!' ■ Shelf. 1 PRINCETON, N. J. ^* BR 315 .M152b 1884 Macintosh, J. S. The breakers of the yoke ! 1 i THE BREAKERS OF THE YOKE. SKETCHES AND STUDIES Men and Scenes of the Reformation. A SERIES OF DISCOURSES DELIVERED IN THE SECOND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, BY Rev. J. S. Macintosh, D.D. PHILADELPHIA: PRESS OF HENRY B. ASHMEAD, 1102 AND 110-1 Sansom Street. 1884. COPYRIGHT, 1884. Rev. J. S. Macintosh, D.D. PHILADELPHIA. MEMBEES OF THE SECOND PRESP.YTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, 3CtfSt iSi'scourscs art SLffcctfonatclB ffltiitattli BY THEIR FRIEND AND PASTOR. CONTENTS. I. — John Wycliffe, " The Morning Star of the Reformation," 9 II. — John Huss, The Flame of Bohemia and the Martyr of Constance, .... 43 III. — Girolamo Savonarola, Monk, Master and Martyr op Florence, 85 IV. — The Intolerable Yoke. The Church of the Middle Ages: Her Degradation and Despotism, 125 V. — Martin Luther, The Monk of Erfurt, the Man op the Emancipation, . . .167 VI. — Patrick Hamilton, The Princely Pioneer OP Scottish Presbyterianism, . . . 193 VII. — Ulrich Zwingle, The Hero of Helvetic Re- form, 213 VIII. — John Knox, The Father of Scotland and the Founder of her Church, .... 255 IX. — Our Heritage and our Hopes. The Pros- pects of Protestantisji, .... 373 PREFACE. These discourses are simply what they are called — sketches and studies of the men and times of the Reformation. They are not exhaustive biographies, nor even finished monographs. Such they were never designed to be. The aim was to sketch graph- ically the great men who broke for us and our fathers the intoler- able yoke of papal bondage, and to study carefully the age and the circumstances in which they each lived and wrought. These lectures formed a series of evening discourses delivered in connec- tion with the Luther and the Zwingle commemorations. They were prepared from week to week amid all the distractions and under the pressure of steady pastoral work. Yet an honest effort was made to render them as accurate and as attractive as the themes themselves demanded and the audiences deserved. Of publication there was not at the first any thought. Those who heard the discourses, however, desired to possess them for them- selves and for their friends in a permanent form ; and at the re- quest of the session and the trustees of the Second Presbyterian Church they have been printed. A few generous friends, ever ready to kindly deeds, have borne the cost of i")ublicatiou, which as to style leaves nothing to be desired. The discourses are pub- lished just as they were delivered. Many changes in form and expression the writer wished to have made, and many additions with a view to greater completeness ; but the incessant demands of the pulpit and the pastorate forbade any such alterations. Vlll PREFACE. ' Prefixed to each lecture will l)e foimd a list of authorities which, Avith many other works, I have, iu preparing these dis- courses, freely and constantly used. To these works I owe much, and gladly declare my indebtedness. Acknowledgments would I also make of the kindness of many friends in Britain, Switzerland and Germany, who have helped me much in these and kindred studies. From Dr, Roberts, of the Princeton Seminary, and from the courteous officers of the Philadelphia Library, have I received most willing and valuable assistance. John S. Macintosh. PHiLAUELniiA, April, 1884. 4» ^' JOHN WYCLIFFE, &e innm ^ln' «f ^¥ liefotmalion." " 'Twas his To see God's truth thro' eyes like eagles", which From higher Alps undazzled eye the sun." " Great truths are portions of the souls of men ; Great souls are portions of eternity." WOEKS CONSULTED. Vaughan's Life of WycliiFe, Lewis' Biography, Arnold's Select Eng- lish Works of Wycliffe, Shirley, Le Bas, Engelhard, Neander, Lives of Savonarola, various works on Huss and Bohemia, several German mon- ographs, e. g., Zeits. f. Hist. Theol., 1853, Reformers before the Refor- mation, Lechler's life with Lorimer's notes. To these works and to the articles in cyclopaedias I would refer all desiring further information. JOHN WYCLIFFE, THE MORNING STAR OP THE REFORMATION." " The yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing." — Isaiah x. 27. Memorable and spirit-stirring scene that which took place at the close of the year 1512 just outside the gates of Milan ! There stand rank on rank the victo- rious troops of the Emperor and the Pope, with banners waving and trumpets sounding ; there upon seats of dig- nity are massed the ambassadors, legates, deputies and commissioners of the Vatican, of Spain, the holy Roman empire and a score of proud cities and duchies ; there waits the young Duke Maximilian Sforza about to re- gain his palace and his authority ; and here, in the very centre, as the heroes of the heroes, are the resistless Swiss who had swept the French invaders from the land, who had carried freedom to Italy and had saved the Church. At their head stands the burgomaster of Zurich with the keys of Milan, which are now, with Latin oration, placed in the hands of Maximilian. Then forth steps the Cardinal-legate to honor in the name of the Pope and by the authority of the Emperor, and amid the applause of the multitude and with the ap- proval of Germany, Italy and Spain, the Swiss con- querors. Henceforth their title shall be " The Liber- ators of the Church," and their banners shall bear "the sacred image of the risen Saviour." Because they had 12 JOHN WYCLIFFE, saved the Cliurcli, restored liberty and broken the yoke of tlie oppressive invader. A grander and vastly more spirit-stirring scene is this year opening to our view : the wide world of the reformed Christendom assembles ; out of every people and kindred and tongue the glad representatives of thankfulness and triumph arise ; the welkin rings with the songs of the redeemed, and their delight and duty are before God and the on-looking world to crown those who counted not their lives dear unto them for the sake of Christ's cause and glory, who wrought righteousness, who accepted not sinful deliverance, and led the Church back to light, life and liberty. Round these God-given and Spirit-strengthened heroes of the faith, these " men to be wondered at," these more than conquerors, we gather, to hail them not by fiction nor in flattery, but in fact and all fullness of truthful meaning, '' The Liberators of the Church," and to lecognize the splendid emblazon- ment which in cloud and sunshine, through seemingly crushing defeats and all-joyous victories, they bore on their banner — the Lord Jesus Christ, " delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification." These are verily " the breakers of the yoke ;" and the anointing of the Spirit was the secret of their strength and the seal of success. To w^hom more aptly, more worthily, may these stirring and sacred words, " the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing," be applied than to those most manly, those so spiritual, men who freed the Church from the yoke of bondage which neither we nor our fathers could bear ? The rapt seer gazes upon this marvellous spirit-picture, at once saddening and gladdening. Here the haughty oppressor is seen seated on his blood-won throne, his "the morning star of the reformation." 13 face proud and flushed with the despot's full faith in his assured safety, and his mouth mocking his serfs with the derisive smile that says, " Yv^ho shall dispos- sess me ?" and here the cowering slaves who, bound with the iron yoke, scarce dare to lift their heads and have hardly heart enough to hope, as in heavenly tones there is softly whispered to them by their covenant- companion God, " not by might, nor by power, but my Spirit — the yoke shall be destroyed by reason of the anointing." That vision is for all time. Every eman- cipation has been by spirit-anointed men. Moses, Sam- uel, David, are proofs. Yes, that grandest emancipation, Christ's own destruction of the yoke of the strong one armed, was by this anointing, for " Jesus returned in the power of the spirit into Galilee ; and there went out a fame of him through all the region." And that emancipation, which is only second to this supreme lib- erty of Christ's working, and which involves it, that emancipation which is grander far than Israel's from Egypt, or Midian, or Philistia, or Babylon, and from a yoke more irksome and a slavery more debasing and deadly, that thrilling release from Rome's tyranny, was begun, carried forward, and finished by " good men, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost." It was His anoint- ing made them more than conquerors ; thence the resist- less " wisdom and spirit by which they spake." Who was the leader of these " anointed ones," the first of the band of yoke-breakers, the head of the grand column ? He was, thank God, an Anglo-Saxon ! Of " the great day of the new light," the Morning Star, breaking in upon the thick darkness of the papal night and heralding the " dawai of the true light," was of our own kith and lineage. To ourselves belongs the 14 JOHN WYCLIFFE, second father of the faithful — the first-born of the Ref- ormation. It is a somewhat curious, if not significant, fact that the first historic mention, so far as my reading has shown, to be found of the now familiar and sacred word " Reformation," is from the lips of a fimous Eng- lishman, Winfrith of Devon, who is better known in story as Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, and who, with all his respect and labors for Rome, w^as, like a true-born and an independent Briton, often found pro- testing vigorously against papal abuses, and that as early as the year 723. And now, almost exactly seven hundred years after the bold Thuringian missionary, comes his scholarly and sainted countryman to break the yoke — John de Wycliffe, of Yorkshire, who was born somewhere about the second decade of the fourteenth century, and died December 31, 1384. About 1336.] The Young Oxonian. We stand in that most perfect of retreats for the scholarly recluse and the ardent seeker of knowledge, Oxford, that magnificent and unique city of colleges, lying between the Isis and the Cherwell. Points in your travels you reach, as the gray rock of Calpe, that marvellous Gibraltar, and the Goth-haunted Ravenna, where you see move past in striking forms the world's story. Oxford is such a panoramic spot. If you hang, in your easy holiday time, over the parapet of Folly Bridge, or loiter on the Magdalen, and suffer, as you well may, your garrulous guide to tell the foibles and the facts of this seat of the Saxon Witenagemotes, you will first see the burning of Troy and the far-fljing ex- "the morning star of the reformation." 15 iles who came from Ilium to the Isis, then the Roman legions, then the Saxons and godly Fridewide, then stu- dious Alfred and the kings of Mercia, then the Norman William and his line, then Sir Thomas More and Eras- mus, then bluff King Hal and the lying Stuarts ; and while all this world's centuries, full of life and fraught richly with the forces making our strange to-day, pass swiftly yet steadily, in cloud and sunshine, across the forefront of the stage, the background is filled with monumental spires and towers and domes, with halls and churches and crosses, with gardens and meadows and venerable trees, the abiding proofs of the shadowy dead. Oxford ! home and mother of reformers ! thou art, alas ! fallen now on evil days, when disguised papists refuse to suffer thee to join the Protestant world in these great commemorations ! Here, somewhere about 1335 or 1337, might have been observed for the first time a right noticeable young Yorkshireman, of some fifteen or sixteen years of age ; he is of an erect carriage and a quick, firm step, with a tall, slender, well-shaped, wiry frame, broad of brow, with face attractive and expressive, with keen and very deep- set eyes, nose large and aquiline, and resolute yet sym- pathetic mouth. He walked about a bold, manifest man, and yet with the easy air and courtesy of the child of a good home. Senior men, quick to mark the freshmen and eager to know the coming stars, asked at once, " Who and whence is he ?" And they were told that he was a " gentleman-commoner," one John de Wj^cliife, the remarkable and well-schooled son of an old and re- spectable family, whose home was at Wycliffe, or Water- cliffe, a rocky hill above the Tees, some ten miles to the north of Richmond, in Yorkshire. Worthy represent- 16 JOHN WYCLIFFE, ative of that grand old county, the home for centuries of big, bony, of strong, straightforward, of free, fight- ing men, that shelter of the true Anglo-Saxon, with his pluck and push and perseverance, that broad stretch of breezy wolds and bright waters, of rocky hills and pleasing valleys, was the young Oxonian ; and clearly stamped was he by the scenes of his birth and his earli- est associations and companionships. He has arrived at Oxford at one of her supremely- stimulating seasons. England is in the fever of one of her great and ever-recurring periods of change and bloodless revolution. Oxford is a marked focus. Eng- land is emphatically and historically the land of national opinions, of independent thinking and of private judg- ment. At this time the mind of England was the most active, independent and fully occupied with national and political ideas of all the European lands. It was not indeed the most polite, refined and cultured ; but by far distances it was the boldest and most self-reliant. Many forces had wrought, many new forces were working, to- gether to make it grow " English :" its very insularity, the many fierce struggles, with all their varied results, between British-Celt and Saxon, between Saxon and Dane, between Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French ; the first conflicts of the conquerors and conquered, and then their mutual approaches, and final fusion ; the long, fierce and strikingly-interesting and richly-instructive contests between the old national church of Britain and the ever-aggressive, rapacious and despotic church of the Vatican, as seen in the stern struggle of William with Lanfranc, Henry with a Becket, and Edward with the Pope ; the war of the Barons, supported by and sympathizing with the free commoners and the large "the morning star of the reformation." 17 towns, against the craven-souled John, assisted by the Romish hierarchs and the Pope ; the arguments ovei' Magna Charta and the early strifes in the young Par- liament ; the rise and the reassertion of the Anglo- Saxon masses and of their local rights, — these and many other causes had made the land one great debat- ing-hall; and the discussions grew hottest about the opening of the fourteenth century. Oxford was conse- quently ringing with the burning questions of the day. The city of colleges was the very centre of these con- stitutional contests. Let all free lands honor and en- courage colleges ; they are and have been the homes of liberty ; they have often taught and trained the best and grandest champions of reform. Into the life of Oxford stepped this fresh and forceful youth. Around him sounded mighty names ; and unto him impulsive memories thickly gathered. He saw the busts of the great dead, and he sat listening to the stir- ring lectures of splendid Englishmen who had all fos- tered and guided the national spirit. Three majestic churchmen, one just deceased, two still living, rose up before him easily princes among all the teachers of the Church and the guides of the college councils. The British spirit has been often seen in the clergy of Britain. Beware how you ever directly or indirectly shut out the ministry of truth and righteousness from a free, full share in the working of national affairs and the discussion of great national questions. Great churchmen have been always great patriots in free coun- tries, and often great statesmen. From time to time the English Church of those early days had furnished very remarkable men. Passing a Becket, Anselm and Lan- franc, regard for a few moments, because closely and 18 JOHN WYCLIFFE, most vitally linked with Wycliffe, three great church- men of Oxford. First and far ahead stands the great Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Greathead (Grossetete or Capito), born in 1175, graduating at Merton when only twenty-three, rapidly distinguishing himself in all the studies of the college, advancing quickly to an easy primacy in all branches of that' century's knowledge, and thereafter reigning as the unchallenged king in the intellectual realm. This was the man before whom even Roger Bacon bowed, saying, " He is the only man liv- ing in possession of all the sciences." This noble and self-denying prelate of the largest and most populous see then in England was the great reform-bishop of his day : busy was he ever in preaching a large gospel, remedying abuses and forcing idle clergymen to do their duty ; he was the bold Samuel to rebuke Henry the Third and the daring preacher of righteousness to face even Innocent the Fourth and to say bluntly before the whole papal court, " Root out your notorious corrup- tions, else destruction will be your portion." This was the fearless Englishman who, in answer to the papal briefs appointing, contrary to all right, Frederick of La- vagna to an English benefice, launched a red-hot thun- derbolt at the Pope which electrified the whole English people, flung an awful light on the despotic and disso- lute Romish court, and did not spend its terrific force for many long days after the brave Jove who hurled it had vanished from the earth. Robert of Lincoln started questions that culminated in Latimer's day. King and people canonized him, though the Pope would not. He was followed by a man living, certainly, in Wyc- liffe's youth, scholarly Thomas Bradwardine, " doctor profundus." mathematician and astronomer, and al)Ove "the morning star of the reformation." 19 all the asserter against all Pelagianism of God's free grace in salvation. This masterly student of Augustine and of Paul, who was converted as he read the Epistle to the Romans, wrote the famous " De Causa Dei," and. became one of the great educators of John Wycliflfe, and through him of Huss and the Bohemians. With him was joined Richard Fitzralph, "Armach- anus," who brought out into startling light and stated with pungent and most suggestive fullness the distinc- tions between apostolic Christianity and arrogant Rome. This Richard of Armagh was one of the Reformer's teachers, and a very determinant force in his develop- ment. To these churchmen must be joined three other great names, then often heard in Oxford — a peer, a prince and a philosopher ; — the great peer who made the Eng- lish House of Commons and fought the battle of the people against the Pope ; the great Prince Edward who repelled the usurpations of the ever-encroaching Roman see; and still more the great philosopher William of Occam, who by his keen logic and sound metaphysics prepared the way for Wycliff'e's exact though revolu- tionary views on transubstantiation and other false doc- trines of the papacy. These are the names of glory sounding and these the formative forces at work at Oxford when one enters her classic retreats, who by immense distance shall be her greater name and mightier force. What hall Wycliffe at first entered cannot now be known positively. Tradition and that painstaking and thoroughly-competent historian Vaughan say it was Queen's College. But there are serious difficulties in the way of our accepting this view. Lechler, Lorimer 20 JOHN WYCLIFFE, and others assign the young student to Balliol. which had been founded by a friend and patron of the Wyc- liffe family, Sir John Balliol, the father of the famous king of Scotland. Wherever he was enrolled, John immediately showed his mettle. Quick and penetrating, with well-balanced mind, ardent thirst for knowledge, untiring industry, A^aried gifts and tenacious memory, he sought all the learning and culture then available, and passed steadily, far ahead of all competitors, through his "Trivium" and "Quadrivium." He proved to have a special faculty and pronounced taste for natural philosophy, and a yet more decided bent for logic, ethics and rhetoric. His powers were well and symmetrically cultivated. He became the keenest dialectician of the schools, brilliant, swift, thoughtful. No so victorious lance to be met as he in the fierce and frequent tourneys of the schools, till with the fame of repeated conquests he stood crowned as the unchallenged chief. Mathematics, phys- ics and chemistry he so mastered that his sermons, even in his old age, are full of illustrations thence sup- plied. Few things are more striking in the histories of these noble men, who reformed the Church, than the faithful discharge of their collegiate duties and the brilliant success that ever marked their way. The exact logician and well-trained debater is next seen devoting himself with heightened resolution and all- glowing enthusiasm to the loftier philosophy and to that theology in which all thoroughly-pursued research must finally conclude. Soon he is the recognized Achilles in this field; and when, in 1345, he took his junior degree in these two closely-allied departments of philosophy and theology, he was the foremost Keen- ''the morning star of the reformation." 21 tiate of his day. He was availing himself of all God gave him in Oxford ; and that Lord who educated Moses in Hierapolis and David on the pasturage for their respective fields is preparing the opener of " the long debate" for his grand arena. When God's moment strikes, God's man shall be ready. This distinguished student is also a man of affairs, discretion and of true business energy. At Bruges and Lutterworth he yet will need it all ; and the occasion for the exercise of his administrative powers and a field for the acquisition of experience is now afforded. An- other college has fixed her eyes on Wycliffe ; and in 1356 Merton College (according to Lewis, and all the subsequent examination leaves in my judgment the evidence untouched) calls him to a fellowship and ap- points him seneschal. His name may still be found on the rolls of Merton. In 1361 Wycliffe, having proved his ability at Mer- ton, is made master of Balliol, and becomes thereby the incumbent of Abbotesley in Huntingdon. He is now in orders and one of the powers of the University government. The knowledge of men, the mastery of youth, the education of office, the hardening and con- firming influences of responsibility, are telling on the man yet to be the king's counsellor and Parliamentary commissioner, and the champion of civil and religious liberty. Two other forces are telling upon him, and they are prophetic. His closely-read Bible is already making him very mighty in the Scriptures ; and his favorite recreations of walking out into the country and of enter- ing the farm-houses and the cottages of the poor, where he is well known and heartily welcomed, and of read- 22 JOHN WYCLIFFE, iiiii the Scriptures to the people in their own tongue and of hearing their (juaint, pithy remarks, are slowly but surely making him master of the common speech of the common folk. His kindly heart and his love of nature are leading the popular preacher and the great translator to a splendid school. 1363.] II. The Evangelic Doctor. Wycliffe is now advanced to a new dignity and made University teacher in theology. The young master of Balliol is, according to Shirley, given his Doctor's de- gree in 1363 ; and, by the usage of the times, with the degree he is authorized and expected to become public lecturer on philosophy and theology. For this position his thorough training as undergraduate, his full ten- years course for his Master's degree, and then ten years more of constant reading in the Fathers and the Schoolmen, had made him singularly fitted. The times were growing daily more exciting. Great questions were abroad. The friend of the people would respond to the feelings of the populace ; the patriotic Englishman to the voice of his country ; the admirer of Greathead, the student of Bradwardine and of Bracton — that pre-eminent jurist of the middle age — and the dis- tinguished debater of Balliol, to the stirring constitu- tional demands of the hour ; and Wycliffe was the chief of the University in each of these fields. In that glory- hour of Edward the Third, the victor of Cressy, the conqueror of Calais, the scourge of the Scots and the captor at Poitiers of King John of France, w^io was even then an honored prisoner in London, the national feeling which had declined during the unfortunate days of the Bruce-beaten Edward and the disgraceful regency "the morning star of the reformation." 23 of the dissolute Isabella was once more glowing red-hot. England had conquered Scotland, and held the half of France. The king and the Black Prince, the nobles and the people, had formed a unit such as shall not be seen again till the days of Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada. " Britons, Saxons and Normans," to use Wyc- liflfe's own terms, " are no more ; all now are English." The speech of the people was now rapidly becoming the tongue of the churchmen and of the lawyers at the bar; and Rome had become for them all the tyrant and the aggressor. One resolution was in every breast, from the knightly king confronting Urban the Fifth to the peasant refusing the unjust demands of the robber- monks — we will resist the Romish see and keep our freedom. " Britons never shall be slaves " might even then have been heard sounding through the English air. Never had been known a day when so powerful a stimulus had been supplied to the life of the country and such sud- den growth come to the national spirit and patriotic dar- ing. That spirit was most intense in the young men of the land ; and of the youth the very flower was found at Oxford. These hot-hearted and bold-souled young patriots are now crowding the class-rooms of the young doctor of canon and constitutional law ; with them are young, rising lawyers ; with the lawyers are seen the young aspirants for holy orders, knowing what avenues of fame and fortune are open to them ; with them are the young and most daring members of that great Parliament to which Edward has so wisely referred the decision of that burning national question, whether the king of "Eng- land as the feudatory of the Pope shall pay tribute and the arrears of thirty-three years never till now claimed. Up before this audience rises the skilled logician, 24 JOHN WYCLIFFE, the luminous lawyer who had mastered Bracton and Bradwardiiie, the great churchman who is now recog- nized as the successor of the canonized Capito, the shrew^d, strong-brained Englishman who is all aglow with patriotic fire. Clearly and fully the question is stated, then quickly and comprehensively are presented the papal complaints and demands and the arguments in support of these employed by the papal lawyers ; then comes a panoramic review of the past ; the grand figure of Thomas a Becket walks across the stage, the gathering at Runnymede starts into full view, the pro- visions of Magna Charta are told and the craven John and the conquered Pope set forth, the perversions of Roman and canon law exposed, and then the honor of the country is maintained in closing sentences that stirred the youth to feverish enthusiasm and the older men to very tears. Wycliffe leads the way to national freedom. That teaching so appears and reappears in the debates and speeches and documents of Parliament that Lechler will make the great canonist to have been actually the leader of the House in that memorable struggle. Of that notion I find no adequate proof. Those thrilling lectures bound the youth to John Wycliffe. Then by guile for higher things he caught them. Dear as was England, Christ had now^ grown much dearer, and with Christ the Word, Wycliffe had come to love the word of Christ. God's truth and God's grace are now his grandest themes. The student of Aqui- nas and Augustine and the scholarly disciple of Paul is pained by the rampant Pelagianism of the hour ; and he begins to lecture upon Bradwardine's " De Causa Dei' and his chief theme the grace of God. In setting forth the source of salvation the sreat student makes Augus- '' THE MORNING STAR OF THE REFORMATION." 25 tine and Stephen Langton, Peter Lombard, Alexander Alesius, the " irrefragable doctor," Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, the " angelical doctor," appear again and again upon the side of truth and grace till he gains himself the noble name of the Evangelical Doctor. But better than to Fathers and Schoolmen, this ripe and reverent teacher, who is head of the biblical school, is leading his pupils, among whom Chaucer is said to have been one, directly to the word of God. Teaching the Scriptures, he learns to accept them as the final word in controversy ; and soon, as Neander says, you find him declaring the Word to be the rule of faith and practice. These lectures are the great theme of the students. They form "the new book of the season" The friars and bold beggars of various orders see that from the teaching of the Canonist and the lessons of the Biblicist their craft is in danger, and they attack the Evangelical Doctor. Controversy rises. Wycliffe is forced to study the question from new standpoints ; and each fresh sur- vey drives him farther from the Roman position and nearer to the reformed and the biblical. The monks now complain at Rome. Wycliffe is now the marked man at Rome ; but he is one of the masterly men of England. Attention is fixed upon him. His actions are canvassed. His words are studied and searched. His fast-showering tracts are everywhere and eagerly read. The professor is the pet patriot and the widest preacher in the realm. People, peers and prince re- spect him. The University adds honor to honor. The Lord is making his influence mighty in the land. And out from England he goes with the young French nobles to Paris and with the Germans to the Fatherland and into the Netherlands, and even Spain. Out from his 26 JOHN WYCLIFFE, 1-ooins at Oxford this many-sided and broadly-human man looks with interest and intelligence upon every land of Europe^ and sees in each a student, a corre- spondent or an antagonist. In every church question this Rector of Fillingham is a busy controversialist. With every new phase of the national strife this noble patriot must acquaint himself, for he must have his answer for king and Parliament ready. And over every ballad of the people this lover of his countrymen and curious student of folk lore is sure to look carefully. He is preparing for the open war which shall now begin, not to end for him even in death. 1365.] III. The Warden of Canterbury Hall. The patrons of learning at that time were many in England : their gifts were large and frequent, and col- leges were consequently rapidly multiplying in the land. Oxford, the chief intellectual, as well as political and ecclesiastical, centre, the pride and the hope of English patriots, scholars and great churchmen, received a spe- cially large share of the donations and the foundations. Among others the good and generous Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, was moved to found in Oxford a new hall where Christian men might, being freed from all want and care and having ample leisure and suitable appliances, devote themselves to the higher philosophy and to the pursuit of science after the new methods of that far-seeing genius Roger Bacon, the forerunner and probable guide of the better-known Francis Bacon. This hall was called Canterbury Hall, which was afterwards merged in that right royal college of Cardinal Wolsey, and lives on in the stately pile of Christ Church. The founder had been fellow student and some time pupil "the morning star of the reformation." 27 of the great logician. He had marked and admired the characteristic Yorkshire shrewdness, promptness, faithfulness and tirelessness of the young seneschal of Merton and the master of Balliol ; he had followed with watchful interest the intellectual and spiritual growth of the Evangelical Doctor ; he had felt his enthusiasm, his magnetic power and his glowing love for truth and right ; he had heard and read his patriotic pleadings and his pointed philippics against the begging friars, " those church-fleas and college-leeches ;" he knew how the ardent professor was with all his love of science and his great philosophical predilections making Oxford resound with biblical truth, and was actively preaching in the " plain words of the simple people God's law and God's word ;" and further, that the great preacher-pro- fessor was training and sending out many young men as evangelists over the land. Hence in the early months of 1365 the good archbishop made the Evangelical Doc- tor master of Canterbury Hall. This appointment was the battle-gage. The master of Canterbury and the monks of Rome come into conflict. Chaucer points out the contrast. The monks, furious that their own champion Wood- hull had lost the rich and influential wardenship, and raging with unbounded wrath that Wycliffe, their foe and exposer, had been placed in a position of such prominence and power, declared war at once. Wycliffe lifted the gauntlet ; the war began, and it was war to the knife — war without quarter down through the rest of Wycliffe's life, and over his grave ; war in England carried on by Oldcastle and Lollard ; war in Bohemia through Milicz and Huss"; war in Constance and Swit- zerland ; war in Italy and Flanders, in Saxony and 28 JOHN WYCLIFFE, Scotland ; yes, war down to our hour. Rome will have no schools, or she must be ruler of them ! The monks w^ere no match for the master. They write lampoons ; Wycliffe replies in tracts that are stinging scorpions. They put to Avork their coarsest libellers ; Wycliffe makes all England laugh by his bluff humor and his true wit. They point to Rome's law ; Wycliffe points to Magna Charta and the acts of Parliament. They quote canon law ; Wycliffe states God's huv. They call in the Pope as authority ; Wyc- liffe confronts them with Christ. They appeal to the great councils ; Wycliffe to the Christian conscience and the day of judgment, and Jesus as the Lord of lords. It was, no doubt, a small quarrel in itself, like Luther's with Tetzel and Huss' with Sbynko, but it involved as vast issues ; and at last they became the real centre of this hotter-waxing fight. With Wycliffe stood the students and colleges, the great Parliamentarians, the prominent lawyers, the chief nobles, and the king and the Black Prince. With the monks, the " swarms of foul friars," the " lazy pre- bends" and prelates, and three plotting, ambitious, Rome-courting churchmen. The death of Islip, on the 26th day of April, L366, makes the growing fight still fiercer ; for the primacy now passes to a violent foe of Wycliffe, the former monk Simon Langham, who immediately orders Wyc- liffe to resign the hall, which has fallen now under his patronage. The bold man, conscious of his rectitude, the able lawyer, convinced of his rights, and the friend of the founder, possessed of full proofs as to Islip's meaning and wishes, point blank refuses to go. Simon Langham a[)peals to the Pope in opposition to "the morning star of the reformation." 29 the warden. For three years the war is waged ; and at last Wycliffe is ousted, about 1371. Back to his University-teaching Wycliffe now turns. Freed from all official responsibility, the strong man strips for a fresh and fiercer fight. The gloves are cast aside. The hitting is fast, straight from the shoulder, and every blow tells. The trained lawyer has been making himself the great master of English law ; the disciple of Aquinas and the church-jurists has been searching into the usurpations of the Vatican and the forged decretals ; the travelling patriot and preacher knows exactly the temper of the land ; the Bible- student, in whom now the word dwells richly, is verily the master of the situation. As the stalwart York- shireman was stepping out into that fierce fight, he might well say with Artavelde, " What must be must ! My course hath been appointed, For I feel that within me which accords With what I have to do. The field is fair, And I have no perplexity or cloud Upon my vision. Everything is clear. I take this with me for my comfort too — That man is not the most in tribulation Who, resolute of mind, walks his own way With answerable skill to plant his steps. Lo ! with the chivalry of Christendom I wage my war ! having hosts of friends — The bondsmen of the world ! who to their lords Are bound with chains of iron ; unto me Are knit by their affections ! Be it so ! With the poor I make my treaty ; and the heart of man Sets the broad seal of its allegiance thereon, And ratifies the compact." There is no mincing of words now ; no hesitancy in the sledgehammer blows of his fast-rained tracts. As 30 JOHN WYCLIFFE, Neander puts it, Wycliffe is now teaching " that the clergy in civil suits shall be brought before secular courts, since this, although contrary to ecclesiastical laws, was grounded in the ancient practice of the Eng- lish realm, in the constitution of the state, in the laws of nature, and in holy Scriptures ;" " that the ultimate standard of faith and law is God's word, and the grand problem of church-evolution is to reform everything according to the principles therein contained;" "that the complaints about Roman extortion, tyranny, ar- bitrary interferences, church-corruptions and scandals were just;" and "that the usurpations of the Popes" must be stopped by the king and Commons. Bold words ! and England, then in a momentous crisis, hailed them with delight. Into tracts these sug- gestive sayings went, and passed to Ireland, France, Ger- many, Italy and Bohemia, where in old libraries to-day are found in numbers tLese manuscripts full of Wycliffe's teaching. Their effect was immense, and was seen over all Europe. But the chief result was found in England, which was then in the throes of one of her great Par- liamentary conflicts and constitutional agitations. She had just lately been defeated in France ; the city of Rochelle had fallen ; the English fleet was shattered ; the Black Prince was sick to death ; the Commons, in order to raise the subsidies needed by Edward, were proposing the taxation of the rich monasteries, church- houses and foundations ; the bold Parliament passed bills and persuaded Edward to sign them removing the Romish prelates from the great state offices and then to fill the Privy Council with laymen opposed to the exactions and usurpations of Rome. Verily the fallow ground was thoroughly broken up "the morning star of the reformation." 31 and was ready for the seed and the sower. Wycliffe's words fell not to the ground. King, peers, Commons and people took them up ; they were repeated in the House, and they were sung in ballads on the streets. Then really began Parliamentary and Protestant Eng- land. In " the making of England " Wycliflfe had a large share. Oxford shall soon be left for a wider sphere and for stormier scenes. Ap. 1374.] IV. The King's Favorite. This patriotic churchman, this popular yet profound preacher, this evangelical doctor, is now the man "whom the king delighteth to honor." No mean king either, that great Edward of Cressy and Poitiers, that fosterer of the free Parliaments, that worthy grandson of the English Justinian, in whose reign of fifty-one years " a greater number of important laws had been passed than in all the preceding reigns since the Conquest ;" "trial by jury had begun to supersede other modes of trial, and justices of the peace to make their earliest appearance," and "architecture and poetry," represented by Chaucer, Gower and the Chroniclers, " had obtained a grand development." This Edward the Third, gifted with the keenest eye for strong helpers, was quite fa- miliar with and very fond of the splendid Oxonian. Lechler maintains that Edward gave Wycliffe a seat in the " Good Parliament ;" but after careful review of all the probable evidence submitted by the pains- taking German, and with Lorimer's additions, I must hand in the verdict, " not proven." Many and marked, however, are the royal favors for which we have abundant historic evidence. Wycliffe en- joyed the singular confidence of the king, to whom he 32 JOHN WYCLIFFE, was either "private chaplain," or, as I would prefer to translate the much-debated phrase, "^ the private sec- retary," of the king. Edward gave him several pre- bends ; then in 1368 opened his way to the rectory of Ludgershall, Buckinghamshire; then in 1373 he placed the energetic counsellor on the foundation of Anst, near Bristol; and in April, 1374, had him appointed to the historic and honored parish of Lutterworth, Leicester- shire, the birthplace of the first English Bible. This token of royal favor was quickly followed by another appointment of vast value to the now monk-hated preacher of the gospel, the Rome-cursed defender of the Englishman's political and personal rights. Valu- able it was for the shielding from murderous rage of the soon-to-be-impleaded heretic ; more valuable for the education and impulse of the reformer. Wyclifte is appointed, and goes in July, 1374, as the king's counsel and as royal commissioner to the historic and moment- ous conference at Bruges. That ancient and historic capital of West Flanders — Bruges, the central mart of the great Hanseatic League, that proud and powerful republic of eighty cities, which, formed about the middle of the thirteenth century and upon the model of the Lombard League of the twelfth century, did so much to define the general principles of mercantile law and to enlarge the scope and ennoble the spirit of commerce, and wake up the spirit of en- terprise and a love of liberty — Bruges, the home of arts, science and song, the metropolis in Wyclilfe's day of the world's commerce with the great merchant- halls of seventeen kingdoms, the splendid houses of twenty ambassadors, a magnificent town hall, a Senate- house that was the glory of Gothic architecture, a "the morning star of the RliFORMATION." 