Some men are colossal. Their characters are so massive, and their
position in history is so towering, that other men can hardly get
high enough to take their measure. An overruling Providence so endows
and places them that they affect the world, turn its course into new
channels, impart to it a new spirit, and leave their impress on all
the ages after them. Even humble individuals, without titles, crowns,
or physical armaments, have wrought themselves into the very life of
the race and built their memorials in the characteristics of epochs.
History tells of a certain Saul of Tarsus, a lone and friendless man,
stripped of all earthly possessions, forced into battle with a
universe of enthroned superstition, encompassed by perils which
threatened every hour to dissolve him, who, pressing his way over
mountains of difficulty and through seas of suffering, and dying a
martyr to his cause, gave to Europe a living God and to the nations
another and an everlasting King.
We likewise read of a certain Christopher Columbus, brooding in lowly
retirement upon the structure of the physical universe, ridiculed,
frowned on by the learned, repulsed by court after court, yet
launching out into the unknown seas to find an undiscovered
hemisphere, and opening the way for persecuted Liberty to cradle the
grand empire of popular rule amid the golden hills of a new and
independent continent.
And in this category stands the name of MARTIN LUTHER.
He was a poor, plain man, only a doctor of divinity, without place
except as a teacher in a university, without power or authority except
in the convictions and qualities of his own soul, and with no
implements save his Bible, tongue, and pen; but with him the ages
divided and human history took a new departure.
Two pre-eminent revolutions have passed over Europe since the
beginning of the Christian era. The one struck the Rome and rule of
emperors; the other struck the Rome and rule of popes. The one brought
the Dark Ages; the other ended them. The one overwhelmed the dominion
of the Cæsars; the other humiliated a more than imperial dominion
reared in Cæsar's place. Alaric, Rhadagaisus, Genseric, and Attila
were the chief instruments and embodiment of the first; _Martin
Luther_ was the chief instrument and embodiment of the second. The one
wrought bloody desolation; the other brought blessed renovation, under
which humanity has bloomed its happiest and its best.