evangelical teaching, the school system then played a prominent part. Nüremberg, some years after, was among the most active to establish a good high school. Luther himself went in April 1525 with Melancthon to his native place Eisleben, to assist in promoting a school, founded there by Count Albert of Mansfeld: his friend Agricola was the head master. Thus we see that the work of planting and building occupied Luther at this time more than the contest with his old opponents. Well might he, as he says in his hymn, rejoice to see the spring-tide and the flowers, and hope for a rich summer. On the other hand, not only did the adherents of the old system knit their ranks together more closely, and, like the confederates of Ratisbon in 1524, profess their desire to do something at least to satisfy the general complaint of the corruption of the Church; but men even, who from their undeniably deep and earnest striving for religion, seemed originally called to take part in the work and war, now separated themselves from Luther and his associates, not venturing to break free from the bonds of old ecclesiastical tradition. Still more was this the case with men of Humanistic culture, whose temporary alliance with Luther had been dictated more by the interest they felt in the arts and letters threatened by the old monastic spirit, and by the open scandal caused by the outrageous abuses of the clergy and monachism, than by any sympathy with his religious principles and ideas. And to those who wavered in so momentous a decision, and shrank back from it and the contests it involved, there was plenty in what they observed among Luther's adherents, to give them occasion for still further reflection. It was not to be denied that, sharply as Luther had reproved the conduct of the Wittenberg innovators, the new preaching gave rise among excited multitudes, in many places, to disturbance, disorder, and acts of violence against obstinate monks and priests; and all this was held up as a proof of what the consequences must be of a general dissolution of religious ties. The desertion of their convents by monks and nuns, ostensibly on the ground of their newly-proclaimed liberty, but in reality, for the most part, as was alleged against them by the Catholics, for the sake of carnal freedom, was denounced with no small severity by Luther himself; but, in so doing, he recalled to mind the fact, that equally low interests had led them into the convents, and that the cloisters also, after their fashion, indulged in the 'worship of the belly.' Luther was just as indignant that the great majority of those who refused to be robbed any longer of their money and goods at the demand and by the deceits of the Papal Church, now withheld them both from serving the objects of Christian love and benevolence, which they were all the more called on to promote. The enemies of the new doctrine began already to charge against it that the faith, which was supposed to make men so blessed,