Here we may pause a moment, and learn a useful lesson. Like a chained eagle, Luther sits all day in the midst of the dark forests of Thuringia, gloomily brooding over the degraded state of the church and clergy, and violently agitated as to the results of the diet of Worms, the welfare of his friends, and the progress of truth. The chain galls him; he has not accepted it from the Lord; his health suffers; he passes whole nights without sleep; the melancholy tendencies of his mind increase, and he imagines that he is incessantly assaulted by Satan. "Believe me," he writes, "I am delivered over to a thousand imps of Satan in this solitude; and it is much easier to contend with incarnate fiends—that is, men—than with wicked spirits in high places." He longs to be at liberty, and to stand in the front of the battle; and, fearing lest he should be accused of deserting the field, he exclaimed, "I would rather be stretched on coals of fire than lie here half dead." And all mankind would say, "a crisis has come; the active efforts, the resistless appeals of Luther are more needful now than ever; for if the leader of this mighty movement be constrained to retire at such a moment, the cause of truth must suffer, and its enemies triumph. But in spite of all human reasoning, the Master says, No. My ways are not as your ways, nor My thoughts as your thoughts. The captivity of My servant shall be the liberty of millions." And so it proved. No event in his history tended so much to enrich his mind, or mature his views as to the nature and extent of the reform which the condition of things around required, besides the books which he wrote, and the scriptures which he translated. May we learn to bow, well-pleased, when the Master's orders are to be quiet, as well as when He says, Go forth and serve in the field to which I have called you, and for which I have fitted you. Moses in Midian, Paul in Arabia, and John in Patmos, are divine lessons for all the Lord's servants.