panied by his three sons, he started a third time (January 23d, 1546.) His Katherina saw him depart with a sorrowful heart, as if she had a presentiment that she should never see him again, at least not otherwise than in his coffin. In vain he sought to cheer her in his letters by gay and grave remarks: "Read St. John and the Little Catechism, my beloved Kate, for thou seemest to fear for thy God as if he were not almighty, and could not create ten Dr. Martins, if the one old one were drowned in the Saale." "Do not trouble me with thine anxieties; I have a better protector than thee and all the angels. He lieth in the manger, or clings to the breast of the Virgin, but sitteth also at the right hand of God our Father Almighty. Therefore rest in peace. Amen."

He had escaped death in crossing the Saale during a flood, (January 28th,) that he might depart this life a few weeks later at the very place where he had entered it, at Eisleben. At the frontiers of Mansfeld he was received by the counts with a great retinue he went there to reconcile the brothers and other relations who were at issue among themselves about their worldly possessions. This task was a most painful one for him. "In this school," he says, one may learn why the Lord in his Gospel calls riches thorns."

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LUTHER'S DEATH.

AN eventful great life, of which the results are incalculable, approaches its end; the heart stands still, that had beaten so warmly and faithfully for his people, for Christianity, and for the gospel. During the last years of Luther's life, his enemies often spread reports of his death; with the addition of the most singular and tragic circumstances. To refute these, Luther had printed in 1545, in German and Italian, a pamphlet, entitled Lies of the Goths touching the Death of Dr. Martin Luther. "I tell Dr. Bucer beforehand, that whoever, after my death, shall despise the authority of this school and this Church, will be a heretic and unbeliever; for it was here first that God purified his word and again made it known. Who could do anything twenty-five years since? Who was on my side twenty-one years ago?" 'I often count and find that I approach nearer and nearer to the forty years, at the end of which I believe all

this will end. St. Paul only preached for forty years; and so the Prophet Jeremiah and St. Augustin. And when each of these forty years had come to an end, in which they had preached the word of God, it was no longer listened to, and great calamities followed."

The aged electress, when he was last at her table, wished him forty years more of life. "I would not have heaven," said he, "on condition that I must live forty years longer. . . . I have nothing to do with doctors now. It seems they have settled that I am to live one year longer; so that I won't make my life a torment, but, in God's name, eat and drink what I please."—"I would my adversaries would put an end to me; for my death now would be of more service to the Church than my life." (February 16th, 1546.) The conversation running much on death and sickness, during his last visit to Eisleben, he said, "If I return to Wittemberg, I shall soon be in my coffin, and then I shall give the worms a good meal on a fat doctor." Two days after this he died, at Eisleben.

Luther often said that it would be a great disgrace to the pope were he to die in his bed. "All of you, thou pope, thou

devil, ye kings, princes, and lords, are Luther's enemies, and yet you can do him no harm. It was not so with John Huss. I take it that there has not been a man so hated as I for these hundred years. I, too, hate the world. In the whole round of life, there is nothing which gives me pleasure; I am sick of living. May our Lord then come quickly, and take me with him. May he, above all, come with his day of judgment. I would stretch forth my neck so that he hurled his thunderbolt and I were at rest.

Luther had arrived, the 28th January, at Eisleben, and, though already ill, he joined in all the conferences until the 17th February. He preached also four times, and revised the ecclesiastical statutes for the earldom of Mansfeld. The 17th, he was so ill that the counts prayed him not to go out. At supper he spoke much of his approaching end, and some one asking him if he thought we should recognize each other in the other world, he replied that he thought so. On returning to his chamber with Master Cælius and his two sons, he drew near the window, and remained there a long time in prayer.

After that he said to Aurifaber, who had just arrived, "I feel very weak, and my pains seem to increase:" on which they administered some medicine to him, and endeavored to warm him by friction. He spoke a few words to Count Albert, who had come to see him, and then laid himself down on the bed, saying, "If I could only sleep for half an hour, I think it would refresh me." He did sleep without waking for an hour and a half. This was about eleven o'clock. When he awoke, he said to those in attendance, "What, still sitting up by me: why do you not go to rest yourselves?" He then commenced praying, and said with fervor, "In manus tuas commendo spiritum meum; redemisti me, Domine, Deus veritatis. (Into thy hands I commend my spirit; thou art my Redeemer, O God of truth.") He also said to those about him, " All of you pray, my friends, for the gospel of our Lord, that his reign may be extended, for the Council of Trent and the pope threaten it greatly." He then slept again for about an hour, and when he awoke, Doctor Jonas asked him how he felt, "O my God," he replied, "I feel myself very bad. I think, my dear Jonas, that I shall remain here at Eisleben, where I was born." He then took a few steps about the room, and laid himself down again on the bed, where they covered him with soft cushions. Two doctors, and the count with his wife, then arrived. Luther said to them, "I am dying I shall remain at Eisleben." And Doctor Jonas expressing a hope that the perspiration would perhaps relieve him

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No, dear Jonas," replied he, "it is a cold and dry sweat, and the pain is worse." He then applied himself to prayer, and said, "O my God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, thou the God of all consolation, I thank thee for having revealed to me thy well-beloved Son, in whom I believe; whom I have preached and acknowledged; whom I have loved and honored; and whom the pope and the ungodly persecute. I commend my soul to thee, O my Saviour Jesus Christ! I shall leave this terrestrial body; I shall be taken from this life; but I know that I shall rest eternally with thee." He repeated three times following, "In manus luas commendo spiritum meum; redemisti me, Domine veritatis." Suddenly his eyes closed and he fainted. Count Albert and his wife, as well as the doctors, used their

utmost efforts to restore him to life, in which they with difficulty succeeded. Doctor Jonas then said to him, "Reverend father, do you die in constant reliance on the faith you have taught?" He replied distinctly, "Yes," and fell asleep again. Soon after he became alarmingly pale, then cold, and drawing one deep breath, he expired.

