Luther’s origin was of the humblest.  Born in Eisleben, Nov. 10, 1483, the son of a poor peasant, his childhood was spent in penury.  He was religious from a boy.  He was religious when he sang hymns for a living, from house to house, before the people of Mansfield while at school there, and also at the schools of Magdeburg and Eisenach, where he still earned his bread by his voice.  His devotional character and his music gained for him a friend who helped him through his studies, till at the age of eighteen he entered the University at Erfurt, where he distinguished himself in the classics and the Mediaeval philosophy.  And here his religious meditations led him to enter the Augustinian monastery:  he entered that strict retreat, as others did, to lead a religious life.  The great question of all time pressed upon his mind with peculiar force, “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” And it shows that religious life in Germany still burned in many a heart, in spite of the corruptions of the Church, that a young man like Luther should seek the shades of monastic seclusion, for meditation and study.  He was a monk, like other monks; but it seems he had religious doubts and fears more than ordinary monks.  At first he conformed to the customary ways of men seeking salvation.  He walked in the beaten road, like Saint Dominic and Saint Francis; he accepted the great ideas of the Middle Ages, which he was afterwards to repudiate,—­he was not beyond them, or greater than they were, at first; he fasted like monks, and tormented his body with austerities, as they did from the time of Benedict; he sang in the choir from early morn, and practised the usual severities.  But his doubts and fears remained.  He did not, like other monks, find peace and consolation; he did not become seraphic, like Saint Francis, or Bonaventura, or Loyola.  Perhaps his nature repelled asceticism; perhaps his inquiring and original mind wanted something better and surer to rest upon than the dreams and visions of a traditionary piety.  Had he been satisfied with the ordinary mode of propitiating the Deity, he would never have emerged from his retreat.

To a scholar the monastery had great attractions, even in that age.  It was still invested with poetic associations and consecrated usages; it was indorsed by the venerable Fathers of the Church; it was favorable to study, and free from the noisy turmoil of the world.  But with all these advantages Luther was miserable.  He felt the agonies of an unforgiven soul in quest of peace with God; he could not get rid of them, they pursued him into the immensity of an intolerable night.  He was in despair.  What could austerities do for him?  He hungered and thirsted after the truth, like Saint Augustine in Milan.  He had no taste for philosophy, but he wanted the repose that philosophers pretended to teach.  He was then too narrow to read Plato or Boethius.  He was a self-tormented monk without relief; he suffered all that Saint Paul suffered at