created many enemies; and being goaded by their fury, and especially by that of Tetzel, he at length posted on one of the doors of the churches in Wittemberg, a paper, containing ninety-five theses, or propositions, in opposition to it, with this celebrated challenge appended :-"In the spirit of honest and genuine love, and of especial anxiety, apart from all vain glory, to bring the truth to light, the Reverend Father Dr. Martin Luther, Augustinian of Wittemberg, Master of Arts and of the Holy Scriptures, etc., is willing, by God's grace, to treat of the following points concerning the doctrine of indulgences, to dispute concerning them, to defend and maintain them, against brother John Tetzel, of the order of preachers. And he requests that those persons who may not be able to dispute with him in person, will discuss the points in writing. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."

This celebrated challenge may be considered as the match which lit up the flames which the dauntless Luther enkindled. The propositions were promptly approved by his order, the university of Wittemberg, and by all intelligent persons far around. But not so were they by his enemies, the blind advocates of the errors of Rome. Tetzel promulgated a series of opposite propositions at Frankfort, and burnt those of Luther in the market of Juterbock, while he thundered forth curses against heresy. The Dominican, Sylvester Prierias, wrote violently against him; Hogstraten, likewise a Dominican, and a furious zealot, pursued the same course, and spoke of the sword and the stake. Eck, professor of theology, at Ingolstadt, arrayed himself against him; and the old emperor Maximilian summoned the pope to put an end to the contention by the exercise of his authority and power.

The summons of the emperor was responded to. Luther was cited to Rome. By the intercession of Frederick the Wise, however, who was his sovereign, his trial took place in Germany. He appeared in Augsburgh, before the legate Cardinal Thomas Vio de Garta, and the choice offered to him was, either to revoke unconditionally or be excommunicated. Luther appealed from "the pope misinformed to the pope disabused," and subsequently to a general council. But his appeal was of no avail. A sentence of condemnation upon his doctrines, and another of excommunication upon him

self, provided he did not retract, were issued from the Vatican.

The emperor Maximilian, who was an implacable enemy of the reformer, was by this time summoned to give in his account at the tribunal of the heartsearching Judge of the world; and although his successor, Charles v., was inclined to carry the sentence into execution by the secular arm, yet Luther found such a powerful protector in the elector Frederic, (who by the change in the empire had become "vicar" in the countries of the Saxon law, and possessed of a temporary security,) that he became more enthusiastic in his great work. He burned the bull of excommunication, and with it the code of common law, publicly, at an appointed spot near Wittemberg. Luther was now cited before the emperor's first diet in Worms. There was danger to his life in this journey; for although a safe conduct was granted him, yet one who was already condemned by the pope as a heretic, and towards whom only the external forms of justice were to be observed, could not be considered safe within the actual grasp of his enemies. It was predicted by some of his friends that he would be burned there, as Huss had been at Constance; and Bucer and Spalatin entreated him by no means to enter the city. But his purpose was fixed. To those who predicted his death, he replied, that if they were "to kindle a fire that should reach to the sky, between Wittemberg and Worms, he would yet appear there in the name of the Lord; that he would enter into the mouth of Behemoth, and acknowledge Christ." And to Spalatin he returned this memorable answer, "I would go into the place if there were in it as many devils as there are tiles upon the houses."

Luther went to Worms, and before the emperor, the princes of the empire, and a host of Romish prelates, boldly defended his doctrine, and declined the retractation which the assembly demanded from him, as contrary to his conscience. He concluded thus:-"If this work is human, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, you will never destroy it."

Luther left Worms in safety; but the sentence of proscription not only sounded after him and against him, but against all his defenders. Protected by the elector of Saxony, however, the edict of Worms was never carried into execution. Affairs

of secular policy, complicated wars, and finally the emperor's own quarrels with

the pope also, all tended to shield the reformer of Germany from personal danger. In the mean time the new doctrine had become so deeply and extensively rooted by the writings of Luther and his friends, that it was impossible to eradicate it; it became the salvation of Germany from the thraldom of popery, and when persecution raged in England, and the fires blazed throughout the country, that country finally gave shelter to many illustrious exiles.

Much has been written respecting the character of Luther. Romish writers represent him as the vilest of sinners; while his friends, on the contrary, represent him as possessing extraordinary excellences. His errors seem to have arisen chiefly from the circumstances of his position. If he were sometimes violent, it was the effect of fierce opposition and bitter persecutions; and if he sometimes passed the bounds of decency in his opposition to the Romish church, it proceeded from the magnitude of its corruptions. Great evils require extraordinary remedies to effect their cure, and Luther proceeded in his noble career, as though he was ever impressed with this great truth. Besides, no one has any reason to expect that Luther, engaged as he was in a struggle for life or death, should have displayed the moderation of a modern controversialist. Nor should any one look for the intelligence of the nineteenth century at the beginning of the sixteenth; or for the polite learning of the Christian scholar of modern times, in one who had been educated in the very midst of monkish absurdities. Violence, indecency of opposition to his enemies, and lack of learning, are charges which his adversaries have brought against him; but not one among them has ventured to call his courage, sincerity, and integrity of purpose into question. Rome would have purchased his return to her bosom by wealth and dignity, but he despised her proffers, and died poor.

