Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 - Various - Страница 2

There is an old house in the "Dom Platz," at Frankfort, in which Luther lived for some years. A bust of him in relief is let into the outer wall; it is a grim-looking ungainly effigy, coarsely coloured, and of very small pretensions as a work of art; but evidently of a date not much later than the time of the great Iconoclast. Round the figure, the following words are deeply cut: "In silentio et in spe, erit fortitudo vestra." Can any of your readers tell me whether any particular circumstance of Luther's life led him to adopt this motto, or otherwise identified it with his name; or whether the text was merely selected by some admirer after his death, to garnish this memorial?

In either case it is not uninteresting to notice, that this passage of Scripture has been employed more than any other as the watchword of that religious movement in the English Church which we are accustomed to associate with Oxford and the year 1833. It forms the motto on the title-page of the Christian Year; it has been very conspicuous in the writings of many eminent defenders of the same school of theology, and it is thus alluded to by Dr. Pusey in the preface to that celebrated sermon on the Eucharist, for which he received the University censure:

"Since I can now speak in no other manner, I may in this way utter one word to the young, to whom I have heretofore spoken from a more solemn place; I would remind them how almost prophetically, sixteen years ago, in the volume which was the unknown dawn and harbinger of the re-awakening of deeper truth, this was given as the watchword to those who should love the truth, 'In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.' There have been manifold tokens that patience is the one great grace which God is now calling forth in our church," &c.

I will not here inquire which of the two great religious revolutions I have mentioned has been more truly characterised by the spirit of this beautiful and striking text, but perhaps some of your readers will agree with me in thinking that the coincidence is at least a note-worthy one; and not the less so, because it was probably undesigned.

Joshua G. Fitch.