Monod, in his book la Vie, and a letter printed inthe work: Adolphe Monod: I,. Souvenirs de sa Vie, 1885, p. 433.

It is needless to remind you once more of the admirable congruity of Protestant theology with thestructure of the mind as shown in such experiences. In the extreme of melancholy the self thatconsciously is can do absolutely nothing. It is completely bankrupt and without resource, and noworks it can accomplish will avail. Redemption from such subjective conditions must be a free giftor nothing, and grace through Christ's accomplished sacrifice is such a gift.

"God," says Luther, "is the God of the humble, the miserable, the oppressed, and the desperate,and of those that are brought even to nothing; and his nature is to give sight to the blind, to comfortthe broken-hearted, to justify sinners, to save the very desperate and damned. Now that perniciousand pestilent opinion of man's own righteousness, which will not be a sinner, unclean, miserable,and damnable, but righteous and holy, suffereth not God to come to his own natural and properwork. Therefore God must take this maul in hand (the law, I mean) to beat in pieces and bring tonothing this beast with her vain confidence, that she may so learn at length by her own misery thatshe is utterly forlorn and damned. But here lieth the difficulty, that when a man is terrified and castdown, he is so little able to raise himself up again and say, 'Now I am bruised and afflicted enough;now is the time of grace; now is the time to hear Christ.' The foolishness of man's heart is so greatthat then he rather seeketh to himself more laws to satisfy his conscience with her, he would sanction everything at oncehe answered.. 'If I live,' saith he, 'I willamend my life: I will do this, I will do that.' But here, except thou do the quite contrary, exceptthou send Moses away with his law, and in these terrors and this anguish lay hold upon Christ whodied for thy sins, look for no salvation. Thy cowl, thy shaven crown, thy chastity, thy obedience, thy poverty, thy works, thy merits? what shall all these do? what shall the law of Moses avail? If I,wretched and damnable sinner, through works or merits could have loved the Son of God, and socome to him, what needed he to deliver himself for me? If I, being a wretch and damned sinner,could be redeemed by any other price, what needed the Son of God to be given? But because therewas no other price, therefore he delivered neither sheep, ox, gold, nor silver, but even God himself,entirely and wholly 'for me,' even 'for me,' I say, a miserable, wretched sinner. Now, therefore, Itake comfort and apply this to MYSELF.

And this manner of applying is the very true force and power of faith. For he died NOT to justifythe righteous, but the UN-righteous, and to make THEM the children of God."[131]

[131] Commentary on Galatians, ch. iii. verse 19, and ch. ii. verse 20, abridged.

That is, the more literally lost you are, the more literally you are the very being whom Christ'ssacrifice has already saved. Nothing in Catholic theology, I imagine, has ever spoken to sick soulsas straight as this message from Luther's personal experience. As Protestants are not all sick souls,of course reliance on what Luther exults in calling the dung of one's merits, the filthy puddle ofone's own righteousness, has come to the front again in their religion; but the adequacy of his viewof Christianity to the deeper parts of our human mental structure is shown by its wildfirecontagiousness when it was a new and quickening thing.

Faith that Christ has genuinely done his work was part of what Luther meant by faith, which sofar is faith in a fact intellectually conceived of. But this is only one part of Luther's faith, the otherpart being far more vital. This other part is something not intellectual but immediate and intuitive,the assurance, namely, that I, this individual I, just as I stand, without one plea, etc., am saved nowand forever. [132] Professor Leuba is undoubtedly right in contending that the conceptual beliefabout Christ's work, although so often efficacious and antecedent, is really accessory and nonessential,and that the "joyous conviction" also come by far other channels than this conception.Itistothejoyousconvictionitself,t(can) he assurance that all is well with one, that hewould give the name of faith par excellence. "When the sense of estrangement," he writes,"fencing man about in a narrowly limited ego, breaks down, the individual finds himself 'at onewith all creation.' He lives in the universal life; he and man, he and nature, he and God, are one with her, he would sanction everything at oncehe answered. .