4 INTRODUCTION. 



The stone which used to serve him as a resting place, 

 is yet there, it is covered by the same species of mosses 

 which grew there in the 16th century ; the same kinds 

 of flowers adorn now as then, meadows and rocks, and 

 Landgrafenschlucht, as well as Hohe Sonne, would be 

 familiar landmarks to him, while his feet would carry 

 him, as in former ages, through Drachenschlucht and 

 Annathal, back to the Marienthal from where he could 

 ascend the Wartburg along familiar paths, and once 

 there, even revisit his former abode. 



So it would appear, even to a returning Luther, as 

 if the landscape of Thuringia — with the exception of 

 minor alterations made bij man — were a permanent 

 and unchangeable result of the working of a Creator. 



And yet this permanency of Nature is a delusion 

 and a snare. 



We need not go very far back into the history of our 

 globe, to find on the spot, now occupied by the Thu- 

 ringian hills, a monotonous flat track of land, and if we 

 recede a little further into time, we see that this con- 

 tinent was preceded by an Archipelago of small isles, 

 while a little further back still, the spot now occupied 

 by Thuringia, was covered by the waters of an ocean, 

 on the bottom of which fragments of ancient rocks 

 were interspersed by a few coral reefs, as a token of the 

 power of the infinitely small, of the action of myriads 

 of minute living beings. \ 



Gradually, slowly, ever so slowly, these fragments 

 of rocks were kitted together by chalky and other sub- 

 stances, a kit including the coral reefs also, and for- 

 ming a new layer around that one, of the numberless 



