All were loud in their praise of the power and vigour of his style. Mathesius in his “Historien” records a remark to this effect of Melanchthon’s.[785] Luther frequently laid down, after his own fashion, the rules which should guide those who preach to the little ones and the poor in spirit: “Cursed and anathema be all preachers who treat of high, difficult and subtle matters in the churches, put them to the people and preach on them, seeking their own glory or to please one or two ambitious members of the congregation. When I preach here I make myself as small as possible, nor do I look at the Doctors and Masters, of whom perhaps forty may be present, but at the throng of young people, children and common folk, from a hundred to a thousand strong; it is to them that I preach, of them that I think, for it is they who stand in need.”[786] And elsewhere: “Like a mother who quiets her babe, dandles it and plays with it, but who must give it milk from her breast, and on no account wine or Malmsey, so preachers must do the same; they ought so to preach in all simplicity that even the simple-minded may hear, grasp and retain their words. But when they come to me, to Master Philip, to Dr. Pommer, etc., then they may show off their learning—and get a good drubbing and be put to shame.” But when they parade their learning in the pulpit this is merely done “to impose on and earn the praise of the poor, simple lay-folk. Ah, they say, that is a great scholar and a fine speaker, though, probably, they neither understood nor learnt anything.”[787]
“Nor should a preacher consider individual members of his congregation and speak to them words of comfort or reproof; what he must seek to benefit is the whole congregation. St. Paul teaches this important doctrine [2 Cor. ii. 17]: ‘We speak with sincerity in Christ as from God and before God.’ God, Christ and the angels are our hearers, and if we please them that is enough. Let us not trouble ourselves about the world and about private persons! We will not speak in order to please any man nor allow our mouth to be made the ‘Arschloch’ of another. But when we have certain persons up before us, then we may reprove them privately and without any rancour.”[788]
As a preacher he was able often enough to tell the various classes quite frankly what he found to censure in them. At the Court, for instance, he could, when occasion arose, reprove the nobles for their drunkenness, and that in language not of the choicest.[789] He was not the man to wear kid gloves, or, as an old German proverb he himself quoted said, to let a spider spin its web over his mouth. A saying attributed to him characterises him very well, save perhaps in its latter end: Come up bravely, speak out boldly, leave off speedily.[790] “I have warned you often enough,” so we read in the notes of a Wittenberg sermon of Sep. 24, 1531,[791] “to flee fornication, and yet I see that it is again on the increase. It is getting so bad that I shall be obliged to say: Bistu do zurissen, sso lop dich der Teuffl.”[792] The preacher then turns to the older hearers, begging them to use their influence with the younger generation, to prevail on them to abstain from this vice.
As to his subject-matter, he was fond of urging Biblical texts and quotations, wherein he displayed great skill and dexterity. In general, however, his attacks on Popery are always much the same; he dwells with tiresome monotony on the holiness-by-works and the moral depravity of the Papists. Though his theory of Justification may have proved to him a never-failing source of delight, yet his hearers were inclined to grow weary of it. He himself says once: “When we preach the ‘articulum justificationis’ the people sleep or cough”; and before this: “No one in the people’s opinion is eloquent if he speaks on justification; then they simply close their ears.” Had it been a question of retailing stories, examples and allegories he could have been as proficient as any man.[793]
Mathesius has incorporated in his work some of Luther’s directions on preaching which might prove a good guide to any pulpit orator desirous of being of practical service to his hearers.[794] Some of these directions and hints have recently appeared in their vigorous original in the Table-Talk edited by Kroker.
It was his wish that religious addresses in the shape of simple, hearty instructions on the Epistles and Gospels should be given weekly by every father to his family.[795] He himself, in his private capacity, set the example as early as 1532 by holding forth in his own home on Sundays, when unable to preach in the church, before his assembled household and other guests. This he did, so he said, from a sense of duty towards his family, because it was as necessary to check neglect of the Divine Word in the home as in the Church at large.[796]
He also himself catechised the children at home, in order, as he declared, to fulfil the duties of a Christian father; on rising in the morning he was also in the habit of reciting the “Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Our Father and some Psalm as well” with the children.
He even expressed the opinion that catechetical instruction in church was of little use to children, but that in the home it was more successful and was therefore not to be omitted, however much trouble it might give. When, however, he adds, that the Papists had neglected such home teaching and had sacrificed the flock of Christ,[797] he is quite wrong. The fact is, that, before his day, it was left far too much to the family to give religious instruction to the children, there being as yet no properly organised Catechism in schools and churches. It was only the opposition aroused among Catholics by the religious changes that led to religious teaching becoming more widespread in the Catholic schools, and to a catechetical system being organised; a fuller religious education then served to check the falling away.[798] How highly, in spite of such apparent depreciation, he valued the ministerial teaching of the Catechism we learn from some words recorded by Mathesius: “If I had to establish order, I should see that no preacher was nominated who had not previously taught the ‘bonæ artes’ and the Catechism in the schools for from one to three years. Schools are also temples of God, hence the olden prophets were at once pastors and schoolmasters.”[799] “There is no better way,” he writes, “of keeping people devout and faithful to the Church than by the Catechism.”[800]
At Wittenberg an arrangement existed, at any rate as early as 1528,[801] by which, every quarter, certain days were set apart for special sermons on the articles of the Catechism.[802] The Larger and the Smaller Catechism published by Luther (see vol. v., xxxiv., 2) were intended to form the basis of the verbal teaching everywhere. The three courses of sermons preached by Luther at Wittenberg in May, Sep. and Nov., 1528, and since edited by George Buchwald, were arranged to suit the contents of the Greater Catechism and to some extent served Luther as a preparation for this publication. Luther, in the first instance, brought out the Smaller Catechism, as we see from certain letters given by Buchwald, not in book form, but, agreeably with an earlier ecclesiastical practice, on separate sheets in the shape of tablets to hang upon the walls; hence what he said on Dec. 18, 1537, of his being the author of the Catechism, the “tabulæ” and the Confession of Augsburg.[803]
He displayed great talent and dexterity in choosing the language best suited to his subject. We hear him denouncing with fire and power the vice of usury which was on the increase.[804] He knows how to portray the past and future judgments of God in such colours as to arouse the luke-warm. When treating of the different professions and ways of ordinary life he is in his own element and exhibits a rare gift of observation. On the virtues of the home, the education of children, obedience towards superiors, patience in bearing crosses and any similar ethical topics which presented themselves to him, his language is as a rule sympathetic, touching and impressive; in three wedding sermons which we have of him he speaks in fine and moving words on love and fidelity in the married state.[805]