started up, and called him back.

ancle that you have got up?"

"Stop, Sir. Was it all to see after my

"Yes, it was, I could not sleep for thinking of you."

"And you have never said a word of the way I have used you!"

"I do feel hurt with you, but I don't want to call you unkind while you are suffering as I am sure you are now."

The man was in an agony of shame and grief. All he asked was to be trusted again, when he should have recovered. He was freely trusted, and gave his generous friend no more anxiety on his behalf.

Captain Pillsbury is the gentleman who, on being told that a desperate prisoner had sworn to murder him speedily, sent for him to shave him, allowing no one to be present. He eyed the man, pointed to the razor, and desired him to shave him. The prisoner's hand trembled; but he went through it very well. When he had done, the Captain said, "I have been told you meant to murder me: but I thought I might trust you." "God bless you, Sir! you may," replied the regenerated man. Such is the power of faith in man!-Harriet Martineau's Retrospect of Western Travel.

MARTIN LUTHER.

A GREAT man arose. Martin Luther presides yet over modern history. Great he was, not only in the actions he did, but in his own intrinsic qualities. And in all manner of contradictions did he seem to have been born. The son of the very poorest people-his father a miserable miner, his grandfather and all his ancestors peasants of the like sort-he was reared in the depths of poverty, and struggled forward to the light out of an extremity of vilest hardship. He "bore the bag" at school, and he sang there, and in the streets, for assistance and support. But what of that? Truth did not desert him for it. There was no formality in Martin Luther. He could stand alone in the middle of the world. Law-student he was at the first, but an event very sudden and full of awe withdrew him from worldly studies. While yet only twenty years old he was walking with a friend in the University of Erfurt, when a thunderbolt darted out of heaven and struck down his companion dead at his feet. This seemed to Luther to have borne a mission from above; and from that instant, in which he thus saw eternity lying at his feet, law and all its matters, and indeed all other proceedings of the world, looked poor and mean, and insufficient for the cravings of his soul. He entered the order of Augustines, and became a pious and laborious monk. At the first, as he expresses it, he was in a sort of state of reprobation. But he began to study the Bible, and it happened to him to see the Pope! This was on a mission to Rome, when just as the natural loveliness of religion had broken in upon him, he beheld in this way the worst vices and corruptions of her ministers in the world. Yet he was silent. In truth, he now felt he had another concern to look after, for was there not his own soul to save? Now nothing was so admirable as the entire simplicity and modesty of him! The idea of reforming the church never entered his head. The living the life of a true man-that was his notion-and all else flowed naturally out of that. He saw that penances, and vigils, and the like, would not, and could not, work out salvation. It must be more hope in the Bible-it must be more faith in the Bible.

At this very time-in the memorable year 1517-Tetzel came to Wittemberg with a very famous set of indulgences for sale. Luther saw him enter his own church, and offer in exchange for sundry pieces of money what were called "indulgences," from "Christ's holy lord the Pope," for the total remission of sins- pieces of paper with a red cross upon them, by which, for a consideration, the gates of hell were closed, and those of heaven and glory

eternally opened! Luther saw these things publicly sold in his own church to his own people, and then spoke out, and said "That shall not be." This was the beginning of the Reformation. Again observe the modesty of Luther. He set forward no grand plea or pretence of reforming the church. He shouted out nothing in big words about what he would do. There was no vanity in him. All he did was to deny, and refuse to tolerate, a falsehoodand so the Reformation began. Four years went on in this way, and then he was summoned to the Diet of Worms, to appear before all the princes and chiefs of the Roman Catholic faith. It was on the 17th of April, 1521-a day to be remembered for ever-that he arrived at the old city of Worms, to testify eternally to the truth, or to give it up utterly. A fearful enterprise! More than two thousand good people had gone out, on horse or foot, to meet him and dissuade him from advancing further. He said he had the safe conduct of the Emperor. Well, they answered, Huss had it too, but it turned out to be safe conduct into a prison six feet long, seven feet wide, and two feet eight inches high, from which he was carried out to be burned. "I cannot help it," Luther remarked, "I must go on. To Worms will I go, though the gates of hell and the powers of air were against me. Yea, to Worms will I go, though there were as many devils in the city as there are tiles on the roofs of the houses." He went accordingly, and was asked to recant what he had written, and he answered that he could not. Whatever there was of intemperate expression in his writings he would, indeed, recant; but the doctrine of them was God's truth, and he durst not recant that. "Here I stand," he said. "I can do no other. It is impossible to admit anything that is against the conscience; God be my help. Amen." And there and then, upon that very spot, was the Reformation consummated. A poor man stood up before the princes of the world and said that; and all the world rose up and said, "Yes; it is right, that thing which you have said."

And never stood up a truer-hearted, a better, or a greater man than he who so appeared before the Diet of the German empire. In his face might be read the various elements of his character. A coarse, rugged, plebeian face it was, with great crags of cheek bones-a wild amount of passionate energy and appetite! But in his dark eyes were floods of sorrow; and deepest melancholy, sweetness, and mystery, were all there. Often did there seem to meet in Luther the very opposite poles in man's character. He, for example, of whom Richter had said that his words were half battles-he, when he began first to preach, suffered unheard of agony! "Oh, Dr. Staupitz, Dr. Staupitz," said he to the vicar-general of his order, "I cannot do it! I shall die in three months. Indeed, I cannot do it!" Dr. Staupitz, a wise and considerate man, said upon this, "Well, Sir Martin, if you must die you must-but remember that they need good heads up yonder too. So preach, man, preach-and then live or die as it happens." So Luther preached and lived and he became indeed one great whirlwind of energy, to work without resting in this world-and also before he died he wrote four hundred books! books in which the true man was! for in the midst of all they denounced or cursed, what touches of tenderness lay! Look at the Table Talk, for example. We see in it that a little bird having alighted at sunset on the light bough of the pear tree that grew in Luther's garden, Luther looked up at it, and said, "That little bird, how it cowers down its little wings, and will sleep there, so still and fearless, though over it are the infinite starry spaces and great blue depths of immensity! Yet it fears not; it is at home. The God that made it too is there." The same gentle spirit of lyrical admiration is in other passages of his Books. Coming home from Leipsic in the autumn season, he breaks forth into loving wonder at the fields of corn. "How it stands there," he says, "erect on its beautiful taper stem, and bending its golden head, with bread in it-the bread of man sent to him yet another year!" Such thoughts as these are as little windows, through which we gaze into the interior of the serene depths of Martin Luther's soul, and see visible -across its tempests and clouds--a whole heaven of light and love. He