33 score of busy shipyards — Bruges, with wealth, refine- ment and luxury rivalling Florentine, Genoese and Venetian — was in truth a worthy scene for a memora- ble conference. Memorable that council was : there took place the first public and successful challenge of Rome's pretensions ; there was heard the first bold pro- test, and it was our Anglo-Saxon forefathers who made it ! Memorable men stood there — stout John of Gaunt, great Duke of Lancaster, the Bishop of London, Gilbert, Bishop of Bangor, Guter, the great lawyer, four chief counsellors, and, most trusted of all, John Wycliffe. France sent among others two royal dukes, Anjou and Burgundy, many bishops and great nobles. Pope Urban sent a large band, and at their head the Archbishop of Ravenna, three of the most distinguished bishops of Italy, and the subtlest lawyer of the curia. These notables and their attendants made a right royal show in the gorgeous city of merchant princes. The central figure is Wycliffe : he spoke for the king ; he quoted Magna Charta and English law quickly and accurately from memory; he exposed the plots of France and he outwitted the subtle Italians. John of Gaunt took the bold man home to his brave heart, and ever after was to him as the Elector to Luther. Lancaster and Wycliffe, at least, stayed nearly two years in that free, bold city of merchant princes. Those years made him what henceforth he was — the whole-souled reformer. What exactly he saw, heard and felt we know not. But he is scarcely back in England till we hear from him such startling, Luther-like phrases as the following : " That antichrist of the Romish see," "the proud worldly priest of Rome," " that most cursed of clippers and purse- kervers," " though our realm had a huge hill of gold 34 JOHN WYCLIFFE, and no man took therefrom but this proud worldly priest's collectors, soon the hill would be spent." More clearly than ever Wycliffe is pointing out the corrup- tions of the Church, and now distinctly traces them to the papacy. He is now convinced — and with him con- viction and confession are ever twins — that the papacy had no oria:in in divine ris-ht, that the Church needs no visible head, and that the Pope is Antichrist. He is pointing sinners now to the Saviour and not the sacra- ments. The eucharist is no more a sacrifice. And the people must have in their own tongue the word, and likewise the preached gospel, so he multiplies his "poor preachers," till in the words of his popish foe, Walsing- ham, he has " filled the land with these pests and made all London swarm with his Lollards." 1378.] V. The Father of the English Bible. Two great passions now absorb the noble Englishman, the preaching of the gospel and the translation of the sacred Scriptures into the folk's speech. To the first the rector of Lutterworth, whom Chaucer makes sit for his famous picture of the Good Parson, will give him- self; to the second the great student of the Bible and of popular talk will devote his chief energies. But Rome will not for a time grant him any peace. Papal brief after brief is launched against him. King, Church and College are haughtily and at their peril commanded to strip him of all his offices and benefices, to seize, imprison, chain and try the heretic. For a time no man dares the dangerous service, the common people hear the "good parson" so gladly. But at last Court- nay, the Bonner of his day, summons Wycliffe peremp- torily to his bar in St. Paul's at London. The great "the morning star of the reformation." 35 Englishman, now worn with work and wasted with worry and disease, appears ; but on one side is stout John of Gaunt and on the other the dashing Harry Percy, and behind the multitude who already look on WycliflTe as almost saint and martyr. Such unlooked- for guards, such loud-voiced assurances of London's love for Wycliffe, had not been expected by the Romish persecutor, who first pales with surprise, and then flushes with rage. Courtnay and Lancaster fall at once into fiery contest. The first day passes in the squabble between the proud prelate and the prouder peer. Wyc- liffe waits and watches with quiet humor. When the council breaks up the grand old man walks forth be- tween Lancaster and Percy, and his march is a triumph. The second day comes ; but the people are storming without, and within the court of trial the messenger of the queen-dowager commands Courtnay to let God's servant go in peace. The old man moves out like a conqueror from St. Paul's ; the streets of old London are lined with a huz- zahing multitude; the shouts make the craven Court- nay cower ; and so homeward to Lancaster's mansion passes Wycliffe through the Londoners standing bare- headed before that hoary-headed reformer, whom for his wisdom and worth, for his weight of character and unwearying work for his country, they honor as a king and love as a father. Now sick, frail and ready to die, he has but few years more ; they are wholly given to the preaching of a re- formed doctrine, the publication of English sermons and of Latin tracts, which were living and working mightily when speaker and writer was long dead and at rest. And more eagerly than all else, Wycliffe is busy in the 36 JOHN WYCLIFFE, translating of the Latin Vulgate into the English Bible. He is the father of the modern translators. May his crown ever gleam in the brightening and broadening light of advancing Protestantism ! This version in the vulgar tongue, though somewhat Latinized in style, is literal, plain and " easily under- standed of the common people." It was the founda- tion of several subsequent versions, and Tyndale in his translation used it largely. Its influence was immense ; its effects ineradicable and incalculable. Copies of the whole Scriptures or of special books were now multiplied with astonishing rapidity. Some manuscripts of the re- former's own day have come down to our times, though the inquisitors for years were searching them out and burning them industriously. In this age we can scarce realize the toil and time, the cost and care, needful to produce one copy of the Bible. Shall not that loved book over which knight and churl, lady and handmaiden, merchant and lawyer, then bent so eagerly, and for which they gave gold and carts of hay, and on whose binding they placed gems, rise to condemn us ? Then that quaint but telling tome was the great book of the season. Students in college-halls, lords and ladies in their castles, soldiers as they rested neath the oaks at noonday halt, farmers among their servants by the fire- side, the sick on their beds, read and reread, till it was hidden in their hearts, their portion of the new book, for few could buy the whole, costing some fifty or sixty dollars ; and they drank in God's truth, like thirsty land the rain, as Wyciiffe gave them the living draught in the simple speech of early English. Many a glory had crowned English toil ; never aught like that English Bible. Many a gem gleamed in the " THE MORNING STAR OF THE REFORMATION." 37 king's regalia and in lordly hall ; here wleness, crafty plans and actions ; with some of her ablest sons and apologists I have often talked, and my mind is made up. With Manning and Newman and Howard I agree — Rome claims the sole right to persecute, and she will use it when she dares ! That I have seen her do — in Ireland and Spain. Even the dead are not safe, nor is the grave a shelter — Rome tries the just-murdered Zwingli and rifles Wycliffe's tomb. Time after time was the dead man tried. Once at Oxford the Rome-ruled prelates, who had then full sway, packed a jury, who examined Wycliffe's writings and found two hundred and sixty-seven conclusions, each "guilty of fire." But the great and final trial was in 1405, at Con- stance, immediately after Huss and Jerome had been burned. Their master is then thirty-one years dead. But the examination proceeds ; forty-five counts are in the solemn indictment, and each charge is a truth of God's word and an article to-day of the Protestant faith, of the apostolic gospel and God-given form of sound words which we hold and love. The Constance council find John Wycliffe heretical and we biblical as to the rule of fiiith, the sole headship of Christ, the falsehood of the papacy, the true power of the keys, the source of salvation, the value and extent of the atonement, the nature, ground and instruments of jnstification, the doctrine of sanctification, the sacraments and the right and duty of private judgment. These and other doctrines they find ; farther, the}^ prove that Wycliffe had taught Lord Cobham and the many Lollards whom they had burned, Huss and his companion whom they had just burned, the Hussites and "poor brethren" whom they "the morning star of the reformation." 41 were catching and burning as fast as possible ; and shall this " father of heresy" escape? Nay, verily ! They resolve that the bones of WyclifFe shall "be disinterred," and " being carefully discerned from all others," shall be " publicly and by the common hangman burnt, and his ashes then flung on running water." This paltry spite and sacrilegious sentence was not executed for thirteen j^ears. Then a foul-souled traitor, to whitewash his character in the eyes of Rome, is found for the craven deed. Know him well, and remember him forever, the caitiff! That dastard is Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, who had often been helped by Wycliffe, had been his loud professed friend and his follower. The coward ingrate will now assure his place in the troublous days. Down he comes to Lutterworth, and hurries through the black, frowning faces of the people to the church of the revered old father of Lutterworth. There with his motley crew, Rome's ribald retinue, he searches out " that damned and obstinate heretic." With rude hands and foul jibes and coarse laughter they burst the tomb and tear out the coffin. Through the church where that good " Clerk did Christ's pure gospel sincerely preach And his parishioners devoutly teach,'' across the meadows where the "good parson" had watched the children play and often blessed them, over the bridge whence the thoughtful student had looked down on the river's flow and seen the " sight of life," — onward to a wooden pile ; there the mouldering clay is rudely tossed forth, deeply cursed, befouled and then Jjurned. Old men wept, and women cried, " Lord, how long !" Strong men held their hands clenched till 42 JOHN WVCLIPFE. their pnlnis were red witli blood. Little children whis- pered that story far and wide. Then the ruftians took the ashes and flung them into the Swift. Thence comes that strange conceit of the quaint Ful- ler — " Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon ; Avon into Severn ; Severn into the narrow seas ; they into the broader ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of this doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." " Heed not the shaft too surely cast, The foul and hissing bolt of scorn, For with thy side shall dwell at last The victory of endurance born. " Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ; The eternal years of God are hers ! But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers. " Another hand thy sword shall wield. Another hand the standard wave. Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed The blast of triumph o'er thy grave." JOHN HUSS, " Faithful foimd Among the faithless, faithful only he ; Among innumerable false, unmoved. Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified. His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal, Nor number, nor example, with him wrought To swerve from truth or change his constant mind." AUTHOEITIES CONSULTED. Gillett's Life and Times of John Huss ; Palacjky's Works ; Hoefler's Magister Johannes Hus; Oilman's Reformers; Bonnechose ; Koehler's and Wessenberg's works ; the articles in the cyclopaedias, English and German, and numerous monographs ; also the lives of Wycliffe, Savon- arola, Militz ; the histories of Bohemia, of Ziska and the Taborites, and of the Constance Council. JOHN HUSS, THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA AND THE MARTYR OF CONSTANCE. "And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance ; that they MIGHT obtain A BETTER RESURRECTION." — Hebrews xi. 35. Switzerland is in itself, in its very physical features, the emblem of the highest life. It stretches heaven- ward, it ever looks heavenward, it ever lifts you heav- enward. By a brilliant Frenchman it has been said, " This land of the free and the brave ever lifts her hands to God, and always gazes from her open eyes on the home of the Eternal." Up and still higher up stretch her great mountain chains ; up and more boldly up heave themselves into the clearest air and brightest sunshine her solemn and sublime peaks till they raise us far out of the mists of the earth and the meanness of to-day. Calm and deep and pure, her lakes watch the skies, studying and reflecting the softened beauties of the dawn, the golden glories of the midday, the mellow charms of evening and the countless fires of night. Just where the mountains begin to rise upward to the marvellous majesty of the great Oberland shines one of these widest heaven-searching eyes, one of the strongest, largest and brightest eyes in all this land of 46 JOHN HUSS, historic fame and natural attractions. Wide and clear, with an ever-varying light, now deep and still, now fiery and gleaming in the summer's golden glory, now stern and wild and awful in the sudden angers of the quick-coming and quicker-going thunder-storms, this great lake of Constance delights the traveller, stirs the hearts of patriots, thrills by its moving memories the servants of God, and by its very waters teaches us to follow those who through faith and patience are now in- heriting the promise. This great inland sea, called by the Germans Der Bodensee, by us and the French the Lake of Constance, was known to the old adventurous and colonizing Romans as the Lacus Brigantinus. On its waters toiled the great galleys of the republic and the empire ; and yonder, beside Reichenau, Tiberius fought the Vindelici. Nearly one hundred miles in circumference, this lake forms the converging point for several states : Switzerland with her Cantons of St. Gallen and Thurgau, Austria in her Vorarlberg, Bava- ria and Wurtemberg and Baden, all touch upon these shores. Let us get quickly down toward the shore, and, embarking on the little steamer which is now puffing at the wooden pier of Friedrichshafen, we shall start across the pleasant waters. The great lake is in the morning light one vast burnished mirror ; the waters are a clear green ; the sloping shores are crowded with villas and villages and towns. Dark-green steamboats, white- sailed boats and countless fishing canoes stud the waters. The green hills and breezy skies are charming to the eye. Away yonder, in the far distance, we catch the snow-clad sides of the Austrian Alps, and here the ice-bound peaks of the Appenzell and the gleaming brow of Sentis. THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 47 "Girt round with rugged mountains The fair lake Constance lies ; In her blue heart reflected Shine back the starry skies ; And, watching each white cloudlet Float silently and slow, You think a piece of heaven Lies on our earth below." But there, on a little island near yonder town, is a curious old building ! What is it ? Yes, it is a curious old building, and round about it gathers a story of rare romance, and connected with it one of the most moving tragedies which the annals of heroism or even the pages of church history can recall or repeat ! That grim, quaint building, now converted to the purposes of trade, is the veritable old Dominican monastery where John IIuss was imprisoned, out of whose dungeon he was brought to a mock trial in this Swiss town to which we are approaching, and the town is Constance. We have found our subject and the scene of his martyrdom. Let us here disembark and give ourselves a quiet hour to study the scene and recall the men. This little quiet and quaint Constance, so unpretending and so un- promising, has been the scene of not a few striking events in the movements of the nations. Here in this square, once called Curia Pacis, Frederick the First con- cluded his fiimous peace, and in that hall Frederick the Sixth made the Burgrave of Nurnberg Margrave of Brandenburg — more famous act still ; but for us one great event rises commanding above them all, the arrest, trial and martyrdom of the great Bohemian reformer. Into this little lake-town have been crowded the nobil- ity, the scholarship, the learning and eloquence of the middle ages, the great dignitaries of the Church, the 48 JOHN HUSS, papal legates and the Emperor of Germany ; and here, one for us more interesting, more truly noble and in- spiring than all others, was chained and cruelly mur- dered — the heroic confessor of Christ. Alike for the student of the past and for the seer of the future this old yet young Constance is ever attractive. Here the old and the new worlds very manifestly unite — the middle ages and the feverish, forceful modern day ; here, inseparably joined, sadness and joy mingle together in your breast as you walk its now somewhat drowsy streets. Fear and hope agitate you as you contemplate its old market-house, or as you pass with busy memory before yon weathered stone face of the martyr near that curious old gateway, the Schnetzthor. Roman antiquity, monuments of the middle ages, memorials of the papal struggle for continued supremacy, reminders of John Huss and recollections of his bosom friend, Jerome of Prague, the vivid scenes of later days and the somewhat recent reports of the first congress of the Old Catholic Church, and still fresh, sharp gossip about its members and leaders, compete, as you move hither and thither, for your regard and your attention. But the interest of all interest for us centres and culminates in the two great councils of Constance ; the council that condemned the reformer warring against Rome, and the council that condemned Rome that would not be reformed. Four hundred years stretch between them. What years of movement to the world ! Two great trials have here been held — for each of the Constance councils had a pope at its bar waiting for judgment ; but the first council ended in the martyrdom of the two witnesses and the escape of the papal criminal, while the second council ended in the condemnation of the THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 49 Jesuit Vatican, in the rejection of the two great doc- trines most recently formulated by the papacy, and in the establishment of a new witnessing company against Roman arrogance, falsehood and superstition, the Old Catholic Church of Europe. But we are chiefly con- cerned with the council of the fifteenth century and with its deed of darkness — the foul murder of the faithful Bohemian reformer. The death of Gregory VII. — that wonderful Hilde- brand, that more than royal, all richly-endowed, king- ruling son of the poor carpenter of Soano — forms the real turning-point in the flood tide of the papal prosper- ity. Up to the moment when Hildebrand's more than imperial sway ended, all things had strangely wrought together for the unchecked and unchallenged supremacy of the papal Church over all consciences, and all coun- tries and their constitutions ; all things had seemingly joined in league to secure, and that forever, the firm es- tablishment of Rome's absolute and unquestioned juris- diction over the world. But with the death of this greatest of the popes, the change began, — at first un- perceived, unsuspected, soon, however, growing mani- fest, at last becoming a revolt. The civilizing influences that have changed Europe, the rousing of the civil con- sciousness, the new birth of national independence, the awaking of the individual conscience, the stirring of the individual intelligence, the growing sense of the indi- vidual right, together with the growth of the middle classes, the resentment of down-trodden peoples and oppressed kings, and a thousand strong under-currents of hostility to the intolerance and brutality of Rome, all like diverse streams of destruction began to pour with quicker, stronger currents down their separate channels, 50 JOHN HUSS, to converge and mingle their death-dealing waters ; and the one point to which finally, with tumultuous rush and roar, they hurried, was the sovereign seat of the proud Pope of Rome. At the opening of the fifteenth century you see all these forces antagonistic to Rome, destructive of the tyranny of the Vatican, in most violent activity. At the same moment you behold a stranger and more start- ling sight, for you see the strange phenomenon of two heads to one body, each head infallible, and each supreme. Two infallible and supreme heads of the one perfect body ! Then were the days of the " great schism." The Church that boasts to be ever one and indivisible and always the same was then divided into three great sections — one with a French head, one with an Italian head and one with no head at all. Gregory XII., at Rome, was one pope and head of the Church, recognized in England, Italy and Bohemia, in the Ger- man empire, by the rulers of Prussia, of Flanders and Scandinavia. That tough little old man, with the sharp wit, the false tongue and the felon soul — Pedro de Luna — ruled as Benedict XII. at Avignon, and he was owned as lord and head of the Church by France, Scotland, Spain, Lorniine, Sicily and Cyprus. At the same mo- ment the great university at Paris, which was then and for many a long year an independent corporation and almost a city in itself, several provinces, some free states and a great host of neutrals, owned neither Gregory nor Benedict as head, but looked for a proper and pure pope to be nominated and elected by a general council. The times were really scandalous. Pope plotted against pope, warred against pope, conspired against pope, would, if possible, assassinate the rival THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 51 pope. The disgrace could not be longer borne, and therefore a general council was held at Pisa ; for, dis- mayed and scandalized by this unseemly struggle be- tween infallible popes, who were cursing and anathema- tizing and excommunicating each other, the more earnest members of the papal communion demanded that an end should be put to this strife and schism and sin. A general council was accordingly held to heal the schism and end the scandal by the regular election of a new and legitimate pope, to whom each of the then contending parties should of right and immediately yield. The existing popes were summoned to appear. Both refused to attend. They would not recognize the council. Hence the council tried them. They were, in their contumacious absence, condemned of schism, heresy, perjury and other crimes, after full examination and by solemn sentence, and were then publicly and formally deposed. The records of this council, the speeches, sentences and acts, surely are very significant facts in history, and surely are very awkward historic truths for the maintainors of the so-called apostolic succession to deal with. This and the succeeding councils do certainly furnish weapons wonderfully potent to the hand of a skillful Protestant champion. Luther and Calvin, Hamilton and Knox, found an armory in the sworn testimony given at Pisa and Constance. The council of reform, having taken this bold and lan- avoidable step, proceeded with great formalities to the election of another pope. The pope called and chosen of the council died soon afterward. Another election took place, and by its vote there was seated on the papal throne one Balthasar Cossa, who, as the notorious John XXIII. , disputes with Alexander VI. the first 52 JOHN HUSS, place in iniquity and villainy aniona the darkest and most depraved occupants of the Vaticnn. Now is seen a wondrous sight ; there are three popes, and Christen- dom is torn into three sections, and the Church is dis- tracted between three infallible heads ! Three infallible and supreme successors to Peter ! Three vicegerents of Christ ! Three visible representatives of the one and indivisible God ! Where was now " the true and easily discoverable " succession to the apostles ? These were very serious questions then, and for some folks they are very serious questions still. But in the fifteenth century some satisfactory and immediate answer must be given to that question ; hence to settle this dispute, to eradicate these and other abuses, to reunite the severed and battling Church, an- other council is called, and this council is summoned to Constance. And so upon the 16th of November, 1414, there began to converge towards and pour into this little city on the lake ecclesiastics from all lands and of all ranks ; doctors of theology and law from the colleges and universities of Germany and Italy, of England and France ; princes of independent states, sturdy magis- trates from the free towns, the ambassadors of the great royal and imperial courts and the cardinals of the Church, until, according to Doellinger (iv. 155), some twenty thousand persons gathered into and around Con- stance. The first great public act of this council of the Church, summoned in the name of the Lord and truth and righteousness, summoned to eradicate abuses, to purify the defiled Church, to satisfy the Christian con- science of the world, and to show that the Church was the great apostle of sweetness and light in the world ; yes, the very first act of that great assembly was a THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 53 most vWe conspiracy and treacherous arrest, an unjust imprisonment, a scandalous trial, cruel mockeries and a murderous execution. Enter with me this council chamber, which is the judgment hall, and let us look around upon the sad yet stirring scene. We are now standing in the old Car- thusian convent, built about 1300, beneath whose mossed and lichened walls you may hear the lapping of the lake. But the convent is now changed into the great council-hall of the merchants. The chief room of assembly was upon the second story ; a room of wide expanse, with low ceiling and a thick plank floor, with great heavy oaken beams stretching across the ceiling, and massive oaken pillars supporting those stout beams that are black with age. Into that room of the council there gathered at one time or another some four to five hundred men. Few scenes in history equal that court. There emperors and kings and princes, dukes and nobles and knights, mingled with papal legates, patriarchs, arch- bishops, bishops, cardinals, popes and minor clergy ; there, balancing the princes and ecclesiastics, were the representatives of the great universities of the day, learned men who were the light of their age ; there were searchers after and joyous finders of precious classical manuscripts ; there were the greatest historians of the times, who have left us vivid annals of their own time, and secured for us the story of the preceding- ages ; there were well-read lawyers of the Church, who were ofttimes the best advisers of kings ; there were stout-hearted burghers and busy clerks : so they gath- ered together. Beside emperor and pope and papal legates, you may count some twenty princes, one hun- dred and forty knights, twenty-three cardinals, seven 64 JOHN HU8S, patriarchs, one hundred and nine bishops and archbishops and about four thousand i)riests. MarveHous scene ! with elements and aims that might have made it forever sacred and sublime, but with an actual history that makes it literally shameful and sin-laden. Sweep your eye around, and there in the centre you behold the greatest man of his age ; the pure preacher of Prague over against polluted priests ; the heroic and honest subject over against that weak and false-hearted em- peror ; the forgiving and Christ-like saint over against cruel-hearted prosecutors. Prisoner, prosecutors and bench, all are before you. Wait here in this quiet angle of the room and watch. There shall pass before you here, at three successive meetings of this council, a scene that links itself with the most marvellous move- ments of that hour and of our own time. According to a custom then prevalent in colleges and great confer- ences, this council, which is to try a preacher and a pope, has been divided into four great sections, called nations — the Italian, the German, the French and the English nations ; so they sit in order, so they deliberate and express opinion, so they vote, so they file in and out when the council meetings begin and close. Sentence in this council goes by the majority of the votes given according to nations. The Prisoner. But who is he who stands indicted at that august bar? who, together with a pope, is to stand and answer for his dignity and life before such a jury ? Who is worthy of a trial in such a council? Who has done deeds that demand such a court? Look at the prisoner patiently and with thouoht. Yes, look at liim with love and es- THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. b'O teem, for far other is he than that papal poltroon John, the one time robber and now disgraced pope who has lately fled from Constance in the guise of a groom, and is now hiding and trembling in SchafFhansen across the lake. Yes, far other this prisoner at the bar than any one of those who seek his life. Study him reverently ; few like him in that day or any other hour of earth to see. He is one of the great souls who rise up head and shoulders above the common masses of mankind ; he is a right royal soul, made kingly by God and truth ; a veritable master of men, leading men, not by the showy glitter of princely rank, nor by the tyranny of custom or the despotism of superstition, but leading multitudes by that sublimest of all forces, hallowed, sanctified, scriptural thought, and by the power of the purest of all masteries, a holy, loving heart, full of Christ and purest charity. He stands alone. There are, to be sure, true-hearted Bohemian knights in that assembly, who would befriend him if they knew how ; but he is really alone. Such men must needs be lonely. Their spirit- brothers stand too far apart for many meetings, too far separated for much spoken sympathy. Yet, strange to say, these men are generally born twins — Wycliffe and Cobham, Luther and Melancthon, Calvin and Knox, Zwingli and CEcolampadius, Ridley and Latimer, and the two martyrs of Constance, John Huss and Jerome of Prague. Gaze admiringly on him. He meets you with a tall, once athletic and vigorous frame, now well worn through toil, and sadly emaciated, sorely diseased from imprisonment. He meets you with a finely-cut, thoughtful, musing, somewhat melancholy face, with deep, gray-blue eyes, now soft with kindliness, now sharply searching, with an eagle-like flash and strength, 56 JOHN HUSS. now shaded and restful, now with a solemn light in them as if they saw, like John of Patmos, through an open door into the heaven of heavens and beheld the throne and Lamb of God. He meets you with a large and expressive mouth and flexible lips, with the general air of purest calm and perfect self-mastery, with tokens of vast but subdued strength, and with a mother-like mildness that draws your heart out toward him : so you see him stand, to use Luther's words, " Like a lamb of God amidst Satan's wolves." Who is he who packs this hall so full to-day ? Who is he who concentrates on himself the eyes, attention, hopes, hatred, of this vast council ? Who is he bold enough to wage this desperate and forlorn fight against such odds ? He is John Huss, the Bohemian witness for Christ's evangel. He is the breaker-up of the way for the Lord's host of the Reformation. He is the first clear, unfaltering voice crying in the European wilder- ness, not behold the Church, but behold the Lamb of God. He is the twin morning star of the Reformation. He is the son of a land where the fallow ground of human hearts had been broken up, and where the weed- covered gardens of the Church had been prepared for the living seed of God's truth by bold, adventurous, God-seeking, Spirit-guided men, who anticipated the dawn and labored, some unconsciously, some hopelessly, to prepare for the Reformation day. He is the succes- sor in this most holy way of Milicz, the Moravian arch- deacon of Prague, who in 1364 resigned all his immense emoluments for the sake of Christ and souls, then trav- t-rsed the country in all directions with that measure of truth which he himself had gained ; preached as another John the Baptist repentance to priest and prince, to THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 57 soldier and serf; pointed all men with gladness and earnestness to Jesus Christ as the only and all-sufficient Saviour, and proclaimed fearlessly that the Church had sunk from being the bride of Christ into the bonds of Antichrist, and was now the slave of Satan. This lone, chained prisoner is also the successor of noble Conrad of Waldhausen, who, fired with the love of reform and filled with the truth of God, had convulsed Bohe- mia with his marvellous sermons on the Church and on Christ. This suffering victim of foul dungeons is like- wise the successor of that great scholar of philosophy, Matthias of Janow, who exposed the sin of the clergy in that terrible volume, " The Abomination of Deso- lation seen in the Church," who stirred Christian con- sciences to seek for the true laws of life in the word of God rather than in the laws of the Church and the tradition of the elders, and who had laid down most important rules for the study of Scripture in his books of lectures upon the Old and New Testaments. The successor of these pioneer spirits is this emaciated, dis- eased John Huss, the forerunner of Martin Luther. This John Huss, or Hus as some spell it, saw the light on the 6th day of July, 1369, or, according to some accounts, 1373, in Husinecz, an inconsiderable town of Bohemia on the banks of the Planitz. He was the son — like Luther his great scholar, his successor and surpasser — of honest, well-to-do peasant folks, Czechs ; kind, simple, noble-hearted people they were, with an unpretending but a comfortable home, who loved learning deeply, sent their boy early to school, and re- solved that he should be educated to the very fullest of their ability and of his age's resources. Yes, regard him affectionately, ye thoughtful men 58 JOHN HUSS. and lovers of learning, this lonely prisoner at this cruel bar. He deserves your attention. From the day the hard-working boy entered the school of Prachatitz, till he ended his career on earth, that Bohemian peasant, who so loved truth, stood foremost in his class, and very early became distinguished in intellectual combats. From the simple school of Prachatitz he passed in due time to the University of Prague, where he quickly made himself known as a youth of highest promise, and where, in lo93, he took, after severest trial and with highest distinction, his degree at that famous college, the first that had been founded in Germany. The young graduate carried away prizes that had been eagerly competed for by ambitious and able competitors, when the halls of that great university were most densely crowded, for those were its days of glory when some twenty-two thousand students from the different lands of Europe gathered in its class-rooms to complete their education. Such was the fame of the young prize-man that he was speedily and unanimously chosen professor of philosophy. In an age when character was too little thought of in comparison with learning or social rank, the young teacher was famous for his chastity, his tem- perance, his elevated manliness, his deep devotion, hig singular Christian earnestness, his modesty and his kindliness. Steadily did that earnest son of that earnest mother, who stopped just as she neared Prague with her boy, and, kneeling down on the earth, dedicated him anew and with great solemnity to the Lord's service, grow in favor with God and men. Steadily, in all learning, in magnetic attractiveness, in elevation of mind, in thoughtful earnestness, in the persuasive eloquence of a facile tongue, in subtlety, in penetrating acuteness ; THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 59 steadily, in all the qualities that make up a noble man and a marvellous preacher and a successful professor, — did John Huss rise, until he became " the star of his university," "' the model of industry " and " the example of morality " to all in Prague. In 1401 he is chosen dean of the theological faculty, and in 1402 he is made rector of the university. Soon after this he is chosen — very important event in his life, very important in the history of the Reformation, be- cause indirectly it became the link uniting him with the great Oxford reformer — he is chosen court-preacher and spiritual director of Queen Sophia. Immediately after this last advancement of our hero he is called to the great scene of his pulpit triumphs, the Bethlehem Church in Prague. Prague — strangely-attractive, half- Oriental city, lying on the banks of the Moldau, sur- rounded by beauty and grandeur, watched over by the old royal keep of Hradschin, that extensive and impos- ing palace of the old Bohemian princes, which spreads its four hundred and forty apartments along the crest of the great eminence, and behind which rise up the heights of Laurenzberg, the one-time sacred hill where the pagan Bohemians solemnized their mystic rites as fire-worshippers. This ancient and interesting city of Prague, above which rise the black precipices of the Wyssehrad, where Queen Libussa, founder of Prague, had her home, and whence she hurled into the dark depths beneath her discarded lovers ; this historic and battling Prague, behind whose terraces are seen rising Ziska's hill — that dauntless leader of the Taborites who smote and shamed so often the lying Sigismund ; this old merchant city of Bohemia had in its far-distant days two princely merchants, who were fired with the 60 JOHN HUSS, holiest patriotism and love of truth, and these two men resolved that the people should have their own church ; so the God-fearing Krentz gave the ground, and generous John de Milheim built the church, where the common people might have the opportunity of hearing the gospel in their native tongue ; and this church for the people, where should be preached the marvellous works of God in the ringing, poetic words of Bohemia, is the historic and hallowed Bethlehem Chapel. This is the scene of Huss's noblest labors and grandest victories. Called by the open-handed builder of the church to its pulpit, John Huss soon filled that Bethlehem Church to overflowing. Multitudes gathered there whenever he preached ; and by his sermons, clear, burning, direct, profound in their thought, yet adapted to the sorrows and wants of men and full of biblical truth, he swayed, as few preachers have ever done, the populace, and influenced professors and princes, till all Bohemia talked admiringly of him as the man of greatest power and most wonderful promise in his day. Ye lovers of our old Anglo-Saxon race and our Eng- lish Bible ! ye sons and daughters of old Britain, with a pure and noble love of the mother-land moving ever strongly in your souls ! regard him attentively ; for this lonely prisoner, weighted and wounded by his chains, is the immediate and greatest scholar of our own Wyc- lifTe. While the young Bohemian philosopher and preacher was stirring the university by his thought, and the court and city with his lectures and sermons, his own soul was, like Luther's at a later day, passing through the agonies of a moral and spiritual revolution. The marriage of Richard II. of England with the Prin- cess Anne of Bohemia had drawn the realm of the sea THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 61 and the realm of the mountain-fastness very close to- gether. The most intimate relations were established between Britain and Bohemia ; many young noblemen and ardent students passed from Prague to Oxford, and in return young Englishmen came in numbers to the city where their