of a poor Augustine monk, and see
that monk step out of his study with no weapon in his hand but the
Bible,--with no armies and no treasures,--and yet defying with his clear and
manly voice both Pope and Emperor, both clergy and nobility: there is no
grander sight in history; and the longer we allow our eyes to dwell on it,
the more we feel that history is not without God, and that at every
decisive battle the divine right of truth asserts its supremacy over the
divine right of Popes and Emperors, and overthrows with one breath both
empires and hierarchies. We call the Reformation the work of Luther; but
Luther stood not alone, and no really great man ever stood alone. The
secret of their greatness lies in their understanding the spirit of the
age in which they live, and in giving expression with the full power of
faith and conviction to the secret thoughts of millions. Luther was but
lending words to the silent soul of suffering Germany, and no one should
call himself a Protestant who is not a Lutheran with Luther at the Diet of
Worms, and able to say with him in the face of princes and prelates, "Here
I stand; I can not do otherwise; God help me: Amen."

As the Emperor was the representative of the nobility, as the Pope was the
representative of the clergy, Luther was the head and leader of the
people, which through him and through his fellow-workers claimed now, for
the first time, an equality with the two old estates of the realm. If this
national struggle took at first an aspect chiefly religious, it was
because the German nation had freedom of thought and of belief more at
heart than political freedom. But political rights also were soon
demanded, and demanded with such violence, that during his own life-time
Luther had to repress the excesses of enthusiastic theorists and of a
violent peasantry. Luther's great influence on the literature of Germany,
and the gradual adoption of his dialect as the literary language, were
owing in a great measure to this, that whatever there was of literature
during the sixteenth century, was chiefly in the hands of one class of
men. After the Reformation, nearly all eminent men in Germany--poets,
philosophers, and historians--belonged to the Protestant party, and resided
chiefly in the universities.

The universities were what the monasteries had been under Charlemagne, the
castles under Frederick Barbarossa,--the centres of gravitation for the
intellectual and political life of t