In these his discourses, it is true, as in his writings and letters, nay, sometimes in his addresses from the pulpit, expressions and remarks fell occasionally from his lips which sound to modern ears extremely coarse. His was a frank, rugged nature, with nothing slippery, nothing secretly impure about it. His friends and guests spoke of the 'chaste lips' of Luther: 'He was,' says Mathesius, 'a foe to unchastity and loose talk. As long as I have been with him I have never heard a shameful word fall from his lips.' It was a great contrast to the coarse indecencies which he denounced with such fierce indignation in the monks, his former brethren, as also to the more subtle indelicacies which were practised in those days by so many elegant Humanists of modern culture, both ecclesiastics and laymen.
Luther's conversation was also remarkable for its freedom from any spiteful or frivolous gossip, of which even at Wittenberg there was then no lack. Of such scandal-mongers, who sought to pry out evil in their neighbours, Luther used frequently to say, 'They are regular pigs, who care nothing about the roses and violets in the garden, but only stick their snouts into the dirt.'
After dinner there was usually music with the guests and children; sacred and secular songs were sung, together with German and sometimes old Latin hymns.
Luther also had a bowling-alley made for his young friends, where they would disport themselves with running and jumping. He liked to throw the first ball himself, and was heartily laughed at when he missed the mark. He would turn then to the young folk, and remind them in his pleasant way that many a one who thought he would do better, and knock down all the pins at once, would very likely miss them all, as they would often have to find in future their life and calling.
In his own personal relations towards God, Luther followed persistently the road which he saw revealed by Christ, and which he pointed out to others. He never lost the consciousness of his own unworthiness, and therefore unholiness. In this consciousness he sought refuge, with simple and childlike faith, in God's love and mercy, which thus assured him of forgiveness and salvation, of victory over the world and the devil, and of the freedom wherewith a child of God may use the things of this world. He clung fondly to simple, childlike forms of faith, and to common rites and ordinances. Every morning he used to repeat with his children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and a psalm. 'I do this,' he says in one of his sermons, 'in order to keep up the habit, and not let the mildew grow upon me.' He took part faithfully in the church services; he who was wont to pray so unceasingly and fervently in his own chamber declared that praying in company with others soothed him far more than private prayer at home.
Lofty, nay proud as was the self-assurance he expressed in his mission, and though possessed, as Mathesius says, of all the heart and courage of a true man, yet he was personally of a very plain and unasserting manner: Mathesius calls him the most humble of men, always willing to follow good advice from others. Like a brother he dealt with the lowliest of his brethren, while mixing at the same time with the highest in the land with the most perfect and unconscious simplicity. Troubled souls, who complained to him how hard they found it to possess the faith he preached, he comforted with the assurance that it was no easier matter for himself, and that he had to pray God daily to increase his faith. His saying, 'A great doctor must always remain a pupil,' was meant especially for himself. The modesty which made him willing, even in the early days of his reforming labours, to yield the first place to his younger friend Melancthon, he displayed to the end, as we have seen in reference to Melancthon's principal work, the 'Loci Communes.' Whenever he was asked for a really good book for theological studies and the pure exposition of the gospel, he named the Bible first and then Melancthon's book. During the Diet at Augsburg we heard how highly he esteemed the words even of a Brenz, in comparison with his own. Touching Melancthon, we must add an earlier public utterance of Luther's, dating from 1529: 'I must root out,' he said, 'the trunks and stems…. I am the rough woodman who has to make a path, but Philip goes quietly and peacefully along it, builds and plants, sows and waters at his pleasure.' He said nothing of how much others depended on his own power and independence of mind, not only as regarded the task of making the path, but in the whole business of planting and working, and how Melancthon only stamped the gold which Luther had dug up and melted in the furnace. The later years of his life were embittered by the conviction, gradually forced upon him, that his former strength and energy had deserted him. His remarks on this subject seem often exaggerated, but they were certainly meant in all seriousness: he felt as he did, because the urgent need of completing his task remained so vividly impressed upon his mind. He wished and hoped that God would suffer him—the now useless instrument of His Word—to stand at least behind the doors of His kingdom. He wrote to Myconius, when the latter was dangerously ill, saying that his friend must really survive him: 'I beg this; I will it, and let my will be done, for it seeks not my own pleasure, but the glory of God.'
With childlike joy he recognised God's gifts in nature, in garden and field, plants and cattle. This joy finds constant expression in his 'Table Talk,' and even in his sermons. It was chiefly awakened by the beauties of spring. With sorrow he declares it to be the well-earned penalty of his past sins that in his old age he should not be able, as he might do and had need of doing, on account of the burdens of business, to enjoy the gardens, the bud and bloom of tree and flower, and the song of the birds. 'We should be so happy in such a Paradise, if only there were no sin and death.' But he looks beyond this to another and a heavenly world, where all would be still more beautiful, and where an everlasting spring would reign and abide.
Among all the gifts which God has bestowed upon us for our use and enjoyment, music was to him the most precious; he even assigned to it the highest honour next to theology. He himself had considerable talent for the art, and not only played the lute, and sang melodiously with his seemingly weak but penetrating voice, but was able even to compose. He valued music particularly as the means of driving away the devil and his temptations, as well as for its softening and refining influence. 'The heart,' he said, 'grows satisfied, refreshed, and strengthened by music.' He noticed, as a wonder wrought by God, how the air was able to give forth, by a slight movement of the tongue and throat, guided by the mind, such sweet and powerful sounds; and what an infinite variety there was of voice and language among the many thousand birds, and still more so among men. Luther's best and most valued means of natural refreshment, and the recreation of his mind and body, remained always his intercourse and friendship with others—with wife and children, with his friends and neighbours. Such was his own experience, and so he would advise the sorrowful who sought his counsel in like manner to come out of their solitude. He saw in this intercourse also an ordinance of Divine wisdom and love. A friendly talk and a good merry song he often declared to be the best weapon against evil and sorrowful thoughts.
About his own bodily care and enjoyment, even with all his conviction of Christian liberty and his hostility to monkish scruples and sanctity, he cared very little. He was content with simple fare, and he would forget to eat and drink for days amid the press of work. His friends wondered how such a portly frame could be consistent with such a very meagre diet, and not one of his hostile contemporaries has ever been able to allege against him that he had belied by his own conduct the zeal with which he inveighed against the immoderate eating and drinking of his fellow-Germans; but he preserved his Christian liberty in this matter. In the evenings he would say to his pupils at the supper-table, 'You young fellows, you must drink the Elector's health and mine, the old man's, in a bumper. We must look for our pillows and bolsters in the tankard.' And in his lively and merry entertainments with his friends the 'cup that cheers' was always there. He could even call for a toast when he heard bad news, for next to a fervent Lord's Prayer and a good heart, there was no better antidote, he used to say, to care.
His physical sufferings were chiefly confined to the pains in his head, which never wholly left him, and which increased from time to time, with fresh attacks of giddiness and fainting. The morning was always his worst time. His old enemy, moreover—the stone—returned in 1548 with alarming severity. Some time since an abscess had appeared on his left leg, which seemed at the time to have healed. Finding that a fresh breaking out of it seemed to relieve his head, his friend Ratzeberger, the Elector's physician, induced him to have a seton applied, and the issue thus kept open. His hair became white. He had long been speaking of himself as a prematurely old man, and quite worn out.