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It was the first distant lightning-flash, the premonitor of the coming storm. The Reformer was thus prepared for his work.

ILLUSTRATION IN FOUR COMPARTMENTS.* [Below, Luther in the confessional refuses absolution to those penitents who rely on indulgences. To the left, Tetzel selling his ware and burning Luther's propositions, (theses.) In the center, Luther affixes his ninety-five propositions to the church-door. To the right, the students of Wittemberg burn Tetzel's reply.]

UNPRETENDINGLY began the greatest work of modern times by a German monk's affixing his ninety-five theses to the churchdoor at Wittemberg. But this unpretending beginning became soon the awakening cry to all Christianity.

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Luther to buckle on his spiritual armour, and seize David's sling and the sword of the Lord, which meaneth ardent prayer and the pure word of God; and relying for protection on his doctor's degree and his oath, he, in the name of God, assailed Tetzel and his indulgences, teaching boldly that they were dangerous delusions."

The fearless Tetzel had pushed rhetoric to the extremest limits of amplification. Boldly heaping pious lie on lie, he went into an enumeration of all the evils cured by this panacea, and, not contenting himself with known sins, invented crimes, dewhich no one had ever heard before; and vised strange, unheard-of wickednesses, of when he saw his auditory struck with horror, coolly added, "Well, the instant money rattles in the pope's coffers, all will be expiated!"

Luther asserts that at this time he hardly knew what indulgences were; but when

he saw a prospectus of them, proudly displaying the name and guarantee of the archbishop of Mentz, whom the pope had appointed to superintend the sale of indulgences in Germany, he was seized with indignation. A mere speculative problem would never have brought him into contact with his ecclesiastical superiors; but this was a question of good sense and morality. As doctor of theology, and an influential professor of the university of Wittemberg which the Elector had just founded, as provincial vicar of the Austin friars, and the vicar-general's substitute in the pastoral charge and visitation of Misnia and Thuringia, he, no doubt, thought himself more responsible than any one else for the safeguard of the Saxon faith. His conscience was aroused. He ran a great risk in speaking; but, if he held his tongue, he believed his damnation certain.

The artist represents in his sketch the church-doors at Wittemberg as symbolical of the great gate of the universal Christian Church, at which Luther knocks warningly and admonishingly with his propositions. Above his head we see the swan rising from the flames of the stake on which Huss suffered. The groups on each side, the flames lighted by Tetzel and by the Wittemberg students, indicate the warfare, the hidden beginning of which is shown in the confessional of Luther.

LUTHER BEFORE CAJETAN.

LUTHER appears before the pope's legate, Cardinal Cajetan, at Augsburg, to defend his doctrine. Although kneeling reverently, according to custom, he courageously refuses to recant as he is ordered.

Angered by the obstinate German, the Italian flings the written defense at his feet,

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saying wrathfully: "Appear not again be- which Cajetan has thrown down, while fore mine eyes, unless thou recant."

"Because he sat there representing the pope," are Luther's own words, "he insisted that I should submit and agree to all he said; while, on the contrary, all that I said against it was contemned and laughed at, although I quoted the Scriptures; in short, his fatherly love went no further than that I must suffer violence or recant, for he declared he would not dispute with me."

The artist has sought to depict the moment in which Luther picks up the paper

his friend Staupitz, evidently frightened at the wrath of the Church dignitary, tries to pacify both. (See engraving on preceding page.) In the above picture we see Luther, according to the advice of his friends, and assisted by Staupitz and Councilor Langemantel, leaving Augsburg at night through a small portal: "Staupitz had procured me a horse, and sent an old horseman with me who was acquainted with the road. I hastened away, without breeches, boots, spurs, or sword, and reached Wittemberg."

