most memorable in the life of Luther, as well as one of the grandest spectacles of the age.  I need not dwell on that exciting scene, where, in the presence of all that was illustrious and powerful in Germany, this defenceless doctor dares to say to supremest temporal and spiritual authority, “Unless you confute me by arguments drawn from Scripture, I cannot and will not recant anything ...  Here I stand; I cannot otherwise:  God help me!  Amen.”  How superior to Galileo and other scientific martyrs!  He is not afraid of those who can kill only the body; he is afraid only of Him who hath power to cast both soul and body into hell.  So he stands as firm as the eternal pillars of justice, and his cause is gained.  What if he did not live long enough’ to accomplish all he designed!  What if he made mistakes, and showed in his career many of the infirmities of human nature!  What if he cared very little for pictures and statues,—­the revived arts of Greece and Rome, the Pagan Renaissance in which he only sees infidelity, levities, and luxuries, and other abominations which excited his disgust and abhorrence when he visited Italy! He seeks, not to amuse and adorn the Papal empire, but to reform it; as Paul before him sought to plant new sentiments and ideas in the Roman world, indifferent to the arts of Greece, and even the beauties of nature, in his absorbing desire to convert men to Christ.  And who, since Paul, has rendered greater service to humanity than Luther?  The whole race should be proud that such a man has lived.

We will not follow the great reformer to the decline of his years; we will not dwell on his subsequent struggles and dangers, his marvellous preservation, his personal habits, his friendships and his hatreds, his joys and sorrows, his bitter alienations, his vexations, his disappointments, his gloomy anticipations of approaching strife, his sickened yet exultant soul, his last days of honor and of victory, his final illness, and his triumphant death in the town where he was born.  It is his legacy that we are concerned in, the inheritance he left to succeeding generations,—­the perpetuated ideas of the Reformation, which he worked out in anguish and in study, and which we will not let die, but will cherish in our memories and our hearts, as among the most precious of the heirlooms of genius, susceptible of boundless application.  And it is destined to grow brighter and richer, in spite of counter-reformation and Jesuitism, of Pagan levities and Pagan lies, of boastful science and Epicurean pleasures, of material glories, of dissensions and sects and parties, as the might and majesty of ages coursing round the world regenerates institutions and nations, and proclaims the sovereignty of intelligence, the glory and the power of God.

AUTHORITIES.

Ranke’s Reformation in Germany; D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation; Luther’s Letters; Mosheim’s History of the Church; Melancthon’s Life of Luther:  Erasmi Epistolae; Encyclopaedia Britannica.