Life and deeds of Dr. Martin Luther

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UNI M ED STATES OF AMERICA.}

LIFE AND DEEDS ft/

CHAPTER II. Luther's Birth and Childhood

Luther was born on the 10th of November, 1483, between eleven and twelve o'clock at night, at Eisleben, in the county of Mansfeld. On the following day he was baptized in St. Peter's Church and received the name Martin, after the saint to whom the day was dedicated, Bishop Martin of Tours. His parents were John Luther and Margaret, whose maiden name was Lindemann. They were originally from Moehra, a village between Eisenach and Salzungen. Qf his ancestors Luther says : "I am the son of a peasant. My father, grandfather, ancestors were all peasants. Afterwards my father removed to Mansfeld and became a miner. Hence I sprang." He came to that place in needy circumstances. "My parents," Luther says, "were at first very poor. My father was a poor hewer, and my mother carried the wood upon her back by which we were raised. They endured many hardships ; nowadays people would not submit to them." Still, Luther always remembered the place of his birth with joy. He was accustomed to say : u Haec est Islebia" — here is life, because there lie received it. He never ceased to love his native land, and always faithfully sought its welfare.

God, in His goodness, blessed his father's labors in Mansfeld, so that He acquired a house and two furnaces. He also became a councilman and was, on account of his integrity, beloved and esteemed by the old count Guenther, and by all honest men. His mother "had many virtues that adorn a good woman. Her fear of God, and her prayerful spirit, were particularly remarked. She was looked upon by all other pious women as a model of virtue and decorum." Both parents taught their son to fear God and abound in good works. The father often prayed aloud and fervently, at the bed-side of the child, that God would give his son grace to remember His holy name and to promote the dissemination of His pure doctrine. Because he loved piety and learning, and also for his son's sake, he treated pious ministers and teachers with much respect and kindness. But the parental discipline was at the same time severe. Luther himself says : "My father once punished me so severely that I ran away, and disliked him until he won me to himself again. My mother at one time chastised me about a trifling nut until the blood came ; and the stern and austere life which she led induced me to flee to a cloister and become a monk. They thought they were doing right and meant it kindly ; they only failed to distinguish dispositions, according to which chastisement must be tempered. Punishment is necessary, but the apple should accompany the rod/'

As soon as Martin was able to learn, his pious parents took measures to have him instructed. His father, with earnest prayers, sent him to the Latin school, whither old Nich. Oemler often carried him on his arms. There he studied diligently and soon learned the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer ; he also practiced penmanship and studied Donatus, the youth's Grammar, Cisio Janus (a Latin Calender,) and memorized

some Christian hymns. This school he at-

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tended until his fourteenth year. There also he experienced excessively harsh treatment. His teachers belonged to those "inept schoolmasters/' of whom he says that "they often /spoil fine talents by their clamoring and storming, their knocks and blows, dealing with children as the jailor deals with thieves." He complains of the "hell and purgatory of the schools, in which we have been tortured about the casuals and the temporals, learning just nothing, with all the chastisement, trembling, fear and misery." "How sorry lam," he says in his epistle to the aldermen, "that I did not read more poets and historians, and that no person taught me them."

In the time of his childhood at Mansfeld occurred also the little event of his school-days, which he narrates in his exposition of Genesis, and upon which he makes some edifying remarks. "When God proves us lie permits manifold obstacles to obstruct our path, so that we cannot see His purpose ; as when one amuses himself by playing with a worm, laying a stick or a straw in its way, so that it cannot creep whither it would, but must turn to and fro, and try everywhere and every way to get out of the difficulty. But this play of divine grace and benevolence we do not at first understand, and the benefits and the grace itself, which are shown us, we explain to our terror and destruction. It happens to us as it happened to me once, when I was a little boy, and to my companions, with whom I was collecting the alms by which we were supported in our studies. When we were going around from house to house, at the time when the Church celebrates the birth of Christ, singing in four parts the usual psalms about the child Jesus born in Bethlehem, we came to the house of a peasant, which stood alone at the end of the village. When the peasant heard us singing, he came out and inquired in rough, rustic words, where we were, and said : " Where are you boys?" bringing some sausages along, which he purposed to give us. But we were so terrified at the words that we all ran away ; although we had no good reason to be afraid, since the peasant had the serious intention to give us the sausages, and offered them in good faith. Our hearts had become timid on account of the daily threats and tyranny, which the teachers practiced towards the poor pupils, and were thus the more easily alarmed by such sudden terrors. While we were running away the peasant called us, and we laid aside our fear, went to him, and received the gifts which he offered us." We learn from this, at the same time, how he had to struggle with poverty at Mansfeld, as it is related of him also, that he attended funerals for a penny.

