It seems as if Dr. Luther were as necessary to us now as when he gave
the first impulse to better things, by affixing his theses to the doors
of Wittemberg, or when the eyes of the nation centred on him at Worms.
In his quiet home he sits and holds the threads which guide so many
lives, and the destinies of so many lands. He has been often ailing
lately, and sometimes very seriously. The selfish luxury of the rich
burghers and nobles troubles him much. He almost forced his way one day
into the Elector's cabinet, to press on him the appropriation of some of
the confiscated church revenues to the payment of pastors and
schoolmasters; and earnestly, again and again, from the pulpit, does he
denounce covetousness.
"All other vices," he says, "bring their pleasures; but the wretched
avaricious man is the slave of his goods, not their master; he enjoys
neither this world nor the next. Here he has purgatory, and there hell;
while faith and content bring rest to the soul here, and afterwards
bring the soul to heaven. For the avaricious lack what they have, as
well as what they have not."
Never was a heart more free from selfish interests and aims than his.
His faith is always seeing the invisible God; and to him it seems the
most melancholy folly, as well as sin, that people should build their
nests in this forest, on all whose trees he sees "the forester's mark of
destruction."
The tone of his preaching has often lately been reproachful and sad.
Else's Gretchen, now a thoughtful maiden of three-and-twenty, said to me
the other day,--
"Aunt Thekla, why does Dr. Luther preach some times as if his preaching
had done no good? Have not many of the evil things he attacked been
removed? Is not the Bible in every home? Our mother says we cannot be
too thankful for living in these times, when we are taught the truth
about God, and are given a religion of trust and love, instead of one of
distrust and dread. Why does Dr. Luther often speak as if nothing had
been done?"