of
by-gone centuries, some stalwart form, like that of Luther, arrests our
backward glance, and all beyond is dark and void. But generations before
Martin Luther the work for the harvest of coming ages was begun. Humble
but earnest men, with such rude aids as they possessed, were toiling to
clear away the dense underbrush of ignorance and superstition, and let
the light of the sun in on the stagnant swamp; struggling to plough up
the stony soil that centuries of oppression had made hard and barren;
scattering seed that the sun would scorch and the birds of the air
devour; and dying without seeing a green blade to reward them with the
hope that their toils were not in vain.

But their labors were not lost. The soil thus prepared by the painful
and unrequited toil of those who had gone down to obscure graves,
sorrowing and hopeless, offered less obstruction to the strong arms and
better appliances of the reformers of a later day. Of the seed scattered
by the early sowers, a grain found here and there a sheltering crevice,
and struggled into life, bearing fruit that in the succession of years
increased and multiplied until thousands were fed and strengthened by
its harvest.

The military history of the reign of the third Edward of England is
illuminated with such a blaze of glory, that the dazzled eye can with
difficulty distinguish the dark background of its domestic life. Cressy
and Poitiers carried the military fame of England throughout the world,
and struck terror into her enemies; but at home dwelt turbulence,
corruption, rapine, and misery. The barons quarrelled and fought among
themselves. The clergy wallowed in a sty of corruption and debauchery.
The laboring classes were sunk in ignorance and hopeless misery. It was
the dark hour that precedes the first glimmer of dawn.

Poitiers was won in 1356. Four years the French king remained in
honorable captivity in England. Then came the treaty of Bretigny, which
released King John and terminated the war. The great nobles, with their
armies of lesser knights and swarms of men-at-arms, returned to England,
viewed with secret and well-founded distrust by the industrious and
laboring classes along their homeward route. The nobles established
themselves in their castles, immediately surrounded by swarms of
reckless men, habituated by years of war to deeds of lawlessness and
violence, and having subject to their summons feudatory knights, each of
whom had his own band of