Thomas Martin

“ The time-keeper is chosen, a large ring made, and the two stand up opposite one another for a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels," as East mutters to Martin, "we shall do."
But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play with both hands. Hard all, is the word; the two stand to one another like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fighting as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand. ”

“ The tone of reproach made poor little Arthur shrink up in a moment and look piteous, and Tom with a shrug of his shoulders turned his anger on Martin.
"Well, I didn't think. Madman, that you'd have been such a muff as to let him be getting wet through at this time of day. You might have done the wading yourself."
"So I did, of course, only he would come in too, to see the nest. We left six eggs in; they'll be hatched in a day or two."
"Hang the eggs!" said Tom; "a fellow can't turn his back for a moment but all his work's undone. ”

“ All nature destroys and laughs.
Thomas. Destroy your own golden coach!
Martin [kneeling] . I am sorry to go a way that you do not like, and to do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you since I was a child in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet. It is not my fault. I have been chosen for what I have to do. [Stands up.] I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The love of God is a very terrible thing!
[Thomas tries to stop him, but is prevented by tinkers. Martin takes a wisp of straw and lights it.] ”

“ Martin and Tom, both of whom had irons on, tried it without success at first; the fir bark broke away where they stuck the irons in as soon as they leant any weight on their feet, and the grip of their arms wasn't enough to keep them up; so, after getting up three or four feet, down they came slithering to the ground, barking their arms and faces. They were furious, and East sat by laughing and shouting at each failure, “Two to one on the old magpie!”
“We must try a pyramid,” said Tom at last. “Now, Scud, you lazy rascal, stick yourself against the tree!” ”

“ Martin [rising] . We will go out against the world and break it and unmake it. We are the army of the Unicorn from the Stars! We will trample it to pieces. We will consume the world, we will burn it away. Father John said the world has yet to be consumed by fire. Bring me fire.
Andrew. Here is Thomas coming! [All except Martin hurry into next room. Thomas comes in.]
Thomas. Come with me, Martin. There is terrible work going on in the town! There is mischief gone abroad! ”

“ Martin became a constant inmate in the joint study from this time, and Arthur took to him so kindly that Tom couldn't resist slight fits of jealousy, which, however, he managed to keep to himself. The kestrel's eggs had not been broken, strange to say, and formed the nucleus of Arthur's collection, at which Martin worked heart and soul; and introduced Arthur to Hewlett the bird-fancier, and instructed him in the rudiments of the art of stuffing. ”

“ Martin has left and gone on a cruise in the South Pacific in one of his uncle's ships; the old magpie, as disreputable as ever, his last bequest [1] to Arthur, lives in the joint study. Arthur is nearly sixteen, and at the head of the twenty, having gone up the school at the rate of a form a half-year. East and Tom have been much more deliberate in their progress, and are only a little way up the fifth form. Great strapping boys they are, but still thorough boys, filling about the same place in the house that young Brooke filled when they were new boys, and much the same sort of fellows. ”

“ TOM'S WORK.
And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he gave for it—what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out Martin of all fellows for a friend. "The old Madman is the very fellow," thought he; "he will take him scrambling over half the country after birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian, and not teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons. ”

“ Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he has the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force me to do night walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of the seven stars! [He begins to play his flute.]
Thomas. I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will have them lodged in gaol.
Johnny B. Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming! The pikes will be up and the traders will go down! ”

“ Martin leads the way in high feather. [4] It is quite a [Pg 267] new sensation to him getting companions, and he finds it very pleasant, and means to show them all manner of proofs of his science and skill. "Brown and East may be better at cricket and foot-ball and games," thinks he, "but out in the fields and woods see if I can't teach them something." He has taken the leadership already, and strides away in front, with his climbing-irons strapped under one arm, his pecking-bag [5] under the other, and his pockets and hat full of pill-boxes, cotton-wool, and other et ceteras. ”

“ He succeeds, and then they are all at it for dear life, up and down the hedge in full cry, the "Come back! come back!" getting shriller and fainter every minute.
Meantime, the farmer and his men steal over the hurdles and creep down the hedge toward the scene of action. They are almost within a stone's-throw of Martin, who is pressing the unlucky chase hard, when Tom catches sight of them, and sings out, "Louts, 'ware louts, your side! Madman, look ahead!" and then, catching hold of Arthur, hurries him away across the field toward Rugby as hard as they can tear. ”

“ I'm for the hawk's nest and anything that turns up."
And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased, East departed to his study, "that sneak Jones," as he informed them, who had just got into the sixth and occupied the next study, having instituted a nightly visitation upon East and his chum, to their no small discomfort.
When he was gone, Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him. "No one goes near New Row," said he, "so you may just as well stop here and do your verses, and then we'll have some more talk. We'll be no end quiet ”

“ In a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard, and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese, and the three fell to with [255] hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's bottled beer and hospitable ways. "Here's Arthur, a regular young town mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes." ”

