Thus it was with Luther. The first of these periods continued up to the day on which he posted his theses, the second until his return from the Wartburg, the third to his death and the beginning of the Schmalkaldic War. It is not the purpose of this sketch to give his entire biography, but to tell briefly how he developed and what he was. Much in his nature appears strange and unpleasing so long as he is viewed from afar; but this historic figure has the remarkable quality of becoming greater and more attractive the more closely it is approached, and from beginning to end it would inspire a good biographer with admiration, tenderness, and a certain good humor. Luther rose from the great source of all national strength, the freeholding peasant class. His father moved from Möhra, a forest village of the Thuringian mountains, where his relatives constituted half the population, northward into the neighborhood of Mansfeld, to work as a miner. So the boy's cradle stood in a cottage in which was still felt the old thrill of the ghosts of the pine wood and the dark clefts which were thought to be the entrances to the ore veins of the mountain. Certainly the imagination of the boy was often busy with dark traditions from heathen mythology. He was accustomed to feel the presence of uncanny powers as well in the phenomena of nature as in the life of man. When he turned monk such remembrances from childhood grew gloomier and took the shape of the devil of Scripture, but the busy tempter who everywhere lies in wait for the life of man always retained for him something of the features of the mischievous goblin who secretly lurks about the peasant's hearth and stable.