The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

that Book at some of the most glorious revelations of the New Testament?
This might have been, and who shall say what incalculable loss it might
have wrought to the world, had it been so? For this very portion might
have been one of the Epistles, or Gospels, or Lessons of the Romish
Service, and thus might have confirmed the false impression of the young
man that he already knew all the Bible. This was a critical period of
Luther's life. Already was his mind tending to an absorption in studies
which would have given a wholly different cast to his life. The sound of a
drum upon the street was the turning point of the spiritual life of an
English nobleman. It lifted him from his knees, and drew him again into
the full march upon everlasting death. On what little things may God have
been pleased to hang the great impulses of the man, who proved himself
capable of leading the Reformation, and who, but for these little things,
might have been lost to the world. Nothing in God's hand is trifling. The
portion on which Luther's eye fell was not in the Church Service. It
quickened him at once with a new sense of the fulness of God's Word. In a
double sense it stood before him, as a revelation. His eyes were opened on
the altar of that inextinguishable fire, from which a few sparks had risen
into the Romish Ritual, and had drifted along on the night-breezes of the
ages. Did the angel of the Covenant with invisible hand open that page, or
was it a breath of air from some lattice near at hand? It matters not--God
opened the Book.
That Book was to Luther, henceforth, the thing of beauty of his life,
the joy of his soul forever. lie read and re-read, and prayed over its sacred
teachings, till the place of each passage, and all memorable passages in
their places fixed themselves in his memory. To the study of it, all other
study seemed tame. A single passage of it would ofttimes lie in his
thoughts days and nights together. The Bible seemed to fuse itself into his
being, to become a part of his nature. Often in his writings he does not so
much remark upon it, as catch its very pulse and clothe his own mind in its
very garb. He is lifted to the glory of the reproducer--and himself becomes
a secondary prophet and apostle. His soul ceased to be a mere