essential difference between men is the difference in their relation
toward God. Here are the biographies of two great men. Both are men
of genius, both are marvelously equipped, but their end was, oh, how
different. One is Martin Luther, who stood forth alone, affirming his
religious freedom, in the face of enemies and devils thick as the
tiles on the roofs of the houses. The few friends Luther had shut him
up in a fortress to save his life, but Luther mightily believed in
God. With the full consent of his marvelous gifts, he surrendered his
life to the will of God. Knowing that his days were as brief as
the withering grass, he allied himself with the Eternal. In his
discouragement he read these words, "The Everlasting God fainteth not,
neither is weary." In that hour Martin Luther shouted for joy. The
beetling walls of the fortress were as tho they were not. Victorious
he went forth, in thought, ranging throughout all Germany. And going
out, he went up and down the land telling the people that God would
protect him, and soon Germany was free.

Goethe tells us that Luther was the architect of modern German
language and literature, and stamped himself into the whole national
life. The Germany of the Kaiser is simply Martin Luther written large
in fifty millions of men. But what made Luther? There was some hidden
energy and spirit within him! What was this spirit in him? The spirit
of beauty turned a lump of mud into that Grecian face about which
Keats wrote his poem. The spirit of truth changes a little ink into
a beautiful song. The spirit of strength and beauty in an architect
changes a pile of bricks into a house or cathedral or gallery. And the
thought of our unwearied God changed the collier's son into the
great German emancipator. But over against this man, who never knew
despondency, after his vision hour, stands another German. He,
too, was a philosopher, clothed with ample power, and blest with
opportunity. But he did evil in his life, and then the heart lost
its faith, and hope utterly perished. The more he loved pleasure and
pursued self, the more cynical and bitter he became. Pessimism set a
cold, hard stamp upon his face, and marred his beauty. Cynicism lies
like a black mark across his pages. At last, in his bitterness, the
philosopher tells us the whole universe is a mirage, and that yonder
summer-making sun is a bubble that repeats its iridescent tints in the
colors of the rainbow. Despair ate out his