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Preoccupied with household cares, and anxiety about his future family, he turned his thoughts to acquiring a handicraft. "If the world will no longer support us in return for preaching the word, let us learn to live by the labor of our own hands." Could he have chosen, he would no doubt have preferred one of the arts which he loved-the art of Albert Durer, and of his friend Lucas Cranachor music, which he calls a science inferior to theology alone; but he had no master. So he became turner. "Since our barbarians here know nothing of art or science, my servant Wolfgang and I have taken to turning." He commissioned Wenceslaus Link to buy him tools at Nuremberg. He also took to gardening and building. "I have planted a garden," he writes to Spalatin, "and have built a fountain, and have

from her convent; was twenty-four years | tremely poor.
of age, and remarkably beautiful. It ap-
pears that she had been previously at-
tached to a young student of Nuremberg,
Jerome Baumgartner; and Luther wrote
to him, (October 12th, 1524 :)-"If you
desire to obtain your Catharine von Bora,
make haste before she is given to another,
whose she almost is. Still she has not
yet overcome her love for you. For my
part, I should be delighted to see you
united." He writes to Stiefel, a year
after his marriage, (August 12th, 1526:)
"Catharine, my dear rib, salutes you.
She is, thanks to God! in the enjoyment
of excellent health. She is gentle, obedi-
ent, and complying in all things, beyond
my hopes. I would not exchange my
poverty for the wealth of Croesus."
Luther, in truth, was at this time ex-

succeeded tolerably in both. Come, and be crowned with lilies and roses." (December, 1525.) In April, 1527, on being made a present of a clock by an abbot of Nuremberg, "I must," he says, in acknowledging its receipt,-"I must become a student of mathematics in order to comprehend all this mechanism, for I never saw anything like it." A month afterward he writes: "The turning tools are come to hand, and the dial with the cylinder and the wooden clock. I have tools enough for the present, except you meet with some newlyinvented ones, which can turn of themselves, while my servant snores or stares at the clouds. I have already taken my degree in clockmaking, which is prized by me as enabling me to tell the hour to my drunkards of Saxons, who pay more attention to their glasses than the hours, and care not whether sun, or clock, or whoso regulates the clock, go wrong. (May 19th, 1527.) "You may absolutely see my melons, gourds, and pumpkins grow; so I have known how to employ the seeds you have sent me." (July 5th.)

Gardening was no great resource, and Luther found himself in a situation equally strange and distressing. This man, who governed kings, saw himself dependent on the elector for his daily food.

THE CONTROVERSY BETWEEN LUTHER AND ZWINGLI ON THE SACRAMENT.

TEN years earlier Luther had stood at Leipzic opposed to the principal and dexterous theological champion of the court of Rome; here, at Marburg, we find him opposing the spiritual head of the Swiss Reformation. Wittemberg and Zurich, Saxony and Switzerland, represented by their most distinguished professors, debated in the castle at Marburg, from the 1st to the 4th of October, 1529, upon the theological interpretation of the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and upon the words employed in instituting it.

The profound mystery of the sacrament of the Lord's supper, in its depth and power entirely beyond the range, and indeed opposed to the scholastic contro

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versy, became nevertheless the watch- his rash and criminal handling of God's word of party. word." (October 27th, 1527.) "What a fellow is that Zwingle, with his rank ignorance of grammar and dialectics, not to speak of other sciences!" (November 28th, 1527.)

Zwingli dreaded a physical interpretation; Luther, on the contrary, dreaded the evaporation of the spiritual element of the sacrament of the communion. One considered that he defended the cornerstone of evangelical Protestantism; the other the foundation of the Christian Church. On one side the cry was, "The spirit quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing!" the other side maintained the presence of the entire Christ.

Profound and insurmountable antitheses of religious thought and practice, defying the discriminating power of the human understanding!

In vain the Swiss sought to establish a cordial union, notwithstanding these differences, or rather rising above them. "There are no people on earth with whom I would more willingly be united than those of Wittemberg!" cried Zwingli in tears. "Ye have a different spirit from ours!" was Luther's implacable reply. "Conscience is a shy thing; therefore we must not act lightly in such great matters, nor introduce anything new, unless we have the distinct word of God for it. We deem, truly, that our opponents mean well; but it will be seen that their arguments do not satisfy conscience, as opposed to the meaning of the words, This is my body."

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Even a Christian and brotherly union was rejected. To-day," says Luther, "the Landgrave proposed that we should, although maintaining different opinions, still keep together as brethren and members in Christ. But we want not such brethren or members; let us, however, have peace and good-will!"

At other times he speaks with great severity of them. In 1527, he published a work against Zwingle and Ecolampadius, in which he styled them New Wickliffites, and denounced their opinions as sacrilegious and heretical. At length, in 1528, he said, “I know enough, and more than enough, of Bucer's iniquity to feel no surprise at his perverting against me my own published sentiments on the Christ keep you, -you who are living in the midst of these ferocious beasts, these vipers, lionesses, panthers, with almost more danger than Daniel in the lions' den." "I believe Zwingle to be worthy of a holy hate for

sacrament.

To the left of the picture, Melancthon and Ecolampadius are conversing; behind them, Philip of Hesse and Ulrich of Wurtemberg follow the conversation between Luther and Zwingli with extreme attention; to the right, several other theologians belonging to the two contending parties sit under the portrait of the peaceable Frederick the Wise.

