fair to Plato. He was no dreamer," replied Melancthon, half gaily, half in earnest.

"Did he ever see Utopia, Philip ?"

"Oh! Father Martin, let us be serious: the times call for it."

"Serious! and am I not serious? What more serious than the practicalness of life and duty? I will henceforth abjure all philosophy, if it must make me put thinking in the place of acting."

"What acting?" asked Melancthon, with great deference.

"Do

"What acting? why, this," returned Martin. you cease to amuse your scholars with æons, and monads, and ideas, and primitive beliefs, and what not. Do you, my dear, great, good Philip, keep them to the practical, the dogmatic, the unspeculative authority of God's Greek. Do you show them, as you can easily, that God's Greek is better than Plato's Greek. Ground them well in that. And I will be practical as well. I will work-work in the church, at the homestead, and when I bury, and when I shrive, and when I christen. Ay, and I will write, too.

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Philip, let us set to work and give God's Word in our mother-tongue, and to all our people. Let the Pope then steal a march upon us if he can.”

"And will you, Father, take no steps for your security?"

"Yes, cautious Philip, I will take steps; for God gives us no warrant for faith, unless we use all means. And now, come, let us adjourn this subject."

CHAPTER II.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, Martin Luther had determined that a decisive conference with his friends should be holden on the morrow evening.

But what were the preliminaries to that meeting?

All the morning through—yea even, and more terribly, during the previous night-the soul of Martin Luther had been tossed restlessly by a paroxysm. Minds the most common can imagine somewhat of the helpless awe, and of the sickening dizziness, of a man around whom a whirlwind rushes and casts its coils, and whom pitilessly it bears aloft, blinding him amidst its irregular and incalculable gyrations. But who can consciously sympathize with the soul of Luther who hath the power to do so-when there blew loud, and burst fierce, and then twined close round his spirit, winds that seemed to be supernal? Who but he himself hath ever witnessed, much less felt, convulsive strugglings amid the eddies of such air?

There seemed to him as if there were voices of that air speaking to him with cruel scorn:

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Renegade of Holy Church! thou wouldst, wouldst thou, defy its Fathers, its Councils, its Popes, its Master? Thou wouldst, wouldst thou-vowed though thou art to battle for that sacred fortress-both lay a lever beneath the foundation-stone, and fling consuming brands into the chambers of her temple? Thou wouldst, wouldst thou?"

And then the voices became as if impersonated to the excited gaze of Father Martin, and his room was filled-not with forms of remonstrant or gibbering demons, such as he saw in later days, and whose very forms enkindled his resistance-but with beings who had the semblance of angels of light; angry, indignant, yet mournful, in their godly jealousy.

They seemed to grasp him, and he felt their very touch was irresistible. They grasped him, and in whirls on whirls multitudinous, and in mazes ever and convulsively intricate, they seemed to bear him aloft. Bewildered, at last-half-unconscious-he fell upon the floor.

He was half incoherent in his wanderings, when the calm Melancthon crossed the threshold of his chamber. "A wandering star!" Luther was murmuring-“ a wandering star. . . . . . And for ever!"

Such a phase of morbid imagination was anything but infrequent in the mental life 'of Martin Luther. It must never be forgotten in our estimate of this great man, that his soul was susceptible as a child's to the fear of doing wrong; that, like a child's, his soul instinctively invested motives and purposes with visible

impersonations; that it gave its sympathies and antipathies to ideal forms of virtue and of vice; that, in its commerce with those forms, it would now be gladdened with all ecstacy and be filled with all encouragement; and anon, again, would be disturbed by every possible black conception, and be palsied by despair.

At this need we wonder? Did Almighty God ever give to any one who was neither prophet nor apostle, a mission more august, yet more terrible ?-a mission more daring, yet more exclusively sustained by warranties that were purely moral? Moses-the inspired legislator and prophet—had to protest against idolatries ; but the objects of his protestation were singled out by a Divine Voice that was audible, and the arm of protestation which he raised was nerved by the Divine power of miracles. Whereas in the case of Martin Luther, a man without the overt aids of inspiration, was called to defy, to oppose, the very Church of which he was a consecrated minister; the Church which the homage of ages had sanctified; which Fathers the most reverend (in his estimate) had glorified for its polity, and honoured for its laws; the Church which held the time-honoured prerogative of giving eternal life, or blasting with a death inconsumable! And, as he wistfully listened for some audible words of command, and put forth his arm for wonder-working, yet found it to be still only human, who can be surprised that his imagination even forced itself to create conceptions that might give substantiality to his thoughts?

And yet were they only pure creations? After

having eliminated all forms, there remained, underneath these semblances of physical life, existent and conscious forces of evil: the very demons that are satellites of the "god of this world, of the prince of the power of the air, who now worketh in the children of disobedience;" beings whose province it was to circumvent the plans of this glorious regenerator of the cause of religion, of science, of literature, of morals, of human freedom; beings, who held powers and capabilities of assuming the garb of ministers of righteousness, when they sought to seduce, or of avengers, when they sought to intimidate. And whenever before was their mission so critical? whenever before was a guiltier dynasty of professed godliness to be advocated, or more honest or more mighty assaults against corruption to be foiled?

Melancthon, on entering Luther's chamber, found him prostrate, and, from his knowledge of the language of Holy Scripture, easily connected together words that otherwise would have been incoherent.

"A wandering star reserved unto blackness and darkness for ever!" he exclaimed, thus linking together consecutively the abrupt words of his great friend.

Philip Melancthon, as we have said, had nothing of daring passion within his bosom. Timid he was in every aspect of his life, save when the command of some great moral law summoned him to danger. Then, but only then, he was as much undiscouraged in defeat, as was his more energetic friend.

Curious it may seem to some men, as they investi