This tyrannical school discipline could only render our Martin shy and timorous. But the religious instruction which he received also tended only to alarm and terrify him still more ; for what he learned was mostly nothing but papfstic superstition and idolatry. No one taught him to derive comfort from his holy baptism ; on the contrary, he says of his teachers : "As soon as we have laid off our infant shoes, the act of baptism scarcely being completed, they deprived us of all again by telling us : 0, thou hast long since lost thy baptism and polluted thy baptismal dress with sin ; thou must now think about atoning and rendering satisfaction for thy sins, of fasting and praying, of pilgrimages and foundations, until thou hast appeased G-od and been restored to His grace." Much less did he learn truly to know Christ. ' ( I was accustomed from childhood," he says, "to become pale and terror-stricken when I heard the name of Christ mentioned ; for I was not taught to think of him otherwise than as of a rigorous and angry Judge." He was directed to his own merits, rather, and to the intercession of the saints. He remarks upon this : "We were shamefully deceived under the papacy, for Christ was not set before us in His clemency, as He is by the prophets, apostles, and by Christ Himself, but he was represented as terrible, so that we feared him more than we did Moses, and thought that the doctrines of Moses were milder and more benignant than those of Christ. Therefore we knew no better than to think of Christ as an angry Judge, whose wrath we must appease by good works and holy living, and whose grace we must secure by the merits and intercession of the saints. This is not only base lying, and lamentably deceiving poor consciences, but it is also a deep revilement of the grace of GTod, a denial of Christ's death, resurrection, ascension and all his unspeakable benefits, a defamation and condemnation of the Gospel, and an extirpation of the faith, while nothing but abominations, falsehoods, errors and blasphemies are substituted for it. If this is not darkness I know not what darkness is ; and yet no one perceived it, but all regarded it as the pure truth."

Thus Luther grew up in the darkness of papistic error, and even as a child was compelled to experience its bitterness. Not a drop of grace, not a ray of heavenly truth, refreshed his heart, which was filled with terror on account of Christ's wrath. Therefore he vowed, already in his childhood, to make a pilgrimage to Koine and "become pious' ' as he, according to a manuscript account, once expressed it when the conversation turned upon his visit to Home. Thus he had entirely lost Christ whom he had put on in Baptism, and would have been eternally lost if God had called him away in that condition. This he himself confesses when he says : "If God refused to help us until we become grateful, what would have become of me when I was twelve years old ? ,J

CHAPTER III. Luther at School in Magdeburg

At that time the Latin schools in Saxony were in a tolerably good condition. When, therefore, Martin had reached his fourteenth year, he was, in 1497, sent to the Latin school of the Franciscans at Magdeburg, in company with John Reineck, who ever afterwards remained his good friend. There, like the son of many an honest and wealthy man, he sought his bread by singing at the doors of citizens. What is to become great must begin small, and when children are trained to effeminacy and sumptuousness they suffer for it all their lives.

While there, he was taken with a violent fever, which caused him great distress. Water having been denied him, he suffered much from thirst ; and once, on a Friday, when all had gone to Church and left him alone in the house, he crept upon his hands and knees into the kitchen, seized a vessel containing fresh water, drank it with great relish, and returned, in the same way, to his chamber, which, in his feebleness, he could scarcely reach before the members of the household returned. Upon this draught he fell into a profound sleep, and the fever left him. At a later period he observed, with reference to this, that he had been informed by several learned physicians that in such burning fevers a copious draught of cold water diminishes the internal heat, as fire is quenched by water.

Luther relates an example of monastic sanctity, occurring at this period, which made a deep impression upon him. "In my fourteenth year, when I was attending school at Magdeburg, I saw with these eyes a prince of Anhalt, the brother of the provost Adolph, afterwards Bishop of Merseburg, in a monk's cowl begging bread through the wide streets, and bending under the sack, like an ass ; but his brother went without a burden, by his side, that the pious prince might alone present to the world the highest example of gray, tonsured sanctity. They had so beguiled him that he also performed every other work of the monastery, like the rest of the monks ; and he had, by fasting, watching and mortification, become so reduced that he looked like a skeleton, nothing but skin and bone. He died soon afterward, for he was unable to endure such a rigorous life. In fine, whoever saw him, melted with devotion, and had to be ashamed of his secular calling. I think there are still many in Magdeburg who saw it."

Efforts were made also to represent by pictures, this great priestly sanctity to the people. Luther describes one which must have made a deep impression upon him in his youth. "They painted a large ship, which they called the Holy Christian Church, in which sat no laymen and no kings nor princes, but only the pope with his cardinals and bishops, who occupied the front, under the Holy Spirit, and the priests and monks, who sat with oars on the sides ; and thus they sailed away towards heaven. The laity swam in the water about the ship ; some were drowning, some drawing themselves to the ship by ropes, which the holy fathers, by grace and by sharing their good works, cast out to them that they might not drown, but be taken along to heaven, clinging to the ship. There was not a pope, cardinal, bishop, priest or monk in the water ; nothing but laymen. This picture was a representation and brief summary of their doctrine concerning secular callings ; and that it is a fair representation of the doctrine contained in their books they cannot deny. For I also was one of the company that taught such things, believing them in my ignorance. Thus they condemned laymen with their whole order, insomuch that even princes and lords, in the hour of death, had monk's cowls put upon their heads and were buried in them, thus boldly denying Christ and renouncing and despising Baptism and all sacraments, condemning their secular vocation, putting all their trust in the holy cowl and the imputation of the good works of the order, and deriving all their consolation from them, whilst, clinging to their rope and their ship, they ascended to heaven/' Once he exhibited a tablet, upon which this picture was painted, dilated upon its meaning, and then added : "It is a very old picture, conceived by a monk of Venice, the purport of which we believed as an article of faith, yea, even against the Christian faith/ ' When Martin had returned from Magdeburg to Mansfeld, the aged count Guenther was taken very sick and had old John Luther invited to his castle, where he remained and waited upon him till the count's death.

