devil,' he says, 'is very proud, and what he least likes is to be
laughed at.' One night he was disturbed by something rattling in his
room; the modern unbeliever will suppose it was a mouse. He got up, lit
a candle, searched the apartment through, and could find nothing--the
Evil One was indisputably there.

'Oh!' he said, 'it is you, is it?' He returned to bed, and went to
sleep.

Think as you please about the cause of the noise, but remember that
Luther had not the least doubt that he was alone in the room with the
actual devil, who, if he could not overcome his soul, could at least
twist his neck in a moment--and then think what courage there must have
been in a man who could deliberately sleep in such a presence!

During his retirement he translated the Bible. The confusion at last
became so desperate that he could no longer be spared; and, believing
that he was certain to be destroyed, he left Wartburg and returned to
Wittenberg. Death was always before him as supremely imminent. He used
to say that it would be a great disgrace to the Pope if he died in his
bed. He was wanted once at Leipsic. His friends said if he went there
Duke George would kill him.

'Duke George!' he said; 'I would go to Leipsic if it rained Duke Georges
for nine days!'

No such cataclysm of Duke Georges happily took place. The single one
there was would have gladly been mischievous if he could; but Luther
outlived him--lived for twenty-four years after this, in continued toil,
re-shaping the German Church, and giving form to its new doctrine.

Sacerdotalism, properly so called, was utterly abolished. The
corruptions of the Church had all grown out of one root--the notion that
the Christian priesthood possesses mystical power, conferred through
episcopal ordination.

Religion, as Luther conceived it, did not consist in certain things done
to and for a man by a so-called priest. It was the devotion of each
individual soul to the service of God. Masses were nothing, and
absolution was nothing; and a clergyman differed only from a layman in
being set apart for the especial duties of teaching and preaching.

I am not concerned to defend Luther's view in this matter. It is a
matter of fact only, that in getting rid of episcopal ordination, he
dried up the fountain from which the mechanical and idolatrous
conceptions of religion had sprung; and, in consequence, the religious
life of Germany has expanded with the progress of knowledge, whi