on record the following amidst many other | not be correctly understood by those who are memorabilia :-"God made the priest. The wholly ignorant of the legendary traditions of devil set about an imitation, but he made the tonsure too large, and produced a monk." A cup composed of five hoops or rings of glass of different colours circulated at his table. Eisleben, an Antinomian, was of the party. Luther pledged him in the following words: "Within the second of these rings lie the ten commandments; within the next ring the creed; then comes the paternoster; the catechism lies at the bottom." So saying, he drank it off. When Eisleben's turn came, he emptied the cup only down to the beginning of the second ring. "Ah!" said Luther, "I knew that he would stick at the commandments, and therefore would not reach the creed, the Lord's prayer, or the catechism."

his native land. This remark is made and illustrated by M. Henry Heine, with that curious knowledge of such lore as none but a denizen of Germany could acquire. In the mines of Mansfield, at Eisenach and Erfurth, the visible and invisible worlds were almost equally populous; and the training of youth was not merely a discipline for the future offices of life, but an initiation into mysteries as impressive, though not quite so sublime, as those of Eleusis. The unearthly inhabitants of every land are near akin to the human cultivators of the soil. The killkropff of Saxony differed from a fairy or a hamadryad as a Saxon differs from a Frenchman or a Greek; the thin essences by which these spiritual bodies are sustained being distilled according to their various national tastes, from the dews of Hymettus, the light wines of Provence, and the strong beer of Germany. At the fireside around which Luther's family drew, in his childhood, there gathered a race of imps who may be considered as the presiding genii of the turnspit and the stable; witches expert in the right use of the broomstick, but incapable of perverting it into a locomotive engine; homely in gait, coarse in feature, sordid in their habits, with canine appetites, and superhuman powers, and, for the most part, eaten up with misanthropy. When, in his twentieth year, Luther for the first time opened the Bible, and read there of spiritual agents, the inveterate enemies of our race, these spectra were projected on a mind over which such legends had already exercised an indestructible influence. Satan and his angels crowded upon his imagination, neither as shapeless presences casting their gloomy shadows on the soul, nor as mysterious impersonations of her foul and cruel desires, nor as warriors engaged with the powers of light and love, and holiness, in the silent motionless war of antagonist ener

It must be confessed, however, that Luther's pleas intries are less remarkable for wit or delicacy than for the union of strong sense and honest merriment. They were the careless, though not inconsiderate. sport of a freespoken man, in a circle where religion and modesty, protected by an inbred reverence, did not seek the doubtful defence of conventional outworks. But pensive thoughts were the more habitual food of his overburdened mind. Neither social enjoyments, nor the tenderness of domestic life, could ever long repel the melancholy which brooded over him. It breaks out in every part of his correspondence, and tinges all his recorded conversation. "Because," he says, "my manner is sometimes gay and joyous, many think that I am always treading on roses. God knows what is in my heart. There is nothing in this life which gives me pleasure: I am tired of it. May the Lord come quickly and take me hence. Let him come to his final judgment-I wait the blow. Let him hurl his thunders, that I may be at rest. Forty years more life! I would not purchase Paradise at such a price." Yet, with this lassitude of the world, his contempla-gies. Luther's devils were a set of athletic, tions of death were solemn, even to sadness. cross-grained, ill-conditioned wretches, with "How gloriously," said his friend, Dr. Jonas, vile shapes and fiendish faces; who, like the "does St. Paul speak of his own death. I can- monsters of dame Ursula's kitchen, gave buffet not enter into this." "It appears to me," re- for buffet, hate for hate, and joke for joke. His plied Luther, "that when meditating on that Satan was not only something less than archsubject, even St. Paul himself could not have angel ruined, but was quite below the society felt all the energy which possessed him when of that Prince of Darkness, whom mad Tom he wrote. I preach, write, and talk about in Lear declares to be a gentleman. Possessdying, with a greater firmness than I really ing a sensitive rather than a creative imaginapossess, or than others ascribe to me." In tion, Luther transferred the visionary lore, common with all men of this temperament, he drawn from these humble sources, to the was profuse in extolling the opposite disposi- machinery of the great epic of revelation, with tion. "The birds," he says, "must fly over but little change or embellishment; and thus our heads, but why allow them to roost in our contrived to reduce to the level of very vulgar hair?" "Gayety and a light heart, in all vir- prose some of the noblest conceptions of intue and decorum, are the best medicine for the spired poetry. young, or rather for all. I who have passed my life in dejection and gloomy thoughts, nor catch at enjoyment, come from what quarter it may, and even seek for it. Criminal pleasure, indeed, comes from Satan, but that which we find in the society of good and pious men is approved by God. Ride, hunt with your friends, amuse yourself in their company. Solitude and melancholy are poison. They are deadly to all, but, above all, to the young.

