IF THE MOST puny instruments inflicted such terrible blows on Rome, what was it when the voice of the monk of Wittenberg was heard? Shortly after the discomfiture of the new prophets, Luther, in a layman’s attire, traversed the territories of Duke George in a wagon. His gown was hidden, and the reformer seemed to be a plain country gentleman. If he had been recognized, if he had fallen into the hands of the exasperated duke, perhaps his fate would have been sealed. He was going to preach at Zwickau, the birthplace of the pretended prophets. It was no sooner known at Schneeberg, Annaberg, and the surrounding places, than the people crowded around him. Fourteen thousand persons flocked into the city, and as there was no church that could contain such numbers, Luther went into the balcony of the town hall, and preached before an audience of twenty-five thousand persons who thronged the market place, some of whom had mounted on heaps of cut stones piled up near the building.

The servant of God was dilating with fervor on the election of grace, when suddenly cries were heard from the midst of the audience. An old woman of haggard mien, who had taken her station on a pile of stones, stretched out her emaciated arms, and seemed as though she would strain with her fleshless hands the crowd that was about to fall prostrate at the feet of Jesus. Her wild yells interrupted the preacher. "It was the devil," said Seckendorff, "who had taken the form of an old woman in order to excite a disturbance." But it was all in vain; the reformer’s words silenced the wicked spirit, enthusiasm seized these listening thousands; glances of admiration were exchanged; hands were warmly grasped, and erelong the monks, confounded and unable to avert the storm, found it necessary to leave Zwickau.

In the castle of Freyberg dwelt Henry, brother of Duke George. His wife, a princess of Mecklenburg, had the preceding year borne him a son who had been named Maurice. With a fondness for the table and for pleasure Duke Henry combined the rudeness and coarse manners of a soldier. In other respects, he was pious after the fashion of the times, had gone to the Holy Land, and made a pilgrimage to St. Iago of Compostella. He would often say: "At Compostella I placed a hundred golden florins on the altar of the saint, and said to him: ‘O St. Iago, to please thee I came hither; I make thee a present of this money; but if these knaves [the priests] take it from thee, I cannot help it; so be on your guard.’ "

A Franciscan and a Dominican, both disciples of Luther, had been for some time preaching the gospel at Freyberg. The duchess, whose piety had inspired her with a horror of heresy, listened to their sermons in astonishment to find that this gentle message of a Saviour was the object she had been taught to fear. Gradually her eyes were opened and she found peace in Christ Jesus. No sooner had Duke George learned that the Gospel was preached at Freyberg than he entreated his brother to oppose these novelties. Chancellor Strehlin and the canons seconded his prayer with their fanaticism. A violent explosion took place in the court of Freyberg. Duke Henry harshly reprimanded and reproached his wife, and more than once the pious duchess watered her child’s cradle with her tears. Yet by degrees her prayers and gentleness won the heart of her husband; the rough man was softened; harmony was restored between the married pair, and they were enabled to join in prayer beside their sleeping babe. Great destinies were hovering over that child; and from that cradle, where a Christian mother had so often poured forth her sorrows, God was one day to bring forth the liberator of the Reformation.

Luther’s intrepidity had excited the inhabitants of Worms. The imperial decree terrified the magistrates; all the churches were closed; but in a public place, filled by an immense crowd, a preacher ascended a rudely constructed pulpit; but the storm was no sooner passed than it was immediately set up in some more secluded spot, to which the crowd again flocked to hear the Word of Christ. This temporary pulpit was every day carried from one place to another, and served to encourage the people, who were still agitated by the emotions of the great drama lately performed in their city.

At Frankfurt-on-the-Main, one of the principal free cities of the empire, all was in commotion. A courageous evangelist, Ibach, preached salvation by Jesus Christ. The clergy, among whom was Cochloeus, so notorious by his writings and his opposition, were irritated against this audacious colleague and denounced him to the Archbishop of Mentz. The council undertook his defense, although with timidity, but to no purpose, for the clergy discharged the evangelical minister, and compelled him to leave the town. Rome triumphed; everything seemed lost; the poor believers fancied themselves forever deprived of the Word, but at the very moment when the citizens appeared inclined to yield to these tyrannical priests, many nobles declared for the gospel. Max of Molnheim, Harmuth of Cronberg, George of Stockheim, and Emeric of Reiffenstein, whose estates lay near Frankfurt, wrote to the council: "We are constrained to rise up against these spiritual wolves." And addressing the clergy, they said: "Embrace the evangelical doctrine, recall lbach, or else we will refuse to pay our tithes!"

