III.

Why Love Germany

Why do I love Germany? Because it has given to the world three great conquering names in modern civilization; names which will ever hold high sway over hearts that love their kind and minds that seek the truth,-Luther, Kant and Goethe,-each one of them a compelling name.

Martin Luther "belongs," as Doctor Hedge once wrote, "to the world.' He gave a national intellectual life to Germany. "He was the voice of the nation."

Three or four pictures will suffice for an introduction to this greatest of modern emancipators of the human mind, who dedicated the soul to its own sanctities.

He was the son of a peasant, who won his way through school by singing on the streets. Luther was early touched into thoughtfulness and into seeking the consolations and inspirations of religion, but he grew sick with the formalities and superstitions which prevailed in the religious life about him. The kindly Father-Superior of the order which he had joined thought he needed a change and sent him to Rome. Thither he went gladly, hoping that the sight of the sacred city would cure him of his heart-sickness. When the "Eternal City" broke upon his eyes, he fell upon his knees, crying, "Hail, Holy Rome! Hail, Rome!" But he finds the life of Rome and all its traditions smitten with insincerity. He undertakes to ascend the Scala Sancta, the holy stairs, for, as the faithful be

lieve, if you ascend on naked knees, uttering a sincere prayer with each step, some entrancing vision will be vouchsafed you before you reach the top, a glimpse, perchance, of the Celestial City, perhaps the face of the sacred Virgin, possibly that of the Redeemer of the world. But his mind is working as he toils upward, and a shaft of thought strikes him as thrilling as the bolt of lightning which had struck his young companion in the meadow years before and turned his mind to serious things. A word from Paul breaks upon his soul,-"By faith are ye justified," and he rises from his knees and walks down, leaving the holy ascent forever uncompleted.

Then he went back to nail his ninety challenges, each challenge involving a principle, on the chapel door at Wurtemburg. The answer was prompt. He was summoned into the presence of "the most remarkable assembly ever convened on earth," as the historian says, an emperor in the chair, a jury of three hundred cardinals, and numerous attendant noblemen. It was "an empire against a man." Friends, knowing the intensity of the feeling against him and fearing he would never return alive, pleaded with him not to obey the summons. The reply was, “I go to Worms though there were as many devils in the streets as there are tiles on the house-tops." When he reached there he found the houses not covered with devils, but with curious human beings, stirred to profound excitement. Five thousand people thronged the streets.

On the first day the august assemblage overawed him. Weary, hungry and lonely, his voice failed, he could hardly be heard, and friends said sorrowfully,

"His case is lost." He asked for a night's delay to prepare his case. A good sleep and a hearty meal restored his spirit, and he stood up in that presence next morning to make his defense. He began to read in stately Latin from a well prepared manuscript. But the rush of thought carried him into the German vernacular, and he broke out with the memorable defiance which rings through the generations to give courage to every heart where great issues are pressing:

"Here Stand I, I Cannot Otherwise, God Helping Me."

The obscure son of a peasant overawed the Cardinals, the Knights, and the Emperor. He was vouchsafed protection by the authorities. He was hurried. away. Friends fled with him to the country. Other friends in disguise, knowing the critical situation and fearing for his life, held up the cavalcade, tore him from his escort and carried him off to the obscure castle of Wartburg, where he remained a lonely prisoner for ten months. Here he "fought with devils,' but during this time he "re-created the language in which he was cradled." He lifted the vernacular dialect into a literary language and gave to Germany a priceless gift,-the most valuable contribution ever given to any nation by any man,-a language fit to carry literature. He gave them his German version of the Bible.

Luther was an old man at sixty. He died at sixtythree, broken by the strain of constant struggle with enemies, but through it all he bore a cheerful spirit. Ever the stalwart champion of intellectual liberty, of the inner voice, he was also the smiling father, the playful husband, the lover of music. When his oppo

nents undertook to meet him in debate they complained that their arguments were drowned in song. He went away from home on a peace errand to quiet warring kindred. On this journey he died, bravely, as he had lived. Such was Luther.

Nearly two hundred years later, from 1724 to 1804,-came the eighty years that measured the earthly life of Immanuel Kant. If we seek to rank him among his colleagues, we can find but three or four names to enter in the list: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Bacon,-perhaps there are no more. He did for philosophy what Darwin did for biology,-summoned the human mind to respect law and to recognize the laws of thought, the inner potency of the soul.

Kant was a little shadowy man, only five feet high, a poor little skeleton, who survived his birth only through the exceeding care of an exceptional mother. He never went more than sixty-five miles from the place in which he was born, a city, sad irony of history, which in these last months has been disturbed by the roar of cannon, besieged by the forces of war, -Königsberg. He gave a new impulse to thought. He compelled a change of front in the thinking of the world.

I cannot speak of his high philosophy. Let us think of him in two connections only at this time, both adequate reasons why we should love Germany, and while reason and breath remain to me I will declare my love.

One day in the streets of Königsberg this little, unsuccessful, despised man, who could not be trusted with a professorship but earned a meager living as a tutor, surprised an Englishman by defending the