eturn from the castle of Wartburg; the third till the beginning of the
Smalkaldic war and his death. It is not our intention to give his life
here, but only to describe shortly how he became what he was. There was
much in him which, only viewed from a distance, appears strange and
unpleasing, but the more closely we examine his character, the greater
and more amiable we find it.

Luther rose from the peasant class; his father left Moehra, a place amid
the forests of the Thuringian mountains, which was half peopled by his
kindred, to engage in mining in the district of Mansfeld; thus the boy
was born in a cottage, where the terrors inspired by the spirits of the
pine woods, and dark fissures which served as entrances to the mine in
the mountains, were still strong and vivid. His mind was no doubt often
occupied with the dark traditions of the heathen mythology; he was
accustomed to perceive in the terrors of nature, as well as in the life
of man, the work of the powers of darkness. When he became a monk,
these recollections of his childhood blended themselves with the figure
of the devil, and the busy tempter always wore the same aspect to his
imagination as the mischievous hobgoblins that frequent the hearth and
stable of the countryman.

His father was a man of concentrated and energetic character, firm and
decided, and gifted with a full measure of strong common sense: he
struggled hard to attain wealth; he kept strict discipline in his
house, and in later years Luther remembered with grief the severe
punishment he had received as a boy, and the sorrow it had inflicted on
his childish heart. The influence of the old Hans Luther on the life of
his son lasted till his death in 1530. When Martin went secretly into a
monastery at the age of twenty-two, the old man was violently angry, as
he had intended to provide for his son by a good marriage. At last
friends succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between them, and
when the supplicating son approached his father, confessing that he had
been driven by a fearful apparition to take the monastic vows, he
replied to him in the following words: "God grant that it may not have
been a delusion of the devil." He agitated still more the heart of the
monk by the angry question: "You thought you were listening to the
command of God when you went into the cloister; have you never heard
that it is a duty to be obedient to parents?" This made a deep
impression on the son, and w