The people, who listened gladly to the Reformation, being encouraged by the language of the nobles, began to put themselves in motion; and one day, just as Peter Mayer, the persecutor of lbach and the most determined enemy of the reform, was going to preach against the heretics, a great uproar was heard. Mayer was alarmed, and hastily quitted the Church. This movement decided the council. All the preachers were enjoined by proclamation to preach the pure Word of God, or to leave the city.

The light which proceeded from Wittenberg, as from the heart of the nation, was thus shedding its rays through the whole empire. In the west, Berg, Cleves, Lippstadt, Munster, Wesel, Miltenberg, Mentz, Deux Ponts, and Strasburg, listened to the gospel; on the south, Hoff, Schlesstadt, Bamberg, Esslingen, Halle in Swabia, Heilbrunn, Augsburg, Ulm, and many other places, received it with joy. In the east, Pomerania, Prussia, and the duchy of Leignitz, opened their gates to it; and in the north, Brunswick, Halberstadt, Gosslar, Zell, Friesland, Bremen, Hamburg, Holstein, and even Denmark, with other neighboring countries, were moved at the sounds of this new doctrine.

The Elector Frederick had declared that he would allow the bishops to preach freely in his states, but that he would deliver no one into their hands. Accordingly, the evangelical teachers, persecuted in other countries, soon took refuge in Saxony. lbach of Frankfurt, Eberlin of Ulm, Kauxdorf of Magdeburg, Valentine Mustoeus, whom the canons of Halberstadt had horribly mutilated, and other faithful ministers, coming from all parts of Germany, fled to Wittenberg, as the only asylum in which they could be secure. Here they conversed with the reformers; at their feet they strengthened themselves in the faith and communicated to them their own experience and the knowledge they had acquired. It is thus the waters of the rivers return by the clouds from the vast expanse of the ocean, to feed the glaciers whence they first descended to the plains.

The work which was evolving at Wittenberg, and formed in this manner of many different elements, became more and more the work of the nation, of Europe, and of Christendom. This school, founded by Frederick and quickened by Luther, was the center of an immense revolution which regenerated the Church and impressed on it a real and living unity far superior to the apparent unity of Rome. The Bible reigned at Wittenberg, and its oracles were heard on all sides. This academy, the most recent of all, had acquired that rank and influence in Christendom which had hitherto belonged to the ancient University of Paris. The crowds that Hocked thither from every part of Europe made known the wants of the Church and of the nations; and as they quitted these walls, now become holy to them, they carried back with them to the Church and the people the Word of Grace appointed to heal and to save the nations.

Luther, as he witnessed this success, felt his confidence increase. He beheld this feeble undertaking, begun in the midst of so many fears and struggles, changing the aspect of the Christian world, and was astonished at the result. He had foreseen nothing of the kind when first he rose up against Tetzel. Prostrate before the God whom he adored, he confessed the work to be His, and exulted in the assurance of a victory that could not be torn from him. "Our enemies threaten us with death" said he to Harmuth of Cronberg; "if they had as much wisdom as foolishness, they would, on the contrary, threaten us with life. What an absurdity and insult to presume to threaten death to Christ and Christians, who are themselves lords and conquerors of death! . . . It is as if I would seek to frighten a man by saddling his horse and helping him to mount. Do they not know that Christ is risen from the dead? In their eyes He is still lying in the sepulcher; nay more – in hell. But we know that He lives." He was grieved at the thought that he was regarded as the author of a work in whose minutest details he beheld the hand of God. "Many believe because of me," said he. "But those alone truly believe, who would continue faithful even should they hear (which God forbid!) that I had denied Jesus Christ. True disciples believe not in Luther, but in Jesus Christ. As for myself, I do not care about Luther. Whether he is a saint or a knave, what matters it? It is not he that I preach; but Christ. If the devil can take him, let him do so! But let Christ abide with us, and we shall abide also."

And vainly, indeed, would men endeavor to explain this great movement by mere human circumstances. Men of letters, it is true, sharpened their wits and discharged their keen-pointed arrows against the pope and the monks; the shout of liberty, which Germany had so often raised against the tyranny of the Italians, again resounded in the castles and provinces; the people were delighted with the song of "the nightingale of Wittenberg," a herald of the spring that was everywhere bursting forth. But it was not a mere outward movement, similar to that effected by a longing for earthly liberty, that was then accomplishing. Those who assert that the Reformation was brought about by bribing the princes with the wealth of the convents, – the priests with permission to marry, – and the people with the prospect of freedom, are strangely mistaken in its nature. No doubt a useful employment of the funds that had hitherto supported the sloth of the monks; no doubt marriage and liberty, gifts that proceed direct from God, might have favored the development of the Reformation; but the mainspring was not there.

