of the Pope, and the proscription of the Emperor. His prince had intimated to him, that to protect him was impossible. The brave Reformer ascended the pulpit, when he was himself in need of sympathy and encouragement, and preached day after day, without even making an allusion to the originators of the trouble, and exorcised the spirit of dissension in the leaders, and the spirit of rebellion in the populace, by a simple and earnest proclamation of the gospel, and by the noble exhibition of a Christian and tolerant disposition. "I seem to be listening to the voice of an angel rather than a man," said one Gabriel Didymus, who had been foremost among the agitators, and acknowledged in public that he had been deceived. Luther was no irritable self-seeker and self-lover. He never entertained others with long chapters of autobiography. With his heroic, "Teutonic" good-nature, he was altogether a pleasant, companionable man, unless he came in contact with something that, in his sincerity, he could not, therefore would not, approve. "Point out," wrote the court chaplain to Luther, "some work that I may translate into our mother tongue; one that shall give general satisfaction, and at the same time be useful." "Agreeable and useful!" he answered, "such a question is beyond my ability. The better things are, the less they please. What is more salutary than Jesus Christ? and yet he is to the majority a savor of death. You will tell me that you wish to be useful only to those who love what is good." This kind of homely honesty, stout defence of what he conceived to be the truth, and abrupt sincerity, has been mistaken for intolerance.

Luther was a man of faith as well as understanding. It is difficult to define faith, even in the abstract; to define a phase of it in an individual, is almost impossible. Luther did not discard reason, but above it he placed faith. "Before faith and the knowledge of God, reason is mere darkness; but in the hands of those who believe, 'tis an excellent instrument. All faculties and gifts are pernicious, exercised by the impious; but most salutary when possessed by godly persons." "Natural wisdom

and understanding must be set aside in matters of faith." "The understanding, through faith, receives life from faith; that which was dead is made alive again." We

find faith defined in phrases like these: "faith consists in a person's understanding; "faith indites, distinguishes, and teaches, and is the knowledge and acknowledgement; ""faith looks to the word or promise, which is truth;" "faith is first, and before all adversities and troubles, and is the beginning of life;" “faith_fights

against errors and heresies; it proves and judges spirits and doctrines; ""faith, in divinity, is the wisdom and providence, and belongs to the doctrine; ""faith is the dialectica, for it is altogether prudence and wisdom;" "faith is given from one to another, and remains continually in one school;" "faith is not a quality, as the schoolmen say, but a gift of God;" "faith's substance is our will; its manner is, that we take hold on Christ by divine instinct; its final cause and fruit, that it purifies the heart, makes us children of God, and brings with it the remission of sins." These definitions are vague, yet they clearly indicate that belief of some kind was for him a necessity.

Luther's mind, as we have seen, acted mostly in the concrete; or, in other words, his nature was such that reason in him manifested itself rather by intuition than by induction and logic. Logic and induction however were not wanting, but subordinate. He restricted the term

reason to these, and above it justly placed intuition, or what he called faith. He did not stop there, but crossed the boundary of legitimate faith, and wandered very near to the borders of absolute credulity. He held doctrines in regard to Deity, Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Trinity, revelation, sin, redemption, the eucharist, etc., which reason can never sanction,-which are not the proper objects of faith. With one of blessed memory among us, we are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because belief in it is a reasonable faith. The charge of a vicious faith, that went almost, if not quite, to the length of simple credulity, against the large-brained Reformer, needs to be substantiated by his own words. "Scarcely a small portion of the earth bears corn," said he, "and yet we are all maintained and nourished. I verily believe that there grow not as many sheaves of corn as there are people in the world, and yet we are all fed; yea, and there remains a good surplus of corn at the year's end.

