MARTIN LUTHER. 207

Look at that young man, who has just struggled up
through the biting March winds of penury to a situation
of trust, and comparatively lighter work. He is going
at his work, slower over it than his employers think he
might be, makes a mistake now and then. He gets sent
for solemnly into the office, and, oh, what a wigging he
gets! He has half a mind to twn up rusty, and cut the
whole concern, but he feels that perhaps he might have
done better than he has done, and that his employers are
not altogether in the wrong. So he bites his tongue and
keeps it bound to civility. “I noticed you that day,
Mr. » says one of the partners afterwards, “I thought
Mr. So-and-so was rather hard on you, but I noticed too
how you kept your temper, and we have observed a
marked improvement ever since. I am happy to say
that we propose to raise your salary.”

Again, an April shower is notalways violent and hasty,
it Is sometimes gentle and genial. Ah! how sweetly
descend the soft refreshing rains of the spiritual spring
of Easter, when the winter is past, and its cold rains are
over and gone. No arid, parching sun, is the Sun of
Righteousness, who has arisen with healing in His wings,
but a giver of light and heat, and a distributor of the
moisture, which He sucks up from poisonous lake and
marshy fen of this world, but gives again, distilled by
His divine chemistry into the small rain of His grace
upon the tender herb of the heart which looks up to Him.

Ah! the gentle genial April showers which He sheds!
Ah ! how full is nature of His parables! Ah! how is the
whole earth filled with His goodness!

MARTIN LUTHER.
A SKETCH, IN TWO PARTS.

By Mrs. Bray,
Avurzor oF “THe REVOLT of THE Protestants OF THE CEVENNES,”
“Tue Goon St. Louis,” ‘‘Hanrtnanp Forzst,” &c., &c.

PART I.
B\T was observed by an able critic, “ that
hitherto the too common idea of the
great Reformer’s character has been,

5

violence and ruggedness. ‘Those traits have been
made so prominent, that the finer lines of his
portrait have been completely shaded from sight.
If, in fact, we knew nothing of Dr. Johnson but
his occasional bursts of uncouth manners, we should
not have a more erroneous impression of him than
is generally entertained of Luther’.” To these

f z |
observations may be fairly added, how very few |
among general readers really know more of Luther |

| than that he was the leader of the Reformation of"
The present sketch of so |

the sixteenth century.
eminent a man, we hope may therefore be accept-

| able to many of our readers.
The violent and long-continued schism, whch at
the close of the fourteenth, and during the early
| part of the fifteenth centuries, divided the Church,
| shook that unbounded faith, hitherto placed in the

| 1 Blackwood’s Magazine, December, 1835: in the review

of William Hazlitt’s translation of the Life of Luther by | ~~~ :
‘ | in life was a great one, as he was transferred to a

Michelet,

power and sanctity of the Roman See; and the
tyranny and detestable lives of some of the Popes,
the vices of the monastic orders, the luxury and
grasping ambition of the higher order of the
clergy, and the ignorance of too many of a lower
grade, all tended to create disgust. States and
nations were disposed to reccive a Reformation
that had become a necessity of the age. And be
it remembered that before Luther appeared, many
of the revivers of learning in Germany (a country
less under papal influence than Italy or Spain)
had in their writings severely attacked the cor-
ruptions of the Roman hierarchy. The censures,
upon the gross ignorance and lives of the clergy,
of no less a person than the celebrated Erasmus,
greatly helped to prepare the way for Luther’s
masterly powers to begin and effect a reform. It
is a great mistake to assert, as some writers have
done, that the doctrines of Luther were unwelcome
to the mass of the people ; so far from this being
the case, thousands desired to be delivered from
the bondage of superstition and spiritual tyranny.
“The whole of civilized Europe,” says Mrs. Somer-
ville, the delightful author of the “ Physical
Geography,” “could not have been roused to the
enthusiasm which led them to embark in the
Crusades, by the preaching of Peter the Hermit,
unless the people had been prepared for it. Men
were ready for the Reformation long before the
impulse was given by Luther.”

Martin Luther, of humble parentage, was born
at Eisleben, in Saxony, on the 10th of November,
A.D. 1488. His early education seems to have been
very much self-acquired. From his love of

| learning, however, he was sent to school at Mag-

deburg, where, like most of the poor Gernan

scholars of his day, he begged in the streets for

: support.
LOS that if was a mere compound of |

The writer of this sketch remembers
haying seen a beautiful picture by a German artist,
representing the historical fact of Luther, ac-
companied by a few poor scholars of his own
age, singing hymms in the streets. Luther’s fine
person (for he was remarkably handsome, both
as a boy and a man) and his beautiful voice, col-
lected around him a crowd of admiring listeners,
for even at this early period he displayed a fine
taste and ear, and a genius for melody of no
common order. Many years after, when his fame
had been spread throughout the Christian world,
Luther thus wrote, concerning this circumstance :

i]
‘Let no one in my presence speak contemptuously

of the poor fellows who go from door to door,
singing and begging bread Propter Deum. You
know the Psalm says, ‘Princes and kings have
sung.” I myself was once a poor mendicant,
seeking my bread at people’s doors, particularly at

Hisenach, my own dear Hisenach.” His next step