Julius Köstlin

“ 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. ”

“ The ordination of priests, as they are called, by a bishop can in reality only signify that, out of the collective body of Christians, all possessing equal power, one is selected, and commanded to exercise this power on behalf of the rest. They hold, therefore, this peculiar office, like their fellow-members of the community who are entrusted with temporal authority, namely, to wield the sword for the punishment of the bad and the protection of the good. They hold it, as every shoemaker, smith, or builder holds office in his particular trade, and yet all alike are priests. ”

“ By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A right faith so blends the soul with God's word, that the virtues of the latter become her own, as the iron becomes glowing hot from its union with the fire. And the soul becomes joined to Christ as a bride to the bridegroom; her wedding-ring is faith. All that Christ, the rich and noble bridegroom possesses, He makes His bride's; all that she has, He takes unto Himself. He takes upon Himself her sins, so that they are swallowed up in Him and in His unconquerable righteousness. ”

“ The outward evils of the Papal system are put clearly before the people:—the scandals among the priesthood and in the convents, the iniquities of the Romish courtiers and creatures of the Pope, who pandered with menial subservience to the magnates at Rome, in order to fatten on German benefices, and reap their harvest of taxes and extortions of every kind. The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths, must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be made accessible to all without distinction. ”

“ In him, more than in any other, the spirit of the Zwickau prophets fermented with full force, and was preparing for a violent outburst. Alone, in the room of a church tower, he held secret intercourse with his God, and boasted of his answers and revelations. He affected the appearance and demeanour of a man whose soul was absorbed in tranquillity, devoid of all finite ideas or aspirations, and open and free to receive God's Spirit and inner Word. More violently than even the champions of Catholic asceticism, he reproached Luther for leading a comfortable, carnal life. ”

“ Old age is creeping on me, which in itself is cold and unsightly, and I am ill and weak. The pitcher goes to the well until it breaks. I have lived long enough; God grant me a happy end, that this useless body may reach His people beneath the earth, and go to feed the worms. Consider that I have seen the best that I shall ever see on earth. ”

“ Thus the Christian is exalted above all things, and becomes a lord; for nothing can injure his salvation; everything must be subject to him and help towards his salvation; it is a spiritual kingdom. And thus all Christians are priests; they can all approach God through Christ, and pray for others. 'Who can comprehend the honour and dignity of a Christian? Through his kingship he has power over all things, through his priesthood he has power over God, for God does what he desires and prays for.'
But the Christian, as Luther states in his second axiom, is not only this new inner man. ”

“ Luther throughout his life and labours had never troubled himself much about the praise or the abuse of men. After the example of his great teacher St. Paul, he went his way in honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report, along the road which he knew to be pointed out from above. The portrait of his life, plain and unadorned as it is presented to the present age, will at any rate testify to the worth of this great man, and thus do something towards that eternal end for which he was ready to sacrifice his life and, in the eyes of the world, his honour and his fame. ”

“ Words of pious reflection from his lips remained stamped on Luther's memory from his boyhood. Thus Luther tells us, in a sermon preached towards the close of his life, how he had often heard his dear father say, that, as his own parents had told him, the earth contains many more who require to be fed than there are sheaves, even if collected from all the fields in the world; and yet how wondrously does God know how to preserve mankind! ”

“ The Majesty of God was not wont to hold such familiar converse with men in old time. The creature must first perish before his Creator, as before a consuming fire: when God speaks, he must feel the meaning of the words of Isaiah, 'As a lion, so will he break all my bones.' And yet Luther would not have them imprisoned or dealt with by violence; they could be disposed of without bloodshed and the sword, and be laughed out of their folly.
But his cares for his Wittenberg congregation and the trouble which Carlstadt's doings there were giving him, left him no peace. ”

“ It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found it joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of those little ones who know neither the cares of daily life nor the troubles of the soul, and enjoy with light hearts the good thing which God has given them. But in his own reminiscences of life, so far as he has given them, no such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time, which his parents at first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had to be shared in by the children, and the lot fell most hardly on the eldest. ”

“ In the doctrine concerning the person of the Redeemer, a point to which the controversy further led, the Church had hitherto affirmed simply a union of the Divine and human natures, each retaining the attributes and qualities peculiar to itself. Luther wished to see in the Man Jesus, the Divine nature, which stooped to share humanity, conceived and realised with deeper and more active fervour. As the Son of God He died for us, and as the Son of Man He was exalted, with His body, to sit at the right hand of God, which is not limited to any place, and is at once nowhere and everywhere. ”

“ The great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the conduct of man, but on the grace of God, not on the will of man, but on the willingness of God to pardon, Who alone transforms the sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. ”

“ If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the great men of past ages, we Germans shall always put Luther in the van: for us Protestants, the object of our love and veneration, who will not prevent, however, or prejudice the most candid historical inquiry; for others, a rock of offence, whom even slander and falsehood will never overcome. ”

“ Luther's preaching had originally forced its way among the German people and its various classes, with an energy and strength never counted on by its opponents. It seemed impossible to calculate how far the ferment would extend, and what would be its ultimate results. It was the idea of the Elector Frederick the Wise, now dead, that by simply letting the word of the gospel unfold itself quietly and work its way without hindrance, the truth could not fail eventually to penetrate all Christendom, or at least the Christian world of Germany, and thus accomplish a peaceful victory. ”

