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

that we say nothing, that we think only in silence; for what words are there!
The Age of Miracles past? The Age of Miracles is forever here!" 8 In the
second picture, Master Martin is brought to school, to a terrible-looking
schoolmaster, with a bundle of rods in his hand, and with a boy whom
you can almost hear sobbing, crouching at the back of his chair. In the
third, wandering with his little comrades, he comes, singing, to the door of
Madame Cotta in Eisenach, (1498.) In a little niche below, his gentle
protectress brings him his lute, to win him for a while from his books.
Luther’s Youth
The SECOND division leads us over his youth, in seven illustrations.
In the first, Luther is seen in the. Library of the University of Erfurt, gazing
eagerly, for the first time, on the whole Bible--his hand unconsciously
relaxing on a folio Aristotle, as he reads, (1501.) Next, the Providence is
smiting, together with the Word. His friend Alexis, as they journey,falls
dead at his side,by a thunderstroke. Then follows the step of a fearful heart.
With sad face, and with the moon, in her first quarter, beaming on him like
that faith which was yet so far from the full; with his heathen poets beneath
his arm, he takes the hand of the monk who welcomes him to the cloister
of the Augustinian Eremites, (1505.) Next the monk receives the solemn
consecration to the priesthood, and now with the tonsure, the cowl and the
rosary, barefooted, with the scourge by his side, he agonizes, with
macerated body and bleeding heart, at the foot of the crucifix. We turn a
leaf--he lies in his cell, like one dead--he has swooned over the Bible,
which he now never permits to leave his hand. The door has been burst
open, and his friends bring lutes, that they may revive him by the influence
of the only power which yet binds him to the world of sense. Now a ray of
light shoots in: the Spirit chafing in the body has brought him hard by the
valley of death; but an old brother in the Cloister, by one word of faith
gives him power to rise from his bed of sickness, and clasp his comforter
around the neck. With this touching scene, ends this part.
8 On Heroes and Hero-Worship--or Six Lectures by Thomas Carlyle--New York, 1849, p. 114.