"Luther's doctrine was altogether in favor of civil liberty, and in Germany it tended to support constitutional rights against the encroachments of the imperial power. Luther's moral courage, his undaunted firmness, his strong convictions, and the great revolution which he effected in society, place him in the first rank of historical characters. The form of the monk of Wittenberg, emerging from the receding gloom of the middle ages, appears towering above the sovereigns and warriors, statesmen and divines of the sixteenth century, who were his contemporaries, his antagonists, or his disciples."-Cyclopedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

The Founder of Bible Societies.

In the reformation times small Lutheran Tract and Bible Societies were started in many parts of Europe. In 1555 the first Lutheran Bible Society was organized in Wuerttemberg under Peter Paul Vergerius, Primas Truber, and Hans Ungnad, for the purpose of giving to the Hungarians, Wends, and Croats the Bible in their mother-tongue. The Lutherans, first championing the cause of giving the Sacred Scriptures to the people in the vernacular, became the pioneers in organizing the first societies to circulate them.

While in London one place I especially desired to visit and that was the large building of the British and Foreign Bible Society. When we ascended the massive stairs there appeared a large oil painting, the largest in the building. It stood alone as it covered nearly the entire wall. It was not a scene from nature but the full stature of a man. Not of a noted Englishman, as one might suppose, but of a foreigner. We had seen on the continent many statues and paintings of the German Reformer, but never did we see a finer painting of him, nor one in a more becoming significant place than this painting here at the very entrance to the greatest Bible Society in the world. There he stood as we see him everywhere with a single book in his hands, the holy Bible, and his eyes and head turned toward heaven in prayer that its central truths might be faithfully taught and defended. Luther knew that the Bible, "like a diamond, casts its luster in every direction; like a torch, the more it is shaken the more it shines; like a healing herb, the harder it is pressed, the sweeter is its fragrance." He was really the founder of Bible societies.

"Luther was ordained to present his nation with the written Word. That same God who had relegated St. John in Patmos, that he might there write what he had seen, had shut up Luther in the Wartburg, that he should there translate His Word. This great labor, which it would have been difficult for him to take in hand in the distracting occupations of Wittenberg, was to set the new edifice on the solid rock, and, after the lapse of so many ages, recall Christians from scholastic subtleties to the pure and unadulterated fountains of redemption and salvation. The wants of the Church loudly called for this service, and Luther's deep experience had fitted him to render it. In truth, he had found in the faith, that rest for his own soul, which his fluctuating conscience and monkish prejudice had so long sought in merits and holiness of his own. The ordinary teaching of the Church, the theology of the schools knew nothing of the consolation which Faith gives: but the Scriptures set them forth powerfully, and it was in the Scriptures that he had discovered them. Faith in God's Word had given him liberty!"-D'Aubigne.

"He was not only the greatest, but also the most German, man in our history. The same man who could scold like a fish-wife could be soft too as a tender maiden. He was often wild as a tempest which uproots an oak, and then as soft as a zephyr which caresses a violet. He possessed something original, incomprehensible, miraculous, as we find it among all providential men. Glory to Luther! Eternal glory to the beloved spirit to whom we owe the saving of our most precious possessions, and on whose benefits we yet live. He gave to the spirit its body, namely, to the thought the word. In his translation of the Bible he created the German language, and the old book is an eternal source of renewal for our tongue. We owe to the grand Luther the spiritual freedom which the later literature needed for its development. He created for us the language in which the new literature could express itself. He himself also opens this literature; it begins with him; his spiritual songs are the first important memorials of it, and already

8

announce its particular character.

Whoever, therefore, proposes to speak about modern German literature must begin with Luther."-Heine. "No one before him, and no one for nearly two hundred years after him, saw that the German tongue must be sought for in the mouths of the people -that the exhausted expression of the earlier ages could not be revived; but that the newer, fuller and richer speech, then in its childhood; must at once be acknowledged and adopted. He made it the vehicle of what was divinest in human language; and those who are not informed of his manner of translating the Bible, can not appreciate the originality of his work, or the marvelous truth of the instinct which led him to it."-Taylor.

TRIBUTES OF SCHOLARS TO LUTHER'S WRITINGS.

