peror

Kate," are some of his titles; and again, in a more circumlocutory humour, " for the hands of the rich dame of Zuhlsdorf, Doctress Catherine Luther:" sometimes. simply and familiarly "Kate my rib." Nowhere does his genial nature overflow more than in these letters, running riot in all sorts of freakish extravagance, yet everywhere touched with the deep mellow light of a healthy and happy affection. What a pleasant glimpse and sly humour in the following:-"In the first year of our marriage my Catherine was wont to seat herself beside me whilst I was studying; and once not having what else to say, she asked me, 'Sir Doctor! in Russia is not the maître d'hôtel the brother of the Margrave?' And again, in the last year of his life, and when he is on that journey of friendliness and benevolence from which he is never to return to his dear household, the old spirit of wild fun and tender affection survives. He writes to his "heart-loved housewife Catherine Lutherinn, Doctoress Zulsdorferess, Sow Marketress, and whatever more she may be, grace and peace in Christ, and my old poor love in the first place."

Catherine is said by Erasmus to have been very beautiful. Her portraits taken by Luke Cranach represent her with a round full face, straight nose, and full tender eyes. Luther himself was greatly taken by

* "Puellam mire venustam." If the engraving in Audin's Life of the Reformer, vol. iii., is to be considered faithful, Catherine can scarcely be said to have deserved the appellation of Erasmus. Any beauty she had must, at least, have been of a very broad, blond, Teutonic cast-the beauty of round, full, and child-like features, rather than of graceful and winning intelligence. Likely enough, however, there is some caricature in the engraving,-so perverse is the dramatic caricature of M. Audin's touch everywhere throughout his interesting but singularly untruthful history.

the likeness, and threatened to send it to the Council of Mantua, to see if it would not influence the holy fathers there assembled to determine in favour of the marriage rather than the celibacy of the clergy.

Of this marriage there were born six children to Luther, and his relations to his children open up still deeper veins of love and kindness than any we have contemplated. Especially his eldest son Johnny and his daughter Magdalen seem to have been dear to his heart; and there is nothing more pathetic in any life than his wild yet resigned grief by the deathbed of the latter, who was taken from him in her fourteenth year. "I love her very dearly," he cried; "but, dear Lord, since it is thy will to take her from me, I shall gladly know her to be with thee." And as he saw her lying in her coffin he said, "Thou darling Lena, how happy art thou now! Thou wilt arise again and shine as a star. I am joyful in the spirit, yet after the flesh I am very sad. How strange it is to know so surely that she is at peace and happy, and yet to be so sad."

We have ever before us," again he says, "her features, her words, her gestures, her every action in life, and on her deathbed, my darling, my all-beautiful, all-obedient daughter. Even the death of Christ cannot tear her from my thoughts, as it ought to do."

The birth of his eldest son was an event of immense interest to the reformer. "I have received," he writes to Spalatin, "from my most excellent and dearest wife a little Luther, by God's wonderful mercy. Pray for me that Christ will preserve my child from Satan, who, I know, will try all that he can to harm me in him.”* * Briefe, vol. iii. p. 116.

And then again, in answer to Spalatin's good wishes, and in reference to his own hopes of the same character, “John, my fawn, together with my doe, return their warm thanks for your kind benediction; and may your doe present you with just such another fawn, on whom I may ask God's blessing in turn. Amen."* As the little fellow grows and is about a year old, he writes to Agricola, "My Johnny is lively and strong, and a voracious, bibacious little fellow."+

It was to this son that he wrote, when stationed at Coburg during the Diet of Augsburg, that most beautiful and touching of all child-letters that ever was written. "Mercy and peace in Christ, my dear little son. I am glad to hear that you learn your lessons well and pray diligently. Go on doing so, my child. When I come home I will bring you a pretty fairing. I know a very pretty pleasant garden, and in it there are a great many children, all dressed in little golden coats, picking up nice apples, and pears, and cherries, and plums, under the trees. And they sing and jump about and are very merry; and besides, they have got beautiful little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles. Then I asked the man to whom the garden belonged, whose children they were, and he said, 'These are children who love to pray and learn their lessons, and do as they are bid;' then I said, 'Dear sir, I have a little son called Johnny Luther; may he come into this garden too?' And the man said, 'If he loves to pray, and learn his lessons, and is good, he may; and Philip and Joe too.' And so on in the same tender and beautiful strain, mixing the highest counsel and Briefe, vol. iii. p. 119. + Ibid., p. 173.

richest poetry with the most child-like interest. Only a very sound and healthy spirit could have preserved thus fresh and simple the flow of natural feeling amid the hardening contests of the world, and the arid subtleties of theological controversy.

In the year 1527, two years after his marriage, Luther fell into a dangerous sickness and general depression of spirits, from the latter of which he was only fully aroused by the dangers besetting the German nation, and the very integrity of Christendom itself, by the threatened advance of the Turks. This was in the year 1529; the same year in which, on the invitation of the Landgrave of Hesse, he engaged in his famous conference with Zwingle, Bucer, and Ecolampadius at Marburg. The Landgrave, who, whatever may have been his personal failings, was always one of the most warm and zealous, and withal energetic and intelligent, supporters of the Reformation, was hopefully eager of establishing a union between the Swiss and German reformers. Zwingle and his party shared in his eagerness, and were willing to concede much to Luther if only he would heartily extend to them the right hand of fellowship. In the matter of the sacrament of the Supper, however, Luther was not to be moved. His mind here remained shut against all argument; and although he is supposed to have admitted, under the name of Consubstantiation, a modification of the Catholic tradition, he adhered substantially to that tradition in all its significance to the last he held to the literal reality of the Divine presence in the Eucharist, and would recognise nothing

but rationalism, or, as he called it, mathematics, in the reasonings of Zwingle and his companions.

The conference was held in an inner compartment of the castle of the Landgrave. Many who had come from distances to be present were disappointed in gaining admission. Carlstadt had requested to be allowed to attend, but Luther would on no account consent: he remembered, no doubt, his interview with him at Jena, and the violence with which he had obtruded upon him his contradictions on this very subject. The Prince opened the audience on the morning of the 2d of October, accompanied by certain of his counsellors and courtiers, and the professors of the University. The numbers who were present vary considerably in the respective accounts-the Swiss say about twenty-four, the German about fifty. A table covered with a velvet cloth separated the disputants; on the one side of it sat Luther and Melancthon, on the other Zwingle and Ecolampadius. Before the discussion commenced, Luther is said to have taken a piece of chalk and written in large characters upon the velvet cloth the words, "This "This is my body"-not a very hopeful be

ginning!

The chancellor, Feige, on the part of the Prince, exhorted the disputants to approach the subject in a spirit of fairness and moderation. Luther, thereupon, after some preliminary objections to the general views of the Swiss, which were overruled, took up the keynote he had already started, and protested against the views of his opponents on the ground that the words of Scripture were explicit and conclusive, "This is my body." Ecolampadius urged in reply that these

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