As a preacher, Luther was energetic and eloquent, but his style was plain and intelligible to all classes of his auditors. According to his own testimony, which is found in a recorded conversation between him and Martin Bucer, he considered when he ascended the pulpit that the greater part of his hearers were illiterate people, and, therefore, preached to them in a manner which they could understand. The effects of his pulpit ministrations on various and isolated oc

casions are recorded in many passages of his history. They are seen, however, in a clearer light, by the final results of his noble struggle. He found his countrymen enthralled by the chains of superstition, and struggled manfully and successfully to obtain for them that true freedom which the soul obtains by simple faith in Christ. E. F.

WINTER.

IN the "Journal of a Naturalist" for January 10,is the following happy description of winter :- "The ground covered with snow, the pools with ice, trees and hedges leafless, and patched here and there with a mantle of white, present a cheerless, dreary void; no insects are animating the air, and all our songsters are silent and away; a few miserable thrushes are hopping on the ditch bank, swept bare by the wind; and the robin, puffing out his feathers and contracting his neck into his body, is peeping with his fine bright eyes into the windows, from the cypress bough. A few evergreens are waving their sprays, and glittering in the light, yet making but poor compensation for the variety, the flutter, the verdure of our summer. Though we have little natural beauty to note or to record, we are not left without a testimony of an overruling Power; and, however sad and melancholy things may appear at the first view, yet a more steady observation will manifest to us a presiding Providence and mercy. Frost and snow are but cheerless subjects for contemplation, yet I would add a reflection in my journal of one passing event, or rather recall from memory the truth that science has made known to us, revived by the sight of that frozen pool. There is one universal body, inherent in every known substance in nature-latent heat, which chemists have agreed to call 'caloric.' By artificial means bodies may be deprived of certain portions of it, and then the substance most usually contracts, and increases in weight. Water is an exception to this; for, in losing a part of its heat, the cause of its fluidity, and becoming ice, it expands, and is rendered lighter by inclosing, during the operation, more or less of atmospheric air; consequently it swims, covering the surface. To this very simple circumstance, ice floating and not sinking, are the banks and vicinities of all the rivers, lakes, pools, or great bodies of

water in northern Europe, Asia, and America, rendered habitable; and what are now the most fertile and peopled, would be the most sterile and abandoned, were it not for this law of nature. Had ice been so heavy as to sink in water, the surface, on freezing, would have fallen to the bottom, and a fresh surface would be presented for congelation; this would then descend in its turn, and unite with the other, and thus, during a hard frost, successive surfaces would be presented, and fall to the bottom, as long as the frost or any fluid remained. By this means, the whole body of the water would become a dense concretion of ice: its inhabitants would not only perish, but the indurated mass would resist the influence of the sun of any summer to thaw it, and continue congealed throughout the year, chilling the earth in its neighbourhood, and the winds that passed over it preventing the growth of vegetation in the former, or blighting and destroying it by the influence of the latter.

"Winter is called a dull season; and, to the sensations of some, the enjoyments of others, and, perhaps, to the vision of all, it is a most cheerless period. This is so universally felt, that we always associate the idea of pleasure with the return of spring: whatsoever our occupations or employments may be, though its sleety storms and piercing winds may at times chill the very current in our veins, yet we consider it as an harbinger of pleasurable hours and grateful pursuits. We commence our undertakings, or defer them till spring. The hopes or prospects of the coming year are principally established in spring; and we trust that the delicate health of the blossoms around our hearths, which have faded in the chilling airs of winter, may be restored by the mild influence of that season. Yet winter must be considered as the time in which nature is most busily employed. Silent in her secret mansions, she is now preparing and compounding the verdure, the flowers, the nutriment of spring; and all the fruits and glorious profusion of our summer year are only the advance of what has been ordained and fabricated in these dull months. All these advances require omnipotent wisdom and power to perfect; but perhaps a more exalted degree of wisdom and power has been requisite to call them into a state of being from nothing. The branch of that old pear-tree now extended before me is denuded and bare, presenting no object

of curiosity or of pleasure; but, had we the faculty to detect, and power to observe, what was going forward in its secret vessels, beneath its rugged, unsightly covering, what wonder and admiration would it create! the materials manufacturing there for its leaf and its bark; for the petals and parts of its flowers; the tubes and machinery that concoct the juices, modify the fluids, and furnish the substances of the fruit; with multitudes of other unknown operations and contrivances, too delicate and mysterious to be seen, or even comprehended, by the blindness, the defectibility of our nature-things of which we have no information, being beyond the range of any of the works or the employments of mankind. We may gather our pear, be pleased with its form or its flavour; we may magnify its vessels, analyze its fluids; yet be no more sensible of its elaborate formation, and the multiplicity of influences and operations requisite to conduct it to our use, than a wandering native of a polar clime could be of the infinite number of processess that are necessary to furnish a loaf of bread, from ploughing the soil to drawing from the oven. This is but an isolated instance, amidst thousands of others more complicated still. How utterly inconceivable, then, are the labours, the contrivances, the combinations that are going forward, and accomplishing, in this our dull season of the year, in that host of nature's productions with which, shortly, we shall everywhere be surrounded.

