Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. IN MARBURG. A MORE beautiful sanitarium for a bruised and broken spirit the Father of the fatherless himself could hardly have provided. Twice I visited this lovely retreat in the valley of the Lahn, where James Arminius spent his fifteenth year. In what refreshing contrast to the levelness and uniformity of Holland scenery stood out those wild surrounding hills! What healing charms for the heart-sick boy were in these ancient forests and this roaring river! Above the town, upon the summit of the Schlossberg, stood the white stone castle of the Hessian margrave.‘ Under the Gothic arches of its
Hall of Knights, only a few years before, the famous conference between Luther and Zwingli had taken place. Doubtless the very table on whose velvet cover Luther chalked his
HOC EST CORPUS MEUM was still to be seen. Melanchthon, one of the members of the conference, had died the very year of the birth of Arminius. Here, too, was the new university, the first one ever founded by Protestants, and in 1575 less than fifty years of age. Through the kindness of his friend he had not only a home, but also the privilege of studying in the university. For the improvement of such opportunities Theodore Emilius had already prepared him. Some of his professors could doubtless recall the memorable conference of princes and nobles and theologians and deputies at the castle in 1529. How eagerly must that youth, destined to become the most famous theologian of his country, have drunk in these descriptions of the great reformers, and sought an understanding of their strange doctrinal dissensions! At another time with what healthful boyish enthusiasm he must have bared his head, and, with his young companions, waved his cap, as down through the town swept, with smoking steeds and armed out-r…