It must
be a great unutterable wrath. O, good Lord, punish us with pestilence
rather than with such silence!"
Like a child, Luther prayed every morning and evening, and frequently
during the day, even while eating. Prayers which he knew by heart he
repeated over and over with warm devotion, preferably the Lord's
Prayer. Then he recited as an act of devotion the shorter Catechism;
the Psalter he always carried with him as a prayer-book. When he was
in passionate anxiety his prayer became a stormy wrestling with God,
so powerful, great, and solemnly simple that it can hardly be compared
with other human emotions. Then he was the son who lay despairingly at
his father's feet, or the faithful servant who implores his prince;
for his whole conviction was firmly fixed that God's decisions could
be affected by begging and urging, and so the effusion of feeling
alternated in his prayer with complaints, even with earnest
reproaches. It has often been told how, in 1540, at Weimar, he brought
Melanchthon, who was at the point of death, to life again. When Luther
arrived, he found Master Philip in the death throes, unconscious, his
eyes set. Luther was greatly startled and said, "God help us! How the
Devil has wronged this _Organan_," then he turned his back to the
company and went to the window as he was wont to do when he prayed.
"Here," Luther himself later recounted, "Our Lord had to grant my
petition, for I challenged Him and filled His ears with all the
promises of prayer which I could remember from the Scriptures, so that
He had to hear me if I was to put any trust in His promises.
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