to disburden his soul to his confessor, an aged monk. He had had no experience of such a case before; it was beyond his skill; the wound was too deep for him to heal. "'Save me in thy righteousness' – what does that mean?" asked Luther. "I can see how God can condemn me in his righteousness, but how can he save me in his righteousness?" But that question his father confessor could not answer.
It was well that Luther neither despaired nor abandoned the pursuit as hopeless. He persevered in reading Augustine, and yet more in studying the chained Bible; and it cannot be but that some rays must have broken in through his darkness. Why was it that he could not obtain peace? This question he could not but put to himself – "What rule of my order have I neglected – or if in aught I have come short, have not penance and tears wiped out the fault? And yet my conscience tells me that my sin is not pardoned. Why is this? Are these rules after all only the empirical devices of man? Is there no holiness in those works which I am toiling to perform, and those mortifications to which I am submitting? Is it a change of garment only or a change of heart that I need?" Into this train the monk's thoughts could scarce avoid falling. And meanwhile he persevered in the use of those means which have the promise connected with them – "Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." "If thou criest after wisdom, if thou liftest up thy voice for understanding, then shalt thou find the fear of the Lord, and understand the knowledge of thy God." It is not Luther alone whose cries we hear. Christendom is groaning in Luther, and travailing in pain to be delivered. The cry of those many captives, in all the lands of Christendom, lying in fetters, goes up in the cry of this captive, and has entered into the ears of the Great Ruler: already a deliverer is on the road. As Luther, hour by hour, is sinking in the abyss, nearer, hour by hour, are heard the approaching footsteps of the man who is to aid him in breaking the bars of his own and the world's prison.
CHAPTER 4
LUTHER THE MONK BECOMES LUTHER THE REFORMER
Staupitz – Visits the Convent at Erfurt – Meets Luther – Conversations between the Vicar-General and the Monk – The Cross – Repentance – A Free Salvation – The Dawn Begins – The Night Returns – An Old Monk – "The Forgiveness of Sins" – Luther's Full Emancipation – A Rehearsal – Christendom's Burden – How Delivered
AS in the darkest night a star will at times look forth, all the lovelier that it shines out amidst the clouds of tempest, so there appeared at intervals, during the long and dark night of Christendom, a few men of eminent piety in the Church of Rome. Taught of the Spirit, they trusted not in the Church, but in Christ alone, for salvation; and amid the darkness that surrounded them they saw the light, and followed it. One of these men was John Staupitz.
Staupitz was Vicar-General of the Augustines of Germany. He knew the way of salvation, having learned it from the study of Augustine and the Bible. He saw and acknowledged the errors and vices of the age, and deplored the devastation they were inflicting on the Church. The purity of his own life condemned the corruptions around him, but he lacked the courage to be the Reformer of Christendom. Nevertheless, God honored him by making him signally serviceable to the man who was destined to be that Reformer.
It chanced to the Vicar-General to be at this time on a tour of visitation among the convents of the Augustinians in Germany, and the path he had traced for himself led him to that very monastery within whose walls the sore struggle we have described was going on. Staupitz came to Erfurt. His eye, trained to read the faces on which it fell, lighted on the young monk. The first glance awoke his interest in him. He marked the brow on which he thought he could see the shadow of some great sorrow, the eye that spoke of the anguish within, the frame worn to almost a skeleton by the wrestlings of the spirit; the whole man so meek, so chastened, so bowed down; and yet about him withal an air of resolution not yet altogether vanquished, and of strength not yet wholly dried up. Staupitz himself had tasted the cup of which Luther was now drinking. He had been in trouble of soul, although, to use the language of the Bible, he had but "run with the footmen," while Luther was contending "with horses." His own experience enabled him to guess at the inner history of the monk who now stood before him.
The Vicar-General called the monk to him, spoke words of kindness – accents now become strange to Luther, for the inmates of his monastery could account for his conflicts only by believing him possessed of the Evil One – and by degrees he won his confidence. Luther felt that there was a mysterious influence in the words of Staupitz, which penetrated his soul, and was already exerting a soothing and mitigating effect upon his trouble. In the Vicar-General the monk met the first man who really understood his case.
They conversed together in the secrecy of the monastic cell. Luther laid open his whole soul; he concealed nothing from the Vicar-General. He told him all his temptations, all his horrible thoughts – his vows a thousand times repeated and as often broken; how he shrank from the sight of his own vileness, and how he trembled when he thought of the holiness of God. It was not the sweet promise of mercy, but the fiery threatening of the law, on which he dwelt. "Who may abide the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appeareth?"
The wise Staupitz saw how it was. The monk was standing in the presence of the Great Judge without a days-man. He was dwelling with Devouring Fire; he was transacting with God just as he would have done if no cross had ever been set up on Calvary, and no "place for repentance." "Why do you torture yourself with these thoughts? Look at the wounds of Christ," said Staupitz, anxious to turn away the monk's eye from his own wounds – his stripes, macerations, fastings – by which he hoped to move God to pity. "Look at the blood Christ shed for you," continued his skillful counselor; "it is there the grace of God will appear to you." "I cannot and dare not come to God," replied Luther, in effect, "till I am a better man; I have not yet repented sufficiently." "A better man!" would the Vicar-General say in effect; "Christ came to save not good men, but sinners. Love God, and you will have repented; there is no real repentance that does not begin in the love of God; and there is no love to God that does not take its rise in all apprehension of that mercy which offers to sinners freedom from sin through the blood of Christ." "Faith in the mercies of God! This is the star that goeth before the face of Repentance, the pillar of fire that guideth her in the night of her sorrows, and giveth her light," and showeth her the way to the throne of God.
These were wise words, and "the words of the wise are as nails, and as goads fastened in a sure place by the master of assemblies." So was it with the words of the Vicar-General; a light from heaven accompanied them, and shone into the understanding of Luther. He felt that a healing balm had touched his wound, that a refreshing oil had been poured upon his bruised spirit. Before leaving him, the Vicar-General made him the present of a Bible, which Luther received with unbounded joy; and most sacredly did he obey the parting injunction of Staupitz: "Let the study of the Scriptures be your favorite occupation."
But the change in Luther was not yet complete. It is hard to enter into life – to cast out of the heart that distrust and fear of God with which sin has filled it, and take in the grand yet true idea of God's infinite love, and absolutely free and boundless mercy.
Luther's faith was as yet but as a grain of mustard-seed. After Staupitz had taken leave of him he again turned his eye from the Savior to himself; the clouds of despondency and fear that instant gathered; and his old conflicts, though not with the same violence, were renewed. He fell ill, and in his sore sickness he lay at the gates of death. It pleased God on this bed, and by a very humble instrument, to complete the change which the Vicar-General had commenced. An aged brother-monk who, as Luther afterwards said, was doubtless a true Christian though he wore "the cowl of damnation," came to his bedside, and began to recite with much simplicity and earnestness the Apostle's Creed, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." Luther repeated after him in feeble accents, "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." "Nay," said the monk, "you
