Catharine not only sympathized most sincerely with her husband in all his joys and sorrows, but she herself suffered severe afflictions, some of which were calculated to fill a mother’s heart with inexpressible anguish. Some of these have been already alluded to. In August, 1538, they were both attacked with fever, and in July, 1539, they providentially escaped a violent death. Luther had had a new cellar constructed, which he went to inspect in company with his wife. They had scarcely left the cellar, when the ground caved in with a terrible crash. In loud thanksgivings to God they expressed their sense of this miraculous deliverance. In January, 1540, Catharine was brought nigh to death at the birth of a child. To Luther’s great joy, she gradually recovered. The death of their second daughter, Magdalena, in 1542, at the age of fourteen—the first, Elizabeth, had died in 1528—bowed her heart deeply, and overwhelmed her with sorrow. Scarcely had the pious sufferer endured these severe visitations with the resignation becoming a true Christian, when she was called on to deplore the death of her most intimate and valuable friend, the wife of Dr. Jonas. This unexpected event was so much the more painful to Luther, inasmuch as when in secret he reflected on his own departure out of this world, he always reckoned on the wife of Dr. Jonas as the comforter of his widow and children. In 1545, the three sons of Luther and his yet surviving daughter, Margaretta, were all at the same time attacked with the measles, and the latter also suffered in addition, from a severe and dangerous fever.