Life of Luther

by Julius Köstlin

At the university Luther was also busily engaged with the necessary preparations for many lectures that were not theological. He steadily persisted in his efforts to secure the appointment of a competent professor of Hebrew. He also worked hard to get a qualified printer, the son of the printer Letter at Leipzig, to settle at the university, and set up there for the first time a press for three languages, German, Latin, and Greek. For everything of this kind that was submitted to the Elector, who took a constant interest in the prosperity of the university, his friend Spalatin was his confidential intermediary. As early as 1518 Luther had expressed to him the wish and hope that Wittenberg, in honour of Frederick the Wise, should, by a new arrangement of study, become the occasion and pattern for a general reform of the universities. In addition to his constant and arduous labours of various kinds, he took part also in the social intercourse of his colleagues, although he complained of the time he lost by invitations and entertainments.

In the town church at Wittenberg he continued his active duties not only on Sundays but during the week. His custom was to expound consecutively in a course of sermons the Old and New Testaments, and he explained particularly to children and those under age, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments. This work alone, he once complained to Spalatin, required properly a man for it and nothing else. These services he gave to the town congregation gratuitously. The magistracy were content to recognise them by trifling presents now and then; for instance, by a gift of money on his return from Leipzig, where he had had to live on his own very scanty means. In simple, powerful, and thoroughly popular language, Luther sought to bring home to the people who filled his church, the supreme truth he had newly gained. Here in particular he employed his own peculiar German, as he employed it also in his writings.

Both he and Melancthon formed a close personal intimacy with several worthy townsmen of Wittenberg. The most prominent man among them, the painter Lucas Cranach, from Bamberg, owner of a house and estate at Wittenberg, the proprietor of an apothecary's and also of a stationer's business, besides being a member of the magistracy, and finally burgomaster, belonged to the circle of Luther's nearest friends. Luther took a genuine pleasure in Cranach's art, and the latter, in his turn, soon employed it in the service of the Reformation.

[Illustration: Fig. l8.—LUCAS CRANACH. (From a Portrait by himself.)]

While occupied thus in delivering simple and practical sermons to his congregation in the town, he continued to publish written works of the same character and purport, in addition to his labours in the field of learned ecclesiastical controversy, thus showing the love with which he worked for them at large in this matter. These writings were little books, tracts, so-called sermons. It did not disturb him, he once said, to hear daily of certain people who despised his poverty because he only wrote little books and German sermons for the unlearned laymen. 'Would to God,' he said, 'I had all my life long and with all my power served a layman to his improvement; I should then be content to thank God, and would very willingly after that let all my little books perish. I leave it to others to judge whether writing large books and a great number of them constitutes art and is useful to Christianity; I consider rather, even if I cared to write large books after their art, I might do that quicker, with God's help, than making a little sermon in my fashion. I have never compelled or entreated anyone to listen to me or read my sermons. I have given freely to the congregation of what God has given to me and I owe to them; whoever does not like His word, let him read and listen to others.'

In this spirit he composed, after the Leipzig disputation, a little consolatory tract for Christians, full of reflection and wisdom. He dedicated it to the Elector, an illness of whom had prompted him to write it. Even his most bigoted opponents could not withhold their approbation of the work. Luther's pupil and biographer Mathesius, thought there had never been such words of comfort written before in the German language. In a similar strain Luther wrote about preparation for dying, the contemplation of Christ's sufferings, and other matters of like kind. He explained to the people in a few pages the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. At the desire of the Elector, conveyed to him through Spalatin, and notwithstanding the difficulty he had in finding time for such a large work, he applied himself to a practical exposition of the Epistles and Gospels read in church, intended principally for the use of preachers.

At the same time he made steady progress with his own Scriptural researches, which led him away more and more from the main articles of the purely traditional doctrines of the Church. And the light which dawned upon him in these studies he took pains to impart at once to his congregation. But it was no mere negative or hypercritical interest that led him on and induced him to write. In connection with the saving efficacy of faith, which he had gathered from the Bible, new truths, full of import, unfolded themselves before him. On the other hand, such dogmas of the Church as he found to have no warrant in Scripture, nor to harmonise with the Scriptural doctrine of salvation, frequently faded from his notice, and perished even before he was fully conscious of their hollowness. The new knowledge had ripened with him before the old husk was thrown away.

