THE MESSENGER

No. 5.

VOL. XXXVIII.

NOVEMBER, 1902.

LUTHER'S LATEST BIOGRAPHER.

It must be evident to every careful student that the modern critical methods of historical writing have effected a most marked and salutary, even if startling change. Pursuing these methods Niebuhr restored to us pristine Rome, Mommsen rescued it from mythland, Janssen revealed a new Germany, and Freeman paved the way to the true historic England. No epoch, however, seems more materially affected, modified, even discredited, than that of the so-called Reformation. The persistent outcry for indisputable evidence, absolute objectivity and unwavering truthfulness of narrative, seems to demand a complete rehabilitation of Reformation history. Historians who many years ago became suspicious and dissatisfied with the historical legacy handed down with uncritical faith and accepted with childlike docility, are now amazed at the structural weakness which propped up the edifice and perpetuated error.

Macaulay, with his keen, historical intuitions, must have been aware of the conditions that brought on and buttressed the English Reformation. His words giving us its history have not only the sting of biting epigram, but the ring of a challenging defiance, when he traces its genealogy as springing from "a king whose character may be best described by saying that he was despotism itself personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a servile parliament, such," he sarcastically claims, "were the instruments by which England was delivered from the yoke of Rome." Continuing its genetic history, he goes on, "the work which had been begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest."(1)

(1) "Macaulay's Essays," Vol. I, p. 199. New York, 1879.

A glamour of saintlike holiness encompassed the heroes of the Scottish Reformation. Historians, from John Knox down to Thomas Carlyle, represented them as men living in an impregnated atmosphere of piety, aspiring to the loftiest spirituality, motived by the most heroic unselfishness-saints and patriots. Now comes Professor York Powell, Scotchman and Protestant, with his ruthless bludgeon, and annihilates the entire picture. He tells us, and in indignant tones, that the "whole story of the Scottish Reformation, hatched in purchased treason and outrageous intolerance, carried out in open rebellion and ruthless persecution, justified only in its indirect results, is perhaps as sordid and disgusting a story as the annals of any European country can show."(1)

The most radical change of historical sentiment about the Reformation, however, we discover in Germany. Wolfgang Menzel, himself one of its leading historians, voices it with an ill-concealed tinge of irritation and sorrow, when he deplores the fact that "the falsification of history during the last three hundred years has done an immeasurable amount of harm and occasioned profound shame," and seemingly aware of the ineradicable partisanship, which, in spite of incontestable evidence, clings to myth and legend, makes the confession that "even now the end is not in view when falsehood will come to an end.''(2)

Not the least hopeful sign is that the general public is measurably influenced by the same critical canons of historical rectitude. Myth and legend, fable and romance, the pillars that supported the Reformation fabric, are shaken, tottering on their foundations. At one time the word "Reformation," bearing in mind Coleridge's axiom, that "the populace is wholly and absolutely governed by words and names," acted like an incantation, produced the effect of an enchantment. At one time the general public was more prone to give the acquiescence of intellectual slaves than exercise the service of reasonable freemen-when the heroes of the Reformation were under consideration. But now, with critical history as standard-bearer, there is a quest for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The countersign now is, "the detection of falsehood is the triumph of truth."

In spite of the drastic, but none the less beneficent methods alluded to, sporadic efforts are not wanting to vitalize these legends and myths, especially when they gravitate from the Reformation as a com(1) "Fortnightly Review," August, 1900, p. 217.

(2) "Kritik des modernen Zeitbewustseins," p. 153, 2 Ed.

erete fact to the Reformers as specific factors. Of these we have a conspicuous, a palmary example in the new "Life of Luther," by Thomas M. Lindsay, D.D., Professor of Church History, Fr. C. College, Glasgow. (1)

It was said by Plato that the Greek rhapsodists could not recite Homer without falling into convulsions. Most biographers of Luther seem afflicted with a kindred mental infirmity. They seemingly cannot give us a portrayal of their hero without lapsing into a state of eulogistic hysteria. Instead of enlarging our views, enlightening our understanding, segregating truth from fiction, their only aim consists in warming our passions, exciting our feelings, obscuring truth. They give us a Luther free from all defects, foibles, paradoxes,-just as some painter or sculptor would give us a Cyrano de Bergerac without his bulbous nose, an Oliver Cromwell without his protuberant warts, a Lord Byron without his club foot. Professor Lindsay does not only sin in coloring facts, assigning motives, conjecturing feelings, reproducing time-stained banalities, seasoned with pungent suggestion, and when dealing with Mother Church leave nothing to the imagination, but upon closer examination his work reveals an utter absence of scientific spirit, comprehensive grasp and discriminating views. A ritical analysis of the first chapter of his work will confirm this estimate.

LUTHER'S PARENTAGE.