An interior revolution was then going on in the depths of the human heart. Christians were again learning to love, to pardon, to pray, to suffer, and even to die for a truth that offered no repose save in heaven. The Church was passing through a state of transformation. Christianity was bursting the bonds in which it had been so long confined and returning in life and vigor into a world that had forgotten its ancient power. The hand that made the world was turned toward it again; and the gospel, reappearing in the midst of the nations, accelerated its course, notwithstanding the violent and repeated efforts of priests and kings; like the ocean which, when the hand of God presses on its surface, rises calm and majestic along its shores, so that no human power is able to resist its progress.

In the monastery of Nimptsch, near Grimma in Saxony, dwelt in the year 1523 nine nuns, who were diligent in reading the Word of God and who had discovered the contrast that exists between a Christian and a cloistered life. Their names were Magdalen Staupitz, Eliza Canitz, Ava Grossen, Ava and Margaret Schonfeldt, Laneta Colis, Margaret and Catherine Zeschau, and Catherine Bora. The first impulse of these young women, after they were delivered from the superstitions of the monastery, was to write to their parents. "The salvation of our souls," said they, "will not permit us to remain any longer in a cloister." Their parents, fearing the trouble likely to arise from such a resolution, harshly rejected their prayers. The poor nuns were dismayed. How could they leave the monastery? Their timidity was alarmed at so desperate a step. At last, the horror caused by the papal services prevailed, and they promised not to leave one another, but to repair in a body to some respectable place, with order and decency. Two worthy and pious citizens of Torgau, Leonard Koppe and Wolff Tomitzsch, offered their assistance, which was accepted as coming from God Himself, and they left the convent of Nimptsch without any opposition and as if the hand of the Lord had opened the doors to them. Koppe and Tomitzsch received them in their wagon; and on the seventh of April, 1523, the nine nuns, amazed at their own boldness, stopped in great emotion before the gate of the old Augustine convent in which Luther resided.

"This is not my doing," said Luther, as he received them; "but would to God that I could thus rescue all captive consciences, and empty all the cloisters! – the breach is made!" Many persons offered to receive these nuns into their houses, and Catherine Bora found a welcome in the family of the burgomaster of Wittenberg.

If Luther at that time thought of preparing for any solemn event, it was to ascend the scaffold, and not to approach the altar. Many months after this, he still replied to those who spoke to him of marriage: "God may change my heart, if it be His pleasure; but now at least I have no thought of taking a wife; not that I do not feel any attractions in that estate; I am neither a stock nor a stone; but every day I expect the death and the punishment of a heretic."

Yet everything in the Church was advancing. The habits of a monastic life, the invention of man, were giving way in every quarter to those of domestic life, appointed by God. On Sunday, the ninth of October, 1524, Luther, having risen as usual, laid aside the frock of the Augustine monk and put on the dress of a secular priest; he then made his appearance in the church, where this change caused a lively satisfaction. Renovated Christendom hailed with transport everything that announced that the old things were passed away.

Shortly after this, the last monk quitted the convent; but Luther remained; his footsteps alone re-echoed through the long galleries; he sat silent and solitary in the refectory that had so lately resounded with the babbling of the monks. An eloquent silence, attesting the triumphs of the Word of God! The convent had ceased to exist. About the end of December, 1524, Luther sent the keys of the monastery to the elector, informing him that he should see where it might please God to feed him. The elector gave the convent to the university and invited Luther to continue his residence in it. The abode of the monks was destined erelong to be the sanctuary of a Christian family.

Luther, whose heart was formed to taste the sweets of domestic life, honored and loved the marriage state; it is even probable that he had some liking for Catherine Bora. For a long while his scruples and the thought of the calumnies which such a step would occasion had prevented his thinking of her; and he had offered the poor Catherine, first to Baumgartner of Nuremberg, and then to Dr. Glatz of Orlamund. But when be saw Baumgartner refuse to take her, and when she had declined to accept Glatz, he asked himself seriously whether he ought not to think of marrying her himself.

His aged father, who had been so grieved when he embraced a monastic life, was urging him to enter the conjugal state. But one idea above all was daily present before Luther’s conscience, and with greater energy: marriage is an institution of God – celibacy an institution of man. He had a horror of everything that emanated from Rome. He would say to his friends, "I desire to retain nothing of my papistical life." Day and night he prayed and entreated the Lord to deliver him from his uncertainty. At last a single thought broke the last links that still held him captive. To all the motives of propriety and personal obedience which led him to apply to himself this declaration of God, "It is not good that man should be alone," was added a motive of a higher and more powerful nature. He saw that if he was called to the marriage-state as a man, he was also called to it as a reformer; this decided him.

