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12 MARTIN LUTHER. it is the way scholars are or he may be preparing his Lectures. When the time comes for returning to college, he sets out on foot with a friend. Just before entering Erfurth they are overtaken by a thunderstorm: his companion is struck dead at his feet, and himself stunned by the lightning. On coming to himself his first thoughts are, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? The things that are seen are temporal, the things that are unseen are eternal : Man giveth up the ghost and where is he? GOD be merciful to me a sinner: and so, while bending over the dead body of his friend, he makes a vow that henceforth he will live a new life, and renouncing the vanities of the world, seek first the kingdom of GOD and its righteousness. His mind is now agitated beyond measure with all kinds of thoughts and fears for his future destiny in that Infinite Invisible which he feels to be every where about him and very near separated only by a veil which the next flash of lightning may roll up as a scroll. He has all manner of doubts, and is spiritually most wretched. He thinks of his illness, of his sickbed vows : of what he had read in a Bible he had chanced to light upon one day in the college library, and what he must do to be saved is now his all-absorbing thought. He knows no satisfying answer, and daily grows more miserable. And no wonder : for verily this is a most wearing question for any one who has no Word of GOD to answer it with. You who have such Christian privi- leges perhaps may think its answer so easy that your very children could not fail to know it. But, dear brethren, you must remember that it is in a good measure owing to this now poor blind struggling Luther whom we have before us that you and they are so wise. The Bible was very little read before Luther's time abroad, and still less understood. Luther had to guess at the answer, and he guessed wrong. lie guessed, A Cloister that is the Strait Gate, the Narrow