low, the rich and the poor, from the very heart and nature of the Anglo-Saxons themselves.

Meantime, while the Reformation was in process, Erasmus was terribly worried, for both extremists sought to claim him as an ally, and he wished to side with neither.

"I will not lose my immortal soul to avenge a worldly wrong," he wrote to Lewis Ber in April, 1529. "I resist the weakness, though I cannot choose but feel my injuries. I understand how Arius and Tertullian and Wickliffe were driven into schism by malicious clergy and wicked monks. I will not forsake the Church myself. I would forfeit life and reputation sooner; but how unprovoked was the conspiracy to ruin me! My crime was my effort to promote learning. That was the whole of it. For the rest I have been rather their friend than their enemy. I advised divines to leave scholastic subtleties and study Scripture and the Fathers. I bade monks remember their profession, forsake the world, and live for God. Was this to hate the divines and the monks? Doubtless I have wished that popes and cardinals and bishops were more like the Apostles, but never in thought have I desired those offices abolished. There may be arguments about the Real Presence, but I will never believe that Christ would have allowed His Church to remain so long in such an error (if error it be) as to worship a wafer for God. The Lutheran notion that any Christian may consecrate or absolve or ordain I think pure insanity. But if monks fancy that by screaming and shrieking they can recover their old tyranny, or that popes and prelates can put the fire out with a high hand, they are greatly mistaken. It may be smothered for a moment, but surely it will break out again. A disease can only be cured by removing the causes of it. We need not give up

our belief in the Church because men are wicked.

But if fresh shoots are not to sprout, the evil must be torn out by the roots."

Europe was fast linking the names of Erasmus and Luther together. It would seem as if the men who respectively translated the New Testament from Greek into Latin, and then again the Bible from Greek, Latin and Hebrew into German, must be religious associates. And yet this was the very last thing that Erasmus desired. For a long while he refused to read any of Luther's writings, as he did not wish to pass any judgment upon them. Friends were always trying to induce Erasmus to write to Luther. Finally, their entreaties prevailed, and he wrote to him in this wise:

"As to me, my business is with literature. I confine myself to it as far as I can and keep aloof from other quarrels; but generally I think courtesy to opponents is more effective than violence. Old institutions cannot be rooted up in an instant. Quiet arguments may do more than wholesale condemnation. Avoid all appearance of sedition. Keep cool. Do not get angry. Do not hate anybody. Do not be excited over the noise which you have made. . . . Christ give you His spirit for His own glory and the world's good."

And writing about Luther Erasmus says: "I was the first to oppose the publication of Luther's books. I recommended Luther himself to publish nothing revolutionary. I feared always that revolution would be the end, and I would have done more had I not been afraid that I might be found fighting against the spirit of God!"

The new Pope, Paul III, was anxious to allay the storm of controversy, seeing what a severe chasm it was making in the bulwarks of the Church, and the tolerant and temper

ate attitude of Erasmus was greatly to his mind. He offered him a Cardinal's Red Hat, and Erasmus, old and feeble, smiled, pleased and favoured by the honour which he was too ill to accept. There is something which evokes our sympathy and our emotion at the picture of Erasmus in his last year of earthly consciousness, the fascinating, satirical, self-willed; ambitious young student, mellowed by strange and varied experience into the sage and philosopher, almost the saint; lying in his lonely, book-bestrewn lodging, toying with Rome's last offer, knowing that through force of circumstance and force of character it was refused, as through circumstance and character all the honours of Rome had consistently been refused, all his life long. "The world cannot over come the world" he had said, and he knew his conclusion was true. His eyes looked far forth into the future, to a time when education should so have encompassed the world that all men would intelligently know and understand the works he had translated for mankind. Then, when all had studied for themselves, the early Fathers, and the writings of the Apostles, when the desire to follow Christ was a reformation in the individual heart and intelligence, then, well then, it would be time to talk of innovations in outward forms, it would be time to talk, time enough, then-and so in dreams of a new world in a new age, Erasmus fell asleep and was buried in the Cathedral at Bâle in great state.

All this raises the interesting question,-To what extent, and in what sense was Mrs. Eddy a Protestant?-We know how closely allied her thought was with Origen and the Greek Christian Fathers, and how much she had in common with Wycliffe, and all earnest spiritual students of Holy Writ. At the same time, her affections flowed out to all mankind in a charity that recognised no sect

or creed, that tended to exclude no one, not even the veriest sinner, from the healing love of God. In what sense was she to take her place as a Protestant? for she had the courage of a lion of the tribe of Judah, and stood alone against the full force of ignorant public opinion. At the head of her chapter "Science of Being" in Science and Health, she herself quotes Martin Luther's renowned challenge: "Here I stand. I can do no otherwise; so help me God! Amen."

To our mind, the key-note of the Reformation and its subsequent effect lies in this paragraph from Science and Health (p. 141):

"All revelation (such is the popular thought!) must come from the schools and along the line of scholarly and ecclesiastical descent, as kings are crowned from a royal dynasty. In healing the sick and sinning, Jesus elaborated the fact that the healing effect followed the understanding of the divine Principle and of the Christ spirit which governed the corporeal Jesus. For this Principle there is no dynasty, no ecclesiastical monopoly. Its only crowned head is immortal sovereignty. Its only priest is the spiritualized man."

A sincere character was Erasmus' ideal, and it is this deep sincerity respecting the question of the nature of God and His manifestation, which Mrs. Eddy demands as a proof of genuine Christianity. In Miscellany, page 270, she writes:

"What we love determines what we are. I love the prosperity of Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protestant, or by Christian Science. . . . It is of

comparatively little importance what a man thinks or believes he knows; the good that a man does is the one thing needful and the sole proof of rightness." There is something in the grave wit of this sentence which recalls the penetrative judgment of Erasmus in his most philosophic vein. She equals Erasmus in charity, and a wise tolerance, and couples with it, without inconsistency, a fearless assertion of freedom which soars above the zealous declarations of the most ardent revolutionist. Hear her declaiming:

"We should thank God for persecution and for prosecution, if from these ensue a purer Protestantism and Monotheism for the latter days of the nineteenth century. A siege of the combined centuries, culminating in fierce attack, cannot demolish our strongholds... and why? Because it is 'on earth peace, good will toward men,'—a cover and a defence adapted to all men, all nations, all times, climes, and races. I cannot quench my desire to say this; and words are not vain when the depth of desire can find no other outlet to liberty. 'Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.' God is everywhere. No crown nor sceptre nor rulers rampant can quench the vital heritage of freedom-man's right to adopt a religion, to employ a physician, to live or to die according to the dictates of his own rational conscience and enlightened understanding." (Miscellany, p. 127.)

In Miscellaneous Writings she herself defines what manner of Protestant she is, in these words:

"Dispensing the Word charitably, but separating the tares from the wheat, let us declare the positive