In the picture his two sons kneel beside their dying parent; his faithful friend and companion, Dr. Justus Jonas, addressed his last words to him; Michael Cœlius prays for the preservation of the beloved life; the physician, Simon Wild, holds the now useless medicine-bottle in his hand; to the right stand Count Albracht and his wife, for whose sake the weary warrior had undertaken this troublesome winter journey.

Below, Master Lukas Fortenagel, from Halle, is kneeling at the coffin of the departed, whose portrait he is about to take. Above, the swan prophesied by Huss, rises anew from the flames.

LUTHER'S OBSEQUIES.

ONCE more we stand at Wittemberg before Luther; but the eloquent lips are silent, the eye is closed which once he raised with holy confidence to the emperor and the country, to the pope and the cardinals; he is silent forever in the Church to which he had affixed thirty years before a word that was to shake the world. His body had been carried, as ordered by the elector, in solemn procession from Eisleben to Wittemberg, that a place of rest might be prepared for it in the electoral chapel. Next to the coffin stands his friend Melancthon, who had during twenty-eight years fought indefatigably by his side. On the morning of the 19th of February he had, deeply affected by the news of the death, pronounced in his lecture-room, with few but emphatic words, the testimony of history and of the Protestant world upon the departed: "The doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of faith in the Son of God has not been discovered by any human understanding, but has been revealed unto us by God through this man, whom he had raised up." On the day of the funeral also, after Dr. Bugenhagen had preached, he once more bore witness to the value of the labors of the departed: "His doctrine does not consist in rebellious opinions

made known with violence; it is rather an interpretation of the divine will and of the true worship of God, an explanation of the Scriptures, a sermon of the word of God, namely, the gospel of Christ. Now he is united with the prophets, of whom he loved to talk; now they greet him as their fellow-laborer, and with him thank the Lord who collects and maintains his Church."

Three times has the centenary festival of his death been celebrated in Wittemberg; but still Germany and the German Evangelical Church await a second Luther. To many has been given the power to develop in an equal or a higher degree some one single feature of his sublime being; but where find a second time that inexhaustible depth of faith, with the same irresistible command of the popular language, united to the same strength of will and readiness for action? where this blessed absorbing in God, with the power of ruling mankind? where find once more that union of qualities, the non-existence of which as thus united has constituted for centuries the hereditary want of Germany? Even to-day we still ask this at the grave of the German reformer.

WE close this series of articles with a beautiful engraving of Campbell's picture— "Martin Luther's first view of the Bible." Luther, it will be remembered, entered the University of Erfurt in 1501, being then in his eighteenth year. It was here, while in quest of knowledge, that the grand episode of his life occurred-the opening of his mind to the blessed truths of Christianity as they exist in the Bible. Here he first distinguished himself, and formed the principles which had afterward so much effect upon the Christian world.

Every moment that could be spared from his academical labors, the young student spent in the university library. Books were as yet hard to be had, and access to the treasures brought together in that vast collection was to him a great privilege. After having been two years at Erfurt, and being then about twenty, he happened one day to be turning over a number of books in the library, to see who their authors were, when a volume, which he opened in its turn, struck his attention; until that hour he had seen nothing resembling it; he reads the title—it was a Bible!

a book which was then seldom to be met with, and almost unknown. It excited his liveliest interest; he was utterly astonished to find that the book contained something beyond the fragments from the gospels and epistles, which were selected by the Church, for people to read at public worship on each Sunday in the year. He had always thought that in these was comprised the whole word of God; but here he found pages, chapters, entire books, of which he had never an idea before! His heart beat high as he held in his hand the whole of that Scripture which is divinely inspired. With an eagerness and interest that no words could express, he ran over all those leaves of the Book of God. The first page that caught his attention, told him the story of Hannah and the boy Samuel, and in reading it he could with difficulty control his emotions. That child, lent by his parents to the Lord for the whole of his life; the song of Hannah, in which she declares that the Lord raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar out of the dunghill to set him among princes; the boy Samuel growing up in the temple before the Lord-the whole history-the whole word then discovered, made him experience feelings before unknown to him. He went home with a full heart, thinking, "O that God would give me such a book to be my own!" Luther did not yet know Greek or Hebrew. There is little probability of his having studied those tongues during the first two or three years of his university course, and it was a Latin Bible that had thrown him into such a transport of joy. He was not long in returning to his treasure in the library; he read and read again; and with mingled surprise and delight he still returned to read. It was then that the first dawn of a truth, entirely new to him, gleamed upon his mind.

What a blessing to mankind was this simple but wonderful discovery of the poor student of Erfurt! Throughout all time, wherever the light of the gospel shines, the name of Martin Luther will be revered. When monarchs, warriors, and statesmen are forgotten, and the laurels they won shall have faded away, the narrative of his glorious deeds and selfsacrifices will be related with the same enthusiasm that they are now, and, we trust, with equally good results.