The Pictures of German Life Throughout History. Gustav Freytag

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