When we read the innumerable and apparently extravagant tributes of praise so freely and heartily paid to Martin Luther from 1517 until the present time and, no doubt, will continue to be paid to him by all classes of thinkers, we do not fully appreciate that they are, either directly or indirectly, praise to his writings, by which "he being dead yet speaketh." It is not a statue of Luther in bronze, nor a picture of him in oil, nor a biography about him in a story, but the real living Luther himself in his own writings that is the best monument, picture and biography of the greatest church Father since the days of the Apostles. When, for example, the world praises Shakspeare and Goethe, Moses and Paul, their writings and So the tributes to Luther are the teachings of those writings are meant tributes to his classic writings. Luther and his writings are inseparable. "On reading the Table Talk of Luther," says Froude, "one ceases to wonder how this single man could change the face of Europe."

"It was upon him and his soul that the fate of Europe depended." -Schlegel.

"After the death of Luther, there was nothing new added to the work of the Reformation."-Bengel.

John Arndt quotes passages from Luther's sermons, which, he says, "we should plant as beautiful flowers in the pleasure garden of our hearts." "Among the books a pastor should have in his library, I should recommend first of all Luther's sermons."-Philip J. Spener.

"I have often wished that our preachers and laymen would read Luther's sermons more diligently, in which there is surely more spirit, power and life than in the modern refined sermons."-August Herman Francke.

"The sermons in Luther's Church Postil offer the erring full power for reformation, the weak a stimulating admonition, the godless a penetrating warning and the distressed a strong consolation."-J. G. Walch.

"The year 1522, saw 130 publications from the pen of the Reformer alone; and the following year, 183; whilst in the latter year, the total number of Roman Catholic publications amounted to but 20."-D'Augbigne. "His influence upon literature was greater than that of any other man Chester D. Hartrauft in the Library of the World's Best of his time." Literature-Ancient and Modern.

"Luther proved, through divine grace, the living influence of Christianity, as no preceding Doctor, perhaps, had ever felt it before. The Refor mation sprang living from his own heart, where God himself had placed it." -D'Aubigne.

Curtis, in Harper's Monthly, says that Luther "began the continuous organized movement of Protestantism and remains to this day the most comprehensive and satisfactory type of its spirit." Hanann writes, "We are not able to place ourselves even up to the point from which he started." Every school teacher and every scholar in the schools should know this, "Had there been no Luther, the German, English and American people would be thinking differently, would be acting differently, would be altogether different men and women from what they are at this moment."-Froude.

Says Fisher, "What is it in Luther that, after four hundred years are gone, stirs the heart of the Protestant nations? It is the great heart and the great mind united together." "His catechisms, his sermons, his printed comments on portions of Scripture, his spirit-stirring hymns, his controver sial treatises and tracts, productions, all of them, called out by the exigencies of the time, and the most effective for their ends, constitute a copious literature."

We do not deify Luther. "In such reverence do I hold Luther that I rejoice in having been able to find some defects in him; for I have, in fact, been in imminent danger of making him an object of idolatrous veneration. The proofs, that in some things he was like other men, are to me as precious as the most dazzling of his virtues."-Lessing.

"The seed which he planted has grown into a tree, which overshadows many nations, and Protestant Christianity, the world over, claims him as her hero. It is therefore right and fitting that we, dwellers in a continent unknown at Luther's birth, but glad sharers in the high results of his lifework, should study at this time the lessons of his life and character." -Smith.

"In consequence of the Reformation the rose garden of the Psalter also began to diffuse its odors as in the renewed freshness of a May morning, and German hymns, born again out of the Psalter, resounded from the shores of the Baltic to the foot of the Alps, with all the fervor of a renewed first love. Rendered into imperishable hymns, the old Psalms passed once more into the congregational singing of the German as well as the Scandinavian Lutheran Church."-Delitzsch.

The Restorer of the Polite Arts.

"The Reformation not only communicated a mighty impulse to literature, but served to elevate the arts."

"The Lutheran Church draws the fine arts into the service of religion, and has produced a body of hymns and chorals, which, in richness, power, and unction, surpasses the hymnology of all other churches in the world." -Schaff.

"From the days of Luther, the congregated worshippers have taken part in the singing; the Bible has been the great theme of their songs, and the impulse communicated at that period of the Reformation, has more recently produced those noble Oratorios, which have carried the art to its highest point of attainment."

