broke forth in profuse eulogies of the princely pilgrim to the glories
of monkish sainthood, that left an indelible impression on the
fifteen-year-old boy. When he observed the Carthusians at Eisenach,
weary and wan with many a vigil, somber and taciturn, toiling up the
rugged steps to a heaven beyond the common heaven; when he talked with
the young priests at the towns where he studied, and all praised the
life of a monk to this young seeker after perfect righteousness; when in
cloister-ridden Erfurt he observed that the monks were outwardly, at
least, treated with peculiar reverence, can any one wonder that in a
mind longing for peace with God the resolve silently ripened into the
act: I will be a monk?

We, too, would call this an act of despair. We would say with Luther:
Despair makes monks. But the despair which we mean, and which Luther
meant, is genuine spiritual despair. What Catholics call Luther's
despair is really desperation, a reckless, dare-devil plunging of a
criminal into a splendid Catholic sanctuary. That Luther's act decidedly
was not. By Rome's own teaching Luther belonged in the cloister. That
mode of life was originally designed to meet the needs of just such
minds as his. His entering the monastery was the logical sequence of his
previous Catholic tutelage. Rome has this monk on its conscience, and a
good many more besides.

As piety went in those days, Luther had been raised a pious young man.
He was morally clean. He was a consistent, yea, a scrupulous member of
his Church, regular in his daily devotions, reverencing every ordinance
of the Church. Also during his student years he kept himself unspotted
from the moral contaminations of the academic life. He abhorred the
students who were devoted to King Gambrinus and Knight Tannhaeuser. He
loathed the taverns and brothels of Erfurt. The Cotta home was no
_Bierstube_ in his day. The banquet-hall where he met his friends the
evening before he entered the cloister was no banquet-hall in the modern
sense of the term. That he played the lute at this farewell party, and
that there were some "honorable maidens" present, is nowadays related
with a wink of the eye by Catholics. But there was nothing wrong in all
the proceedings of that evening. It was indeed an honorable gathering.
Luther was never a prudish man or fanatic. He loved the decent joys and
pleasures of life. Luther gathered his friends about him to take a
decent leave of them. He did not r