then, as now, so common in German universities. Anon a bolt of lightning struck at his feet, and his somewhat naturally superstitious nature was aroused, and he resolved to become a priest instead of a lawyer. Accordingly, July 17th, 1505, he entered the Augustinian convent at Erfurt, and, after three years there, became a professor of philosophy at the University of Wittenberg. While at the convent he was noted for his devotion and self-denying labor. He was the sweeper, porter, beggar for the institution. Here he met with and studied for the first time a Bible, also the writings of St. Augustine, and Tauler's sermons, and was much helped to independent thinking by the commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, and the counsels of Johann Staupitz, the superior of the order of St. Augustine. In 1510 he made that memorable journey to Rome as a penitent seeking pardon for his sins, and was slowly climbing on his knees the steps of the Scala Santa, opposite the church of St. John Lateran, when he heard an inward voice saying to him, "The just shall live by faith," and, rising, he there resolved to give up the vain endeavor to secure pardon by outward ceremonials, and to take it as a gift of God received by faith alone. Returning to his professorship, he was made a Doctor of Divinity in 1512, and for eight years thereafter he remained within the fold of the Catholic Church, laboring to reform the glaring abuses he found therein.

When Pope Leo X. engaged in the task of rebuilding St. Peter's Church at Rome, that prelate aroused the faithful of his flock by promising indulgence to all who should contribute. toward the expense of rebuilding, and sent forth the Dominican monk, Tetzel, to dispense them in Saxony. Tetzel was uncommonly zealous both for the worthy father of his church, and for himself, and farmed out the indulgences promiscuously, even making an open sale of them as a quittance in full for future sins, as well as for those of the past, to the infinite disgust of the thoughtful, and the great scandal of the devout, among whom were the faculty of the University of Wittenberg. Ere long, Professor Luther protested against the indulgence sales

of the monk by his famous ninety-five Latin theses, which he proceeded to post up on the doors of the Schloss-kirche at Wittenberg, on October, 31, 1517, and sent a copy of them to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, begging him to put a stop to the scandalous practices of Tetzel.

Immediately a storm arose and raged. The infant press took up the strife, and it spread throughout Europe like wildfire. In 1519 Dr. Eck and Dr. Luther held a public debate at Leipsic on the question, and the excitement spread faster and waxed fiercer. Professor Luther was supported by his University, and protected from civil violence by the elector of Saxony, Frederick the Wise. Leo X. at first considered the matter as simply a quarrel between the monks of the Augustinian and Dominican orders, but in June, 1520, when better informed, he issued his bull of excommunication against the heretic Dr. Martin Luther unless he recanted within one hundred days. But the mediæval professor had more "spunk" than some of our modern religionists or even that eminent scientist, St. George Mivart, has had, and so he not only refused to recant, but openly burned the Pope's bull before the Elstergate of Wittenberg, December 10, 1520, in the presence of the students and faculty of that university.

Now the war raged hot and furious, and soon Europe was in the throes of the mightiest revolution it had ever known. The frightened spiritual hierarchs invoked the aid of the civil government against the daring heretic, and a few months after the Wittenberg escapade, the young German emperor, Charles V., summoned him for trial before the Diet of Worms. The friends of the young professor, knowing his life was now at stake, sought to persuade him not to attend the Diet. But with the heroic answer that though there were as many devils there as tiles on the roofs of the houses he would go, he set forth, and was greeted on his arrival at that city by some two thousand persons who sympathized with him, and escorted him to his lodgings. On entering the hall where the Diet was held, the old commander, Freundsburg, tapped him on the shoulder,

and kindly, warningly, said, "Monk, monk, thou art on a passage more perilous than any which I and many other commanders ever knew in the bloodiest battlefields. If thou art right, fear not, God will sustain thee."

