Current Literature
MARTIN LUTHER : THE NAN AND HIS GOD
By Brian Lunn
We learn from the brief statement on the wrapper that this book (Nicholson and Watson, 12s. 6d.) is " a spirited bio- graphy," and it would be foolish to quarrel over the choice of adjective. Certainly the introductory chapter, which is entitled " A Thunderstorm and a Vow," will lead the reader into believing that Mr. Lunn means to avoid at all costs a humdrum incursion into matters spiritual. ' In the first para- graph Martin Luther, garbed as a young law student, comes on the stage, accompanied by the same natural phenomena as the Witches in Macbeth, Mephistopheles and the remorse- stricken heroes of Byron :
" For quite a long time the thunder was desultory, but as he came over the hill it seemed as though the storm, out of a sudden caprice, had decided on business. The casual illumination of the aky crystallized into jagged tearing lines ; the distant rumblings became the deep protests of an angry God. He passed near a solitary elm : suddenly it stood aflame against the grey sky as though the life in every vein were turned to fire, and in the simul- taneous clap it seemed to roar defiance from its trunk through every twig and root fibre. As the exultant vision of the elm faded Martin's spirit was filled with apprehension."
Fortunately, Mr. Lunn does not indulge too much in this style of modern picturesque biography. The task of com- pressing into readable form the multifarious activities of the great Reformer keeps him most of the time at a safe distance from the pathetic fallacy and, as a matter of fact, his book as a whole is a compact and succinct account of Luther's life and thought. The record of works on Luther occupies one and a half of the huge catalogue volumes in the British Museum, and it would be too much to expect Mr. Lunn to throw a new light on a subject that involves so many centuries of thought. He is a pleasant guide and brings us to the custom- ary stopping places : the posting of the theses at Witten- berg, the drama at Worms, the debates with Melanehthon and Erasmus, the controversy over transubstantiation, the Peasants' Revolt. But it is difficult to guess what kind of audience Mr. Lunn has in mind. He pays indeed a tribute to the religious tolerance or perhaps indifference of our age by citing political examples of today in order to illustrate the furious passions which theological niceties raised in the human breast some hundreds of years ago. But to an audience which knew little of the Reformation and the advance in freedom of mind which it inaugurated, it is to be feared that Mr. Lunn's agreeable book would not bring a sense of spiritual momen- tousness. Many of Luther's sayings which appear to us now as mere truisms were greater than themselves, greater than the man himself. They were tons of bricks, avalanches and mov- ing mountains; civilization changing itself. Mr. Lunn gives us a vividly human picture of the man, but he is too equable to grapple with the age. It is a depressing fact that one can only get an idea of all that was at stake in the sixteenth century from those old-fashioned tomes of furious and savage abuse in which Luther or the Pope is a monster of blasphemy, craft and iniquity according to the side on which the learned author happened to be.
Previous page