own honored princess had been born, and to the university where the king ofttimes presided at the learned discussions. With the English nobles and these earnest students Wycliffe came, entering Prague in his books. There was one man there whom nothing that was fresh in thought or true in morals and philosophy could possibly escape ; and so almost imme- diatel}^ after their arrival the writings of John of Ox- ford, the morning star of the Reformation, came into the hands of John of the university, " John of the eagle mind," as his admirers called him. There are few things more interesting in the history of truth than the un- broken and close succession of the witnesses to the truth. Paulicians and Beghards lead to Albigenses and Vaudois, these lead to the Brothers of Bruges, they in turn to Wycliffe, Wycliffe to Huss and Jerome of Prague, the Hussites and Mystics lead to Martin Luther and Calvin, and Luther leads to Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart and John Knox. The professor of philosophy and the preacher of the Bethlehem Chapel is at first scandalized and horrified at the teaching of the English reformer ; then, honest student, he begins to doubt, then to debate the very questions that Wycliffe debated ere he reached his Protestant conclusions ; then he hesitates as to duty, but only for a moment, for he was too simple-minded, too earnest, too noble, to halt long between two opinions. He is at last fullv convinced ; John Huss is converted 62 JOHN HUSS, to the truths of the Reformation, and the great Bohe- mian thinker sits humbly and with teachable spirit at the feet of the English Gamaliel, the fiiithful pastor of Lutterworth, to whom Huss ever reverently refers under the striking title, " the master of deep thoughts." Lovers of free thought and of a pure faith, view that bitterly-assailed and foully-belied prisoner well. In 1409, on the 20th of December, Pope Alexander v., under the influence of Sbynko, the archbishop of Prague, once friend of Huss but now most bitter foe, published a bull against Wycliffe's writings, forbidding, under severest penalties, their being taught, command- ing them to be burned, and prohibiting all persons from proclaiming publicly or privately doctrines that in any way savored of the views of the English reformer. The archbishop proclaimed the papal bull, forbade the popular preacher to occupy any longer the pulpit of the Bethlehem Chapel ; and, finding that the bold scholar and reformer refused obedience, he excommunicated with virulent abuse the favorite of the students and the populace. These papal terrors did not at all affright the rector of the university. Huss immediately stepped into the breach, boldly denounced the bull, appealed from the pope ill informed to the pope better informed, and laid down with clearness and force in a tract this grand principle, " The books of heretics should be read and disproved, not burned. . . . When Peter and John were forbidden to preach they appealed from the church to the consciences of men and to God as supreme, say- ing, ' We ought to obey God rather than man.' " Sbyn- ko sent out his emissaries to collect the works of Wycliffe, and made a huge bonfire in the public square of Prague of two hundred exquisitely-bound and beau- THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 63 tifully-printed copies of Wycliffe's works. This bull of the pope, this rash haste and cruel violence of the archbishop, so roused the ire of the students and the fury of the populace that in vaster crowds than ever they rushed to the Bethlehem Chapel, where the ex- communicated but undaunted Huss thundered more loudly than before against the foul tyranny and frauds of the papacy. His bold words thrilled his audiences : " Fire does not consume truth ; it is always the mark of a little mind to vent anger on inanimate and uninju- rious things." From the church the dispute was carried to the university, where professors and students were engaged in fierce debate. The court was divided, the city was convulsed. For five long days Huss, Simon and Jacobel, with the ablest teachers of the school, ex- pounded to the delight of the great masses of the students, and defended to the joy of the earnest citizens, the boldest statements of Wycliffe. The ex- citement grew daily more and more intense. Amid the swelling storm Huss remained quite calm, but waxed bolder in his statements every day. " They who for excommunication by man refuse to preach are thereby excommunicate of God, and in the judgment will be found among the foes of Christ. Any teacher or any priest or any soul that has found the truth may proclaim the word of God without being dependent on bishop or pope." " Mark what is written in Scripture of the Pharisee, ' All that they bid you do, that observe and do, but do ye not after their works.' The same lan- guage may apply to our ecclesiastics now", whose con- duct exhibits little conformity to the law of God. What these men find in the gospel of Christ to their taste they very willingly receive, but when they meet any- 64 JOHN HUSS, thing requiring labor and self-denial they pass it by. When Jesus said to Peter, ' I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,' that they grasp at for aggrandizement of their own authority ; but that other sentence addressed by Christ to Peter, ' Follow me, and feed my sheep,' they eschew like poison ; so too what Christ said to the disciples, ' Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,' they accept gladly and comfort themselves with it ; but when He says, ' Possess neither gold nor silver,' they decline it as offensive." Lovers of Protestant truth, rejoicing in the glorious Reformation, and honoring the great Monk of Erfurt, behold this lonely prisoner with pure admiration and true affection ! This is the clear-thoughted, plain- spoken man who says, regarding the foundation of faith, " All Christians ought to believe all and only what God has commanded to be believed. . . . Every man ought to be ready when the truth is shown him out of the Holy Scriptures to receive it gladly, and should he hold anything contrary to the Scriptures, to forsake it imme- diately. When he comes to know God's truth let him hold it firmly, even to death." He is really the forerunner of Luther, who again and again expresses his obligation to this diligent and learned annotator of the Psalms, this unfortunate Bohemian prisoner. When Luther found, in one of the libraries at Erfurt, a volume of Huss's sermons, he grasped it with most eager yet trembling curiosity. He says, " I was seized with a longing to know what doctrines this great heretic had taught. The reading filled rae with in- credible surprise. I could not comprehend why they should have burned a man who explained the Scriptures THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 65 with SO much discernment and wisdom." Hearken to the bill of indictment in which at the council the heres}^ of this man is set forth. John Huss taught : (1) The predestinated, whatever fault they may fall into, do not cease to be members of the Church of Christ, and they alone do form the true Church of God ; (2) A repro- bate pope is not the head of the holy Church of God ; (3) There is not a particle of evidence to make it appear that there should be but one head in spiritual matters ruling over the Church ; (4) Christ would rule His Church better by means of His true disciples scat- tered throughout the world, than by such monstrous heads as we now see ; (5) Peter was not universal pastor of the sheep of Christ, much less is the pope of Rome ; (6) The apostles and faithful priests of the Lord have ably ruled the Church in all things necessary to salvation before the office of the pope was invented or introduced. Truly these are bold enough utterances ; truly these are the anticipations of the great battle at Wittemberg and at Geneva. And in supporting these clear Protest- ant protestations Huss appealed to the word of God as the sole and supreme authority on matters of faith, and boldly affirmed in the presence of that council, as well as in his sermons, that the meaning of the divine word was to be decided, not according to traditions of the Church, but after prayerful study by each seeker of the truth for himself before conscience and under the eye of God. From the Church he appealed to the law and testimony, and from the hierarchy to the head, even Jesus Christ Himself. " Almighty God, one essence in three persons, is the first and final refuge of all who are oppressed. He is the Lord who keepeth truth forever. 66 JOHN HUSS, He will do justice to those who suffer wrong, near to those who call upon Him in truth, and will condemn to destruction incorrigible transgressors. Our Lord Jesus Christ — true God and true man, surrounded by high priests, scribes and Pharisees, His judges and their partisans, and willing to ransom by a bloody and shameful death from eternal damnation His children chosen from the foundation of the world — has given His disciples a noble example for committing their cause to the judgment of that God who is all power and knowledge, and who doeth whatsoever He will. ... I commend all this matter to the Judge in heaven, who will judge the cause of both parties with impartial justice. ... 1 appeal to God who sees me oppressed by this unjust sentence, and by the pretended excom- munication of high priests, scribes, Pharisees and judges occupying Moses's seat. ... I am absolved before God from the guilt of contumacy, and discharged from this pretended and frivolous excommunication. I, John Huss, present this appeal to Jesus Christ my Master, who knows, protects and judges the righteous cause of every individual whatsoever, and who can neither be intimidated by fear nor corrupted by gifts nor deceived by false testimony." And this man, who with Stitney fixed and fitted — as Chaucer did with our own English — the forceable and flexible Bohemian tongue, so that singer and sage could find in the large vocabulary, rich forms and striking idioms of its noble language all that could move the mob or convince the thinker or express the imagination of the poet ; this patient student, who in his enforced retirement at Tabor, Prachatitz and Koze-Hradit cor- rected, purified and perfected the Bohemian Bible, THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 67 originally translated about 1243 ; this Christian poet, who wrote moving hyuins that still float down the hills and through the valleys of his native land, or, translated into many a tongue, tlirill the hearts of the devoted Moravian brethren and their converts ; this distinguished scholar, who by his genius, eloquence and ever-growing erudition filled the greatest students of Paris and Bo- logna, of Rome and Oxford, with amazement ; this earn- est, laborious preacher, who had toiled by day and night to spread Christ's truth throughout Germany and across Christendom ; this stainless moralist, who had kept a conscience void of offence, and himself unspotted in that all-polluted age, — now stands to be judged by a crowd of foes, made by their own gross indecencies at this trial, and by their wanton defiance of justice, for- ever infamous in history. The Prosecutors. Who assail him ? Three distinct parties. Men of intense national feeling, embittered against the Bohe- mian patriot ; men of hostile philosophies, enraged against the able opponent of their views ; but worse than all his personal foes, men of burning bigotry and strongest prejudice, infuriated against the man who by his teaching has exposed their ignorance, and by his chastity has condemned them before the public, who knew and loathed their impurity. The Nationalists of Germany prosecute the Bohemian. When John Huss became a power in the University of Prague, he found that the Germans who crowded its class-rooms were gradually acquiring an undue influence within its halls, which they harshly wielded to the social disparagement and pecuniary loss of the native 68 JOHN HUSS, Bohemian students. The patriotic rector, by his influ- ence over the king, by his own tact, perseverance and eloquence, so roused the authorities and students of Bohemia that they vigorously and unitedly reasserted their ancient place in the university, petitioned the king, who took a constant and lively interest in all collegiate matters, to give them their rights, and, suc- ceeding with their monarch, deprived the German in- truders of their arrogated place and excessive privileges. Enraged by this defeat, and smarting under their humil- iation, the Germans withdrew by thousands from the Bohemian city, founded the now celebrated University of Leipsic, denounced the act of Huss, and from the day of their secession ceased not jealously to watch and bitterly to persecute him whom they justly held to be the author of their disgrace. Very many of those who as students withdrew in that great exodus were now, as ecclesiastics or lawyers or professors, members of this very council, at whose cruel and clamorous bar John Huss is standing to plead vainly for his life. Terribly exasperated, they thirst now for revenge. At that day, moreover, the Germans were most bigoted and devoted followers of the Church ; and hence you have in these German members of the council that union of national antipathy and denominational bigotry which in Ireland, France and Holland has ever wrought such deadly dis- aster. To this very hour there is rankling deep in the heart of the Bohemians a fierce detestation of the real Germans, and this bitter feeling, started with the cruel treatment of John Huss on the part of the German mem- bers of this conference, grew and rose to the height of a passion in the bitter Bohemian wars. This unhappy feeling has displayed itself often in grimmest forms, and THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 69 may ultimately work most destructive results inside the loosely-bound Austrian empire. Violent philosophers were among his foes. Many of the most influential opponents of Huss were those who represented in this council of Constance the University of Paris, the churches and courts of France and of England. Of these great actors in this tragedy John Gerson — the learned and remarkable chancellor of Paris University — was the acknowledged leader. The ini- petuous and justly-distinguished cardinal of Cambray, Peter D'Ailley, his former instructor, sympathized with him on most of the controverted questions of the day, whether philosophical or confessional. Joining heartily with them were Clemengis, master of withering invec- tive, the young and subtle cardinal of Ferrara and the English doctors. These men hunted Huss down. From the remark which they afterward made, viz., " that had Huss been properly defended he would have escaped," it is to be fairly presumed that they agreed with Huss in the main. So their writings prove. Yet they made all their vast social influence and intellectual power so tell against Huss as very largely to settle his fate. That deed was born of hate — the hate of the philos- opher rather than of the theologian. " To the observer of these sad events, not initiated into a full knowledge of the secret currents of influence blending wnth or counter-working one another beneath the surface, such violent hostility as these learned and in many respects excellent men manifested toward Huss w^ould have been quite inexplicable," had we not full evidence of the extremely bitter feeling existing between the two phil- osophical parties represented on the one side by them- selves and on the other by Huss. Huss belonged to 70 JOFIX HUSS, the school of the Realists, while Gerson and the cardinal wei'e the avowed and leading champions of the Nomi- nalists. To us, quietly and critically studying the furious strifes of past days waged between these two opposing parties in the school of metaphysics, it seems wellnigh impossible to believe that scholarly and also Christian men could hate one another with such fierce virulence simply because a favorite theory was opposed. As hostile hosts these two great parties in the specula- tive world confronted each other — the Realists and the Nominalists. The Realists taught that genus and species are real things ; that such a notion as the gen- eral notion "tree" had a reality somewhere existent which did positively correspond to it ; that the general idea "whiteness" had a reality corresponding to it somewhere ; and that just as in the case of singular names there is some real individual corresponding to each, so in all general teims likewise there is something corresponding to each, which is the object of our thoughts when we employ the general term. They said shib- boleth. The Nominalists on the other hand taught that genus and species are in themselves only names ; that they exist only in the individual members of the par- ticular class, and are abstractions of our own mind. They said sibboleth. " Is whiteness a reality, or is it an abstraction made by the mind ?" That question divided the speculators of the middle ages into two actually hostile armies ; and, as with Jephthah's men and the Ephraimites at the ford, a word wrought death. We smile and we shudder at the evil and sin of it all ; but let us beware that for mere words we do not destroy friendship and work evil irreparable. Huss was a Realist. Up rose that fierce Nominalist, the cardinal of THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 71 Cainbray, Peter D'Ailley, who, except Gerson, was by far the ablest man in the crowd of persecutors. The cardinal was a passionate, positive, proud man, filled with all the prejudices of his day, who did not for one moment scruple to make, in his religious discussions, use of all the tricks and niceties of the school, all the refinements of speculation and a pitiless logic. He hated Huss desperately, and he pressed him very hard. Never in all his life did D'Ailley show more eagerness in any transaction, though ofttimes he had displayed so successfully his powers that he had gained the title of the '• Eagle of France," to which honorable name had been added — because of his rigor against heretics and his inflexible determination to let none of them escape — the other designation of the " Hammer of Heretics." " John Huss," said this cardinal-hammer, " do you admit the universals a fcirte rei as belonging to the thing itself, of which they are the universals ?" " I admit them," said John Huss firmly. " Then I shall prove that you are a heretic and cannot hold the doc- trines of the Church concerning the presence of our Lord in the sacrament of the supper." And prove it the cardinal did by his own process and to the entire satisfaction of the council, who cared but little for proper evidence against Huss, but clamored loudly for the prompt execution of the heretic. These two parties, the Nominalists and the National- ists, combined with the third section of his foes, the priests and the prelates, who hated him for his life and his teaching. As Pilate and Herod became friends over the doomed Christ, and aided the bigoted Sanhedrim to crucify the Lord of glory, so the German students and the French philosophers, though hating one another 72 JOHN HUSS, with a ))urnino' hatred, united together aaainst Hnss, and joined with his priestly foes to hound him on to death. Chief among these personal foes were three traitors, once friends of Huss but now his persecutors — Stephen Paletz and Andreas Broda, and one Michael de Causis. This Michael de Causis was one of the most infamous characters of his day. He was a villain from the start ; he was schooled in all the trickeries of the times ; he was an adept in all the arts of fraud, ready to do the meanest things as the pliant tool of other men's malice, if the bribe were heavy and the assassin's blow would satisfy his own cowardly revenge. He was ever in the midst of the foulest intrigues ; the basest passions ruled him ; he fawned upon the pope ; he bribed that basest of men to secure his own aims ; and the destruction of Huss was necessary to his suc- cess. This foul fiend said, " By the grace of God we shall soon burn this heretic, whose condemnation has caused me much mone}^" Yet of this hardened wretch it was that noble Huss said, " I leave him to God, and pray for this man most affectionately." Like Wyclifle and Matthias of Janow, like Savon- arola and Patrick Hamilton, like Luther and Knox, the pure soul of John Huss had been stirred by the rapacity, the obscenity, the debauchery, the indescribable vile- ness of the priesthood, and he had spoken out plainly on the subject. When he looked upon a bishop who actually boasted at a public civic dinner of the number of illegitimate children that had been born to him in twelve months ; when he thought of the dark deeds that were enacted in monasteries and convents ; when he beheld the pomp and prodigalit}^ of the regular clergy ; when he witnessed the thefts of the seculars THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 73 and the mendicants, and when he witnessed the iniqui- ties of the indnlgence-shambles, and knew that the money there gathered was for that monster John XXIII., he had lifted up the thunders of his denunciations, like the great Florentine reformer himself; and the sinners in Germany and in Rome fairly quailed before the Bethlehem preacher. Yes, they quailed, but they plotted for his downfall ; and now they had him in their grasp, and they resolved that he should never go forth again. Just fancy such a bench set in judgment on such a man. Just fancy these Italian villains in holy orders who, according to a Roman Catholic histor- ian, brought with them to Constance openly seven hundred courtesans, daring to judge a pure and noble man like our Bohemian witness ; and ruling over them all was a pope, one John XXIII., whom that very council was at last forced to degrade and imprison, and whom as they degraded him they charged with every sin from theft to murder. As described by his secre- taries the character of this pope was a monstrous com- j)ound of all the vices that can make a man detestable and odious. While the great powers of this Balthasar Cossa are admitted, they serve merely as a gigantic frame to a picture of correspondingly enormous deprav- ity. Nein speaks of him as "a monster of various ambition, cruelty, violence, injustice and the most horrid sensuality." " A pirate in his youth, he was fitter for the trade of a bandit than the office of a pope." " He was the tyrant of Bologna," " The mirror of infamy — the slave of lasciviousness — the bond of vice — the poisoner of Alexander V. — the incarnate devil." Yet this was the man who was seated in the chair of authority as high as that of the emperor himself; "a 6 74 JOHN IIUSS, chair covered with drapery of gold, the triple crown borne by the hands of cardinals and placed upon his head when he took his seat." As joint head of the council with that false pope there sat that meanest of men, the cowardly and unfaithful Sigismund, then wearer of the imperial purple. Upon a throne magnif- icently adorned, placed upon the right hand of the pope, sat the false king ; while upon Sigismund's left hand, upon a royal seat, was that woman of infomous morals and abandoned character, the empress Barbara, whom Sigismund, when seized and imprisoned by some of his mighty subjects, had been compelled to marry as the sole condition of his liberation. Upon the other side of the emperor sat the Marquis of Brandenburg, who again was supported by the Duke of Saxony, bearing as grand marshal of the empire the sword of state. Immediately behind the emperor and the pope stood Count Cilley, the father-in-law of Sigismund, holding in his hand the golden apple typifying the globe. Be- fore the emperor lay the huge sword recently presented to Sigismund by the pope, with the charge to wield it in defence of the Church. Little did Sigismund think that the first to suffer should be his own brave, noble sub- ject John Huss, to whom the emperor had as friend given his personal promise of protection, and as king his faith- ful safe-conduct. That large sealed parchment containing the imperial safe-conduct read as follows: "Sigismund, by the grace of God king of the Romans, etc., etc. : To all princes, ecclesiastical and lay, and to our other sub- jects, greeting. Of our full affection we recommend to all in general and to each individually the honorable man. Master John Huss, Bachelor in Theology and Master of Arts, the bearer of these presents, going from THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 75 Bohemia to the council of Constance, whom we have taken under our protection and safeguard and under that of the empire, requiring when he arrives among you that you will receive him kindly and treat him favorably, furnishing him whatever shall be necessary to promote and secure his journey, whether by water or by land, without taking anything from him or his on any claim whatsoever, but let him truly and securely pass, sojourn, stop and return, providing him if neces- sary with good passports, to the honor and respect of the imperial majesty. Given at Spires, October 18, 1414." Solemn document surely. Right royal safe-conduct. And yet Huss is a prisoner, and Huss is left to his fate by that coward king, and that act of falsity and weak- ness was the first thing that ever shook the attachment of Protestant Germany to the Austrian throne, and the sin of Sigismund against John Huss has lain heavy against his line. At one moment during the council John Huss spoke boldly of maintaining public faith and keeping true to promise ; and turning round he fixed his eyes steadily upon the recreant emperor, and told of the safe-conduct which he had received from the royal hands. Sigismund covered his face, and well he might, for the deep blush crimsoned all his countenance. Sigismund's blush was never forgotten. The shame and meanness of that man lived on in the memories of the German men, kings and subjects. To that blush of Sigismund the safety of Luther perhaps a century later was in part due, for when at the celebrated Diet of Worms Charles V. was pressed to consent to the seizure of the Saxon reformer in contempt of the imperial safe- conduct granted to Luther, that warrior king, with 76 JOHN HUSS, the honor of a Spanish gentleman, gave this indignant answer to the foul proposal : " No, no ; I should not like to blush like Sigismund." Yes, and there was another answer given, and that answer was John Ziska's, who led, blind conqueror, his troops from victory to victory, scattered the emperor's forces once and again, and often baffled the plans of the emperor, and on whose tomb these M'ords were engraven : ''• Huss, here rests John Ziska, thine avenger, and the emperor himself has quailed before him." By such a bench the trial of such a man as John Huss was a mere mockery. The end was plain from the very beginning. The treacherous arrest, the cruel imprisonment, the harsh treatment during his trial, all showed plainly that there could be but one end. He was taken from his quiet home, in the house of the godly widow beside the Schnetzthor, to the prison of the Dominican monastery on the banks of the Rhine. Had his bitter foes designed to slay him ere he was tried, they could not have selected a place of confinement more fit to accomplish their end. The monastery was situated in the spot where the Rhine dashes forth from the Lake Constance ; the prisons were all underground, and into the foulest of the dungeons was Huss flung — a deadly den, through which the sewers passed and into which they freely leaked as they carried their filthy tides into the lake. The deathful stench and foul air and filth of the place acted quickly on the noble victim. A violent fever in a few hours set in, and the life of John Huss trembled in the balance. From this noisome and abominable hole, that left him a wreck and covered him with sores, Huss was carried, by order of the Bishop of Constance, to the castle of Gottlieben. THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 77 Armed men sat in the boat beside the prisoner, who was fainting in his weakness and yet was loaded with heavy chains, till the jailers reached the castle on the banks of the Rhine, three miles distant from Constance. He was placed in the lowest cell. Would you know the place ? Come with me into this low vaulted room ; chains and heavy bars, and iron rings in floor and walls, its only furniture. Yet this had been a comfortable home in comparison with that which we shall now see. Look at your feet, and you see an iron trap-door. Stand back till it be opened. Look as the light is lowered. A pulley and a rope you see, and a pit deep under ground. Yes, fifteen fathoms below where we stand, and so small that a man like Huss cannot stand in it; and down there, irons fastened to his feet, his arms chained to the wall, John Huss lay. Thence this man of boldest spirit, able to stand up alone in the strength of God against this host of enemies who thirsted for his blood, — thence, weak, fever-wasted, chain-galled, Christ's faithful witness was brought three separate times to plead before these persecutors, and the charges read are false charges, and they are sup- ported by forged and feigned evidence. John Huss bravely defends himself; but the moment the intrepid reformer essayed to speak, his voice was instantly drowned in contemptuous laughter, in shouted insults and disgraceful clamor. An eye-witness says, " It was a noble man among devils, a holy man among fiendish brutes." Martin Luther says of it in his own bold, vigorous terms, " All worked themselves into rage like wild boars ; the bristles of their back stood on end; they bent their brows, they gnashed their teeth against John Huss." Yet even this did not cause the firm- 78 JOHN HUSS, souled man once to quail, and the secret of his strength may best be told in his own simple words. " There were given to me by God boldness and presence of mind. They tried to frighten me from my constancy in the truth of Christ, but they could not vanquish the strength of God in me." Thus they tried him, and they easily and quickly found him guilty ; and the sentence was that " the arch heretic," the " son of perdition," should be burned, and his ashes scattered on the Rhine. On July G, 1415, the great hall of the council is packed to suffocation. Tall, noble, calm, patient, pray- erful, though weak and wasted, John Huss stands once more before them all. Scorn and derision are plainly marked upon the features of the members of that cruel council. They mock and sneer at the man. The last act of the tragedy begins. To him approach his two fierce enemies, the Bishop of Prague and Michael de Causis, who now clothe him in his robes of office, as if he were about to celebrate mass, and they place the sacred chalice in his hand. As they put the white robe upon him John Huss quietly says, " My Master, Jesus Christ, when he was sent away by Herod to Pilate was clothed in a white robe." The bishops now call upon him to recant. John Huss says, " I fear to do it lest hereafter I be charged with falsehood before God ; be- cause if I should do as ye command I should confess myself to be guilty of errors of which I was never conscious, and thus sin against my conscience and divine truth at once." Now Huss is commanded to leave his seat, to descend from the platform. The chalice is violently snatched from his hands. He is stripped of the priestly robes. He is insulted with these words : THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 79 " thou cursed Judas ! who, breaking away from the counsels of peace, hast consulted with the Jews ! be- hold, we take from thee this chalice, in which the blood of Jesus Christ for the redemption of the world is offered." " I have all hope and confidence fixed in my God and Saviour that he will never take from me the cup of salvation, and I abide firm in my belief that, aided by His grace, I shall this day drink of it in His kingdom." Now they curse him. Now they cruelly mutilate his saintly head to erase the priest's tonsure. Now they clothe him with the robe of shame, on which all fiends and foul things were painted. They place upon his head the paper crown which he is in mockery to wear to the place of execution, and which in derision is covered with pictured fiends, and on which is written, " The arch heretic devoted to the devils of hell." Then comes the final sentence, " We devote thy soul to the devil and to hell." " But I," said John Huss, with a voice that rang throughout all the hall, his eyes lifted up to heaven, his hands reverently folded, " I commend it to my Saviour and most merciful Master, Jesus Christ." Huss is now, according to Rome's crafty plan, surrendered by the Church to the emperor, by him to the elector palatine, by him to the magistrates of Con- stance, and by them to the executioners. Chained be- tween four sergeants walked John Huss, saying, " Lord Jesus, I gladly wear this cap of shame for thee, who wore for me a crown of thorns." The princes and their escort of eight hundred armed men are there ; the bishops and their clergy are there; an immense multitude is there, and the whole sad procession moves past the council-church, past the episcopal palace, past the fire in the palace square, where the prisoner's writings are 80 JOHN HUSS, heaped up for the flames to consume — over the bridge shaking under the weight of the massed multitude, out through the gate of Gottlieben, down through the pleas- ant suburbs and the smiling gardens, out and across the green quiet meadow, onward to the stake, the gathered straw, the pile of oiled w^ood. There they bind him, as he is repeating the penitential Psalms, they befoul him with soot, they cover his face with slime. The straw is piled up to his chin, he is fired, and they leave him to die as he prays, " Jesus, Son of the living God, have pity on me." Then he sings, he prays, he bows his head, he lifts it once more and a smile plays upon it ; he breathes his last, and he is with Christ. And now the fire slackens. A charred corpse is hanging to the stake by the iron chain. They take away the burned corpse. Away ! Yes ! they take it to tear it in pieces small as possible, to toss the reeking fragments back, to stir the fire once more that all may be consumed ! They dash the bones and limbs upon the stones to break them that they may be the sooner burned. His head has rolled down ; it is beaten to pieces with a club and flung into the flames again. His heart, just found, is pierced by a sharp stick, and, in the words of an eye- witness, " roasted at a separate fire till it was reduced to ashes." Then they gather the ashes and fling them to the Rhine. They talk of consecrated spots. Yes, there are hal- lowed scenes : that old amphitheatre at Rome, that London Smithfield, that Edinborough Grassmarket, that old Culdee Height at Saint Andrews, that place of ex- ecution in Madrid, the Inquisition at Seville, and this flowing Rhine, all hallowed spots ! Rhine, father Rhine ! many a precious burden hast thou borne, but THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 81 none dearer, more sacred, than the ashes of this Bohe- mian martyr. Bear them safely, let hot one be lost ! Down, and down, to Germany the ashes have floated, touched the sod and hallowed it. Outward to the Ger- man sea they have floated, and onward to England, up- ward to Scotland, round the British coasts to the ocean, and outward to the free West, and Germany and Eng- land and America have avenged God's martyred saint. The mock trial and cruel murder of Huss were speedily followed by the arrest, the sentence and execution of his friend and pupil, the impulsive and eloquent Jerome of Prague. Two treacherous arrests ! two foul murders ! And by a church-council at Constance summoned for reform ! Yes, Constance is the spot stained by Rome with the double blood-tides of a double murder. Constance is thus the abiding proof of the craft, the falsehood, the cruelty of that papal Rome through which our fathers' blood w^as shed. Yes, of that ultramontane Rome which claims at this very hour supremest rule in every home, in every school, in every land ! Yes, of that despotic Rome whose full development in God-defying doctrines we see to-day ; of that Rome which seeks and demands the absolute control of all thought and educa- tion ; of that Rome which has desolated France, de- stroyed Spain, convulsed Italy, imperilled the cantons of Switzerland by repeated religious strifes, and is at this very hour provoking in Ireland and in the German em- pire the deadliest passions. Yes, of that proud, blas- phemous, Jesuit-ruled Rome which has by her most recent legislation provoked her best sons and best scholars to rebellion, and precipitated a momentous revolution in her own hitherto closely-united realm ! 82 JOHN HUSS, Strange, verily, the retributions of history. Four hun- dred years ago Rome stepped to glory on the necks of kings. To-day, who so poor as do her reverence. Four hundred years of battle have come and gone, four centuries and a half of revolutions have sped quickly away, and we stand amid the thick-crowding wonders of our time, one of the world's most marvellous and mighty ages ; and again to that little city on the old historic lake amid the mountains have gathered the members of another church-council. That new council is also a court. Once more an investigation proceeds. Once more a prisoner is at the bar, if not in actual per- son, yet really before the minds of the judges. Once again a sentence is pronounced, once again a separation and a death-blow. Who is the prisoner now ? No more a protester against papal abuses; no more a lone witness for God's truth ; no more a single brave pleader for free national life, for free thought, for free conscience, for free worship ; no more any single successor of Huss or Jerome or Savonarola or Patrick Hamilton ; no, verily : the culprit is now the proud Pio Nono, stubborn suc- cessor of Hildebrand and of Innocent, the man who has falsified all his early vows, blasted his early promises, betrayed the hopes of his countrymen, and carried to their last fell development the ideas of Gregory and those haughty priest-kings who would make Rome high as the throne of God. Yes, as this second council meets in Constance, the prisoner to be condemned is the pope of Rome, Pius IX., the opponent of all reform, the op- pressor of national life, the calumniator of science and thought, the would-be enchainer of mind, the would-be despot of conscience, the persecutor of the Jew, the willing tool in the hands of the Jesuit society, the THE FLAME OF BOHEMIA. 