When Veit Deitrich asked him what kind of
person the Apostle Paul was, Luther answered quickly, "He was an
insignificant, slim little fellow like Philip Melanchthon." The Virgin
Mary was a graceful image to him. "She was a fine girl," he said
admiringly; "she must have had a good voice." He liked to think of the
Redeemer as a child with his parents, carrying the dinner to his
father in the lumber yard, and to picture Mary, when he stayed too
long away, as asking--"Darling, where have you been so long?" One
should not think of the Saviour seated on the rainbow in glory, nor as
the fulfiller of the law--this conception is too grand and terrible
for man--but only as a poor sufferer who lives among sinners and dies
for them.
Even his God was to him preeminently the head of a household and a
father. He liked to reflect upon the economy of nature. He lost
himself in wondering consideration of how much wood God was obliged to
create. "Nobody can calculate what God needs to feed the sparrows and
the useless birds alone. These cost him in one year more than the
revenues of the king of France. And then think of the other things!
God understands all trades. In his tailor shop he makes the stag a
coat that lasts a hundred years. As a shoemaker he gives him shoes for
his feet, and through the pleasant sun he is a cook. He might get rich
if he would; he might stop the sun, inclose the air, and threaten the
pope, emperor, bishops and the doctors with death if they did not pay
him on the spot one hundred thousand gulden.
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