Life of Luther | Page 6

portrait, in the eyes
and the lower part of the face. At the same time, from what is known of
the appearance of the Luthers who lived afterwards at Möhra, he must
also have resembled his father's family.


CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOLDAYS.
As to the childhood of Martin Luther, and his further growth and
mental development, at Mansfeld and elsewhere, we have absolutely no
information from others to enlighten us. For this portion of his life we

can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks of his own,
partly met with in his writings, partly culled from his lips by
Melancthon, or his physician Ratzeberger, or his pupil Mathesius, or
other friends, and by them recorded for the benefit of posterity. These
remarks are very imperfect, but are significant enough to enable us to
understand the direction which his inner life had taken, and which
prepared him for his future calling. Nor less significant is the fact that
those opponents who, from the commencement of his war with the
Church, tracked out his origin, and sought therein for evidence to his
detriment, have failed, for their part, to contribute anything new
whatever to the history of his childhood and youth, although, as the
Reformer, he had plenty of enemies at his own and his parents' home,
and several of the Counts of Mansfeld, in particular, continued in the
Romish Church. There was nothing, therefore, dark or discreditable, at
any rate, to be found attaching either to his home or to his own youth.
It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found it
joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of those little ones
who know neither the cares of daily life nor the troubles of the soul,
and enjoy with light hearts the good thing which God has given them.
But in his own reminiscences of life, so far as he has given them, no
such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time, which his parents at
first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had to be shared in by the
children, and the lot fell most hardly on the eldest. As the former spent
their days in hard toil, and persevered in it with unflinching severity,
the tone of the house was unusually earnest and severe. The upright,
honourable, industrious father was honestly resolved to make a useful
man of his son, and enable him to rise higher than himself. He strictly
maintained at all times his paternal authority. After his death, Martin
recorded, in touching language, instances of his father's love, and the
sweet intercourse he was permitted to have with him. But it is not
surprising, if, at the period of childhood, so peculiarly in need of tender
affection, the severity of the father was felt rather too much. He was
once, as he tells us, so severely flogged by his father that he fled from
him, and bore him a temporary grudge. Luther, in speaking of the
discipline of children, has even quoted his mother as an example of the
way in which parents, with the best intentions, are apt to go too far in

punishing, and forget to pay due attention to the peculiarities of each
child. His mother, he said, once whipped him till the blood came, for
having taken a paltry little nut. He adds, that, in punishing children, the
apple should be placed beside the rod, and they should not be chastised
for an offence about nuts or cherries as if they had broken open a
money-box. His parents, he acknowledged, had meant it for the very
best, but they had kept him, nevertheless, so strictly that he had become
shy and timid. Theirs, however, was not that unloving severity which
blunts the spirit of a child, and leads to artfulness and deceit. Their
strictness, well intended, and proceeding from a genuine moral
earnestness of purpose, furthered in him a strictness and tenderness of
conscience, which then and in after years made him deeply and keenly
sensitive of every fault committed in the eyes of God; a sensitiveness,
indeed, which, so far from relieving him of fear, made him
apprehensive on account of sins that existed only in his imagination. It
was a later consequence of this discipline, as Luther himself informs us,
that he took refuge in a convent. He adds, at the same time, that it is
better not to spare the rod with children even from the very cradle, than
to let them grow up without any punishment at all; and that it is pure
mercy to young folk to bend their wills, even though it costs labour and
trouble, and leads to threats and blows.
We have a reference by Luther to the lessons he learned in childhood
from his experience