of the word of God. One day new lights will
rise up, and the Scriptures will be despised and be flung away into the
corner.'

His relations with his children were singularly beautiful. The
recollection of his own boyhood made him especially gentle with them,
and their fancies and imaginations delighted him.

Children, to him, were images of unfallen nature. 'Children,' he said,
'imagine heaven a place where rivers run with cream, and trees are hung
with cakes and plums. Do not blame them. They are but showing their
simple, natural, unquestioning, all-believing faith.'

One day, after dinner, when the fruit was on the table, the children
were watching it with longing eyes. 'That is the way,' he said, 'in
which we grown Christians ought to look for the Judgment Day.'

His daughter Magdalen died when she was fourteen. He speaks of his loss
with the unaffected simplicity of natural grief, yet with the faith of a
man who had not the slightest doubt into whose hands his treasure was
passing. Perfect nature and perfect piety. Neither one emotion nor the
other disguised or suppressed.

You will have gathered something, I hope, from these faint sketches, of
what Luther was; you will be able to see how far he deserves to be
called by our modern new lights, a Philistine or a heretic. We will now
return to the subject with which we began, and resume, in a general
conclusion, the argument of these Lectures.

In part, but not wholly, it can be done in Luther's words.

One regrets that Luther did not know Erasmus better, or knowing him,
should not have treated him with more forbearance.

Erasmus spoke of him for the most part with kindness. He interceded for
him, defended him, and only with the utmost reluctance was driven into
controversy with him.

Luther, on the other hand, saw in Erasmus a man who was false to his
convictions; who played with truth; who, in his cold, sarcastic
scepticism, believed in nothing--scarcely even in God. He was unaware of
his own obligations to him, for Erasmus was not a person who would
trumpet out his own good deeds.

Thus Luther says:--

'All you who honour Christ, I pray you hate Erasmus. He is a scoffer and
a mocker. He speaks in riddles; and jests at Popery and Gospel, and
Christ and God, with his uncertain speeches. He might have served the
Gospel if he would, but, like Judas, he has betrayed the Son of Man with
a kiss. He is not with us, and he is not with our foes; and I say with
J