Life of Luther

o enlighten us. For this portion of his life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks of his own, partly met with in his writings, partly

ment of his war with the Church, tracked out his origin, and sought therein for evidence to his detriment, have failed, for their part, to contribute anything new whatever to the history of his childhood and youth, although, as the Reformer, he had plenty o

love, and the sweet intercourse he was permitted to have with him. But it is not surprising, if, at the period of childhood, so peculiarly in need of tender affection, the severity of the father was felt rather too much. He was once, as he tells us, so severely flogged by his father that he fled from him, and bore him a temporary grudge. Luther, in speaking of the discipline of children, has even quoted his mother as an example of the way in which parents, with the best intentions, are apt to go too far in punishing, and forget to pay due attention to the peculiarities of each child. His mother, he said, once whipped him till the blood came, for having taken a paltry little nut. He adds, that, in punishing children, the apple should be placed beside the rod, and they should not be chastised for an offence about nuts or cherries as if they had broken open a money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very best, but they had kept him, nevertheless, so

er life, on the sons of poor men, who by sheer hard work raise themselves from obscurity, and have much to endure, and no time to

articularly his brother James, that from childhood they were those of brotherly companionship, and that from his mother's own

it by being carried. The school-house, of which the lower portion still remains, stood at the upper end of the little town, part of which runs with steep streets up the hill. The children there were taught not only reading and writing, but also the rudiments of Latin, though doubtless in a very clumsy and mechanical fashion. From his experience of the teaching here, Luther speaks in later years of the vexations and torments with declining and conjugating and other tasks which schoo

the social and moral welfare of the people, by preaching the Word of God, by instruction, and by spiritual ministration. They undertook in particular the care of youth. They were, moreover, the chief originators of the great movement in Germany, at that time, for promoting intellectual culture, and reviving the treasures of ancient Roman and Greek literature. Since 1488 a colony of them had existed at Magdeburg, which had come from Hildesheim, one of their head-quarters. As there is no evidence of heir having had a school of their own at Magdeburg, they may have devoted their services to the town-school. Thither, then, Hans Luther sent his eldest son in 1497. The idea

ck of a burning fever, and tormented with thirst, and in the heat of the fever they refused him drink. So one Friday, when the people of the house had gone to church, and left him alone, he, no longer able to endure the thi

pit or the lecturer's chair, would he tell little anecdotes about those days. The boys used to sing quartettes at Christmas-time in the villages, carols on the birth of the Holy Child at Bethlehem. Once, as they were singing before the door of a solitary farmhouse, the farmer came out and called to them roughly, 'Where are you, young rascals?' He had two large sausages in his hand for them, but they ran away terrified, till he shouted after them to come back and fetch the sausages. So intimidated, says Luther, had he become by the terrors of

country, and who might be of service to him. But of these no mention has reached us, except of one, named Konrad, who was

oble Italian family who had acquired wealth by commerce. Ursula Cotta, as her name was, belonged to the Eisenach family of Schalbe. She died in 1511. Mathesius tells us how the boy won her heart by his singing and his earnestness in prayer, and she welcomed him to her own table. Luther met with similar acts of kindness from a brother o

ght have chosen many a one of the lads present to be a future mayor, or chancellor, or learned doctor; a thought which, as he adds, was amply realised afterwards in the person of Doctor Luther. The relations of these two at the school, which contained several classes, must be a matter of conjecture. But the system of teaching pursued there was praised afterwards by Luther himself to Melancthon. The former acquired there tha

the teacher, and the warrior, the most important question for us

Christian truth, and for that reason he would always honour it as the House of his Father. The Church would at any rate take care that children, at home and at school, should learn by heart the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments; that they should pray, and sing psalms and Christian hymns. Printed books, containing them, were already in existence. Among the old Christian hymns in the German language, of which a surprisingly rich collection has been formed, a certain number, at least, were in common use in the churches, especially for festivals. 'Fine songs' Luther called them, and he t

nce and shortcomings were exposed by the Visitations which they undertook, and from these we may fairly judge of the actual state of things existing for many years before. It appeared, that even where these portions of the catechism were taught by parents and schoolmasters, they never formed the subject of clerical instruction to the young. It was precisely one of the charges brought against the enemies of the Reformation, that, n

nward suffering to him from childhood, was the distorted view, held up to him at school and from the pulpit, o

