turned to Saxony; and his friend Staupitz, seeing clearly that a
monastery was no place for him, recommended him to the Elector as
Professor of Philosophy at Wittenberg.

The senate of Wittenberg gave him the pulpit of the town church, and
there at once he had room to show what was in him. 'This monk,' said
some one who heard him, 'is a marvellous fellow. He has strange eyes,
and will give the doctors trouble by-and-by.'

He had read deeply, especially he had read that rare and almost unknown
book, the 'New Testament.' He was not cultivated like Erasmus. Erasmus
spoke the most polished Latin. Luther spoke and wrote his own vernacular
German. The latitudinarian philosophy, the analytical acuteness, the
sceptical toleration of Erasmus were alike strange and distasteful to
him. In all things he longed only to know the truth--to shake off and
hurl from him lies and humbug.

Superstitious he was. He believed in witches and devils and fairies--a
thousand things without basis in fact, which Erasmus passed by in
contemptuous indifference. But for things which were really true--true
as nothing else in this world, or any world, is true--the justice of
God, the infinite excellence of good, the infinite hatefulness of
evil--these things he believed and felt with a power of passionate
conviction to which the broader, feebler mind of the other was for ever
a stranger.

We come now to the memorable year 1517, when Luther was thirty-five
years old. A new cathedral was in progress at Rome. Michael Angelo had
furnished Leo the Tenth with the design of St. Peter's; and the question
of questions was to find money to complete the grandest structure which
had ever been erected by man.

Pope Leo was the most polished and cultivated of mankind. The work to be
done was to be the most splendid which art could produce. The means to
which the Pope had recourse will serve to show us how much all that
would have done for us.

You remember what I told you about indulgences. The notable device of
his Holiness was to send distinguished persons about Europe with sacks
of indulgences. Indulgences and dispensations! Dispensations to eat meat
on fast-days--dispensations to marry one's near relation--dispensations
for anything and everything which the faithful might wish to purchase
who desired forbidden pleasures. The dispensations were simply
scandalous. The indulgences--well, if a pious Catholic is asked nowadays
what they were, he will say that t