the rudeness of their poverty-stricken congregations.  But the great man was subject to still further hindrances.  The ruler of the souls of the German people lived in a little town, among poor university professors and students, in a feeble community of which he often had occasion to complain.  He was spared none of the evils of petty surroundings, of unpleasant disputes with narrow-minded scholars or uncultured neighbors.  There was much in his nature which made him especially sensitive to such things.  No man bears in his heart with impunity the feeling of being the privileged instrument of God.  Whoever lives in that feeling is too great for the narrow and petty structure of middle-class society.  If Luther had not been modest to the depths of his heart, and of infinite kindness in his intercourse with others, he would inevitably have appeared perfectly unendurable to the matter-of-fact and common-sense people who stood indifferent by his side.  As it was, however, he came only on rare occasions into serious conflict with his fellow-citizens, the town administration, the law faculty of his university, or the councillors of his sovereign.  He was not always right, but he almost always carried his point against them, for seldom did any one dare to defy the violence of his anger.  With all this he was subject to severe physical ailments, the frequent return of which in the last years of his life exhausted even his tremendous vigor.  He felt this with great sorrow, and incessantly prayed to his God that He might take him to Himself.  He was not yet an old man in years, but he seemed so to himself—­very old and out of place in a strange and worldly universe.  These years, which did not abound in great events, but were made burdensome by political and local quarrels, and filled with hours of bitterness and sorrow, will inspire sympathy, we trust, in every one who studies the life of this great man impartially.  The ardor of his life had warmed his whole people, had called forth in millions the beginnings of a higher human development; the blessing remained for the millions, while he himself felt at last little but the sorrow.  Once he joyfully had hoped to die as a martyr; now he wished for the peace of the grave, like a trusty, aged, worn-out laborer—­another case of a tragic human fate.

But the greatest sorrow that he felt lay in the relation of his doctrine to the life of his nation.  He had founded a new church on his pure gospel, and had given to the spirit and the conscience of the people an incomparably greater meaning.  All about him flourished a new life and greater prosperity, and many valuable arts—­painting and music—­the enjoyment of comfort, and a finer social culture.  Still there was something in the air of Germany which threatened ruin:  princes and governments were fiercely at odds, foreign powers were threatening invasions—­the Emperor of Spain, the Pope from Rome, the Turks from the Mediterranean; fanatics and demagogues were influential, and the hierarchy