Mr. Forster, in presiding ou Wednesday over a large public
meeting at St. George's Hall, Bradford, in connection with the Luther Commemoration, described Luther as " the most courage- ous man, for both physical and moral courage, that he knew of in history," and as having said the great word of the Reforma- tion when he declared, iu the presence of the Emperor, "My conscience binds me." This is true ; but when Mr. Forster went on to speak of Luther with almost pure admiration, we cannot follow him. Luther was a man of marvellous courage, but his courage was sometimes the courage of great passions, as well as of deep convictions. . His treatment of the terrible subject of the Peasants' War alone proved this. First, no doubt, he mediated between the Sovereigns and the insurrection, trying to make the peasants moderate, and to make the princes just; but when the peasants would not obey his counsels, he said they ought to be " slaughtered like mad dogs,"—and that saying was not the saying of courage, but the saying of resentful violence. Afterwards, again, he endeavoured to moderate the severity of the princes ; but, in the social, as iu theological dis- putes, you hardly ever get the piety of Luther free from his passions, or his soul without its taint of bodily crudeness and coarseness. To Luther may be traced not only the new freedom of the conscience, but no small part of the lawlessness of the modern naturalism. His was a fiery nature, strongly mixed of evil and of good.
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