publicly burned the bull at Wittenberg. He had not then the burly look we are used to in his portraits, but was worn quite thin by his close studies.

junior. Thus he secured in a genial home the only earthly happiness now possible to him, in a life which events saddened henceforth to the end. His insistence on religious freedom had kindled the passion of cruelly oppressed peasants for the social justice which Christ enjoined, and 100,000 of them perished in the vain struggle to extort it. Luther even felt obliged to urge the authorities to sanguinary measures, lest the Reformation should be fatally compromised as anarchical revolution. For all that, the social disorders caused an anti-Protestant reaction. The Reformation had reached its limit. The only question was, Could it sustain itself there?

At the second Diet of Spires, in 1529, the Emperor felt strong enough to demand that all further toleration should cease; and the Diet so decreed. The Lutheran princes received the name of "Protestants," from their signed protest against this. Luther struck up a pæan in his martial hymn, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." But an invasion by the Turks averted the danger. Next year, at Augsburg, the first Protestant state- . ment of doctrine, "the Augsburg Confession," Luther's own, but drafted by Melanchthon, was presented to the Diet, and the League of Schmalkald formed for its military defense, in disregard of Luther's wish; but hostilities were again prevented by a Turkish invasion. Melanchthon employed the respite with vain endeavors to reconcile the rival theologies. Nor was the effort of 1529 more successful to unite the Swiss and the German Reformers. Different interpretations of the Eucharist sundered Luther and Zwingli, and Luther refused to Zwingli's conscience what he demanded for his own.

Five days later Five days later

It was now the Emperor's turn. The Pope called on him to crush the daring heretic. But for this the consent of the German Electors was necessary, and these had many grievances with Rome. The Emperor, therefore, was obliged to grant Luther a hearing, and a safe-conduct to and from. He obeyed the summons, though believing that the safe-conduct would not secure him from death, any more than Hus. So bent, however, was he to make no truce that he left for publication in his absence a good book for the laity," pictorial illustrations of "the Contrast between Christ and the Pope," ending with the Ascension of the former and the descent of the latter to hell. On his journey he even contravened the conditions of his safeconduct by preaching. Expecting martyrdom, he faced the Diet at Worms April 17 and 18, 1521, a solitary, steadfast Protestant for the sovereign right of a Bible-taught conscience to judge in matters of religion.

Condemned, of course, his safe-conduct was respected, the princes insisting on it. But to save his life his friend, the Elector Frederic, thought best to conceal him a while in Wartburg Castle. Here, in the dress of a knight, and under the name of "Junker George," he devoted himself for ten months to the translation of the New Testament into German. But he broke away from this safe "Patmos " to save the imperiled cause at Wittenberg. Iconoclastic puritanism would have swept out of the Church all that the Scripture did not enjoin. Luther would retain all that it did not forbid. The so-called Anabaptists, faulty but overmaligned predecessors of modern Congregationalists, were pushing Luther's logic to lengths from which he shrank. To settle things conservatively he redoubled his efforts. In 1522 he published 130 treatises, and 83 in the year after. In 1522 his German New Testament appeared; in 1524 his hymn-book; then his prayer-book, his catechisms for young and old, and his summary of doctrine for the common people. He was also strenuously urging the foundation of schools, primary and secondary. It required longer time to "make the Hebrew prophets speak German." His translated Bible was delayed till 1534.

3. In 1520 he had said, "Let priests marry." In 1525, not having fallen in love, but, as he said, "to please his father, tease the pope, and vex the devil," he wedded Katharine Bora, formerly a nun, and eighteen years his

Foreboding the civil war which broke out at his death, distressed by the troubles of the time and the wickedness of the world, in which even Wittenberg became to him a "Sodom," the brave but discouraged spirit of Luther found welcome release in the death which came to him in 1546, while on an errand to heal a quarrel. His grave was made in front of the pulpit in the Castle Church of Wittenberg. He says of himself that he was "rough, boisterous, and stormy, born to fight devils and monsters." He showed himself also fond of children, flowers, music, and mirth. His faults were superficial, his virtues central; he abode in God, and God in him.

Adolf Harnack: A Sketch

By Elbert F. Baldwin

It is seven o'clock in the morning in the city of Berlin. For a couple of hours there have been street-sweepers, hucksters, market-women, and early shopkeepers about, but now the early sightseer will observe a few unmistakable students; unmistakable because, even if their eyeglasses and rather intellectual air did not give one the impression that they were students, the little skull-caps and broad sashes of many would remove all doubt. The sightseer may be curious enough to walk behind some of these students toward the great University on the Unter den Linden. He will.find, however, that some of the students are not entering the huge main structure, but are going around it to a smaller building in the rear, on Dorotheen. Strasse. Into the courtyard of a rather ordinary-looking house the students are entering, and we enter with them. We pass into the corridor of the house, and into a long, low room filled with rows upon rows of benches placed on platforms which rise gradually, thus giving every man a good seat. Many of the men have already taken their seats, and others are coming. At exactly quarter past