Luther and the Reformation Part 2

Call it superst.i.tion, call it religious melancholy, call it morbid hallucination, it was a most serious matter to the young Luther, and out of it ultimately grew the Reformation. False ideas underlay the resolve, but it was profoundly sincere and according to the ideas of ages. It was wrong, but he could not correct the error until he had tested it. And thus, by what he took as the unmistakable call of G.o.d, he entered the cloister.

Never man went into a monastery with purer motives. Never a man went through the duties, drudgeries, and humiliations of the novitiate of convent-life with more unshrinking fidelity. Never man endured more painful mental and bodily agonies that he might secure for himself an a.s.sured spiritual peace. Romanists have expressed their wonder that so pure a man thought himself so great a sinner. But a sinner he was, as we all; and to avert the just anger of G.o.d he fasted, prayed, and mortified himself like an anchorite of the Thebaid. And yet no peace or comfort came.

A chained Bible lay in the monastery. He had previously found a copy of it in the library of the university. Day and night he read it, along with the writings of St. Augustine. In both he found the same pictures of man's depravity which he realized in himself, but G.o.d's remedy for sin he had not found. In the earnestness of his studies the prescribed devotions were betimes crowded out, and then he punished himself without mercy to redeem his failures. Whole nights and days together he lay upon his face crying to G.o.d, till he swooned in his agony. Everything his brother-monks could tell him he tried, but all the resources of their religion were powerless to comfort him or to beget a righteousness in which his anguished soul could trust.

It happened that one of the exceptionally enlightened and spiritual-minded monks of his time, _John Staupitz_, was then the vicar-general of the Augustinians in Saxony. On his tour of inspection he came to Erfurt, and there found Luther, a walking skeleton, more dead than alive. He was specially drawn to the haggard young brother.

The genial and sympathizing spirit of the vicar-general made Luther feel at home in his presence, and to him he freely opened his whole heart, telling of his feelings, failures, and fears--his heartaches, his endeavors, his disappointments, and his despair. And G.o.d put the right words into the vicar-general's mouth.

"Look to the wounds of Jesus," said he, "and to the blood he shed for you, and there see the mercy of G.o.d. Cast yourself into the Redeemer's arms, and trust in his righteous life and sacrificial death. He loved you first; love him in return, and let your penances and mortifications go."

The oppressed and captive spirit began to feel its burden lighten under such discourse. G.o.d a G.o.d of love! Piety a life of love!

Salvation by loving trust in a G.o.d already reconciled in Christ! This was a new revelation. It brought the sorrowing young Luther to the study of the Scriptures with a new object of search. He read and meditated, and began to see the truth of what his vicar said. But doubts would come, and often his gloom returned.

One day an aged monk came to his cell to comfort him. He said he only knew his Creed, but in that he rested, reciting, "_I believe in the forgiveness of sins_."--"And do I not believe that?" said Luther.--"Ah," said the old monk, "you believe in the forgiveness of sins for David and Peter and the thief on the cross, but you do not believe in the forgiveness of sins _for yourself_. St. Bernard says the Holy Ghost speaks it to your own soul, _Thy_ sins are forgiven _thee_."

And so at last the right nerve was touched. The true word of G.o.d's deliverance was brought home to Luther's understanding. He was penitent and in earnest, and needed only this great Gospel hope to lift him from the horrible pit and the miry clay. As a light from heaven it came to his soul, and there remained, a comfort and a joy.

The glad conclusion flashed upon him, never more to be shaken, "If G.o.d, for Christ's sake, takes away our sins, then they are not taken away by any works of ours."

The foundation-rock of a new world was reached.

Luther saw not yet what all this discovery meant, nor whither it would lead. He was as innocent of all thought of being a Reformer as a new-born babe is of commanding an army on the battlefield. But the Gospel principle of deliverance and salvation for his oppressed and anxious soul was found, and it was found for all the world. The anchor had taken hold on a new continent. In essence the Great Reformation was born--born in Luther's soul.

LUTHER'S DEVELOPMENT.

More than ten years pa.s.sed before this new principle began to work off the putrid carca.s.s of mediaeval religion which lay stretched over the stifled and suffocating Church of Christ. There were yet many steps and stages in the preparation for what was to come. But from that time forward everything moved toward general regeneration by means of that marrow doctrine of the Gospel: _Salvation by loving faith in the merit and mediation of Jesus alone_.

Staupitz counseled the young monk to study the Scriptures well and whatever could aid him in their right understanding, and gave orders to the monastery not to interfere with his studies.

On May 2, 1507, he was consecrated to the priesthood.

Within the year following, at the instance of Staupitz, Frederick the Wise appointed him professor in the new University of Wittenberg.

May 9, 1509, he took his degree of bachelor of divinity. From that time he began to use his place to attack the falsehoods of the prevailing philosophy and to explore and expose the absurdities of Scholasticism, dwelling much on the great Gospel treasure of G.o.d's free amnesty to sinful man through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, on which his own soul was planted.

