Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/12

 wife Katherine, that succorer of many, labored; and Luther is interested in all that concerns each.

In Hering’s Die Mystik Luthers, we see the fresh interest which entered Luther’s life through Tauler’s writings. His own dark hours had been a puzzle to him long before he made the acquaintance of the Mystics. “The just shall live by faith” had been his first comforter, but Tauler was his first human comforter. “Although unknown in the schools of theology, and therefore despised,” Luther writes, “yet I have found more pure theology in his book than in all the scholastic teachers in all the universities put together.” Finding an old book containing an outline of Tauler’s theology, he edited it; and a peculiar interest attaches to it, as the issue of Deutsche Theologie (Theologia Germanica) in 1516 was Luther’s first appearance in print.

Another great joy to him was the accession of the Anhalt Princes to the Reformed faith. These three brothers were his warm friends; and he sent them Nicolas Hausmann as their Court preacher. Max Müller says that in every crisis in their country’s history the Anhalt Princes came to the front.

With Luther “out of sight was not out of mind.” When his good Elector had him carried off to the Wartburg, after his grand appearance at Worms in 1521 he at once began writing to his anxious friends in Wittenberg. On May 12 he wrote to Melanchthon, Amsdorf, and Agricola. He surveys with deep pain the general state of the Church, and reproaches himself for not shedding tears over her wretched condition in the presence of Antichrist. He admonishes Melanchthon to defend the walls of Jerusalem with the gifts God had given him; and he would aid him through his prayers. He asks anxiously who is filling the pulpit where he was wont to preach; and, along with these weighty matters, he does not forget