multiplied wealth--the
use of canals, textile machinery, steam, electricity. This has created a
new class of rich. It has improved the condition of the laboring man,
not enough to satisfy him, but enough to strengthen him to demand more.

Thus, military force giving strength; its organization as feudalism,
giving the chivalric virtues and training an upper class; commerce,
discovery, invention, raising first the middle class and then the
lower,--these forces, not on the surface ethical, have cooperated to
realize the ideal.

Luther led a revolt which in its issue freed half Europe from the Roman
court. He made the quarrel on a moral question. No man, he said, could
sell a license from God to commit sin. If the Pope said otherwise, the
Pope was a liar and no vicegerent of God. So he put in the forefront of
the revolting forces a moral idea.

He showed that the spiritual life, with all its aspirations, struggles,
and victories, was open to man without help from Pope or priesthood. He
gave the German people the Bible in their own tongue. He taught by word
and example that marriage was the rightful accompaniment of a life
consecrated to God.

He had many of the limitations of the peasant and the priest. He was
wholly inadequate to any comprehensive conception of the higher life of
humanity. His ideal of character was based on a mystical experience,
under the forms of an antiquated theology. He was narrow; he confounded
the friends with the foes of progress; he had no clear understanding of
the social and political needs of the time; he was full of superstition,
and saw the Devil present in every mischief; he was often violent and
wrathful. But he had a great and tender heart; he had the soldierly
temper which prompted him to strike when more sensitive and reflective
men held back; and he won the leadership of the new age when against all
the pomp and power of Emperor and Pope he planted himself on the truth as
he saw the truth: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; God help me!"

Copernicus died in 1543--two years before Luther. For thirty-six
years--all through the Reformation struggle--he was quietly working out
his theory. The book containing it he did not venture to publish, till
under Paul III. there was a lull in the storm. He was a loyal Catholic,
but his teaching was sure to conflict with the church. He kept alive
just long enough to see his book come from the printers--dying at the age
of s