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false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; and in the history of Mankind we see it summed-up into great historical amounts,-revolutions, new epochs. Dante's Mountain of Purgatory does not stand 'in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has once sailed thither! Men find no such thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease to be believed to be there. So with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,-all Systems of Belief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these.

If we add now the melancholy fact that when Belief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who will do faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage; if he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be misdone. Every such man is a daily contributor to the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of a new misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, clearedoff as by explosion. Dante's sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther; Shakspeare's noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder volcanically; and there are long troublous periods before matters come to a settlement again. —H. IV.

THE DIET OF WORMS.

THE Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation takes it rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal Nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there: Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this hand: on that, stands up for God's Truth, one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go; he could not be advised. A large company of friends rode-out to meet him, with still more carnest warnings; he answered, "Were there as many Devils in Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever denieth me before men!" they cried to him,—as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not: "Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!" Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of

God, he could not recant it. How could he? "Confute me," he concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I; I can do no other: God assist me!"—It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work. these two centuries; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there had Luther in that moment done other, it had all been otherwise! The European World was asking him: Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathesome accursed death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live? -H. IV.

PROTESTANTISM.

LUTHER did what every man that God has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do: answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, Dost thou believe me?-No!-At what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behoved to be done. Union, organisation spiritual and material, a far nobler than any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one! -H. IV.

"NO POPERY."

AND yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was true, if it no longer is.

In Dante's days it need

no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good then; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of 'No Popery,' is foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels, and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very curious: to count-up a few Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant logic-choppings,―to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say: See, Protestantism is dead; Popism is more alive than it, will be alive after it! Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves Protestant are dead; but Protestantism has not died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napoleon; German Literature and the French Revolution; rather considerable signs of life! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive but Protestantism? The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic one merely,-not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life! -H. IV.

THE REFORMATION AND THE NATIONS.

PROTESTANT or not Protestant ? The question meant everywhere: "Is there anything of nobleness in you, O Nation or is there nothing? Are there, in this Nation, enough of heroic men to venture forward, and to battle for God's Truth versus the Devil's Falsehood, at the peril of life and more." Men who prefer death, and all else, to living under Falsehood,-who, once for all, will not live under Falsehood; but having drawn the sword against it (the time being come for that rare and important step), throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious clearness, with their whole soul: 'Come on, then! Life under Falsehood is not good for me; and we will try it out now. Let it be to the death between us, then!'

Once risen into this divine white heat of temper, were it only for a season and not again, the Nation is thence

forth considerable through all its remaining history. What immensities of dross and crypto-poisonous matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his Puritans, making England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages by being thrown once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no Nation that has not had such divine paroxysms at any time, is apt to come to much.

Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Poland,-the offer of the Reformation was made everywhere; and it is curious to see what has become of the Nations that would not hear it. In all countries were some that accepted; but in many there were not enough, and the rest, slowly or swiftly, with fatal difficult industry contrived to burn them out. Austria was once full of Protestants; but the hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; we, with our dull obstinate Cimburgis underlip and lazy eyes, with our ponderous Austrian depth of Habituality and indolence of Intellect, we prefer steady darkness to uncertain new Light!"-and all men may see where Austria now is. Spain still more; poor Spain going about, at this time, making its "pronunciamentos;" all the factious attorneys in its little towns assembling to pronounce virtually this, "The Old is a lie, then;-good Heavens, after we so long tried hard, harder than any nation, to think it a truth!—and if it be not Rights of Man, Red Republic and Progress of the Species, we know not what now to believe or do; and are as a people stumbling on steep places, in the darkness of midnight!" -They refused Truth when she came; and now Truth knows nothing of them. All stars, and heavenly lights, have become veiled to such men; they must now follow terrestrial ignes fatui, and think them stars. That is the doom passed upon them.

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