were then mostly serfs, and that he looked upon princes as having something like divine rights. The true explanation of this remarkable fact is, perhaps, that Luther accepted the social and political institutions of his time as beyond his jurisdiction. Accordingly he never preached political or doctrinal sermons. On the other hand, he was intensely German, and his allusions to the other nations of his time are quite meagre. His acquaintance with ancient Greece and Rome, however, was intimate.

What Luther strove after was the salvation of his immortal soul. Heaven, hell, the justice of God, the day of judgment, and the saving death of Christ were to him as real and definite as the facts of natural history are to us. It was natural, therefore, that he turned from the law, for which his father intended him, to theology and religion. He began his public career as a professor of philosophy. But immediately he plunged into theology, and it was as a doctor of divinity that he began Hebrew, and perfected himself in Greek. With his usual thoroughness he did not stop toiling until he had fairly mastered these languages, and he perfected himself in German in order to make his sermons intelligible to his plainest hearers. Incidentally he stumbled upon Popery as a human institution; but Luther devoted more attention to his own necessities as a sinner that needed a Saviour, and to the religious necessities of those who followed him, than he ever did to Popery, bishops and ecclesiastics. He has been criticised harshly for his treatment of Calvin and Zwingle; this criticism should be applied no less to the singular severity with which Luther treated his own friends and himself in all theological matters.

Theology was to him an objective reality such as the Rocky Mountains are to us, and it was foreign to his mind to beg that men might acknowledge the fact. He accepted the Bible as the Word of the living God, and it is not strange that he measured all things by its revelation. His own profound agitation was due no less to his temperament than to his unqualified acceptation of the Old and New Testaments as the literal Word of God to be accepted under the pain of everlasting damnation. Luther never ceased to dread the justice of God, and to tremble at the day of judgment. By the side of this profound terror, his treatment of opponents in theology is con

sistent, although his language is unbridled and at times terrific. No honorable historian defends the horrors of the French revolution, but history explains them. In a like sense the unmeasured violence of Luther against theological opponents and himself, as well as his friends, is explained, when we remember the power of the Papacy, and the unswerving firmness with which Luther accepted every syllable of the Bible as the Word of the righteous God who judges the quick and the dead. Calvin made and defended a system in which there was hardly a flaw. Luther had no system, and wished for no system; he assumed the Trinity, plenary inspiration, and the accuracy of the early creeds, precisely as he did not assume God to be merciful on the ground of justice. This belief was not so much linked to a heroic soul, as it made him a hero, and fairly forced him into gigantic proportions. It was his religion that called into activity and enlarged whatever nature bad planted in his breast. And having grown up toward the ideal demands. of his stern, great belief, it was no wonder that he could readily respond to the gentler appeals which innocent childhood or modest piety made to him. For his children he wrote this Christmas hymn:

I. SONG OF THE ANGEL.
From highest heaven come I here,
To bring you news of goodly cheer;
So much of good came I to bring,
That I will of it say and sing.

This night to you was born a child
Of holy virgin meek and mild,
A lovely child so sweet and bright
To be your joy and your delight.
It is the Christ, our common Lord,
To guide you and all help afford;
He will himself your Saviour be,
And from all sin will set you free.

He brings you all beatitude,
Which from his father he has sued,
That you may dwell with us above
Through all eternity in love.

Hear, then, the sign that you may know

The swaddling-clothes, the oxen's low,

And in a manger there is laid

The child whose hand hath all things made.

VOL. VII.

II. SONG OF THE CHILDREN.

Then let us all right joyous be,
And with the shepherds go and see;
Let us behold the Son most dear,
Whom God hath sent, who now is here.

Behold, my soul, and look thereat!
What lies there in the manger, what?
Who is the child so dear and fair?
It is dear Jesus lying there.

Be welcome, welcome, honored guest,
However poor, in thee I'm blest;
Thou comest wanting down to me,
What shall I offer, Lord, to thee?

Ah, Lord, by whom all things were made,
Thou hast aside thy glory laid,

And on poor hay thou liest there,

Of which the toiling cattle share.

And though the world were twice as great,
And full of gold and pomp and state,

E'en then too narrow would it be

To make a cradle, Lord, for thee.