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ITR

THE REV. WILLIAM JAY.

was about the year 1783 that the Rev. Cornelius Winter, then in the prime of manhood, a zealous convert of Whitefield, and, like many other good men of the same class in those days, an itinerant preacher, added to his "circuit" the little village of Tisbury, in Wiltshire, England. Mr. Winter was a benevolent man, and fond of youth. At that time, indeed, he was settled in the town of Marlborough, and his circuit, unlike those divisions of the country bearing the same name under Wesley, was formed by himself alone. He resided permanently at the central station, and employed pupils of his own for supplying the village pulpits, if pulpits they were. In the days of his itinerancy, more properly so called, when his habits were more fully those of a Methodist, and his ordination and settle

ment in a fixed abode had not made him altogether an Independent minister, he had often said that if he were ever settled, he would give some poor child a common education. Being settled with an income from his little church of £30 per annum, and married to a lady whose fortune brought in £25, the competence of £55 yearly encouraged him to carry the desire of his heart into execution; and he charitably took charge of the child of his deacon, a poor man-taught the child to decipher the alphabet, and persevered until he was made fit for business. Attracted by the fatherly solicitude of Mr. Winter toward this child, one or two other persons in inferior circumstances confided their children to his care; and on these beginnings rose the Academy at Marlborough. Mr. Winter could not be expected

to impart a finished education, inasmuch as he was originally but a servant man, and quite untaught; but partly under the care of Whitefield, and yet more by dint of self-discipline, he had acquired a tolerable amount of rudimentary and general knowledge. But his piety, benevolence, and unaffected earnestness in well-doing, made him an invaluable teacher of truths more precious than those of literature and science, and a foster-father to every youth that came under his care.

Among Mr. Winter's constant hearers in Tisbury, were a quarryman and stonemason named Jay, his wife, and children. One of these children, William, a boy of about fourteen when the congregation was first collected, and working with his father in the capacity of mason's laborer, used to listen with fixed attention to the plain, but affectionate discourse of good Cornelius Winter; and, as if drawn by the force of reverential admiration, got into the habit of taking a seat just at the foot of the pulpit stairs, where he could be near the preacher as he came in and went out. The good-natured smile of this boy won the attention of Mr. Winter, and as his mind rapidly unfolded, and his heart became affected by what he heard, an air of intelligence more keen than appeared in any of the rustic audience, induced him to notice him, speak to him, ascertain his name, and seek information concerning the occupation and character of his parents, and his own conduct. His "eye was upon him more immediately than upon any other in the congregation; his heart was unaccountably knit to him." "Why do you come here so constantly?" said he one day to the lad. "I don't know, sir, but I like to come," was the reply.

William Jay entered the hospitable dwelling of this man of God, wearing his working dress and iron-soled boots, rich with depositions of mortar, gathered during many a long day's hard work, and then the old coat and ponderous boots were not only exchanged for attire such as he probably had worn on Sundays, but the very boots and coat were laid up by his patron and Mrs. Winter, to be memorials of his original vocation; or, as one might say, of the rock whence he was hewed, and the quarry where he had wrought. And this was not the only remembrance of his humble beginning. Long after his VCL. V.-3

removal from the rude society of his father's fellow-workmen, it was currently related in Tisbury that he had set himself against their evil habit of profane swearing, and used to lecture them roundly thereupon, until people looked upon him as a young Methodist, and the rougher sort would make merry with him about his "sarments." And this plainly enough shows that before he forsook the hod for the lexicon, his mind and life were habitually under the power of religion. There is no record as yet extant of the time or manner when he first made open declaration of his determination to forsake the follies of the world: but there is this evidence, that he did rise above their influence; and it is but reasonable to regard him as a living fruit of Mr. Winter's gratuitous and self-denying toil as a village preacher. Let village preachers take heart, then, and venture to hope that their labors, humble as they are, may draw forth other brilliant ornaments of humanity, to shine in the great world, and give the first impulse to nascent luminaries, whose virtues shall enlighten other generations.

With a sort of fatherly pride, Mr. Winter entered on the charge of his rustic pupil, and already showed him to his friends, as if he had set it down for certain that he was the rudiment of a great man. Introducing him to a family, a member of which afterward became one of Mr. Jay's first and most devoted deacons in Bath, he is recorded to have laid his hand upon his head, and said, "There' is more under this cap than you think for."