"If this monk should marry," said his friend Schurff the lawyer, "he will make all the world and the devil himself burst with laughter, and will destroy the work that he has begun." This remark made a very different impression on Luther from what might have been supposed. To brave the world, the devil, and his enemies, and, by an action which they thought calculated to ruin the cause of the Reformation, prevent its success being in any measure ascribed to him – this was all he desired. Accordingly, boldly raising his head, be replied, "Well, then, I will do it; I will play the devil and the world this trick; I will content my father, and marry Catherine!"

Luther, by his marriage, broke off still more completely from the institutions of the papacy; he confirmed the doctrine he had preached, by his own example, and encouraged timid men to an entire renunciation of their errors. Rome appeared to be recovering here and there the ground she had lost; she flattered herself with the hope of victory; and now a loud explosion scattered terror and surprise through her ranks and still more fully disclosed to her the courage of the enemy she fancied she had crushed. "I will bear witness to the gospel," said Luther, "not by my words only, but also by my works. I am determined, in the face of my enemies who already exult and raise the shout of victory, to marry a nun, that they may see and know that they have not conquered me. I do not take a wife that I may live long with her; but seeing the nations and the princes letting lose their fury against me, foreseeing that my end is near, and that after my death they will again trample my doctrine underfoot, I am resolved, for the edification of the weak, to bear a striking testimony to what I teach here below."

On the eleventh of June, 1525, Luther went to the house of his friend and colleague Amsdorff. He desired Pomeranus, whom he styled "The Pastor," to bless his union. The celebrated painter Lucas Cranach and Doctor John Apella witnessed the marriage. Melancthon was not present.

No sooner was Luther married than all Europe was disturbed. He was overwhelmed with accusations and calumnies from every quarter. But while Luther was thus assailed, many wise and moderate men, whom the Roman Church still counted among her members, undertook his defense. "Luther," said Erasmus, "has taken a wife from the noble family of Bora, but she has no dowry." A more valuable testimony was now given in his favor. The master of Germany, Philip Melancthon, whom this bold step had at first alarmed, said with that grave voice to which even his enemies listened with respect: "It is false and slanderous to maintain that there is anything unbecoming in Luther’s marriage. I think that in marrying he must have done violence to himself. A married life is one of humility, but it is also a holy state, if there be any such in the world, and the Scriptures everywhere represent it as honorable in the eyes of God."

Luther was troubled at first when he saw such floods of anger and contempt poured out upon him; Melancthon became more earnest in friendship and kindness towards him; and it was not long before the reformer could see a mark of God’s approbation in this opposition of man. "If I did not offend the world," said he, "I should have cause to fear that what I have done is displeasing to God."

Eight years had elapsed between the time when Luther had attacked the indulgences and his marriage with Catherine Bora. It would be difficult to ascribe, as is still done, his zeal against the abuses of the Church to an "impatient desire" for wedlock. He was then forty-two years old, and Catherine Bora had already been two years in Wittenberg.

Luther was happy in this union. "The best gift of God," said he, "is a pious and amiable wife, who fears God, loves her family, with whom a man may live in peace and in whom he may safely confide." Some months after his marriage he informed one of his friends of Catherine’s pregnancy, and a year after they came together she gave birth to a son. The sweets of domestic life soon dispersed the storms that the exasperation of his enemies had at first gathered over him. His Ketha, as he styled her, manifested the tenderest affection towards him, consoled him in his dejection by repeating passages from the Bible, exonerated him from all household cares, sat near him during his leisure moments, worked his portrait in embroidery, reminded him of the friends to whom he had forgotten to write, and often amused him by the simplicity of her questions. A certain dignity appears to have marked her character, for Luther would sometimes call her, "My Lord Ketha." One day he said playfully that if he were to marry again, he would carve an obedient wife for himself out of a block of stone, for, added he, "it is impossible to find such a one in reality." His letters overflowed with tenderness for Catherine; he called her "his dear and gracious wife, his dear and amiable Ketha." Luther’s character became more cheerful in Catherine’s society, and this happy frame of mind never deserted him afterwards, even in the midst of his greatest trials.

The almost universal corruption of the clergy had brought the priesthood into general contempt, from which the isolated virtues of a few faithful servants of God had been unable to extricate it. Domestic peace and conjugal fidelity, those surest foundations of happiness here below, were continually disturbed in town and country by the gross passions of the priests and monks. No one was secure from those attempts at seduction. They took advantage of the access allowed them into every family, and sometimes even of the confidence of the confessional, to instill a deadly poison into the souls of their penitents, and to satisfy their guilty desires. The Reformation, by abolishing the celibacy of the ecclesiastics, restored the sanctity of the conjugal state. The marriage of the clergy put an end to an immense number of secret crimes. The reformers became the models of their flocks in the most intimate and important relations of life; and the people were not slow in rejoicing to see the ministers of religion once more husbands and fathers.

