uenos Aires_, page 254.

[23] See _Cartier Explores Canada_, page 236.

[24] See _De Soto Discovers the Mississippi_, page 277.

LUTHER BEGINS THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY

A.D. 1517

JULIUS KOESTLIN JEAN M. V. AUDIN

It has seldom happened that the story of one man was
essentially the history of a great movement and of an epoch
in human progress. In the case of Luther, a large part of
the world regards his name as a historic epitome. The monk
whose "words were half-battles," and whom Carlyle chose for
his hero-priest, was chief among the reformers, and in the
general view stands for the Reformation itself.

But recognition of Luther's dominating position and
representative character should not leave us blind to other
factors in the religious revolution which was also an
evolution, the achievement not of one man, but of advancing
generations with many leaders. Luther had great helpers in
his own time and great successors. He also had great
predecessors. The Reformation was the religious development
of the Renaissance; it had been heralded by Wycliffe, Huss,
and Savonarola, and there were many minor prophets of a
reformed church before the great German was born.

Luther's Reformation was a revolt against the power and
abuses of the Roman Catholic Church. It was directed against
certain doctrines as well as certain practices, and
especially against evils in the spiritual and temporal
government of the Church.

All the reformers aimed at freeing themselves from
oppressive rule at Rome, and endeavored to establish a purer
faith. The appeal to private judgment as against
unquestioning belief was a natural result of the revival of
learning as well as of spiritual quickening.

Before Luther's time, however, such revolts against church
authority had been quickly suppressed. It is also true that
many abuses had been done away by reformation within the
Church itself; and that, indeed, was what Luther at first
intended. His movement became "too powerful to be put down,
and its leaders soon passed beyond the point at which they
were willing to reform the Church from within. Finding that
the Church would not respond as quickly and as fully to
their demands as they wished, they left the Church and
attacked it from without." In Ger