Luther was born at Möhra, a hamlet near Eisleben, November 10, 1483. While his parents recalled the hour and day of his birth, the year in some inexplicable manner escaped their memories. For it, since Luther himself gives us no autobiographic hint, we are dependent upon the evidence of his brother Jacob. The romancing proclivities of Professor Lindsay confront us here at the outset and hunt us to the close of his biography. If unlike the original Luther biographers, some of them his contemporaries, and at times members of his household, he does not herald the birth of his hero by prophecies, heavenly portents, supernatural prognostications, numerical identifications and astrological predictions, he cannot resist the temptation to weave about it the texture of sympathetic romance. We are indebted to Melanchton for the incidents connected with the birth of his friend and mentor, which he in turn received from the Reformer's mother. According to our biographer, paraphrasing Melanchton's narrative.

(1) "Luther and the German Reformation." Charles Scribner's Sons, 1900.

she remembered lying in bed and counting the minutes till the clock struck twelve."(1) The vision of the expectant mother, in painful and prayerful travail, counting the wearisome moments till her first born is ushered into the world is a cleverly contrived interlude, not devoid of dramatic incident, and worthy of Froude in one of his most imaginative flights. But it is neither true to history, nor just to Melanchton. The latter simply states that the mother told him her son was born during the night of the tenth of November after eleven o'clock." (2)

Continuing in almost the same breath he tells us that Luther's "parents taught their children the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, the teaching which Luther afterwards made possible for all German children by his Catechism."

Inferentially but one conclusion can be drawn from this statement -that Luther's parents were a shining exception to a prevalent rulethat they rose superior to the religious environment, influence and practice of their time-that Luther's Catechism supplied a want which the Church utterly neglected. But what are the real facts? Luther, his contemporary and modern biographers, the very existence of numerous editions of Catechisms ante-dating the Reformation, prove that the charge is unwarranted and baseless. In spite of his avowed hostility to the Church which blinded him to all good in her doctrine and discipline, Luther always bore in grateful recollection the schools of the Papacy, in which he states explicitly what Professor Lindsay denies covertly, that "the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments were retained and which the Church employed in caring for the children." (3) Mathesius, the fountain head of most Luther biographical data, a member of his household for a time, and a devotee whose ardent admiration for his hero is only equalled by his virulent hatred of the Church, contends "that although the truths of religion were obscured under the reign of Antichrist, all the same, God in some wonderful manner preserved the Catechisms in the schools." (4) He flatly contradicts our author by stating that under the Papacy "parents and teachers taught their children the Ten Commandments,

(1) Page 13.

(2) Die Historie vom Leben und Geschichten Dr. Martin Luthers. p. 72. Leipz. 1830. Philipp Melanchton's Werke.

(3) Tischreden, Fol. 458 a Leipz. 1621

5 Theil.

(4) Mathesius, Historie von des Ehrwürdigen, etc. D. Martin Luther. Fo 3 a, Nürnberg, 1588.

the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, as I learned these lessons in the schools myself in my childhood." (1) It is a misconception in the words of Köstlin, "that there was wanting to the Church and the youth entrusted to her care the true Christian doctrinal matter in that measure, which is frequently surmised to be the case," (2) and Bayne does not hesitate to state that Luther "did recollect and to the last acknowledge, that his Mother Church had taught him the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Creed." (3)

It would be a work of historical supererogation to impugn the honors thrust upon Luther as the father of the catechism or catechetical instruction, or produce evidence that catechisms in the vernacular in many editions and impressions were in common, even mandatory use before the Reformer was born. Janssen (4) with his customary critical research and copiousness of illustration devotes no less than ten pages to the catechetical methods of the Church at the close of the Middle Ages, while Moufang's collection of catechisms of the sixteenth century alone embraces six hundred and twenty-six pages. (5)

An age in which the darkest periods are characterized by Neander as "pervaded by active benevolence, hospitality, sympathy with the sick and suffering; devout participation in prayer and all the ordinances considered as belonging to the church life; zeal in the Christian education of children," (6) must have been an age in which the Lord's Prayer lost its educational character in devotional practice, when the Creed was not a Sunday School recitation feat, but an unfaltering profession of faith, when the Ten Commandments were not an "iridescent dream," but the rule of conduct, the discipline of the faithful, the guide of nations.

Historical criticism, not Catholic as much as Protestant, has focalized a strong and piercing light on the Luther household, with results that prove it to have been anything but an ideally happy or religious one, unless indeed parental brutality may be accounted a domestic virtue. It was a household not calculated to leave beneficent impres

(1) Mathesius, Historie von des Ehrwürdigen, etc. D. Martin Luther. Fol. 56 b, Nürnberg, 1588.

(2) Martin Luther, Sein Leben und Seine Schriften, Vol. I, 31, 2 Ausgabe Elber, 1883.

(3) Martin Luther. His Life and Work. Vol. I, p. 86, London, 1887.

(4) Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes. Vol. I, pp. 42-52, 16 Ed.

(5) Katholische Katechismen des Sechzehnten Jahrhunderts in deutscher Sprache. Dr. Christoph Moufang, Mainz, 1881.

(6) "Church History," Vol. IV, p. 294.