The sombre character of Luther's mind can

At the castle of Wartburg, his Patmos, where he dwelt the willing prisoner of his friendly sovereign, the reformer chanced to have a plate of nuts at his supper-table. How many of them he swallowed, there is, unfortunately, no Boswell to tell; yet, perhaps, not a fewfor, as he slept, the nuts, animated as it would seem by the demon of the pantry, executed a sort of waltz, knocking against each other, and against the slumberer's bedstead; when, lo! the staircase became possessed by a hundresi

barrels rolling up and down, under the guid-sition, and to suppose it a mere pleasantry. ance, probably, of the imp of the spigot. Yet So constantly was he haunted with this midall approach to Luther's room was barred by night crew of devils, as to have raised a sechains and by an iron door-vain intrench-rious doubt of his sanity, which even Mr. Halments against Satan! He arose, solemnly lam does not entirely discountenance. Yet the defied the fiend, repeated the eighth Psalm, hypothesis is surely gratuitous. Intense study and resigned himself to sleep. Another visit deranging the digestive organs of a man, from the same fearful adversary at Nurem- whose bodily constitution required vigorous burg led to the opposite result. The reformer exercise, and whose mind had been early stored flew from his bed to seek refuge in society. with such dreams as we have mentioned, suffiOnce upon a time, Carlostadt, the sacrament- ciently explains the restless importunity of the arian, being in the pulpit, saw a tall man enter goblins amongst whom he lived. It is easier the church, and take his seat by one of the for a man to be in advance of his age on any burgesses of the town. The intruder then other subject than this. It may be doubted retired, betook himself to the preacher's house, whether the nerves of Seneca or Pliny would and exhibited frightful symptoms of a disposi- have been equal to a solitary evening walk by tion to break all the bones of his child. Think- the Lake Avernus. What wonder, then, if ing better of it, however, he left with the boy a Martin Luther was convinced that suicides message for Carlostadt, that he might be looked fall not by their own hands, but by those of for again in three days. It is needless to add diabolical emissaries, who really adjust the that, on the third day, there was an end of the cord or point the knife-that particular spots, poor preacher, and of his attacks on Luther as, for example, the pool near the summit of and consubstantiation. In the cloisters at the Mons Pilatus, were desecrated to SatanWittemburg, Luther himself heard that pecu- that the wailings of his victims are to be heard liar noise which attests the devil's presence. in the howlings of the night wind-or that the It came from behind a stove, resembling, for throwing a stone into a pond in his own neighall the world, the sound of throwing a fagot on bourhood, immediately provoked such strugthe fire. This sound, however, is not invaria- gles of the evil spirit imprisoned below the ble. An old priest, in the attitude of prayer, water, as shook the neighbouring country like heard Satan behind him, grunting like a whole an earthquake? herd of swine. "Ah! ha! master devil," said The mental phantasmagoria of so illustrious the priest, "you have your deserts. There a man are an exhibition to which no one who was a time when you were a beautiful angel, reveres his name would needlessly direct an and there you are turned into a rascally hog." unfriendly, or an idle gaze. But the infirmi The priest's devotions proceeded without fur- ties of our nature often afford the best meather disturbance; "for," observed Luther, sure of its strength. To estimate the strength "there is nothing the devil can bear so little as by which temptation is overcome, you must contempt." He once saw and even touched a ascertain the force of the propensities to which killkropff or supposititious child. This was it is addressed. Amongst the elements of Luat Dessau. The deviling,-for it had no other ther's character was an awe verging towards parent than Satan himself,-was about twelve idolatry, for all things, whether in the works years old, and looked exactly like any other of God or in the institutions of man, which boy. But the unlucky brat could do nothing can be regarded as depositories of the Divine He consumed as much food as four power, or as delegates of the Divine authority. ploughmen. When things went ill in the From pantheism, the disease of imaginations house, his laugh was to be heard all over it. at once devout and unhallowed, he was preIf matters went smoothly, there was no peace served in youth by his respect for the doctrines for his screaming. Luther sportively asserts of the church; and, in later life, by his absothat he recommended the elector to have this lute surrender of his own judgment to the text scapegrace thrown into the Moldau, as it was of the sacred canon. But as far as a panthea mere lump of flesh without a soul. His istic habit of thought and feeling can consist visions sometimes assumed a deeper signifi- with the most unqualified belief in the uncomcance, if not a loftier aspect. In the year 1496, municable unity of the Divine nature, such a frightful monster was discovered in the Tiber. thoughts and feelings were habitual to him. It had the head of an ass, an emblem of the The same spirit which solemnly acknowledged pope; for the church being a spiritual body the existence, whilst it abhorred the use, of the incapable of a head, the pope, who had auda-high faculties, which, according to the popular ciously assumed that character, was fitly repre- faith, the foul fiends of earth, and air, and sented under this asinine figure. The right hand resembled an elephant's foot, typifying the papal tyranny over the weak and timid. The right foot was like an ox's hoof shadowing forth the spiritual oppression exercised by doctors, confessors, nuus, monks, and scholastic theologians; while the left foot armed with griffin's claws, could mean nothing else than the various ministers of the pope's civil authority. How far Luther believed in the existence of the monster, whose mysterious significations he thus interprets, it would not be easy to decide. Yet it is difficult to read his expo

