North Brixton.
[Footnote 1: The largest number of advertisements in one paper with a
double supplement was in June last, 2,250.]
[Footnote 2: The quantity of paper used for _The Times_ with a single
supplement is 126 reams, each ream weighing 92 lbs., or 7 tons weight of
paper; with a double supplement, 168 reams.]
[Footnote 3: During the week of the Duke's funeral, there were issued by
the Stamp Office to the newspaper press more than 2,000,000 of stamps.]
* * * * *
"IN QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE SHALL BE YOUR STRENGTH."
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.