The princes followed Luther's counsel, and the peasants' uprising was put down with relentless severity. Thus ended in blood the movement which promised to make the church the champion of social freedom. It seems, as we look back upon it, a tragical issue. What these poor people asked for was really only a crumb or two from the table of the lords of privilege; they thought that the brotherhood taught by Jesus warranted them in expecting it, and they seemed to hope that the church of Jesus Christ, when purified from formalism and superstition, would support that expectation. It must have been a bitter disappointment to them. And it is a sorrowful reflection that the great hero of the Reformation fell, in this matter, so far below the Christian ideal. Doubtless his strenuous repugnance to revolutionary methods was a good trait in his character; but surely revolutions are sometimes justifiable, and it looks, at this distance, as though this one was as nearly so as most of those that have succeeded. If Luther had put his great heart and mighty will at the head of this movement which he confessed to be most righteous, it might have succeeded, and Protestantism, in its beginnings, might have made a firm alliance with those whom Jesus Christ recognizes as his representatives in the earth. But it was hard for him to believe that the poor of this world, chosen to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, were stronger allies than the German nobles. He thought that he must have the support of the princes, and he turned his back on Christ's poor. It was a melancholy conclusion, not only for Luther but for the cause which he represented. "It is probable," says Dr. Lindsay, "that he saved the Reformation in Germany by cutting it free from the revolutionary movement, but the wrench left marks on his own character as well as in the movement he headed." One wonders whether success won at such cost is worth having; and whether, if he had gone down with the peasants in their struggle for freedom and opportunity, the sacrifice would not have brought a larger and fairer Reformation.