A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible LandsWhittle, Walter Andrew
Religion
A Baptist Abroad: Travels and Adventures of Europe and all Bible Lands
Whittle, Walter Andrew
Europe -- Description and travel; Middle East -- Description and travel
and boundless resources, revived like the vigor of vegetation after
the stunning blow had fallen. He stood until there was not a man to
meet him. The haughty hierarchy which he assailed had “bound kings in
chains, and nobles in fetters of iron; but before the fire of his
quenchless zeal those fetters fell, fused as by the lightning touch of
Heaven.”
It is only in accordance with the “eternal fitness of things,”
therefore, that we find in Worms a monument memorializing this severe
conflict and brilliant victory of the intrepid reformer.
As we enter the town from the railway station, we pass through the
Luther-Platz (place or square), in the center of which stands the
Luther Monument, which was erected in 1868 at a cost of $85,000. The
monument is on this wise. There is a massive platform of granite,
forty-eight feet square and nine and one-half feet high, bearing in its
centre a large pedestal, also of granite. This pedestal is surmounted
by another in bronze, adorned with reliefs representing four scenes in
Luther’s life. In the first, we see him administering the communion as
a Catholic priest; second, he is nailing his theses on the church door
in Wittenberg; next, we see him defending himself at Worms; and, last,
he is translating the Bible into his native language.
Now, upon this pedestal, whose sides are thus adorned, stands the
bronze statue of Luther, eleven feet in height, a commanding figure.
In his left hand he holds a Bible, on which his right hand is placed
emphatically, while his face, on which faith is admirably portrayed, is
turned upwards. John Huss, Savonarola, John Wycliffe, and Peter Waldus
are sitting at the four corners of the large pedestal on which Luther
stands.
From the four corners of the large platform, rise four granite
pedestals, not so large as the central one. On these four pedestals
stand bronze statues of Luther’s fellow champions, Malanchthon,
Reuchlin, on one side, and Philip of Hesse and Frederick the Wise of
Saxony, his princely protectors, on the other. The four last-named
statues are each nine feet high. Taken all in all, this is one of the
finest and most impressive monuments I have seen. And why should it
not be so? These men have justly been called the thunderers, the cloud
compellers, the world uplifters, the hammers of the Lord, the pioneers
of progress, the liberators of mankind,
“Whose names are ever on the world’s broad tongue,
Like sound upon the falling of a force;
Who play upon our hearts as upon a harp,
And make our eyes bright as we speak of them.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
GERMAN BAPTISTS.
BY WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH.
A Weak Beginning—Persecutions—Firm Faith—Rapid Growth—A Trio of
Leaders—Theological Schools—Publishing House—Hopeful Outlook.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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