When he returned home he spoke in high terms of praise to his family of the excellent testament of the count. In answer to the inquiry about the contents of this glorious last will and testament, he said that "he desired to depart from this world trusting alone in the bitter' sufferings and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, consoling himself with His merits, and commending his soul to Him/' "I thought," Luther afterwards said, "even as a young pupil, can this be such an excellent testament ? For it seemed to me that if the count had bequeathed something considerable to churches or monasteries, this would have beea a more 2* note-worthy testament. But we see by this that our God has always, even in the midst of the darkness of the papacy, preserved many Christians unto eternal life, who have embraced the merits of His only Son and clung to them in faith. Therefore my father justly praised the count's last will as an excellent testament, although as a young pupil I did not then understand it."

CHAPTEK IV.

Luther at School in Eisenach.

After Luther had been but one year in Magdeburg, he went in 1498, by the command of his parents, to Eisenach, where his mother had many relatives. There he attended the Latin School connected with the church of St. George. Its rector was John Trebonius, a learned man and distinguished poet, who taught Grammar more skillfully than was the case elsewhere. Whenever he entered the school he took off his cap until he was seated upon his chair, from which he lectured. The other teachers were required to do the same, and when they occasionally forgot it, he admonished them earnestly. "For among these young pupils," he said, "sit those of whom God may make our future mayors, chancellors, learned doctors and rulers ; although you do not know them now, it is proper that you should show them honor." In Dr. Luther this was abundantly realized.

In Eisenach his condition was, at first, exceedingly miserable. His relatives gave him no sufficient support. He was therefore compelled to seek his scanty subsistence by singing from house to house, and often to suffer hunger. At a later period he himself says : "Do not despise the boys who sing at the doors partem propter Deum, (i. e., bread for God's sake.) I too have been such a wanderer, going the rounds for bread, especially in my own dear town of Eisenach." He w T as so depressed on account of this destitution that he despaired of maintaining himself at school, and thought of returning home. But he was soon to experience how paternally God cared for him. Once he had been roughly repulsed from three different houses. The choir went on to the residence of Conrad Cotta, an honorable and wealthy citizen. Dame Ursula Cotta had long been "affectionately inclined toward the boy on account of his singing and of his fervent prayers at Church." She invited him in, gave him many presents, and a few days afterwards received him to her house and table. This kindness Luther never forgot. When Henry Cotta, her son, subsequently studied in Wittenberg, Luther received him to his table in turn. Of Ursula the report became current that God blessed her, after Martin's reception into her house, with unusual prosperity. May this stimulate us also to assist poor pupils in their studies.

In Martin a burning passion for learning was now aroused. He perceived "how beautiful a thing is knowledge/' and studied Grammar, Rhetoric and Poetry with all industry. With his quickness of apprehension and fine talents he was soon in advance of his fellow pupils, and surpassed them in elocution and composition, both in verse and prose , There he laid the foundation of his future learning ; yea, the faithful instruction there received contributed to the fulfillment of the prophecy, which had lately been uttered concerning him in the monastery of the place.

About the year 1490 there lived in that monastery a Franciscan friar by the name of John Hilten, a quiet, pious old man. He had been thrown into a dungeon by the monks, because he had attacked several manifest abuses in monastic life. On account of age and the injurious influence of the prison, he became a prey to disease. He had the prior called, and notified him of his weakness. But when his superior, moved by pharisaic bitterness, and envy, encountered him with harsh expressions, he ceased to complain of his physical weakness, sighed deeply, and said, with earnest gesture, that he would bear such injustice cheerfully for Christ's sake, although he had written and taught nothing derogatory to the monastic order, but had attacked only gross abuses. Finally he said: "Another man shall appear in 1516, who shall extirpate you monks, and against whom ye shall be powerless/' Concerning this Luther says in his Table Talk : "Now must John Huss be remembered, according to the prophecy of John Hilten, who was a monk at Eisenach, and who was slain within our own memory. He is reported to have said, when death was approaching : 'another shall come, whom ye shall see V This prophecy was spoken when I was a boy and went to school at Eisenach/ ' Luther remained in the house of Cotta until his departure from Eisenach. There he also devoted his attention to Music, of which he was always fond, and learned to play the flute. Eisenach he always, in gratitude, called "his dear town," because he had "there learned and experienced so much good."