“ But the old Madman hasn't, and gets called up and makes some frightful shots, losing about ten places, and all but getting floored. This somewhat appeases Tom's wrath, and by the end of the lesson he has regained his temper. And afterwards in their study he begins to get right again, as he watches Arthur's intense joy at seeing Martin blowing the eggs and glueing them carefully on to bits of cardboard, and notes the anxious loving looks which the little fellow casts sidelong at him. ”

“ However, I'll go and see what he's after, and tell him to come in after prayers to supper." And away went Tom to find the boy in question, who dwelt in a little study by himself, in New Row.
The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for, was one of those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still) quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby ”

“ Luther had told the assembly of clergy, who met at Leitzkau in 1512 to discuss the affairs of the Church, that every true reformation must begin with individual men, and that it must have for its centre the regenerate heart, for its being an awakening faith, and for its inspiration the preaching of a pure Gospel. ”

“ Tom felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped off his jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his handkerchief round his waist, and rolled up his shirtsleeves for him. “Now, old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or try to help yourself a bit—we'll do all that; you keep all your breath and strength for the Slogger.” Martin meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to handle him, and Martin to give him a knee, steps out on the turf, and is ready for all that may come ”

“ Brown, you can climb against any one."
"Oh yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest, nor a hawk's egg."
"You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts," said Martin.
"Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out-and-out," said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer and the chance of a convert, launched into a proposed birds'-nesting campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets ”

“ It was not a man that had to be dealt with, but the slowly increasing movement of a nation. He felt this during the progress of his journey. When he reached Augsburg and Nürnberg, and found himself among his old friends and kinsmen, three out of five were strongly in favour of Luther. So impressed was he with the state of feeling in the country that before he entered Saxony he "put the Golden Rose in a sack with the Indulgences," to use the words of his friend, the jurist Scheurl, laid aside all indications of the papal Commissioner, and travelled like a private nobleman. ”

“ If we concern ourselves with the central position in the attacks made on Luther's Theses it will be found that they amount to this; that Indulgences are simply a particular case of the use of the ordinary power placed in the hands of the Pope and are whatever the Pope means them to be, and that no discussion about the precise kind of efficacy which may be in their use is to be tolerated. The Roman Church is virtually the Universal Church, and the Pope is practically the Roman Church. ”

“ We can see a sturdy common-sense religion taking possession of multitudes in Germany, which insisted that laymen might rule in many departments supposed to belong exclusively to the clergy. The jus episcopale which Luther afterwards claimed for the secular authorities had been practically exercised in Saxony and Brandenburg; cities and districts had framed police regulations which set aside ecclesiastical decrees about holidays and begging; the supervision of charity was passing from the hands of the church into those of laymen ”

“ He spent the usual year as a novice, then took the vows, and was set to study theology. His text-books were the writings of Occam, Biel, and D'Ailly. His aptness for study, his vigour and precision in debate, his acumen, excited the admiration of his teachers. But Luther had not come to the convent to study theology; he had entered to save his soul. These studies were but pastime; his serious and dominating task was to win the sense of pardon of sin and to see his body a temple of the Holy Ghost. ”

“ Such a man, occupying the position he had won, could not keep silent when he saw what he believed to be a great source of moral corruption gathering round him and infecting the people whom he taught daily, and who had selected him as their confessor and the religious guide of their lives. ”

“ The sturdy peasant adhered to his anti-clerical Christianity, and when his son told him that he had a clear call from God to the monastic life, the father suggested that it might have been a prompting from the devil. Once ordained, it was Luther's duty to say mass and to hear confessions, impose penance and pronounce absolution. He had no difficulties about the doctrines and usages of the Church; but he put his own meaning into the duties and position of a confessor. His own experience had taught him that man could never forgive sin ”

“ We have therefore this new thing, that the laity in power had begun to set quietly aside the immunities and privileges of the Church, to this extent at least, that the civil authorities compelled the local ecclesiastical institutions within their dominions to live under the rule of reform laid down by an ecumenical council, and that they did this despite the remonstrances of the superior ecclesiastical authorities.
The same assertion of the rights of laymen to do Christian work in their own way appears when the records of the boroughs are examined. ”

“ The modern mind is tempted to imagine intellectual difficulties, to think of the rents in the Church's theology which the criticisms of Occam and of Biel had produced, of the complete antagonism between the whole ecclesiastical mode of thinking and the enlightenment from ancient culture that humanism was producing, and Luther's doublings are frequently set down to the self-questioning which his contact with humanism in Erfurt had produced. ”

“ Luther was the greatest religious genius which the 16th century produced, and the roots of the movement in which he was the central figure must be sought for in the popular religious life of the last decades of the 15th and opening decades of the 16th centuries—a field which has been neglected by almost all his biographers. ”