83 deifier of the Virgin Mary, the blasphemous claimer of infallibility. Verily God is in history. In 1415 John Huss died at Constance, and at Constance in 1873 died the unity of the papacy, the unchallenged supre- macy of the pope of Rome. The work of Hildebrand is overthrown, the decrees of Innocent, the misnamed, flung to the winds, and the free independent Church — not seeking papal recognition, not acknowledging papal rule — arises in the very heart of the Jesuits' Church, which having once by fire and sword laid all the wit- nesses dead, said in triumph and in gladness, " The earth rests." Rests ! No ! Enceladus never rests be- neath Etna ! Rests ! No ! the earth never rested under Rome's tyranny and sin ! Claudius of Turin, Arnold of Brescia, Peter of Valdo, gave Rome no rest. They fought the tyrant ; under that attack Rome trem- bled. Then WyclilTe the brave, plain Englishman, " morning star of the Reformation," entered the fight and waged bravest battle, till he shook to its foundation the ecclesiastical power of the Vatican. Wycliffe gave birth to Huss and Jerome ; and John Huss, through the Hussites, the Moravians and the spiritual Mystics of Germany, was the ancestor of Luther. Luther gave new life to Germany, and Germany never rested till she gave birth to the old Catholic Church. And here in Constance, duly organized, earnest, intellectual, mighty, vigorous and promising, the new Church holds its first great council. Verily, Huss and Jerome, ye are avenged of the Lord ! In one hundred years after your murder Luther arose ; two hundred years after your death the Puri- tans began to lay the foundation of the great Protestant nations of America ; three hundred years after your 84 JOHN HUSS. martyrdom saw England established as a Protestant realm ; four hundred years after your ashes were scat- tered to wind and water beheld the first great downfall of France, the prop of the papacy ; and the fifth century saw the utter defeat of France at Sedan, the loss of the temporal power of the papacy, the crowning victories of the Luther-loving Protestants of Prussia, and the rise, establishment and consolidation of the old Catholic Church at Constance. Verily these are wondrous works of the God of history ! To-day we see the Christian Protestant world in a wholly new epoch, approaching a new crisis, preparing for a new strife, for the old battle is gained. Freedom of conscience, freedom of worship, freedom of the word, are settled. Yes, mighty is the truth, and it is prevailing : the truth which is the glory of the Church, the inspiration of mind, the hope of the world, the truth for which our fathers bled, the truth which Huss loved and Jerome preached, the truth of which the brave Bohemian said, " Though pontiff and priests and you Pharisees condemn it in me and burn both it and me, that truth shall yet rise by God's strength from my tomb and vanquish you all." John Huss was bound, but the word of God is not bound, the word of the Lord liveth and abideth forever, it hath free course and is glorified. " E'en in my failure, I am comforted To know that not myself the lejfions led, The legions of God's children ; but while I, Defeated, thus with my poor comrades lie, God waves the army on to victory." GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, '^m\. ^asf« and ^ortgt of |'lot«iit<. " 'Tis much he dares ; And, to that dauntless temper of his mind, He hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor." " A storm-cloud lurid with lightning, And a cry of lamentation Repeated and again repeated Deep and loud As the reverberation Of cloud answering unto cloud." AUTHORITIES. Ullman ; Bonnechose ; Milman ; Rudelbach ; Myer •, Villari ; Meier ; Lives of the Popes ; Roscoe's Works ; various books on Florence ; Ro- mola ; The Makers of Florence ; Farrar's Witness of History ; The Dark Ages ; and numerous articles in revievrs and cyclopeedias. GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. " Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched mt mouth. And THE Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth. See, I have this day set thee over the nations and OVER THE kingdoms, TO ROOT OUT, AND TO PULL DOWN, AND TO DE- STROY, AND TO THROW DOWN.'' — Jeremiah i. 9, 10. Scenes and lands there are where few or none expect to find beauty, grandeur or wealth ; yet there the beauty flashes on you like the quick sun-bursts of a spring day ; there the grandeur starts forth suddenly to awe you like the glories of the heavens breaking on you from rifted clouds and through floating mists ; there the wealth is suddenly revealed like the quick opening of a royal treasure-chamber. Africa has been for centuries held to be a land devoid of beauty, grandeur and importance. Men have for ages spoken of it disparagingly or pityingly. Can any good thing come out of that modern Nazareth ? — the breed- ing-ground of slaves, the unknown land of savagery. Yet one man opens to us in his missionary daring that land of darkness, and it floods our sight with great tides of wonder, beauty and grandeur; and now the old South African fields are yielding up their long-treasured stores of gems to enrich the European adventurers, to enhance the beauty of European women and increase the charms of European society. The old land of Ham 88 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, grows to be a very land of wonders to the hardy sons of Japhet. As there are scenes and lands where little is expected, so are there societies wherein is expected but little of majesty, of noble character, of sublime struggling after good, of holy enthusiasm, of grandest moral daring, of fiery zeal against abuses, of purest patriotism, of most self-forgetting toil, of most tragic suffering, of most thrilliHg, soul-moving martyrdom. Yes, before every man rise up societies which to him are as Nazareth to the old Jewish rabbi — places necessarily destitute of all good, the natural breeding- ground of all evil and loath- some things. To Protestants are not the monastic orders of the Church of Rome just such ? What thoughts rise up, and not unnaturally, not without historic justification, at the mention of these orders ? At the best, idleness, ignorance, self-indulgenCe, and at the worst a more than Augean filth, polluting the corridors and the halls of monasteries, a moral blackness thicker than the old Egyptian gloom. Such the ideas that gather about the monastic orders of Rome, especially in the dark days of the bloody Borgias. And of all orders, what so detestable, what so hateful to our Protestant souls as the blood-stained company of Dominic ? The Dominicans ! — order of merciless perse- cutors, founded in 1215 by that Dominic ce Guzman who, failing to convert to popery the Waldenses, insti- gated the pope to proclaim those two frightful crusades in which the Alpine hills were left gory with the blood of Christ's faithful servants : the Dominicans ! — apos- tles of cruelty, willing engineers of the hellish Inquisi- tion, order of the infixmous Torquemada, who in sixteen MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 89 years burned nine thousand victims : the Dominicans ! — order of Diego Deza, who for eight years never left a single day without a stake, a fire and a Protestant martyr : the Dominicans indeed ! can any good thing come out of that horrid place of cruelty ? Yet out of it did come Albertus Magnus, the light of his day ; out of it came Thomas Aquinas, the normal theologian of the Roman Catholic Church, one of the profoundest minds that ever tried to fathom the deep things of God, the greatest of the schoolmen, the universal and angelical doctor, the second Augustine, the father of moral phil- osophy, the stern opponent of the Immaculate Concep- tion, and the starter of questions that hurried on the Reformation. And to-night we shall find, I think, a real man, a grand, masterly, noble man, whose Italian enthusiasm, whose vast insight into character, whose great learning, whose intellectual earnestness, w^hose power of leader- ship, whose force in preaching, have never been sur- passed, whether regarded in their own splendor or in the sublimity of their consecration to God ; and we shall find him in a Dominican convent at Bologna. Bologna, old city among the oldest of Italy ; curious city, the rival in many striking points of Rome herself; Bologna, lying in exquisite beauty and amid teeming fertility below the Apennines, watered by the Reno and Surena ; Bologna, proud in historic recollections and gorgeous with palaces, is famous for great treaties, for striking antiquity, for men of renown ; famous for its old university, where ten thousand students often gath- ered, and where for centuries learned ladies lectured as professors. Bologna is famous also because of one old convent, in whose cloistered shades we are now resting. 90 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, It is the Dominican convent of Bologna. Here, in 1221, breathed his last that monk whose religious zeal ate out his very heart, the great though cruel Dominic, founder of the order ; and here, on the night of the 24th of April, 1475, began his new life Girolamo Savonarola, monk of the austerest virtue, preacher of unsurpassed power, prince of the Sacred Republic, martyred oppo- nent of Rome's sin and marvellous forerunner of the Reformation. The Monk in the Convent at Bologna. On the night of the 24th of April, 1475, began, I say, his ecclesiastical career. Why at night ? He has fled from his home to become a monk. Girol- amo or Jerome Savonarola was born at Ferrara on Sep- tember 21, 1452, and he is now therefore a young monk of two and twenty and a half years of age. His was a noble family. Padua knew them well and had called one of her fairest gates by their name. For generations they were distinguished for their in- telligence, scholarship and moral worth. One of the greatest physicians of his day was Michael Savonarola, and Nicholas, prince of Este, invited him to Ferrara to be his own medical attendant, trusted counsellor and friend. Guardian of the health of princes, the good man was also the friend of the poor, and very soon became the idol of the destitute and the suffering. Like his Master, this really Christian physician went about continually doing good, healing the bodies of the sick poor and speaking Christ's evangel to the souls of the friendless outcasts. The old doctor's son was called Michael likewise, and MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 91 he married an earnest, noble Christian woman, Helena Buonaccorsi. Sons and daughters filled their home, and it was a happy, loving, thoughtful and religious house- hold. There Girolamo, the third child, grew up amid noblest memories and under blessed and stimulating influences. Thoughtful, meditative, serious, the boy prophesied the man. He sought the loneliest scenes of the neighborhood, mused in them for hours, and came home often pale as death after these deep searchings of heart and those stern, solemn thoughts which, like flood- ing waves, had filled his soul. He walked the old hos- pital paths of his grandfather, reading the miseries, the solemn mysteries, the sublime meaning of this life and its sorrows. Even in his young hours there were great depths of religious passion within the boy ; and the soul- less frivolities of the times and the godless pleasures of his city only fired him with a more ardent zeal against these abuses. He fled from the garden where the grand duke made holiday and fostered sin at once. Yet the pure-souled lad was no puling craven, for a boldness that feared no danger ever marked him on the mountain- path, and a moral courage that frowned most sternly upon the richest and proudest sinners early distinguished him in Ferrara. As a youth and student he stood a Saul among his fellows, lofty and lonely. Men spoke wonderingly of that sad-eyed, solitary, self-possessed son of Michael Savonarola, and asked doubtfully, would he become as successful a physician as his noble 'grandfather ; for physician his father had resolved that Girolamo, with his broad brow and deep eye, with his quick judgment and skillful, pliant fingers, should become. " Yes," said all the friends of the family, " he must be a physician." 92 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, But " No," said the youth himself, " I cannot abide this riot and revel, this Sodomite luxury, this Gomorrhene godlessness. I will get me up into a higher and holier realm, Avhere I can nourish the pure and noble within me, live clear of these lusts and sins, and on the mount- ain lands of faith and devotion keep unbroken com- munion with my God, and myself unspotted from the world." Remember that we are far back in the world's his- tory. Remember that in this year 1475 nothing but Roman Catholicism is known. Remember that, bad as many monasteries were, all of purity and truth and virtue to be then discerned gathered within their walls. Remember that these religious houses were in that hour the recognized asylums for the wearied with this world, the only apparent gateway to that narrow road which leads upward to the holy city of God. Away then stole this strange young man out of a wealthy, noble, historic family ; away from a loving father and mother, from high-spirited brothers and affec- tionate sisters, from all the seductive influences of the highest society, from the powers and possible dignities of the second noblest profession on earth, and with firm hand knocked that night a lonely lad at the convent door of the Dominicans. Like Paul, he conferred not with flesh and blood ; and he could not trust himself to say farewell. This was no weakling's flight to find a mere shelter from the storm ; but, as his letters prove, it was the calm act of a resolute and strong man after years of thought and deliberation. His aim was of the loftiest kind. To gain his high ideal of sanctity he must cut loose from the sinful city about him. It was, if you MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 93 study it aright, a solemn act of sublime self-surrender. Who that has read the thrilling life of that other young enthusiast and vastly more successful man, Martin Lu- ther, can fail to be struck with the wonderful parallel- isms between the monk of Bologna and the monk of Erfurt ? The likenesses grow as you think of them. On the evening of the 17th of August, 1505, there knocked at the gate of the Augustinian monastery of Erfurt a young man, the son of the well-to-do, intelli- gent and ambitious counsellor of Mansfield ; a 3^oung man distinguished for his learning, for earnestness, for deep religious feeling ; a strong man, sick of the world, longing after holiness and peace of soul ; a man of promise, to whom the ways of success are already fast opening to stir and feed his ambition ; and that youth, then twenty-one years and nine months old, was Martin Luther. Like him in aim, in heart, in dearest studies, in spiritual intensity, stole in that other youth of twenty-two years, Girolamo Savonarola, destined not indeed to the victor's place like Luther, but to the humble yet indispensable task of the pioneer, prepar- ing the w^ay for the reformation of the faith. Like Martin Luther in his entrance into the monastic re- treat, Savonarola was like him in his humble appeal to his parents for forgiveness, and like Luther in his first experience of parental anger and then of slowly-granted pardon, and finally of fullest reconciliation. I know noth- ing more tender and thrilling in the world's many epis- tles than the letter which Savonarola wrote to his fiither two days after the gates of the old convent shut him from the world forever. But the parallelisms between the monk of Erfurt and the monk of Bologna are not yet exhausted. To me this similarity between the two 94 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, great men has come home with such striking force that I cannot avoid making it prominent for you. We all know, from Merle D'Aubigne, from Koestlin, Croly and others, the deep humility and the childlike simplicity marking Luther when, distinguished scholar though he was, he acted as porter, and swept the church and cleaned the house, and, singing, begged through the streets for his daily bread, and did cheerfully the most menial tasks of a junior monk. In Savonarola you find the same humility, the same simplicity, the same sub- lime exaltation above the fear of man, the power of wealth, above pomp and pride ; you find the same lav- ish charity to the poor, the same intense passion for learning, the same long-continued study. These two men read the same books. Like Luther after him, Savonarola drank in the thought of Aristotle, the ethics and theology of Aquinas, the teaching of Augustine ; and he bent all the great power of his mind to these pursuits so thoroughly that in after days the sermons of Savonarola were full of the results of his monastic toil. But like the monk who shook the world, his one chief book was the Bible. He did not indeed need to search it, like Luther, for peace of soul ; that he had already reached. His heart had long found rest and consolation in the simple truths and the peaceful prom- ises of the gospel. But he did search it with most pas- sionate intensitv to discover God's will for his children on earth, for the knowledge of the true life for man, for highest morals, for ever-nobler thoughts of God, for the true view of a God-pleasing holiness. He saw that all these moral beauties and glories were needed in his time. He felt growing up in him the spirit of the old, brave Hebrew seers and of John the Baptist ; hence he lived MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 95 chiefly with the old prophets and with the apostles Paul and James. The great Hebrew seers were beyond all teachers his favorite masters. He drank in their spirit : the rugged majesty and dauntless bravery of Hosea, the scathing exposure of royal sins from Amos' lips, the bold and startling imagery of Joel, the soul-stirring pictures of national wickedness drawn by Micah, the living figures, the overpowering revelations of sin's vile- ness, given by Isaiah, the pathetic pages of Jeremiah, — these were his delight, and in time came to be hidden deep and richly in his heart. The awful utterances of these great men of God burned within his soul. They kindled his moral enthusiasm ; they iired his zeal against all ungodliness, and afterwards reproduced themselves so appropriately to the times and the themes he dealt with that his speech became like an inspired message. To the Herods of his day he seemed as an old prophet risen from the dead. He was at peace, I say, within his own soul ; his sal- vation he was convinced was by faith in Christ Jesus and holiness of life — faith inspired of grace, of which holiness was the constant and the necessary manifesta- tion. But he was in agony about the state of Italy. The Bible, he felt, gave him what he needed to con- vulse and revolutionize society. The Bible pictures of sin, the Bible views of guilt, the Bible denunciations of God's wrath, — these, if naught else, would startle the deep-slumbering souls of his guilty and careless fellow men ; and the Bible voice of authority was loud enough, bold enough, sublime enough, supreme enough, to com- mand attention from even the highest wrong-doers in the land, whether polluted prince or the more polluted pope. So the monk read the Scriptures, thought over 96 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, them, prayed to know their meaning. For six long years he dwelt alone with God and hearkened con- stantly to the divine voice, and he grew very mighty in the truth and sweetly strong in grace. His very face, it is said, shone with a seer's brightness ; and the name of Fra Girolamo grew celebrated throughout the land for deep learning, far-reaching influence, prayerful- ness and devoted piety. Story gathers upon story about his power with men, as he talked with them regarding their soul's salvation : many were turned by him to the Lord, His power and boldness in dealing with the most daring sins was certainly remarkable. Here is one scene. It is on shipboard. The boat is bound from Ferrara to Mantua. The young, meditative, wasted monk sits apart in the stern of the boat ; he is meditating as usual on the moral riot of the land. The heavens seem dark to him with judgment; God's storm must soon burst on the land. While he is thus thinking, down comes one of those sudden-brewing and sudden-bursting storms known in Switzerland and Italy. In this thun- der-storm Savonarola sees, as did the old stern Micah, the emblem of God's anger. The boatmen are rude and wicked and obscene ; they pour out their rude songs, their blasphemies and filthy jokes. The storm in the heavens waxes fiercer. The boatmen grow more coarse and foul tongued. The storm grows wilder still, but the storm of holy anger in the monk's breast is the fiercest of all. Up rises Savonarola from his seat, casts back his cloak, commands the men to listen, binds them by the spell of his flaming eyes, and forth he rolls in his sweet but potent Italian one of the most startling passages of the Hebrew seers ; then comes a picture of sin, of the just God upon his throne, and of the lonely MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 97 wicked man called to judgment to give an account for his idle words. More and more vivid flashes the light- ning, louder and more appalling come the thunder peals. More and more vivid becomes the monk's description of guilt, clearer and more awful his words of condemna- tion, till the boatmen, awed and overpowered, sink at his feet confessing their sins and pleading for his pray- ers and his guidance. It was a reproduction of David and Nathan, and was prophetic of Savonarola's preach- ing in his grandest hours and of his power with men. And now the day comes when the long and patient prep- aration in the cloisters of Bolosrua must be tried in the pulpits of gay and guilty Florence. The Master of Florence. In 1482 Ferrara, to which Savonarola had once more gone, though but for a short season, was threatened by the Venitians with war, and the Dominican monks were ordered to leave their house and retire to the monas- teries of their order in various other districts. Among others Savonarola was sent to the magnificent monastery of San Marco in Florence. Savonarola has now reached the place of his fame and of his fate. There he was called immediately to preach. At first he was a complete and surprising failure. In spite of his burning zeal and his acknowledged sanctity ; in spite of his all-penetrative insight into human hearts and bold, convincing denunciations of sin ; in spite of his learn- ing, his schoListic attainments and his biblical lore ; in spite of a fine form, tall and slight, full of grace and strength and action ; in spite of a face striking and ex- pressive to an unusual degree, and of a far-reaching voice, flexible and pathetic, — his first series of Lenten 98 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, sermons in the great church of San Lorenzo were all lamentable failures. The disappointment was bitter and boundless. From thousands his audience quickly dwin- dled down to twenty-five. His career as a preacher seemed ended. But was it? No. The force that lay in the boy to choose his own pleasures and pursuits, the moral strength that kept the young man pure amidst all the seductions of a royal town, the intense zeal that made the student of the monastery pore for nights and days over his philosophy, theology and his Bible, lived on in the man and moved him mightily. Disappointed, he despaired not. He retired from public view for two more years. Voice he cultivated, gestures he corrected, reading and elocution he studied, style of address he altered. He heard the piercing cry for reform, and felt the force needful for that sad and deadly battle was his own. God's truth burned like fierce fire within him. He believed God had a work for him to do. He knew he had a message for his age. He resolved to learn how to do his work and how best to make his message tell. He vanishes from men's sight. Two years pass away in unbroken silence, but intense, passionate, yet well- directed work. Men have utterly ceased to speak of Savonarola, when, like the sun dashing through clouds, he flashes out the light of his flaming message sudden and searching, and all Brescia, where he then was, speedily gathers around him, waits spell-bound before him, trembles for sin, rushes, as he closes, in tears from the church, resolving to go no more to hear that awful prophet ; but on the next day they all regather, and the next day they come, and every day they crowd the church to hear this Italian John the Baptist. For four years he preached in Brescia like an old MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 99 prophet ; his sterling genius, his sinless character, his elcA^ation above all human fear, his contempt of all human reward, his resistless enthusiasm, and his man- ifest devotion to God, supported him in his daring de- nunciations of sin, whether wrought in princely halls or in pauper's hovel. He was master of the situation. Brescia cowered and trembled as if God had come to judgment. Assuredly it was small wonder. The text- book of the preacher was the Revelation of Saint John. That book, full of the righteous wrath of God, took for Savonarola an almost perfect literality in his applica- tions of its teaching to the state of Brescia and of Italy in general. But while he thus thundered the terrors of the Lord over the heads of his sinful countrymen, he was growing in a deep-rooted determination to scourge iniquity out of the highest places of the land ; and at the same time he was more deeply impressing all those who w^atched him closely with the conviction that here was a man of the profoundest thought, of wisest counsel, of gravest authority ; a man of commanding powers ; a student of vast theological attainments ; a teacher of amazing clear- ness and unusual subtlety in solving the deepest ethical and theological difficulties. But Brescia was not to be the scene of his greatest pulpit victories. Florence, which was then the literary centre of the world, was in sorest need of him. In 1490, by some, to us, appa- rently accidental arrangement, the one-time disappointed and disgraced Lenten preacher was sent back to Flor- ence as a simple, unpretending gospel-reader. He crept into the convent of San Marco, unheralded, unaccompa- nied, almost exhausted. Travelling the whole distance on foot from Brescia, his frame worn out by labors, by 100 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, fasting, by long-continued study, he sank down upon the way almost dead. How long he lay upon the road cannot be told. Later legends state that he was saved by an angel ; but such falsities always gather round such a life in such a time. The only power upholding and rescuing him other than the gracious, guardian hand of the God of providence was the iron will of Savon- arola himself, and that one great, noble and holy aim of releasing his land from the might of sin and the des- potism of usurpers which had now grown into an exclu- sive and absorbing passion with him. How many have found in God and in their own deep, holy resolution to persevere in their unpromising, yes even contemned, work, but work which thev feel to be needful for men and given of God to them, that support and that secret of victory which have seemed to the surrounding wit- nesses verily miraculous ! Quietly through the gate of San Gallo, quietly through the streets of the city, quietly to the postern of San Marco, quietly up the long corridor, quietly into the cold, small cell, passed Savonarola, and Flor- ence has at last met her master and her martyr ! How quietly revolutions are oftentimes born ! Yes, the rev- olution of all revolutions — in a quiet night in a quiet little town of little Syria ! Florence and her duke and her gay court knew not that the revolutionary and the reformer lay down that night within San Marco and slept the deep sleep of the tired man and trustful child of God. Nothing creeps down upon us with softer foot and lighter tread than the wind, so soon to swell into the furious tempest that shall fell the forest's king and strew the earth with the proud tower's ruin, and the MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 101 sea with wrecks, and the gray strand with ghastly corpses. The storm is brewing for the court of the duke and the pope. They reck not. Then Lorenzo de Medici, the magnificent, was lord of Florence, aiid his age is commonly called the Augus- tan age of revived Italian literature. " The tranquillity which had for some years" (I quote from Koscoe) " reigned in Italy had introduced into that country an abundance, a luxury and a refinement almost unexam- pled in the annals of mankind. Instead of contending for dominion and power, the sovereigns and native princes of that happy region attempted to rival each other in taste, in splendor and in elegant accomplish- ments ; and it was considered as essential to their grandeur to give their household establishments a lit- erary character. Hence their palaces became a kind of polite academy in which the nobility of both sexes found a constant exercise for their intellectual talents. There courage, there beauty and rank did not hesitate to associate with learning, taste and wit. In this re- spect the court of Florence was pre-eminently distin- guished." Yes, Roscoe, Florence was distinguished for all this luxury and learning, for all this taste and wit, but also for all the semi-disguised paganism of that age " of fear- ful moral retrogression," for the impure, lascivious revel, for the wanton songs, for the indecent dances, and the indecorum of her entertainments. That fifteenth cen- tury was one of the most perilous ages for Christianity which the faith of the gospel has yet survived, and Florence was the very centre of the iniquity. If we are to consider the place and power of Savonarola truly, we must look at the age of his activity as it is reflected 102 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, in the two great centres — the centre of the literary and the centre of the rehgious worlds. Florence was the centre of the literary world, and she was full of de- bauchery, extravagance and godlessness. Here society " was remarkably glittering and surpassingly corrupt — radiant with outward splendor, rotten with internal de- cay." Her palaces were full of a beauty almost heav- venly, yet they hid passions that were bestial. Rome, the centre of the religious world, was worse than Flor- ence. '' Christendom," says Farrar of this fifteenth cen- tury, " had practically ceased to be Christian ; priests, turned atheists, made an open scoff of the religion they professed; the pope jested with his secretary on the profitableness to them of the fable of Christ." Such was the state of the Church when a man that was Knox- like in his man-defying boldness, that was Luther-like in his power over the masses, that was Calvin-like in his submission to the word and will of God — a man that was stainless as Daniel in his character and mighty as John the Baptist in his preaching of repentance — rose in the pulpit of San Marco to preach the gospel of the Crucified and declare to all the counsel of the holy God, with an eloquence unheard of among that order of preachers. And the Dominicans are remarkable preach- ers. Never have I seen or heard anything like the preaching of one passion-sermon delivered by a great Dominican orator in the Cathedral of Milan — fervid, forcible, full of action and passion, the soul of the speaker blazing into fire, and that fire running like a flame through his audience — Gavazzi in his wildest pas- sion-moods was very calmness to the fire of that Do- minican. Savonarola was a Dominican preacher, and stands MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 103 chief among the Dominicans. Speech so full of fire that the many graces of it were lost, it surged up from the depths of his soul like a curbed sea suddenly loosed from bands ; it came leaping forth a very torrent of re- buke for sin, a lava-stream of withering denunciations of vice, a thunder-peal, an awful revelation concerning the coming wrath of God. He preached not " in words only, but with eyes, hands, features ;" " the whole man rendering," as Myers says, " every hearer forgetful of all but the awful utterances of the awful preacher." " His sermons address the fears, the hopes, the imag- inations, the affections, the intelligence, of all classes of his heai'ers." The great metaphysical student plunges into every part of man a keen-edged rapier and then causes the pierced, transfixed faculty to quiver with the thrusts of truth. But the chief characteristic of his eloquence was that it was amazingly biblical. It gained and grew in old Hebrew majesty till it reached its climax in the famous Lenten lectures of 1496, Avhich Savonarola delivered on the books of Amos and Zechariah. Savonarola began as a reader, as a common gospel reader, in the small hall of San Marco ; nobody ex- pected anything, and at first his audience was very thin and quite listless. In a few days the company swelled, and all waited with eagerness the arrival of the entranc- ing yet appalling speaker. In the beginning of the third week the audience crowded that hall, and the friars and pious servants pressed forward to hear the burning words. From the hall they were driven to the garden ; from the garden to the great chapel; from the great chapel to the large refectory and reception-room ; thence to the vast cathedral ; and in that cathedral the audi- ence swelled and still swelled, till they were compelled 104 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, to seat the vast building round and round like a huge amphitheatre, and still there was not room. Men clam- bered into the stalls and up to sit upon the windows, and clung to the pillars and waited outside ; and these audiences, vast as they were, often waited patiently for hours to hear the " prophet-preacher," Florence verily needed a preacher of righteousness, and she had found him in a man who feared only God and who listened for his message alone. And not Florence only, but Pisa and Leghorn poured their living tides in and in, and the smaller towns and sleepy villages, until the cathedral and the piazzas around groaned beneath the thick- massed multitudes. The monk's denunciation of the sins common to the times was scathing enough ; but the pride, the corruption, the greed of gold, the hypocrisy, the infidelity and the darker and deadlier sins of the clergy, these it was that stirred all the fiery indignation of this strong and saintly soul. The thunders of his righteous wrath were appalling in the extreme. The city and the country were convulsed by this one man, and his one single force was truth, — God's truth fully told, fearlessly applied. " The people are met to pray Before the shrine, Where day and night, from year to year. The pale lamps shine, To li^ht the dai'kness of a Face That bendeth from the altar-place, Sad, yet divine. " The clouds of incense rise, The sweet bell tolls, Down all the darkness of the church A music rolls. And stirs, as with a wind from heaven, The gathered souls. MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 105 *' But when the passionate voice Of the music dies, And even the echo, faint and sweet. Hath ceased her sighs. Another voice, more solemn and grand, Is heard to rise ! " Ah ! well fair Florence knows That voice of doom ; This is her Prophet, stern and sad. Whose soul doth loom .So dark and awful from its place, That they who dare to meet his face Pale at its gloom. " How fair and sweet on the hills Their footsteps glow Who come with tidings of peace and love To the world below ! As angels of light, by day and night They come and go. " But those whom God has appointed Heralds of wrath. From his secret place of thunder Come by a darker path ; A voice of doom, a brow of gloom, This herald hath. " To him the smiles of earth Are little worth, His eyes have seen the lifted sword Gleam wild in the north. And he spake as one to whom is given To know the wrath of outraged Heaven, And to pour it forth. " Yet are there softer hours. When his voice sinks low, And they see, as it were, an angel's face ; So sweet the glow With which he prays them all to come To the arms of Christ, who is our home. And loveth so. 106 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, " ' I have longed as other men To be at rest, To follow the sinking, smiling sun Down the shining west, Or to take the wings of the morning and flee To my Saviour's breast. " ' Yet might I go to him This night in peace. How could I sing in the silver dawn Of that sweet release. Whilst my people darkly stand without, And lift to heaven the rebel shout. That will not cease? " ' Oh that mine eyes were fountains Of flowing tears, That I might weep through the sunless hours Of my bitter years ; For my land hath filled her cup of sin. And the judgment nears.' " Then all the people trembled For fear of God, As if they saw in heaven the sign Of his lifted rod, And felt the truth that, a little while, And instead of the light of his fatherly smile His wrath should be shed abroad." The changes which that preaching wrought in Flor- ence were sudden and wonderful. They are the boast of Savonarola's admirers ; they are the sullen admis- sions of his foes. Half the year was devoted to relig- ious services ; and the days when he preached the streets were silent, because deserted, and all the shops were closed. No more obscene songs were heard, but, instead, low-chanted psalms. Vast sums were paid back in resti- tution of old debts or of wrongful gains. The dress of men became sober, and of women quiet and modest. Many members of the highest families, many distin- MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 107 guished for rank or learningj became the preacher's dis- ciples ; and not a few noble ladies gave themselves under his direction to the works of sweet Christian charity. The frightful, abominable carnival of Florence was seen no more. Savonarola was now really the master of Florence, and the day came quickly when he was openly raised to her seat of rule and acknowledged as her prince. In November, 1494, the sword of the Lord, long fore- told by Savonarola, was bared and brandished in the eyes of Florence. Charles the Eighth, whom for months Savonarola had declared to be the avenger decreed by God and appointed to waste Italy because of her sins, made his victorious way to the walls and then through the gates of Florence. Dictating terms too hard. King Charles was met by the brave magistrate, Gino Capponi, and the braver monk, Savonarola, — for the weak Piero de Medici, then reigning prince and son of the dead Lorenzo, had fled in sore aifright. Capponi threatened to sound the fearful Florentine tocsin. Savonarola threatened the sorer and undying vengeance of God against the king who was merciless in his triumph, and pointed the awed Charles back to Nebuchadnezzar. Magistrate and monk conquered the conqueror. On the 26th of November a treaty was signed between the king and the city, in accordance with which the tyran- nical Medici were banished from the state, and fair but long-fallen Florence had restored to her her long-lost but ever-loved liberties. But where shall Florence " Statesmen for her council get Who know the seasons when to take Occasion by the hand, and make The bounds of freedom wider yet " ? 108 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, Yes, the chief, the vital question was, Who should rule ? The old republican forms did indeed remain, but the great tribunes who were able to apply them were all dead ; and the grand, imperial spirit of the old Flor- entine magistrates had in the days of the Medicean despotism vanished to appear no more. All was an- archy. Mean factions reigned. The streets were often red with sudden fights. The sharp cry of the assas- sinated not unfrequently broke the stillness of the night. Trade was ruined ; shops were closed, and starving me- chanics had become brigands. Who should bring order forth out of this chaos ? Who could grasp the reins and guide the car of state ? Where were the Soderinis, the Capponis, the Valoris ? Represented indeed they were, but by weak and contemptible descendants. All eyes turned to one man, the preacher-prince, the monk of San Marco. He was really the chief of Florence. He had faced the proud Lorenzo when all men, high and low, cowered before the illustrious but iron-handed des- pot. He had commanded him to repent, and made him know a higher law than his own proud will. Had he not also bearded the haughtier French victor and forced him, albeit at the head of his flushed legions, to yield obedience to the law of truth and mercy ?' Had he not saved the blood of Florence ? Had he not proved his mastery of men ? Yes, he must rule. Not, be it known to all and ever remembered, of his own ambitious seek- ing and plotting, but by a common call of a hunger- stricken and hopeless population, was Savonarola called to authority, yes, commanded to reign. Reluctantly he obeyed. He feared the end for him was death ; but he stepped into the breach. The monk is now prince, and his pulpit is his throne. In the fear of God he began. MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 109 The first meeting of state he summons in the great cathedral, for the new republic shall be founded in the fear of God the Lord of Hosts, and in his house with prayer, and on the law of his truth. Ruler and people shall first be Christian. But there was more than the enthusiasm of the fifth-monarchy men and the emotion of a mere prophet-preacher in Savonarola. The monk was a born magistrate ; and this man, with all the native endowments of a ruler, had carefully studied in earlier days the theory of government, for Thomas Aquinas, his old master, had entered deeply into the whole question of rule and legislation, and with his characteristic cool analysis had penetrated to the very heart of the political question, and had with exhaustive fullness stated what he regarded as the perfect forms of liberty. Savonarola was the student of Aquinas, and had mastered all his teaching. With all his noble aver- sion to tyranny our preacher-prince had also a most wise dread of the rule of the untaught mob. Under God as supreme, Florence was to be a Christian re- public, but a republic in which the wisest, the purest and most matured alone should rule. The first and indispensable requisite of the state was that it should be a true civitas Dei, a city of God. These were the four great rules of the constitution laid down for Flor- ence by her new chief: first, "Fear God;" second, " Prefer the good of the republic to thine own ;" third, "A general amnesty ;" fourth, "A council composed like that of Israel, with Christ as the head of the nation." The first aim of the monk-magistrate was to relieve the wants of the poor ; the second to open shops, to restore and encourage trade, so that employment might be given to the needy and money might circulate once more ; third, 110 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, to lighten taxes, especially those pressing hardest on the working classes and those levied on the most common articles of daily life ; fourth, to enforce strict justice regardless of men's persons ; fifth, to seek in all things God's glory and the purity of private and public life as the chief end of their state life. Savonarola would make Florence such a city as earth had never seen, the light of the wide Christian world, a model to Rome, a new Jerusalem. He plunged into politics that he might purge the Augean pit. He did not himself grow pol- luted like the most who sound those foul and slimy depths ; but, alas ! he did, as he feared, draw down upon himself, the one great and pure man of his day, ruin and death. But nobly did he gird himself to achieve his noble purpose. Starting from the principle that Florence should be a Christian commonwealth, with Jesus as king and his gospel as sovereign law, Savon- arola passed, with the consent of the great council held in the cathedral and in the presence of the people, the most stringent laws for the thorous^h and immediate suppression of vice. All the haunts of debauchery were in consequence closed. Gambling in all forms was forbidden and stopped. Drunkenness was made impossible by the first prohibitory liquor law I have discovered in history. The gross habits and indecen- cies of the old Florentine life and the ruinous extrav- agances of dress were restrained. Foul pictures and fouler poems were burned. The abominable statues once disgracing the streets were removed ; and the filthiness of the revived paganism of the magnificent Medici hidden forever. It was in truth a sublime effort ; but there was only one man true to the sublime ideal, and he as a ruler was ruined by the ecclesiastical system MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. Ill which had bred and still bound him. He was a monk, and he was in his pure, self-denying life a standing re- buke to Rome ; and monkery and Rome destroyed him — monkery, for the ascetic training of the monk led Savonarola to stretch his restrictions of civil law to the point of tyrannical interferences with private liberty and the duties of the family. The city could not be made a convent, and such a convent as Savonarola would have. And Rome hunted him to death. Actuated himself by one holy wish to obey God, he would force all men to live as he did, and the cord strained too tightly at last snapped. With the will of Cromwell, he wanted the unerring sagacity of that great uncrowned king. Discontent arose among the dissolute nobles, among the gay women and the proud youth of Florence. They grew tired of the monk. They plotted against him secretly and complained openly. They ap- pealed to Rome. She was glad of the opportunity ; she had wished, watched and wrought for the reformer's downfall. Yes, Rome more than monkery was the ruin of Savonarola. The Vatican was wildly wroth with this bold man who spoke clearly out to the common people the word of God ; who preached not the one Church, but the one Christ and free salvation — that " triumph of the cross " so dear to his soul — and taught that all sinners, especially clerical sinners, should reap as they sowed, and the wages of sin must be death. Florence under Savonarola was to Rome under the in- famous, the indescribably vile, the everlastingly con- temned Alexander the Sixth, that lustful and bloody Borgia whose name is the abiding shame of the papacy, all that Goshen in light was to Egypt in her gloom. Savonarola had turned God's daylight full upon Rome. Rome in her foul bestiality writhed in angry shame. 