done time and again in every corner of Christendom.

Martin Luther's quarrel with the Church began simply as a protest
against certain practises of the monks, and that his protests should
develop into a something called "Protestantism" was a thing he never for
a moment anticipated or desired. He had no thought of building an
institution on negation; and that he should be driven from the Church,
because he loved the Church and was trying to purify and benefit it, was
a source to him of deepest grief.

* * * * *

Martin Luther was thirty-five years old. He was short in stature,
inclining to be stout, strenuous and bold. His faults and his virtues
were all on the surface. He neither deceived nor desired to deceive--the
distinguishing feature of his character was frankness. He was an
Augustinian monk, serving as a teacher in the University of Wittenberg.

Up to this time his life had been uneventful. His parents had been very
poor people--his father a day-laborer, working in the copper-mines. In
his boyhood Martin was "stubborn and intractable," which means that he
had life plus. His teachers had tried to repress him by flogging him
"fifteen times in a forenoon," as he himself has told us.

In childhood he used to beg upon the streets, and so he could the better
beg he was taught to sing. This rough, early experience wore off all
timidity, and put "stage-fright" forever behind. He could not remember a
time when he could not sing a song or make a speech.

That he developed all the alertness and readiness of tongue and fist of
the street-urchin there is no doubt.

When he was taken into a monastery at eighteen years of age, the fact
that he was a good singer and a most successful beggar were points of
excellence that were not overlooked.

That the young man was stubbornly honest in his religious faith, there
is not a particle of doubt. The strength of his nature and the extent of
his passion made his life in the monastery most miserable. He had not
yet reached the point that many of the older monks had, and learned how
to overcome temptation by succumbing to it, so he fasted for days until
he became too weak to walk, watched the night away in vigils, and
whipped his poor body with straps until the blood flowed.

We now think it is man's duty to eat proper food, to sleep at night, and
to care for his body, so as to bring it to the most perfect condition
possible--all this that he may use