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Dürer were his personal friends and coworkers. On hearing of the death of the latter, he wrote: "It is painful, no doubt, to have lost him. Let us rejoice, however, that Christ has released him by so happy an end from this world of misery and of trouble, which soon, perhaps, will be desolated by greater troubles still. God has been unwilling to suffer him, who was born for happiness, to see such calamities. May he rest in peace with his fathers!" (April, 1528.)

LUTHER PRAYING AT THE SICK-BED OF MELANCTHON.

We have seen Luther on a sick-bed, and his friends grieving beside him; here we find him by the side of the suffering

Melancthon, raising the almost broken spirit of the sick man with the powerful words of life. Melancthon had suddenly fallen sick at Weimar, while on his way to the monastery at Hagenau. Presentiments of death had accompanied him thither; and a mental affliction, which undermined his strength, threatened the speedy dissolution of the almost exhausted powers of life; his delicately strung mind was tormented by the bitterest pain that can assail a poor mortal; he was at war with himself, for his conscience could not find rest from the reproach that he had not resisted more heroically the desires and demands of the Landgrave of Hesse, and had thus, it might be said, sanctioned,

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in part at least, a public slight offered to the evangelical Church.

At the call of the elector, Luther and Kreuziger came to him: the former saw with terror the corpselike form of his friend, the failing eyes, the fleeting sense. "God preserve me!" he cried; "how has the devil destroyed this organon!" and turning to the window, he poured out his anxious soul in the boldest and most glowing prayer. Words passed through his soul and crossed his lips which, coming from another mouth, might be condemned as blasphemy, but which in him arose from the very depth of a sublime confidence in God, and from an unconditional faith in the Scriptures. "This time I besought the Almighty with great vigor; I attacked him with his own weapons, quoting from Scripture all the promises I could remember, that prayers should be granted, and said that he must grant my prayer, if I was henceforth to put faith in his promises.' He then took the hand of the sick man, saying, Be of good courage, Philip, thou shalt not die; although the Lord might see cause to kill, yet wills he not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should turn to him and live! God hath called the greatest sinners unto mercy; how much less then will he cast off thee, my Philip, or destroy thee in sin and sadness! Therefore do not give way to grief-do not become thine own murderer; but trust in the Lord, who can kill and bring to life-who can strike and heal again." Melancthon would rather have passed away in sleep to eternal peace, than have returned to earthly strife; but the spiritually powerful words of Luther recalled him, "No, no, Philip; thou must serve the Lord our God still further!"

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In the picture he is represented surrounded by his children and friends practicing the first evangelical church-melodies under the direction of the electoral chapelmaster, John Walther. To the left stands the cantor, to the right Mathesius.

"I have," relates Walther, "sung many a delightful hour with him; and have often observed how our beloved friend became more and more cheerful as we sang, and never grew weary nor had enough of it. He has himself composed the chants to the Epistles and Gospels, has sung them to me, and asked my opinion. He kept me three weeks at Wittemberg, until the first German mass had been chanted in the parish church. I attended it, and afterward took a copy of this first German mass with me to Torgau, that I might present it to the elector.

"At table, as well as afterward, the doctor sang sometimes; he also played the lute; I have sung with him; between the songs he introduced good words."

In the preface to his first collection of sacred songs and psalms he says that they had been set for four voices, because he wished " that the young people, who ought at all events to be instructed in music and other proper arts, might be rid of their improper love-songs, and learn something good and instructive instead; and to find pleasure in that which is good, as it beseemeth young people."

He was an enthusiast for music. "Music is one of the finest and most magnificent of God's gifts. Satan hates it. It dispels temptations and evil thoughts; the devil cannot hold out against it." Luther being entertained (December 17th, 1538) in the house of a musical family, who played to him to his great delight, he bursts out with, "If our Lord grants us such noble gifts in this life, which is but filth and misery, what will it be in the life everlasting? This is a foretaste." "Singing is the best exercise; it has no concern with the word.

Therefore do I rejoice that God has refused to the peasants (alluding, no doubt, to the peasants in revolt) so great a gift and comfort. They do not understand music, and listen not to the word." He one day said to a harp-player,

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it that we have now-a-days so many fine things of a worldly kind, and nothing but what is cold and indifferent of a spiritual? (and he repeated some German songs.) I cannot agree with those who despise music, as do all dreamers and mystics." I will ask the prince to devote this money to the establishment of a musical academy." (April, 1541.) On the 4th of October, 1530, he writes to Ludovic Senfel, a musician of the court of Bavaria, to ask him to set the In pace in id ipsum to music: "The love of music overpowers my fear of being refused, when you shall see a name which, no doubt, you hate. Tis same love also gives me the

hope that my letters will involve you in no disagreeables. Who could reproach you on their account, even were he a Turk? . After theology, no art can be compared with music."

LUTHER'S JOYS OF SUMMER IN THE BOSOM OF HIS FAMILY, AND HIS ORDINARY DINNER-GUESTS.

THE artist here presents to us Luther's summer pleasures in the circle of his family; and at the same time calls attention to those habitual guests at his table, to whom (as indicated by the young man who is writing behind Luther) we owe the noting down of his table-talk.

LUTHER SINGING AT HOME.

imps rave and roar, I shall laugh at him, and admire and enjoy, to the Creator's praise, God's blessings in the gardens." He writes to Spalatin in 1526: "I have planted my garden and built a well, both with success. Come to me, and thou shalt

A garden-scene could not indeed be omit-garden-seeds for him: "If Satan and his ted in a series of pictures, memorials of the man whose heart ever opened in the free air, in the sight and enjoyment of nature; who gladly observed and admired the creation with his pious, thoughtful, and poetical eye. He wrote to a friend who procured be crowned with roses and lilies!"

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word; how great that is!-He said, and beautiful still. when the old world shall it was so!"

His profoundly contemplative mind, in its heartfelt enjoyment of nature, looked upon creation as the divine symbolic expression of the Invisible and Highest. He compared the Bible, for instance, to a beautiful forest, "in which there is no tree at which my hand has not knocked." Again, he said on a fine spring day (1541) to Justus Jonas, in that tone of mind of mingled melancholy and undefined longing, which sometimes overpowers us amid the joys of spring: "If there were neither sin nor death, we might be satisfied with this paradise. But all shall be more

have been renewed, and a new spring shall open and remain forever."

LUTHER'S WINTER PLEASURES.

UPON the pleasures of summer follow those of winter, the Christmas festival; and the garden which now delights Luther's eyes are his children, whom he looked upon as God's greatest blessing. He expressed this one day to his friend Justus Jonas, who admired the branch of a cherrytree which hung over the table: "Why do you not consider this still more in your children, the fruits of your body, and who are more beautiful and noble creatures of

LUTHER'S WINTER PLEASURES.

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