For twenty more busy years he was destined to work as an educator of his nation. During this time his greatest work, the translation of the Bible, was completed, and in this work, which he accomplished in coöperation with his Wittenberg friends, he acquired a complete control of the language of the people--a language whose wealth and power he first learned to realize through this work. We know the lofty spirit which he brought to this undertaking. His purpose was to create a book for the people, and for this he studied industriously turns of phrases, proverbs, and special terms which made up the people's current language. Even Humanists had written an awkward, involved German, with clumsy sentences in unfortunate imitation of the Latin style. Now the nation acquired for daily reading a work which, in simple words and short sentences, gave expression to the deepest wisdom and the best intellectual life of the time. Along with Luther's other works, the German Bible became the foundation of the modern German language, and this language, in which our whole literature and intellectual life has found expression, has become an indestructible possession which, in the gloomiest times, even corrupted and distorted, has reminded the various German strains that they have common interests. Every individual in our country still rises superior to the dialect of his native place, and the language of culture, poetry, and science which Luther created is still the tie which binds all German souls in unity.