In spite of the fact that these songs were the natural outcome of a period of spiritual and political conflict, and give evidence of this fact in almost every instance, yet they are less dogmatic and controversial than might be expected, for Luther, bitter and intolerant as he often was, understood the requirements of church song well enough to know that theological and political polemic should be kept out of it. Nevertheless these hymns are a powerful witness to the great truths which were the corner-stone of the doctrines of the reformed church. They constantly emphasize the principle that salvation comes not through works or sacraments or any human mediation, but only through the merits of Christ and faith in his atoning blood. The whole machinery of mariolatry, hagiolatry, priestly absolution, and personal merit, which had so long stood between the individual soul and Christ, was broken down. Christ is no longer a stern, hardly appeasable Judge, but a loving Saviour, yearning over mankind, stretching out hands of invitation, asking, not a slavish submission to formal observances, but a free, spontaneous offering of the heart. This was the message that thrilled Germany. And it was through the hymns of Luther and those modelled upon them that the new evangel was most widely and quickly disseminated. The friends as well as the enemies of the Reformation asserted that the spread of the new doctrines was due more to Luther’s hymns than to his sermons. The editor of a German hymn-book published in 1565 says: “I do not doubt that through that one song of Luther, ‘Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g’mein,’ many hundred Christians have been brought to the faith who otherwise would not have heard of Luther.” An indignant Jesuit declared that “Luther’s songs have damned more souls than all his books and speeches.” We read marvellous stories of the effect of these hymns; of Lutheran missionaries entering Catholic churches during service and drawing away the whole congregation by their singing; of wandering evangelists standing at street corners and in the market places, singing to excited crowds, then distributing the hymns upon leaflets so that the populace might join in the paean, and so winning entire cities to the new faith almost in a day. This is easily to be believed when we consider that the progress of events and the drift of ideas for a century and more had been preparing the German mind for Luther’s message; that as a people the Germans are extremely susceptible to the enthusiasms that utter themselves in song; and that these hymns carried the truths for which their souls had been thirsting, in language of extraordinary force, clothed in melodies which they had long known and loved.