fretfulness and impatience, to take some hasty and schismatical step, mistaking a trial of the faith, and soundness of the Church, for a token of her being deserted of her Saviour; if they avail themselves, in all humility and devotion, of the means of Divine grace, which she is the rich channel of imparting to them; if they hold fast by her primitive service books, and shut their ears to this deluge of real infidelity, which is setting in from Germany ;-then we may hope that God will bring good out of our evil, and even by the very means of this reckless, insulting, and most lamentable appointment, pour out unexpected blessing on our suffering Church.

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ART. IV.-1. The Life of Luther, written by himself, collected and arranged by M. MICHELET, Member of the Institute, Author of the History of France, &c. Translated by WILLIAM Hazlitt, Esq. of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: David Bogue.

2. Histoire de la Vie, des Ecrits, et des Doctrines de Martin Luther. Par M. AUDIN, Membre des Académies Royales de Lyon, Turin, &c. Paris: L. Maison.

3. The Mission of the Comforter; and other Sermons, with Notes. By JULIUS CHARLES HARE, M. A. Archdeacon of Lewes, Rector of Herstmonceux, and late Fellow of Trinity College. London: J. W. Parker. Cambridge: Macmillan.

THE life and character of Luther have been brought rather conspicuously before public attention of late years. The taste for the striking and powerful forms of character, which has been so general among us lately, pervading the most different schools of sentiment and doctrine, has contributed to this. The movement of opinion respecting the Reformation has also contributed. The special mixture of character which Luther exhibits, has kept alive the discussions about him, when once begun. He is peculiarly a man whom persons both like to attack and like to defend. To his advocates belongs the undoubted fact that he was a great man; to his opponents the very awkward question, whether he was a saint. He was very amiable; he was very virulent. He was frank and simple; he was crafty and double. He was not vain; he was self-willed and over-bearing. He liked power; he was indifferent to station. He had an ardent

faith; he showed germs of rationalism. Few characters have exposed themselves more to the attacks of adversaries, or more engaged the sympathies of friends. His admirers are, indeed, fond of him,-fonder, perhaps, for the very fact that he has left himself so open to attack as he has. They think it an unfairness in fate to Luther, or in Luther to himself, for which they are bound in justice to compensate. Should he suffer for the temper which always made him show himself off to the worst? And should the fault, which his own frankness and carelessness about himself have put into our possession, not rather commend him the more to the generous judge?

Three biographies of Luther have appeared within the last few years; one by a friend, another by an enemy, and a third by a neutral. D'Aubigné's biography-for the first half of his History of the Reformation may be so called-has the

merit of a good deal of information, and a lively and pointed style, but is the thorough-going work of a partizan. The writer is always colouring, and will let nothing speak for itself. His comments do not occupy particular positions, and collect themselves into main groups, but are constant and ever recurring. The over quantity of detail in the narrative-a fault on its own account-is a worse fault as being so prolific of comment; for the smallest detail seldom wants its appendage. If the historian has no remark to make, the preacher has: and the reader, harassed with an endless reiteration of small reflections and officious instructions, retaliates, by regarding M. d'Aubigné as a writer a good deal more copious than weighty. His omissions in the line of fact are nearly as large, moreover, as his additions in the way of comment. He leaves out whole portions of Luther's character, or but faintly alludes to them. His aim is to assimilate Luther's ethical and religious mould as much as possible to that of an evangelical preacher of the present day. Luther does not gain by his biographer's tenderness on this head; and the same process which cuts off the irregularities, narrows the expanse, and tames the freedom of character.

M. Audin has, as might be expected, inserted a good many of the touches which M. d'Aubigné's pencil left out. Nor, though highly relishing his task, has he performed it ill-temperedly. His unfairness is not a malicious one; he delights in the amiable tasks of the favourist, and extols all his friends with innocent audacity, the notorious Tetzel among the rest: but he is not harsh and vituperative to opponents. He only gives, however, the more active and fiery parts of the Reformer's character, and not the whole of it; and describes Luther's external career better than Luther himself.

M. Michelet's Life hardly professes to be more than a crude and straggling performance: its composition having been the amusement of the writer during an illness. It consists, principally, of passages strung together from the table-talk, and those parts of Luther's writings where the Reformer speaks of himself. M. Michelet stands idly by, and gives the reader no assistance. An admiration of Luther's greatness, sympathy with his genial flow of spirits, and amusement at his faults and extravagances, compose, as far as we can see, the feeling of the impartial biographer toward his hero: and the sceptic seems to gaze with quiet pleasure upon the medley which the religious leader, saint, and prophet of so many millions of Christians

exhibits.

