" They may be
called so. The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and
conquer; that he was a right piece of human Valor. No more valiant man, no
mortal heart to be called _braver_, that one has record of, ever lived in
that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valor. His defiance of the
"Devils" in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken.
It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of
the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this
turns up; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some. In the
room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show
you a black spot on the wall; the strange memorial of one of these
conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms; he was worn down with
long labor, with sickness, abstinence from food: there rose before him
some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid
his work: Luther started up, with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at
the spectre, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there; a curious
monument of several things.
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