And the kindling of Europe.]

[Sidenote: The gathering under the banner of the Cross.]

[Sidenote: Tyndal's first appearance and character.]

[Sidenote: The translation of the Bible, and the press at Antwerp.]

The state of England did but represent the state of all Northern Europe.
Wherever the Teutonic language was spoken, wherever the Teutonic nature
was in the people, there was the same weariness of unreality, the same
craving for a higher life. England rather lagged behind than was a
leader in the race of discontent. In Germany, all classes shared the
common feeling; in England it was almost confined to the lowest. But,
wherever it existed, it was a free, spontaneous growth in each separate
breast, not propagated by agitation, but springing self-sown, the
expression of the honest anger of honest men at a system which had
passed the limits of toleration, and which could be endured no longer.
At such times the minds of men are like a train of gunpowder, the
isolated grains of which have no relation to each other, and no effect
on each other, while they remain unignited; but let a spark kindle but
one of them, and they shoot into instant union in a common explosion.
Such a spark was kindled in Germany, at Wittenberg, on the 31st of
October, 1517. In the middle of that day Luther's denunciation of
Indulgences was fixed against the gate of All Saints church, Wittenberg,
and it became, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the sign to
which the sick spirits throughout the western world looked hopefully and
were healed. In all those millions of hearts the words of Luther found
an echo, and flew from lip to lip, from ear to ear. The thing which all
were longing for was done, and in two years from that day there was
scarcely perhaps a village from the Irish Channel to the Danube in
which the name of Luther was not familiar as a word of hope and promise.
Then rose a common cry for guidance. Books were called for,--above all
things, the great book of all, the Bible. Luther's inexhaustible
fecundity flowed with a steady stream, and the printing-presses in
Germany and in the Free Towns of the Netherlands multiplied Testaments
and tracts in hundreds of thousands. Printers published at their own
expense as Luther wrote.[35] The continent was covered with disfrocked
monks who had become the pedlars of these precious wares;[36] and as the
contagion spread, noble young spirits from other countries, eager
themselves to fight