[Illustration: LUTHER AT ERFÜRT. By permission of the executors of Sir Noël Paton, and Mr. R. H. Brechin, Glasgow] LUTHER AT ERFÜRT _I rejoice at Thy word, as one that findeth great spoil_.--Ps. cxix. 162. I wish to connect this text with a picture which is thought by many judges to be among the greatest of the late Sir Noël Paton's works. Its title is "Dawn," and its subject is a well-known incident in the life of the famous German Reformer, Martin Luther. As we see Luther in this picture he is a young man between twenty and thirty years of age. He has had a brilliant career at the University of Erfürt, and has taken his degree with the highest honours, but he has disappointed all his friends by refusing to become a lawyer, and by choosing to become a monk instead. He has already entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfürt. Luther's reason for taking this unexpected step has been anxiety about his soul. He has begun to do his best to gain salvation by performing all the duties of a monk. He has fasted, and scourged himself, and done without sleep. He has once spent three whole days without eating or drinking. He has been found fainting on the floor of his cell. But with all this he does not feel that God has forgiven his sins. In this monastery, however, he has found something which he has never seen before, and that is a Bible. You would think it strange nowadays if a man were over twenty years old, and a Master of Arts, and yet had never seen a Bible; but that was quite common in Luther's time. Well, in this monastery there is a Bible, a great Latin book bound in red leather. The other monks have shown it to Luther, though they have not cared much about it themselves. He has begun to read it eagerly. The first thing he has read in it has been the story of Hannah and the little Samuel, and this has made him think of his own mother Margarethe and himself. Night and day he studies this precious book, but at first it only makes him more anxious. It seems to speak to him only of the righteous and jealous God, who hates and punishes sin. But he gets some advice from a wise friend, and begins to read the Epistle to the Romans over again. And at length the glad meaning of the gospel dawns upon him. His own account of it is, _Straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I had found the door of Paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw the Scriptures altogether in a new light. That passage of Paul was to me the true door of Paradise_.