And this marriage, performed in opposition to the judgment of his contemporaries, and amid the shouts of scorn of his adversaries, became the bond to which we Germans owe as much as to the years in which he, a priest of the ancient Church, bore arms in behalf of his theology.  For henceforth the husband, the father, and the citizen, became the reformer also of the domestic life of his nation; and the very blessing of their earthly life which Protestants and Catholics share alike today is due to the marriage of an excommunicated monk with a runaway nun.

For twenty more busy years he was destined to work as an educator of his nation.  During this time his greatest work, the translation of the Bible, was completed, and in this work, which he accomplished in cooeperation with his Wittenberg friends, he acquired a complete control of the language of the people—­a language whose wealth and power he first learned to realize through this work.  We know the lofty spirit which he brought to this undertaking.  His purpose was to create a book for the people, and for this he studied industriously turns of phrases, proverbs, and special terms which made up the people’s current language.  Even Humanists had written an awkward, involved German, with clumsy sentences in unfortunate imitation of the Latin style.  Now the nation acquired for daily reading a work which, in simple words and short sentences, gave expression to the deepest wisdom and the best intellectual life of the time.  Along with Luther’s other works, the German Bible became the foundation of the modern German language, and this language, in which our whole literature and intellectual life has found expression, has become an indestructible possession which, in the gloomiest times, even corrupted and distorted, has reminded the various German strains that they have common interests.  Every individual in our country still rises superior to the dialect of his native place, and the language of culture, poetry, and science which Luther created is still the tie which binds all German souls in unity.

And what he did for the social life of the Germans was no less; for by his precepts and his writings he consecrated family prayers, marriage and the training of children, the daily life of the community, education, manners, amusements, whatever touches the heart, and all social pleasures.  He was everywhere active in setting up new ideals, in laying deeper foundations.  There was no field of human duty upon which he did not force his Germans to reflect.  Through his many sermons and minor writings he influenced large groups of people, and by his innumerable letters, in which he gave advice and consolation to those who asked for them, he influenced individuals.  When he incessantly urged his contemporaries to examine for themselves whether a desire was justified or not, or what was the duty of a father toward his child, of the subject toward the authorities, of the councillor toward the people, the progress which was made through