Martin Luther has generally been regarded as the father of the Reformation. He was certainly one of the greatest men of the sixteenth century. He was the son of very poor parents, his father being a miner; and was born at Eisleben, Nov. 10, 1483. Martin’s childhood was simply such as was to be expected in the home of poor but very religious parents. At the age of fourteen he was sent to school at Magdeburg; but his destitution was so great, that he often obtained a few pence, which contributed essentially to his support, by singing in the streets. Still he made rapid progress in study; and, being taken under the care of a maternal relation, at the age of eighteen he entered the University of Erfurt. Here the closeness of his application and his attainments soon attracted the attention of his teachers. The Bible at that time was a sealed book to the laity. Luther, to his great delight, found a copy in the Latin language in the library of the university. He studied it with the utmost diligence, and became so interested in its contents, that he resolved to devote himself to the study of divinity. The sudden death of a friend at this time, who fell dead at his side, so impressed him with melancholy emotions, that he decided to withdraw from the world, and immure himself in the glooms of the cloister. Accordingly, he entered the monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt in the year 1505, and patiently submitted to all the rigors and penances imposed upon him by his superiors. But he was tortured with a sense of sin: none of his self-inflicted sufferings appeased his conscience. His mental agitation threw him into severe and dangerous illness. He felt that he had no good works upon which he could rely as atonement for his many infirmities, and his good sense enabled him to contemplate with thorough disgust the traffic in indulgences. But a gleam of new light dawned upon his mind as one of the brothers spoke to him of salvation from sin and its penalty through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ,――salvation through faith, and not by works. The high intellectual endowments of Luther could not be concealed. The provincial of the order released him from the menial duties of the cloister that he might devote himself to the study of theology. In 1507 he was ordained a Catholic priest; and, one year after, was made professor of philosophy in the University of Wittenberg. Here his commanding intellect, and independence of character, collected around him a large number of disciples. A visit to Rome in 1510 revealed to him the corruption of the clergy, and utterly destroyed his reverence for the pope. Upon his return to ♦Wittenberg, at the age of twenty-nine, he was made a doctor in theology, and became a preacher.