person was made
safe by the Elector, who arranged a friendly capture by which he was
concealed in the Wartburg in charge of the knights.

No one knew what had become of him. His mysterious disappearance was
naturally referred to some foul play of the Romanists, and the feeling
of resentment was intense and deep. Indeed, Germany was now bent on
throwing off the religion of the hierarchy. No matter what it may once
have been, no matter what service it may have rendered in helping
Europe through the Dark Ages, it had become gangrened, perverted,
rotten, offensive, unbearable. The very means Rome took to defend it
increased revolt against it. It had come to be an oppressive lie, and
it had to go. No Bulls of popes or edicts of emperors could alter the
decree of destiny.

And a great and blessed fortune it was that Luther still lived to
guide and counsel in the momentous transition. But Providence had
endowed him for the purpose, and so preserved him for its execution.
What was born with the Theses, and baptized before the Imperial Diet
at Worms, he was now to nourish, educate, catechise, and prepare for
glorious confirmation before a similar Diet in the after years.

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.

While in the Wartburg he was forbidden to issue any writings. Leisure
was thus afforded for one of the most important things connected with
the Reformation. Those ten months he utilized to prepare for Germany
and for the world a translation of the Holy Scriptures, which itself
was enough to immortalize the Reformer's name. Great intellectual
monuments have come down to us from the sixteenth century. It was an
age in which the human mind put forth some of its noblest
demonstrations. Great communions still look back to its Confessions as
their rallying-centres, and millions of worshipers still render their
devotions in the forms which then were cast. But pre-eminent over all
the achievements of that sublime century was the giving of God's Word
to the people in their own language, which had its chief centre and
impulse in the production of Luther's _German Bible_. Well has it been
said, "He who takes up that, grasps a whole world in his hand--a world
which will perish only when this green earth itself shall pass away."

It was the Word that kindled the heart of Luther to the work of
Reformation, and the Word alone could bring it to its consummation.
With the Word the whole Church of Christ and the entire fabric of our
civilizatio