e one man who gave the
death-blow to the ignorance of the Dark Ages, and changed the history of
the world. For the writer was Martin Luther, the apostle of the
Reformation, the "renegade monk" who dared, in spite of Pope and Orders,
to tell the world that alike the Word of God and the conscience of man
were free, and who, in the year 1521, commanded by Pope and Emperor to
take back his bold words, heroicly said, in the midst of enemies, and in
the face of almost certain death: "I may not, I cannot retract; for it
is neither safe nor right to act against conscience. Here stand I. I
cannot do otherwise. God help me."

And the little four-year-old boy to whom this storylike letter was
written was Luther's first-born, the dearly loved "son John." He was
named for his grandfather Hans (or John) Luther, the Saxon miner, and he
was born in June, 1526, in the cloister-home in Wittenberg, where his
father, Martin Luther, had first lived as monk, and afterwards as
master. For when that monk made his heroic stand, and the men of North
Germany followed him as a leader, the Prince of his homeland, the
Elector of Saxony, gave him as his home the Augustinian convent at
Wittenberg, deserted by the monks, who would not follow him whom they
called "the renegade."

Here in the cloisters of the old convent, close to the city wall, and
almost overhanging the river Elbe, Martin Luther and his wife Catherine
made their home; here they received into their household students,
professors, travellers, and guests--men anxious to hear the glad tidings
of religious freedom that this great leader proclaimed to Germany and
the world, and here, as I have told you, in June, 1526, little
"Hanschen," or "Johnny" Luther was born.

Luther was a man who loved home and family ties, and from babyhood
little John was most dear to him. The Reformer's letters to his friends
are full of references to the small stranger who had come into the
Wittenberg home; and neither hot religious disputes, knotty theological
problems, nor grave political happenings could crowd Johnny out of the
father's heart.

We get these glimpses of "our John" frequently. "Through the grace of
God there has come to us," he writes to one of his friends, "a little
Hans [John] Luther, a hale and hearty first-born"; and a few days later
he says that, with wife and son, he envies neither Pope nor Emperor. Of
the year-old boy he writes, in May, 1527, "My little Johnny is lively
and robust, an