“ Luther, in teaching now that justification proceeds from faith, rejects, above all, the notion that man by any outward acts of his own can ever atone for his sins and merit the favour of God. He reminds us, moreover, with regard to moral works especially, that good fruits always presuppose a good tree, upon which alone they can grow, and that, in like manner, goodness can only proceed from a man, if and when, in his inward being, his inward thoughts, tendencies, and feelings, he has already become good; he must be righteous himself, in a word, before he works righteousness. ”

“ He wrote that afternoon to Melancthon, Jonas, and Spalatin. 'Dearest Philip,' he begins to Melancthon, 'we have at last reached our Sinai, but we will make a Sion of this Sinai, and here will I build three tabernacles, one to the Psalms, one to the Prophets, and one to Æsop.... It is a very attractive place, and just made for study; only your absence grieves me. My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mahomet, when I see this intolerable raging of the devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven. ”

“ The way of life—in other words, the way of saving faith—was now rediscovered and clearly brought to light; and, as Luther said, a truly moral life should be the consequence. And great pains were taken to stamp this new truth clearly and distinctly on doctrine, and to guard against new errors and perversions. Differences, however, now arose among those who had hitherto worked so loyally together for the establishment of the faith—a beginning of those doctrinal disputes which after Luther's death became so disastrous to his Church. ”

“ Thus he wrote to him in 1534 as follows: 'A merry heart and good courage, in honour and discipline, are the best medicine for a young man—aye, for all men. I, who have spent my life in sorrow and weariness, now seek for pleasure and take it wherever I can.... Pleasure in sin is the devil, but pleasure shared with good people in the fear of God, in discipline and honour, is well-pleasing to God. ”

“ With the mystics, behind the Christian and religious, lay a metaphysical conception of God, as a Being of absolute power, superior to all destiny, apparently rich in attributes, but in reality an empty Abstraction,—above all, a Being who suffers nothing finite to exist in independence of Himself. With Luther the fundamental conception of God remained this, that He is the perfect Good, and that, in His perfect holiness, He is Love. ”

“ Hutten himself had written to him, during the Diet of Worms, as follows: 'I will fight manfully with you for Christ; but our counsels differ in this respect, that mine are human, while you, more perfect than I am, trust solely in those of God.' And when Hutten seemed really bent on taking the sword, Luther declared to him and to others, with all decision of purpose: 'I would not have man fight with force and bloodshed for the Gospel. By the Word has the world been subdued, by the Word has the Church been preserved, by the Word will she be restored. ”

“ And we Protestants must confess that not only did a great mass of the German people remain bound by the spell of tradition, but that even to honest and independent-minded adherents of the old system, the interests of religion and morality might in reality have seemed to be seriously endangered by the new teaching and by the breach with the past. But never did the most momentous issue in the fortunes of the German nation and Church rest so entirely with one man as they did now with the German Emperor. ”

“ They show, indeed, how much genuine good-nature, and at the same time how strange an ignorance of the world and of men, was combined in him together with a passionate zeal for combat. George answered him at once with ferocity, and, as Luther says, with the coarseness of a peasant. The prince, otherwise not ignoble, was so embittered by hatred against the heretic as to reproach him with the vulgarest motives of avarice, ambition, and the lust of the flesh. Never had Luther, even with his worst enemies, stooped to such personal slander. ”

“ To me, a poor, unworthy, miserable sinner, God, the Father of all mercy, has entrusted the Gospel of His dear Son, and has made me true and faithful therein, and has so preserved and found me hitherto, that through me many in this world have received the Gospel, and hold me as a teacher of the truth, despite of the Pope's ban, of emperor, king, princes, priests, and all the wrath of the devil. ”

“ Luther, in after life, as we have already remarked, always recognised and found comfort in the fact that, even under such conditions as the above, enough of the simple message of salvation in the Bible could penetrate the heart, and awaken a faith which, in spite of all artificial restraints and perplexing dogmas, should throw itself, with inward longing and childlike trust, into the arms of God's mercy, and so enjoy true forgiveness. ”

“ Thus, later on, the Augsburg Confession rejected the doctrine that to attain evangelical perfection, a man must renounce his worldly calling, as also the theory of the Anabaptists, who would allow no Christian to hold civil office or to wield the sword.
But Luther, while thus determining the province of secular authority, took care to impose limits on its jurisdiction, and to guard against those limits being invaded. The true spiritual government, as instituted by Christ, was intended to make men good, by working upon the soul by the Word, in the power of the Spirit. ”

“ And even though a man should have made a vow in a spirit of piety, he placed himself at all events, by his own will and act, under a restraint and yoke at variance with the gospel and the liberty which faith in Christ bestows. Luther went still farther, and declared that the chastity enjoined upon the monk was only possible if he possessed the special gift of continence spoken of by St. Paul. How dare a man make a vow to God, which God must first endue him with the power to keep? ”

“ On the way he had had constant opportunities of noticing, both among learned men and the common people, signs of sympathy for the man against whom his mission was directed, and a feeling hostile to Rome, of which those at Rome neither knew nor cared to know. He was a young and clever man, full of the enjoyment of life, who knew how to mix and converse with people of every kind, and even to touch now and then on the situation and doings at Rome which were exciting such lively indignation. ”

“ When the anniversary of the ninety-five theses came round again, Luther wrote to Amsdorf telling him of these troubles and anxieties, and concluded with the words: 'So now there are struggles without and terror within.... It is a comfort which we must set against the malice of Satan, that we have the Word of God, whereby to save the souls of the faithful, even though the devil devour their bodies.... Pray for us, that we may endure bravely the hand of the Lord, and overcome the power and craft of the devil, whether it be through death or life. ”