When in 1515 the associated convents had to choose at Gotha, on a chapter-day, their new authorities, Luther was appointed, Staupitz being still Vicar-General, the Provincial Vicar for Meissen and Thuringia. He obtained by this office the superintendence of eleven convents, to which in the next year he paid the customary visitation. In person, by word of mouth, and equally by letters, we see him labouring with self-sacrificing zeal for the spiritual welfare of those committed to his care, for the correction of bad monks, for the comfort of those oppressed with temptations, as also for the temporal and domestic, and even the legal business of the different convents. In addition to his academical duties, he performed double service as a preacher. In the first place he had to preach in his convent, as he had already done at Erfurt. When the new convent at Wittenberg was opened, the church was not yet ready; and in a small, poor, tumbledown chapel close by, made up of wood and clay, he began to preach the gospel and unfold the power of his eloquence. When, shortly after, the town-priest of Wittenberg became weak and ailing, his congregation pressed Luther to occupy the pulpit in his place. He performed these different duties with alacrity, energy, and power. He would preach sometimes daily for a week together, sometimes even three times in one day; during Lent in 1517 he gave two sermons every day in addition to his lectures at the university. The zeal which he displayed in proclaiming the gospel to his hearers in church, was quite as new and peculiar to himself as the lofty interest he imparted to his professorial lectures on the Scriptures. Melancthon says of these first lectures by Luther on the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans, that after a long and dark night, a new day was now seen to dawn on Christian doctrine. In these lectures Luther pointed out the difference between the law and the gospel. He refuted the errors, then predominant in the Church and schools, the old teaching of the Pharisees, that men could earn forgiveness by their works, and that mere outward penance would justify them in the sight of God. Luther called men back to the Son of God; and just as John the Baptist pointed to the Lamb of God who bore our sins, so Luther showed how, for his Son's sake, God in His mercy will forgive us our sins, and how we must accept such mercy in faith.