Richter says of Luther’s words, “His words are half-battles.” 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 was 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 specter, and it disappeared! The spot still remains there, a curious monument of several things. Any apothecary’s apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition in a scientific sense; but the man’s heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against hell itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists not on this earth or under it. Fearless enough! “The devil is aware,” writes he on one occasion, “that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable devils.” Of Duke George, of Leipsic, a great enemy of his, he said, “Duke George is not equal to one devil--far short of a devil! If I had business at Leipsic, I would ride into Leipsic, though it rained Duke Georges for nine days running.” What a reservoir of dukes to ride into!