Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/127

 first separate themselves, as those did, from the nation and abandon or betray it, they were afterwards easily swept into unanimity with the nation and took pity on their peoples. That the former has always been the case we shall prove more clearly hereafter by further illustrations; that the latter may always continue to be the case we can only wish with fervent yearning.

75. One must confess that there was a darkness and unclearness in the anxiety of that generation about the salvation of souls, since it was a question, not merely of changing the external mediator between God and man, but of needing no external mediator at all and of finding the bond of connection in one’s self. Nevertheless, it was perhaps necessary that the religious education of mankind should go through this intermediate state. Luther’s own honest zeal gave him more than he sought, and carried him far beyond his own dogmatic system. Once he had successfully overcome the first inward conflicts, produced by his conscientious scruples when he boldly broke away from the whole existing faith, all his utterances are full of jubilation and triumph about the freedom won for the children of God, who assuredly no longer sought for salvation outside themselves and beyond the grave, but were themselves a manifestation of the immediate feeling of salvation. In this he became the pattern for all generations to come, and died for us all. Behold in this also a characteristic of the German spirit. If it but seeks, it finds more than it sought, for it comes into the stream of living life, which flows on of itself and carries the seeker on with it.

76. To the Papacy, when taken and judged according to its own view of the matter, wrong was undoubtedly done by the way in which it was taken by the Reformation. Its utterances were for the most part picked at random