Courage

At ten of the clock, on the morning of Tuesday, the sixteenth of April, exactly four hundred years ago, Luther, with three companions, rode into Worms, in a covered wagon protected by eight horsemen. Just a fortnight before, he had left Wittenberg, under a safe-conduct of the Emperor which he hardly believed to be worth the value of the wax in the seal. He knew precisely what had happened, in Constance, to Huss under almost similar circumstances. "Even if they kindled a fire as high as heaven from Wittenberg to Worms," Myconius reports him as saying, "I would appear, in the name of the Lord, in obedience to the imperial summons, and would walk into behemoth's mouth, between his great teeth, and confess Christ."

All those fourteen days, in the covered wagon, must have been crowded with the images of fear and torment. Still, he remained absolutely undismayed. A year later, he wrote to the Elector, "Had I known as many devils would set upon me as there were tiles on the roofs, I should have sprung into the midst of them with joy." When he came to Worms there were devils enough in the streets, but there were more angels. A huge concourse had gathered, in hope and fear, in interest and sheer curiosity, to see what was going to happen. There were Lutherans and Papists, monks and soldiers, nobles and mighty ecclesiastics, all intent on witnessing the defiance of Emperor and Pope by the town preacher of Wittenberg. But would it be a defiance? Next afternoon, as Luther pressed through the throng, into the great hall of the bishop's palace, a huge mailclad baron caught him by the shoulder in his steel hand. "Pluck up thy spirit, little monk," he said, "some of us here have seen warm work, in our time, but, by my troth, nor I nor any knight, in this company, ever needed a stout heart more than thou needest it now. If thou hast faith in these doctrines of thine, little monk, go on, in the name of God." Luther threw back his head. "Yes," he answered, "in the name of God, forward!"

There, in very truth, is the note of courage, the courage of a man facing the world, and defying its powers and numbers, in the name of Principle. Paradoxically, he did not realize his danger, because he saw the full extent of it. It was so vast he was compelled to take refuge in his understanding of the power of the Christ. One day, long years after, he explained this in his own peculiar way. "I was undismayed and feared nothing," he said, with an obvious reference to the first letter to the Corinthians, "so foolish can God make a man": for says the apostle, in a certain great translation, "The foolishness of God transcends man's wisdom, the weakness of God man's strength." Luther himself had, however, not fully mastered the meaning of the writer. Had he done so the story of the Reformation would have been more far-reaching even than it was. He walked by faith in Worms, but not fully by understanding. Evil to him was still the great red dragon, and a dragon very great and real at that. "The great red dragon," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 563 of Science and Health, "symbolizes a lie,—the belief that substance, life, and intelligence can be material. This dragon stands for the sum total of human error." In Worms, in 1521, this was not so clear as it had been in Corinth fifteen centuries earlier, nor so manifest a it was to become in Boston some four hundred years later. Nevertheless Luther's challenge to fear represented a great victory in the name of Principle.