tion; she will call on them to contribute toward supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all dependence.'

Mr. Bancroft concludes the epoch with the words: "England became not so much the possessor of the valley of the West as the trustee, commissioned to transfer it from the France of the Middle Ages to the free people who were making for humanity a new life in America."

To many this period, the preliminary of our Revolution, with the stirring struggle for the overthrow of French power, with all its merits, proves less interesting from the manner in which European affairs, opinions of statesmen in America and England, and the narrative of colonial internal affairs, are blended in fragments with the military operations, forming a mosaic, in which not all can readily trace the figures.

To criticize a work which has had an established reputation for more than a generation is a bold task; and the more so when, to such an historic task as that before us, the author brings a love of country that can be impartial, unwearied research, a sound judgment, and a mind of no ordinary gifts in conceiving the great drama, or presenting it with beauty. The task is all the greater to one who recognizes in him a master and a guide, one who gave his youthful studies their bent, and made them ever since devoted to the history of the country. Nay, more, to one who received from him encouragement and approval, when there were few to bestow it, and when coming from him it was a reward not to be forgotten. And not only encouragement came but aid, in counsel, in frequent imparting of material acquired in researches in avenues open to no scholar but himself.

But addressing the circle of those who adhere to the only logical Christian faith and Church, a deference to truth, and that only, has compelled the utterance of remarks as frankly as they would have been expressed to the author himself, and conscious, that to the public at large, and especially to the great body of those who claim descent from New England, no words of the writer can alter the verdict as to Bancroft's History of the United States, a monument as lasting as any man could rear in life to keep his memory alive in coming generations.

MARTIN LUTHER.

Dr. Martin Luther's Briefe, Senschreiben und Bedenken . . . . bearbeitet Von Dr. Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette. 5 vols. 8vo. Berlin, 1825.

The Life of Martin Luther. Compiled from reliable sources. By Rev. William Stang. New York, F. Pustet & Co., 1883. 12mo. I12

N

pp.

EARLY three-quarters of a century ago the monarch of the Scandinavian kingdom of Denmark summoned the Protestant world to do honor to Martin Luther; and now another potentate, fresh from the Canossa to which he has been led by his boastful premier, the man of blood and iron, muezzin-like renews the call. Germany and Scandinavia again strive to do homage to Luther; statues, addresses, medals, will mark the epoch; a ripple will be seen in this country, but in England and other Protestant lands. not even a ripple seems to be discernible. A certain lack of human freedom, a certain tinge of absolute power seems necessary to fit man for a complete appreciation of Martin Luther.

The attention thus called to Luther makes it necessary for Catholics at large to know and understand what the real Luther was, and to distinguish him from the false ideal which will everywhere be presented to a deluded public in these days. The Rev. Mr. Stang's brief sketch of the reformer will be a ready means of giving Catholics a true knowledge of the character and acts of the

man.

Luther is the boast of Protestantism, little more than a boast, yet the only man in the great apostasy of the sixteenth century whom its adherents can use to arouse popular enthusiasm. In the history of the Church heresiarchs generally have been men of great intellect, framers of a system with symmetry and form, men removed from the busy world, holding to their theories with unwavering earnestness. They were men who could find followers to sway the masses, but could not themselves evoke personal enthusiasm. But in Luther came a man with no system, who said and unsaid with equal vehemence, who appealed to the lowest passions of the masses, and gave the widest scope to sensuality, by decking it in a flimsy cloak of sentimentality and calling it a religion.

Loud, boisterous, fond of good cheer, good company and indulgence, he stands out with a kind of personal attractiveness that.

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arouses a sympathetic feeling that for three centuries and a half has made him a rallying-point among those who revolted from the Catholic Church with the cry, “ Non serviam.”

It is not easy to understand how a man so gross and sensual, so vacillating and uncertain in doctrines, so full of contempt for almost everything that had for centuries been regarded with reverence, could have been instrumental or influential in leading any large number of intelligent Catholics out of the Church; and it is really only the fact that he was so instrumental that makes intelligent men in our day continue to render him a form of hero worship.

Three centuries and a half have reduced the amount of Christianity in the various reformed churches to a very slight remnant. While the Church stands as it did then, with its Papal and hierarchical system, its creed, its worship, its evangelical counsels, ever creating lives devoted to sanctification, to the relief of ignorance and poverty, of all human woes and miseries, Protestantism, in the Germany of Luther and the Switzerland of Calvin, has reached the uttermost rationalism, the existence of God is barely recognized, the inspiration, authenticity and creditableness of the Scriptures, which they made the sole rule of faith, are impugned in pulpit, university and literature; the idea of a church founded by Christ, with a worship, a priesthood, a deposit of faith, is scouted; the fall of man, the need of redemption, atonement, are denied. But whether they retain nothing of Christianity but the name, or very little except the name, we see them ever ready to extol the name of Martin Luther. The advocate of arbitrary power, the man who would crush the people beneath the iron heel of Cæsarism, the Nihilist and Communist who would annihilate all government and with it the whole social system, alike render homage to the name of Martin Luther. It is not that the man in himself was entitled to respect, but simply as the popular type of the movement which wrested country after country from Catholicity. Men may throw away all Christianity, like your infidel and agnostic, or veil it under a mask of rationalism, or fritter it away, but on one point they all agree, as to that there is no division of sentiment, and that is blind. hatred of and opposition to the Catholic Church, and as the symbol of this, nothing suits them all better than Martin Luther.

