lost, and higher life shall fill the whole, making all one. A holier strength shall rescue the life of man from death. The floor and the roof of his beautiful house, the earth and sky, shall resound no longer his hopeless wail; a diviner joy shall come over him, brightening even the grave, as it opens the heavens. No tyranny now; for all shall freely serve. No anarchy now; for Truth shall reign. as king, and the life of its universal law shall be the Infinite Love. SERMON XII. THE WORD OF THE REFORMATION.* GAL. ii. 19. I THROUGH THE LAW AM DEAD TO THE LAW, THAT I MIGHT LIVE UNTO GOD. IF, among those who regard the Protestant Reformation as a fruit of the Divine Truth and a germ of human improvement, there were the readiness sometimes manifested to observe festivals and anniversaries, we should have hardly seen the last month pass without its sacred pomps. More than three centuries and a quarter since, its thirty-first evening may be considered as opening the first scene in the grand series of actions with which these centuries have been crowded, and of which, as we look forward to the future, we can scarce deem ourselves able to foresee the greater issues. Two singular facts, the one outward and public, the other inward and secret, the former a course of deeds, the latter a process of experience, - had conspired to bring this event to pass. During the pontificate of Leo the Tenth, the sale or grant of indulgences, it is well known, had become common * Delivered the first Sunday in November. in Europe. Between the defenders and the opposers of Rome, it is true, there has not been perfect agreement in regard to the efficacy ascribed to these indulgences. In Germany, however, their power to remit certain penalties supposed to be due to sin was certainly set forth in no measured language by Tetzel. The magnificent edifice denominated St. Peter's, at Rome, is not only monument of the genius which devised it, but assurance of the vast contributions which, among other things, the proclamations of indulgence secured. Whether intended or not by the rulers of the Church, it is probable, to say the least, that there were those, and those not a few, who hoped to escape, through the powers of the Church procured by these contributions, from the dreadful punishments which had been depicted as awaiting them, and to obtain the blessing, where they had feared the curse, of God. At any rate, minds dissatisfied with them have understood them to encourage this groundless hope. So stands it, this potent agency of ecclesiastical wealth and grandeur, during the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The world hears little of indulgences now; to us, they have passed into old history; with us, they are remembered but with the delusions and follies into which men have always seemed so prone to fall, misled and bewildered; among us, there may perhaps be those, far from untaught in better things, to whom the very word sounds strange and new. But the world has come to know Luther's story well. His is a name new to none, strange to none. Loved or hated, acknowledged as herald of dawning truth or rejected as emissary of darkness, he is not forgotten. What is the place, void of influences which have flowed into it through his life? What the region, at least of Christendom, but is full of his labor? Yet, at the instant Tetzel is enriching the magnificent Popedom from the treasures of Germany, Luther, sorrowing or rejoicing, dwells unknown in his monk's cell, and sometimes goes out to beg bread. This man deserves some thought. Let us glance at the outline of his earlier history. Martin Luther was born of peasant parents the 10th of November, in the year 1483. Born of parents, let it be added, sincerely pious according to the sentiments of their age, so brought and trained within the bosom of a Church, at once containing in its services the source of salvation, and associating with itself the sacred memories of nearly fifteen centuries. The theology of fear has already gained complete establishment; his parents receive it, and, according to its genuine spirit, educate him in its discipline and its faith. Their own treatment of the boy was severe; and so too was that which he suffered in the school to which they sent him. The religious susceptibilities of his nature appear to have been early excited, and in a manner corresponding alike to the theology which surrounded him, and to the severity which aided in calling them forth. To him the whole spiritual sphere was one vast realm of darkness and terror. It might seem likely that the thought of One who was supposed to have satisfied the justice of God and to have appeased his wrath, should do something to soothe the deep and unceasing disquietude; but even Jesus Christ appeared to him, not as Saviour, but as angry Judge: he turned pale to hear his very name. Eastern, western, and northern mythologies had contributed their different images of abysmal wrath to complete the catholic ideas of purgatory and hell; nor is it probable that the tender mind conceived otherwise of the Son of God, than as enthroned in mid heaven, amidst angelic legions, mankind gathered and trembling before him, a portion indeed loved of him and saved, the many with himself doomed and thrust down to those fiery depths. Dante had already emerged as from the night of woe, already repeated the dark characters written on the summit of the infernal gateway; the awful threat to whoever passed within! "Through me he goes into the sorrowing city, Those dreadful visions, read as fictions now, which we contemplate as stupendous creations of an individual mind, were really but the terrible aggregate of what the nations for ages actually believed veritable realities. The very Judge, over whom no shade of anger should fall, whose soul should be for ever clear and serene as cloudless morning; the Christ, on whose brow majestic gentleness is for |