o approach their Father with frank and childlike confidence, and, if aroused to a consciousness of sin or wrong, to entreat at once His forgiveness. Such however, he tells us, was not what he was taught. On the

the century, and the mining town of Annaberg, built in 1496, was named after her. Luther records how the 'great stir' was first made about her, when he was a boy of fifteen, and how he was then anxious to place himself under her protection. There is no lack of religious writings of that time, which, with the view of preserving the Catholic faith, warn men earnestly against the danger of overvaluing the saints, and of placing their hopes more in them than in God; but we see from those very warnings how necessary they were, and later history shows us how little fruit they bore. As for Luther, certain beautiful features in the lives and legends of the saints exercised over him a power of attraction which he never afterwards renounced; and of the Virgin he always spoke with tender reverence, only regretting that

gnised the value of being able to pour out the inner temptations of the heart to some Christian father-confessor, or even to some other brother in the faith, and to obtain from his lips that comfort of forgiveness which God, in His love and mercy, bestows freely on the faithful. But nothing of this kind, they said, was to be found in the confessional. The conscience was

y true forgiveness. He received, as we shall see, some salutary directions for so doing from later friends of his, who belonged to the Romish Church, nor was that character of ecclesiastical religiousness, so to speak, stamped everywhere, or to the same degree, on Christian life in Germany during his youth. Nevertheless, his whole inner being, from boyhood, was dominated by its influence; he, at all events, had neve

orldliness and gross immorality of the priests and monks. The Papacy had reached its lowest depth of moral degradation under Pope Alexander VI. We hear nothing, however, of the impressions produced on Luther, in this respect, in the circumstances of his early life. The news of such scandals as were then enacted at Rome, shamelessly and in open day, very likely took a long while to reach Luther and those about h

all of which have reference to altars and the celebration of mass. The overseer of the mines, Reinicke, the friend of

with Reinicke and other fellow-magistrates, was among the first to make use of the invitation. The enemies of the Reformer, while fain to trace his origin to a heretic Bohemian, had not a shadow of a reason for suspecting his real father of any leanings to heresy. Nor do we hear a word in later years from the Reformer, after his father had separated with him from the Catholic Church, to show a trace of any hostile or critical remark against that Church, remembered from the lips of his father during childhood. Quietly but firmly the latter asserted his own judgment, and framed his will accordingly. He was firm, in particular, in the consciousness of his paternal rights and duties, even against the pretensions of the clergy. Thus, as his son Martin tells us, when he lay once on the point of death, and the priest admonished him to leave something to the clergy, he replied in the simplicity of his heart, 'I have many children: I will leave it them, for they want it more.' We shall see how unyieldingly, when his son entered a convent, he insisted, as against all the value and usefulness of monasticism, on the paramount obligation of God's command, that children should obey the

r, as is well known, has frequently expressed his own opinions about the devil, in connection with the enchantments supposed to be practised by the Evil One on mankind, and, more especially, on the subject of witchcraft. Of one thing he was certain, that in God's hand we are safe from the Evil One, and can triumph over him. But even he believed the devil's work was manifested in sudden accidents and striking

ies in the punishment of those who were pretended to be in league with the devil, and they had gradually multiplied their baneful effects. The year after Luther's birth, appeared the remarkable Papal bull which sanctioned the trial of witches. When a boy, Luther heard a great deal about witches, though later in life he thought there was no longer so much talk about them, and he would not scruple to tell stori

as waging against the false teachings of the Church, from which he himself had suffered, made him dwell, as was natural, on this side of his early life. But amidst all those trials and depressing influences, the fresh and elastic vigour of his nature stood the strain-a vigour innate and inherited, and which after

onversations and letters. German legends also, and popular tales, such as the history of Dietrich von Bern and other heroes, or of Eulenspiegel or Markolf, would hardly have been remembered so accurately by him in later years, if he had not familiarised himself with them in childhood. He would at times inveigh against the worthless, and even shameless tales and 'gossip,' as he called it, which such books contained, and especially against the priests who used to spice their

his dear father's work-mates, he loved all his life long. But a wider horizon was not opened to him among the people of the little town of Mansfeld, or where he afterwards went to school. To this fact, and to his quiet life as a monk, we must ascribe the peculiar feature of his later activity, namely, that while prosecuting with far-seeing e

intellectual culture, which his father wished him to pursue. Thus equipped, he was prepa