Luther's qualities of mind, heart, and attainment were transcendent.
Though naturally meek and diffident, when it came to matters of duty
and conviction he was courageous, self-sacrificing, and brave beyond
any mere man known to history. Elijah fled before the threats of
Jezebel, but no powers on earth could daunt the soul of Luther. Even
the apparitions of the devil himself could not disconcert him.
Roman Catholic authors agree that "Nature gave him a German industry
and strength and an Italian spirit and vivacity," and that "nobody
excelled him in philosophy and theology, and nobody equaled him in
eloquence."
His mental range was not confined to any one set of subjects. In the
midst of his profound occupation with questions of divinity and the
Church "his mind was literally world-wide. His eyes were for ever
observant of what was around him. At a time when science was hardly
out of its shell he had observed Nature with the liveliest curiosity.
He studied human nature like a dramatist. Shakespeare himself drew
from him. His memory was a museum of historical information, anecdotes
of great men, and old German literature, songs, and proverbs, to the
latter of which he made many rich additions from his own genius.
Scarce a subject could be spoken of on which he had not thought and on
which he had not something remarkable to say."[22] In consultations
upon public affairs, when the most important things hung in peril, his
contemporaries speak with amazement of the gigantic strength of his
mind, the unexampled acuteness of his intellect, the breadth and
loftiness of his understanding and counsels.
But, though so great a genius, he laid great stress on sound and
thorough learning and study. "The strength and glory of a town," said
he, "does not depend on its wealth, its walls, its great mansions, its
powerful armaments, but in the number of its learned, serious, kind,
and well-educated citizens." He was himself a great scholar, far
beyond what we would suspect in so perturbed a life, or what he cared
to parade in his writings. He mastered the ancient languages, and
insisted on the perpetual study of them as "the scabbard which holds
the sword of the Spirit, the cases which enclose the precious jewels,
the vessels which contain the old wine, the baskets which carry the
loaves and the fishes for the feeding of the multitude." His
associates say of him that he was a great reader, eagerly perusing the
Church Fathers, old and new, and all histories, well retaining what he
read, and using the same with great skill as occasion called.
Melanchthon, who knew him well, and knew well how to judge of men's
powers and attainments, said of him: "He is too great, too wonderful,
for me to describe. Whatever he writes, whatever he utters, goes to
the soul and fixes itself like arrows in the heart. _He is a miracle
among men._"
Nor was he without the humility of true greatness. Newton's comparison
of himself to a child gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him, has
been much cited and lauded as an illustration of the modesty of true
science. But long before Newton had Luther said of himself, in the
midst of his mighty achievements, "Only a little of the first fruits
of wisdom--only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths,
and depths of truth--have I been able to gather."
He was a man of amazing _faith_--that mighty principle which looks at
things invisible, joins the soul to divine Omnipotence, and launches
out unfalteringly upon eternal realities, and which is ever the chief
factor in all God's heroes of every age. He dwelt in constant nearness
and communion with the Eternal Spirit, which reigns in the heavens and
raises the willing and obedient into blessed instruments of itself for
the actualizing of ends and ideals beyond and above the common course
of things. With his feet ever planted on the promises, he could lay
his hands upon the Throne, and thus was lifted into a sublimity of
energy, endurance, and command which made him one of the phenomenal
wonders of humanity. He was a very Samson in spiritual vigor, and
another Hannah's son in the strength and victory of his prayers.
Dr. Calvin E. Stowe says: "There was probably never created a more
powerful human being, a more gigantic, full-proportioned MAN, in the
highest sense of the term. All that belongs to human nature, all that
goes to constitute a MAN, had a strongly-marked development in him. He
was a _model man_, one that might be shown to other beings in other
parts of the universe as a specimen of collective manhood in its
maturest growth."
As the guide and master of one of the greatest revolutions of time we
look in vain for any one with whom to compare him, and as a
revolutionary orator and preacher he had no equal. Richter says, "His
words are half-battles." Melanchthon likens them to thunderbolts. He
was at once a Peter and a Paul, a Socrates and an Æsop, a Chrysostom
and a Savonarola, a Shakespeare and a Whitefield, all condensed in
one.