“When we are dead,” he says for instance, “where will others be found to take our place unless there are schools? For the sake of the Churches we must have Christian schools and maintain them.”[42]—“When the schools multiply, things are going well and the Church stands firm.”[43]—“By means of such cuttings and saplings is the Church sown and propagated.”—“The schools are of great advantage in that they undoubtedly preserve the Churches.”[44] “Hence a reformation of the schools and universities is also called for,” so he writes in a memorandum,[45] immediately after having declared, that “it is necessary to have good and pious preachers; all will depend on men who must be educated in the schools and universities.”[46] For this reason, viz. on account of the preparation they furnished, he even has a kind word for the schools of former days. He recalls to mind, that, even in Popery “the schools supplied parsons and preachers.” “In the schools the little boys learnt at least the Our Father and the Creed and the Church was wonderfully preserved by means of the tiny schools.”[47]—Of a certain hymn he remarks, that it was “very likely written and kept by some good schoolmaster or parson. The schools were indeed the all-important factor in the Church and the ‘_ecclesia_’ of the parson.”[48] _Luther’s Educational Plans_ When, in his exhortations, Luther so warmly advocated the study of Latin and of languages generally, he was merely keeping to the approved traditional lines. Although he values ancient languages chiefly as a means for the better understanding of Scripture, he is so prepossessed in their favour in “worldly matters” that he even praises Latin at the expense of German. He is particularly anxious that Latin works should be read; among themselves the boys were to speak Latin. Recommending the study of tongues, he says: “If we make such a mistake, which God forbid, as to give up the study of languages, we shall not only lose the Gospel but come to such straits as to be unable to read or write aright either Latin or German.” The education of earlier days had not only led men away from the Gospel owing to the neglect of languages, but “the wretched people became mere brutes, unable to read or write either Latin or German correctly, nay, had almost lost the use of their reason.” It was statements such as these which drew from Friedrich Paulsen the exclamation: “Hence Christianity and education, nay, even sound common sense itself, all depend on the knowledge of languages!”[49] Well founded as were Luther’s demands for a Latin education, yet we find in him a notable absence of discrimination between schools and schools.