highest questions of life rushed with fearful force
upon his defenseless, wandering soul. Remarkably strong and passionate
with him was the necessity of feeling himself in harmony with God and
the universe. What theology offered him was all unintelligible,
bitter, and repulsive. To his nature the riddles of the moral order of
the universe were most important. That the good should suffer, and the
evil succeed; that God should condemn the human race to the monstrous
burden of sin because a simple-minded woman had bitten into an apple;
that this same God should endure our sins with love, toleration, and
patience; that Christ at one time sent away honorable people with
severity, and at another time associated with harlots, publicans,
and sinners--"human understanding with its wisdom turns to folly at
this." Then he would complain to his spiritual adviser, Staupitz:
"Dear Doctor, our Lord treats people so cruelly. Who can serve Him
if he lays on blows like this?" But when he got the answer, "How
else could He subdue the stubborn heads?" this sensible argument
could not console the young man. With fervid desire to find the
incomprehensible God, he searched all his thoughts and dreams with
self-torture. Every earthly thought, every beat of his youthful blood,
became for him a cruel wrong. He began to despair of himself; he
wrestled in unceasing prayer, fasted and scourged himself. At one time
the priests had to break into his cell in which he had been lying for
days in a condition not far from insanity. With warm sympathy Staupitz
looked upon such heart-rending torment, and sought to give him peace
by blunt counsel. Once when Luther had written to him, "Oh, my sin! My
sin! My sin!" his spiritual adviser gave him the answer, "You long to
be without sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of
real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you,
you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash
and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in
which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive
for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of
terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means of grace which
the ancient Church prescribed--in the first place through constant
confession, for which there were innumerable prescriptions and formulae
which seemed to the heart empty and cold. By strictly prescribed
activities