facts of history, so patent that all have seen and acknowledged
it, that to meet every great epoch a man has been prepared. I mean
it in no irreverent or theological sense when I say that there has
been a series of Christs, whose appearance has denoted the
departure of old dispensations and the inauguration of new. Men
have arisen who have torn down temples, and demolished idols, and
swept away systems, and knocked off fetters, and introduced their
age into a freer, better, and larger life; and it will always be
so while time shall last. Men will arise equal to the wants of
their age wherever men are civilized. The causes which produce
emergencies are the agents which educate men to meet them; and
nature is prodigal of her material among men, as among the things
made for his service.

When, in the history of Christianity, it became necessary to re-assert
and emphasize the truth that "the just shall live by faith," Luther
was raised up; and nothing is more apparent to the student than that
the age which produced him demanded him--that he fitted into his
age, supplied its wants, and cut a new channel, through which the
richest life of the world has flowed for centuries. He found his country
tied up to formalism, scholasticism, and tradition; and by strokes as
remarkable for boldness as strength he set it free. He stands at the
head of a great historical epoch, which was prepared to receive and
crown him. In another field, we have, even in this day, a reformer
whom his age has called for, and who will surely do in the world of
art what Luther did in religion. No one can read Ruskin, and mark his
enthusiasm, his splendid power, his earnestness, his love of truth,
his reverence for nature, and above all, his love of God, without
feeling that he has a great mission to fulfil in the world. I bow myself
in homage before this man, and acknowledge his credentials. He