nowhere any pillars on which the Master-builder had poised this lofty frame; yet the heavens did not fall in, and the firmament stood quite fast. But there are some who search for such pillars, and would anxiously grasp and feel them, and because they cannot do this, fear and tremble lest the heavens should fall. The other spectacle I saw was a great dense cloud floating over us, so charged and burdened that it might be likened to a mighty sea, and yet I could perceive nothing on which it rested, no coffer in which it was enclosed; and yet it fell not, but, greeting us with a black frown, passed on. When it had passed, a rainbow appeared-a weak, thin, and slight bow, which soon vanished into the clouds. Now, there are some who think more of the dense cloud than of the dim and slender bow, and are in great terror lest the clouds should pour down an eternal deluge. I write to your worship in this familiar yet serious style, because I rejoice to hear that your courage has not failed. Our rainbow, indeed, appears a frail hope on which to rest, and their clouds are dark and lowering; but in the end it will be seen who will gain the victory."* In this confident manner Luther encouraged his friends, and feared for himself no evil. It seems a grand and heroic spectacle this solitary man in the old fortress of Coburg, looking out upon nature and the world with such a calm clear trust in God, interested in the proceedings at Augsburg, yet feeling, with the fulness of a living faith, how much greater was Providence than the negotiations of princes,-and with what mysterious safety the wheels of the world's progress were revolv* Briefe, vol. iv. pp. 128, 129.

ing, whatever the poor pride of man might counsel or devise. The jackdaws and rooks, as they convened in circling crowds in front of his window, seemed to him not an unfitting emblem of the "magnanimous kings, dukes, and nobles," consulting over the affairs of the realm at Augsburg. As he watched their movements, and saw them " flap their wings and strut with mimic. majesty, not clad in royal attire, but glossy black or dark-grey, having eyes of ashy paleness, and singing the same unvarying song, diversified only by the weaker tones or more discordant notes of the young or inexperienced," he thought of the great princes and lords busying themselves with pompous and weak inconsequence over the movements of the world, which they vainly imagined within their control. What a fresh, living glance was that which looked from these high and lonely windows upon the heavens above, and the joyous creatures of nature around, in comparison with those worn and beclouded eyes of statecraft and priestcraft which sought to measure, from the limits of their own weak vision, the interests and destinies of man!

On from this point the life of Luther narrows greatly in incident, and we cannot pause over any special features it presents. The establishment of the Protestant Creed at Augsburg, in 1530, may be said to constitute the highest point of the German Reformation. The years after this are years of reactionary sorrow more than anything else, with no abatement of activity, but with no further hearty and favourable advance. Luther himself had for some time ceased to entertain any further projects of reform; and after this period his conservative tendencies gathered always

greater force. The wild excitements of the period, and especially the terrifying invasion of the Turks and the dreadful excesses of the Anabaptists, which broke out afresh in the north in the year 1536, under the leadership of John of Leyden, all tended to sadden and moderate his spirit. The imminence of war between the Emperor and the Protestant princes, bound together by the Smalkald League, was a further source of grief and anxiety to him; and to crown the whole, the affair of the Landgrave of Hesse, in 1536, proved a humiliating and dark trial, which, though he bore it more cheerfully than Melancthon (whom it nearly killed), left, as his letters plainly show, its gloomy shadow upon his temper and the prospects of the cause so dear to him. "Who is not now ruffled by the folly of Luther?" he wrote in bitterness of spirit to a friend who asked him to be present at his marriage, while excusing his absence. Altogether these last years were years of sadness, so far as the public aspects of the reformer's life were concerned. It was well for him that he had a dear home and a happy wife and children, in whose society he solaced himself amidst all his troubles: "My little Magdalen, and my little John too, pray for me," he says. "I love my Catherine-I love her more than I do myself, for I would die rather than any harm should happen to her or to her children." The light of his cheerful German hearth burned undimmed to the last, and rose only brighter amid the darkness of his outer life.

The circumstances of his death were befitting his noble life. On the 23d of January 1546, he left his loved Wittenberg on a mission of conciliation between

the Counts of Mansfield, the lords of his native soil, who had long been at variance with one another, but had offered to submit their dispute to the reformer's arbitration. For some time previously his mind had been filled with thoughts of death, and, on his journey, presentiments of his approaching end haunted him. "When I come back from Eisleben, I will lay me in my coffin: the world is weary of me, and I of the world: pray God that he will mercifully grant me a peaceful death." The prayer was granted. On the 14th of February he wrote to his "dear Ketha" that his work of peace was all but concluded. Two days after, he was overheard in earnest prayer while standing, as he was wont to do, in the window. The next day he was unwell, and the idea of death again came vividly to his mind. "I was born and baptised here in Eisleben; what if I am likewise to die here?" He was still able, however, the same day to dine and sup with his friends, and somewhat enjoy himself. During the night his illness increased. He suffered from oppression of the chest and severe pains. He was joined by his friends in alarm, a soothing draught was administered to him, and he murmured, "If I could fall asleep for half an hour, I think it would do me good." Sleep came for a little, but did not bring him relief. During the whole of the next day, his friends, and his two sons who were with him, watched by his bedside as he gradually sank. "Do you die in the faith of Christ and the doctrine you have preached?" he was asked by Dr Jonas, as consciousness was departing. He answered "Yes," closed his eyes and fell asleep; and then, with one deep sigh, slept his last. By the com

mand of the Elector his body was brought in solemn procession from Eisleben to Wittenberg, and laid in the church whose walls had so often resounded with his eloquence. Melancthon pronounced an oration over his tomb; and sobs and tears from the congregated thousands,-men, women, and children,-who had loved the great monk, mingled with the words of his admiring and faithful friend.

The character of Luther, as presented in our rapid survey, is especially distinguished for its broad and massive manliness. Everywhere and pre-eminently Luther is a man with a heart alive to all true human feeling, and burning with the most earnest and passionate aspirations after human good. When we remember that he was trained a monk, and was in fact a monk till he was about forty-two years of age-that books rather than men were his chief study during the most fresh and formative period of life-it is truly wonderful to recognise in him such a breadth and intensity, such a variety and richness of human interest and affection. Scholastic in the spirit of his theology, sacerdotal to the last in many of his convictions, he was of all the reformers the least technical and narrow and ecclesiastical in feeling. His genial and vivifying humanity broke through all conventional bounds, brushed them aside, and more than anything else, except the spiritual truth which he preached, brought him near to the heart of the German people. Had he been less of a man and more of a scholar, less animated by a common and popular sympathy, and more animated by mere intellectual impulse, he could never