In his Exposition of the Magnificat (1521), for instance, we meet with trains of thought expressed in words which by their beauty recall those of the mystics of old. One cannot read without being edified what he says at the commencement of this little work, of the love of God which makes “the heart overflow with joy,”[1865] or of the glories of Mary; of her, nothing greater can be said than that she was the Mother of God, “even had one as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, blades of grass in the field, stars in heaven, or grains of sand on the sea-shore.”[1866]—Akin to this is the touching conclusion of his little writing on the Our Father, where he pictures the soul as pouring forth its desires to God the Father.[1867] Such jewels are, however, not offered to his readers as frequently as his talent in this respect would have rendered desirable.
To what good account he put this gift in his earlier years is well seen even in his controversial “Von der Freyheyt eynes Christen Menschen” (1520), where he is at pains to expound the sum of the Christian life, though “only for the plain man.” Our present subject invites us to return once more to this side of the writing.[1868]
Of works of charity Luther there speaks as follows: “The inward man is at one with God, is joyful and merry by reason of Christ Who has done so much for him, and all his joy is in wishing to serve God in return freely and out of pure love. In his flesh, however, he finds a will which is quite other and which wishes to serve the world and to seek what it pleases. But this, faith cannot bear, and it sets vigorously to work to check and restrain it. As St. Paul says, Rom. vii.[23]: I see another law in my members fighting against the law of my mind and ensnaring me in the law of sin.”[1869]
Later, coming to the works imposed upon man by self-restraint, he says: “So much of works in general, such as it suits a Christian to practise against his own flesh. Now we have to speak of works which he does for other men. For on this earth man does not live by himself but among other folk. Hence he cannot live without performing works for them, for he has to speak and have dealings with them.... Look how plainly Paul makes the Christian life to consist in works done for the good of our neighbour.... He instances Christ as our example and says [Phil. ii. 6-7]: ‘Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, Who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal to God, and yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,’ and doing and suffering all things for our sakes alone. In the same way the Christian man, though he is free, ought willingly to become a slave in his neighbour’s service, and treat him as God through Christ has treated us, and all this, too, without reward; to seek nothing thereby but to be well-pleasing to God, and to think thus: See, God in and through Christ has bestowed on me, unworthy and guilty wretch that I am, without any merit, and solely out of pure mercy, an abundance of riches, piety and salvation.... Hence, in my turn, I will readily, gladly and without reward do what is well-pleasing to such a Father Who has heaped upon me His unspeakable riches, and be a Christ to my neighbour as Christ was to me; only what I see him to need and what is useful and profitable to him, will I do, now that, by my faith, I myself have all things abundantly in Christ. See, how joy and love of God spring from faith, and, how, from love comes a ready, willing, cheerful life of service towards our neighbour.”[1870]—“It is thus that God’s gifts must flow from the one to the other and become common to all, so that each one cares as much for his neighbour as he does for himself. They flow to us from Christ, Who, in His life, took us on Him as though He had been what we are. From us they should flow to those who need them.”[1871]
Though, intermingled with such excellent matter, we find ever-recurring allusions to his peculiar doctrine of justification by faith alone, and though he fails to see the true organic connection between good works and the life of faith and thus condemns to inanity all works not performed out of perfect charity, yet it cannot be gainsaid that certain aspects of neighbourly love are here admirably portrayed.
Later on we often miss this sympathetic tone, for it was blighted by his polemics. As for his aptitude for instructing the people he retained it, however, to the end.
In the Exposition of the Our Father, of which the dialogue of the soul with God forms a part, he lays down at the outset in striking, popular guise the need of prayer, the value of the simple Paternoster, the profit to be derived from weighing well its contents, and also the beauty of the virtue of humility.[1872] His explanation of the Hail Mary, for all its brevity, contains practical and valuable hints as to how God is to be honoured in all.[1873]
In a very useful booklet entitled “Einfeltige Weise zu beten”[1874] (1534), Luther assumes the garb of an instructor on prayer and attempts to show how the forms in common use, the Our Father, Ten Commandments and Creed, provide matter for prayer even for busy laymen, and how the latter, by meditating on each separate word or clause, may rise to perfect prayer. “When good thoughts press in upon us,” he says, for instance, explaining the latter practice, “then the other prayers may be neglected and all our attention given to such thoughts which should be listened to in silence and on no account be thwarted, for then the Holy Ghost Himself is preaching to us; one word of His sermon is far better than a thousand prayers of ours. And I, too,” he adds, “have often learnt more in one such prayer than I could from much reading and composing.”[1875]
In the “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken,”[1876] exhorting all to pray for the public needs, he speaks alluringly and with great religious fervour. Urging his readers to pray for the divine assistance, he takes one by one, as was indeed his wont, the thoughts suggested by the Our Father.[1877] “Our comfort and defiance, our pride, our daring and our arrogance, our insistence, our victory and our life, our joy, our honour and our glory are seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. There, devil, just you touch a hair of His!” The power of his words is heightened by his references to the nearness of the Last Day, the advent of which was foreshadowed in the downfall of both Papal and Turkish power. He even declares that the certainty of being heard depended on the spiritual struggle being waged in defence of the Evangel against the popish “blasphemers, persecutors and God-forsaken children of the devil”; where these had their way and were fighting, there nothing was to be looked for save ruin; there God’s “angry hand was raised in vengeance against all the devils and Turks, against Mahmed, Pope, Meinz, Heinz and all the miscreants.”[1878] Hence, even in a tract intended as an exhortation to prayer and to promote a great work of Christian charity, quite other sentiments gain for the time the upper hand.
This brings us back to the remark we have frequently had to make when describing other writings of Luther’s meant for the common people.