almost convivial,--fond of music, of poetry, of
society, of friends, and of the good cheer of the social circle. The
people love Luther, for he has a broad humanity. They never did love
monks, only feared their maledictions.

About this time the Pope was in great need of money: this was Leo X. He
not only squandered his vast revenues in pleasures and pomps, like any
secular monarch; he not only collected pictures and statues,--but he
wanted to complete St. Peter's Church. It was the crowning glory of
papal magnificence. Where was he to get money except from the
contributions of Christendom? But kings and princes and bishops and
abbots were getting tired of this everlasting drain of money to Rome, in
the shape of annats and taxes; so Leo revived an old custom of the Dark
Ages,--he would sell indulgences for sin; and he sent his agents to
peddle them in every country.

The agent in Saxony was a very vulgar, boisterous, noisy, bullying
Dominican, by the name of Tetzel. Luther abhorred him, not so much
because he was vulgar and noisy, but because his infamous business
derogated from the majesty of God and religion. In wrathful indignation
he preached against Tetzel and his practices,--the abominable traffic
of indulgences. Only God can forgive sins. It seemed to him to be an
insult to the human understanding that any man, even a pope, should
grant an absolution for crime. These indulgences were the very worst
form of penance, since they made a mockery of virtue. And it was useless
to preach against them so long as the principles on which they were
based were not assailed. Everybody believed in penance; everybody
believed that this, in some form, would insure salvation. It consisted
in a temporal penalty or punishment inflicted on the sinner after
confession to the priest, as a condition of his receiving absolution or
an authoritative pardon of his sin by the Church as God's
representative. And the indulgence was originally an official remission
of this penalty, to be gained by offerings of money to the Church for
its sacred uses. However ingenious this theory, the practice inevitably
ran into corruption. The people who bought, the agents who sold, the
popes who dispensed, these indulgences used them for the
vilest purposes.

Fortunately, in those times in Germany everybody felt he had a soul to
save. Neither the popes nor the Church ever lost that idea. The clergy
ruled by its force,--by stimulating fears of divine wrath