of the Devil. "The heart," he said, "is satisfied, refreshed, and strengthened by music." He played
the lute, sang melodiously, and composed tunes to his hymns, especially the immortal, Ein feste
Burg," which gives classic expression to his heroic faith in God and the triumph of the gospel. He
never lost his love for Virgil and Cicero, which he acquired as a student at Erfurt. He was fond of
legends, fables, and proverbs. He would have delighted in the stories of old "Mother Goose," and
in Grimm’s "Hausmährchen." He translated some of Esop’s Fables, and wrote a preface to an
edition which was published after his death.
He enjoyed the beauties of nature, loved trees and flowers, was fond of gardening, watched
with wonder the household of the bees, listened with delight to the singing birds, renewed his youth
with the return of spring, and adored everywhere the wisdom and goodness of nature’s God. Looking
at a rose, he said, "Could a man make a single rose, we should give him an empire; but these
beautiful gifts of God come freely to us, and we think nothing of them. We admire what is worthless,
if it be only rare. The most precious of things is nothing if it be common." "The smallest flowers
show God’s wisdom and might. Painters cannot rival their color, nor perfumers their sweetness;
green and yellow, crimson, blue, and purple, all growing out of the earth. And yet we trample on
lilies as if we were so many cows." He delighted in a refreshing rain. "God rains," he said, "many
hundred thousand guilders, wheat, rye, barley, oats, wine, cabbage, grass, milk." Talking of children,
he said, "They speak and act from the heart. They believe in God without disputing, and in another
life beyond the present. They have small intellect, but they have faith, and are wiser than old fools
like us. Abraham must have had a hard time when he was told to kill Isaac. No doubt he kept it
from Sarah. If God had given me such all order, I should have disputed the point with Him. But
God has given his only begotten Son unto death for us."
He shared in the traditional superstitions of his age. He believed in witchcraft, and had many
a personal encounter with the Devil in sleepless nights.^599 He was reluctant to accept the new
Copernican system of astronomy, because Joshua bade the sun stand still, not the earth." He regarded
the comets, which he calls "harlot stars," as tokens of God’s wrath, or as works of the Devil.
Melanchthon and Zwingli held similar opinions on these irregular visitors. It was an almost universal
belief of mankind, till recent times, that comets, meteors, and eclipses were fire-balls of an angry
God to scare and rouse a wicked world to repentance.^600 On the other hand, he doubted the
calculations of astrology. "I have no patience with such stuff," he said to Melanchthon, who showed
him the nativity of Cicero from the stars. "Esau and Jacob were born of the same father and mother,
at the same time, and under the same planets, but their nature was wholly different. You would
persuade me that astrology is a true science! I was a monk, and grieved my father; I caught the
Pope by his hair, and he caught me by mine; I married a runaway nun, and begat children with her.
Who saw that in the stars? Who foretold that? Astronomy is very good, astrology is humbug. The
example of Esau and Jacob disproves it."
Luther gave himself little concern about his household, and left it in the hands of his wife,
who was prudent and economical. He calls himself a negligent, forgetful, and ignorant housekeeper,
but gives great credit to his "Herr Kathie." He was contented with little, and called economy the
(^599) See above, p. 334 sq.
(^600) See a curious tract of Andrew D. White, A History of the Doctrine of Comets, in the "Papers of the American Historical Association,"
N. Y., 1887, vol. II. 16.