Both took their share in the troublesome and unpretentious work of educating and instructing the children. Luther rightly extols such labours as great and meritorious in God’s sight, just as he frequently describes the seemingly lowly callings, which, in the eyes of the world, are of no account, e.g. marriage, as ennobled by God when performed by pious Christians in accordance with His Will and to the benefit of body and soul. (Above, p. 142 f.) By means of a fairly well-ordered division of the day he found time, in the intervals of the demands made by his domestic duties, to devote long hours to the multifarious and exhausting labours of which we know something. Self-denial in the interests of the cause he had espoused, renunciation of ease and enjoyment so as better to serve an end for which he was impassioned, disregard even of the pressing claims of health--all this is not easily to be matched in any other writer of eminence and talent occupying so historic a position in public life. Luther, plagued as he was by extraneous difficulties, with his professorship, his pulpit and his care for souls, seemed to revolve the wheel of time. Without unheard-of energy and a fiery, overmastering enthusiasm for the cause his achievements would indeed be incomprehensible. The Catholic, however, when contemplating these traits so far as they redound to Luther’s credit must deeply regret, that such energy was not employed in a well-ordered amelioration of the ecclesiastical system on the basis of the true Christian doctrine and in harmony with the authority divinely appointed. If he considers these favourable sides of Luther’s character with befitting broad-mindedness, his grief can only deepen at the action, characterised by such perversity and contradiction, by which Luther sought utterly to destroy the existing Church and her faith as revealed and handed down. CHAPTER XXVI LUTHER’S MODE OF CONTROVERSY A COUNTERPART OF HIS SOUL 1. Luther’s Anger. His Attitude towards the Jews, the Lawyers and the Princes WHAT above all strikes one in Luther’s mode of controversy is his utter unrestraint in his scolding and abuse. Particularly remarkable, especially in his later years, is the language which he has in readiness for two groups of foes, viz. for Jews and Lawyers; then, again, we have the invective which, throughout his career, he was fond of hurling at such Princes and scholars as did not submit to his teaching.