Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/19

 on the Visitations. Bugenhagen had the gift of church organization, and introduced the Reformation into Hamburg, Lubeck, Pomerania, and Denmark, where in 1537 he crowned King Christian IV. and his Queen, like a true bishop, as Luther wrote.

Next in order is the good pastor of Joachimsthal, Johann Matthesius, who was born in 1504, and boarded for years with Luther, where he was received into the circle of his dearest friends. In 1526 he became acquainted with Luther’s pamphlet on Good Works, “from which,” he says, “I learned the elements of Christianity.” Matthesius wrote the first complete and reliable life of Luther, a series of Sabbath evening lectures to his Bible class in 1562-64, one of the most charming books of Reformation times. In Lecture VII. Matthesius gives an interesting account of his first sojourn in Wittenberg, which was cut short in 1529 by the Marburg Conference. Although placed in a remote parish he knew all that was going on; for, he had friends in the great Reformation centers, Nürnberg, Strassburg, Regensburg, and even in Vienna. Melanchthon often wrote asking him for news, for letters were then the newspapers. One may gather that Matthesius was a person of note; for, over a hundred portraits of him still exist, two in the National Gallery in London. Matthesius died on October 8, 1565.

Friedrich Myconius, the beloved Mecum of Luther’s letters, eventually first Evangelical superintendent in Gotha, was born in 1591 at Lichtenfels. His spiritual experience as a monk closely resembled Luther’s in Erfurt. In 1546 he related, as fresh as if it had happened the day before, how the way of salvation had been so far revealed to him in the now famous dream of July 14, 1510, on his first night in the Franciscan cloister in Annaberg, which he entered solely to serve God perfectly. But 1517 dawned before peace visited his soul. Little did the pious monk know,