Strong was the attachment of Mr. Jay to his patron. The first volume that he ever wrote was a collection of letters, and a short memoir of his life, of which the first edition bears date April 1, 1808, and contains some very characteristic sentences. "I know not," he says, "whether there has been a wakeful hour since his death, (nearly eleven weeks before,) in which I have not thought of the deceased, or that I have written a page concerning him without tears; for tears have been my meat." But he also says, "I have labored with pleasure, and rejoice in the enterprise, from a persuasion that what I have written from the warmest affection and the highest regard, will be ratified by the public voice; and that I am doing good to others while I have an opportunity to indulge my own feelings, and to ac

knowledge the obligations to my dear and honored friend and benefactor, which I shall never be able to discharge. To him I owe all my respectability in life, and all my opportunities of public usefulness."

And, on the other hand, Mr. Winter bears honorable testimony to the character and deportment of the youthful inmate of his family, telling him in one of his letters, that "to all that was amiable and kind in his dear friend, under God," that family was in part indebted for their happiness. He contributed his quota to it, and had his share in return. "O blessed villages!" exclaimed the good old pastor in a rapture of grateful recollection, "O blessed villages which were favored with your ministerial abilities! O highly favored Marlborough, whose streets were then occasionally thronged with them who went to and from the house of God, and had their hearts filled with joy and gladness! I bless the Lord for all he has since done for you and by you." The discipline of the house was easy; there was little or no academical formality; instead of lectures were familiar conversations and "breakfast and tea readings," and young Mr. Jay took his full share of village preaching, going into the highways and hedges, in good old style, to compel the attention of the ignorant and ungodly. The exigencies of those times, the extraordinary religious excitement that prevailed in almost all parts of the country, the laxity, too, of ecclesiastical discipline, both in the Established Church and out of it, with a powerful reaction against forms and rules which had superseded piety instead of guarding and guiding it, justified or suffered many proceedings which could not be often repeated with advantage, in such days as ours, and thus only can we account for the haste with which this young man was sent out to preach before he was sixteen years of age. Before he was twenty-one, he had preached nearly one thousand sermons. Mr. Jay himself, in after-life, would not probably have exposed a youth to so severe an incentive to vanity; but he was under a tutor whose authority he felt bound not to dispute, and the state of the villages around was truly deplorable. Compassionating the multitudes who were "perishing for lack of knowledge," that venerable tutor sent his students to address them early. The rude rustics, too, required neither depth

nor accuracy; they only yearned after some knowledge of those cardinal verities which began to be dispersed over the land, on the wings of rumor, and crowded around any one, man or boy, whom they thought able to bring them more exact intelligence. But Mr. Jay's own account of this part of his life is better than any second-hand representation of it.

"In some of these villages I have preached down many a live-long Sabbath, in the homely cottage, on the green before the door, or in some open place in the road, or in a field hard by. How often have I wished to revisit all these hamlets! But, alas! how few should I now find alive, and who would be able to remember-what I was always then called-the boy preacher. Many of these places we supplied on week-day evenings, as well as on the Sabbath, as we could afford time and assistance. To many of them we walked on foot; from some of them we returned, for the want of accommodation, the same evening, whatever was the weather; and from none of them received we the least remuneration. We seldom encountered persecution. This depends very much always on the preacher; and our prudent tutor taught us not to rail and abuse, but simply to preach the truth, and to avoid the offense of folly, when we could not avoid the offense of the cross. I shall never forget with what eagerness and feeling these villagers received the words of life. The common people heard us gladly, and the poor had the gospel preached unto them; not by the poor man's Church,' but by those who then supplied their lack of service."

But we must now follow him into more public life. He was born, it must be noted, on the first day of May, 1769. Counting from the date to the time when Mr. Winter broke up his establishment at Marlborough, and removed to Painswick, where he was welcomed on the second day of August, 1788, we should say that Mr. Jay must have been a little over his nineteenth year when he entered on the duties of a Christian pastor. Gladly would he have sheltered himself from so heavy a responsibility, and avoided the assumption of that character for a year or two longer, for although he had been

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