Staupitz was astounded at the young brother's thorough mastery of the sacred Word, the minuteness of his knowledge of it, and the power with which he expounded and defended the great principles of the evangelic faith. So able a teacher of the doctrines of the cross must at once begin to preach. Luther remonstrated, for it was not then the custom for all priests to preach. He insisted that he would die under the weight of such responsibilities. "Die, then," said Staupitz; "G.o.d has plenty to do for intelligent young men in heaven."

A little old wooden chapel, daubed with clay, twenty by thirty feet in size, with a crude platform of rough boards at one end and a small sooty gallery for scarce twenty persons at the other, and propped on all sides to keep it from tumbling down, was a.s.signed him as his cathedral. Myconius likens it to the stable of Bethlehem, as there Christ was born anew for the souls which now crowded to it. And when the thronging audiences required his transfer to the parish church, it was called the bringing of Christ into the temple.

The fame of this young theologian and preacher spread fast and far.

The common people and the learned were alike impressed by his originality and power, and rejoiced in the electrifying clearness of his expositions and teachings. The Elector was delighted, for he began to see his devout wishes realized. Staupitz, who had drunk in the more pious spirit of the Mystic theologians, shared the same feeling, and saw in Luther's fresh, biblical, and energetic preaching what he felt the whole Church needed. "He spared neither counsel nor applause," for he believed him the man of G.o.d for the times. He sent him to neighboring monasteries to preach to the monks. He gave him every opportunity to study, observe, and exercise his great talents. He even sent him on a mission to Rome, more to acquaint him with that city, which he longed to see, than for any difficult or pressing business with the pope.

LUTHER'S VISIT TO ROME.

Luther performed the journey on foot, pa.s.sing from monastery to monastery, noting the extravagances, indolence, gluttony, and infidelity of the monks, and sometimes in danger of his life, both from the changes of climate and from the murderous resentments of some of these cloister-saints which his rebukes of their vices engendered.

When Rome first broke upon his sight, he hailed it reverently as the city of saints and holy martyrs. He almost envied those whose parents were dead, and who had it in their power to offer prayers for the repose of their souls by the side of such holy shrines. But when he beheld the vulgarities, profanities, paganism, and unconcealed unbelief which pervaded even the ecclesiastical circles of that city, his soul sunk within him.

There was much to be seen in Rome; and the Roman Catholic writers find great fault with Luther for being so dull and unappreciative as to move amid it without being touched with a single spark of poetic fire.

They tell of the glory of the cardinals, in litters, on horseback, in glittering carriages, blazing with jewels and shaded with gorgeous canopies; of marble palaces, grand walks, alabaster columns, gigantic obelisks, villas, gardens, grottoes, flowers, fountains, cascades; of churches adorned with polished pillars, gilded soffits, mosaic floors, altars sparkling with diamonds, and gorgeous pictures from master-hands looking down from every wall; of monuments, statues, images, and holy relics; and they blame Luther that he could gaze upon it all without a stir of admiration--that he could look upon the sculpture and statuary and see nothing but pagan devices, the G.o.ds Demosthenes and Praxiteles, the feasts and pomps of Delos, and the idle scenes of the heathen Forum--that no gleam from the crown of Perugino or Michael Angelo dazzled his eyes, and no strain of Virgil or of Dante, which the people sung in the streets, attracted his ear--that he was only cold and dumb before all the treasures and glories of art and all the grandeur of the high dignitaries of the Church, seeing nothing, feeling nothing, exclaiming over nothing but the licentious impurities of the priests, the pagan pomps of the pontiff, the profane jests of the ministers of religion, the bare shoulders of the Roman ladies.

Luther was not dead to the aesthetic, but to see faith and righteousness thus smothered and buried under a G.o.dless Epicurean life was an offence to his honest German conscience. It looked to him as if the popes had reversed the Saviour's choice, and accepted the devil's bid for Christ to wors.h.i.+p him. From what his own eyes and ears had now seen and heard, he knew what to believe concerning the state of things in the metropolis of Christendom, and was satisfied that, as surely as there is a h.e.l.l, the Rome of those days was its mouth.[3]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Bellarmine, an honored author of the Roman Church, one competent to judge concerning the state of things at that time, and not over-forward to confess it, says: "For some years before the Lutheran and Calvinistic heresies were published there was not (as contemporary authors testify) any rigor in ecclesiastical judicatories, any discipline with regard to morals, any knowledge of sacred literature, any reverence for divine things: THERE WAS ALMOST NO RELIGION REMAINING."--_Bellarm._, Concio xviii., Opera, tom. vi. col. 296, edit. Colon., 1617, apud _Gerdesii Hist. Evan. Renovati_, vol. i. p.

25.

LUTHER AS TOWN-PREACHER.

On his return the Senate of Wittenberg elected him town-preacher. In the cloister, in the castle chapel, and in the collegiate church he alternately exercised his gifts. Romanists admit that "his success was great. He said he would not imitate his predecessors, and he kept his word. For the first time a Christian preacher was seen to abandon the Schoolmen and draw his texts and ill.u.s.trations from the writings of inspiration. He was the originator and restorer of expository preaching in modern times."

