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When Luther died, he left behind him, as set forth in his will, "no ready money, no treasure of coin of any description." He was so poor at one part of his life, that he was under the necessity of earning his bread by turning, gardening, and clockmaking.
As they worked, you may imagine, the boys swept the sky for a sign of Luther Barr's dirigible, but not a trace of her did they discover that day. "It begins to look as if we had beaten Luther Barr this time," cried Harry, exultingly. "Don't be too sure," was Frank's cautious reply.
In one point only it had never changed intolerance. Claiming to be the centre of the religious life of Europe, it steadfastly refused to recognize any religious existence outside of itself, yet both in a political and theological sense it was rotten to the core. Erasmus and Luther heard with amazement the blasphemies and witnessed with a shudder the atheism of the city.
Luther himself, afterward recalling the event, said: "It must indeed have been God who gave me my boldness of heart; I doubt if I could show such courage again." A weak, poor man, arraigned and alone before the assembled powers of the earth, with only the grace of God and his cause on which to lean, had demand made of him whether or not he would retract his books or any part of them, Yes or No.
He was noisy and dishonest, and spent on his own evil pleasures sums that were given by the ignorant creatures upon whom he traded to secure their eternal happiness. Luther inveighed against such practices from the pulpit of the church at Wittenberg.
Not alone that Germany is to-day what Luther, more than any other man, has made it, but as heirs to the inheritance which he bequeathed to all lands and ages, are Americans called to the profound study of the epoch which Luther shaped, and of which our age is but a part.
Luther, on the other hand, saw in Erasmus a man who was false to his convictions; who played with truth; who, in his cold, sarcastic scepticism, believed in nothing scarcely even in God. He was unaware of his own obligations to him, for Erasmus was not a person who would trumpet out his own good deeds. Thus Luther says: 'All you who honour Christ, I pray you hate Erasmus.
The sectaries and seducing spirits understand nothing in the Scriptures; but with their fickle, inconstant, and uncertain books which they have devised, they run themselves into error. Whoso is armed with the Text, the same is a right pastor; and my best advice and counsel is, said Luther, that we draw water out of the true fountain, that is, diligently to read in the Bible.
Not indeed that Luther, in accepting the words in their literal sense, had become a slave to the letter, in contradiction to the free and lofty spirit in which he had elsewhere accepted the contents of Holy Scripture.
Erasmus had written some time before to the Archbishop, contrasting the excesses charged against Luther with those of the Papal party, and denouncing the corruptions of the Church, and particularly the lack of preachers of the gospel. Much to the annoyance of Erasmus, this letter was published, and it worked more in Luther's favour than he wished.
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