Thus he now learnt and taught others to understand anew the meaning of the Christian sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The Church of the middle ages beheld with wonder in this sacrament the miracle of transubstantiation. The body of our Lord, moreover, here present as the object of adoration, was to serve above all as the bloodless repetition of the bloody sacrifice for sin on Golgotha, to be offered to God for the good of Christendom and mankind. To offer that sacrifice was the highest act which the priesthood could boast of, as being thought worthy to perform by God. This whole mysterious, sacred transaction was clothed in the mass, for the eye and ear of the members of the congregation, with a number of ritualistic forms. In giving them, moreover, the consecrated elements in the sacrament, the priest alone partook of the cup. Luther, on the contrary, found the whole meaning of that institution of the departing Saviour, according to His own words, 'Take, eat, and drink,' in the blessed and joyful communion here prepared by Him for the congregation of receivers, each one of whom was verily to partake of it in faith. Here, as he taught in a sermon on the Sacrament in 1519, they were to celebrate and enjoy real communion; communion with the Saviour, who feeds them with His flesh and blood; communion with one another, that they, eating of one bread, should become one cake, one bread, one body united in love; communion in all the benefits purchased by their Saviour and Head; and communion also in all gifts of grace bestowed upon His people, in all sufferings to be endured, and in all virtues alive in their hearts. Above all, he appealed to Christ's own words, that He had shed His blood for the forgiveness of sins. Here at His holy Supper, He wished to dispense this forgiveness, and, with it, eternal life to all His guests; He pledged it to them here by the gift of His own body. Luther, but only incidentally, remarked in this sermon, when speaking of the cup: 'I should be well pleased to see the Church decree in a General Council, that communion in both kinds should be given to the laity as to the priests.' Even then he regarded as unfounded that idea of sacrifice at the mass which in his later writings he so strenuously denied and combated. At the same time he pointed out the sacrifice which Christendom, and indeed every Christian, must continually offer to God, namely, the sacrifice to God of himself and all that he possesses, offered with inward humility, prayer, and thankfulness. The question as to a change of the elements, which Melancthon had already denied, Luther passed by as an unnecessary subtlety. Lastly, together with the sacrifice supposed to be offered by the priest, he dismissed also the notion of a peculiar priesthood; for with the real sacrifice offered by Christians, as he understood it, all became priests. Instead of the difference theretofore existing between priests and laymen, he would recognise no difference among Christians but such as was conferred by the public ministration of God's word and sacrament.

Whilst discoursing in a sermon, in a similar manner, on the inner meaning of baptism, he passed from the vow of baptism to the vow of chastity, so highly prized in the Catholic Church. He admits this vow, but represents the former one as so immeasurably higher and all-embracing, as to deprive the Church of her grounds for attaching such value to the latter.

He enlarged on moral and religious life in general in a long sermon 'On Good Works,' which he dedicated early in 1520 to Duke John, the brother of the Elector. In clear and earnest language he explained how faith itself, on which everything depended, was a matter of innermost moral life and conduct, nay, the very highest work conformable to God's will; and further, how that same faith cannot possibly remain merely passive, but, on the contrary, the faithful Christian must himself become pleasing to God, on whose grace he relies, must love Him again, and fulfil His holy Will with energy and activity in all duties and relations of life. These duties he proceeds to explain according to the Ten Commandments. He will not, however, have the conscience further laden with duties imposed by the Church, for which no corresponding moral obligation exists. He turns then with earnest exhortation to rebuke certain common faults and crimes in the public life of his nation, the gluttony and drunkenness, the excessive luxury, the loose living, and the usury, which was then the subject of so much complaint. Against this last practice he preached a special sermon, in which, agreeably with the older teaching of the Church, he spoke of all interest taken for money as questionable, inasmuch as Jesus had exhorted only to lending without looking for a return. The creditor, at any rate, he said, should take his share of the risks to which his capital, in the hands of the debtor, was exposed from accident or misadventure.