of MARTIN LUTHER.

He was a poor, plain man, only a doctor of divinity, without place
except as a teacher in a university, without power or authority except
in the convictions and qualities of his own soul, and with no
implements save his Bible, tongue, and pen; but with him the ages
divided and human history took a new departure.

Two pre-eminent revolutions have passed over Europe since the
beginning of the Christian era. The one struck the Rome and rule of
emperors; the other struck the Rome and rule of popes. The one brought
the Dark Ages; the other ended them. The one overwhelmed the dominion
of the Caesars; the other humiliated a more than imperial dominion
reared in Caesar's place. Alaric, Rhadagaisus, Genseric, and Attila
were the chief instruments and embodiment of the first; _Martin
Luther_ was the chief instrument and embodiment of the second. The one
wrought bloody desolation; the other brought blessed renovation, under
which humanity has bloomed its happiest and its best.

THE PAPACY.

Since Phocas decreed the bishop of Rome the supreme head of the Church
on earth there had grown up strange power which claimed to decide
beyond appeal respecting everybody and everything--from affairs of
empire to the burial of the dead, from the thoughts of men here to the
estate of their souls hereafter--and to command the anathemas of God
upon any who dared to question its authority. It held itself divinely
ordained to give crowns and to take them away. Kings and potentates
were its vassals, and nations had to defer to it and serve it, on pain
of _interdicts_ which smote whole realms with gloom and desolation,
prostrated all the industries of life, locked up the very graveyards
against decent sepulture, and consigned peoples and generations to an
irresistible damnation. It was omnipresent and omnipotent in civilized
Europe. Its clergy and orders swarmed in every place, all sworn to
guard it at every point on peril of their souls, and themselves held
sacred in person and retreat from all reach of law for any crime save
lack of fealty to the great autocracy.[1] The money, the armies, the
lands, the legislatures, the judges, the executives, the police, the
schools, with the whole ecclesiastical administration, reaching even
to the most private affairs of life, were under its control. And at
its centre sat its absolute dictator, unanswerable and supreme, the
alleged Vicar of God on earth, for whom to err was deemed impo