_Margaret Ziegler_. There has been a traditional belief that her name
was Margaret Lindeman. The mistake originated in confounding Luther's
grandmother, whose name was _Lindeman_, with Luther's mother, whose
name was _Ziegler_. Prof. Julius Köstlin, in his _Life of Luther_,
after a thorough examination of original records and documents, gives
this explanation.


WHAT THE REFORMATION WAS.

It is hard to take in the depth and magnitude of what is called The
Great Reformation. It stands out in history like a range of Himalayan
mountains, whose roots reach down into the heart of the world and
whose summits pierce beyond the clouds.

To Bossuet and Voltaire it was a mere squabble of the monks; to others
it was the cupidity of secular sovereigns and lay nobility grasping
for the power, estates, and riches of the Church. Some treat of it as
a simple reaction against religious scandals, with no great depths of
principle or meaning except to illustrate the recuperative power of
human society to cure itself of oppressive ills. Guizot describes it
as "a vast effort of the human mind to achieve its freedom--a great
endeavor to emancipate human reason." Lord Bacon takes it as the
reawakening of antiquity and the recall of former times to reshape and
fashion our own.

Whatever of truth some of these estimates may contain, they fall far
short of a correct idea of what the Reformation was, or wherein lay
the vital spring of that wondrous revolution. Its historic and
philosophic centre was vastly deeper and more potent than either or