his part, was deeply pleased but did not fail to add a pleasant discourse on the happiness of contentment.  Or when on one occasion she became impatient at the reading of the Psalter, and gave him to understand that she had heard enough about saints—­that she read a good deal every day and could talk enough about them too—­that God only desired her to act like them; then the Doctor, in reply to this sensible answer, sighed and said, “Thus begins discontent at God’s word.  There will be nothing but new books coming out, and the Scriptures will be again thrown into the corner.”  But the firm alliance of these two good people was for a long time not without its secret sorrow.  We can only surmise the suffering of the wife’s soul when, even as late as 1527, Luther in a dangerous illness took final farewell from her with the words:  “You are my lawful wife, and as such you must surely consider yourself.”

In the same spirit as with his dear ones, Luther consorted with the high powers of his faith.  All the good characters from the Bible were true friends to him.  His vivid imagination had confidently given them shape, and, with the simplicity of a child, he liked to picture to himself their conditions.  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.  But he does not do that, and we are thankless scoundrels.”  He reflected seriously about where the food comes from for so many people.  Old Hans Luther had asserted that there were more people than sheaves of grain.