As in many of the most important conveniences and improvements of civilised life, the origin or spring has been insignificant and comparatively obscure, surrounded with every disadvantage and impediment to success; so also has it been with our most valuable religious movements, “For God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.” {13} Look at the great moral and spiritual reformation which commenced in the year 1503, when a change took place in Germany, agitating the whole Christian world, shaking the papal kingdom from the centre to the circumference, opening to the light its secret abominations, overturning its iniquitous customs, irradiating its darkest recesses, and pouring its healing waters into the abodes of suffering and woe. And what was the immediate instrument, and who was the artificer selected or raised up to accomplish this? The prohibited volume of the Holy Scripture, which had long lain on the shelves of the library at the Augustine monastery at Erfurt—here Martin Luther, a monk, found it, secretly he conveyed it to his cell, and amid the solemn silence and darkness of night, his solitary lamp tells his employment, and aids him in exploring the mine of truth, the record of eternal life. Celestial light diffused itself through his mind, illumined his soul, and wrought strong convictions that the principles and practices of that Church, of which he was the avowed and sworn servant, were at perfect variance with truth. Arrayed against him as was the whole hierarchy of that apostate Church, he clothed himself in the panoply of the Gospel, especially “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” to do warfare in the sacred cause.