That was his last word on earth. Then turning on his right side, he
seemed to fall peaceably asleep for a quarter of an hour. Once more hope
awoke in the hearts of his children and his friends; but the physician
told them it was no favourable symptom.
A light was brought near his face; a death-like paleness was creeping
over it, and his hands and feet were becoming cold.
Gently once more he sighed; and, with hands folded on his breast,
yielded up his spirit to God without a struggle.
This was at four o'clock in the morning of the 18th of February.
And now, in the house opposite the church where he was baptized, and
signed with the cross for the Christian warfare, Martin Luther lies--his
warfare accomplished, his weapons laid aside, his victory won--at rest
beneath the standard he has borne so nobly. In the place where his eyes
opened on this earthly life his spirit has awakened to the heavenly
life. Often he used to speak of death as the Christian's true birth, and
of this life as but a growing into the chrysalis-shell in which the
spirit lives till its being is developed, and it bursts the shell, casts
off the web, struggles into life, spreads its wings and sours up to God.
To Eva and me it seems a strange, mysterious seal set on his faith, that
his birth-place and his place of death--the scene of his nativity to
earth and heaven--should be the same.
We can only say, amidst irrepressible tears, those words often on his
lips, "O death! bitter to those whom thou leavest in life!" and "Fear
not, _God liveth still_."