ABOVE, LUTHER PRAYING. PRINCIPAL SCENE, THE PRESENTATION OF THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION, 1530.

THAT which had been heard thirteen years before at Wittemberg, on the 31st of October, 1517, like the voice of a watchman at midnight, was in full daylight, on the 25th of June, 1530, proclaimed at the court of the Bishop of Augsburg, before the emperor and the country, as the steadfast conviction of many thousand German hearts.

Melancthon, transformed at Augsburg into a partisan leader, and forced to do battle dayly with legates, princes, and emperor, was exceedingly discomposed with the active life with which he had been saddled, and often unbosomed his troubles to Luther, when all the comfort he got was rough rebuke: “You tell me of your labors, dangers, tears; am I on roses? Do not I share your burden? Ah! would to Heaven my cause were such as to allow me to shed tears!" (June 20th.) "May God reward the tyrant of Saltzburg, who works thee so much ill, according to his works! He deserves another sort of answer from thee; such as I would have made him, perchance; such as has never struck his ear. They must, I fear, hear the saying of Julius Cæsar: They would have it.' I write in vain, because, with thy philosophy, thou wishest to set all these things right with thy reason, that is, to be unreasoning with reason. Go on; continue to kill thyself so, without seeing that neither thy hand nor thy mind can grasp this thing." (30th June, 1530.) "God has placed this cause in a certain spot, unknown to thy rhetoric and thy philosophy-that spot is faith; there all things are inaccessible to the sight;

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and whoever would render them visible,
apparent, and comprehensible, gets pains
and tears as the price of his labor, as thou
hast. God has said that his dwelling is
in the clouds and thick darkness. Had
Moses sought means of avoiding Pharaoh's
army, Israel would, perhaps, still be in
Egypt.
If we have not faith,
why not seek consolation in the faith of
others, for some must necessarily have it,
though we have not? Or else, must we
say that Christ has abandoned us before
the fulfillment of time? If he be not with
us, where is he in this world? If we be not
the Church, or part of the Church, where
is the Church? Is Ferdinand the Church,
or the Duke of Bavaria, or the pope, or the
Turk, or their fellows? If we have not
God's word, who has? These things are
beyond thee, for Satan torments and weak-
ens thee. That Christ may heal thee is
my sincere and constant prayer!" (June
29th.) "I am in poor health.

But I despise the angel of Satan, that is
buffeting my flesh. If I cannot read or
write, I can at least think and pray, and
even wrestle with the devil; and then
sleep, idle, play, sing. Fret not thyself
away, dear Philip, about a matter which
is not in thy hand, but in that of One
mightier than thou, and from whom no one
can snatch it."

"Great is my joy," says Luther," to have lived till this hour, when Christ is proclaimed by such confessors, before such an assembly, through so glorious a confession! Now the word is fulfilled: 'I will speak of thy testimony also before kings.' The other also will be fulfilled: 'Thou hast not let me be put to shame;' for 'whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father who is in heaven."'"

In this spirit he comforted his friends with the most joyful confidence: “Ye have| confessed Jesus Christ; ye have offered peace, rendered obedience to the emperor, borne evil, have been covered with contumely, and have not returned evil for evil. To sum all, ye have worthily carried on the sacred work as it becometh his saints. Look up, and lift up your heads, for your deliverance is nigh!"

Being in the castle at Coburg-which, from a Sinai, he intended to make his Sion-Luther could only in the spirit and in prayer be present with his friends during the decisive hours at Augsburg.

"With sighs and prayer," he writes to Melancthon, "I am in truth faithfully by your side. The cause concerns me also, indeed more than any of you; and it has not been begun lightly or wickedly, or for the sake of honors or worldly good; in this the Holy Ghost is my witness, and the cause itself has shown it until now. If we fall, Christ falls with us-he, the ruler of the world: and though he should fall, I would rather fall with Christ than stand with the emperor. Christ is the conqueror of the world; that is not false, I know! Why then should we fear the conquered world, as if it were the conqueror ?"

The artist has grouped the Reformers to the left, and the Catholics to the right of the spectator. There stands Melancthon, with his careworn, thoughtful countenance, full of grief over the impending separation of the Churches; beside him, with hands folded in prayer, the elector, John the Constant; behind him, the margrave, George of Brandenburg; and, leaning on his sword, Philip of Hesse. Before the emperor stands the chancellor, Christian Baier, reading with a loud voice the evangelical confession. On the stairs in the background, the people are seen pushing in, and listening with attention. Above, in the Gothic arch, Luther is seen in prayer. In the lower compartment appear Luther's and Melancthon's coatof-arms, connected by a band, on which we read Luther's motto of those days, taken from his favorite Psalm: Non moriar, sed vivam, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord." Such was the presentiment of his soul regarding himself and his mission.

THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

THE members of the Evangelical Church had published their General Confession at Augsburg. It is true the source of this Confession could only be found in the Bible; and the Bible became their property only through Luther's translation.

"This is one of the greatest miracles," says Mathesius, "which our Lord has caused to be performed, by Dr. Martin Luther, before the end of the world, that he giveth us Germans a very beautiful version of the Bible, and explaineth to us his eternal divine nature, and his merciful will, in good intelligible German words.

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