erplexed and
anxious. He had not anticipated those civil commotions which he now
saw, sooner or later, were inevitable. With the increase of his party
was the decline of spirituality. Political considerations, also, with
many, were more prominent than moral. Religion and politics were
mingled together, not soon to be separated in the progress of reform.
Moreover, the reformers differed upon many points among themselves.
There was a lamentable want of harmony between the Germans and the
Swiss. Luther had quarrelled with nearly every prominent person with
whom he had been associated, except Melancthon, who yielded to him
implicit obedience. But, above all, the Anabaptist disorders, which he
detested, and which distracted the whole bishopric of Muenster,
oppressed and mortified him. Worn out with cares, labors, and
vexations, which ever have disturbed the peace and alloyed the
happiness of great heroes, and from which no greatness is exempt, he
died at Eisleben, in 1545, while on a visit to his native place in
older to reconcile dissensions between the counts of Mansfeldt.

Luther's name is still reverenced in Germany, and, throughout all
Protestant countries, he is regarded as the greatest man connected
with the history of the church since the apostolic age. Others have
been greater geniuses, others more learned, others more devout, and
others more amiable and interesting; but none ever evinced greater
intrepidity, or combined greater qualities of mind and heart. He had
his faults: he was irritable, dogmatic, and abusive in his
controversial writings. He had no toleration for those who differed
from him--the fault of the age. But he was genial, joyous, friendly,
and disinterested. His labors were gigantic; his sincerity
unimpeached; his piety enlightened; his zeal unquenchable.
Circumstances and the new ideas of his age, favored him, but he made
himself master of those circumstances and ideas, and, what is more,
worked out ideas of his own, which were in harmony with Christianity.
The Reformation would have happened had there been no Luther, though
at a less favorable time; but, of all the men of his age that the
Reformation could least spare, Martin Luther stands preeminent. As the
greatest of reformers, his name will be ever honored.

* * * * *

REFERENCES.--The attention of the student is directed only
to the most prominent and valuable works which treat of
Luther and t