might have painted-he might have sung-could have been beautiful like Raphael, great like Michael Angelo.

As it was, the extremes of energy and modesty met in his active spirit. Perhaps, indeed, in all men of genius one great quality strongly developed might force out other qualities no less. Here is Luther-a savage kind of man as people thought him-a Wild Orson of a man-a man whose speech was ordinarily a wild torrent that went tearing down rocks and trees-and behold him speaking like a woman or a child. But no sentimentalist was he! A tolerant man, but with nothing of sentimental tolerance. He went to the real heart of the matter. When his reforming associates made vast fuss about some surplice that somebody or other wanted to wear, he ended the matter with a “What ill can a surplice do to us? Let him have three surplices if he will. That is not our religion." Nothing of what is commonly called cant, or pride, or ambition, was in Luther. In his modesty, certainly, there was an indomitable pride. It was this that made him not higher than the lowest man with a soul, nor yet lower than the highest. Thus, when he was threatened with the anger of "Duke George" if he went to Leipsic, he made answer that he had no business at Leipsic, but if he had, nothing on earth should prevent him. If it rained Duke Georges for nine days running, there he would go. Well, and this man, who thought and acted in this way, passed a whole life of suffering! He was a deeply melancholy man. More labour had fallen upon him than he could rightly bear, and it was in vain that he prayed to be released; he toiled and sorrowed on. Even with Satan himself the evil principle of the world-was he destined to hold high argument. Men would laugh at that, and a cheap game, indeed, was ridicule; but be it recollected that in Luther's days God and Devil were equally real; and that he thought he was from the first, as when he had that vision of the crowded house-tiles of the old city of Worms, a man selected to fight with devils. Well, then, he sat alone one night; he was translating the twentythird Psalm, and, pondering on its deep significance; he had sate fasting for two days, when the Devil rose and stood before him and opened the famous dialogue, accusing Luther of crimes, and threatening him with hell, and terrifying him to recant; all which the Christian hero put an end to at last by taking up his ink-bottle and flinging it at the Devil. The mark made by the ink upon the wall is shown to this day;-and a memorable spot, truly, is that!-a spot that may mark at once the greatness and the poverty of man ; -the record of a delusion which any doctor's or apothecary's 'prentice could explain nowadays; but also of a courage that could rise against what seemed to be the bodily impersonation of darkness and despair, and of enmity to good. No braver man than Luther ever appeared in Europe.

From a Report of a Lecture by Thomas Carlyle.

Penal Laws.-As ten millions of circles can never make a square; so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood. It were to be wished then, that instead of cutting away wretches as useless, before we have tried their utility, (and thus) converting correction into vengeance, it were to be wished that we tried the restrictive arts of government, and made the law the protector, and not the tyrant of the public. We should find that creatures, whose souls are held as dross, only wanted the hands of a refiner; we should then find that wretches now stuck up for long tortures, lest luxury should feel a momentary pang, might, if properly treated, serve to sinew the state in times of danger; that, as their faces are like ours, their hearts are so too; that few minds are so base, as that perseverance cannot amend; that a man may see his last crime without dying for it; and that very little blood will serve to cement our security.-Goldsmith.

318

Oft at the churchyard gate,

Scanning that unhewn stone thereby,
Paused we to muse upon the fate
Of him to whom that brand of shame
And wordless epitaph had given
The interest of a mighty name,
A mystery that must be riven
By vagrant Curiosity-

Who, heedless of the letter'd tomb, will stare
At that strange monument:-"Who lieth there?"

Who rests beneath that stone?

That unform'd, melancholy Thing,
With wreaths of yellow mosses strown;
Lone 'mid those little heaps of green,
Even as a broken spirit furl'd

In its own thoughts, heart that has been
Its own hopes' grave, o'er which the world
Trampleth, in scorn of suffering;

Despairing heart that maketh scorn its guest,
Girding the strong one like a poison'd vest.

Who lieth there? Such doom
Haply was his, the occupant

Of yon strait cell: no deeper gloom,
Despite the massive roof, is there,

Than lurketh 'neath the daisied turf:-
But of his fate? what shape did wear
The features of his Life, that Serf
Of Destiny the dominant?

Oh! when will Destiny unlatch the door

Of Love's sure home to earth's unhoused poor?

Who sleeps beneath that stone,

Accursed in its loneliness?
Little of his sad course is known,
And of its goal-but rend the veil !
His was an outcast's name, and his
A felon's doom; yet earnest wail
Hung drooping o'er his bier: I wis
Few know unpitied wretchedness;—
And there were who arraign'd his punishment,
Holding the proof of crime incompetent.

Yet bore he an ill name

For dissolute habits; he had worn
A soldier's trammels, and he came
Unto this spot, his early home,

A vagabond and runaway,

For covert and support, to some

Who yet were kindred: men did say,

These things too much in mind were borne;

That, like a curse, they clung to him, and bow'd
His head even to the dust-thus deem'd the crowd.