Page:Works of Martin Luther, with introductions and notes, Volume 1.djvu/145

Rh not sicken at the spectacle of those miserable forms lying at our church doors and in our streets, their faces disfigured, and all their members hideously consumed with putrifying sores; so that the mind is horror-struck at the thought and the senses recoil from the sight! And what does God intend, through these lamentable specimens of our flesh and brotherhood, but to open the eyes of our mind, that we may see in how much more dreadful a guise the soul of the sinner shows forth its disease and decay, even though he himself go in purple and gold, and lie among lilies and roses, as a very child of paradise! Yet how many sinners are there to one of those wretched creatures? When these evils on the part of our neighbors, so great both in number and degree, are disregarded by us, it follows that our one evil, be it never so trifling, will appear as the sole evil, and the greatest of all.

But even in respect of bodily evils, the wicked are of necessity in a worse plight than we. For what sweet and pure joy can be theirs, so long as their conscience can find no peace? Or can there be a more terrible evil than the unrest of a gnawing conscience? Isaiah says, "The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." This also, in Deuteronomy xxviii, applies to them: "The Lord shall give thee a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind: and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy life; in the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! for the fear of thine heart wherewith thou shalt fear, and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see." In a word, if one regarded all the evils of the wicked in the right spirit, whether they be those of his friends or his foes, he would not only seem to be suffering nothing at all, but he would also, with Moses and the Apostle Paul, be filled with an hearty desire to die for them, if it might be,