ent was not the
least of the influences to which Luther yielded, and when his father,
advanced in years, at last a councillor of Mansfeld, lay in his death
throes and the minister bent over him and asked the dying man if he
wished to die in the purified faith in Christ and the Holy Gospel, old
Hans gathered his strength once more and said curtly, "He is a wretch
who does not believe in it." When Luther told this later he added
admiringly, "Yes that was a man of the old time." The son received the
news of the father's death in the fortress of Coburg. When he read
the letter, in which his wife inclosed a picture of his youngest
daughter Magdalena, he uttered to a companion merely the words, "Well,
my father is dead too," rose, took his psalter, went into his room,
and prayed and wept so hard that, as the faithful Veit Dietrich wrote,
his head was confused the next day; but he came out again with his
soul at peace. The same day he wrote with deep emotion to Melanchthon
of the great love of his father and of his intimate relations with
him. "I have never despised death so much as today. We die so often
before we finally die. Now I am the oldest of my family and I have the
right to follow him." From such a father the son inherited what was
fundamental to his character--truthfulness, a sturdy will,
straightforward common sense, and tact in dealing with men and
affairs. His childhood was full of rigor. He had many a bitter
experience in the Latin school and as a choir boy, though tempered by
kindness and love, and he kept through it all--what is more easily
kept in the lowlier circles of life--a heart full of faith in the
goodness of human nature and reverence for everything great in the
world. When he was at the University of Erfurt, his father was already
in a position to supply his needs more abundantly. He felt the vigor
of youth, and was a merry companion with song and lute. Of his
spiritual life at that time little is known except that death came
near him, and that in a thunder storm he was "called upon by a
terrible apparition from heaven." In terror he took a vow to go into a
monastery, and quickly and secretly carried out his resolve.

From that time date our reports about the troubles of his soul. At
odds with his father, full of awe at the thought of an incomprehensible
eternity, cowed by the wrath of God, he began with supernatural
exertions a life of renunciation, devotion, and penance. He found no
peace. All the