"Poetry participated in the movement. In singing the praises of God, Christians were not willing to restrict themselves to simple renderings of ancient hymns. The souls of Luther and his contemporaries, elevated by faith to the most sublime contemplations, roused to enthusiasm by the dangers and struggles which incessantly threatened the infant Church, inspired by the poetry of the Old, and the hope of the New Testament, soon began to pour out their feelings in religious songs, in which poetry and music joined, and blended their most heavenly accents; and thus were heard reviving, in the sixteenth century, the hymns, which, in the first century soothed the sufferings of the martyrs. In 1523, Luther, as we have already said, consecrated it to commemorate the martyrs of Brussels; others of the children of the Reformation followed his example. Many were the hymns composed, and rapidly circulated among the people, and greatly did they contribute to arouse their slumbering minds. It was in this same year Hans Sachs composed the "Nightingale of Wittenberg". It represented the teaching that had been current in the Church for four centuries as a moonlight time of wandering in the deserts. But the nightingale proclaimed the dawn, and soaring above the morning mist, sang the praise of day."

Whilst lyric poesy was thus deriving from the Reformation its loftiest inspiration, satirical verses and dramas, from the pen of Hutten, Murner, and Manuel were attacking the most flagrant corruptions.

"It is to the Reformation that the great poets of England, Germany, and perhaps of France, are indebted for the highest flights of their muse."

"Painting was renovated, and as it were, hallowed by the universal movement which was then communicated to all the powers of man.”— D'Aubigne.

"The German, as a distinctive school, sprang from, and grew up with, the great Protestant movement under Luther (1483-1546,) which began about 1524. Luther introduced the Chorale, from which our modern hymntune is undoubtedly derived, and to Luther himself are attributed several fine compositions of this order. In 1524 a collection of chorales by J. Walther (1490-1555,) a friend of Luther, was published at Wittenberg under the immediate supervision of Luther himself."-Hunt.

"Old Hundred has been variously ascribed to Luther, to Goudimel and

to Guillaume Franc; all that is positively known concerning this immortal tune is that it was published about the year 1550."-Hunt.

"For many of the old tunes which are really and truly the heritage of the English and German nations we are indebted to the great religious movement of the sixteenth century under Luther, who, with the aid of Walther and Goudimel, published the first collection of chorals to words in the vernacular (1524.")-Hunt.

"Dr. Pick, who has given much study and research to this hymn (Ein Feste Burg,) has discovered over 175 different translations, nearly all of which are found in hymn books."-Lutheran Literature, Vol. 1, No. 3.

"As an eminently practical man, and well acquainted with the avenues to the human heart, he exerted himself to establish the study of music in all the communities founded on the evangelical creed. He believed that music was a gift of God: that its use was especially becoming in praises of its Author; but was also, by itself, of excellent value at all times. In the education, therefore, of all who followed him, he was careful to provide the means of exercising this divine art; and laid down a system of musical tuition, enjoined in every Lutheran parish school, which has continued in force throughout nearly three centuries. What fruit this seed has borne, all educated persons know. In Germany alone, of all countries, is music a common domestic friend, instead of being, as elsewhere, an outcast, a prostitute, or a mountebank. Its cultivation is thought no folly, its practice introduces no excess, and is exposed to no peculiar temptations; the whole land is filled with its cheerful voice, and with a grateful feeling of its value as a heavenly companion, amongst the cares of daily life. At the same time, its highest creations have silently grown, in that country, to a perfection elsewhere unknown. It is needless to name Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Bethoven; author of the greatest works that music has yet produced, and the genuine offspring of the soil on which Luther's powerful hand had cast the first seed."-Belcher's Religious Denominations in the United States.

Protestant and Evangelical

"We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." 2 Cor. 13:8. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32. This freedom works not against the truth, but for the truth. Those who know not the truth are too weak to do anything against it-against God, the God of truth.

The Protestant Reformation was destructive but also constructive. It is based on two great principles. The formal principal is that the Bible is our only infallible rule of faith and life. The material principle is that we are justified before God by faith in Christ without the works of the law. It rests upon the truth of the Bible and upon the life of faith in Christ.

Protestant and Evangelical are inseparably yoked together. Protestant without being Evangelical has no safe foundation, no definite program; Evangelical without being Protestant is untrue to itself and weak. Together they dominate individuals, families, communities and nations by one spirit, the spirit of truth and freedom.