but eat.

water, at once enjoy and pervert, contemplated with almost prostrate reverence the majesty and the hereditary glories of Rome; and the apostolical succession of her pontiff, with kings and emperors of his tributaries, the Catholic hierarchy as his vicegerents, and the human mind his universal empire. To brave the vengeance of such a dynasty, wielding the mysterious keys which close the gates of hell and open the portals of heaven, long appeared to Luther an impious audacity, of which nothing less than wo, eternal and unutterable, would be the sure and appropriate penalty

For a man of his temperament to hush these this argument, as a reef of rocks thrown up superstitious terrors, and to abjure the golden against the waves laughs at all their fury.” idol to which the adoring eyes of all nations, kindred, and languages were directed, was a self-conquest, such as none but the most heroic minds can achieve; and to which even they are unequal, unless sustained by an invisible but omnipotent arm. For no error can be more extravagant than that which would reduce Martin Luther to the rank of a coarse spiritual demagogue. The deep self-distrust which, for ten successive years, postponed his irreconcilable war with Rome, clung to him to the last; nor was he ever unconscious of the dazzling splendour of the pageantry which his own hand had contributed so largely to overthrow. There is no alloy of affectation in the following avowal, taken from one of his letters to Erasmus:

He who thus acknowledged the influence, while he defied the despotism of human authority, was self-annihilated in the presence of his Maker. "I have learned," he says, "from the Holy Scriptures that it is a perilous and a fearful thing to speak in the house of God; to address those who will appear in judgment against us, when at the last day we shall be found in his presence; when the gaze of the angels shall be directed to us, when every creature shall behold the divine Word, and shall listen till He speaks. Truly, when I think of this, I have no wish but to be silent, and to cancel all that I have written. It is a fearful thing to be called to render to God an account of every idle word." Philip Melancthon occasionally endeavoured, by affectionate ap"You must, indeed, feel yourself in some plause, to sustain and encourage the mind measure awed in the presence of a succession which was thus bowed down under the sense of learned men, and by the consent of so many of unworthiness. But the praise, even of the ages, during which flourished scholars so con- chosen friend of his bosom, found no echo versant in sacred literature, and martyrs illus- there. He rejected it, kindly indeed, but with trious by so many miracles. To all this must a rebuke so earnest and passionate, as to show be added the more modern theologians, uni- that the commendations of him whom he loved versities, bishops, and popes. On their side and valued most, were unwelcome. They are arrayed learning, genius, numbers, dignity, served but to deepen the depressing consciousstation, power, sanctity, miracles, and what ness of ill desert, inseparable from his lofty not. On mine, Wycliff and Laurentius Valla, conceptions of the duties which had been asand though you forget to mention him, Augus- signed to him. In Luther, as in other men, the tine also. Then comes Luther, a mean man, stern and heroic virtues demanded for their born but yesterday, supported only by a few support that profound lowliness which might friends, who have neither