"It is in a period like this, where one comfortless hue predominates over all things,

'Where all is sky, and a white wilderness;
And, here and there, a solitary pine,
Its branches bending with a weight of snow,'

that we fully perceive the beauty, the cheerfulness, of the colours of nature, which, like so many other things in life, we do not duly appreciate until we are deprived of them.

"The splendour, the variety of the autumnal glow, is certainly magnificent, and, by reason of the diversity of tints, gives a breadth and depth to woods and glades, exceeding that which an uniformity of colour would effect; but this gaiety, this lustre of the grove, however pleasing as a temporary exhibition, would, probably, not be agreeable as a lasting vestiture, independent of that cast of melancholy the decay of natural beings

the senses.

commonly conveys; but it is green, reviving green, that appears most to gratify A bank, an eminence, swept by the wind, and verdurous, the grassy streamlet, the ivy-vested trunk in the hedgerow, allure our view, as fertile islands in a desert waste; and we watch the progress of a thaw, as the subsidence of a wintry flood. Green seems to be the predominant hue of vegetation, when in health; and our faculties feel revived, reanimated, by its freshness when we view it. The wide-spread pastures, the foliage of the thicket, appear to impart their life to a wearied, languid being; and as the sick man looks out on the verdant turf, his jaundiced eye imbibes the universal spirit of vitality that circulates around; he admits the hope of restoration, as he sees the healthy existence of all things. And how is it that this colour conveys such sensations? Probably not from any innate love or accordance with a particular tint; for, if so, it would prevail in all things, become the influencing dye in our dress, of our fancies—which it is not. It may at times be an association of the memory-an impression on the mind of superior health and life, enjoy- | ment, leisure, bland airs, and recreations; but, then, persons bred in cities and situations where no early recollections of such conceptions have had birth, yet feel pleasure in the verdure of nature, an importunity for the country. Surrounded by verdure, we inhale a larger portion of oxygen, of vital air: this increases the pulsations of the heart, augmenting the flow of spirits. An analysis of a certain number of cubic inches of the atmospheres from the crowded alley and the open down, would, probably, give no indication of this excess; yet we have strong presumptions that it exists. But this is an effect on the animal machine, not an operation on the mind by vision. The immediate satisfaction which the eye receives in resting upon verdure, is difficult to account for: many natural colours please, but green seems to be a tint that conveys a calm exhilaration, and, as an innate disposition in many, without reasoning or deliberation, effects its influences by actions imperceptible to our understanding."

The same writer observes, under the date of January 20th:-" A keen frost, and the ground covered with snow, present a scene of apparent suffering and want to many of our poor little birds; but the preservation of the fowls of the air, which

sow not, nor gather into barns,' has been beautifully instanced to us, as a manifest evidence of a superintending Providence ; the full force of this testimony is most strongly impressed upon us in a season like this, when winter rules with rigour; and we marvel how the lives of these beings can be supported, when the waters are bound up, and earth and all its products hidden by a dense covering of snow. Many of the small birds obtain subsistence by picking the refuse of our cornstacks, by seeds scattered about our home-stalls and cattle-yards; but multitudes of others are in no way dependent upon man for, shelter or support, do not even approach his dwelling, but are maintained by the universal bounty of Providence, as the woodlark, the meadowlark, the chats, and several others; but by what means they are maintained in a period like this, is not quite manifest. The portion that they require is probably small, yet it must be insect food; and the chats, larks, and gray wagtails, seem busily engaged in providing for their wants, upon the furze sprays, amidst frozen grass, or upon the banks of ditches and pools; and, as no insect, but the winter gnat, is found in such places, it is probable that this creature, which sports in numbers in every sunny gleam, yields them in this season much of their support. Some of the insectivorous birds have, at such periods, no apparent difficulty in supporting their existence, finding their food, in a dormant state, in mosses, lichens, and crevices of trees and buildings; but for those which require animated creatures, I am sensible of none that are to be procured but this gnat, and it possibly has been endowed with its peculiar habits and dispositions for a purport like this. We have many examples in nature of similar provisions, wherein one race supports the existence and requirements of another. The molluscæ and insects of the deep continue the life of some, the feeble races of the air and waters maintain the beings of others, and the beast of the wild seeks his food amidst those which inhabit with him; but where this chain ends, human faculties will probably never be able to ascertain. The remarkable fact which our microscopes make known to us, that all infusions of natural substances in water, will produce life, however extraordinary the form may be, seems to denote a continuation of beings beyond any possible comprehension, and probably subservient to the