The mode in which Luther is introduced to our notice, in the pages of national history, creates an impression of him as

He

primarily a practical, rather than a doctrinal reformer. comes before us suddenly as the opponent of some great practical abuses in the Church: we connect him, in the first instance, with the resistance to indulgences. We thus picture a doctrinal movement, as arising, in process of time, out of a practical one; and Luther appears one of those rough, energetic minds which, only alive at first to the palpable and tangible, gradually advance to the department of opinion and belief. This is undoubtedly true of the multitudes whom Luther moved. They were moved, in the first instance, by the gross practical abuses in the Church; and those supplied that groundwork to the reforming movement, without which it could not have advanced at all. But it is not true of Luther. If there are two classes of influential men in the world, great practical men and men who propagate ideas, Luther belonged, in the first instance, to the latter. His mind was full of an idea, and he wished to propagate it. National history brings us across him for the first time engaged in a particular practical movement; but his biography shows that the doctrinal was then already begun and in progress.

The process by which leading ideas are arrived at is generally that of doubt and perplexity. A particular class of minds feels strongly the difficulties which surround the whole subject of morality and religion. Some have one difficulty, and some another. They dwell upon the obstacles to their internal peace with an intensity natural, or morbid, as may be: and, after they have brooded long enough, they hit on a solution. This solution is then the idea which occupies and fills their minds. They have felt a want, and they have relieved it; they have put their question, and had their answer: they have been in suspense, and now are settled. They prize the new conviction, because it succeeds to so much indefiniteness and void. The search has enhanced the discovery, the toil the reward; and the offspring of mental troubles is loved as an only child. The idea which has destroyed a difficulty is a victorious champion on which the mind reposes ever after, and to which it refers all of system, adjustment, and completeness it has attained to.

Luther had a natural character, which made him strongly alive to difficulties; that is to say, a character which partook largely of melancholy. Dante, Cromwell, Dr. Johnson, Cowper, Rousseau, Lord Byron, Shelley, are instances of men, who in their different ways, high or low, religious or sceptical, uncouth or refined, were melancholy men. Luther was one of this class of men. He had a mind intently self-contemplative, and profoundly unquiet, which, except the strongest active occupations diverted it, preyed upon itself; scrutinized its own faith,

feelings, fears and hopes; pried into the mysteries of its own nature; and provoked internal dissatisfactions and struggles. Luther speaks of his great scenes of trial as being throughout life internal. His agonies, his temptations, his colloquies with himself or with Satan, the tenderest controversy and the most formidable disputant, were always within him. He had just that disposition on which particular difficulties, and the ideas which seem to solve them, lay remarkable hold.

The opening circumstances of Luther's life were not calculated to discourage or tame such a disposition. The calm of a restless spirit is activity; and quiet unsettles and agitates it. The retirement and dulness of the Augustin monastery at Wittenburgh, threw him the more upon himself and his own thoughts. The particular circumstances of his entrance into monastic life were also trying. A stroke of lightning which killed his bosom friend by his side, according to some writers, though others make the thunderstorm and the death of Alexis two different events, inspired him with sudden terror. A lively, joyous temperament was also most alive to calls; and possessed a power of forming sudden strong resolutions. He was able, in a moment, to change the prospects of a life; a vow uttered on the spot, dedicated him to monasticism; and the accomplished, philosophical, literary academician, the favourite of fellow-students who enjoyed his humour, and of scientific professors who predicted his greatness, called his friends together, enjoyed an evening of brilliant conversation and music, and the next morning knocked at the gate of the Augustin monastery, which closed after him. But the young devotee was not made a monk by the change. The constant interruptions to formal prayer were irksome to him he did not stomach the household monastic tasks he was set to; tasks, indeed, needlessly humiliating and offensive, and, if intended to correct the fastidiousness of his previous education, arguing a blundering, however well-meaning discipline, in the monastery. Luther felt himself, in addition to the ordinary confinements and privations of a monastic life, to be among inferior and unsympathizing minds, alone, suspected, and ill-used.

There was another and more direct cause which led to religious melancholy and difficulties. Luther had ardent aspirations after the perfect and saintly character. There is not the smallest reason for doubting not only his sincerity, but his strength of will, and readiness to endure the greatest self-denial and mortification in pursuit of that character. But, impatient of regular discipline and routine, the more simple and external motive of obedience, for leading a holy life, was supplied in his case by a motive of another stamp. He had, what has been