learning, nor genius, at first appear the most opposed to their denor greatness, nor sanctity, nor miracles. Put velopment. The eye which often turns inthem altogether, and they have not wit enough ward with self-complacency, or habitually looks to cure a spavined horse. What are they? round for admiration, is never long or steadWhat the wolf said of the nightingale-a fastly fixed on any more elevated object. It voice, and nothing else. I confess it is with is permitted to no man at once to court the apreason you pause in such a presence as this. plauses of the world, and to challenge a place For ten years together I hesitated myself. amongst the generous and devoted benefactors Could I believe that this Troy, which had tri- of his species. The enervating spell of vanity, umphed over so many assaults would fall at so fatal to many a noble intellect, exercised last! I call God to witness, that I should have no perceptible control over Martin Luther. persisted in my fears, and should have hesi- Though conscious of the rare endowments he tated until now, if truth had not compelled me had received from Providence (of which that to speak. You may well believe that my heart very consciousness was not the least imporis not rock; and, if it were, yet so many are tant) the secret of his strength lay in the the waves and storms which have been beaten heartfelt persuasion, that his superiority to upon it, that it must have yielded when the other men gave him no title to their comwhole weight of this authority came thunder-mendations, and in his abiding sense of the ing on my head, like a deluge ready to overwhelm me."

The same feelings were expressed at a later time in the following words:

"I daily perceive how difficult it is to overcome long cherished scruples. Oh, what pain it has cost me, though the Scripture is on my side, to defend myself to my own heart for having dared singly to resist the pope, and to denounce him as antichrist! What have been the afflictions of my bosom! How often, in the bitterness of my soul, have I pressed myself with the papist's argument, Art thou alone wise? are all others in error? have they been mistaken for so long a time? What if you are yourself mistaken, and are dragging with you so many souls into eternal condemnation? Thus did I reason with myself, till Jesus Christ, by his own infallible word, tranquillized my heart, and sustained it against

little value of such praises. The growth of his social affections was impeded by self-regarding thoughts; and he could endure the frowns and even the coldness of those whose approving smiles he judged himself unworthy to receive, and did not much care to win. His was not that feeble benevolence which leans for support, or depends for existence, on the sympathy of those for whom it labours. Reproofs, sharp, unsparing, and pitiless, were familiar to his tongue, and to his pen. Such a censure he had directed to the archbishop of Mentz, which Spalatin, in the name of their common friend and sovereign, the elector Frederic, implored him to suppress. "No," replied Luther, "in defence of the fold of Christ, I will oppose to the utmost of my power, this ravening wolf, as I have resisted others. I send you my book, which was ready before your letter reached me. It has not induced

This buoyant spirit sometimes expressed itself in a more pithy phrase. When he first wrote against indulgences, Dr. Jerome Schurf said to him, "What are you about? they won't allow it." "What if they must allow it?" was the peremptory answer.

