the worthier clerics who hated but could, not break their bonds.  Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold:  Luther broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,—­freeing to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France, and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China:  without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition, still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still both spiritually and politically the mean vassals of an Italian priest instead of brave freemen under our English Queen.  Luther relit the well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it shines for him all the more gloriously to this hour:  Luther refreshed the gospel salt that had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener of good:  Luther, under God’s good grace and providence, has rescued the conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superstitious fears of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in this:  Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,—­for he has cleansed the real Augaean stable,—­more than any mythical William Tell,—­for he has ensured the boon of everlasting liberty, more to us than a whole army of so-called heroes in conquest, patriotism, or even local philanthropy,—­for the enemies he fought and vanquished were our spiritual foes,—­the country he opened to us is the heavenly one,—­the good-doing, he inaugurated is wide as the world, and shines an electric universal threefold light of faith, hope, and charity.”

    Luther.

    Written by request, for the four-hundredth anniversary of his
    birth.

    “Martin Luther! deathless name,
    Noblest on the scroll of Fame,
    Solitary monk,—­that shook
    All the world by God’s own book;
    Antichrist’s Davidian foe,
    Strong to lay Goliath low,
    Thee, in thy four-hundredth year,
    Gladly we remember here.

    “How, without thy forceful mind,
    Now had fared all human kind,—­
    Curst and scorch’d and chain’d by Rome,
    In each heart of hearth and home? 
    But for thee, and thy grand hour,
    German light, and British power,
    With Columbia’s faith and hope,
    All were crush’d beneath the Pope!