The Elector heard him, and was filled with admiration. An old professor, whom the people called "the light of the world," listened to him, and was struck with his wonderful insight, his marvelous imagination, and his ma.s.sive solidity. And Wittenberg sprang into great renown because of him, for never before had been heard in Saxony such a luminous expositor of G.o.d's holy Word.

LUTHER MADE A DOCTOR.

On all hands it was agreed and insisted that he should be made a doctor of divinity. The costs were heavy, for simony was the order of the day and the pope exacted high prices for all church promotions; but the Elector paid the charges.

On the 18th of October, 1512, the degree was conferred. It was no empty t.i.tle to Luther. It gave him liberties and rights which his enemies could not gainsay, and it laid on him obligations and duties which he never forgot. The obedience to the canons and the hierarchy which it exacted he afterward found inimical to Christ and the Gospel, and, as in duty bound, he threw it off, with other swaddling-bands of Popery. But there was in it the pledge "to devote his whole life to the study, exposition and defence of the Holy Scriptures." This he accepted, and ever referred to as his sacred charter and commission.

Nor was it without significance that the great bell of Wittenberg was rung when proclamation of this invest.i.ture was made. As the ringing of the bell on the old State-house when the Declaration of Independence was pa.s.sed proclaimed the coming liberties of the American colonies, so this sounding of the great bell of Wittenberg when Luther was made doctor of divinity proclaimed and heralded to the nations of the earth the coming deliverance of the enslaved Church. G.o.d's chosen servant had received his commission, and the better day was soon to dawn.

Henceforth Luther's labors and studies went forward with a new impulse and inspiration. Hebrew and Greek were thoroughly mastered. The Fathers of the Church, ancient and modern, were carefully read. The systems of the Schoolmen, the Book of Sentences, the Commentaries, the Decretals--everything relating to his department as a doctor of theology--were examined, and brought to the test of Holy Scripture.

In his sermons, lectures, and disquisitions the results of these incessant studies came out with a depth of penetration, a clearness of statement, a simplicity of utterance, a devoutness of spirit, and a convincing power of eloquence which, with the eminent sanct.i.ty of his life, won for him unbounded praise. The common feeling was that the earth did not contain another such a doctor and had not seen his equal for many ages. Envy and jealousy themselves, those green-eyed monsters which gather about the paths of great qualities and successes, seemed for the time to be paralyzed before a brilliancy which rested on such humility, conscientiousness, fidelity, and merit.

LUTHER'S LABORS.

Years of fruitful labor pa.s.sed. The Decalogue was expounded. Paul's letter to the Romans and the penitential Psalms were explained. The lectures on the Epistle to the Galatians were nearly completed. But no book from Luther had yet been published.

In 1515 he was chosen district vicar of the Augustinian monasteries of Meissen and Thuringia. It was a laborious office, but it gave him new experiences, familiarized him still more with the monks, brought him into executive administrations, and developed his tact in dealing with men.

One other particular served greatly to establish him in the hearts of the people. A deadly plague broke out in Wittenberg. Citizens were dying by dozens and scores. At a later period a like scourge visited Geneva, and so terrified Calvin and his ministerial a.s.sociates that they appealed to the Supreme Council, entreating, "Mighty lords, release us from attending these infected people, for our lives are in peril." Not so Luther. His friends said, "Fly! fly!" lest he should fall by the plague and be lost to the world. "Fly?" said he. "No, no, my G.o.d. If I die, I die. The world will not perish because a monk has fallen. I am not St. Paul, not to fear death, but G.o.d will sustain me." And as an angel of mercy he remained, ministering to the sick and dying and caring for the orphans and widows of the dead.

COLLISION WITH THE HIERARCHY.

Such was Luther up to the time of his rupture with Rome. He knew something of the shams and falsities that prevailed, and he had a.s.sailed and exposed many of them in his lectures and sermons; but to lead a general reformation was the farthest from his thoughts. Indeed, he still had such confidence in the integrity of the Roman Church that he did not yet realize how greatly a thorough general reformation was needed. Humble in mind, peaceable in disposition, reverent toward authority, loving privacy, and fully occupied with his daily studies and duties, it was not in him to think of making war with powers whose claims he had not yet learned to question.

But it was not possible that so brave, honest, and self-sacrificing a man should long pursue his convictions without coming into collision with the Roman high priesthood. Though far off at Wittenberg, and trying to do his own duty well in his own legitimate sphere, it soon came athwart his path in a form so foul and offensive that it forced him to a.s.sault it. Either he had to let go his sincerest convictions and dearest hopes or protest had to come. His personal salvation and that of his flock were at stake, and he could in no way remain a true man and not remonstrate. Driven to this extremity, and struck at for his honest faithfulness, he struck again; and so came the battle which shook and revolutionized the world.

THE SELLING OF INDULGENCES.