holy faith, but merely its deformity, abasement,
and falsification."

"Call it so," replied Wolf calmly. "I have heard others name and
interpret differently what you probably have in mind while using these
harsh epithets. But is it not the old house, and that alone, in which
the martyrs shed their blood for Christianity? Where did it fulfil its
lofty task of saturating the heart of mankind with love, softening
the customs of rude pagans, clearing away forests, transforming barren
wastes into cultivated fields, planting the cross on chapels and
churches, summoning men with the consecrated voice of the bell to the
sermon which proclaims love and peace? Where did it open the doors of
the school which prepares the intellect to satisfy its true destiny, and
first qualifies man to become the image of God? By the old mansion this
country, covered with marshes, moors; and impenetrable forests, was
rendered what it now is; from it proceeded that fostering of science and
the arts of which as yet I have seen little in your circles."

"Give us time," cried the theologian, "and perhaps in our home their
flowering will attain an unsurpassed richness of development. With what
loose bonds the humanists are still united to you!"

"And the finest intellect of all, the great scholar whose name you bear,
though he deemed many things in our old home deserving of improvement,
remained with us until his death. Jesus Christ is one, and so his Church
must also remain. The only question is, What the Saviour still is to you
Protestants, what he is to you, my friend?"

"Before how many saints, and many another whom your Church desires to
honour, do you bow the knee?" Erasmus fervidly answered; "but we do so
only to the august Trinity. And do you wish to know what Jesus Christ,
the Son, is to me? All, and more than all, is the answer; I live and
breathe in my Saviour Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and
throughout eternity."

The young theologian raised his sparkling eyes heavenward as he spoke,
and continued: "Our doctrine is founded on him, his word, his love
alone; and who among the enthusiastic heralds of Christianity in ancient
times grasped faith in him with warmer sincerity than the very Martin
Luther whom you would have led to the stake had not the Emperor
Charles's plighted word been dearer to him than the approval of Rome?
Oh, my friend, our young faith can also show its martyrs. Think of the
Bohemian John Huss and the true