them that he
was fighting their battle. Indeed, his brave words gave fit utterance to
their hopes. For, as the historian reminds us, Luther's message was
democratic. That must have been its character if it was, in any proper
sense, a return to "the simplicity that is in Christ." "It destroyed the
aristocracy of the saints, it leveled the barriers between the layman
and the priest, it taught the equality of all men before God, and the
right of every man of faith to stand in God's presence, whatever be his
rank and condition of life. He had not confined himself to preaching a
new theology. His message was eminently practical. In his 'Appeal to the
Nobility of the German Nation' Luther had voiced all the grievances of
Germany, had touched upon almost all the open sores of the time, and had
foretold disasters not very far off. Nor must it be forgotten that no
great leader ever flung about wild words in such a reckless way. Luther
had the gift of strong, smiting phrases, of words which seemed to cleave
to the very heart of things, of images which lit up a subject with the
vividness of a flash of lightning. He launched tracts and pamphlets from
the press about almost everything, written for the most part on the spur
of the moment, and when the fire burned. His words fell into souls full
of the fermenting passion of the times. They drank in with eagerness the
thoughts that all men were equal before God, and that there are divine
commands about the brotherhood of mankind of more importance than all
human legislation. They refused to believe that such golden ideas
belonged to the realm of spiritual life above."[26]

When, therefore, the religious reformation was fairly launched, a great
uprising of the poor people speedily followed. It seemed to them that
the return to Christ meant, for them, the breaking of yokes and the
enlargement of opportunity, and they proceeded to claim for themselves
some portion of the liberty that belonged to them. Their demands, as
voiced in their "Twelve Articles," were by no means extravagant, from
our point of view. The abuses of which they complained were flagrant,
the rights they claimed were far less than are now, even in despotic
Russia, fully granted to the humblest people. And they protested most
earnestly that they "wanted nothing contrary to the requirements of just
authority, whether civil or ecclesiastical, nor to the gospel of
Christ."

It would, however, have been unreasonable to expe