Thus Froude, who certainly has a minimum of Christianity, is now the eulogist of Luther, and ends a rhapsody by declaring " that any faith, any piety, is alive now in Europe, even in the Roman Church itself. . . . is due in large measure to the poor miner's son, who was born in a Saxon village four hundred years ago."

He was born in a Saxon village of a violent race, born in a village to which his father fled after slaying a fellow-man. Accord

ing to his mother's statement, he came into the world on the 10th of November, and, so far as she could recollect in later years, in 1483. After learning the rudiments at home, he became a poor scholar at Eisenach, hospitably sheltered by the Cotta family. He was a lover of books, and at last entered the university of Erfurt.

Here he found professors, some at least of whom were imbued with the doctrines of Wicklif and Huss. The press was already disseminating books through Germany, and the universities and monasteries were the earliest purchasers. It was in the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt that the young student first saw a complete printed Bible, one of several purchased by the house, some of the numerous editions that had poured from the press in Latin and in German.'

He was twenty years old when he took his degree in philosophy. While pursuing further studies with a view of becoming a professor of law, the death of a comrade, killed by a lightning-stroke at his side, made him suddenly resolve to renounce the world. At nightfall he knocked at the portal of the Augustinian convent, and begged admission. He was received, renouncing his insignia of master, resisting alike the entreaties of his scholars and the anger of his father. He entered on his novitiate with great fervor, but was often in deep melancholy and despondency. That he might be a reprobate was the one overpowering thought. Fasting, austerities, prayer, the counsels of confessors and directors, nothing brought peace to his mind, even after his religious profession and his ordination as a priest, till a passage in St. Bernard on the Annunciation gave his thoughts a new direction. He passed from the depths of despair to the heights of presumption. He believed himself justified in the sight of God by the merits of Christ, and by the very force of his infallible conviction one of the elect.

But doubts recurred, and a mind of real ability, unhinged by interior trials, unbalanced by exact learning, and already adopting unorthodox views, was stimulated to pride by the reputation he had acquired. When, after a visit to Rome, where the pomp of the court and much that he saw gave a shock to the plain Augustinian from a German village, he was appointed professsor in the newly founded university at Wittenberg, he began to teach philosophy. His knowledge was but elementary; he hated the Aristotelian philosophy, and the whole system of the schoolmen, including

At the Caxton Exhibition in London, in 1878, there were sixty copies of different Bibles, printed in Latin or in German, all dating prior to the year 1503, when Luther attained his twentieth year Of course this did not represent every edition issued ; but at all events there was the distinct proof that the whole Bible had been set up and printed sixty-two times at least between 1450 and 1503. Vet doubtless in the present Luther revival, hundreds will declare that Luther never saw a Bible till after he was a priest, and was then utterly astonished to find that such a book existed.

St. Thomas. An exact logical system was always something abhorrent to him, and to which he could not submit. His lectures were brilliant tirades against the very philosophy which he was appointed to teach. He was also assigned to preach in the town, and he soon became popular. In the sermons of Luther at this time, as they have come down to us, his doctrine of justification by faith alone constantly appears, and as a necessary sequence, the priesthood, sacraments, indulgences, intercessory prayer, fast and pilgrimages are made little of, or directly censured as unavailing.

That a professor in a university just created by the Pope should, in his professor's chair and in the pulpit, pursue this course, shows that in Germany the standard of orthodoxy was very low, and the attachment to the Church and its whole system very feeble. Luther's language apparently received no censure from any superior in his order or in the Church, and no voice was raised to controvert the utterances of the bold young Augustinian. The doctrines of Wicklif and Huss were silently permeating the schools and monasteries.

Germany had been gradually drifting away from unity in government, from unity in faith. The faith spread over the Roman empire, gathering into the fold in time the Celtic nations to the limits of Ireland and Scotland, turned last of all to the Germanic and Scandinavian tribes, and won the Angles, Saxons, and Danes in Britain; the Franks in Gaul conquered to be conquered, who overthrew the Roman Celtic power to yield to the Church. These German tribes sent apostles to other bands of their race, and their rulers employed force. Before the end of the eighth century the Franks forced the Saxons to profess Christianity and receive baptism. They rose in rebellion against a Church which was made, in their eyes, odious and oppressive, but they were crushed. But the work of force went on. Pomerania and the Isle of Rugen, crushed by arms, abandoned their idols and sullenly accepted Christianity as the twelfth century was nearing its close. The first missionary to the Prussians died the death of a martyr in 997, almost at the close of the first millennium of Christianity. Two hundred years later a regular crusade was carried against the fierce pagans of Prussia, who were overcome by the Teutonic knights in 1243, and after a series of insurrections finally crushed forty years later.

Thus for five centuries the work had gone on. In 1300 thousands of Germans were still pagan in heart, though forced to appear outwardly as Catholics. The work of real conversion advanced slowly; and at the opening of the sixteenth century in a general relaxation, religious instruction, the frequentation of the sacraments, the eradicating of superstitions were all neglected, and