Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/92

Rh 78 L U T H E K common worship. This led to the publication in 1524 of a small collection of church hymns, which was Luther s first German Church Hymn-book, and which was the beginning of the wonderfully rich German Protestant hymnology. In the same year Luther translated the order of baptism, and published it under the title of Las Tauf- Buchlein. He also drew up a directory for public worship for Leisnig (cf. Richter, op. cit., vol. L). The hymn-book was followed by a prayer-book, and by the publication of a short summary of the heads of Christian truth fitted for the instruction of the &quot; ruds common man.&quot; Luther s catechism for children completed this series of works, intended to aid worship, public and private. Notwithstanding this immense amount of literary work, Luther found time to make preach ing tours, and visited in this way Altenburg, Zwickau, Eilenburg, Erfurt, Weimar, and many other places, and was cheered by the progress of the Reformation throughout North Germany. About this time also he sent a powerful address to the municipal councils of the German towns, exhorting them to establish everywhere Christian schools, both elementary and secondary. &quot; Oh my dear Germans,&quot; he exclaimed, &quot;the divine word is now in abundance offered to you. God knocks at your door ; open it to Him ! Forget not the poor youth. . . . The strength of a town does not consist in its towers and buildings, but in count ing a great number of learned, serious, honest, and well- educated citizens.&quot; He tried to impress upon them the necessity for the highest education, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, by showing how serviceable such, learn ing had been to him in his attack upon the abuses of Rome. He also appealed to the princes and cities to help the gospel and the Reformed churches ; but church rule and church maintenance could not be fixed on a legal basis until much later. Here we conclude this first glorious period of Luther s life. The problem to be solved was not to be solved by Luther and by Germany ; the progressive vital element of reformation passed from Germany to Switzerland, and through Switzerland to France, Holland, England, and Scotland. Before he descended into the grave, and Germany into thraldom, Luther saved, as much as was in him, his country and the world, by maintaining the funda mental principles of the Reformation against Melanchthori s pusillanimity ; but three Protestant princes and the free cities were the leaders. The confession was the work of Melanchthon ; but the deed was done by the laity of the nation. The German Reformation was made by a scholastically trained monk, seconded by professors ; the Swiss Reformation was the work of a free citizen, an honest Christian, trained by the classics of antiquity, and nursed in true hard-won civil liberty. Luther s work was continued, preserved, and advanced bytho work of the Swiss and French Reformers. The monk began ; -the citizen finished. If the one destroyed Judaism, the other converted paganism, then most powerful, both as idolatry and as irreligious learning. But as long as Luther lived he did not lose his supremacy, and he deserved to keep it. His mind was universal, and therefore catholic in the proper sense of the word. Third Period (1525-1546). In this third period the epic of Luther s life was changed into tragedy ; the revolt of the knights under Sickingen, the Anabaptist tumults, and the peasants war in the Black Forest alienated the sympathies of many from the Reformation, and resulted in a divided Germany (see vol. x. p. 498, Revolt vol. i. p. 786). From Sickingen s rising Luther sedulously under kept himself aloof, but the insurgent had more than once proclaimed himself on Luther s side, and that was enough to make many of the princes resolve to have nothing to do with reform. The convention of Ratisbon was the result of Sickingen s abortive revolt. The Anabaptists have to do with Luther s history mainly in so far as his contact Ana- with them modified and gave final shape to his doctrine baptist of baptism. In his tract on the Sacrament of Baptism, tumu tts. 1519, Luther distinguishes carefully between the sign -and the thing signified. The ordinance is just the sign, the thing signified is the death to sin, the new birth, and a new life in Christ. This new life goes on here on earth, so does the death to sin. Believers die daily to sin, not once for all in baptism, and their life in Christ is not a full life whilst earth s life lasts ; and so baptism is merely a sign of what is never really accomplished till after death. In the Babylonian Captivity of the Church of God, 1520, Luther adopted a view not unlike Calvin s. He said that God s word was always more than a statement, it was also a promise. Baptism was therefore a seal or pledge, a promise that what was signified by the ordinance would be bestowed. Only unbelief can rob the baptized of the benefits of their baptism and make the ordinance of none effect. But after Luther came in contact with the Anabaptists he departed from this simple theory, for he thought that he could not justify infant baptism upon it, and so in his Sermon on Baptism, 1535, he introduced a third theory, which approached much nearer to mediaeval views. He explained that in the ordinance of baptism God through His word so works on the water in the sacrament that it is no longer mere water, but has the power of the blood of Christ in some mysterious fashion. Luther then asked if faith was required for the worthy partaking of the sacrament, and he felt obliged to confess that the faith of the recipient was not needed. This sermon marks Luther s reaction towards ideas he had abandoned in 1519-20. More important was the connexion between the Lutheran Peasant! movement and the peasant revolt. The first coalitions of war - the peasants against the intolerable rapacity and cruelty of the feudal aristocracy had begun before the close of the 15th century. But all the oppressed inclined towards Luther, and the oppressors, most of whom were sovereigns, bishops, and abbots, towards the pope. The struggle in the peasants warwas really between the reforming and the papist party, and it could easily be foreseen that Luther would be dragged into it. As early as January 1525 the revolu tionary movement had extended from the Black Forest into Thuringia and Saxony, and the peasants were eagerly looking to Luther for help. The more moderate party published their programme in twelve articles, with a very remarkable preface, in which they stated that they did not wish for war, and asked nothing that was not in accord ance with the gospel. These articles were the following : (1) the whole congregation to have power to elect their minister, and if he was found unworthy to dismiss him ; (2) the great tithe, i.e., the legal tithe of corn, to be still payable for the maintenance of the pastor, and what is over to go to support the poor ; the small tithes to be no longer payable ; (3) serfdom abolished, since Christ has redeemed us all by His precious blood ; (4) game, fish, and fowl to be free as God created them ; (5) the rich have appropriated the forests, this to be rearranged ; (6) compulsory service to be abolished wages for work ; (7) peasant service to be limited by contract, and work done above contract to bo paid for ; (8) fair rents ; (9) arbitrary punishments abolished; (10) the commons restored; (11) the right of heriot, i.e., the right of the lord to take the vassal s best chattel, to be abolished; (12) all these propositions to be tested by Scripture, and what cannot stand the test to be rejected. Most impartial historians have declared that their demands were on the whole just, and most of them have become law in Germany. The words of Scripture brought forward by the peasants prove clearly that Luther s preaching of the gospel had acted, not as an incentive, but