112 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, Savonarola and the tiara-crowned Borgia must fight. The prophet of Florence and the pope of Rome could not exist in one Church, nay more, in one country. The bloody Borgia feared and hated the monk. Savon- arola could not abide that Borgia; he could not in his own stainless, noble purity forget that the private life of Roderigo Borgia was a disgrace to humanity, was the unutterable scandal of the Church and the stum- bling-block of countless souls. The fiery preacher spoke out clearly and loudly against the simony, the rapacity, the sensuality, the murders of the pope. He told the in- iquities of his household, of his brother and of that whole foul and blood-stained family ; from the pope he passed out to the cardinals, from the cardinals to the clergy, and with resistless hand unveiled in the sight of clearest day and of a terror-stricken world the putridities of that papal court and city. Rome became for the prophet- preacher Babylon, and her diabolic pope was branded as antichrist. On went this terrific war. At last came one terrible sermon from the prophet-prince of Florence, delivered to a gathered province packed inside the great cathedral, made vivid with awful pictures drawn out of the Hebrew seers. Savonarola had set forth the sins of the land, and in his sermon stated with clearer and more scathing language than even Luther dared to use the utter moral degeneracy of the clergy, and then traced all this horrifying evil to the more horrible and shame- less sins of the papal court, and then closed leaving the pope standing forth in the midst as the very chief of sinners. Rome was stirred throughout her whole ex- tent and to a very frenzy of revengeful madness. What shall be done ? said pope and cardinals in one breath. " Make him a cardinal," said the sneering Caesar Bor- gia; and the whole court laughed and approved the MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 113 scheme. Many a mouth had been closed in that way. They mistook their man this time. Down came in hot haste from the pope one Louis de Ferrara to offer the uncompromising enemy of all unrighteousness, God's simple-hearted, fearless servant, the bribe that was only less in the esteem of the selfish in that hour than the popedom itself — the archbishopric of Florence, the full- est favor of the Roman court and a cardinal's hat. Would he only be still ? Like the apostle starting back from Simon Magus in the horror and holy wrath of an indignant soul did Savonarola repulse the tempter. That voice of temptation made a fearful recoil in the soul of our hero. With all his tremendous love of, and passion for, purity, simplicity, sanctity, with all his sub- lime enthusiasm for a more perfect conformity to his Master, with all his glowing hatred of the selfish and the mean, with all the declarations he had made regard- ing his aims and desires, with all the proofs that he had given to men of his elevation above the base and the self-indulging, that papal bribe, that temptation, Avas more than he could bear, and he confronted the papal seducer as Elijah faced Ahab of old. Like an outburst of Vesuvius his indignation rolled out, hot, scathing, resistless. After the first outburst of his indignation he eyed for some seconds Louis de Ferrara till the papal messenger actually quailed beneath those soul- searching eyes. Then Savonarola sternly summoned the tempter to appear in the cathedral the next day and hear before the world his answer to Rome. The bells ring and the criers tell the news and summon the people to the church the next day. The people gath- ered mass on mass. Magnificent subject for a painter, that place and preacher ! The grand old cathedral 114 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, packed to suffocation, the waiting, wondering province ; in the very centre of the scene, full before the pulpit, on a high seat, within view of the whole vast congre- gation, was the pope's messenger placed like Satan at the divine bar; there, in his well-known place, stands the wasted, almost ethereal, prophet of Florence. He bows in prayer. He rises. His fine, noble face lights up with the blaze of holy indignation as he looks on Louis the tempter. His kindling eyes are now dilating and contracting — they seem actually flashing like light- ning. His lips open, close. His hands clench together convulsively. Twice he tries to speak ; the words choke him. One quick glance is flung to heaven. There is one quick pressure of the wasted hands upon his brow, and out rolls the torrent. The crime of Rome is made to stand out in horrible relief against the purity of the apostolate ; the character of Christ against the so-called vicegerent ; the sins of the papacy against the holiness and devotion of the early Church. Higher and higher rises the storm of holy scorn and scathing denunciation, till all culminates in one concentrated anathema : " Get thee behind me, Satan. I will have no hat but the mar- tyr's, reddened with mine own blood ; no seat but with my Master. Get thee gone to thy master, and tempt me no more." The vast audience rose, and, amid the hissing and the scorn, Louis fled from out the church as if hunted by the furies with their snaky thongs. Savonarola gained the glory he sought, won the hat he craved ; that day he told his own doom. The Martyr. His work was almost done, his day all but sped. The night dropped sharp and sudden, like the night in a MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 115 tropic land. But the doom came not immediately. At first the Borgias had to stay, eager though they were, their bloody hands, for over their own heads was hang- ing the sword of vengeance. The French king had crossed the Apennines, was in Rome herself. Pope Alexander was hiding, weak and terror-stricken, in San Angelo, and was deserted by all his cardinals save two. There were angry murmurs and a threatening of a gen- eral council to try the Belial of the Vatican for his in- famous crimes, that were of all kinds and of all depths, and to degrade this foul scoundrel of the purple. That storm passed and left the Borgias safe. From Home first, then from Naples, then from Italy, went the French avenger. The released pope and the Medici drew a long breath of safety once more. Freed from fears re- garding their own fate, they turned their thoughts on vengeance, and prepared the nets of death for the monk of Florence. The makers of the bloody hat begin their task. At first, with soft words and courteous addresses, Savonarola is invited to Rome to give account of his teachings before the papal court. They are very anx- ious to know his grounds of dissatisfaction ! He de- clines to stand at that bar. Again asked, he reminded them of Paul refusing to go to Jerusalem where the conspirators awaited him, and told them he knew too well of the keen, ready daggers of the Borgias. Once more asked and assured of safety, he replied that " safe- conducts" from the Vatican were no guarantees of safety. The fourth message is a command to come at once ; but the prophet-preacher hesitates about his answer not a moment. He declines. Savonarola is deposed by the pope and excommunicated. He replies boldly, There is power in the Church to depose a wicked pope. A 110 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, wicked pope is no pope ; his excommunication is no excommunication ; his briefs are of no authority ; they are of the devil. I am sent of God to preach, and I shall preach ; I must preach, even if I have to contend against the world. Brave words ! they remind us of Athanasius ; brave words! they anticipate the deathless declaration of Luther before the diet at Worms ; brave words ! they recall the great apostle of the Gentiles himself, " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel." Higher still rises the eloquence of the dauntless monk ; his vitu- perations grow more terrible ; his fulminations against Rome wax brighter and more blasting. Rome works with deadly craft. The bloody hat grows clearer, draws onward to the martyr. In the spring of 1496 the pope packs a council of Dominicans at Rome, who, in his absence, try Savon- arola and pronounce their foregone conclusion, guilty of contumacy, heresy, schism, rebellion in the highest de- gree, and pronounce the sentence of death. On the 7th of November a decree is passed degrading him from all offices, and another is appointed to his place. Through bribery, the influence of the pope and the old autocratic party of the Medici, a number of his personal enemies were introduced into the general council of Florence. The pope, the Medici, the dissolute youth of Florence, who had chafed against the strict moralities of the monk, are now united together in one league of revenge and death. The spring comes around again, and with it the fresh bull of excommunication from the pope. Through that whole year, however, on went the battle between one lone man from whose side fear and bribes, craft, treachery and the power of the Church were grad- ually stealing all his allies, and that furious court of MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 117 Rome, in league with the old despots of the city and envious monks and godless men and graceless women. Still the one man, hero of God, stands firm, and instead of closing his ministry he preaches and administers the sacraments in spite of the pope and his repeated ex- communications. The year of 1498 comes ; and the hat, not of the cardinal but of the confessor, will soon be fitted on. Then it was that Savonarola anticipated Luther ; for, turning from the Church to Christendom, he indicted the pope before the Christian conscience and the Christian world to answer for his personal crimes and his official sins. To the emperor of Ger- many, to the king of France, to the king and queen of Spain, to the king of England, to the king of Hungary, Savonarola writes, as John Huss and Wycliffe wrote before. One of these letters was intercepted by the duke of Milan and was immediately forwarded to Rome, where, after long and anxious consideration, a plot was concocted on the suggestion of a traitorous Florentine to entrap Savonarola into a trial of his true position and of his power by '' the ordeal of fire." He was chal- lenged to this trial. He did not accept the challenge, but in a moment of excitement his friends consented for him, and he allowed himself, through his over-gen- erous chivalry, to be bound by their action. The day was appointed, the multitude gathered together. The. excitement was intense, the anticipation most feverish ; but when everything was ready for the trial the rain descended, drenched the wood, quenched the flames, and the ordeal became an impossibility. Rome by her emissaries, the Medici through their tools, immediately stepped in, wrought quickly and successfully on the superstition of the mob, detached them from Savon- 118 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, arola, had him suddenly arrested, tried, repeatedly tor- tured until the man was maddened and his brain reeled. He was condemned to death by fire on the ground of some wild utterances made while racked with the pain caused by their fiendish tortures. In all the history of Rome's torturing nothing more diabolical is known than the treatment of Savonarola. The racking of this noble, self-denying man and the slow fire that burned Patrick Hamilton may be placed side by side. Now the eleva- tion of the man is nigh, not to a prince's seat in the church militant, but to the martyr's throne in the church triumphant. The bloody hat shall be given to-morrow. It is the evening of the 22d of May, 1498 ; the doomed man is in the cold, guarded cell, with him is his warder; but look, the death-marked victim has laid his manly head on the warder's lap, and he sleeps like a little child. As they watched the sainted Argyle slumbering peace- fully as an infant in the mother's arms and smiling as he slept, so Nicolini watched Savonarola, and as he gazes down he sees the thin face gleam, the wasted form thrill with some strange emotion and a heavenly smile gather around the pale lips. The man's spirit is already entering into glory. " I knelt down And saw his face. God, my God, this night And every night I bless thee for that look He wore in sleep ! The look of one to whom After a hopeless night had risen a Sun, Too wonderful and sweet for waking eyes. He lay asleep, forgiven and at rest. Ah ! the closed eyes were not too darkly veiled For me to read the secret of their light, And the pale lips betrayed it in a smile Which said the soul was joying within the veil. With something like a tear upon his cheek, And something like a child's surprise and joy MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 119 At unexpected sifjht of home and friends, He lay asleep. Dear in the sic^ht of God The death of ail his saints ! — Was this the look Which angels saw on the great Prophet's face, Lying in death — alone — upon the Mount, After sight in wide, sweet vision of that Rest Prepared for Israel ; and drawn at the last So close to the forgiving heart of God, Men said he died of that divine caress? Such peace at the last, O God, thou givest As only broken hearts can taste or dream of!" It is morning now, and the three gibbets are ready. Savonarola is led out between his two faithful friends, Silvestro and Dominic ; they are parted from him, chained and fired first. Savonarola must behold their fate and watch for his own. Out now steps the bishop of Vaison : " Girolamo Savonarola, I separate you from the church militant and the church triumphant." " Not from the church triumphant ; that is beyond thy power." Then calm, firm, at peace with himself, with the world and God, forgiving his enemies, he walked forward to the stake, was bound, watched them light the pile, bowed his head and prayed, commended his trustful spirit to the Lord Jesus, and died. The martyr wore his crown. " They brought him forth to die In the face of the sun ; They took his sacred robes away One by one ; Whilst the city gazed, he stood amazed, As a man undone. " The lips that were bathed in fire Are silent and pale •, The marks of tempest and agony, And of hope that doth fail. Are on the brow that was so high — It faced God's thunders in the sky, And could not quail. 120 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, " Has he missed the cup of joy, Whose rich wine jjlows With heavenly radiance, poured forth For the lips of those Who dare to face a martyr's death, A martyr's gathered woes? " Is there no cup for him But the cup of agony? No ecstasy of faith and prayer, No parted sky ? Yet, steadfastly he standeth there, Unaided in his last despair. And dares to die. " Within the chambers dark Of his rapt soul Strange scones are passing fitfully. Strange voices roll ; He lives again the last dark days. Whilst the bell doth toll. " He hears once more the witness Of the accusing band : * Thy words have been bold against the men That rule in the land ; Yea, and the Church of God, amazed, Has heard thy voice in thunder raised To blast her hand !' " They said he bore it well — The torture dread ; They racked his bi-oken frame again From foot to head. Till the quivering lips denied the truth — He knew not what he said ! " ' When the blood-red mists had cleared From my reeling brain. And the pale daylight that had been lost Crept back again, I looked on the white robe of my soul And saw its deadlv stain. MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 121 " ' How awfully that stain Did j2;row and gloom, Even whilst I hastened to speak the words That sealed my doom, Denying the false denial, wrung From lips to which the cold sweat clung, In the torture-room. " ' And now they bid me yield This weary breath ; I, who have lost my Saviour's smile. And shipwrecked faith, Am still allowed to die for him, In my poor raiment, soiled and dim — A martyrs sacred death. " ' Last night I saw God's hosts On the moonlight ride. And as they passed each martyr drew His stainless robe aside, Lest I should seek to touch the hem That floated wide. " ' Theij died for the love of Christ By fire and sword, And he himself stood by to cheer With smile and word ; / die, alone, for him to-day, My lost, lost Lord !' " Within the chambers dark Of his rapt soul Such thoughts were passing drearily Whilst the bell did toll. And sunny Florence smiled to see Her noblest son, in agony, Draw near the goal. " He was aware of a voice That cried aloud ; ' We blot thy name this day,' it said, ' From the Church of God ; homeless soul, the thunders roll Along thy downward road !' 122 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, " But even as it spake, Through all the place A murmur ran, for a nameless change Was on the martyr's face, As if a golden hope, that slept Deep in his soul, had waked and leapt To meet a coming grace. "A glorious gleam of heaven Lighted his eye : ' Ye may blot my name from the Church on earth ; But the Church of the sky, Christ's radiant Bride, is opening wide The Gates of Victory. " 'And I, a man despised, Shall enter there Amongst the priests of the House of God, Clean and fair. The clouds are broken overhead ; The smile of Christ's own lips is shed On my despair.' " No golden dawn that glitters On the eastern sea, No burning glories of the west Which transient be, Can image how that light broke forth, blessed martyr, on thee ! " He stood transfigured there, In the smile of God, Not noting the fear and wrath that shook The cruel crowd. Not knowing how they set him free. To stand with Christ in ecstasy, Where the angels sang aloud." Ye Christian men and women, have we not found in- deed a gem of purest ray and rarest worth amid the rubbish of the Dominican convent ? Has not verily one good man come out of that Nazareth of monkery ? Not a perfect man indeed, but one whose faults and evils MONK, MASTER AND MARTYR OF FLORENCE. 123 were bred of the day in which he lived, and still more, of the noblest aims and pursuits and longings ; not per- fect indeed, but worthy certainly to take his place in the front circle of that crowd of the royal dead by whom I would have you engird yourselves. Round about their children and their youth the old Greeks gathered their most exquisite statues and their finest forms, that the young, feasting their eyes ever on beauty, symmetry and strength, might themselves grow beauti- ful, symmetric and strong. Not with cold, dead statues would I encompass you, but with the living spirits of the holy, kingly dead ; for ennobling inspirations are breathed into young ardent souls by these royal ones of God, and they most mightily do move us to be their followers upward from the cross to the crown. Girol- amo Savonarola, son of Ferrara and martyr of Florence, is worthy of a place with Huss and Wyclifi'e, with Wes- sel and Patrick Hamilton, ay, with Luther and Calvin and Knox, for the hard toil of the pioneer, shaking the faith of Europe in the necessary sanctity of the pope, teaching the mind of Europe that appeal lay righteously from the Church to Christendom, forcing the consciences of Europe to face the law of God rather than the law of the Church, and compelling earnest men to try the Church by the word of God — that hard toil was Savon- arola's. Leader of a forlorn hope, it was his death breached the walls of the Vatican ! Ye true men, yes, you young men, think of his early piety and youthful consecration ; think of his honest living up to the full- ness of his knowledge ; think of his thirst for the pure waters of the holy word ; think of his writing the mes- sage of his Master so deeply in his heart that he, we are told, could have reproduced the Bible had it been 124 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. lost; think of his self-forgetting devotion to the cause of righteousness in an age all godless and in a Church rotten to the very core ; think of his enthusiastic devo- tion to all apparent duty, of his fearless prosecution, in face of danger and death, of God's hardest work ; think of that intense perseverance that conquered all early defects, of the perpetual industry that, relying not on vast inherent powers, gathered to the preaching of the gospel all the knowledge open to him in his day ; think of that noble spirit of self-surrender that gladly laid all his wonderful abilities, magnetic influences and majestic strength at the feet of Christ ; think of that absolute, blameless moral character that places him in a holy brotherhood with Joseph the chaste and Daniel the pure and James the just ; think of these things, and then remember that not in the gray light of a misty morning you are looking like Savonarola Christward, and through the blinding influences of monkery and Romanism, but in the sunlight of the midday and through the clear skies of the gospel you face the unclouded glory of the incarnate God ; and let it consequently be your struggle to make this your stronger, clearer, fuller, happier light appear in brighter, nobler, holier deeds. Fight and fight well, and to life's end, the good fight; but fight not in your own strength, fight in the strength of the Lord ; quit you like men ; be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might; trust, pray and toil, and ye too shall then be more than conquerors through him that loveth you. THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. "Oh, that deceit should dwell In such a gorgeous palace !" 'Think'st thou there is no tyranny but that Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice — The weakness and the wickedness of luxury — The negligence — the apathy — the evils Of sensual sloth — produce ten thousand tyrants, Whose delegated cruelty surpasses The worst acts of one energetic master," AUTHOEITIES COI^SULTED The Lives of the Keformers ; the Church Histories of Mosheim, Milman, Neander, Killen and others ; Dollinger, Janus, Gladstone, Hefele and the various "Old Catholic" articles; Lives of the Popes ; the Histories of the Reforming Councils, e. g.., Pisa and Constance ; Church, Palmer, Maitland, Gregory, Oxford Tracts, Wiseman, Manning, Faber ; Duruy ; Jameson, Gregorovius, Farrar, Roscoe, Ranke ; The Dark Ages ; The Renaissance ; Buckle ; Draper ; Hallam's Middle Ages ; Guizot ; Bryce ; Comte ; Montalembert ; Alison ; Lecky ; Robertson ; Symonds ; Hardwick : various articles by Carlyle, Emerson and others ; the monographs in cyclopaedias and in several revievFS. THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. " A rOKE WHICH NEITHER OUR FATHERS NOR WE WERE ABLE TO BEAR." — Acts XV. 10. We have spoken of the yoke, the iron yoke which is to be broken by reason of the anointing. We have been gathering around us those men who were, if not the breakers of that yoke, the pioneers of the emancipa- tion. Beside the earnest Christian men of the Church who accepted as a divine work this great labor and agony of liberty, there were many others, who should not be wholly forgotten, working with them, working for them. There were patriots and politicians ; there were noble statesmen and all the base schemers of the times ; there were earnest students, and there were keen-tongued satirists. Perchance the latter were not among the least of the co-workers with the great re- formers, not their weakest helpers among the popula- tions of northern Europe. It is a good thing at times to answer a fool according to his folly. A hearty laugh will occasionally convince, where a logical argument might fail. Irony, as we know from the scriptural instance of Elijah, and keen-cutting sarcasm, as we find it in the epistles of Paul, have been more than once employed in the service of Christ and human reformation. The humor of John Wycliffe, the bluff joking of Hugh Latimer, the dry caustic wit of John Knox, and the raillery of Luther and Zvvingli, are 128 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. balanced by the many satires and lampoons of Erasmus and his school, by the songs and ballads of David Lind- say, and the mock-plays and somewhat rude and ribald farces in which James of Scotland delighted. There was a deep meaning, however, in all this laughter and humor. There was a deep bitterness of soul in it too. There glowed beneath its flame and sparkle a strong fire of honest indignation. The meaning of it was serious, and worthy of earnest, able men ; it w^as intended to reveal to the people the state of the corrupt, fallen papal Church in the middle ages. That bitterness was felt by men into whose souls the corroding iron of priestly oppression had entered deep and was there rankling and agonizing ; bitterness caused by the un- bearable despotism of the now degraded, once noble. Church of Augustine and Jerome. That fiery indignation blazed forth as the sharp-eyed men of the world and the earnest, musing moralists contemplated the whited sepulchres of papal Rome. We must study the state of the Church in the middle ages if we would really know for ourselves what the iron yoke of Rome was — the intolerable yoke, broken in the Reformation. We must walk up and down in the Roman world of Leo the Tenth and his great predecessors on the Tiber and at Avignon, looking out with the eyes of the reformers and the satirists, if w^e are to see for ourselves the necessity of the great revolt, the justification of the Reformation. Let us look then calmly but critically and closely at the mediaeval Church. As in human life we mark four great stages, child- hood, youth, manhood and old age, so in nations there are the periods of rise and growth, of glory and decay ; and as with the single nation, so with the mass of peo- THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 129 pies, the great struggling world of business, thought, politics and religion. The second period of man and of nations corresponds to that period of growth in the history of Europe — may I not say of the world ? — called the Middle Ages. This name has, by general consent, been applied to the cen- turies running between classic antiquity and the move- ments of modern times. Like the difficulty always felt in exactly deciding when childhood passes into youth is that trouble felt by historians regarding the passage of classic days into the middle ages, and again regard- ing their end in the opening of our modern history. Roughly stated, however, the extremes are respectively the fall of the Western Empire, in the year 476, and Luther's first open conflict with Rome, October 31, 1517. Like youth itself these ages of Europe's growth were full of a strong throbbing life ; boisterous indeed, but hopeful withal ; full of the most generous impulses and noble endeavorings, though fiery with fiercest passions and stained with many a blood-curdling crime. In these centuries what is somewhat vaguely called modern civilization started into life with the change of the bar- barian conquerors of Rome into the ordered nations of Europe, into moral life and religious thought. Then stirred first the motions of that life which has de- veloped and become matured in our own era, which has largely changed and will yet more change the face of the entire earth ; for in these middle ages we meet the victorious Charlemagne and his imperialism, Moham- medanism and its heroic frenzy ; in them rose, culmi- nated and died chivalry; in them began the feudal ordering of society, the crusades, the aristocracy of Europe, the monastic system and scholasticism, the free 130 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. towns, the burgher-classes, the rush of the Northmen, and the holy Roman empire ; and with all these are inseparably connected the liberty and the life, the Church and State of modern Europe as we now see them. In those ages likewise began real commercial and naval life ; the second day of classical learning and the new day of letters. But from all these tempting themes I must turn away. Interesting all of them and instructive ; they are not, however, our present subject. Our path to-night is not over the secular but over the sacred, or rather the ec- clesiastical, highways of those days. From the states of the middle ages we must turn to the Church. The investigation of the state of the Church during those nine or ten centuries is more than historically interest- ing ; it is essential to the justification of the Reforma- tion, and the victorious maintenance of our own position and opinions in relation to the Church of the Vatican. This matter is indissolubly bound up with the often- misunderstood nature, and the latterly-denied necessity, of the Reformation ; is bound up with the question of the righteousness of a separation from the Church of Rome ; bound up with the consequent defence of the reformers, our fathers' hatred of the papacy, our own continued Protestantism, and with our modern battle against our ultramontane assailants, against the Oxford schoolmen, against Matthew Arnold, against persistent defamers of the reformers and the many present apol- ogists for Rome. Again, the earnest study of the dark ages is highly advisable in our day, when a few deceivers and too many dupes are demanding and laboring for a revival of medisevalism, first in worship and then in faith. The THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 131 closer inyestigation of this period is intensely interest- ing to US, hearing the voices from the Vatican proclaim- ing the pope's infollibility, Rome's absolute right to control education, science, politics and the world, and the propriety of Rome's maintaining intact her canon laws ; for this study proves that each new enormity of Rome is only the natural and necessary outgrowth of the ungodliness, the unscripturality, the half-hidden paganism of that Church whose boast, " Always the same," is true absolutely if confined to the wrong, and shows how easily the corrupted apostolic Church, the papal Church of Gregory, passed into what the Dol- linger school terms the Church of 1870. Manifestly it were impossible to give even a survey of the Church history of those ages. I must select some period in it ; and of even that portion I can give only a very hasty and partial sketch. The authorities I have already mentioned and from time to time may quote will guide to the various sources of information any who may be desirous of more perfect knowledge. The section selected by me is that period called by Vol- taire " The Ages of the Popes," which extends from the coming to Rome of Hildebrand, afterwards known as the greatest of the Gregories, to the pontificate of Leo the Tenth. It will thus be evident to all students of history that I select the glory-period of the papacy, the time when no external foe interfered with the prosecution of her proper work, had she known it; when Europe actually crouched at the feet of the Church ; when kings stood bareheaded and barefooted in penance before the papal gates ; when emperors were the equerries of the pontiffs ; when the lawyers and leaders of the Church had perfected her legal and parochial systems, and 132 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. energetic monks had carried the ecclesiastical rule home to hearths and hearts which had never bowed to the haughtiest C?esar of imperial Rome. " By their fruits ye shall know them." Neither soul nor Church dare question either the Lawgiver or his law. Now, when all was for the Church and nothing was against her, what did she ? What was the outcome of her work ? Christ's Church should be the educator of men, the almoner of God's bounty, the mistress of morals and the mother of godliness, and the humble administrator of Christ-made laws. Place the Church of the middle ages at the bar. Let her give an account of her stewardship. I. What did the Church of the middle ages in the day of her fullest strength, as the educator of the world ? With unequalled opportunities, with many powers promising her success, what did she in lifting men and women out of superstition and ignorance, and in in- structing them in human and divine truth, in faith and unto godliness ? What did she do for the cultivation of man's mind and the spread of gospel truth ? Observe, the question is not. Did she at all civilize and elevate ? The very existence of a Christian Church, in her very worst possible state, must somewhat civil- ize ; and the bare presence of the Church in those ages suffices to explain all the miserable advance — and it was most miserable — that an honest searcher can discover. Nor is the question. Did any schools and universities spring up, and did some scholars here and there appear ? Nor again is the question. Had the Church in those days any thinkers and writers in her ranks ? But the question is, Did the mediaeval Church, charged with the THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 133 duty of education, professedly acknowledging her obli- gations in this department, and entrusted notoriously and in clearest deeds, by pious donors, with enormous sums to perform this great task, address herself vigor- ously to the education of her members and the masses of the people as a sacred responsibility, rather than to temporal aggrandizement ? Did the Church impart to the nations of Europe secular and religious instruction, the best then possible, and one at all commensurate with her ability ? The histories of those days harmoniously answer no, in direct opposition to Dr. Maitland's book and Canon Gregory's lectures in St. Paul's. The proofs are countless that the mediaeval Church, with all her resources, in her full strength and unchallenged su- premacy, educated neither the heads nor the hearts of her people. Let it be remembered how she started. The Church of Christ, with the volume of Revelation, with men for teachers like Polycarp who had sat at the apostles' feet, and with Christ's promise of the Spirit's presence and teaching in the honest study and faithful exposition of God's truth. Then in addition, as the slightest study of the opening three hundred years of her history will show, the Church had gained, and nobly gained, the intellectual riches of the east and west; for, as Gibbon states, she became heir to the best treasures of antiquity, the guardian of all sacred and true things in the empire's fall. Moreover, when the magnificent Hildebrand ascended the papal throne in 1073, that tri- umphant day when the papacy stood higher than the kings of the earth, the day of Canossa, the parochial system had so extended that a priest and a monastery with professedly a school attached were to be found in each district of the Church's wide and submissive 134 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. territories. What, I ask, was then the state of educa- tion and doctrinal knowledge ? So low, so utterly want- ing, that some impartial historians affirm that this period was the inky midnight of those dark days, calling it " the palpable gloom." The clergy were as a rule un- educated idlers and had become clerical mountebanks, amusing the people with so-called religious shows. The people actually grovelled in superstition and ignorance. " For centuries it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name." "A few signa- tures to deeds," says Hallam, " begin to appear in the fourteenth century." As to the clergy, we are told that not one Spanish priest in a thousand could even write an ordinary letter of salutation ; that in Italy most of the beneficed clergy could not even read, and that in England many monks and priests understood not the ordinary prayers, daily repeated by rote, and that in Germany the only competent teachers were a few monks of St. Benedict. Whether you turn to Mosheim, Hal- lam, Ranke, Milner, Milman and Guericke on the Prot- estant side, or to Lingard, Palmer, Maitland, Manning and Newman on the Papal side, the account of clerical ignorance is substantially the same. There can be no two opinions on the point. When Church council after council at Rome acknowledged this degradation, and when the great reforming councils found it necessary to legislate concerning the general ignorance of the clergy, and when we know that the great satirists found an un- failing fountain of fun here, it is surely impossible to question the facts. But it may be said that the state of the clergy was only the result of the general ignor- ance, only the effect of that complete and continued mental stagnation in the preceding centuries which THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 135 caused Cave to call them the Age of Iron, and Barrenness the Age of Lead. Why should we be so surprised and shocked at the deadness of the Church and the semi- barbarism of the clergy, when all around was death, and semi-barbarism reigned ? It is said that the average intelligence of the clergy is only as the average intelligence of their age. That statement may, perhaps, be too often historically true, but it is not always nor necessarily true ; and when it is a fact, the fault lies at the door of the Church that permits it and the clergy who neglect their many op- portunities of study and superior cultivation. The ignorance and superstition of the Church teachers in the middle ages were not the result of the general ignor- ance, but that widespread semi-barbarism was the direct product of the clerical neglect of learning, and especially of theology and God's word. There had been the schools of Charlemagne. Why had they not been fos- tered ? Who let them die ? Mohammedanism had its letters, why not Christianity ? In the monasteries men had time, leisure and the old theology : why did they not think, and thinking teach ? Somewhat more care- ful investigation will show that this dreadful ignorance, which Milman calls "the total barrenness of mind, the most unbroken slumber of human thought," had arisen, First, from the way the priesthood of the Church and her various brotherhoods were supplied. The duty of the Church was then, just as ever, to select her best