DR. MACKINNON in his great work on Luther* deals in the last volume which completes the work with the great events in the Reformation struggle preceding the passing of the great Reformer. Dr. Mackinnon has given us far and away the best biography of Luther in the English language and while some of his conclusions in important matters are open to criticism no one who has read these volumes as they have come from the press can help admiring the untiring patience which he has brought to his great task. The fulness with which he quotes from the writings of the Reformer gives the reader an opportunity to test the conclusions drawn by the author and enables the reader to form his own judgment on the teaching presented. The period covered by the last volume issued deals with the Augsburg Confession and its rejection, the League of Schmalkald, the Anabaptist Movement, the Münster Madness, Luther and the Anabaptists, the final Controversy with Rome, and Luther’s conflicts with the Antinomians and the Zwinglians. Some of these controversies caused intense heart-burning and tested Luther’s temper to the utmost. It is not necessary to dwell on them here as they are fairly well known to all who have the slightest acquaintance with the Reformation struggle, but Dr. Mackinnon has treated them with a fulness of treatment that leaves nothing to be desired. Luther himself had used very strong expressions against the Law and the rise of the Antinomians had the effect of setting a check on the exuberance of his onset. In striking at Legalism there is always the
*‘Luther and the Reformation,’ by James Mackinnon, Ph.D., D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh. London: Longmans, Green & Co., Vol. IV., Price 16s.
danger of falling into the Anti-nomian extreme and in our day the latter is more prevalent than the former. Luther did not appear at his best in his controversy with the Zwinglians and this was all the more regrettable, not because he was right and they were wrong, but because he was very far astray himself in his doctrine of consubstantiation.
The tremendous strain of the struggle which broke the strong fetters which held men bound for centuries told on the fearless Reformer and the last years of his life were overshadowed, as Dr. MacKinnon says, by recurring ill-health. His intellectual powers and his extraordinary capacity for work remained. But nervous exhaustion began to tell and he became subject to fits of depression. It is no wonder that such should have been the case. He faced the might of Rome and did not quail in the conflict. He had to endure the shocks following on the defection of professed friends and to meet with keen disappointments. On 18th February, 1546, he passed away at Eisleben. During his last hours he recited passages of scripture—John iii. 16; Ps. lxviii. 21 and repeatedly committed his soul to God. When asked if he died in Christ and in the faith of the doctrine he preached he replied, “Yes,” and then gently quietly passed away a quarter of an hour later.
In a short article like this it is impossible to do justice to the greatness of Luther. His fearlessness, his tremendous energy, his yearning desire to get at the truth were all made use of by the Holy Spirit to light in his heart fires that burned with a vehement flame. Any attempt to account for Luther’s work and the great movement called the Reformation that ignores that this was a Spirit-taught man waging war with error in a deadly guise must fail as a presentation of the truth. Here was a man facing one of the most powerful institutions that ever held the minds of men in thrall, a man be it remembered with glaring weaknesses in speech and conduct, and yet he broke the spell of that power over the minds of millions of his fellowmen. God’s way of salvation by freely justifying the guilty laid hold of his mind and heart in a mighty grip and held his powerful mind under its sway. Dr. MacKinnon says that it never occurred to Luther to ask whether “a doctrine based on the belief in the fall of Adam from a state of perfect innocence into a state of moral depravity was really in accord with the facts of man’s primeval condition, which modern scientific investigation brought to light.” It is well that he did not. Modernism has not the mighty dynamic
to move nations and shake the foundations of ecclesiastical institutions. Its mission is to weaken what was strong and to destroy that which brought hope to millions of the human race.
Great though Luther was he was not perfect; his attitude to the law was not the outcome of a well-balanced theologian; the same may be said about his doctrine of the Scriptures, of the Lord’s Supper, and some other matters. Dr. Mackinnon has called attention to these but when all is said and done he pays Luther this tribute: “He was a religious genius and an intellectual giant. He left his impress on the age, and moulded the history of the future as no other man has done in the sphere of religion and religious thought since Augustine and Paul.” To this we might add that with all his faults he was a man taught by the Spirit and had a living knowledge of God’s truth.
A Sermon.*
By the Rev. WILLIAM C. BURNS.