and punishes sin. But he gets some advice from a wise
friend, and begins to read the Epistle to the Romans over again. And
at length the glad meaning of the gospel dawns upon him. His own
account of it is, _Straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was
as if I had found the door of Paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw the
Scriptures altogether in a new light. That passage of Paul was to me
the true door of Paradise_.

Sir Noel Paton's picture represents Luther reading the Bible and
finding his restlessness and anxiety giving place to gladness and peace
of heart. He is sitting at a reading-table with the great
leather-covered book open before him. He wears his monk's dark robe
and cowl. His hands are thin and wasted. His cheeks are pale and
hollow with fasting. His eyes are bloodshot and fevered with anxiety
and sleeplessness. Near his left hand a richly carved crucifix stands
on the table, and beside it are an hour-glass and a skull. An ink-pot
with pens is at the other side. A lamp hangs from the roof above his
head, but it is giving no light. Only a thin blue trail of smoke rises
from the wick, showing that the oil has been burnt out. The fresh
morning air is coming in at a half-opened window above the crucifix.
The bright morning sun shines through the richly stained glass, and
makes a strange blur of coloured light on the wooden shutter behind.
The front of the reading-table is adorned by a picture of the Garden of
Gethsemane, with Christ praying, and the disciples sleeping. On the
wall behind Luther is a portrait of Pope Alexander VI., who died not
long before this time, and was one of the worst of men. In a recess
beyond a curtain we see on another stained-glass window, the figure of
Augustine, one of the great teachers of the early Church, after whom
the monastery at Erfuert was named. A number of old parchment-covered
books are visible, and it is interesting to notice the titles of some
of them, and the places where they lie. Away on a shelf are the works
of Aristotle, a great philosopher of ancient heathen Greece. On the
floor beside the reading-table is a book by a man called Thomas
Aquinas, a famous Roman Catholic teacher of the thirteenth century.
And on the table is a book by Augustine about the City of God. A
rosary, that is, a string of black beads with a cross at the end, has
been thrust between the leaves of this last book, as if to mark the
page. We seem to see that Luther h