like a facile stream, to the sharp corners of national character, to the urgent needs of each age.  It is true that this noble idea of a perpetually living organism had not been preserved in its original purity.  The best part of its life had vanished; empty cocoons were being preserved.  The old democratic church had been transformed into the irresponsible sovereignty of a few, had been stained with all the vices of an unconscientious aristocracy, and was already in striking opposition to reason and popular feeling.  What Luther, however, could put in its place—­the word of the Scriptures—­although it gave freedom from a hopeless mass of soulless excrescences, threatened on the other hand new dangers.

What was the Bible?  Between the earliest and latest writings of the sacred book lay perhaps two thousand years.  Even the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, not even entirely by those who had received the sacred doctrine from his lips.  It was compiled after his death.  Portions of it might have been transmitted inexactly.  Everything was written in a foreign tongue, which it was difficult for the Germans to understand.  Even the keenest penetration was in danger of interpreting falsely unless the grace of God enlightened the interpreter as it had the apostles.  The ancient Church had settled the matter summarily; in it the sacrament of holy orders gave such enlightenment.  Indeed, the Holy Father even laid claim to divine authority to decide arbitrarily what should be right, even when his will was contrary to the Scriptures.  The reformer had nothing but his feeble human knowledge, and prayer.

The first unavoidable step was that he must use his reason, for a certain critical treatment even of the Holy Bible was necessary.  Nor did Luther fail to see that the books of the New Testament were of varying worth.  It is well known that he did not highly esteem the Apocalypse, and that the Epistle of James was regarded by him as “an epistle of straw.”  But his objection to particular portions never shook his faith in the whole.  His belief was inflexible that the Holy Scriptures, excepting a few books, contained a divine revelation in every word and letter.  It was for him the dearest thing on earth, the foundation of all his learning.  He had put himself so in sympathy with it that he lived among its figures as in the present.  The more urgent his feeling of responsibility, the warmer the passion with which he clung to Scripture; and a strong instinct for the sensible and the fitting really helped him over many dangers.  His discrimination had none of the hair-splitting sophistry of the ancient teachers.  He despised useless subtleties, and, with admirable tact, let go what seemed to him unessential; but, if he was not to lose his faith or his reason, he could do nothing, after all, but found the new doctrine on words and conditions of life fifteen hundred years old, and in some cases he became the victim of what his adversary Eck called “the black letter.”