movement. He was
not so learned as Erasmus, nor so logical as Calvin, nor so scholarly as
Melancthon, nor so broad as Cranmer. He was not a polished man; he was
often offensively rude and brusque, and lavish of epithets, Nor was he
what we call a modest and humble man; he was intellectually proud,
disdainful, and sometimes, when irritated, abusive. None of his pictures
represent him as a refined-looking man, scarcely intellectual, but
coarse and sensual rather, as Socrates seemed to the Athenians. But with
these defects and drawbacks he had just such traits and gifts as fitted
him to lead a great popular movement,--bold, audacious, with deep
convictions and rapid intellectual processes; prompt, decided,
kind-hearted, generous, brave; in sympathy with the people, eloquent,
Herculean in energies, with an amazing power of work; electrical in his
smile and in his words, and always ready for contingencies. Had he been
more polished, more of a gentleman, more fastidious, more scrupulous,
more ascetic, more modest, he would have shrunk from his tasks; he would
have lost the elasticity of his mind,--he would have been discouraged.
Even Saint Augustine, a broader and more catholic man than Luther, could
not have done his work. He was a sort of converted Mirabeau. He loved
the storms of battle; he impersonated revolutionary ideas. But he was a
man of thought, as well as of action.

Luther's origin was of the humblest. Born in Eisleben, Nov. 10, 1483,
the son of a poor peasant, his childhood was spent in penury. He was
religious from a boy. He was religious when he sang hymns for a living,
from house to house, before the people of Mansfield while at school
there, and also at the schools of Magdeburg and Eisenach, where he still
earned his bread by his voice. His devotional character and his music
gained for him a friend who helped him through his studies, till at the
age of eighteen he entered the University at Erfurt, where he
distinguished himself in the classics and the Mediaeval philosophy. And
here his religious meditations led him to enter the Augustinian
monastery: he entered that strict retreat, as others did, to lead a
religious life. The great question of all time pressed upon his mind
with peculiar force, "What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
And it shows that religious life in Germany still burned in many a
heart, in spite of the corruptions of the Church, that a young man like
Luther should seek the shades