sons for her work ; and then she could have commanded them. Instead, however, of the best and noblest being dedicated to the Church, two classes, utterly unfit, filled and furnished her teaching ranks : serfs who wanted freedom, and the younger sons of noble families who 136 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. wanted neither letters, moral cultivation nor divine knowledge, but ease, wealth, power, dignities and the closest possible approach to the ecclesiastical throne. " In the country parts," says Wimpheling, quoted by D'Aubigne, " the preachers were chosen from among wretched creatures, some of whom had originally been brought up as beggars, others of whom had been cooks, musicians, game-keepers and even worse." And who has read Savonarola and the many Romish chronicles, the songs, the lampoons and the satires of those days and does not know that the illegitimate sons of bishops and popes and the needy sons of strong nobles were then again thrust into the priest's office for a morsel of bread, and that these illiterates, even when in the cler- ical ranks, never as a rule sought after knowledge, gave themselves to study, nor cultivated in any way their minds? Second. Ignorance arose from the cleiical and mo- nastic neglect of those very schools which had been originally attached to churches, abbeys and monasteries. These schools were neither few nor unimportant. So continued indeed became this neglect that the schools fell into ruins ; and so engrossed grew even the Bene- dictine monks, at one time earnest teachers of secular and sacred truth, in the amassing of wealth and the increas- ing of their power, that decree after decree came forth from papal councils for the restoration of these schools and the renewal of monastic teaching. But bribery and corruption prevented anything ever being effectually done ; the hands of popes and cardinals were not clean, and the reformatory efforts were, therefore, vain and ill sustained. Third. Ignorance is traceable again to the action of THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 137 the Roman pontiffs themselves, who then as now would allow nothing to be taught, even in the existent schools and by the few zealous teachers and thinkers, contrary to their doctrines and to their designs of supremacy. Fourth. Ignorance was due to the deliberate and continued cultivation, in this period, of popular super- stitions and general ignorance by the priesthood, whose members strove in this way more completely to subju- gate the people and hold them more firmly and easily in their bitter bondage. A degraded people suit a des- potic and demoralized priesthood. Spanish priests would be tolerated only in polluted, prostrate Spain. So no- torious is this fact that two new orders, that of the Spanish Dominic and of the Italian Francis, arose in the thirteenth century to meet this very necessity of popular teaching and preaching, and their members specially addressed themselves to the w^ork abandoned by the priests and the older orders ; yea, and opposed by them. Fierce were the fights between the old men and the new men of the monasteries. Fifth. Ignorance flowed largely and swiftly from the abandonment of public preaching on the part of the regular local clergy. Pope Gregory, as is stated in Bower's " Lives of the Popes," wrote thus to the Bishop of Liege in J 274: "You do not even say the prayers which every priest is bound daily to say ; nor do you understand your office, being quite illiterate ; nor do you ever preach." And we know that in Scotland, even so late as the time of Hamilton, Wishart and Knox, leading clergy were not able to preach ; some of them not even able to read, repeating from memory the prayers of the day. Who has ever disproved the statement given in his 10 138 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. "Paradise," canto xxix, by Dante, that noble-souled witness in the earliest hours of the uprising revolt ? — " The book of God Is forced to yield to man's authority ; Or from its straightness warped. . . . E'en they whose office is To preach the gospel let the gospel sleep, And pass their own inventions off instead ; — The sheep meanwhile, poor witless ones, return From pastures fed Avith wind ; and what avails For their excuse, they do not see their harm. Christ said not to his first conventicle Go forth and preach imposture to the world, But gave them truth to build on ; and the sound AVas mighty on their lips, nor needed they. Beside the gospel, other spear or shield To aid them in their warfare for the faith ; The preacher now provides himself with store Of jests and gibes, and so there be no lack Of laughter, while he vents them, his big cowl Distends, and he has won the meed he sought. Could but the vulgar catch a glimpse the while Of that dark bird which nestles in his hood. They scarce would wait to hear the blessing said." Palmer, surely a reliable witness when his testimony is against Rome, says, '' In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries archbishops and bishops were engaged in wars, crusades, hunting and hawking, not in spiritual aflliirs ; they and the clergy were still ignorant ; they neglected preaching, and the mendicant friars, by permission of the popes, half superseded them in their offices." What these same mendicant friars were, John Wycliife and his scholar Chaucer have helped us to understand. The neglect of preaching and of appeal to the Scriptures of God as the source of true preaching, as the final authority, as the fountain of truth — an appeal which always necessitates thought, which advances education, THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 139 and which highly cultivates the minds of all men, yes, of those who may not have the advantages of books and schools — ended, as may be well fancied, in veritable semi-barbarism. The means of instruction being thus neglected, the evidences of ignorance among the people became awful and universal ; " Utter forgetfulness of God's word, extreme ignorance," to use the words of Mosheim regarding these years, " of everything pre- tending to religion, and the most abject submission to the tyranny of a dissolute and illiterate priesthood." Now, from that condition arose a superstitious habit of mind which received the grossest lies as truth, believed the most extravagant of Mse wonders positively blas- phemous in their form, adored all kinds of relics, sought for pardon and heaven through voluntary penances, and gave divine honors to madmen like Leuthold, and mad women like Hildegarde of Bingen. Only think of the wild fanaticisms manifested by those bands of flagel- lants, walking long pilgrimages and furiously beating each other till the blood from their many wounds dyed the very roads ; only think of processions of relics con- ducted by the monks that they might gather larger donations from the people, and everywhere welcomed by their dupes ; only think of abbots and of bishops travel- ling through the villages, the cities and countries of Europe, carrying in solemn procession the carcasses of dead men and fabled relics and manufactured objects of devotion for the rude people to see and the ignorant masses to handle and adore ; only think of the indul- gence-shambles, where enormous sums were paid to the ecclesiastical peddlers of churchly grace ; only think of the degrading exhibitions constantly attending the great religious festivals of those days, and you will no longer 140 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. wonder that the darkness, deep as the Egyptian gloom, brooded upon the people, and that verily they sat in the shadow of death. Small wonder is it that in these centuries took place the change of scriptural truth which Newman calls "the development of the latent truths of Christianity," but which we believe to be the flagrant soul-endangering, God-insulting corruption of the truth and perversion of the faith once delivered to the saints. If the denial of human depravity and original sin, if baptismal regener- ation and necessary sacramental efficacy, if the limita- tion of the Church to the prelatic communion united to the popes and bound together by the sacraments, if the supremacy of the pope and the sacrificial character of the priesthood, if the idolatry of the Virgin Mary, the adoration of saints and angels as secondary intercessors, if the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body, blood, soul and perfect personality of Immanuel, if the worship of the elevated host, if the duty of con- fession to priests for absolution, if the way to heaven by means of pagan rites of worship Christianized and the legal works of a revived Judaism, and by papal indulgences abolishing sins, instead of by faith in the perfect work of Christ, — if all these doctrines, which were legalized between the days of Gregory the Seventh and Boniface the Eighth, be the lawful and needful ex- pansion of scriptural truth, then indeed medigeval the- ology is the very perfection of wisdom. But if God's word be true, if there be but one Name, and one perfect Sacrifice, and one Way of life, and if all that believe in Christ that Way and Lamb of God are justified from all things, then medisevalism in doctrine is the deadliest of lies, the most blasphemous travesty of truth. THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 141 Dark are those ages indeed ; in them was developed really the whole theology that was finally formulated at the Council of Trent. Not a few have wondered at that mediaeval perversion of scriptural teaching ; but to a keen-sighted mind it is but a logical and necessary de- velopment of false doctrines too easily introduced and very early observable in the Church of Rome. Admit but once the idea of a real priesthood, that the essence of the Church is in her organization, that the clergy constitute the Church, that all Church power vests in them, that the priestly office inalienably enjoys posses- sion of the Holy Spirit, that the Church, as Church, is the infallible expositor of truth, and that she is the source and in her sacraments the giver of grace, and there is no resting-place for a thorough and honest logician but the dark depths of the ultramontane Aver- nus. By the adoption of these errors did the mediaeval Church lose, as Dorner puts it, the power of illumina- tion, reconciliation, sanctification and universality. No doubt here and there did start up in the papal communion a few very noble men. Who would forget Anselm, believing that he might know ; who would for- get Abelard, seeking to know that he might believe ; who would forget Thomas Aquinas and the other great schoolmen, but too often and foolishly despised ? These men, however, were like lone stars in a dark sky. They shine indeed with their own light, but they are supreme- ly brilliant because all was gloom around. They did scarce anything to dissipate that general night ; though it must be confessed that they did start questions that prepared for and hurried on the Reformation. They were useless to the mass, among whom reigned stupidity, superstitions, false faith, to the eternal shame of that 142 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. powerful, wealthy, widely-spread Church of the middle ages which suffered the people to perish for utter lack of knowledge. II. What did the mediaeval Church, as God's almoner, in the fields of charity ? Here as everywhere in those mediaeval days the gloom is least upon the threshold when the Church is nighest to apostolic times ; and also least upon the close of the period when happily she is approaching the days of the Reformation. At first the Church was mindful of the poor, for then she was herself poor ; with her wealth came her selfishness ; ay, her wickedness. The care which the apostolic Church exercised towards the poor passed, after the rise of monachism, very largely into the hands of brotherhoods and sisterhoods. The houses of religious orders became the hospitals for the sick, the asylums for the persecuted, and the store- houses for the poor, in some cases the libraries of the learned. These facts are undeniable, and I rejoice to state them. Abundant proofs will be found in Kings- ley's '• Hermits," Montalembert's " Monks of the West," in the fifth chapter of Comte's " Positive Philosophy," in Dollinger's " First Age of the Church," in Church's " Lectures" and in Lecky's " History of European Mor- als," with similar works. Suffice it now to say that no one can read the early histories of the humble houses that sprang first from the eremite's cell, no one can study the foundations of the countless monastic orders, no one can follow the footsteps of Eligius of Noyon, of Augus- tine of Canterbury, of Boniface of Germany, of Adal- bert the martyr, or of those whom we know more familiarly, Patrick, Columba, Kentigern, Cuthbert and Ninian and all the 2;reat monks of the west, without THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 143 acknowledging with Manning and Newman that once the only hospitals were in the religious houses, without ac- knowledging with Milman that once the church and the monastery were the chief refuges of the oppressed, and with Chastel, with Comte and Lecky that the broadest charity was there for a time nobly exemplified. But these distinctions, which are the boast of our com- mon Christianity, were only passing, alas, too quickly- passing, glories; glories which actually disappeared too often with the very founders of the orders, and ulti- mately passed away from all monastic institutions. The irresistible tendency of that monachism which degen- erate Christianity took from the vestal virgins of pagan Rome, from the strange anchorites of Egypt and the Essenes of Syria, was alwaj^s in the end to destroy the good effects of the labors and characters of the truly noble but sadly-misguided men who originated and established the various orders. The evil leaven always corrupted the good. Mona- chism has ever had and must ever have the same round. At first the earnest enthusiast in his sod-built cell, shut out from man, shut in to God, is seen thus mistakenly wearing life away for the soul's sake. Then the fame of the hermit's piety spreading through the district brings around his cell the crowd of worshippers, the guilty rich with their gems and gold and sins, the troubled poor giving their time and toil. Then slowly rises the splendid abbey, and there spreads about it the rich green mead, and acres multiply and all around stretches the teeming land. In the quiet acre of God now is sleeping the mistaken seeker after God who founded the hermitage. And now his successor, to use Mil- man's picture, is no more the poor ascetic bowed down 144 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. to the earth with humility, careworn, pale, emaciated, with a coarse habit bound with a cord, with naked feet; he has become the abbot on his curvetting palfrey, in rich attire, with his silver cross borne before him, trav- elling to take his place amid the proudest and the lord- liest of the realm. Thus was it everywhere. Shortly after its establishment, each brotherhood and sisterhood began to add acres and amass wealth through gifts be- stowed for prayers or intended for the relief of the poor, the teaching of youth and the service of God. In their first days of poverty, humility and real self-denial, monks and nuns did attract powerfully the sympathies of men ; and those were the days when such sympa- thies always grew visible in silver, in land or in work. In their later days of grasping and degeneracy and im- posture, these orders possessed all the means of so working on the superstitions of the living and the fears of the dying that they could extort money, and it actually flowed into their coffers. Hallam states that beside their money-wealth the British clergy, including all ranks, possessed in this age about half of England, and that an even greater propor- tion of land was in some countries of Europe owned by churchmen, inasmuch as they had been able to buy, out of their well-stored coffers, the great estates sold by the needy crusaders when they were preparing for the East. In consequence of this wealth, the houses of the older religious orders grew everywhere notorious for their luxuriousness ; and their members ceased to be thence- forth the honest distributors of the riches that had been placed in their charge for the poor, the ignorant and suff"ering, and for the cause of God. Hallam, who is certainly a very impartial witness, THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 145 states : " An account of expenses at Bolton Abbey about the reign of Edward II. published in Whitaker's history makes a very scanty show of almsgiving in this opulent monastery. It is a strange view to conceive that Eng- lish monasteries before their dissolution fed the indigent poor of the nation." Piers Plowman is indeed a satirist, but his satires are founded on truth, and he plainly charges the monks with utter want of charity. " Little had Lordes to do to give landes from their heirs to re- ligious who have no ruth, though it rain on their altars." But for the proof that these priestly and monastic trustees wasted the goods of the poor in riotous living you have only to study the annals of the papacy itself, and the many decrees published against the luxury of the priesthood, the monks and the nuns. If we would disbelieve the utter corruption of the religious orders in the middle ages, and credit instead Digby, Maitland and the modern apologists for all the defects of medioevalism, we must then declare the solemn deliverances of papal councils to be slanders and the legal reports of episcopal visits, inquiries and courts to be the most shameless of lies. Of the eleventh century, Hildebert, Bishop of Mans, thus writes : " The clergy and monks are in the forum Scythians, in the chamber Vipers, at the banquets Buffoons, in their exactions Harpies." About 1140, St. Bernard says : " Contagion spreads through the whole Church. A meretricious splendor is everywhere visible ; vestments of actors, the parade of kings ; they are called ministers of Christ, but really are servants of Antichrist; their tables are splendid with dishes and silver ; great is their gluttony and lust and drunkenness. , Their larders are stored with pro- visions and their cellars are overflowing with wine. . . . 146 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. It is a wonder to me whence comes this intemperance which I observe among monks in their feasting and revels." Innocent the Second said, in opening the Lateran Council : " It is time, as the apostle saith, that judg- ment should begin at the house of God, for all the cor- ruption of the world proceeds chiefly from the clergy." Old Gerald of Cambray, quoted by Blount, tells us that before returning home he dined once with the monks of Canterbury, when the following was the en- tertainment : " sixteen lordly dishes and upwards ; fish of divers kinds, omelettes, seasoned meats and sundry provocatives of the palate prepared by lay cooks. And wines in profusion." Palmer, one of the great apologists for these times, says : " In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the monasteries, which had been originally intended for examples of perfect piety and devotion to God, were polluted by gross sins." But of the monks' and the clergy's perversion of the money left for the poor, for God's work and worship to their own use, the origina- tion of new orders and the restoration of old discipline are the proofs imbedded in the very heart of popish history. As Rome guarded the Catacombs to her con- fusion, so has she kept the annals of her orders and reports of her councils. Take but two of these insti- tutions, the Dominicans, Masters of the Inquisition, and the Franciscans, or Lesser Brothers. Why were they founded ? Notoriously to counteract the luxuriousness of the clergy, and to overcome the disgust engendered by the greed and the rapacity of priests and friars. Mrs. Oliphant, no friend of Puritajiism, rather indeed a foolish lover of medievalism, says in her introduction THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 147 to the life of St. Francis of Assisi : "The lands and legacies and rich donations of many a guilty penitent, buying ease to his conscience and as he thought deliver- ance to his soul, infected as with a moral contagion the ecclesiastic who sold his sacred services. . . . The con- vents were gorged with wealth ; the bishops were as great nobles in the land, and even the parish priest, secure in his ofhcial influence, was often indifferent of adding to it an}^ spiritual influence over the people. It was at this moment that Francis in Italy and Dominic in Spain w^ere both stirred by the same absolute devo- tion to that Saviour who had come penniless and home- less into the world he was to save, and who had lived the life of a poor man and died the death of a slave." The poverty of Francis and Dominic and their orders are the standing protests against the luxuriousness of the many orders and the clergy and hierarchy of Rome. We are ever by certain persons pointed to these me- diaeval times for a perfect model of Christian charity, and to these monastic orders as the perfect caretakers of the poor. So fondly-dreaming enthusiasts now think. What thought the contemporaries of these custodians of bequeathed charities ? Shall we believe those who are now gazing back through the gloom of years and are under the glamour of myth and fancy ; or shall we be- lieve those who actually saw the system for themselves ? What said John Wycliffe of them ? " These persons are more busy about worldly goods than about virtue and charity. For he who can best get the riches of the world together and hold a great household and much money is deemed a worthy man of the Church though he make not ready to answer Christ how he spent the goods of the poor man." But a few years ago, in a 148 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. crowded cathedral service, London and all England, and we too, were told in most glowing eulogies about the noble self-denial of the Franciscans in their work for the poor. What did Bonaventura think, when as freshly- appointed general of the Franciscans he surveyed that order? These are his own words: "This order of Saint Francis, which should be a mirror of holiness, has become, alas, the scandal of worldly people, an object of abhorrence and contempt. Why ? Because of cu- pidity and luxury. It is an abominable falsehood for a man to profess the voluntary adoption of the most ex- treme poverty, while he is not willing to suffer want in anything ; for a man to be rich inside the monastery, while outside he begs like a pauper." So spake a wit- ness, a churchman, a Franciscan and the general of the order. Once again in the world's history was it true that the priest and the Levite, clad in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, passed by on the other side, neglecting the suffering, the needy, the dying; and the real charity of life remained with the outcast Samaritans of the rising sects. From without, yonder hospital smiles fair upon you from amid old historic trees, and is girt round with life and beauty ; but within, disease is everywhere and death reigns resistless ; — from without and in the dis- tance the monastery seems the symbol of charity, but within, and to the eyes of truth, it is foul with reckless luxury and criminal self-indulgence. III. What did the mediaeval Church as the mistress of morals and the mother of godliness ? Much at first every way. It has been asserted by Mr. Church that during the opening ten centuries of its THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 149 history Christianity had hardly leavened society at all. But over against that hasty and false generalization I would put the evangelization of Germany and Britain, the gradual downfall of serfdom, the extirpation of sui- cide so common in pagan days, the purification of society and the establishment of law, social security and family life. For proof we appeal to Gibbon, to Mill, to Comte, all surely reliable witnesses when they are found on the side of the Church. As Cox has aptly stated in his " Latin and Teutonic Christianity," " The Church gave faith and with it civilization to the two ruling races, the Latin and the Teutonic, and through them to the world." These services I do not forget. But then I say that just as she was apostolic, the Church moralized and sanctified ; just as she grew papistical, she sunk back into a Christianized paganism, and then she debased men and demoralized society. Farrar, in his eloquent Hulsean lectures, describes the age before us in these striking sentences : " It was a state of society remarkably glittering and surpassingly corrupt, radiant with external splendor, rotten with in- ternal decay. Christianity had practically ceased to be Christian. Priests turned atheists made an open scoff of the religion they professed ; scholars filled their writings with blasphemy and foulness ; a semi-heathen classicalism degraded even the most sacred phrases into a sickening travesty of pagan idioms ; the tenth Laternn Council found it necessary to repromulgate the doctrine of immortality, and the pope jested with his secretary on the profitableness to them of the fable of Christ." Michelet, in his memoir of Luther, says : " In that age there was an astounding ostentation of wickedness ; the atheist priest thought himself the world's king." 150 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. Alas, those ages are not only dark because of reigning brute force, ignorance and greed, but inky-black they are with a very night of immorality, to be felt like that of Egypt. And that immorality gathers and thickens on the steps, in the courts and in the innermost shrines of the papal throne, till it culminates in the chambers and crimes of Alexander the Sixth, Here I would say that I began to read upon these middle ages biassed very decidedly in their favor and disbelieving the current notions of the gross, frightful immoralities alleged to belong to them ; but I am sorry to say that out of these reeking years, their churches, their confessionals, monasteries, nunneries, episcopal and papal palaces, I have come convinced unto a sickened disgust. Everywhere there is filth, reeking, nauseous, deadly. The sanctities of this place I will not pollute, nor will I desecrate the decencies of life by leading you through those slimy corridors ; they are too foul. They are more dangerous to our moral health and life than to our physical is the gathered choke-damp of the mine. Bat if we would know how intolerable the yoke of bondage was, if we would settle the question, were the reformers justified in their separation from Rome, and in their testimony against her as botli liter- ally and figuratively " the mother of harlots," we must look for a few moments at the least gross features of the sins of those days. Five grievous sins are constantly found in the Church of the middle ages : a. The render- ing of God's commandments nugatory through the doc- trines of the Church ; h. The denial of the obligations of oaths and faith-keeping with the enemies of the Church, whenever the interests or possible aggrandizement of THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 151 the papacy might be concerned ; c. Extortion ; d. Si- mony, and finally foul unchastity. The proofs of these serious charges are not to be found chiefly nor most strikingly in the writings of Protestants, but in the writings of contemporary popish witnesses. They wring forth the indignant outcries of her outraged sons. We hear them from Grostete and Clemengis ; we have them proved at Pisa and Constance ; we behold them in a Borgia and a Cossa. Bishop Durandus of Mende speaks thus in 1310 : " The papal court is always sending out immoral clerks provided with benefices, whom the bishops are obliged obediently to receive ; that court is continually extort- ing large sums of money from prelates, and by its simony is corrupting the whole clergy, whose immorality has exposed them to universal hatred." Such was the moral condition during the age of Innocent the Third and his successors. Nicholas Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux, describes, in an elaborate address and in awfully plain terms, before Pope Urban the Fifth and the cardinals at Avignon, the iniquities of the Church, calling her " that venal harlot whose shame God would surely soon uncover in the sight of all men." St. Bonaventura, to whom I have already referred, said, as quoted in Janus, page 227 : " In Rome church dignities were bought and sold, there did the powers and the rulers of the Church assemble, dishonoring God by their incontinence ; adherents of Satan they are, and plunderers of the flesh of Christ." As to forgeries, the Diillinger party and the Old Cath- olics have made and are still making the world ring with their charges of forgery of document after docu- ment, and all to aid the grasping papacy. Think of the 152 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. Isidorian decretals, think of the forgeries of Hildebrand's era and the earlier Roman fabrications, to which some fifty startling pages are given in Janus. What was the effect upon the people of all this clerical sin and churchly scandal and shame ? Moral ruin. A cardinal, who is now a canonized saint of Rome, stated : " The prelates corrupted by Rome infect the lower clergy with their vices, and the clergy by their evil examj)le and profligacy poison and lead to perdition the whole of Christ's people." Ah yes, it was not only their new grasp of the forgotten word of God that made the reformers so mighty ; it was the open, horrible iniquity of their priestly opponents and the undeniable, unchecked degradation engendered by a rotten and reeking Church ; it was the greed and ambition and simony of bishops and popes ; it was the unutterable vileness of cloisters and confessionals; it was the wild orgies, the bestial sins and murders of the Vatican, that caused the manly and indignant voices of Rome-sickened Savonarola, Luther and Zwiiigli, of pure-souled Hamil- ton and Knox, of Wycliffe and Latimer, to ring out like the old prophet's cry, startling the people with " The burden of the Lord ! Woe ! woe to you, whited sep- ulchres !" Yet we are now asked to take this Church as the model for the regathered multitudes of the faith. We are asked to believe her an apostolic church, a true witness unto God's grace and Christ's salvation ! Was it true witnessing for the arrogant Innocent the Third, desiring to make Deuteronomy the code for Christians and thus get Bible authority for his imperial powers, deliberately to falsify the text of Deuteronomy, seven- teenth chapter, twelfth verse ; for Leo the Tenth to THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 153 forge a new verse in the book of Kings, and for the whole Church to suppress the second commandment? Was it true witnessing for the Council of Toulouse to forbid the laity to possess a single copy of the Old and New Testaments in the common tongue ; and for the Council of Beziers to command the Inquisition to search out every copy of the Scriptures, lest the people should be corrupted and damned by them ? Was it true wit- nessing unto him who. said " Come unto me," to inter- pose the countless hosts of sacrificing priests, of saintly and angelic intercessors, between the soul and that Saviour ? Was it true witnessing to raise the mountain- barriers of a revived Judaism, a baptized paganism, a consecrated materialism, between the yearning human spirit and that loving Spirit of Life who bids all the needy welcome to his grace, yes, welcome to himself? No ! no ! it is too late in the world's history for Canon Gregory, for Maitland, for high churchmen generally, and for apologists for these mediaeval times, as they seek to galvanize that dead medisevalism into fresh life, to tell us that that Church of the middle ages, as a Church, was a witness to Christ at all. She was w^orse than dead ; she spread corruption and death. She was not so much unchristian as antichristian. The struggles of the reformers before the Reformation, so graphically told by Ullman ; the contending of the noble line of evangelical witnesses in France, Bohemia, the Alps and the Netherlands ; the sermons of the monks burned at Cologne ; the touching story of the mediaeval mystics ; the evangelical labors of Johann Wessell ; the marvellous work of Wycliffe, of Huss and Savonarola; yea, the thrilling history of Luther's almost fatal struggle, to which we are just approaching, out of mediaeval mid- 11 154 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. night, into the full, blessed glory of the gospel's second great day, all, all unite to prove that the old, aggressive apostolic Church, witnessing faithfully and victoriously to Christ, had passed away from the communion and sway of the popes of Rome ; that, sad to tell, the grand old Latin Church had now been changed into the Church of the Vatican, with the at last completed mediaeval deification of the priesthood ; that the sublime, soul- saving, heart-calming, life-ennobling old gospel, " We preach unto you Jesus and the resurrection : believe and be saved," had been everywhere corrupted into the ruinous, God-insulting dogma of Rome, " We preach the Church, and set forth the saints : pay and be saved." A change must come ; the yoke must be broken. God had not written out in his letters of gleaming light, " The just shall live by his faith, the blood of Christ cleanseth us from all sin," to suffer them forever to lie hidden beneath the foul skirts of that modern Babylon, the fallen Church. The Spirit's own witnesses, the anointed ones, God's heroes, are coming, and the yoke shall be destroyed, the oppressed go free ! The jubilee nears ! IV. How did the Church of the middle ages, as the servant of Christ, execute his laws ? As of the individual disciple, so of the great company of the faithful, is it the chiefest wish and the chiefest work, " Thy will be done." Did the mediaeval Church honestly and heartily do the will of Christ in the ad- ministration of the laws of his kingdom ? Remember the glorious charter of liberty, " Call no man master," given to the Church by her Lord, by the King of kings. For many a long century the Church had proved herself the enemy of tyrants : in the person of Ambrose with- THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 155 standing Theodosiiis, of Ansehn opposing the Red Nor- man, of Gregory conquering the German imperial patrons. Right nobly did the Church fight for freedom. It were grossest injustice to forget the services rendered to hu- manity by the western Church in the emancipation, long fought for, hardly won, of the Church from the bondage of the State. She fought out a good fight and she established the fertile distinction between Church and State. Guizot, in his " Histor}'- of Civilization," proves this splendid service of the mediasval Church to human- ity, and convincingly shows that the great principle on which the Church fought the battle has been a lasting gain to the world. She founded her claim for freedom on this idea : material forces have no right over the mind, over civilization and truth. John Stuart Mill expresses his estimate of that work somewhat thus : " Enormous as have been the sins of the Catholic Church in the way of intolerance, her assertion of the superior- ity of truth to force has done more for human freedom than all the fires she enkindled to destroy it. From the days of Constantine downwards, two tendencies are manifest as you study ecclesiastical history ; first, the desire of the civil ruler to make the Church the crea- ture of the State ; and second, the determination of the Church to regain and maintain her independence." In the centuries of the great popes, stretching from Hildebrand to the captivity at Avignon, we see the triumph of the Church. " In such lawless times," says Milman, " it was an elevating sight to behold an em- peror of Germany, in the plenitude of his power, arrested in his attempts to crush the young freedom of the Ital- ian republic ; a warlike tyrant like Philip Augustus of France, or a pusillanimous one like John of England, 156 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. standing rebuked for their criminal oppressions at the voice of a feeble old man in a remote city." Yes, there was much grandeur in that success ; but there was an ineffaceable stain on the glory : that power and independence when gained were perverted, and to the very basest purposes ; and, hence, were des- tined to vanish away. Many of the ways trodden by the Church of Rome to that supreme seat of honor and might were red with blood and were filthy with sin ; and wellnigh the whole use she made of her power under Gregory, Innocent, Urban and Boniface was in- describably bad. In the noonday of her glory the me- diaeval Church exalted herself from a power independent of and co-ordinate with the State into the uncontrolled, all-despotic and merciless mistress of the world. Pass- ing from the pure and perfect spiritual theocracy which recognized Immanuel as her sole head, the Church be- came more and more an earthly, absolute monarchy, ruled by an ecclesiastical tyrant, underneath whose iron heel liberty wellnigh perished. The great popes opposed and destroyed the liberty of the individual conscience, the liberty of the Christian congregation and of the inferior clergy ; next the liberty of the higher clergy, of the diocesan bishops and of the .church councils ; and ultimately they assailed and en- dangered, in some instances did actually destroy, the liberties of states and kingdoms, yes, of the entire world of thought, of civilization, of society, politics and gov- ernment; then came the deluge. In the thirteenth century the popes ceased to style themselves vicars of Peter and became the vicars of Christ, asserting that they were the personal representatives of the Almighty on earth, and hence were clothed with powers above all THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 157 earthly powers, laws and limitations. Mohammedans cried, " There is but one God, and Mohammed is his prophet ;" but the ultramontane despotism of Gregory and Innocent cried across the broad Catholic world, " There is one infallible Jehovah, and we are his repre- sentatives, the embodiment of his will, and are infallible ; who resists us, resists God ; conscience. Church and countries all must obey us as fully as God !" Was this faithful administration of God's law ? Liberty of conscience is the will and law of Christ ; " Call no man master, for one is your master, even Christ ;" " Search the Scriptures ;" " I speak as unto wise men, judge ye what I say ;" " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." These are the King's words to men. God is alone the Lord of conscience ; and he has given to us the one perfect rule of faith and practice ; he has promised his spirit to guide us into all truth, and that promise is for every seeking soul ; he has freed men from the obligation to believe any- thing but the teaching of his spirit through his word ; yea, has actually forbidden men to believe the doctrines and commandments of men, if unauthorized by his word. But the Church in the mediixBval days demanded and actually usurped the position of the infallible ex- positor, and demanded and universally exercised the power to bind men's consciences, to open and close the kingdom of heaven, to save or damn at will. This self- styled vicegerent of Christ said, " Ye shall neither have the right of private judgment nor possess the word that regulates judgment and illuminates the conscience." The Church of the popes, for they claimed to be the Church, became actually antichrist. So far did the strong-willed popes extend their antichristian claims that they affirmed 158 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. and decreed that every person baptized becomes thereby subject to the pope, and must, because baptized, remain such a vassal all his life, whether he will or no, and m death be his slave, to be consigned to light or darkness ! Was it not an iron yoke, an intolerable yoke ? Innocent the Third writes thus : " The Lord gave not only the whole Church to Peter, but the whole world, for he bade Peter walk the waves ; now the waves are the nations, whence it is clear that we, Peter's succes- sors, are entitled to rule the nations, and that every Christian, though baptized outside the papal communion, is not only subject to all the laws of the Church, but also to the vicar of Christ, seated on Peter's seat, who may call him to account and punish him foi^ every grave sin, even to the penalty of death." Was that law Christ's will ? Was it not a despot's horrible decree ? The liberty of the Christian congregation conferred by Christ was by the popes in those ages destroyed utterly. Manifestly the several Christian congregations in apostolic days possessed the right of selecting by popular vote their own pastors and