human
And now, in conclusion, let us answer these reasonable questions: What has Martin Luther done and suffered that we at this distant interval of four centuries should reverence his memory with gratitude and admiration? What was the lifework he was raised up to do, and how did he do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which we live?--We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and superstition: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,--freeing to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France, and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China: without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition, still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still both spiritually and politically the mean vassals of an Italian priest instead of brave freemen under our English Queen. Luther relit the well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it shines for him all the more gloriously to this hour: Luther refreshed the gospel salt that had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener of good: Luther, under God's good grace and providence, has rescued the conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superstitious fears of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in this: Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,--for he has cleansed the real Augæan stable,--more than any mythical William Tell,--for he has ensured the boon of everlasting liberty, more to us than a whole army of so-called heroes in conquest, patriotism, or even local philanthropy,--for the enemies he fought and vanquished were our spiritual foes,--the country he opened to us is the heavenly one,--the good-doing, he inaugurated is wide as the world, and shines an electric universal threefold light of faith, hope, and charity.