The ancient edifice was crumbling under the load of superstition and ignorance; the new one was rising on the foundations of faith and knowledge. New elements entered deep into the lives of the people. Torpor and dulness were in all parts succeeded by a spirit of inquiry and a thirst for instruction. An active, enlightened, and living faith took the place of superstitious devotion and ascetic meditations. Works of piety succeeded bigoted observances and penances. The pulpit prevailed over the ceremonies of the altar; and the ancient and sovereign authority of God's Word was at length restored in the Church. The printing-press, that powerful machine discovered in the fifteenth century, came to the support of all these exertions, and its terrible missiles were continually battering the walls of the enemy. The impulse which the Reformation gave to popular literature in Germany was immense. Whilst in the year 1513 only thirty-five publications had appeared, and thirty-seven in 1517, the number of books increased with astonishing rapidity after the appearance of Luther's theses. In 1518 we find seventy-one different works; in 1519, one hundred and eleven; in 1520, two hundred and eight; in 1521, two hundred and eleven; in 1522, three hundred and forty-seven; and in 1523, four hundred and ninety-eight......And where were all these published? For the most part at Wittemberg. And who were their authors? Generally Luther and his friends. In 1522 one hundred and thirty of the reformer's writings were published; and in the year following, one hundred and eighty-three. In this same year only twenty Roman-catholic publications appeared.[225] The literature of Germany thus saw the light in the midst of struggles, and contemporaneously with her religion. Already it appeared learned, profound, full of daring and life, as later times have seen it. The national spirit showed itself for the first time without mixture, and at the very moment of its birth received the baptism of fire from christian enthusiasm. [225] Panzer's Annalen der Deutsch. Litt.; Ranke's Deutsch. Gesch. ii. 79. [Sidenote: COLPORTAGE.]