Short Studies on Great Subjects Part 6

Erasmus was a philosopher. A powder magazine was once blown up by lightning in a town where Erasmus was staying, and a house of infamous character was destroyed. The inhabitants saw in what had happened the Divine anger against sin. Erasmus told them that if there was any anger in the matter, it was anger merely with the folly which had stored powder in an exposed situation.

Luther possessed no such premature intelligence. He was distinguished from other boys only by the greater power of his feelings and the vividness of his imagination. He saw in his friend's death the immediate hand of the great Lord of the universe. His conscience was terrified. A life-long penitence seemed necessary to atone for the faults of his boyhood. He too, like Erasmus, became a monk, not forced into it--for his father knew better what the holy men were like, and had no wish to have son of his among them--but because the monk of Martin's imagination spent his nights and days upon the stones in prayer; and Martin, in the heat of his repentance, longed to be kneeling at his side.

In this mood he entered the Augustine monastery at Erfurt. He was full of an overwhelming sense of his own wretchedness and sinfulness. Like St. Paul, he was crying to be delivered from the body of death which he carried about him. He practised all possible austerities. He, if no one else, mortified his flesh with fasting. He pa.s.sed nights in the chancel before the altar, or on his knees on the floor of his cell. He weakened his body till his mind wandered, and he saw ghosts and devils. Above all, he saw the flaming image of his own supposed guilt. G.o.d required that he should keep the law in all points. He had not so kept the law--could not so keep the law--and therefore he believed that he was d.a.m.ned. One morning, he was found senseless and seemingly dead; a brother played to him on a flute, and soothed his senses back to consciousness.

It was long since any such phenomenon had appeared among the rosy friars of Erfurt. They could not tell what to make of him. Staupitz, the prior, listened to his accusations of himself in confession. 'My good fellow,'

he said, 'don't be so uneasy; you have committed no sins of the least consequence; you have not killed anybody, or committed adultery, or things of that sort. If you sin to some purpose, it is right that you should think about it, but don't make mountains out of trifles.'

Very curious: to the commonplace man the uncommonplace is for ever unintelligible. What was the good of all that excitement--that agony of self-reproach for little things? None at all, if the object is only to be an ordinary good sort of man--if a decent fulfilment of the round of common duties is the be-all and the end-all of human life on earth.

The plague came by-and-by into the town. The commonplace clergy ran away--went to their country-houses, went to the hills, went anywhere--and they wondered in the same way why Luther would not go with them. They admired him and liked him. They told him his life was too precious to be thrown away. He answered, quite simply, that his place was with the sick and dying; a monk's life was no great matter. The sun he did not doubt would continue to shine, whatever became of him. 'I am no St. Paul,' he said; 'I am afraid of death; but there are things worse than death, and if I die, I die.'

Even a Staupitz could not but feel that he had an extraordinary youth in his charge. To divert his mind from feeding upon itself, he devised a mission for him abroad, and brother Martin was despatched on business of the convent to Rome.

Luther too, like Erasmus, was to see Rome; but how different the figures of the two men there! Erasmus goes with servants and horses, the polished, successful man of the world. Martin Luther trudges penniless and barefoot across the Alps, helped to a meal and a night's rest at the monasteries along the road, or begging, if the convents fail him, at the farm-houses.

He was still young, and too much occupied with his own sins to know much of the world outside him. Erasmus had no dreams. He knew the hard truth on most things. But Rome, to Luther's eager hopes, was the city of the saints, and the court and palace of the Pope fragrant with the odours of Paradise. 'Blessed Rome,' he cried, as he entered the gate--'Blessed Rome, sanctified with the blood of martyrs!'

Alas! the Rome of reality was very far from blessed. He remained long enough to complete his disenchantment. The cardinals, with their gilded chariots and their parasols of peac.o.c.ks' plumes, were poor representatives of the apostles. The gorgeous churches and more gorgeous rituals, the pagan splendour of the paintings, the heathen G.o.ds still almost worshipped in the adoration of the art which had formed them, to Luther, whose heart was heavy with thoughts of man's depravity, were utterly horrible. The name of religion was there: the thinnest veil was scarcely spread over the utter disbelief with which G.o.d and Christ were at heart regarded. Culture enough there was. It was the Rome of Raphael and Michael Angelo, of Perugino, and Benvenuto; but to the poor German monk, who had come there to find help for his suffering soul, what was culture?

