Page:Lectures on Great Men.djvu/28

 y MARTIN LUTHER. well of the Water of Life which had been choked up for centuries with rubbish of man's superstitious offerings, and effectually exhorted myriads to drink of it and live. To think of the work which Luther was allowed to do and not to sympathise with him who did it, is unneces- sarily to defraud ourselves of what is naturally most ennobling (for there is an elevating purifying influence in the contemplation of all imitable goodness) ; and therefore, though I willingly admit that there is enough of weakness and of wilfulness in the character of Luther to impress upon us the wisdom and the worth of the precept, Keep yourselves from Idols, yet I verily believe that there is also at least abundantly enough in him both of greatness and of goodness to make him a most profitable subject for our earnest contemplation. The Story of Luther is this : On the llth of November, 1483, St Martin's day, there was baptised by the name of Martin, at St Peter's Church at Eisleben in Saxony, a child of John and Margaret Luther, of that place. John Luther was a hardy, worthy, labouring man, much like other men of his class at that time : only with one element of superiority in him, a love of books. He was very badly off for work and wages when Martin was born : and six months afterwards he removed to Mansfeld, where he had a better prospect of employment. Here he was at first a woodcutter ; and then afterwards worked about the mines : and then set up a furnace for smelting iron. He gets on better here, and by the time his son is able to go to school, he has become a town-councillor, and is able to enter- tain the ecclesiastics and schoolmasters of the neighbour- hood at his own house often. This is his greatest pleasure : and this love of books and of bookish men, gives him a great desire to make his son a scholar: and so earnest has he now become on this point that after his wife has taught