me to alter a word. The question is decided, | himself openly and freely, careless whether he I cannot heed your objections." They were is alone, or has others at his side. So spake such, however, as most men would have thought Jeremiah, and I may boast of having done the reasonable enough. Here are some of the same. God has not for the last thousand words of which neither friend nor sovereign years bestowed on any bishop such great gifts could dissuade the publication. "Did you as on me, and it is right that I should extol his imagine that Luther was dead? Believe it gifts. Truly, I am indignant with myself that not. He lives under the protection of that God I do not heartily rejoice and give thanks. Now who has already humbled the pope, and is and then I raise a faint hymn of thanksgiving, ready to begin with the archbishop of Mentz a and feebly praise Him. Well! live or die, game for which few are prepared." To the Domini sumus. You may take the word either severe admonition which followed, the princely in the genitive or in the nominative case. prelate answered in his own person, in terms Therefore, Sir Doctor, be firm.” of the most humble deference, leaving to Capito, his minister, the ticklish office of remonstrating against the rigour with which the lash had been applied. But neither soothing nor menaces could abate Luther's confidence in his cause, and in himself. "Christianity," he replies, "is open and honest. It sees things as they are, and proclaims them as they are. I am for tearing off every mask, for managing nothing, for extenuating nothing, for shutting the eyes to nothing, that truth may be transparent and unadulterated, and may have a free course. Think you that Luther is a man who is content to shut his eyes if you can but lull him by a few cajoleries ?" "Expect every thing from my affections; but reverence, nay tremble for the faith." George, duke of Saxony, the near kinsman of Frederic, and one of the most determined enemies of the Reformation, not seldom provoked and encountered the same resolute defiance. "Should God call me to Wittemburg, I would go there, though it should rain Duke Georges for nine days together, and cach new duke should be nine times more furious than this." "Though exposed daily to death in the midst of my enemies, and without any human resource, I never in my life despised any thing so heartily as these stupid threats of Duke George, and his associates in folly. I write in the morning fasting, with my heart filled with holy confidence. Christ lives and reigns, and I, too, shall live and reigr."

Here is a more comprehensive denunciation of the futility of the attempts made to arrest his course.

"To the language of the fathers, of men, of angels, and of devils, I oppose neither antiquity nor numbers, but the single word of the Eternal Majesty, even that gospel which they are themselves compelled to acknowledge. Here is my hold, my stand, my resting-place, my glory, and my triumph. Hence I assault popes, Thomists, Henrycists, sophists, and all the gates of hell. I little heed the words of men, whatever may have been their sanctity, nor am I anxious about tradition or doubtful customs. The word of God is above all. If the Divine Majesty be on my side, what care I for the rest, though a thousand Augustines, and a thousand Cyprians, and a thousand such churches as those of Henry, should rise against me? God can neither err nor deceive. Augustine, Cyprian, and all the saints, can err, and have erred."

"At Leipsic, at Augsburg, and at Worms, my spirit was as free as a flower of the field." "He whom God moves to speak, expresses

The preceding passages, while they illustrate his indestructible confidence in himself as the minister, and in his cause as the behest, of Heaven, are redolent of that unseemly violence and asperity which are attested at once by the regrets of his friends, and the reproaches of his enemies, and his own acknowledgments. So fierce, indeed, and contumelious and withering is his invective, as to suggest the theory, that, in her successive transmigrations, the same fiery soul which in one age breathed the "Divine Philippics," and in another, the "Letters on a Regicide Peace," was lodged in the sixteenth century under the cowl of an Augustinian monk; retaining her indomitable energy of abuse, though condemned to a temporary divorce from her inspiring genius. Yet what she lost in eloquence in her transit from the Roman to the Irishman, this upbraiding spirit more than retrieved in generous and philanthropic ardour, while she dwelt in the bosom of the Saxon. Luther's rage, for it is nothing less-his scurrilities, for they are no betterare at least the genuine language of passion, excited by a deep abhorrence of imposture, tyranny, and wrong. Through the ebullitions of his wrath may be discovered his lofty selfesteem, but not a single movement of puerile vanity; his cordial scorn for fools and their folly, but not one heartless sarcasm; his burning indignation against oppressors, whether spiritual or secular, unclouded by so much as a passing shade of malignity. The torrent of emotion is headlong, but never turbulent. When we are least able to sympathize with his irascible feelings, it is also least in our power to refuse our admiration to a mind which, when thus torn up to its lowest depths, discloses no trace of envy, selfishness, or revenge, or of any still baser inmate. His mission from on high may be disputed, but hardly his own belief in it. In that persuasion, his thoughts often reverted to the prophet of Israel mocking the idolatrous priests of Baal, and menacing their still more guilty king; and if the mantle of Elijah might have been borne with a more imposing majesty, it could not have fallen on one better prepared to pour contempt on the proudest enemies of truth, or to brave their utmost resentment.

Is it paradoxical to ascribe Luther's boisterous invective to his inherent reverence for

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