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and Times of Martin Luther."

After introducing his subject, the Lecturer said that all
ages and nations have had their great men ; men who had
a mission to their fellows ; men who would be heard whe-
ther we would hear or forbear, and who could command
attention. These great men had all one father—even
Adam. They had the same flesh and blood, were cheered

by the same sun, had the same wants, and were all mem-
bers of the same family ; for all of them were of God's
family. They arose in different periods, under widely dif-
ferent circumstances ; in nations the most civilized and
the most barbarous. They were, moreover, stars of dif-
ferent magnitudes,—some shining with the greatest lustre,
and some with lesser brightness. But none of them

lived in vain ; though some of them were great warriors,
some poets, some moralists and philosophers, who vigor-
ously exposed the errors of their fellows, and struck out
new truths for other minds to perfect; and some set them-
themselves to defend truth against error, and thus be-
came the reformers of mankind. A great living writer
would have us believe that all great men were constituted
alike that Burns and Newton, Luther and Wellington,
had the same characteristics, and that they differed only
in the world's reception of them. There are, however;
spurious great men as well as real ones. There are
Paines and Voltaires, Humes, and Gibbons, and Joe
Smiths, as well as Miltons and Newtons, Bacons and
Lockes ; but all are heroes to their several followers.
Christian men have their heroes also ; but they are hewn
out of a different quarry—are coined from a different mint.
They are God's men, doing God's work and will. Has
any other age or people seen such heroes as the Hebrew
prophets ? They have long ceased to give utterance to
their divine inspirations ; but there is not a Christian land
in the world where their voices are not still heard. And
who is there that has received the light of Gospel, but has
blessed God for having sent to us the Christian reformers?
Where is the social-hearted German who does not rever-
ence the name of Martin Luther ?—where the English-
man who honours not John Wickliffe ?—where the canny
Scot who does not glory in John Knox,—or the Swede
who fails to revere the memory of Zuingle ? It was theirs
to make the beauty and holiness of the Bible known
throughout Europe ; and their writings have never lost
their charm. Above all,—and here lies the gist of the
whole : they believed what they taught, and they
spoke because they believed.—(Loud applause.) They
tried their armour on their own consciences before
they ventured to use it in doing battle with the
errors of others ;—as David refused to put on the
armour of Saul, because he had not assayed it.
The lecturer then referred to the difficulty of the
task which he had that night undertaken—not from
any want of materials, but from their abundance, and the
labour required judiciously to select them. Looking,
however, at the wheels which set the character of Martin
Luther in motion, they would find that his father, in the
fifteenth century, was a poor peasant, living on the bor-
ders of the Thuringian forest, and doing his duty in the
sphere to which it had pleased God to call him. That
peasant's name was John Luther, and, being a younger
brother, by the old law of the country he derived no
inheritance from his father, so that John Luther was
obliged, according to an expression common in Lancashire,
to " rough it." But his perseverance and application
enabled him to keep his family, and to save about £l2O
in money. He was subsequently made councillor of the
town of Mansfeld, the place in which he lived ; and, from
all that we know of him, he appears to have been a model
of what a working man should he. Instead of wasting
his means in drinking and smoking, he thought and stu-
died good things. Instead of making his children work
hard for him, while he lived in idleness, as many persons
do in this town, he worked hard for them, even till blood
was sometimes drawn from him by his laborious occupa-
tions ; and his wife seconded his efforts in all things, so
that they lived very haupily together. Martin Luther, their
their son, was born Nov. 10, 1483, at Eisleben, in Lower
Saxony, at 11, p.m.—the great hero of the Protestant
Reformation, and of the sixteenth century. His parents
paid the greatest attention to the training of their child,
though both seem to have dealt somewhat harshly with
him. Generally, the mother is a city of refuge to her
children, but the mother of Martin Luther was of sterner
stuff than most mothers ; and one day she so severely
chastised him about a nut, that he could never forget it in
after years. Had they understood phrenology, and ex-
amined his bumps, they would probably have treated him
with more gentleness—(laughter)—but at home, both by
his father and his mother, and at school, he found that
those who had him in charge never intended to " spare
the rod and spoil the child ;" and he used to say, when
he had grown up to be a man, that the treatment he expe-
rienced nearly made him spirit-broken. He stated that
he had got flogged one morning fifteen times running.
With regr.rd to spiritual training, however, he was treated
most worthily, for his parents began with religion. At
twelve years old he was sent to Magdeburg, where he
studied diligently, and thence was removed to Erfurt,
where, in the library of his college, he first had an oppor-
tunity of reading a copy of the Bible—the true word of
God. This first awakened in his mind new impulses, and
soon afterwards, having overworked himself in preparing
for his examination, he was seized with serious illness,
and expected death, when an old priest besought him to
look for salvation to the atoning blood of Christ. About
the same time, a friend and fellow-student, named Alexis,
was murdered ; and on returning home through the forest
Luther was overtaken by a terrible thunder-storm. He
then fell on his knees and vowed the remainder of his life
to God. Agreeably to what was at that time considered
the fulfilment of this vow, he entered a monastery, where
he soon discovered the idleness and vicious lives of the
monks—being sent out to beg in the streets, while they
lived luxuriously in the cloisters. God had evidently sent
him thither, in order that he might see what religion was
not. He was subsequently sent on a mission to Rome,
where he saw that still greater debaucheries were practised
by the priesthood of Anti-Christ. Julius 11. was then
Pope, a man who was fearfully ambitious, who was fond
of war, and placed himself at the head of his armies,
instead of attending to the duties of religion. Luther
then saw that the Papal church, as it existed, was vile and
debased, and that its services were a mere mockery ; and
he afterwards said, that, if there he a hell, Rome must
be built upon it ; but he added, that he would not
for a hundred thousand florins have missed seeing
Rome. After his return home, Pope Leo X. issued
a bull for the sale of indulgences, and sent a number of
agents throughout Europe, allowing them a per centage
for selling his letters, These purported to remit all venial
sins at a certain scale of charges. A man might purchase
permission to marry two wives, although he had one
already alive, fora few ducats; he might steal from a
church, or commit almost any offence, if he was willing
and able to pay the fixed price of the Papal indulgence.
The chief instrument for the sale of these letters of in-
dulgence was an old man of 73, himself a great sinner,
and concerning whom the Emperor Maximilian had given
orders that he should be put into a sack and thrown into
the river. This man's name was Tetzel (concerning
whose proceedings the lecturer narrated many character-
istic particulars). It was against these indulgences that
Luther first raised his reforming voice. He wrote and
nailed up at the church door 95 theses, which at
once created a strong sensation throughout Germany.
They were read in the monasteries and the uni-
versities, and eventually reached Rome, whither Luther
was cited to answer for them. He next assembled a large
congregation at Wittenberg, where, having read the Pope's
decree against himself, he committed it to the flames.
He was then excommunicated ; but, subsequently, was
induced to go to defend his principles, and expose the
errors of papacy to the Diet which had been summoned at
Worms, consisting of a large number of bishops and
archbishops, nobles, and princes of the empire. There,
feeling that he was the champion of truth, he defended
himself manfully; and his defence is now producing its
good fruits throughout the Christian world. The lecturer
then related the main facts of Luther's subsequent life—
his retreat to the Castle of Wartenburg, his steadfast
preachings of the Gospel, and his wrestlings with the
devil—who he believed continued to haunt him in a
tangible, bodily form, till the period of the Reformer's
death, in his 64th year. The leading traits of Luther's
character were—that having embraced the truth, nothing
could deter him from maintaining it ; devotional feeling ;
strong belief in a superintending providence ; and a stern
adherence to the permanent authority of the Holy Scrip-
tures. Mr. Sutton subsequently described some features
in the back-sliding tendencies of certain clergymen of the
Church of England at the present day, in the manifestation
of a strong leaning towards the errors of Rome, and a dis-
like of what they designate Bibliolatry ; and concluded by
exhorting his hearers to preserve their attachment to the
written word of God, and to assist with all their hearts in
spreading the light of evangelical Christian truth. (Loud
applause.)
A vote of thanks to the lecturer, moved by the Rev.
Williams, curate of St. Peter's Church, was carried by
acclamation ; and the Rev. Mr. Sutton having briefly
responded, the auditory separated.

