Straightway I felt as if I were born anew. It was as if I had found the door of Paradise thrown wide open. Now I saw the Scriptures altogether in a new light. That passage of Paul was to me the true door of Paradise.

Sir Noël Paton's picture represents Luther reading the Bible and finding his restlessness and anxiety giving place to gladness and peace of heart. He is sitting at a reading-table with the great leather-covered book open before him. He wears his monk's dark robe and cowl. His hands are thin and wasted. His cheeks are pale and hollow with fasting. His eyes are bloodshot and fevered with anxiety and sleeplessness. Near his left hand a richly carved crucifix stands on the table, and beside it are an hour-glass and a skull. An ink-pot with pens is at the other side. A lamp hangs from the roof above his head, but it is giving no light. Only a thin blue trail of smoke rises from the wick, showing that the oil has been burnt out. The fresh morning air is coming in at a half-opened window above the crucifix. The bright morning sun shines through the richly stained glass, and makes a strange blur of coloured light on the wooden shutter behind. The front of the reading-table is adorned by a picture of the Garden of Gethsemane, with Christ praying, and the disciples sleeping. On the wall behind Luther is a portrait of Pope Alexander VI., who died not long before this time, and was one of the worst of men. In a recess beyond a curtain we see on another stained-glass window, the figure of Augustine, one of the great teachers of the early Church, after whom the monastery at Erfürt was named. A number of old parchment-covered books are visible, and it is interesting to notice the titles of some of them, and the places where they lie. Away on a shelf are the works of Aristotle, a great philosopher of ancient heathen Greece. On the floor beside the reading-table is a book by a man called Thomas Aquinas, a famous Roman Catholic teacher of the thirteenth century. And on the table is a book by Augustine about the City of God. A rosary, that is, a string of black beads with a cross at the end, has been thrust between the leaves of this last book, as if to mark the page. We seem to see that Luther has come from the heathen philosopher to the Roman Catholic doctor, and then to the earlier Christian teacher, and last of all to the Bible itself. For the Bible is the only open book; and the pale, worn, young monk, who has been reading it all night, is still bending over it in the early morning, with a wonderful earnestness in his look. The sunrise outside is an emblem of the light that is beginning to dawn upon his soul.

Now what can this picture teach you? Two things, I think, at least.

I

The first is to prize the Bible and study it earnestly. You can understand what a surprising and precious discovery the Bible was to Luther, how glad he was to read it, how he rejoiced in God's Word as one that findeth great spoil. And one of the first things he did when he had an opportunity was to translate the Bible into the common speech of the German people, that every one might be able to have it, and that no one might grow to manhood or womanhood without having seen it or read it.

Bibles are common and cheap in these days, but I am afraid that there are still some people who are as old as Luther in our picture, and yet do not know very much about the truths which the Scriptures contain. Be sure that you do not despise the Bible because it is so familiar. It is still the best of all books. Try to take as much interest in it as if it were a book you had never seen before, and you will always find something new and fresh in it to reward you.

II

The second is to discover in the Bible God's message of love and peace to your own heart. Luther's case shows that you cannot win God's forgiveness by punishing yourself, by fasting, and scourging, and sleeplessness, and things like these, while you can get forgiveness for nothing just by taking it from God. Jesus Christ has won it for you. He has loved you and given Himself for you. You simply need to believe that God pardons you and saves you freely for Jesus Christ's sake. This was what Luther found in his Bible. It is the best thing you can find in yours. And when you do find it I am sure that you also will rejoice as one that findeth great spoil.

HERCULES WRESTLING WITH DEATH
FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS

BY THE LATE LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A.

HERCULES WRESTLING WITH DEATH FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS.
By permission of the Fine Art Society, 748 New Bond Street, London, the owners of the copyright

HERCULES WRESTLING WITH DEATH
FOR THE BODY OF ALCESTIS

That through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death.—HEB. ii. 14 (Revised Version).

We come now to a picture which represents a scene in one of the most beautiful stories of ancient Greece. There was a king of Thessaly called Admetus, with whom the god Apollo served for a time as herdsman. Apollo had offended Zeus, the Father of the gods, by killing the forgers of the thunderbolts with which Zeus had slain Apollo's son Asclepius—

"And so, for punishment, must needs go slave,
God as he was, with a mere mortal lord."

He found Admetus to be a kind master, and when his term of service was over he showed his gratitude by obtaining from the Fates a promise that, whenever Admetus should be about to die, his life would be spared, if only some one of his friends should be found willing to die instead of him. The promise was very soon put to the test. Admetus was struck down with a deadly disease. His father Pheres and his mother were each asked if they would die for their son, but though they were old, and had not many years of life to hope for at the best, neither of them was willing to make the sacrifice. When they refused, Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, offered herself to Death in the flower of her youth and beauty. She was taken, and her husband was spared. Hercules was the greatest hero of the Greeks—their strong man, like Samson in the Bible. And when Alcestis died Hercules came to the rescue. He wrestled with Death, overcame him, and gave Alcestis back to her husband again. This beautiful tale was taken by the Greek poet Euripides as the subject of one of his plays, the Alcestis, which some of you may read when you are older. The story is also found in English in Browning's Balaustion's Adventure, which is just a translation and explanation of the poem of Euripides.

The fight of Hercules with Death for the body of Alcestis has been painted as well as sung. Lord Leighton's large and masterly picture brings the whole scene before us. In the centre you see the body of Alcestis, which has been brought out of doors, and laid on a bier under the shadow of some ancient trees. Beyond it, in the background, is the dark blue sea, flecked with white spots of foam. The dead body is covered with pure white drapery. The beautiful face is pale as marble, and the brow is crowned with a garland of myrtle leaves. Roses are strewn on the white coverlet, and on the ground. Beside the bier are the offerings of food and drink which the Greeks used to burn along with their dead on the funeral pyre. In the left hand corner lies a shovel for digging the grave that is