on the rock. No wonder he should venerate the Bible,
which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of
the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that;
as through life and to death he firmly did.

This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over
darkness, what we call his conversion; for himself the most important of
all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness; that,
unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should
rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, and be found more and
more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was
sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity
fit to do their business well: the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named
the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a
valuable person; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg,
Preacher too at Wittenberg; in both which capacities, as in all duties
he did, this Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining
more and more esteem with all good men.

It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome; being sent
thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second,
and what was going on at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther
with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of God's
High-priest on Earth; and he found it--what we know! Many thoughts it
must have given the man; many which we have no record of, which perhaps
he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false
priests, clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other
vesture, is _false_: but what is it to Luther? A mean man he, how shall
he reform a world? That was far from his thoughts. A humble, solitary
man, why should he at all meddle with the world? It was the task of
quite higher men than he. His business was to guide his own footsteps
wisely through the world. Let him do his own obscure duty in it well;
the rest, horrible and dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, not in his.

It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, had Roman
Popery happened to pass this Luther by; to go on in its great wasteful
orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault
it! Conceivable enough that, in this case, he might have held his peace
about the abuses of Rome; left Providence, and God on high, t