to know what Jesus Christ,
the Son, is to me? All, and more than all, is the answer; I live and
breathe in my Saviour Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and
throughout eternity."

The young theologian raised his sparkling eyes heavenward as he spoke,
and continued: "Our doctrine is founded on him, his word, his love alone;
and who among the enthusiastic heralds of Christianity in ancient times
grasped faith in him with warmer sincerity than the very Martin Luther
whom you would have led to the stake had not the Emperor Charles's
plighted word been dearer to him than the approval of Rome? Oh, my
friend, our young faith can also show its martyrs. Think of the Bohemian
John Huss and the true Christians who, in the Netherlands and Spain, were
burned at the stake and bled upon the scaffold because they read the
Bible, the Word of God and their Saviour, and would rather die than deny
it. If it should come to the worst, thousands here would also be ready to
ascend the funeral pyre, and I at their head. If war is declared now, the
Emperor Charles will gain the victory; and if he does not wish to
withdraw in earnest from Romish influences, who can tell what will then
await us Protestants? But I am not anxious about what may come. We German
citizens, who are accustomed to guide our own destinies and maintain the
system of government we arranged for ourselves, who built by our own
strength our solid, comfortable, gable-roofed houses and noble, towering
cathedrals, will also independently maintain the life of our minds and
our souls. Rome, with her legions of priests, claimed the right not only
to interfere in our civil life, but also to intrude into our houses, our
married lives, and our nurseries. What could she not decide for the
individual by virtue of the power she arrogates to bind and to loose, to
forgive sins, and to open or to close the door of heaven for the dying?
What she has done with the Church's gifts of grace we know.

"There is a deep, beautiful meaning underlying this idea. But it has
degenerated into a base traffic in indulgences. We have sincere natures.
For a long time we believed that salvation is gained by works--gifts to
the Church, fasts, scourgings, seclusion from the world, self-confinement
in a cell--and our wealth went to Rome. Rarely do we look vainly in the
most beautiful sites on mountain or by river for a monastery! But at last
the sound sense of Germany rebelled, and when Luther saw in Rome