He fled at the first moment that he could. 'Adieu! Rome,' he said; 'let all who would lead a holy life depart from Rome. Everything is permitted in Rome except to be an honest man.' He had no thought of leaving the Roman Church. To a poor monk like him, to talk of leaving the Church was like talking of leaping off the planet. But perplexed and troubled he returned to Saxony; and his friend Staupitz, seeing clearly that a monastery was no place for him, recommended him to the Elector as Professor of Philosophy at Wittenberg.

The senate of Wittenberg gave him the pulpit of the town church, and there at once he had room to show what was in him. 'This monk,' said some one who heard him, 'is a marvellous fellow. He has strange eyes, and will give the doctors trouble by-and-by.'

He had read deeply, especially he had read that rare and almost unknown book, the 'New Testament.' He was not cultivated like Erasmus. Erasmus spoke the most polished Latin. Luther spoke and wrote his own vernacular German. The lat.i.tudinarian philosophy, the a.n.a.lytical acuteness, the sceptical toleration of Erasmus were alike strange and distasteful to him. In all things he longed only to know the truth--to shake off and hurl from him lies and humbug.

Superst.i.tious he was. He believed in witches and devils and fairies--a thousand things without basis in fact, which Erasmus pa.s.sed by in contemptuous indifference. But for things which were really true--true as nothing else in this world, or any world, is true--the justice of G.o.d, the infinite excellence of good, the infinite hatefulness of evil--these things he believed and felt with a power of pa.s.sionate conviction to which the broader, feebler mind of the other was for ever a stranger.

We come now to the memorable year 1517, when Luther was thirty-five years old. A new cathedral was in progress at Rome. Michael Angelo had furnished Leo the Tenth with the design of St. Peter's; and the question of questions was to find money to complete the grandest structure which had ever been erected by man.

Pope Leo was the most polished and cultivated of mankind. The work to be done was to be the most splendid which art could produce. The means to which the Pope had recourse will serve to show us how much all that would have done for us.

You remember what I told you about indulgences. The notable device of his Holiness was to send distinguished persons about Europe with sacks of indulgences. Indulgences and dispensations! Dispensations to eat meat on fast-days--dispensations to marry one's near relation--dispensations for anything and everything which the faithful might wish to purchase who desired forbidden pleasures. The dispensations were simply scandalous. The indulgences--well, if a pious Catholic is asked nowadays what they were, he will say that they were the remission of the penances which the Church inflicts upon earth; but it is also certain that they would have sold cheap if the people had thought that this was all that they were to get by them. As the thing was represented by the spiritual hawkers who disposed of these wares, they were letters of credit on heaven. When the great book was opened, the people believed that these papers would be found entire on the right side of the account.

Debtor--so many murders, so many robberies, lies, slanders, or debaucheries. Creditor--the merits of the saints placed to the account of the delinquent by the Pope's letters, in consideration of value received.

This is the way in which the pardon system was practically worked. This is the way in which it is worked still, where the same superst.i.tions remain.

If one had asked Pope Leo whether he really believed in these pardons of his, he would have said officially that the Church had always held that the Pope had power to grant them.

Had he told the truth, he would have added privately that if the people chose to be fools, it was not for him to disappoint them.

The collection went on. The money of the faithful came in plentifully; and the pedlars going their rounds appeared at last in Saxony.

The Pope had bought the support of the Archbishop of Mayence, Erasmus's friend, by promising him half the spoil which was gathered in his province. The agent was the Dominican monk Tetzel, whose name has acquired a forlorn notoriety in European history.

His stores were opened in town after town. He entered in state. The streets everywhere were hung with flags. Bells were pealed; nuns and monks walked in procession before and after him, while he himself sate in a chariot, with the Papal Bull on a velvet cushion in front of him.

The sale-rooms were the churches. The altars were decorated, the candles lighted, the arms of St. Peter blazoned conspicuously on the roof.

Tetzel from the pulpit explained the efficacy of his medicines; and if any profane person doubted their power, he was threatened with excommunication.

Acolytes walked through the crowds, clinking their plates and crying, 'Buy! buy!' The business went as merry as a marriage bell till the Dominican came near to Wittenberg.

