Luther - Works of Martin Luther Vol. 6 - Righteousness is Love

11worshiped and among the people with whom he worshiped, making use ofthe means common to both. A truer valuation of his principles and writingswill be had by pursuing the latter method.Luther, a son and priest of the Church, had not come to the place ofprominence which he held in his Order without exhibiting some markedabilities. He had more than a fair amount of theological and other learning,as those things were counted in those days, and he was not withoutambition to acquire more. He knew the people from whom he had sprungand among whom he lived; he knew their life in every phase of it; he wasone of them; he learned to know his Church more and more. And he wasbeginning to find his way to Christ, beginning to discover that this Waydiverged from the way he had been going guided by his Church. The newWay called; more and more intensely he sought it. Luther’s own spiritualexperiences colored everything from these days forward.For the cloister life he had his Breviary for his daily devotions; when it washis privilege to say Mass, he had his Missal and the book with the Ordinaryof the Mass and the minute rubrical directions for its celebration, —possibly a Plenarium. If he was called upon for other priestly ministrations,he had the ritual governing the administration of such offices, and apenitential system which governed matters connected with theconfessional. He found, possessed and used, — was forced to, whether orno, — a vast system of worship, canonically established and ordered andwell-nigh in universal use. Normally an average priest’s life andministrations would seldom demand of him the exercise of anything out ofthis category: his office centered and expended itself in the administrationof the externals; seldom did “doctrine” appear save as related to andimbedded in the externals. That was not a matter of faith and life but ofpractice. Naturally this sort of thing made for just what existed, atremendous over-emphasis of the means used mechanically by anunthinking priesthood. What chance for incitement to thought or warmthof spirituality when almost every external contact was canonicallygoverned and every action definitely ordered? Under such circumstanceseven the glory and beauty and spirit of the means would fade away andleave an emptied form slavishly, mechanically performed. Fortunately,there always are exceptions.One cannot imagine Luther using Missal or Breviary or Ordinesperfunctorily. His reaction against a slavish recitation of the daily Hours,