His statements belittling his own powers and achievements, coming from a man whose apparently overmastering self-confidence had, from the beginning, prepossessed so many of his followers in his favour, afford a subject for psychological study. He seems the more ready to give full play to his confidence the more he feels his weakness face to face with the menace of danger, and the more he experiences in the depths of his soul the raging of doubts which he attributes to the devil. In the humble admissions he makes he never conceals how much he stands in need of assistance. He does not hide from himself the fact that he dreads outward troubles, and is deficient in strong and exalted virtue. But side by side with his faults, he is fond of gazing on and extolling God’s gifts in his person. His peculiar form of humility, his prayer and his trust in God find expression in certain utterances and experiences, on which no judgment can be passed until we have before us a larger selection of them, particularly of such as seem to be less premeditated. _Prayer and Confidence in God._ Luther’s strangely undaunted confidence and the personal nature of his reliance on God’s help form part of his mental physiognomy. He sees around him much distress and corruption and exclaims: “Alas, we are living outwardly under the empire of the devil, hence we can neither see nor hear anything good from without.” And yet, he proceeds in his usual forced tone, “inwardly we are living in the kingdom of Christ, where we behold God’s glory and His grace! For of Christ it is said: ‘Rule Thou in the midst of Thine enemies.’” “Hatred is our reward in this world.” “Our reward is excessive considering the insignificance of the service we render Christ. But what is the world, its anger, or its prince? A smoke that vanishes, a bubble that bursts, such is everything that is opposed to the Lord Whom we serve and Who works in us.” With these words, so expressive of his determination, he directs his trusted pupil, Conrad Cordatus, to enter courageously upon the office of preacher at Stendal in the March.[918] Again and again he seeks to reanimate his faith and confidence by calling to mind not merely God’s faithfulness to His promises, but also his own personal “sufferings” and “temptations,” the only escape from which, as he believed, lay in the most obstinate and presumptuous belief in his cause, and in the conviction that God was constantly intervening in his favour.