* * * *

Luther arrived at Eisleben on January 28, 1546, and, although very ill, he took part in the conferences which ensued, up to February 17. He preached four times and revised certain ecclesiastical regulations. At supper that day he spoke a great deal about his approaching death. Someone asked him whether we should recognize one another in the next world. He replied he thought we should. On retiring he was accompanied by the master of the house and his sons. He went to the window and remained there for a considerable time in silent prayer. Two other friends joined him, and to those present he expressed a desire to sleep if only for a half hour for the good it would do him. Resting upon his bed he did fall asleep for an hour and a half. On awaking he said to those in the room, "What! are you still there? Will you not go, dear friends, and rest yourselves?" They told him they would remain with him and then he began to pray, "Into thy hands I commend my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth."

After requesting of the others that prayer be made for the extension of the gospel, he fell asleep again for about an hour. Awaking he expressed a feeling of great illness. Dr. Jonas sought to give some assurance of help, but he said he was getting worse and prayed again: "O my Father, Thou, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, Thou, the source of all consolation, I thank Thee for having revealed unto me Thy well-beloved Son, in whom I believe, whom I have preached, and acknowledged, and made known; whom I have loved and celebrated. I commend my soul to Thee, O my Lord Jesus Christ! I am about to quit this terrestrial body, I am about to be removed from this life, but I know that I shall abide eternally with Thee."

He then repeated three times: "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit: Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, God of truth." He closed his eyes and fell back on his pillow. Efforts were made to revive him, and this question was put to him: "Reverend father, do you die firm in the faith you have taught?" Luther opened his eyes, looked at Dr. Jonas, and replied, firmly and distinctly: "Yes." He then fell asleep, his breathing was more and more faint: at length he sighed deeply, and the great reformer was gone.

His body was conveyed in a leaden coffin to Wittenberg, where it was interred on February 22, 1546, with the greatest honors. He sleeps in the castle church, at the foot of the pulpit.

* * * *

Luther’s will, dated January 6, 1542, reads:

"I, the undersigned Martin Luther, doctor of divinity, do hereby give and grant unto my dear and faithful wife, Catherine, as dower to be enjoyed by her during her life, at her own will and pleasure, the farm at Zeilsdorf, with all the improvements and additions I have made thereto; the house called Brun, which I purchased under the name of Wolff; and all my silver goblets, and other valuables, such as rings, chains, gold and silver medals, etc., to the amount of about a thousand florins.

"I make this disposition of my means, in the first place, because my Catherine has always been a gentle, pious, and faithful wife to me, has loved me tenderly, and has, by the blessing of God, given me, and brought up for me, five children, still, I thank God, living, beside others who are now dead. Secondly, that out of the said means she may discharge my debts, amounting to about four hundred and fifty florins, in the event of my not paying them myself before my death. In the third place, and more especially, because I would not have her dependent on her children, but rather that her children should be dependent on her – honoring her, and submissive to her, according to God’s command; and that they should not act as I have seen some children act, whom the devil has excited to disobey the ordinance of God in this respect, more particularly in cases when their mother has become a widow, and they themselves have married. I consider, moreover, that the mother will be the best guardian of these means in behalf of her children, and I feel that she will not abuse this confidence I place in her, to the detriment of those who are her own flesh and blood, whom she has borne in her bosom.

"Whatever may happen to her after my death, (for I cannot foresee the designs of God) I have, I say, full confidence that she will ever conduct herself as a good mother toward her children, and will conscientiously share with them whatever she possesses.

"And here I beg all my friends to testify to the truth, and to defend my dear Catherine, should it happen as is very possible, that ill tongues should charge her with retaining for her own private use, separate from the children, any money they may say I left concealed. I hereby certify that we have no ready money, no treasure of coin of any description. Nor will it appear surprising to any who shall consider that I have no income beyond my salary, and a few presents now and then, and that, yet, with this limited revenue, we have built a good deal, and maintained a large establishment. I consider it, indeed, a special favor of God, and I thank Him daily, therefore, that we have been able to manage as we have done, and that our debts are not greater than they are . . .

"I pray my gracious lord, duke John Frederick, elector, to confirm and maintain the present deed, even though it should not be exactly in the form required by law.

"Signed, MARTIN LUTHER

"Witnesses, Melancthon, Cruciger, Bugenbagen."

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