This is a wonderful thing, which should make us see and perceive God's blessing. "When I saw Dr. Gode begin to tell his puddings hanging in the chimney, I told him he would not live long, and so it fell out; and when I begin to trouble myself about brewing, malting, cooking, &c., then shall I soon die." "A covetous farmer, well known at Erfurth, carried his corn to sell there in the market, but selling it at too dear a rate, no man would buy of him, or give him his price. He being thereby moved to anger, said, 'I will not sell it cheaper, but rather carry it home again and give it to the mice.' When he had come home with it, an infinity of mice and rats flocked into his house and devoured up all his corn. And, next day, going out to see his grounds, which were newly sown, he found that all the seed was eaten up, while no hurt at all was done to the grounds of his neighbors. This was certainly a just punishment from God, a merited token of his wrath." This tendency of Luther's mind especially manifested itself in his notions of the devil and his works. "The maladies I suffer are not natural, but devil's spells." "Many devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people; some are also in the thick, black clouds, which cause hail, lightnings, and thunderings, and poison the air, the pastures and grounds." "I know of one person at Magdeburg, who put Satan to the rout, by spitting at him." "One man, who relied implicitly on his baptism, when the devil presented himself to him, his head furnished with horns, tore off one of the horns; but another man of less faith, who attempted the same thing, was killed by the devil." "I would rather die through the devil, than through the Emperor or Pope; for then I should die through a great and mighty prince of the world. But if he eat a bit of me 'twill be his bane; he shall spew me out again; and at the day of judgement, I in requital will devour him." "When I could not be rid of the devil with sentences out of the Holy Scripture, I made him often fly with jeering words; sometimes I said unto him, Saint Satan, if Christ's blood, which was shed for my sins, be not sufficient, then I desire that thou wouldst pray to God for me." Tertullian somewhere says, "This is true, for it is impossible; it is to be believed, for it is an

absurdity." Luther's belief in some things went almost as far.

The honest Reformer was a questioner, as well as a believer. Questioning is a very different thing from doubting. Luther's personality interferred with the free action of reason on the side of credulity rather than on the side of skepticism. In regard to his extreme belief we must make allowance for the influence of a superstitious age; but this questioning was the result of the free activity of a reason strong enough to break the chains with which the church had bound it. Doubting, questioning more than reason demands, was not a characteristic of his mind. Skepticism, denying without any action of reason at all, was probably beyond the sphere of Luther's experience. He questioned all the leading doctrines of the papacy, weighed them in the balance of reason, and found them wanting. Sometimes we find in him extreme faith and questioning strangely mingled, as in the following narrative. "On Good Friday last, I being in my chamber in fervent prayer, contemplating with myself, how Christ my Saviour on the cross suffered and died for our sins, there suddenly appeared upon the wall a bright vision of our Saviour Christ, with the five wounds, steadfastly looking upon me, as if it had been Christ himself corporally. At first sight, I thought it had been some celestial revelation, but I reflected that it must needs be an illusion and juggling of the devil, for Christ appeared to us in his word, and in a meaner and more humble form; threfore I spoke to the vision thus: Avoid thee, confounded devil, I know no other Christ than he who was crucified, and who in his word is pictured and presented unto me. Whereupon the image vanished, clearly showing of whom it came."

On account of this intermingling of questioning and belief, some have have supposed that Luther was wanting in consistency and persistence. There is a quality that is sometimes called consistency, which thoughtful, honest men do not at all like. It means that a man shall stick to the party or sect which he first happens to join, right or wrong, as long as he lives. If he advocates certain doctrines to-day, he must advocate them in all coming days. If he announced his belief in some proposition last year,

he must stick to it this year. We always hear the greatest political or religious hypocrite, talking most about his consistency. The stolid blockhead, or the slippery viper, that sticks to a party or sect, for the worldly purpose of crawling or worrying himself into "a little brief authority," will be continually calling the attention of men to his persistence. The soul may be acting one uninterrupted, black, God-hated falsehood, in a so-called consistent course, and persistence therein is plunging deeper into that place where there is weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth. Had Luther taken such a course, beginning it when at the university, he might have fulfilled his father's wishes, by making himself a successful advocate. If he had commenced such a course in the convent, he might have become a cardinal, living sumptuously for a season, then dropping into the motherly arms of an indulgent oblivion. If he had been a much smaller, less sincere man, such would have been his life-purpose. He was always true to such light of truth as his soul could get, and in that diviner course no man ever showed greater persistence. Let men or devils cross him in that, and he was ready to unsheath the sword.

Luther, notwithstanding his life was a continual solemn battle, had in him good hearty laughter. His mirth was like his nature, earnest and strong. There may be insincerity in laughing as well as crying; one may "smile and smile, and be a villain." In Luther there was no humor of the elusive, etherial, shy, sly kind. His humor was of the heart-in-hand quality; full of sincerity and deep fellowfeeling. His mirth was not boisterous; was no sky-piercing buffoonery; his life was too real for that. His wit was of the finest, most sterling quality. It cut like a Damascus-blade, and sometimes cleaved like a heavy claymore. His satire burned and wasted like a conflagration, withering and crisping the soul of his antagonist. He delighted to riddle the mask of insincerity with the hot shots of scorn. The wit-tempered lance of invective he drove home through the strongest shield of defence. The arrows of ridicule never missed their mark when shot from his bow. After the Reformation had progressed so far that Rome despaired of crushing it by force, she sought to compass her end by stratagem and manœuvre.

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