For no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds of his manhood.  We ourselves do not become new through new deeds.  Our mental life is based upon the sum of all thoughts and feelings that we have ever had.  Whoever is chosen by Fate to establish new greatness by destroying the greatness of the old, shatters in fragments at the same time a portion of his own life.  He must break obligations in order to fulfil greater obligations.  The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels in his own heart the wound he has inflicted upon the order of the world.  That is the secret sorrow, the regret, of every great historical character.  There are few mortals who have felt this sorrow so deeply as Luther.  And what is great in him is the fact that such sorrow never kept him from the boldest action.  To us this appears as a tragic touch in his spiritual life.

Another thing most momentous for him was the attitude which he had to take toward his own doctrine.  He had left to his followers nothing but the authority of Scripture.  He clung passionately to its words as to the last effective anchor for the human race.  Before him the pope, with his hierarchy, had interpreted, misinterpreted, and added to the text of the Scriptures; now he was in the same situation.  He, with a circle of dependent friends, had to claim for himself the privilege of understanding the words of the Scriptures correctly, and applying them rightly to the life of the times.  This was a superhuman task, and the man who undertook it must necessarily be subject to some of the disadvantages which he himself had so grandly combatted in the Catholic Church.  His mental makeup was firmly decided and unyielding:  he was born to be a ruler if ever a mortal was; but this gigantic, daemonic character of his will inevitably made him sometimes a tyrant.  Although he practised tolerance in many important matters, often as the result of self-restraint and often with a willing heart, this was only the fortunate result of his kindly disposition, which was effective also here.  Not infrequently, however, he became the pope of the Protestants.  For him and his people there was no choice.  He has been reproached in modern times for doing so little to bring the laity into cooeperation by means of a presbyterial organization.  Never was a reproach more unjust.  What was possible in Switzerland, with congregations of sturdy free peasants, was utterly impracticable at that time in Germany.  Only the dwellers in the larger cities had among them enough intelligence and power to criticise the Protestant clergy; almost nine-tenths of the Protestants in Germany were oppressed peasants, the majority of whom were indifferent and stubborn, corrupt in morals, and, after the Peasant War, savage in manners.  The new church was obliged to force its discipline upon them as upon neglected children.  Whoever doubts this should look at the reports of visitations, and notice the continued complaints of the reformers about