so much as today.  We die so often before we finally die.  Now I am the oldest of my family and I have the right to follow him.”  From such a father the son inherited what was fundamental to his character—­truthfulness, a sturdy will, straightforward common sense, and tact in dealing with men and affairs.  His childhood was full of rigor.  He had many a bitter experience in the Latin school and as a choir boy, though tempered by kindness and love, and he kept through it all—­what is more easily kept in the lowlier circles of life—­a heart full of faith in the goodness of human nature and reverence for everything great in the world.  When he was at the University of Erfurt, his father was already in a position to supply his needs more abundantly.  He felt the vigor of youth, and was a merry companion with song and lute.  Of his spiritual life at that time little is known except that death came near him, and that in a thunder storm he was “called upon by a terrible apparition from heaven.”  In terror he took a vow to go into a monastery, and quickly and secretly carried out his resolve.

From that time date our reports about the troubles of his soul.  At odds with his father, full of awe at the thought of an incomprehensible eternity, cowed by the wrath of God, he began with supernatural exertions a life of renunciation, devotion, and penance.  He found no peace.  All the highest questions of life rushed with fearful force upon his defenseless, wandering soul.  Remarkably strong and passionate with him was the necessity of feeling himself in harmony with God and the universe.  What theology offered him was all unintelligible, bitter, and repulsive.  To his nature the riddles of the moral order of the universe were most important.  That the good should suffer, and the evil succeed; that God should condemn the human race to the monstrous burden of sin because a simple-minded woman had bitten into an apple; that this same God should endure our sins with love, toleration, and patience; that Christ at one time sent away honorable people with severity, and at another time associated with harlots, publicans, and sinners—­“human understanding with its wisdom turns to folly at this.”  Then he would complain to his spiritual adviser, Staupitz:  “Dear Doctor, our Lord treats people so cruelly.  Who can serve Him if he lays on blows like this?” But when he got the answer, “How else could He subdue the stubborn heads?” this sensible argument could not console the young man.  With fervid desire to find the incomprehensible God, he searched all his thoughts and dreams with self-torture.  Every earthly thought, every beat of his youthful blood, became for him a cruel wrong.  He began to despair of himself; he wrestled in unceasing prayer, fasted and scourged himself.  At one time the priests had to break into his cell in which he had been lying for days in a condition not far from insanity.  With warm sympathy Staupitz looked upon such heart-rending torment, and sought to give him peace by blunt counsel.