The spirit of protest, of reformation, is the spirit of the Bible in the conflict between the good and the evil. The spirit of the Ten Commandments, of the writers of the Psalms, Proverbs and the Prophets, was a protest against sin within as well as without the Church. Hezekiah and Josiah did that which was right—right in the eyes of Jehovah-and purified the temple and were true reformers. The New Testament is also strong in protest. See the gentle, loving Saviour make a scourge of cords and drive out of the temple those who made it a house of merchandise, instead of a house of prayer. We see the two great apostles contending for the truth, Paul resisting Peter to the face. Yet in his last writings Peter called him "our beloved Paul," and said they agreed in their writings. They, like Christ, did much for the truth, as did the Christian martyrs following them. They suffered and died for the truth, and live; their enemies who worked against the truth, did nothing. the earth it shall rise again. seed of the Christian church.

Truth crucified is still truth, crushed to The blood of Christian martyrs became the God causes the wrath of man to praise him.

God is the author of the spirit of protest in the Bible, and in his true church. God has also planted the spirit of protest in human nature, in the conscience, which approves of the good and disapproves of the evil. It is to the human conscience that the reformers of the Bible and those since, appealed with the truth. Conscience and truth work well together. Wicklif appealed to Englishmen, Huss to Bohemians, Savonarola to Italians, Luther to Germans and Scandinavians, Zwingli to the Swiss Germans, Calvin to the French and Knox to the Scotch. These facts are enough to prove that the spirit of protest and reformation is universally human.

The Church of the West separated from the Church of the East which was the first division of Christendom, the Latin from the Greek; then the Church of the North of Europe separated from the Church of the South of Europe, the Teuton from the Latin. Thus we have the Christian Churches of the East, West and North, while Mohammedanism occupied the South, Arabia and Northern Africa, because a lifeless Christianity permitted it to do so. Constantinople, Rome, Wittenberg and Mecca were the centers of

the four religions.

Of the three types of christianity, the Greek, Latin and Teuton, the first two are 1900 years old, and the last 400 years. The Eastern or Greek type has 120 million adherents; the Western or Latin 273, and the Northern or Teuton type after only 400 years has 165 million adherents. If members who can read and write only are counted the Protestants are the strongest, for - nations, 50 to 80 per cent of whose population cannot read and write, should not be counted as Christian nations belonging to any Christian Church in this year of grace 1917. They are in the state of nature rather than of grace.

Each of the three members of the family of Christendom have had their family quarrels and have been divided by the spirit of protest and type of Gospel life. We are well acquainted with the two general divisions of Protestantism into the Evangelical Lutheran and the Evangelical Reformed and into Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists and Congregationalists, but know little of the divisions of the Catholic Church into Greek, Roman, Armenian, Gregorian, Catholic, Old Catholic, etc.

Contrary to the idea of some we wish to emphasize that Protestantism, lacking outward organized unity, is an inner unit in making the Bible our only rule of faith and life and in justification by faith in Christ without the works of the law, whether of Moses or of the Church or State. It protests against all teachings to the contrary. Protestantism in orgin and development is Evangelical.

Evangelical comes from the Greek word Evangelium, which means in plain English, Gospel. Gospel Protestants protest only on the basis of Gospel truth. The Gospel is good tidings that cause us to say with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me," by faith in him. Because of this Christ-life in us, we must have the spirit of Protestants. The spirit of Evangelical Protestantism stands for certain definite things everywhere, whatever name it bears. First of all, Protestantism stands for the Bible, Bible translation, Bible distribution, Bible societies, Bible reading, Bible teaching, Bible preaching, Bible protest, Bible literature in poetry, song, catechisms, theology and devotional writings. It appeals to every soul through the eye by the printed page. Luther and the Reformation marked an era in modern literature, appearing at the time of the invention of printing. (To be continued.)

WHAT WAS THE REFORMATION?

"The Reformation was not a revolution, seeking to overthrow the existing order of things, but a conservative movement, endeavoring to cleanse, purify and develop the Church. It was not simply a statement of a doctrine nor the assertion of a negative principle. It was a fresh revelation through the Bible that God is love and has loved the world with an infinite love. It was a re-discovery of the Gospel teaching that the just shall live by faith. From a moral point of view it was inward freedom. It liberated the consciences of men from the bondage of ecclesiastical tyranny. Intellectually it was the right of private judgement. The principle was laid down that every enlightened Christian has the ability and right to read and interpret the Bible for himself.”—J. R. E. Hunt.