Thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods continued up to
the day on which he posted his theses, the second until his return
from the Wartburg, the third to his death and the beginning of the
Schmalkaldic War. It is not the purpose of this sketch to give his
entire biography, but to tell briefly how he developed and what he
was. Much in his nature appears strange and unpleasing so long as he
is viewed from afar; but this historic figure has the remarkable
quality of becoming greater and more attractive the more closely it is
approached, and from beginning to end it would inspire a good
biographer with admiration, tenderness, and a certain good humor.
Luther rose from the great source of all national strength, the
freeholding peasant class. His father moved from Moehra, a forest
village of the Thuringian mountains, where his relatives constituted
half the population, northward into the neighborhood of Mansfeld, to
work as a miner. So the boy's cradle stood in a cottage in which was
still felt the old thrill of the ghosts of the pine wood and the dark
clefts which were thought to be the entrances to the ore veins of the
mountain. Certainly the imagination of the boy was often busy with
dark traditions from heathen mythology. He was accustomed to feel the
presence of uncanny powers as well in the phenomena of nature as in
the life of man. When he turned monk such remembrances from childhood
grew gloomier and took the shape of the devil of Scripture, but the
busy tempter who everywhere lies in wait for the life of man always
retained for him something of the features of the mischievous goblin
who secretly lurks about the peasant's hearth and stable.
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