[Sidenote: A New Evangel.] The sale of indulgences began promptly to decline, and the money, intended partly for the building of St. Peter’s Church at Rome, ceased to flow into the treasury. The local clergy took alarm, the alarm reached to Rome. Threatened, cajoled, greatly disturbed, but steadfast, Luther clung to his conviction. “The Christian man who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an indulgence and does not need one; Christ demands true repentance from every one,” said Luther. At once came a stern reply. It was the Pope and not Luther who had the right to decide this and all other questions. Thus reproved, Luther began to investigate the claims of the Pope upon the lives and fortunes of men. Excommunicated, threatened, with the fate of the martyr Huss in store for him, but gathering courage each day, he persisted until he had separated essentials from non-essentials and, thrusting aside the judgments and traditions of men, had founded his theology upon the Word of God. _Tearing out the weeds of false doctrine and false practice, he cleared the stream of the Gospel to its clear and living Spring._ [Sidenote: The Bible Translated.] Luther not only opened the stream, but provided for its continued freedom. To his German people he gave their Bible. His was not the first German translation, but it was the first which was at once readable and true to the original. With the most painstaking care and with the aid of his friends, Luther prepared his version, drawn from the original languages, true to the German idiom, a joy to laity and scholars alike. [Sidenote: Luther and Missions.] The interest of Luther in missions has been the subject of much unnecessary discussion. There are fervent admirers who claim for him a missionary enthusiasm which he did not possess. There are others who deny for him all interest in this vital question. The truth lies midway. Missionary enterprise was not one of the first activities of the new Church, nor was it to be expected that it should be. The turmoil and difficulties connected with the establishment of the evangelical religion occupied fully the minds of the reformers. Germany was practically an inland nation and a divided nation. It had no ships, no foreign possessions, no communication with the heathen world. There were not for the early Protestants as for the early Christians great Roman roads leading the imagination afar, there were no large cities where men of many nations touched elbows. The newly discovered lands were the possession of Catholic countries in whose domain the new Gospel, which was really the old Gospel, would have had no hearing.