s and from what you owe to them.
He wants you to serve Him by your loving obedience to them. When you
honour your father and your mother you are honouring God's commandment,
and so honouring God Himself in the very best way.

[1] John ii. 20.

[2] Mal. iii. 1.

[3] Luke ii. 51 (Revised Version).

LUTHER AT ERFUeRT

By THE LATE SIR J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A.

[Illustration: LUTHER AT ERFUeRT. By permission of the executors of Sir
Noel Paton, and Mr. R. H. Brechin, Glasgow]

LUTHER AT ERFUeRT

_I rejoice at Thy word, as one that findeth great spoil_.--Ps. cxix.
162.

I wish to connect this text with a picture which is thought by many
judges to be among the greatest of the late Sir Noel Paton's works.
Its title is "Dawn," and its subject is a well-known incident in the
life of the famous German Reformer, Martin Luther.

As we see Luther in this picture he is a young man between twenty and
thirty years of age. He has had a brilliant career at the University
of Erfuert, and has taken his degree with the highest honours, but he
has disappointed all his friends by refusing to become a lawyer, and by
choosing to become a monk instead. He has already entered the
Augustinian monastery at Erfuert. Luther's reason for taking this
unexpected step has been anxiety about his soul. He has begun to do
his best to gain salvation by performing all the duties of a monk. He
has fasted, and scourged himself, and done without sleep. He has once
spent three whole days without eating or drinking. He has been found
fainting on the floor of his cell. But with all this he does not feel
that God has forgiven his sins. In this monastery, however, he has
found something which he has never seen before, and that is a Bible.
You would think it strange nowadays if a man were over twenty years
old, and a Master of Arts, and yet had never seen a Bible; but that was
quite common in Luther's time. Well, in this monastery there is a
Bible, a great Latin book bound in red leather. The other monks have
shown it to Luther, though they have not cared much about it
themselves. He has begun to read it eagerly. The first thing he has
read in it has been the story of Hannah and the little Samuel, and this
has made him think of his own mother Margarethe and himself. Night and
day he studies this precious book, but at first it only makes him more
anxious. It seems to speak to him only of the righteous and jealous
God, who hates