in hell," but also "a poor, miserable, unworthy sinner," to whom "God, the Father of all mercies,
has intrusted the gospel of His dear Son, and made him a teacher of His truth in spite of the Pope,
the Emperor, and the Devil." He signs himself, in that characteristic document, "God’s notary and
witness in His gospel." One of his last words was, "We are beggars." And in the preface of the first
collected edition of his works, he expresses a wish that they might all perish, and God’s Word alone
be read.
Luther was a genuine man of the people, rooted and grounded in rustic soil, but looking
boldly and trustingly to heaven with the everlasting gospel in his hand. He was a plebeian, without
a drop of patrician blood, and never ashamed of his lowly origin. But what king or emperor or pope
of his age could compare with him in intellectual and moral force? He was endowed with an
overwhelming genius and indomitable energy, with fiery temper and strong passions, with irresistible
eloquence, native wit, and harmless humor, absolutely honest and disinterested, strong in faith,
fervent in prayer, and wholly devoted to Christ and His gospel. Many of his wise, quaint, and witty
sayings have passed into popular proverbs; and no German writer is more frequently named and
quoted than Luther.
Like all great men, he harbored in his mind colossal contrasts, and burst through the trammels
of logic. He was a giant in public, and a child in his family; the boldest reformer, yet a conservative
churchman; the eulogist of reason as the handmaid of religion, and the abuser of reason as the
mistress of the Devil; the champion of the freedom of the spirit, and yet a slave of the letter; an
intense hater of popery to the last, and yet an admirer of the Catholic Church, and himself a pope
within his own church.^991
Yet there was a unity in this apparent contradiction. He was a seeker of the righteousness
of works and peace of conscience as a Catholic monk, and he was a finder of the righteousness of
faith as an evangelical reformer; just as the idea and pursuit of righteousness is the connecting link
between the Jewish Saul and the Christian Paul. It was the same engine, but reversed. In separating
from papal catholicism, Luther remained attached to Christian catholicism; and his churchly instincts
were never suppressed, but only suspended to re-assert themselves with new and greater force after
the revolutionary excesses of the Reformation.
His history naturally divides itself into three periods: the Roman-Catholic and monastic
period, till 1517; the Protestant and progressive period, till 1525; the churchly, conservative, and
reactionary period, till 1546. But he never gave up his devotion to the free gospel, and his hatred
of the Pope as the veritable Antichrist.^992
Luther’s greatness is not that of a polished work of art, but of an Alpine mountain with
towering peaks, rough granite blocks, bracing air, fresh fountains, and green meadows. His polemical
(^991) Comp. the admirable description of Luther by Hase in his Kirchengesch. (11th ed., p. 400), and at the close of his Prot. Polemik.
The Roman Catholic Möhler (Kirchengesch., III. 148) thinks that out of Luther’s writings might be drawn "the most glorious apology of
the Catholic Church." Harnack (l.c., p. 5) calls him "a sage without prudence; a statesman without politics; an artist without art; a man
free from the world, in the midst of the world; of vigorous sensuality, yet pure; obstinately unjust (rechthaberisch ungerecht), yet concerned
for the cause; defying authority, yet bound by authority; at once blaspheming and emancipating, reason."
(^992) An interesting parallel in this and other respects may be drawn by some future historian, between Luther and Bismarck, whose
political influence upon Germany in the nineteenth century is as powerful as Luther’s ecclesiastical influence was in the sixteenth. Bismarck
was originally an intense aristocrat, but became the boldest liberal, and ended as a conservative statesman, though without surrendering
the creations of his genius. He defeated Catholic Austria and France, and protested that he would never go to Canossa; yet he met Pope
Leo XIII. half way, and repealed the unjust May-laws in the interest of patriotism, without surrendering any religious principle. With all
his faults, he is the greatest statesman and diplomatist of the century, and the chief founder of the Protestant German Empire.