Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/13

 his friend Agricola’s domestic concerns, sending two golden gulden — one to the baby, another to buy wine for his wife.

And his friends must send him his papers at once, so that he may resume his work, since not a moment could Junker Georg lose in his seclusion except through frequent headaches; for, even when following the chase, he spiritualised what he saw in the hunting-field. And when he left his “Patmos” he took with him his gift to the German people, the New Testament, in their mother-tongue.

Coleridge speaks of the great interest of the Wartburg letters; but those from Coburg Castle are not a whit less interesting, especially those to Melanchthon, dated from the “Castle so full of evil spirits,” in which he endeavors to encourage his friend. “The six months spent here,” says a recent German writer, “might be called the mid-hour of his life. He is no longer the monk who sighs over his sins, nor the embarrassed peasant’s son, who, dazzled by the august assembly at Worms, begs for a day’s grace before answering for himself. He has been made strong by inward and outward storms which, however, were powerless to rob him of his childlike innocence of heart and poetic freshness of feeling; for he knows that the wondrous Christian experience with which God has honored him is now the common property of hundreds of thousands. Hence he got through an amount of work which fills us with astonishment; for, while holding in his hands the threads which set all the Evangelical princes and theologians in motion in Augsburg, he had leisure to be professor to his students, Veit Dietrich, etc., seelsorger for those in affliction, bookmaker for his dear Germans, and the most loving of sons, husbands, and fathers.”