In this happy married life and home the great Reformer found his peace and refreshment; in it he found his vocation as a man, a husband, and a father. Speaking from his own experience he said: 'Next to God's Word, the world has no more precious treasure than holy matrimony. God's best gift is a pious, cheerful, God-fearing, home-keeping wife, with whom you may live peacefully, to whom you can entrust your goods, and body, and life.' He speaks of the married state, moreover, as a life which, if rightly led, is full to overflowing of good works. He knows, on the other hand, of many 'stubborn and strange couples, who neither care for their children, nor love each other from their hearts.' Such people, he said, were not human beings; they made their homes a hell.
In his language about this life and his own conduct in it, there is no trace of sentimentality, exaggerated emotion, or artificial idealism. It is a strong, sturdy, and, as many have thought, a somewhat rough genuineness of nature, but at the same time full of tenderness, purity, and fervour; and with it is combined that heartfelt and loyal devotion to his Heavenly Creator and Lord, and to His Will and His commands, which marked the character of Luther to the last.
With regard to his children, Luther had resolved from the moment of their birth to consecrate them to God, and wean them from a wicked, corrupt, and accursed world. In several of his letters he entreats his friends with great earnestness to stand godfather to one of his children, and to help the poor little heathen to become a Christian, and pass from the death of sin to a holy and blessed regeneration. In making this request of a young Bohemian nobleman, then staying in his house, on behalf of his son Martin, he grew so earnest that, to the surprise of all present, his voice trembled; this, he said, was caused by the Holy Spirit of God, for the cause he was pleading was God's, and it demanded reverence. And yet, in the simple, natural, innocent, and happy ways of children he recognised the precious handiwork of God and His protecting Hand. He loved to watch the games and pleasures of his little ones; all they did was so spontaneous and so natural. Children, he said, believe so simply and undoubtedly that God is in Heaven and is their God and their dear Father, and that there is everlasting life. On hearing one day one of his children prattling about this life and of the great joy in Heaven with eating, and dancing, and so forth, he said, 'Their life is the most blessed and the best; they have none but pure thoughts and happy imaginations.' At the sight of his little children seated round the table, he called to mind the exhortation of Jesus, that we must 'become as little children;' and added, 'Ah! dear God! Thou hast done clumsily in exalting children—such poor little simpletons—so high. Is it just and right that Thou shouldst reject the wise, and receive the foolish? But God our Lord has purer thoughts than we have; He must, therefore, refine us, as said the fanatics; He must hew great boughs and chips from us, before He makes such children and little simpletons of us.'
In what a childlike spirit Luther understood to talk to his children is shown by his letter from Coburg to his little Hans, then fourteen years old. He himself taught them to pray, to sing, and to repeat the Catechism. Of his little daughter Margaret he could tell one of her godfathers how she had learnt to sing hymns when only four years old. His hymn 'From the highest Heaven I come,' the freshest, most joyful, most childlike song that has ever been heard from children's lips at Christmas, he composed as a father who celebrated that joyous festival with his own children. It appeared first in the year 1535. He might well, after the manner of old Festival plays, have let an angel step in among them, who in the opening verses should bring them the good tidings in the Gospel, to which they should answer with 'Therefore let us all be joyful.' The words 'Therefore I am always joyful, Free to dance and free to sing,' call to mind an old custom of accompanying the Christmas Hymn with a dance.
Luther warned against all outbursts of passion and undue severity towards children, and carefully guarded himself against such errors, remembering the bitter experiences of his own childhood in that respect. But he could be angry and strict enough when occasion required; he used to say he would rather have a dead son than a bad one.
There was no really good school at Wittenberg for his boys, and Luther himself could not devote as much time to them as they required. He took a resident tutor for them, a young theologian. His boy John nevertheless gave some trouble with his teaching and bringing up. His father, contrary to his own wishes, seems to have been too weak, and his mother's fondness for her first-born seems to have somewhat spoilt him. Luther gave the boy over afterwards to his friend Mark Crodel, the Rector of the school at Torgau, whom he held in high respect as a grammarian, and as a pedagogue of grave and strict morals.
[Illustration: Fig. 51.—LUTHER'S DAUGHTER 'LENE.' (From Cranach's portrait.)]