Instead of silk and velvet gay

Thou hast coarse swaddling-clothes and hay,
And there, thou King so great and wise,

Dost lie as if in paradise.

And this was pleasing all to thee,

To point the truth out unto me,
That all the world, its honor, might,
Must count for nothing in thy sight.
Ah Lord, my love and my delight,
Make thee a bed all pure and white,
And dwell and be enshrined, in me,
That I may aye remember thee;

That I may ever joyful be,

And leap, and sing, forever free :

Sleep, little child, this lullaby

Sings all my heart that thou art nigh :

Praise, honor, glory be to God

Who unto us his Son bestowed,

Him all the angels praise and sing,
And to us now a new year bring.

18

It is not strange that Luther has never found outside of Germany that appreciation which his countrymen have for him. He is one of them in a stronger sense than Shakespeare was an Englishman. Luther wrote pamphlets for his countrymen, and for these writings there is no universal demand, save with such rare scholars and students as would approach Lord Bacon, Augustine, and Aristotle. The perennial magic of Luther's name in Germany is less due to his theology than to the marvelous and heroic proportions which religion gave to his German mind, heart, and aspirations. It is not an accident that the language of the German people is full of expressions, puns, and witticisms coined by Luther; for he created the literary language of his country, and he could do it, because he lived, felt, and spoke like a true-hearted German. Next to his relig ious character, then, it is his German way of thinking with the heart that reveals the nature of Martin Luther. Had he not been a German, he would not have called himself Doctor through life, and on all occasions. Few people, except the Germans, would ransack all scholarship and history in order to find arguments for the dogmatic assumption with which Luther started, and to which he clung tenaciously. Like so many eminent Germans, Luther was somewhat imaginative in his conclusions, dogmatic in his assumptions, and not always orig inal in his fundamental ideas. In one respect he resembles Alexander Humboldt, who never published a line which the world would wish to perish. But a more perfect parallel may be drawn between Shakespeare, the poet, and Luther, the German prose writer. As a religious character, Luther is unique for his want of secular prudence and executive skill, for his self-concentration upon purely religious interests and for a certain neglect of ethics. For to him the acceptance of God's revelation in Christ outweighed all matters of secular conduct. It is not strange, therefore that the Lutherans of the present time are lacking in organization, and that they exalt their pure doctrines above morality. Neither is it strange that they glory in the name of Luther,—a name which will probably be uttered with increasing joy, when a century from now the Protestant world celebrates the five hundredth anniversary of Luther's birth.

ARTICLE IX.-CATHARINE ADORNA.

THERE is a strong desire on the part of many professing Christians for higher attainments in holiness. The standard to which the majority of Christians aspire is felt to be below that which the New Testament sets forth. It is felt to be not enough to have a comfortable hope that one is renewed of God, and is numbered among the true friends of Christ. Something higher, more sure, and therefore more satisfactory, is sought.

It is indeed known and felt to be a privilege to cherish a comfortable hope, even a feeble hope, of acceptance with God. The soul has gone to the fountain that Christ has opened. The taste of those living waters is sweet and reviving. In the weariness of the way, the toil and trial of travel, that fountain offers coolness and refreshment; and the pilgrim, who came to it dusty and way-worn, departs with renewed energy and joy. But he is not satisfied with the taste. He wants the fountain within him, welling up into continual nourishment and life. He must have something more than a timid, uncertain, wavering hope. He wants assurance of faith, a joyful, confident trust in the Redeemer, in which the soul can abide peacefully, through the events of a turbulent life, and the last conflict, and the entrance upon the realities of the future.

Christians of this type desire to "walk with God," to enjoy His recognized presence, to live daily as seeing Him who is invisible. They open their Bibles, and they find many expres sions there applied to believers which have never been realized in their experience, but which they would like to have so realized. They do not yet know what it means to live by faith. They know that their only hope is in the Redeemer, that they trust Him for their salvation; that they have gratitude, deep, heartfelt, for that. But the principle of faith, rather faith itself, is not with them a controlling, animating reality. The whole spirit and life are not permeated and transformed and transfigured by it. There is something in such a passage as this: "For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God:"