loon Society; the
date being November 9, 1883.

Of this lecture, not to be tedious, I will here give only the
peroration.

"And now, in conclusion, let us answer these reasonable questions: What
has Martin Luther done and suffered that we at this distant interval of
four centuries should reverence his memory with gratitude and
admiration? What was the lifework he was raised up to do, and how did he
do it? and what influence have his labours of old on the times in which
we live?--We must remember that in the sixteenth century priestcraft had
culminated to its rankest height of fraud, cruelty, vice, and
superstition: the lay-folk everywhere were its serfs and victims, not to
mention also numbers of the worthier clerics who hated but could, not
break their bonds. Luther was the solitary champion to head and lead
both the remonstrant layman and the better sort of monk up to the then
well-nigh forlorn hope of combating Antichrist in his stronghold: Luther
broke those chains for ever off the necks of groaning nations,--freeing
to this day from that bitter bondage not alone Germany, Sweden, France,
and England, but the very ends of the earth from America to China:
without the energies of Luther nearly four hundred years ago, and the
living spirit of Luther working in us now, we should be still in our own
persons adding to the Book of Martyrs in the flames of the Inquisition,
still immersed in blankest ignorance, with the Bible everywhere
forbidden, and scientific research condemned, still cringing slaves at
the feet of confessors who fraudulently sell absolution for money, still
both spiritually and politically the mean vassals of an Italian priest
instead of brave freemen under our English Queen. Luther relit the
well-nigh, extinguished lamp of true religion, and it shines for him all
the more gloriously to this hour: Luther refreshed the gospel salt that
had through corruption lost its savour, until now it is more antiseptic
than ever as the cure of evil, more purifying than ever as the quickener
of good: Luther, under God's good grace and providence, has rescued the
conscience and reason of our whole race from the thraldom of
self-elected spiritual despots, who worked upon the superstitious fears
of men as to another-world in order to strengthen their own power in
this: Luther, for the result of his great labours, is more to us now
than ever was the fabulous Hercules of old,--for he has cleansed the
real Augaean stable,--