n semblances but on realities; that Life was a
truth, and not a lie!

At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet
Idol-breaker; a bringer-back of men to reality. It is the function of
great men and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols of yours are wood; you
put wax and oil on them, the flies stick on them: they are not God, I
tell you, they are black wood! Luther said to the Pope, This thing of
yours that you call a Pardon of Sins, it is a bit of rag-paper with ink.
It is nothing else; it, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone
can pardon sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God's Church, is that
a vain semblance, of cloth and parchment? It is an awful fact. God's
Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand
on this, since you drive me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German
Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, but on
God's Truth; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and
armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and
are not so strong--!

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521,
may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the
point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilization
takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had
come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes
of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are
assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he
will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this
hand: on that, stands up for God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans
Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go;
he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode out to meet
him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, "Were there as many
Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on
the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and
house-tops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to
recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!" they cried to him,--as in
a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our
petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage
of soul, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted
Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not