the Protestant cause to Melancthon, who attended the diet, but Luther
removed to Coburg to be at hand for consultation. The drawing up of the
Augsburg Confession marks the culmination of the German Reformation
(1530); and the life of Luther from henceforth possesses comparatively
little interest. He survived sixteen years longer, but they are years
marked by few incidents of importance. He died at Eisleben on February
18, 1546, and was buried at Wittenberg.

Luther's character presents an imposing combination of great qualities.
Endowed with broad human sympathies, massive energy, manly and
affectionate simplicity, and rich, if sometimes coarse humor, he is at
the same time a spiritual genius. His intuitions of divine truth were
bold, vivid, and penetrating, if not comprehensive; and he possessed the
art which God alone gives to the finer and abler spirits that He calls
to do special work in this world, of kindling other souls with the fire
of his own convictions, and awakening them to a higher consciousness of
religion and duty. He was a leader of men, therefore, and a Reformer in
the highest sense. His powers were fitted to his appointed task; it was
a task of Titanic magnitude, and he was a Titan in intellectual
robustness and moral strength and courage. It was only the divine energy
which swayed him, and of which he recognized himself the organ, that
could have accomplished what he did.

View him as a mere theologian, and there are others who take higher
rank. There is a lack of patient thoughtfulness and philosophical temper
in his doctrinal discussions; but the absence of these very qualities
gave vigor to his bold, if sometimes crude, conceptions, and enabled him
to triumph in the struggle for life and death in which he was engaged.
To initiate the religious movement which was destined to renew the face
of Europe, required a gigantic will, which, instead of being crushed by
opposition, or frightened by hatred, should only gather strength from
the fierceness of the conflict before it. To clear the air thoroughly,
as he himself said, thunder and lightning are necessary. Upon the whole,
it may be said that history presents few greater characters--few that
excite at once more love and admiration, and in which we see tenderness,
humor, and a certain picturesque grace and poetic sensibility more
happily combined with a lofty and magnanimous, if sometimes rugged,
sublimity.

Luther's works are very voluminous, partly