NOVEL TOLL-TAKING.—The accounts of the late floods
give an amusing incident at Gloucester. It is something
novel for a man to demand toll from his bedroom window,
when his gate was under water, but such appears to have
been the case in the following instance, related by a far-
mer of his man, whom he had sent on an errand :—" The
little muscular blood mare which took him is deserving of
the highest praise, be being the first man who faced the
water into Gloucester, after the flood became so high as
to be thought dangerous to pass. He tells me, for a mile.
and-a-half there was nothing to guide him but a high
hedge on one side of the road, and many times he saw
nothing but the mare's head ; as he says, it was nothing
but the mare's game which saved him, for every time the
water went over her back she would snort and press for-
ward with determined vigour. At the toll-gate, which
was nearly at the far end of the flood going into Glouces-
ter, the toll-keeper was driven up-stairs, who, with a lad-
der at his window, stepped out with one foot on the gate-
post to demand his toll, there being nothing visible but
the tops of the two posts. The poor fellow, who is a
most faithful man, and dexterous among horses, acknow-
ledged he was frightened for the first time in his life."

UNSEEMLY FRACAS.—On Wednesday, at Bow-street,
London, the Hon. B. Johnstone, M.P. for Canterbury,ap-
peared before Mr. Henry, the magistrate, charged with
violently assaulting Mr. Benj. Oliveira, M.P. for Ponte-
fract. It appeared from the evidence, which was gone
into at great length, that on Friday night, after the divi-
sion on the free-trade motion in the House of Commons,
the complainant and defendant were walking along Pall-
mall, the former in company with Mr. Hastie, M.P., and
the latter with Lord Drumlanrig. Both parties called
a cab, and the cabman driving up to the side of the pave-
ment, the complainant got inside, when the defendant
struck him twice in a violent manner with a cane, and
then ran away. Mr. Oliveira, feeling himself aggrieved,
on the following morning took out a summons against the
defendant. Several witnesses were called to prove the
above facts, and after some considerable conversation
between the parties, Mr. henry, the magistrate, stated
that the best course to pursue would be to send the case
before a jury, and let them decide or

!ratter at issue
ris to be taker

fore, order the

and the defendant to be bound over to appear at the next
Middlesex sessions. The parties were then bound over
to appear and prosecute.