Lord Selborne, an English hymnologist, remarks on Luther’s hymns, “Homely and sometimes rugged in form, and for the most part objective in tone, they are full of fire, manly simplicity, and strong faith.”
Luther wrote thirty-eight hymns. Twelve of them were based on Latin hymns, among others, “Veni, Redemptor gentium,” “Veni, Creator Spiritus,” “O Lux beata Trinitas,” and “Te Deum Laudamus”; four were rewritten pre-Reformation hymns; seven were versions of Latin psalms; six were paraphrases of other portions of Scripture, such as the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer; nine were original hymns.
Nine collections were issued by Luther, beginning with the “Achtlieder Buch,” the first evangelical hymnbook in the German language, issued in 1524. It contained but eight hymns, four by Luther, three by Paul Speratus, court chaplain at Koenigsberg, and one of unknown authorship. Later in the year it was increased to twenty-five hymns, bringing fourteen new hymns by Luther; it was called the “Erfurt Enchiridion.” During this year, 1524, he wrote twenty-one of his thirty-eight hymns. Five years later, 1529, he issued another hymnbook containing fifty-four hymns. The issue of 1553, seven years after his death, contained one hundred and thirty-one hymns. Three of these nine issues had prefaces, as noteworthy as those of Watts to his several books of psalms and hymns in formulating the principles of the new Christian hymnody.
Luther’s masterpiece, “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A mighty fortress is our God”), is based on the forty-sixth Psalm. It is one of the greatest hymns in the whole Christian hymnody, great in itself, great in its influence on the Protestantism of northern Europe. Ranke, the noted church historian, says: “It is the production of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in a consciousness that he was defending a divine cause, which could never perish.” Carlyle recognized its majesty, “a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmurs of earthquakes.” Calling up the inspiration it brought to the Protestant armies, German and Swedish, in the religious wars after the Reformation, Heine characterized it as “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.” It has been recognized as the national hymn of Protestant Germany.