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At the Diet he was confronted by the haughty and mighty dignitaries of the Roman Church, by the Emperor of Germany, with the barons, nobles, and grandees of his empire, and a vast concourse of spectators, and when called upon to recant what they called heresy, he proceeded boldly to defend his doctrine, and in his defense he announced on April 18, 1521, his evermemorable and ever-safe declaration: Unless I shall be refuted and convinced by testimony of the Holy Scriptures, or by public, clear, and evident arguments and reasons, I cannot and will not retract anything, since I believe neither the Pope nor the councils alone; both of them having evidently often erred, and contradicted themselves, and since it is neither safe nor advisable to do anything against the conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me! Amen!" The Diet pronounced the ban of excommunication of the empire against him, as the church had previously done, and thereafter he was an outlaw, both before the church and the civil government.

The agents of Frederick the Wise protected him, and for ten months secreted him, under an assumed name, in the castle of the Wartburg, near Eisenach, in Thuringia. But the horrors of the Peasants' War were abroad in the land, and the wild vagaries of some of the Anabaptists; and the to him strange and erratic preaching of his colleague, Carlstadt, induced him to come from his retreat, against the advice of friends, in order that he might rescue the child of religious freedom of thought from being strangled in its infancy. And thenceforth, amid many perils, through all those turbulent and epoch-making years, he both gave and received many a sturdy blow, and made and alienated many a friend. In June, 1525, he returned to one of the ancient practices of the Roman Church he had left, and, to the surprise alike of his friends and enemies, he

took to wife the ex-nun, Catherine Von Bora, in order, as he said, to please his father, to tease the pope, and to vex the devil, and continued thereafter to prize his "Katy above the kingdoms of France, or the state of Venice."

His habits, if contrasted with those of our modern times, would be considered rude and gross; but they were, like himself, the product of his age. He had a wonderful faculty of expressing, in the everyday speech of the people, the views he held. He lacked utterly the legislative faculty of John Wesley, and was far inferior to John Calvin and the Geneva reformers, both as a thinker and reasoner. He was impatient of contradiction, and of an imperious and overbearing spirit that he was never able to master, and he was mentally so limited that he could not willingly grant to others the right of conscience and of private judgment in religious things that he claimed for himself. He was often coarse in his thought and language, as were the times in which he lived. But he was emphatically a man of devotion, of faith, and prayer; and he lived in and with his Bible, as but few men have ever done. He put the energy of his being into his words and deeds, gave to the German race a translation of the Bible that is yet without an equal in that tongue, and which alone would immortalize his name. He compiled and wrote the catechisms of the church now called by his name. He compiled, translated, and wrote, books, tracts, and hymns, one of which last, the "Ein feste Burg ist Unser Gott," the famous war song of the Reformation, written in 1529, and based on the forty-sixth Psalm, is sung around the world by the men of all Protestant creeds. Though a fighter, and living in, and the child of, those times of blood and persecution, he came to his grave in peace, and has a name among the very chief of the world's reformers. A man of the people, his personal independence of character soon made him in those fierce, tempestuous times, a leader and spiritual ruler of the people; and to-day, after the lapse of three and a half centuries, no name is so revered by Germans the world over as the name of the once poor beggar boy, Martin Luther.

Importance of Self-Mastery.

V

REV. JAMES W. COLE, B.D.

ICE is only another name for weakness and decay. Ages have proved that virtue alone can give us strength and

life. Each person finds within himself, and everywhere

he goes, the eternal contrast and the eternal choice between good and evil. If he choose the good, then strength of body, of mind, of character, comes to him, and ultimately the highest success of which he is capable. If he choose evil, the one inevitable result is loss of power to do the best work of which he might be capable, and, sooner or later, a collapse of his physical and mental force, and, finally, failure. In the business world, a poor workman always diminishes profits. And for this reason wages must be paid out of the profits of one's business, otherwise they must be taken from the capital, which can mean but one thing, the destruction of all business.

In the commercial world it is found that profits go with quality, not quantity; the higher the quality, the greater the profits; unless, indeed, one is dealing wholly with the ignorant, or with children, or savages, incapable of appreciating quality. A small good painting, or sculpture, or work of art is worth immensely more in the world's markets than far larger ones that lack their quality. Merit, not space, determines the price and the profits. Again, the best produce and the best goods are found to bring the best prices, they being in the end the cheapest because they are the best. He, therefore, who would succeed in business must perforce not be a poor workman. Nor, if he be an employer, must he use such workmen if better ones can be had. Poor workmen cheapen products; hence, the