LUTHER QUADRICENTENNIAL. 



499 



write that his words should be understood " by 

 the mother in the house, the children in the 

 streets, and the common man in the markets." 

 The translation of the New Testament was al- 

 most wholly his own work. Some of the manu- 

 scripts of this translation are still extant, and 

 they evince the labor which the work cost 

 him. There are passages which have been cor- 

 rected and recorrected half a score of times 

 before the exact form was at last attained ; 

 but now it seems strange that any other words 

 or collocation of words should have been 

 thought of. In the translation of the Old Tes- 

 tament Luther needed much assistance, for, be- 

 sides a few rabbis, there was not in all Europe 

 a tolerable Hebrew scholar. So much aid did 

 he receive from these rabbis, that the company 

 ~ f translators was jestingly called " the private 

 nhedrim." But, even in this part of the 

 dertaking, the real work of translation was 

 uther's. His co-laborers might enable him 

 understand what the Hebrew writers had 

 id in their own language, but Luther alone 

 competent to make them say it in Ger- 

 an. He himself tells what a task it was : 

 We are working hard," he writes to a friend, 

 to bring out the prophets in our mother- 

 ngue. Ach Gott! what a great and difficult 

 ork it is to make the Hebrew writers speak 

 erman ! " But he did make them do it, so 

 at least as he understood them ; and his in- 

 nse sympathy with them went far to enable 

 to penetrate the very soul of their Orien- 

 thought and phraseology. 

 So adequate for all purposes has Luther's 

 translation proved, that it is not until our own 

 immediate day that any serious attempt at 

 even a revisal has been made. A German 

 revised translation has just been completed, 

 and the first printed copy of it was presented 

 to the Emperor of Germany on the day of this 

 Lutheran quadricentennial. 

 Very much of Luther's abundant literary 

 ork was for the time merely. He occupied, 

 a measure, the place now filled by the edi- 

 r. Newspapers and regular periodicals did 

 then exist ; but Luther's pamphlets and 

 broad-sheets partially supplied their place. In 

 one year he put forth nearly two hundred of 

 these treatises, all dealing with current mat- 

 ters, which to him and to others seemed of 

 vital import. All of them have been reprinted 

 again and again. His "Table-Talk," jotted 

 down mainly from memory by one and an- 

 other of his disciples, is among the most read- 

 able of books to this day. He lacked little of 

 being a great poet. He was all his life too 

 busy to be able to spend much time in fitting 

 rhymes and scanning syllables ; yet some of bis 

 hymns are immortal. The " Em' feste Burg ist 

 unser Gott " is not merely a psalm of worship, 

 but has been also the national battle-hymn, 

 the German anthem of hope and encourage- 

 ment, from Luther's day to our own ; and 

 wherever this Luther commemoration was sol- 

 emnized, this hymn formed the fitting prelude. 



The great secret of the strength of Luther- 

 is, that he was German to the very core of his 

 being. He, as it were, created the German 

 nation, because he was himself a German of 

 the Germans. Julius Kostlein, the latest, and 

 by far the best, biographer of Luther, fairly 

 sums up the national estimate of the man, 

 which is in the m;iin that of the great body of 

 the Protestant world. Kostlein's "Life of 

 Luther" appeared in German ten years ago; 

 an English translation of it was brought out 

 at the time of this commemoration. Kostlein 

 says: "No German has ever influenced so 

 powerfully as Luther the religious life, and, 

 through it, the whole history of his people. 

 No other one has ever, in his whole personal 

 character and conduct, so faithfully reflected 

 the peculiar features of that life and history, 

 and has been enabled by that very means to 

 render us a service so effectual and popular. 

 If we recall to fresh life and remembrance the 

 great men of past ages, we Germans shall al- 

 ways put Luther in the van." 



In Germany. There were in Germany some 

 reasons why this four-hundredth anniversary 

 of Lutheranism which is but another expres- 

 sion for Germanism should have a special 

 significance. The consolidation of the dis- 

 jointed German states into a nation, which 

 had been one of the dreams of Luther's life, 

 had within less than half a generation come 

 to be an established fact, after centuries of un- 

 availing effort. To give a tangible evidence 

 of this great fact, a colossal statue of Ger- 

 mania had been planned, to be placed opposite 

 Bingen on the Rhine. This statue, thirty-three 

 feet high, stands upon a lofty pedestal, erected 

 upon a bold bluff, looking down upon and 

 seeming to keep watch over a long stretch of 

 that historic stream, now for the first time 

 wholly German. It was just ready for unveil- 

 ing in the autumn of this year. The inscrip- 

 tion on its base reads, " In memory of the 

 unanimous and victorious uprising of the Ger- 

 man nation, and the restoration of the German 

 Empire, 1870-1871." Herr Stocker, the court 

 preacher at Berlin, speaking to an English 

 audience upon commemoration - day, empha- 

 sized the vital connection between Luther and 

 this " victorious uprising." " Prussia," he said, 

 "like other countries, owes its growth to the 

 Lutheran Reformation; and when the Crown 

 Prince of Germany laid a wreath upon Luther's 

 grave at Wittenberg, he well knew what he 

 was doing. He gave public recognition to the 

 truth that the new German Empire had its rise 

 in the Protestant spirit." 



The precise mode of the celebration in Ger- 

 many developed itself but slowly. If any spe- 

 cial day was to be chosen, one would imagine 

 that the anniversary of Luther's birth would 

 at once have suggested itself. But for some 

 reason the authorities of Wittenberg the place 

 of all others most intimately associated with 

 the public life of the reformer chose to hold 

 their celebration two months earlier, on Sept. 