His favourite child was little Lena, a pious, gentle, affectionate little girl, and devoted to him with her whole heart. A charming picture of her remains, by Cranach, a friend of the family. But she died in the bloom of early youth, on September 20, 1542, after a long and severe illness. The grief he had felt at the loss of his daughter Elizabeth was now renewed and intensified. When she was lying on her sick-bed, he said, 'I love her very much indeed; but, dear God, if it is Thy will to take her hence, I would gladly she were with Thee.' To Magdalene herself he said, 'Lena, dear, my little daughter, thou wouldst love to remain here with thy father; art thou willing to go to that other Father?' 'Yes, dear father,' she answered; 'just as God wills.' And when she was dying, he fell on his knees beside her bed, wept bitterly, and prayed for her redemption, and she fell asleep in his arms. As she lay in her coffin, he looked at her and exclaimed, 'Ah! my darling Lena, thou wilt rise again and shine like a star—yea, as the sun;' and added, 'I am happy in the spirit, but in the flesh I am very sorrowful. The flesh will not be subdued: parting troubles one above measure; it is a wonderful thing to think that she is assuredly in peace, and that all is well with her, and yet to be so sad.' To the mourners he said, 'I have sent a saint to Heaven: could mine be such a death as hers, I would welcome such a death this moment.' He expressed the same sorrow, and the same exultation in his letters to his friends. To Jonas he wrote: 'You will have heard that my dearest daughter Magdalene is born again in the everlasting kingdom of Christ. Although I and my wife ought only to thank God with joy for her happy departure, whereby she has escaped the power of the world, the flesh, the Turks and the devil, yet so strong is natural love that we cannot bear it without sobs and sighs from the heart, without a bitter sense of death in ourselves. So deeply printed on our hearts are her ways, her words, her gestures, whether alive or dying, that even Christ's death cannot drive away this agony.' His little Hans, whom his sick sister longed to see once more, he had sent for from Torgau a fortnight before she died: he wrote for that purpose to Crodel, saying 'I would not have my conscience reproach me afterwards for having neglected anything.' But when several weeks later, about Christmas-time, under the influence of grief and the tender words which his mother had spoken to him, a desire came over the boy to leave Torgau and live at home, his father exhorted him to conquer his sorrow like a man, not to increase by his own the grief of his mother, and to obey God, who had appointed him, through his parents' direction, to live at Torgau.
The care of the children and of the whole household fell to the share of Frau Luther, and her husband could trust her with it in perfect confidence. She was a woman of strong, ruling, practical nature, who enjoyed hard work and plenty of it. She served her husband at all times, after her own manner, with faithful and affectionate devotion. He must often have felt grateful, amidst his physical and mental sufferings, and the violent storms and temptations that vexed his soul, that a helpmate of such a sound constitution, such strong nerves, and such a clever, sensible mind should have fallen to his share.
Luther lived with her in thankful love and harmony; nor have even the calumnies of malicious enemies been able to cast a shadow of doubt upon the perfect concord of his married life. In his 'Table Talk' he says of her: 'I am, thank God, very well, for I have a pious, faithful wife, on whom a man may safely rest his heart.' And again he said once to her, 'Katie, you have a pious husband, who loves you; you are an empress.' In words now grave, now humorous, he told her of his tender love for her; and how trustful and open-hearted were their relations to each other we gather from the way in which he mocks and occasionally teases her for her little weaknesses. In later life and in his last letters he calls her his 'heartily beloved housewife' and his 'darling,' and he often signs himself 'your love' and 'your old love,' and again 'your dear lord.' Still he said frankly and quietly that his original suspicion that Catharine was proud was well-founded. In some of his letters he speaks of her as his 'lord Katie' and his 'gracious wife,' and of himself as her 'willing servant.' Once he declared that if he had to marry again, he would carve an obedient wife out of stone, as he despaired of finding obedience in wives. He spoke also of the talkativeness of his Katie. Referring to her loving but over-anxious care for him on his last journey, he called her a holy, careful woman. From her thrift and energy she gained from him the nicknames of Lady Zulsdorf, and Lady of the Pigmarket; thus one of his last letters is addressed to 'my heartily beloved housewife, Catharine, Lady Luther, Lady Doctor, Lady Zulsdorf, Lady of the Pigmarket, and whatever else she may be.'