historical information, anecdotes
of great men, and old German literature, songs, and proverbs, to the
latter of which he made many rich additions from his own genius.
Scarce a subject could be spoken of on which he had not thought and on
which he had not something remarkable to say."[22] In consultations
upon public affairs, when the most important things hung in peril, his
contemporaries speak with amazement of the gigantic strength of his
mind, the unexampled acuteness of his intellect, the breadth and
loftiness of his understanding and counsels.

But, though so great a genius, he laid great stress on sound and
thorough learning and study. "The strength and glory of a town," said
he, "does not depend on its wealth, its walls, its great mansions, its
powerful armaments, but in the number of its learned, serious, kind,
and well-educated citizens." He was himself a great scholar, far
beyond what we would suspect in so perturbed a life, or what he cared
to parade in his writings. He mastered the ancient languages, and
insisted on the perpetual study of them as "the scabbard which holds
the sword of the Spirit, the cases which enclose the precious jewels,
the vessels which contain the old wine, the baskets which carry the
loaves and the fishes for the feeding of the multitude." His
associates say of him that he was a great reader, eagerly perusing the
Church Fathers, old and new, and all histories, well retaining what he
read, and using the same with great skill as occasion called.

Melanchthon, who knew him well, and knew well how to judge of men's
powers and attainments, said of him: "He is too great, too wonderful,
for me to describe. Whatever he writes, whatever he utters, goes to
the soul and fixes itself like arrows in the heart. _He is a miracle
among men._"

Nor was he without the humility of true greatness. Newton's comparison
of himself to a child gathering shells and pebbles on the shore,
while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him, has
been much cited and lauded as an illustration of the modesty of true
science. But long before Newton had Luther said of himself, in the
midst of his mighty achievements, "Only a little of the first fruits
of wisdom--only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths,
and depths of truth--have I been able to gather."

He was a man of amazing _faith_--that mighty principle which looks at
things invisible, joins the soul to divine Omnipotence, and launc