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Luther remained a prisoner for seven months, and so closely guarded was he that he only knew by inference that his keepers were his friends. The Elector was discreet: he held no personal communication with Luther.

In December, Fifteen Hundred Twenty-one, the prisoner was allowed to go to Wittenberg on a three-days’ parole. When he appeared at the University he came as one from the dead. The event was too serious for student jollification; many were struck dumb with astonishment and glad tears of joy were upon every cheek–and by common consent all classes were abandoned, and a solemn service of thanksgiving held in the church, upon the door of which, four years before, this little college professor had tacked his Theses.

All understood now that Luther was a prisoner–he must go back to his prison. He admonished his hearers to be patient, but to be firm; cleave to what they believed to be right, even though it led to the scaffold. He administered the sacrament, and through that congregation, and throughout Saxony, and throughout all Germany ran the vow, silent, solemn and serious, that Martin Luther’s defiance of Papal authority was right. The Church was made for man and not man for the Church–and come what may, this man Luther must be protected even though the gutters ran with blood.

When would his trial occur? Nobody knew–but there would be no haste.

Luther went back to prison, but not to remain there. His little lease of liberty had been given just to see which way the wind lay. He was a prisoner still–a prisoner on parole–and if he was taken out of Saxony it could only be by illegal means.

The action of the Elector was as wise and as successful a bit of legal procedure as ever mortal lawyer worked: that it was all done without the advice, consent or connivance of the prisoner makes it doubly admirable.

Luther set himself to work as never before, writing and preaching. He kept close to Wittenberg and from there sent forth his thunders of revolt. Outside of Saxony, at regular intervals, edicts were read from pulpits ordering any and all copies of Luther’s writings to be brought forward that they might be burned. This advertised the work, and made it prized–it was read throughout all Christendom.

That gentle and ascetic Henry the Eighth of England issued a book denouncing Luther and telling what he would do with him if he came to England. Luther replied, a trifle too much in kind. Henry put in a pious rejoinder to the effect that the Devil would not have Luther in hell. In their opinion of Luther the Pope and King Henry were of one mind.

So lived Martin Luther, execrated and beloved. At first he sought to serve the Church, and later he worked to destroy it. After three hundred years, the Catholic Church still lives, with more communicants than it had in the days of Luther. The fact that it still exists proves its usefulness. It will still live, and it will change as men change. The Church and the Pope are not the detestable things that Martin Luther pictured them; and Protestantism is not the sweet and lovely object that he would have us believe. All formal and organized religions will be what they are, as long as man is what he is–labels count for little.

In Fifteen Hundred Twenty-five Martin Luther married “Catharine the Nun,” a most excellent woman, and one whom rumor says had long encouraged and upheld him in his works. Children came to bless them, and the picture of the great heretic sitting at his wooden table with little Johnny Luther on his knee, his loving wife by his side, and kind neighbors entering for a friendly chat, shows the great reformer at his best.

He was the son of a peasant, all his ancestors were peasants, as he so often told, and he lived like a peasant to the last. For himself he wanted little. He sided with the people, the toilers, with those who struggled in the bonds of slavery and fear–for them he was an Eye, an Ear, a trumpet Voice.

There never lived a braver man–there never lived one more earnest and sincere. He fought freedom’s fight with all the weapons God had given him; and for the liberty we now enjoy, in great degree, we are debtors to Martin Luther.