Half a century before, such a spectacle would have excited no particular attention. The few who saw through the imposition would have kept their thoughts to themselves; the many would have paid their money, and in a month all would have been forgotten.

But the fight between the men of letters and the monks, the writings of Erasmus and Reuchlin, the satires of Ulric von Hutten, had created a silent revolution in the minds of the younger laity.

A generation had grown to manhood of whom the Church authorities knew nothing; and the whole air of Germany, unsuspected by pope or prelate, was charged with electricity.

Had Luther stood alone, he, too, would probably have remained silent.

What was he, a poor, friendless, solitary monk, that he should set himself against the majesty of the triple crown?

However hateful the walls of a dungeon, a man of sense confined alone there does not dash his hands against the stones.

But Luther knew that his thoughts were the thoughts of thousands. Many wrong things, as we all know, have to be endured in this world.

Authority is never very angelic; and moderate injustice, a moderate quant.i.ty of lies, is more tolerable than anarchy.

But it is with human things as it is with the great icebergs which drift southward out of the frozen seas. They swim two-thirds under water, and one-third above; and so long as the equilibrium is sustained, you would think that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea-water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down, the tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed; and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous ma.s.s heaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly in the sunlight, are buried in the ocean for ever.

Such a process as this had been going on in Germany, and Luther knew it, and knew that the time was come for him to speak. Fear had not kept him back. The danger to himself would be none the less because he would have the people at his side. The fiercer the thunderstorm, the greater peril to the central figure who stands out above the rest exposed to it. But he saw that there was hope at last of a change; and for himself--as he said in the plague--if he died, he died.

Erasmus admitted frankly for himself that he did not like danger.

'As to me,' he wrote to Archbishop Warham, 'I have no inclination to risk my life for truth. We have not all strength for martyrdom; and if trouble come, I shall imitate St. Peter. Popes and emperors must settle the creeds. If they settle them well, so much the better; if ill, I shall keep on the safe side.'

That is to say, truth was not the first necessity to Erasmus. He would prefer truth, if he could have it. If not, he could get on moderately well upon falsehood. Luther could not. No matter what the danger to himself, if he could smite a lie upon the head and kill it, he was better pleased than by a thousand lives. We hear much of Luther's doctrine about faith. Stripped of theological verbiage, that doctrine means this.

Reason says that, on the whole, truth and justice are desirable things.

They make men happier in themselves, and make society more prosperous.

But there reason ends, and men will not die for principles of utility.

Faith says that between truth and lies, there is an infinite difference: one is of G.o.d, the other of Satan; one is eternally to be loved, the other eternally to be abhorred. It cannot say why, in language intelligible to reason. It is the voice of the n.o.bler nature in man speaking out of his heart.

While Tetzel, with his bull and his gilt car, was coming to Wittenberg, Luther, loyal still to authority while there was a hope that authority would be on the side of right, wrote to the Archbishop of Mayence to remonstrate.

The archbishop, as we know, was to have a share of Tetzel's spoils; and what were the complaints of a poor insignificant monk to a supreme archbishop who was in debt and wanted money?

The Archbishop of Mayence flung the letter into his waste-paper basket; and Luther made his solemn appeal from earthly dignitaries to the conscience of the German people. He set up his protest on the church door at Wittenberg; and, in ninety-five propositions he challenged the Catholic Church to defend Tetzel and his works.

The Pope's indulgences, he said, cannot take away sins. G.o.d alone remits sins; and He pardons those who are penitent, without help from man's absolutions.

The Church may remit penalties which the Church inflicts. But the Church's power is in this world only, and does not reach to purgatory.

If G.o.d has thought fit to place a man in purgatory, who shall say that it is good for him to be taken out of purgatory? who shall say that he himself desires it?

True repentance does not shrink from chastis.e.m.e.nt. True repentance rather loves chastis.e.m.e.nt.

The bishops are asleep. It is better to give to the poor than to buy indulgences; and he who sees his neighbour in want, and instead of helping his neighbour buys a pardon for himself, is doing what is displeasing to G.o.d. Who is this man who dares to say that for so many crowns the soul of a sinner can be made whole?

These, and like these, were Luther's propositions. Little guessed the Catholic prelates the dimensions of the act which had been done. The Pope, when he saw the theses, smiled in good-natured contempt. 'A drunken German wrote them,' he said; 'when he has slept off his wine, he will be of another mind.'