teachers ; and it is undeniable that for many long years this God-given right was, without interference, both claimed and exer- cised by the Church of God. This liberty, bestowed in those happy days and enjoyed through the opening cen- turies of the Christian era, was the gift and the will of Christ ; but the last vestige of that freedom disappeared in the mediaeval times. Partly through their own neg- lect, as Killen shows in his " Old Catholic Church," the professing Christian people had allowed their right to be wrested from their grasp ; but chiefly through the plots and devices and decrees of the papal curia had THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 159 they finally been robbed of their privileges and liberty. Henceforth such complaints are loud and frequent, as those which are quoted in the " Pope and the Council :" " that court, which has drawn all things to itself, is always sending out clerks whom we are obliged obe- diently to receive." The liberty of the inferior clergy was completely de- stroyed. For many long centuries the equality of bish- ops had completely disappeared, and the apostolic parity of presbyters had yielded to prelatic and papal dignities ; but in the days of Hildebrand two new decrees went forth so absolute, and were exercised with cruelty so heartless, that the inferior clergy were reduced to a state of positive serfdom. These two decrees enjoined the celibacy of the clergy, and placed the monks above the parochial ministers. Few chapters in history are so dark and horrible with unfaltering cruelty and un- measured tyranny as that which details the execution of the Gregorian edict for the dissolution of clerical marriages. A German bishop, horrified at the priestly profligacy and monastic immorality of his times, had given license to all his clergy to contract, if they chose, regular marriages ; his diocese became nobly notorious for its social purity, for the respect paid to the ministers, for its well-built and well-filled churches, and for the spreading religious life of the district. Then came forth the antichristian decree of clerical celibacy. The bishop, his clergy and the nobles of his diocese sent forward strong and repeated petitions for exemption on the ground of the superior morality and religiousness of their diocese and district. That petition was rejected. Firm stood the bishops, the clergy, the nobles. Out rolled the thunders of the Vatican. Still the petitioners pleaded, 160 • THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. but stood firm in their opposition to the despotic decree. Threats followed upon threats. Then came the ban, the interdict, the excommunication. That diocese grew silent as the grave so far as public worship went ; the dead lay unburied ; so it continued till the happy ftxm- ilies of the clergy were all broken up and the chaste married life was exchanged for a licensed, because con- cealed, concubinage. The final blow was struck by the Vatican at the liberties of the ordinary clergy in this decree, which sanctioned in the thirteenth century the new religious orders. I shall let DoUinger tell the story : " The Franciscans and Dominicans, the Augustinians and Carmelites, espe- cially the first two, were the strongest pillars and sup- ports of this despotism. After the Isidorian decretals, the introduction of these orders, with their rigid mo- narchical organization, was the third great lever whereby the old church system was undermined and destroyed. Completely under Roman control, and acting every- where as papal delegates, wholly independent of bishops, with plenary powers to encroach on the rights of parish priests, these monks labored for the papal authority on which their prerogatives rested. We may say that authoi'ity was literally doubled through their means. Thus the spiritual campaign against priestly independ- ence, organized at Rome, was carried into every village, and the parish clergy generally succumbed to the men- dicants, armed as they were with privileges from head to heel. They could compel both priest and people by excommunication to hear them preach the papal indul- gences. Bishops and priests felt their impotence against this new power of these monks strengthened by the In- THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES." 161 quisition, and had, however indignantly, to bow under the yoke laid on their necks." With the liberties of the ordinary clergy soon there disappeared also the liberties of the bishops themselves and of the councils. Innocent the Third and Gregory the Ninth, pointing to the plenary powers possessed by the Roman Csesars, declared their right to make and unmake laws, to dispense with church canons, whether canons of councils or decrees of popes, and in some cases to suspend the very laws of God. Then were the days when verily the pope was uni- versal bishop and the embodied Church. Clement the Ninth affirmed the right of the Church to give away all church offices without distinction. Innocent the Third declared that all bishops were bound to unconditional subjection to the pope, in political as well as ecclesias- tical matters ; and absolved all clergy from their alle- giance to any rulers who might oppose the court of Rome. Pius the Second declared that a bishop broke his oath who uttered any truth inconvenient for the pope ; and he forbade the convocation of any parliament save by the pope's consent and authority. Is it any wonder that Cardinal Zaborella, as quoted in Janus, should say, " So completely has the pope destroyed all the rights of all the lesser churches that the bishops are as good as non-existent " ? The liberties of conscience, of the congregation and of the lower and higher clergy were now all destroyed ; and this usurpation was completed by the overthrow of the liberties of the church councils. Whatever opinion be held as to the wisdom and authority of church councils, it is demonstrated by Hefele and other historians deal- ing with this special topic that up to the year 1123 every 162 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. council, in publishing decrees, sent them forth as the will of the council, and not the law of the pope. Then, how- ever, Calixtus the Second summoned the first Lateran Council — name of ill omen ! — not to deliberate and legis- late, but to receive his legislation and passively sanction his acts. From that hour onward all real freedom of debate in Roman church assemblies ceased ; despotic, iniquitous and blasphemous edicts followed edicts, till the despotism, the iniquity and the blasphemy culminated in the deification of Mary and the declaration of the in- fallibility of Pius the Ninth. Then and thus, as Dorner shows and the Old Catholic Synod affirms, " The Chris- tian conscience of the people was wholly ignored ; the rights of laity, clergy, bishops and theologians to discuss articles of fidth were denied ; the parochial priesthood, through enforced celibacy and the influence of the terrible Inquisition, was reduced to abject vassal- age ; the co-ordination of bishops was now lost in the subordination of the episcopal bench to the papal throne; the national churches, from being coequal and free com- munities, were degraded into the oppressed provinces of an absolute spiritual monarchy, and councils had be- come only an excuse for continuous papal aggressions." But one other step forward, one other struggle, and the Church, in the person of her pope, placed her proud but defiled feet on the dizzy heights of supreme authority, and stood forth before the world claiming to be the mistress of all men, the fountain, guardian and absolute owner, by divine right, of all rule and power. *' From land to land The ancient thrones of Christendom are stuff For occupation of a magic wand, And 'tis the pope that wields it — whether rough Or smooth his front, our world is in his hand."' THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 163 The destruction of the civil liberty was the last great usurpation of Rome. By God's authority civil rulers move within their own independent kingdom, subject not to the Church, but to God, whose ministers they are. Side by side with the State works the Church, wholly free from the State, yet by no means the mistress of the civil power. Through the frauds, the forgeries and the force of Gregory, the Church of the popes had advanced to the very side of the Master of the Holy Roman Empire, and stood as his equal. But it contented not the haughty pontiff to be the equal of that imperial chief of Hohenstaufen's historic line. " Aut Ciesar, aut nullus." The pope must be supreme, yes, absolute : the lord of the kings' lord. Fierce and deadly was the fight between popes and emperors. " The whole of this policy is personified in one man, Hildebrand. Hilde- brand, who has been by turns indiscreetl}' exalted or unjustly traduced, is the personification of the Roman pontificate in its strength and glory. He is one of those characters in history which include in themselves a new order of things, resembling in this respect Charle- magne, Luther, Napoleon, in different spheres of action. One grand idea occupied his comprehensive mind. He desired to establish a visible theocracy, of which the pope as the vicar of Christ should be the head. The recollection of the ancient universal dominion of heathen Rome haunted his imagination and animated his zeal." Read Milman's thrilling pages of the deadly struggle between Henry the Fourth and Hildebrand ; follow the wars of Italy ; watch the siege of Rome, the march of the papal guards and the brutal mercenaries ; look on the rush of the Normans to help Gregory against his foe ; behold the fight in the holy city between the Saracen 164 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. allies of that most holy father and the sturdy soldiery of the German Osesar, and you have the startling picture of that Church which some Anglicans are now pointing out to us as the model for all churches. On strode the Church, bribing and bloodstained, cursing and perjured? using now the smile of the harlot to win some strong noble a very slave of his lust, now the promise of the pallium and the mitre to gain the aid of some popular and powerful bishop, ever with lavish hand using her harshly-extorted gold to bribe the mercenary, ever with fierce mouth hurling forth her curses, interdicts and anathemas to bow the stubborn ; on and on through crowded graves, sacked cities, burned churches, desolated lands, hand in hand with all the sin and shame of those diabolic days, till, overthrowing the imperial house of the Hohenstaufens, she gained for herself the dizzy height of glory through the services of the Hapsburghs. Then heaven wept to see on earth what the tempter tried in vain to gain in the wilderness, the Church taking the kingdom of this world out of the hand of Satan. The Church was then at Satan's feet. From Christ she had passed to antichrist, and over men she tyrannized with the fell forces of darkness and of death. Then hell from beneath moved to meet her at her coming, in this her fall ; the chief ones of the earth, the olden tyrants of the olden days, starting from their thrones cried, " Art thou become like unto us, thou the once pure Calvary Church, thou God's star of the morn- ing, thou fallen thus from the heaven of thy grace and truth, humility and devotion to Christ, thou de- graded to the abominable beast, thou sunken unto the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, thy shameless brow branded with this terrific title, Mys- THE CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 165 tery, Babylon, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." Yea verily, such had she become. The wicked of the earth laughed in derision ; the good wailed in pain ; spirit-voices were heard crying " Ichabod, Ichabod ;" the souls of the witnesses beneath the altar cried, " How long, Lord ! how long ?" and great trumpet^ tones pealed out, " Come out of her, my people, and be ye separate." Above all God's calm voice was heard saying, " The yoke shall be broken, the oppressed shall go free. Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand : at the eventide it shall be light." Light, the light of life and love ! " Vainly that ray of brightness from above, That shone around the Galilean lake, The light of hope, the leading star of love, Struggled the darkness of that day to break ; Even its own faithless guardians strove to slake, In fogs of earth, the pure ethereal flame ; And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessfed sake, Were red with blood, and charity became. In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a name. " They triumphed, and less bloody rites were kept Within the quiet of the convent-cell ; The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept, And sinned, and liked their easy penance well. Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell. Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay. Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell, And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the way. All in their convent weeds, of black, and white, and gray. " Still heaven deferred the hour ordained to rend From saintly rottenness the sacred stole ; And cowl and worshipped shrine could still defend The wretch with felon stains upon his soul ; 166 THE INTOLERABLE YOKE. And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole Who could not bribe a passai^e to the skies ; And vice, beneath the mitre's kind control, Sinned gayly on, and grew to giant size. Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes. " At last the earthquake came — the shock that hurled To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown, The throne whose roots were in another world. And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled ; The web, that for a thousand years had grown O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen thread. " The spirit of that day is still awake, And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again ; But through the idle mesh of power shall l)reak Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain ; Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain. Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands, Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain The smile of heaven ; — till a new age expands Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands." MARTIN LUTHER, "We need, methinks, the prophet-hero still, Saints true of life and martyrs strong of will, To tread the land, Proclaiming freedom in the name of God, And startling tyrants with the fear of hell ! Soft words, smooth prophecies, are doubtless well. But to rebuke the age's popular crime, We need the souls of fire, the hearts of that old time." " His social life wore no ascetic form ; He loved all beauty, without fear of harm, And in his veins his Teuton blood ran warm." ATJTHOEITIES CONSULTED. Luther's Works; Selections by Lommler; Letters; Table-Talk; Melancthon's Historia; Meurer ; Croly ; Ziminermann ; D'Aubigne; Bunsen ; Kcistlin ; Michelet ; Boner; Schcinberg-Cotta Family; Dorner's Theology ; Dietz and Ackermann ; Tulloch and Cunningham's Reply ; Carlyle ; Froude ; Hare's Vindication ; with numerous articles in cyclo- paedias, reviews and magazines. MARTIN LUTHER, THE MONK OF ERFURT-THE MAN OF THE EMAN- CIPATION. " They glorified God in me." — Galatians i. 24. There are men who belong to a year, to a decade, to a period ; there are men who belong to the ages and live for all time ; there are men, fresh and forceful, who be- long to a city, to a country, to a continent, and men who belong to the world ; there are men w^ho belong to a class, to a particular circle, to a single definite move- ment, to a special field of distinct struggle, and men who belong to the wdde realm of our common humanity, to the round globe of varying interests, manifold thought and universal activity ; there are men of whom j^ou say, " they were," and men of whom all competent witnesses declare, "they are" — are to-day central men, chieftains, summations of the past, explanations of the present, inspirations for the future, fresh forces still and unspent, lights increasing while thousands wax old and are ready to vanish away. And these men to be wondered at ; these men " most men, who work best for men ;" these men, " to whom nothing of humanity is alien," are the strong, true men to gather round, to study and to learn from. Art, literature, science, politics, have in their Angelos, Miltons, Newtons and Hampdens their universal, im- 12 170 MARTIN LUTHER, mortal, many-sided chiefs ; and shall the Church, re- vealer of the perfect beauty, guardian and mother of highest song and sublimest prose, friend of the truth and teacher of the perfect law, not have her imperial spirits ? Yes, verily ; all down her line she has fur- nished these kinglike children of the King of kings ; and curious enough it is, they ever meet us by threes, these mightiest of God's host, overtopping all the remaining host of the covenant-heroes — Moses, Samuel, Elijah ; Peter, John and Paul ; Athanasius, Augustine and Chry- sostom; Patrick, Columba and Boniface; Luther, Calvin and Knox ; and of these three, mightiest and midmost, stands manly, merry, massive, masterly Martin Luther, monk of Erfurt and man of the great Emancipation — " a great brother man," " sov.ereign of this greatest rev- olution," " prophet idol-breaker," " bringer back of men to reality," " true son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries and many yet to come will be thankful to heaven." This man, whom grace made humble and God made great, belongs to the world's centuries, to the common activities, the broadening thought, the dominant forces and the farthest-reaching influences of to-day and to- morrow. He belongs to the Church universal ; his life and labors are telling mightily within the Romish pale as well as without. The Council of Trent and the West- minster Assembly, the wily Jesuit and William Care}^, are all linked, though by very different bands, to the monk of Erfurt, scholar, singer, sage, statesman, saint ; a joy to real men, triumph and trophy of God's Son and Spirit. " We glorify God in him." Yes, God we glorify while we recall the man ; for this service is no secret canonization, no subtle hero- THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 171 worship, no exquisite Protestant idolatry, no uncon- scious act of most refined deification. We see the sin- ner who had his hard fight to wage through life with his fallen nature and was saved only hy grace, while we thankfully honor the great revolutionary and grand reformer in whom God's grace found a fit instrument and wrought so efficaciously and abundantly for our emancipation. If Stephen in his masterly apology and Paul in his thrilling roll-call of God's heroes set before their audit- ors the God-crowned victors in the noble fight, why should we not look long and lovingly on those leaders of the sacramental host who have been made more than conquerors through the Christ who loved them and whom they so loved ? God's historic word reveals often- est embodied grace. There we see grace triumphant, and glorify God, who, by his grace, made the men " of like passions" live to be ''the praise of the glory of his grace." God's hand and his grace are manifest in the earnest boy of Eisenach, the ardent student of Er- furt, the God-fearing reformer of Wittenberg, and the popular preacher of northern Germany. The Earnest Boy of Eisenach. It is a sweet, bright September afternoon. I am pushing my way up George Street in this hill-crowned, pine-shadowed, mead-girdled little town on the Horsel, Eisenach, beneath the Wartburg ; and as I pause before the little door of a quaint old house, summer sunshine and to-day's business fade away, and winter cold, and olden industries, and unfamiliar phrases, and curious garb, and strange, pathetic singing, and nightfall, are about. A band of boys, some twelve, some fifteen. 172 MARTIN LUTHER, one seventeen years of age, are singing, poor scholars, for their bread ; and he of seventeen has the broadest brow and deepest eyes and sweetest voice and thinnest cheeks, yes, and that evening, saddest face, of any. The door opens and a woman's soft, tender hand lifts the boy's face ; a woman's eyes look deep down into those pool-like eyes ; a woman's heart pities the thin cheeks ; a woman's motherly love goes out to the starving lad whose voice in the village choir had often lifted her nearer to God, and now made her God's helper in the Reformation. " Who art thou, and whose son ?" " I am little Martin, and the son of Hans and Marguerethe Luther of Mansfield ;" and Dame Ursula Cotta took him from that hour to her home and heart. That day in Eisenach God had "a missing hand," to use Mrs. Browning's striking phrase ; and that good woman, like Miriam, said, " Let others miss me ; never miss me God ;" and wheresoever the gospel of free grace is preach.ed, let the name of her "content with duty" be told in gratitude and with honor. It was the grace of God meeting the starving scholar. He is the child of hard-wrought parents, the child of praj'er, the first-born of a pious though somewhat stern home. Near the very centre of Germany — significant fact — in Saxony, is Eisleben, where about midnight of the 10th of November, 1483, is heard the first cry of a new-born child, and where, over a newly-swaddled babe, a hard-working miner soon bows in earnest prayer, dedicating his boy to God. God accepts the ofi'ering and seals the infant Martin Luther to sublime and suc- cessful work. Watched by that strong-brained, free- souled, keen-witted, industrious and God-fearing father, who often knelt by the child's cot wi-estling in prayer THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 173 that rich blessings might be showered on his first-born ; carefully tended and wisely taught by his devoted and wise mother ; surrounded by the profitably-talking mi- ners, companions of his father ; hearkening to the mind- stirring tales of travellers who came for trade from other shores ; having his strong memory stored with pithy proverbs and suggestive folk-lore yet to be frequently and forcibly employed in keen fight and pointed preach- ing ; having his tuneful spirit stirred by songs and hymns born on battle-fields or bequeathed by the minne- singers — ^^Martin grew for fourteen years in reflective wisdom, and gained in earnest, persevering study all the knowledge Mansfield could yield. In 1497 his father, self-sacrificing and lore-loving, resolved to make a well- finished scholar of his son. Accordingly he sent Martin to Magdeburg, and a year afterwards transferred the promising boy, who was already attracting attention by his thirst for knowledge, his strong, independent thinking and sound judgment, to Eisenach, where Wie- gand taught and also good Trebonius, who always lifted his hat to the boys of his classes. These masters made him a first-rate Latinist and grammarian, as went the times; and Frau Ursula Cotta made him a genial, gentle and home-loving man, and, better still, an earnest seeker of holiness. What see I in all these facts of Luther's boyhood ? The hand of the Lord. And shall we not glorify him who gave that earnest spirit, that curious mind, that fast-gripping memory, that joyous, song-filled heart, that brave, unconquerable spirit to this boy ; who made that shrewd father and praying mother train religiously and educate liberally as their means and their day permitted their pious and promising son ; who surrounded the lad 174 MARTIN LUTHER, with a vigorous, self-reliant, sober peasantry, making manliness at once easy and necessary ; and who raised up friends and teachers wheresoever young Martin went whose lessons and love called forth his large endow- ments of head and heart and cultivated them rapidly and well ? Looking back from those fierce battle-hours of Wittenberg and Worms, from the solemn work of the Wartburg and the crises of Augsburg, Nuremberg and Schmalkald, upon these boyish years in Mansfield and Eisenach, I can imagine no better training for Luther's life-work ; and the hand of the Lord was in that order- ing of circumstances — glory be to his name ! The Ardent Student of Erfurt. The scene has changed to the capital of old Thuringia, to the walled fortress on the broad, fat meadows of the Gera, with its splendid Gothic cathedral, the church of Severus and the convent of the Ursulines, to Erfurt of imperishable fame, dearer far to the lovers of truth and gospel light and liberty than the birth-places of all the Caesars ; and in this famous Erfurt the most famous and fascinating spot is this orphan asylum, for here is the Augustinian monastery ; nnd in the thought-stirring old pile, most thrilling to me, on July 17, 1860, was a little cell, then visible, with a table, bedstead and chair, for it was the cell which Luther entered upon the 17th of July, St. Alexis day, 1505, the cell where he and the world were reborn. Waiting and thinking in that birth-spot, now, alas, swept away by fire, I felt how quietly God's revolutions arise ! Rome in all her pride is saying, " I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow ;" her mes- sengers come from England, from Constance, from Flor- THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 175 ence, with o;lad tidings — " The whole earth is at rest and is qniet," for the witnesses are dead ; and the kings of the earth have given to the woman, " drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the mar- tyrs of Jesus, their power and strength." He that sits in the heavens laughs : he hath chosen to confound the mighty Avith a weak thing in this little cell ! The excellency of the power is of God ! How still and simple it all is ! yet sublime as the quietness of God ! Yet here w^as really born " the mighty man whose light w^as to flame as the beacon over long centu- ries and epochs of the world ; . . . the whole world and its history was waiting for this man. It is strange, it is great," that out of this quiet cell shall step forth " a Christian Odin — a right Thor once more with his thun- der hammer to smite asunder ugly enough lotuns and giant-monsters." As I mused thus with the hero-loving Carlyle, the present passed ; the pointer on the dial had gone far backward — well-nigh four centuries — and I am starting back from something awful on the floor. Who lies at our feet on the cold damp flags in that death-like faint ? Who is he to whom the Augustinian brothers are rushing with such anxious eyes and loving hearts ? Who slowly opens sad, searching, sunken eyes at the sound of the wise brothers' music, that " best cordial for sorrowful men"? Who holds with death- grip that heavy folio Latin Bible ? He is the distin- guished student of the most distinguished university of northern Germany, the eager truth-seeker, the com- panion of and chief among the most brilliant scholars of the university ; the Eisenach boy who quickly distin- guished himself in Latin, in philosophy, in patristics 176 MARTIN LUTHER, and dogmatic theology, in music and law and oratory, and gained his master's degree with highest honors after severest tests when he had been only two years at Er- furt; he is the pious and earnest soul who, finding one day — -just when conscience stung most sharply and Se- bastian Wimman thundered over him most loudly the terrors of the law — in the university library a Latin Bible, was brought face to face with the question of questions, " How shall a man be just with God ?" and who, knowing no better, quicker, surer path to peace than in monastic life, fled to the house of the Augus- tinian monks, and became their hope and their pride for scholarship, power of speech and sanctity. That entrance into this Augustinian monastery, with which his independent and clear-headed fjither ever dis- agreed, was a momentous and perilous course that had started in fear and been maintained through supersti- tion and ignorance ; but the hand of the Lord Avas in it, and so Luther in the clearer light of after days plainly said and thankfully stated. There of necessity he came into contact with Augus- tinian theology, preparing Luther to sit at Paul's feet ; there he came under the comforting ministry of old Mathesius, who one day, pointing to the clause in the creed, " I believe in the forgiveness of sins," commanded him to hope ; there he gained fuller light under the sweet instruction of his teacher Arnold ; there he was reached by the suggestive thinking of the English Occam, blessed through the influences of Tauler, cheered through the enlightening words of the " German Sermons " and of the Mystics ; there, too, he received the hitherto unsupplied, but most needful, instruction in Greek and Hebrew from his friends Johann Lange and Wenceslaus Linz. But THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 177 in that old monastery, where at the risk of his life he Avas ardently seeking perfect peace of conscience and the richest stores of knowledge, he won these three things, for him and his work the chiefest of all : the friendship of Stanpitz, vicar-general of Germany ; the calm leisure to study God's word till it lived in his heart and memory ; and the peace of God passing all understanding. Through the favor and patronage of Staupitz, Martin Luther became known to professors at Wittenberg and prelates in northern Germany as the finest theologian and biblical scholar of his time ; was made at twenty- five years of age professor of philosophy and theology in Wittenberg ; was created district-vicar for Mussen and Thuringia, and advanced to the city pastorate of Wittenberg in February, 1517. God's hand is seen in it all : that lonely soul-fight ends in the peace of God ; that monastic study made him mighty in the Scripture ; his university professorship rounded his scholarship and made him the wonder and the trusted friend of the young students of his day, who afterwards cheered and rallied about him ; the support of Staupitz gave him chair and pulpit ; and thus when the monk of Erfurt, only twenty-five, stripped for his determined fight with Rome, he was a trained athlete and a recognized victor. "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass." The Lord has ever used weak things to confound the mighty, but never weaklings. Run down the line and see the men of God — Paul and John, Clement and Poly- carp, Athanasius and Augustine, Patrick and Columba, Wycliffe and Huss, Luther and Melancthon, Calvin and Zwinffle, Knox and Melville. The Church needs first 178 MARTIN LUTHER, for her work saved men, spirit-born, Christ-loving, Christ-like soul-seekers ; but, at the same time, the work of the Church and the wants of the world de- mand, in the second place, that these men should be scholars and students and thinkers, " giving themselves to reading." Martin Luther, busy among the busiest, gives himself to reading. God gave him the opportunities, the mind, the zeal ; and we glorify God in that ardent student of Erfurt, who so mastered his mother tongue that he re- made it and fixed its sonorous, flexible speech and facile fullness ; who so cultivated Latin and Greek and He- brew that he made the German Bible speak the loving message of the loving Master ; who so practiced the art of simple, idiomatic writing that he filled heart and head at once ; who so cultivated popular and robust speech that "his words are half battles," and so gave himself to music that his hymns and chorals ring and thrill like the songs of the redeemed and the chorus of angelic choirs. God's man is ready for the struggle, and God's mo- ment strikes. The God-FearIx\g Reformer of Wittenberg. " The monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade by Leo the Tenth — the elegant pagan pope — who merely wanted to raise a little money," has come to Wit- tenberg and is selling his indulgences. " Come forward," " forward " — " a soul out of purgatory for a dollar." Thousands come forward and buy. One man, one lone man, a (juiet, peaceable recluse, a wasted student, a poor monk, comes forward — not to buy, but to say, " You are a lie ; your pardons are no pardons at all, no THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 179 letters of credit on heaven, but flash-notes of the bank of humbug, and you know it." And that one man, to use again Froude's words, of bravery, honesty and ve- racity, is the monk of Erfurt. The afternoon of the 31st of October, 1517, the eve of the festival of All Saints, has come, and a little group wonderingly Avatches an Augustinian monk with the doctor's hood, a man of medium size, whose bones can be counted through his habit, as standing on the upper door-step of the Castle Church he nails with wasted but firm hand a long sheet of Latin sentences to the door. It is Martin Luther fixing the gauntlet of Christ's truth to Rome's gates and challenging her to battle in the name of the Lord. In that act he takes his place side by side with Peter and John and Paul, with Polycarp and Athanasius, with Huss in Prague, Savonarola in Florence, and Knox in the court of Scotland and at Edinburgh. All the issues of that act Martin saw not : we never do see the remotest and greatest results of our acts. One thing he saw, that Tetzel was a devilish seducer, and that the vaunted indulgences, peddled by him under the bull of Leo the Tenth for the completion of Saint Peter's, was a quick path for souls to hell, and that if possible he at least must bar the way. It is the birth- hour of the modern world. How quietly, unpretend- ingly, it comes ! The fight of emancipation has begun, but begins on a side issue, as all decisive fights open, whether in Church or State. In fourteen days those quaint-sounding scholastic words have been changed into " smiting idiomatic phrases" for German, French and Italian princes and peasants, into terse English, and soon into every patois 180 MARTIN LUTHER, of Europe ; and the papal world is convulsed. The war of the faith has opened. The spiritual breaker-up of the way is at the head of the host. God's teaching of the man himself is tlie monk's text in these theses ; and it is clearly stated in one of the sentences, " If a man experiences genuine sorrow for sin he receives full re- mission from penalty and guilt without any letter of indulgence." One other memorable sentence, " Even the pope can remit the guilt of the penitent only so far as the declaration of God's terms of remission." In those two sentences, the first bringing the personal conscience into direct contact with God and the second defining and so limiting papal and ministerial power, are the beginnings of the Reformation. Yes, only the beginnings ; for though Luther had been to Rome, had been electrified at the Sancta Scala by the Spirit-voice, " The just shall live by faith," and had been horrified by the villainies of the Vatican, and was now blazing with the fires of a holy hatred of Tetzel and his ways, he had to dispute with Tetzel and the Domin- icans, with Sylvester Prierias, with Cajetan at Augs- burg, with the papal chamberlain Karl von Miltitz at Altenburg, and fiercest, keenest, most momentous con- test of aJl, with Eck at Augsburg, ere he reached the marrow of the gospel, " that a Christian secures forgive- ness of endless guilt, reconciliation with God, righteous- ness before God, peace and salvation by means of a cordial reliance upon the grace of God as revealed in the gospel, and upon the Saviour Jesus Christ." Now he had reached his theme and his task ; and God gave him a mouth and wisdom which papal legates, and time-serving souls like Eck, and selfish cowards like Erasmus, could not gainsay or resist, as well as a heroic THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 181 might that bore him on to victory. Martin Luther was a many-sided man. You touch in him the many sides of this grand revolution, the manifold and fruitful Ref- ormation. But one thing above all else he did : he re- placed the lonely Saviour in the midst of dying sinners and said, " Look and live !" As brave-hearted, reunited Germany made by the sword of her strength space beside the Rhine for the lonely commanding " Germania" to be the rallying-point and inspiration of the Fatherland, so this lion-like hero of the Reformation, by the sword of the Spirit, placed in clear light and in broad space, lonely and command- ing, yet attractive, the sweet and sublime form of apos- tolic Christianity beside the broad, full river of life ; and ever since Christ's one perfect sacrifice, the open way of faith, the waiting, welcoming Saviour, the open heaven, tliis grace of God justifying all who believe in Christ, have proved the rallying-point and the in- spiration of the multiplying hosts of the faith of God's elect. If one thing more than another rises up clear, central, commanding, consoling, in the reformer's field' of words and works, it is the Christ of the cross. Stand back ; let him be seen to-day alone — mighty to save to the uttermost all who come. Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. Look unto him, sinner, and be saved. Contemplate him, holy brethren, and grow like him. Not church, nor priest, nor ritual ; not Bible, nor baptism, nor supper ; nothing but Christ, the lonely, almighty Christ, can do helpless sinners good. Oh, solitary, seeking, saving Son of God, thou art the Saviour of the sinner, the sanctifier of the saint, the satisfaction of the saved forever ! This Christ Luther 182 MARTIN LUTHER, proclaimed to rich and poor, to the students of the uni- versity and tlie masses of the markets. The Popular Preacher of Northern Germany. Away I must turn from such tempting and thrilling themes as Luther's fearless march to Worms and his unquailing daring before the imperial and papal court, from his seemingly hostile arrest and his kindly pro- tective imprisonment in the Wartburg, from his trans- lation of the Bible and his companionship with Melanc- thon, from his sudden and secret return in 1522 to Wittenberg, from the part played by him during the Peasants' War, from his marriage, June 13, 1525, with Katharine von Bora, from the grand public protest of Spires, April 19, 152G, from the famous Marburg con- ference and the Augsburg diet, and the thousand activ- ities filling up the great worker's life, to speak of the last grand phase of his reform work, the preaching of the word. All the reformers were the preachers of great sermons, solid with doctrine, full of well-digested thought and close, cogent reasoning. Huss in Prague, Savon- arola in Florence, Calvin in Geneva, Knox in Edinburgh and Latimer in London so preached ; and Luther in Wittenberg and in Borna, Altenberg, Zwickau, Eulen- berg, Weimar, through Saxony and many districts of northern Germany, was no exception. He was indeed a mighty preacher. When he could not in person pro- claim the gospel he sent out his letters, so that from England to Russia his truth spread and his words stirred or strengthened life. Every inch a man, an accurate student of philosophy and ethics, an educated lawyer, a telling biblical ex- positor, a well-trained, though not exactly systematic, THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 183 theologian, a close, conservative thinker, a skilled rhet- orician, a fiery-tongued orator, poetic and pictorial, the common people heard him gladly, and strong-brained men were taxed to the utmost by his profound think- ing. He was a man among men — as one called him, " der erste Bursch der Burschen," the biggest boy of all boys ; he loved the children ; he knew the plays of youth, the struggles of the market-place, the doubts of the thought- ful, the sorrows of the bereaved, the household feasts and joys and tears, and his country's need, and. Paul- like, he became all things to all men to win them for Christ. Thus preaching, translating, expounding — thus writ- ing hymns and composing tunes — thus planting schools and fostering colleges — thus fighting the papacy and denouncing despotism-^for twenty years more on went the genial, generous, great-hearted man. Grace marked all his years, and God upheld him through life's battle, nor failed him when smitten fatally he lay down to die in the little town where he was born, baptized and con- secrated to God. Half-past two has struck on Thursday morning, the IStli of February, 1546 ; round the dying saint stand his boys, Martin and Paul, with Coleus and Justus Jonas, his loving friend ; three times this sinner saved b}^ grace says, " God so loved the Avorld that he gave his only begotten Son ;" three times the sou going home says, " Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit," — then sleeps, then wakes, then draws one deep, gentle breath, and Christ crowns the conqueror. What do we as Christian patriots and as churchmen recognize in this Man of the Emancipation? We see, 184 MARTIN LUTHER, first, the living centre of the long line of light. The witnesses have been often slain, but they have never failed. They stretch from Christ, the faithful and true Witness, down through the thunderous and tu- multuous centuries, a line of hallowed heroes, who stand fast and quit them like men. And the great Centre, the living link binding the souls of truth together, is this stalwart Saxon, genial and godly Luther. He was not the only reformer, he was not the first reformer, he was not the reformer who in all gifts surpassed all others ; but he was of the yoke-breakers the most truly central, the most largely comprehensive, the most vari- ously influential. As Paul stood in the apostolate, so to a great degree stood Luther among the apostles of the Reformation. Paul in himself carried the old over into the new, made the true, the essential, the divine of the past dispensation take its place and reappear, grow active and become fertile in the new : Paul was not John, nor Peter, nor James, but he had much of each of the " pillar-apostles :" Paul was the most largely human of that unique band. And in Martin Luther I see the resurrection and reappearance of Augustine, of the grand old British missionary, of Aquinas and the philosophical theologians, pioneers of free thought — of Wyclilfe and the early and later schools of Oxford re- formers, of Huss and Jerome, of Savonarola and the Bohemians : in him I see the man who comprehended in his own large self something of the men of Geneva and of Zurich, of the men of Rotterdam and of Basle, of Edinburgh and of London : in him I see the man who has touched broad, everyday life at most points, and each point touched became a fountain. Like mountain- lake, receiving and guarding the upper waters and sup- THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 185 plying the lower streams, Martin Luther saved the waters of the old springs and poured forth a full, fresh flood into the fields of the reformed Church. Again, we see in this stalwart soldier, shouting out afresh the old battle-cries of insulted Wycliflfe and mur- dered Huss, the anointed yoke-breaker who freed his land, and thus other lands, from the intolerable bondage of the papal supremacy. That burning of the papal bull by Luther on the 10th of December, 1520, was a world- turning deed. That solemn march of Martin with his fellow doctors, the fire-faced students, and the vast crowds, stirred to their soul-depths and yet silent in awe, down to the Elster gate, out from the city walls, to the river meadows, that prepared pile, and that reso- lute, defiant burning by one hot-hearted, fearless, revo- lutionary monk, amid the cheers of the crowd and be- neath the eyes of Europe, was verily all that timid, self-loving Erasmus said — " the beginning of a universal revolution. Now I see no end of it but the turning upside down of the whole world. . . . When I was at Cologne, I made every effort that Luther might have the glory of obedience and the pope of clemency, and some of the sovereigns approved this advice. But lo ! and behold, the burning of the decretals, the ' Babylon- ish captivity ;' those propositions of Luther, so much stronger than they need be, have made the evil appar- ently incurable." Yes, thank God ! the " universal revolution" then began, freeing Germans, Swiss, Hol- landers and Britons from that dreadful despotism of the Vatican by which kings were deposed at the pleasure of tyrants like Gregory and Leo, or of scoundrels like Alexander Borgia and Balthasar Cossa, whole nations plunged into storm and strife, lands deluged with blood, 13 186 MARTIN LUTHER, dragged like tlie miserable subjects of Henry the Third into foreign wars, cursed with the fell anathemas, and laid under the frightful " interdict." To-day we have little idea of the terrible thralldom once endured beneath the iron rule of Rome. Hear how the cold-blooded Hume speaks of the interdict : " The execution of the sentence of interdict was calculated to excite the senses in the highest degree, and to operate with irresistible force on the superstitious minds of the people. The nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion. The altars were despoiled of their orna- ments ; the crosses, the relics, the images, the statues of the saints, were laid on the ground ; and as if the air itself were profaned and might pollute them by its con- tact, the priests carefully covered them up even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased. . . . The dead were not interred in consecrated ground ; they were thrown into ditches or buried in common fields, and their obsequies were not attended with prayers or any hallowed ceremony. Marriage was celebrated in the churchyards. . . . People were debarred from all pleasures and entertain- ments, and were forbidden even to salute each other, or so much as to shave their beards, and give any decent attention to their person and apparel. Every circum- stance carried symptoms of the deepest distress and of the most immediate apprehension of the divine venge- ance and indignation." This Roman yoke was broken in " the revolution." We see in this bold revolutionary one of God's chief- est instruments in disenchaining the minds of men. Robertson says : " Luther was raised by Providence to be the author of one of the greatest and most interesting THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 187 revolutions recorded in history. ... To rouse mankind when sunk in ignorance or superstition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the ut- most A^ehemence of zeal, as well as a temper daring to excess." All students know how the German mind has stirred and now stirs the mind of the world. Martin Luther w^as the mover of these moving minds. After the edict of the Diet of Spires in 1526, Saxony, led by Luther and leading other Protestant states, abolished monasteries and nunneries, released their members to teach and preach, and devoted their revenues to the purposes of education. The effect w^as immediate and immense. To aid and accelerate the movement came the German sermon, the German Bible and the German hymn. The school and the song were everywhere in the " Luther-land," and mind was free. Thus was it likewise in every reformed state. Is it any wonder, then, that even the humanitarian Frederick von Schlegel should say, " The Reformation was unquestionably a mighty, extraordinary and momentous revolution which has in chiefest part directed the march of modern times, influenced the legislation and policy of European states, and stamped the character of modern science down to our own days"? Luther placed the pope and Rome and the traditions of the elders before the jury of the world's thought : he made his charge, he pleaded his cause, and challenged a verdict, — judge ye ! Free inquiry became the right and the duty, yet the necessity, not of the few but of the many, not of the priest but of the people, not of the learned but of all responsible men. To-day it is of the vastest importance to emphasize this fact that knowledge, free thought, advancing sci- ence, are the noble children of this holy revolution. The 188 MARTIN LUTHER, attempt is made to sever free thought and full faith. It is a foolish and foul deed — this robbing of the mother of her children. Even Buckle says, " In the sixteenth century the credulity of men and their ignorance, though still considerable, were rapidly diminishing, and it was found necessary to organize a religion suited to their altered circumstances — a religion more favorable to free inquiry. . . . All this was done by the establishment of Protestantism." And in more sympathetic and elo- quent words the great Robert Hall declares, " The Reformation was the great instrument in undermining and demolishing that long-established system of intel- lectual despotism and degradation. Under the light diffused by the reformers, men awoke from the trance of ignorance and infatuation in which they had slept for ages. They felt those energies of thought and reason which had been so long disused. They began to inves- tigate truth for themselves ; they started to that career of genius and science which has ever since been advanc- ing. Had this been the only benetit which it produced, the Protestant Reformation would deserve to be num- bered amongst the noblest achievements of mental energy. Viewing it in this light, even infidels have applauded Luther and his associates." Yes ! that reformation-day was the spark of a glorious revolution : thought was freed from the fetters, the understanding was emancipated, and man became God's " interpreter of nature" once again : and the centre of that liberation movement were the reformers, with the great Saxon at their head. Thank God for the great yoke-breaker ! — he belongs to us all ! and we rejoice in him, and honor him as freely and fully as German or Lutheran ! And finally we see in him the anointed champion THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 189 who gave freedom of conscience, of worship and of home. The monk of Erfurt and student of the old Latin Bible knew the bliss of a free conscience and an open Bible ; and he placed the lonely soul in its own awful, personal responsibility face to face with the per- sonal God and the incarnate Saviour, and gave them the record of life in simple speech to guide the sinner to peace and the saint to glory. Blessed freedom ! The one High-priest he showed, and called men to free churches where in their own tongue they heard the wonderful works of God, listened to "all the words of this life" told in their own home-speech, sang the trans- lated psalm and the German chorals or hymns, and worshipped the living God directly and in their own way. Blow the great trumpet ! the Lord's jubilee has come. And the home ! — oh sweet emancipation ! dear Martin ! lover of childhood, singer for the infants, weeper over the " wee dead ;" true-hearted husband, writer of the merry letters home — thou wilt free the home from the yoke of the confessional, and save our wives and daughters from that despotism and degra- dation ! Yes ! as we look at the chains snapped asunder, at our deliverance from priest and pope, at our large place of liberty, at the open and full charter of our free- dom in this unchained, open Bible ; at our free altars, churches and homes — we will remember the Man of the Emancipation, whom God made to stand strong; and we will glorify God in him ! " Still echo in the hearts of men The words that thou hast spoken ; No forge of hell can weld again The fetters thou hast broken." 190 MARTIN LUTHER, " Friend of the slave ! and yet the friend of all ; Lover of peace, yet ever foremost when The need of battling freedom called for men To plant the banner on the outer wall ; Gentle and kindly, ever at distress Melted to more than woman's tenderness, Yet firm and steadfast, at his duty's post Fronting the violence of a maddened host, Like some gray rock from which the waves are tossed !"' Thus he lived " a true «and brave and downright honest man ;" and thus he died : — " Ueverend father, wilt thou stand by Christ and the doctrine thou hast preached ?" — he uttered an audible " Yes !" " Through- out the whole evangelical Church arose a cry of lamen- tation. Luther was mourned as a prophet of Germany — as an Elijah who had overthrown the worship of idols and set up again the pure word of God. Like Elisha to Elijah, so Melancthon called out after him, ' Alas ! the chariot of Israel and the horsemen there- of!'" He died, yet lives. Luther, the child of the long past, the father of the fertile future — reformer of the reformers, as Spenser and Keats are the poets of poets — the head of the column, with Calvin, his superior in subtle analysis and exact system, on the one side, and Knox, his superior in administrative statesmanship and political daring, on the other, himself chiefest of the three mighties, with loving Melancthon, dashing Zwingle, fjir- seeing Farel, hesitating Cranmer, dauntless Hamilton and stout Hugh Latimer behind him — thank God for the brave, blunt, bold son of reality — hero of the faith- fight and inspiration of the brave, with spirit independ- ent yet humble, conservative yet radical, critical yet believing and reverent, whose method was search the Scriptures, submit only to Scripture and spread these THE MAN OF THE EMANCIPATION. 191 Scriptures, whose aim was to bring the man and the mind to the light and liberty and life of the gospel. Great man of God, we honor thee and glorify thy Maker ! Great man of the centuries ! in whom, as Carlyle says, were present " English Puritanism, England and its Parliament, America's vast work these two centuries ; French Revolution, Europe and its work everywhere at present," we will honor thee and glorify God in thee, for clearer than the hand of the Caesars, or of Con- stantine, or of Charlemagne, we see thy hand, more commanding thy position, more controlling thy influ- ence ! '' True great man — great in intellect, in courage, in affection and integrity, one of our most lovable and precious men ! Great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain ; so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all, there for quite another pur- pose than being great. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens, yet in the clefts of it fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers." " Rest, high-souled Witness ! Nothing here Could be for thee a meet reward ; Thine is a treasure far more dear, — Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear Of living- mortal heard The joys prepared — the promised bliss above, — The holy presence of Eternal Love. " Sleep on in peace. The earth has not A nobler name than thine shall be •, The deeds by martial manhood wrought, The lofty energies of thought, The fire of poesy, — These have but frail and fading honors : thine Shall time unto eternity consign. 192 MARTIN LUTHER. "And when thrones shall crumble down, And human pride and grandeur fall, The herald's line of long renown, — The mitre and the kingly crown, — Perishing glories all ! — The pure devotion of thy glowing heart Shall live in heaven, of which it was a part." PATRICK HAMILTON, "The tale is one of distant skies; The dust of many a century lies Upon it ; yet its hero's name Still lingers on the lips of fame. "God mend his heart who cannot feel The impulse of a holy zeal, And sees not, with his sordid eyes, The beauty of self-sacrifice." AUTHOEITIES CONSULTED. Knox's History (Laing's edition) ; Calderwood ; Hetherington ; D'Au- bignfe ; Life of Lambert ; McCrie ; Lorimer ; various articles regarding St. Andrews; Johnson's Tragedy of Hamilton; and monographs in Scotch reviews and in cyclopaedias. PATRICK HAMILTON, THE PRINCELY PIONEER OF SCOTTISH PRESBY- TERIANISM. " Be THOr FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH, AND I WILL GIVE THEE A CROWN OF LIFE.'" — Revelation ii. 10. " Men who have a real, genuine belief in God, men to whom God is not a name but an awful reality ever present, think naturally before all things how they best can please him; how they can make his law the law of their own existence. . . . The true nature of human existence, the tremendous responsibilities of it, the majesty and purity of God and the assurance of his judgment, came home as they had never done before to the hearts of those whose eyes were opened. . . , They modelled themselves after the highest conceptions of duty which they were able to form. . . . They would have no lies either taught or suggested in God's house, whatever might be done elsewhere. If the creed were true, no tone of voice could be too plain and simple in repeating facts of such infinite importance." These memorable sentences from two most memorable essays of James Anthony Froude on " The Pv^evival of Romanism " and " The Oxford Counter-Reformation " set before us prominently, pre-eminently and suggest- ively the Scottish reformers and their work — work so near and so dear to us. And righteously so dear if it 196 PATRICK HAMILTON, be true, as Ranke has said, that John Calvin was virtually the founder of America. Who can fairly challenge that broad statement if he faces the historic fact that Eng- lish Puritanism and Scottish Presbyterianism have told most decisively on the form and destiny of this land ? Now English Puritanism is linked by the closest ties to the Scotch Reformation, and the grand revolt in Scot- land may not be separated from John Knox, and Knox leads you at once to John Calvin. But quickly start the questions, what is the ecclesi- astical descent of the father of the sturdy Church of the Covenant, how did the sacred fire reach him, who put the great fiery cross into his iron grasp, whence the influ- ences that made Scotland ready, as the plastic clay, for the touch of Knox's Spirit-guided hand, how did the Reformation reach Caledonia stern and wild, who linked the heath-clad hills of Scotia and the pine-guarded heights of Saxony, who made the thunders of Witten- berg waken the echoes of the great cathedral halls on the heights of sea-washed St. Andrews, who breached the walls of that defiant papal stronghold, who like Huss in Bohemia and Savonarola in Italy was the death- marked leader of the seeming forlorn hope in Scotland ? Stirring questions that make a true man's blood course hot and fast ! And now as we have studied the mar- tyr's monument in North Street of this ancient and royal borough of St. Andrews, and have looked out upon the sea and the " ocean cave Where good St. Rule his holy lay From raidnitrht to the dawn of day Sings to the billow's sound," let us pass through this gateway and, crossing the soft green sward, seat ourselves on this weathered stone THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 197 beneath these most stately ruins on the breezy crag above the dirge-singing waves, and tell the moving story of the memorable past. The Scene. On this very spot was fought the great good fight. Yes, it is holy ground ! worthy of the memories of the Christ-crowned conqueror ! How green the grass, how high the sky and cloudless to-day ! How calm the sea, singing so softly fifty feet below ! How peaceful and prosperous those college halls, outcome of the famous St. Leonard's Well, in this sweet-breathed St. Andrews ! Yes, but we must step backward three hundred and fifty-five years and nine months, if we would see it all live again — back to March 1, 1528 — and now all in a moment changes. These magnificent and picturesque ruins rise up at once into strong, frowning, defiant walls, into towers and turrets that seem the points of the native rocks, their base. The waves are rushing fast and white-capped, the spindrift is scudding beneath a leaden sky, and the storm is brewing. But rage and tempest fiercer and more deadly far than those by which sky and sea are torn and tossed fill the hearts and hurry on to murder those priests and prelates and their tools, who are now seen pouring with shouts and sneers and curses through those old cathedral doors. Who are they ? To use the strong words of a strong man, they are " Bea- touns the beasts, their bloody butchers ; the black friars with their pliant tools, sin-laden priests and selfish lords, and the witless fools of the common folk." And these men are speeding on to murder fast as thirsty tigers who have scented blood. These are the rulers of hajjless Scotland in these 198 PATRICK HAMILTON, darkest of her dark days. The fatal field of Flodden, fought on the 9th of September, 1513, left an infant for a king, and that luckless lad is yet but a very pup- pet within a lawless and war-wasted kingdom in the hands of peers who were the minions of France, and of prelates who were the most dissolute of their order and the greedy myrmidons of Rome. What a land they have made of it! Look around and you will see a lower deep of wretchedness than is known even in the Spain of the Inquisition. Nothing like the state of things here can be witnessed in the entire western Church : — corruptions grown to greatest height, super- stition and religious imposture in their grossest forms, the full half of the wealth of the nation in the hands of the clergy, whose lives are a scandal to religion and an outrage on decency. The bishops set the example of the most shameless profligacy before the lower clergy, — their houses brothels, and their many sons put into the highest benefices, even as infants; while the inferior benefices are put up to public sale and bought by stroll- ing players, by dice-casters and actually by the courte- sans of the cardinal and the bishops ; and among all these bishops not one has ever been known to preach. But now they gather fast, and hurry on their tools to burn the one pure, princely man, with the blood of the kings full and large in his veins, because, loving his land and his people and his Lord, he has filled St. Leonard's Well full to overflowing with the living water from the German springs to slake the thirst of dying Scotland. Whence come they with these flouts and jibes and curses ? From the packed council where the worst of the priestly scoundrels have sat as judges and jury, and where they have held the little hands of boy-peers like THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 199 Cassilis, compelling them to sign the condemnation of this royal youth. Ah, yes ! that hurried trial with the foregone conclusion, in the early morning and the troop- guarded hall, is like the infamous trial of Huss at Con- stance, and the iniquitous travesty of justice at Flor- ence — only a mere form to compel the secular arm to strike the blow which the papacy longs to hear fall with murderous force. Execution was decided ere the court was constituted; therefore was it that these coarse, stalwart servants of the cardinal and his nephew have been hastily bringing and piling thick and high this wood and straw and coal and powder round that stout stake, with its iron chain, beside the outer gate. See how, yonder, the younger Beatoun, more bloodthirsty than his uncle, hurries on his cursing crew. AVhy all this hot haste ? The bloody butchers fear a rescue. No ordinary victim this — so soon to be bound before our eyes to that tree of shame and agony ! He belongs to the family whose feet are on the throne, and his little cousin shall be soon named as a most worthy mate for the Tudor Elizabeth. Already the warlike Hamiltons are on the march ; already the tramp of the hastening rescuers is heard by the cardinal's scouts ; already the Beatouns fear they may even yet lose their prey. There- fore " Speed ye ! speed ye !" said with a coarse laugh cruel David Beatoun ; " speed ye ! and we will gie them aishes to gaither !" And ashes he soon will be — he that comes from the castle keep — ashes on the blackened sod ! Ashes for the wind from off the German Sea to scatter over all Scotland ! Ashes that will sow death for these bloody Beatouns, and armed men for the fierce fight coming — the fight to free faith and this land ! 200 patrick hamilton, The Sufferer. Tall and straight, like a young pine on the side of yonder corry, broad-shouldered and stout-armed as his father, who was the swiftest and deadliest swordsman of his warring days — elastic in his tread as a stag, with a fair, sweet face, yet firm as flint, with an eye that flashes round its keen, piercing glance, and yet melts so softly on his sobbing gaoler pleading for forgiveness, and long curling hair that tells of his Stuart mother — he comes, a young man to whom life is now so strangely dear, and for whom life has so sore and pressing need ; a young man just four-and-twenty years of age. Mark him well as with measured step, but all firmly-planted foot, he walks, as the clock tolls the noon hour, through the outer gate, across the drawbridge and out upon the sward. That bright-faced youth has in him the most heroic soul of his heroic line, and in his veins runs the royal blood of Scotland ; better still, he is one of the noblest of the reforming band. Yes, princely among the Davids of the host of God — Patrick Hamilton ! the first reformer of Scotland and the first of Scottish martyrs ! The beloved pupil of Farel, Luther and Lambert, the friend of John Fryth and of Tyndale, the converter of Alexander Aless or Alesius, the teacher of Forrest and George Wishart, and the forerunner and inspiration of John Knox. Yes, there is an apostolic succession, but it comes not with the chrism of the Church — only through the unction of the Holy Ghost ; and God's witnesses stand one long unbroken line. The Albigensian missionaries and martyrs, the Bohemian preacher Crawar, lead in England to Bradwardine of the " De Catisa Dei," and to Peter Lombard of the " Sentences ;" these lead to THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 201 the Louvain monks and the Cologne confessors ; these link themselves to Wycliffe of Oxford ; John of Oxford to John of Prague ; Huss and Savonarola and Wessel to Luther of Wittenberg; Wittenberg to Marburg, and they to St. Andrews, and it to Dundee and Wishart; Wishart — gentle prophet — to gigantic Knox, to Edin- burgh and St. Giles ; St. Giles to Carrickfergus and the Scotch-Irish, and they to Independence Hall and to our own Witherspoon, and the golden chain reaches even to us. This young man of four-and-twenty years of age is the heroic and princely son of bravest knight and royal mother. That father, according to the heralds stand- ing yonder, was Sir Patrick Hamilton, Scotland's first knight, the prize-winner in every tournament of his day, the famous son of Lord Hamilton and husband of the princess Mary, Countess of Arran, daughter of King James the Second. The mother of him whom they are stripping for the stake was Catherine Stuart, the daughter of the Duke of Albany, and he was the son of the same James of Scotland. Princely young Patrick is, therefore, on both sides, and with warrior's blood he is filled. Yes, the young eagle comes not from the dove-cot, nor the young lion from the sheep-fold ; the old crusader's son is to be to-day the first standard- bearer of the host warring for Christ's crown and cove- nant. If not many, some nobles are called, and princely Hamilton will be followed in due time by Glencairn and Ruthven and Argyll and Mora3^ No class, no rank, from the prince to the pauper, in the stern fights com- iner shall fail to furnish martvrs for the truth. How and when did this young noble, under whom they are kindling for the third time the green wood and 14 202 PATRICK HAMILTON, damp straw, whose slow flames the strong sea Avind has blown out twice — how and when did he come to the knowledge of the truth ? No one knows exactly. But you will hear strange tales, if you are trusted, beside some peat-fires in Galloway, nnd the Lothians, and through Renfrewshire, while the wind howls outside. The old folks say that from the hour when Columba, from the song-laden oaks of Deny, came to lona till this sad hour Scotland — in her Culdees, whose fallen church still covers that crag with ruins, in the quiet followers of the Bohemian Crawar, who was burned years ago by the priests, in her Lollards of Kyle, and in the students coming from Paris, Louvain and Cologne with the books of Hussite believers and with the Bibles, of Wycliffe — Scotland has never wanted men and women who liked not the priests and monks, but loved dearly the strange talk of Luther and Farel and Calvin and Zwingle. These students always found a welcome and these books ever had a sale among the Hamiltons ; and it has been whispered that gentle, beautiful and gracious Catherine Stuart, to whom her chained, doomed boy is sending cheery messages for her own breaking heart, and for his young wife, just now needing all a fond mother's tenderest care, talked oftenest with the students and read deepest in their books. And the old steward of Kincavil told but lately that between the gentle mother and her brave boy Patrick there was a closer bond than blood — the deepest sympathy of kindred souls. Be this fireside gossip as it may, this dear young soldier of the gospel, round whom the flames are now kindling and the powder is exploding and the monkish torturers are jeering, was early known as the most thoughtful and pure-souled of the throng that THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 203 gathered in the palace halls of Linlithgow, then the Florence of Scotland. Yet the sword was no stranger to his hand, for all his father's strength and all his skill promised to be Patrick's rather than the elder son's. He swam the wildest seas, he ran the fleetest race, and scaled the loftiest crag to reach the eagle's nest. But books he loved best, from whom the blood is now spurting out of the wounds caused by that last explo- sion. Books he devoured and mastered easily while yet but a lad. Exhausting all the means of instruction then to be found in Scotland, he went with the funds derived from his abbey of Feme in Rosshire — for they had made him an abbot when still a child — to Paris, then the most famous school of western Europe. There he entered the college of Montaigne, where the Scotchman John Major was professor. And you may see* his name on the register to this hour. When Hamilton entered the University of Paris, one Farel was lecturing on the true use of the cross and the true Christ. To his lec- tures all the young men gathered, and Hamilton ardent among the foremost. Soon began the battle which ended in Farel's expulsion from the university, — began and waxed swiftly into a deadly fight with the Church- rulers and convulsed the colleges. Into the heart of that contest the brave young Scotchman, with his fiery heart and chivalrous spirit, dashed, and bore him right nobly in the strife. Even then he made men old in years and skilled in scholastic struggles wonder at his keen logic and his rare powers of expression ; his state- ment of the case was a half-victory. While his mind was thus in a white heat, the tidings came to him that his father had fallen at the head of his victorious troops, and his darling mother was a widow — but a widow 204 PATRICK HAMILTON, brave in her God, and self-possessed for her boy's sake. From that moment, it has been told, Patrick was a de- voted, avowed Christian, and a leader on the side of the Reformation. Graduating with much distinction, the ardent student hurried to Louvain, and gave himself to the study of philosophy and Greek under Erasmus. The workers for the Reformation are all now working to make Hamilton a mighty champion of the faith. No wonder that the friars feared and hated him ! On the 9th of June, 1523, the fearless youth is again in his native land, working vigorously for the inbringing of the brighter day. Soon he is found in St. Andrews lecturing to a group of eager men, and promulgating his strange and revolutionary doctrines. In 1524 he becomes a recognized member of the faculty of arts, and delivers, as regular professor, his first lecture on the 3d day of October. His noble rank, his great personal power, his stainless character, his rare devo- tion, his extensive reading, his exact scholarship, his clear speech, his convincing reasoning, and his knowl- edge of the word daily increasing, he makes very quickly tell on the college and community. The young men rally enthusiastically to his side ; gray-haired seekers of wisdom hearken with wonder to the fiery-souled and fiery-tongued teacher, and fear for his life ; perplexed priests seek him by night like Nicodemus of old ; sus- picious friars watch him narrowl}^, and feel that they have at last met a deadly foe ; the bishops and nobles shake their heads, and the bloody Beatouns keep silent, watching and plotting mischief. Hamilton's uncle, brother and friends hear of the plot of death, and they force tlio dauntless teacher to go once more abroad. Had he only stayed there, he THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 205 were not now slowly roasting to death in these unutter- able agonies, which cannot draw from his more than heroic spirit even one single groan ! First to Witten- berg he went : as to that fact there is no doubt, for all his closest friends, and those knowing best his life, are united here in their testimony. Upon the outbreak of the plague, Luther, who was much taken with the bold and ardent youth so ripe in grace and wisdom, advised Hamilton to go partly as pupil and partly as professor to the newly-opened University of Marburg, founded by Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and presided over by the learned, eloquent, commanding and devout Francis Lambert of Avignon. Here Hamilton immediately made Lambert and all the faculty feel that a master, rather than a scholar, was in their midst. And the man whom here they hoot and mock at the stake, those holy men of God prized and loved in Marburg. To Lambert the young enthusiast was especially dear. They studied together, they debated on the highest themes, and pored for hours over the sacred word. Hamilton stirred the wonder of the distinguished Frenchman by the extensive and exact knowledge of the Bible which he had gained, by the freshness of his thoughts, the force of his imagination, the nobility of his character, the loftiness and strength of his soul, and the thorough mastery of the way of life shown by him in conversation and public discussion. The learned and devout landgrave looks with amaze on the stripling one day as Lambert, pointing to the youth, says, " This young man of the illustrious family of the Hamiltons, which is closely allied by the ties of blood to the king and the kingdom of Scotland, though hardly twenty- three years of age brings to the study of the Sci'iptures 206 PATRICK HAMILTON, a very sound judgment and has vast store of knowledge. I have hardly ever met a man who expresses himself with so much spirituality on the word of God." Right speedily this kingly son of Scotland stands forth the kingly son of God to defend and declare all his Father's message as the gospel lecturer of the university. Daily the great hall is packed to overflowing, the doorways and windows and corridors filled — nobles, professors and preachers, students and eager townsfolk, crowding to hear the Scottish Stephen, who, with the character- istic features of the Scottish divinity, a philosophy born of common sense and broadened by faith, and a theology drawn direct from the scholarly study of the God-spoken word, discourses on " the law and the gospel." And thus Avas this mighty man in the Scriptures wont to speak : " There is a difference and even an op- position between the law and the gospel. The law showeth us our sin, the gospel showeth us the remedy for it ; the law showeth our condemnation, the gospel our redemption ; the law is the word of ire, the gospel the word of grace ; the law is the word of despair, the gospel the word of comfort; the law" is the word of storm, the gospel the word of peace ; the law saith pay thy debt, the gospel saith Christ hath paid it ; the law saith thou art damned, therefore despair, the gospel saith thy sins are forgiven thee, be of good comfort, Christ hath made amends, thou shalt be saved ; the law saith thou art bound to me, to the devil and to hell, the gospel saith Christ hath delivered thee from the curse of the law and all evil." Equally clear and sharp are his views of faith : " Faith is the eye which sees and receives Christ the THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 207 author of redemption. There are only these two things, Christ sacrificed and the eye contemplating him. Faith is born in a man's heart, when as he hears or reads the word of God the Holy Spirit bears witness in his heart to the master truth found therein, and proves to the soul that Christ is an almighty Saviour. Faith is God's work, not man's, and this faith sets a man on the rock." Verily he had found the rock. So he lectured, till all wondered at the gracious w^ords that proceeded out of his young lips, till all loved him and would have kept him ; but, like Paul yearning over the hapless and hope- less Hebrew, Hamilton is longing in his brave Scotch heart to give God's clear light to his darkened land. He hears the cry and sees Christ going out before him, and he must needs go home. And these four hours of slow fire is the reward given to Christ's ambassador by these servants of Satan ! The devoted scholar and apostle begins his last great crusade in his brother's- house, where he pours the full gospel forth to the joy and peace of his mother's soul, to the enlightenment of his kinsfolk, and the heart- stirring of many young lairds and earnest peasants. From old Kincavil he passes on to royal Linlithgow, and there to the court he speaks for the first time of Scot- land's higher and real King and his crown rights. Then out into the Lothians, and up and down through Ren- frewshire, he carries to the refreshing and gladdening of many thirsty, weary hearts the pure evangel. Now the tigers fix their eyes on him. He is, with blandest words and sweetest courtesies but with an all-satanic craft, invited by the Beatouns to the centre of the church and college life of Scotland. A good man, full of faith and the Holy Ghost, mighty in the Scriptures, with a 208 PATRICK HAMILTON, mouth and wisdom not to be gainsaid or resisted, Ham- ilton goes, and soon fills the college chapel, and then the cathedral itself. Many are added to the Lord. But, alas, his good confession is his condemnation. The bloody Beatouns have him seized by night ; they secure him in the dungeon of the castle, which has been made by the cardinal into a very fortress ; they plot against him with the many enemies of his father's house ; they stir the easily-kindled jealousies of those who fear the succession of the Hamiltons to power and the l;hrone ; they pack a council ; they have the noble preacher tried, condemned, sentenced to the slow fire ; and now the fifth hour is sounding since this devilish cruelty began. And now through the triple line of guards you may see the fiendish black friar, Alexander Campbell, whose name as the Scottish Judas shall go down blasted through the ages, mocking the unmurmuring martyr, un- til at last Hamilton, to rid him of this torture far worse to his pure and noble soul than even the flames, says, " Thou wicked man, thou knowest better. Thyself hast often told me so. I appeal thee to the bar of Christ." And look ! how with the brand of Cain on his brow, and the remorse of Judas gnawing in his heart, the friar rushes from the spot to his awful death. Now the young husband thinks of his lovely bride and his child, never to know a father's kiss and bless- ing, and he commends them to his king-cousin and to God. Then he is heard praying for his mother. Once more he is silent. Hearken ! once more the clear voice rises above the gathering storm, " God, open the eyes of my fellow countrymen, that they may know the truth !" THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 209 Half-past five — five hours and a half! A long fight truly ! See ! they grow tired of the hell-sport. They are piling round him dry and oiled straw. See ! the rising wind catches it. The iron chain grows red-hot, and is cutting him in two. Who starts forward ? Who is dashing the guards aside ? It is the martyr's servant. Hear him cry, " Young laird, if thou holdest true the doctrine thou diest for, make us a sign !" One arm is gone, and of the hand on the other arm three fingers are lost. But up, out of the hissing, raging flames, rises the blazing hand, and the two fingers stiffen ;(lhen they grow relaxed, then the arm sinks and the head droops, and the Saviour takes him home ere his last words have died on the wind — " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit !" And the sweetest, strongest, saintliest confessor Scotland ever gave to God wears the crown ! He was faithful unto, and even through, that death ! The Successors of the Martyr. Come, the light of our October day in this year of grace 1883 is fading fast; and, as we walk back to the manse again, we can tell the sequel. That flame on the old Culdee headland kindled all Scotland. " The reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all it blew upon," was the witness of the foe. It became a real fiery cross. From hand to hand it went — ^north and west through the highlands, south and across the borders. Every one asked. Why did the Beatouns burn the brave young laird, the king's cousin? And as they heard many a youth said. We want Patrick's faith. And strong men swore that the deed of blood should bring blood. " Just at the time when these cruel wolves," said John Knox, "had, as they supposed, clean de- 210 PATRICK HAMILTON, voured their prey, a very great crowd surrounded them and demanded of them an account for the blood they had shed." The immediate disciple of Hamilton was a young monk, born about the same time as the martyr, one Alexander Aless. He had been sent by the papists to convert Hamilton, but the reformer so planted the truth in the soul of his antagonist that Alesius became a holder of the faith. He witnessed and has recorded the martyrdom of Hamilton so vividly that we ourselves have been able to see it pass anew down those dreadful six hours. Out from the stake Aless went preaching Christ. For many months he hurried to and fro, telling the good news. Then the Beatouns seized him and would have burned him, had they not, like the Jewish persecutors, feared the people. But they banished him for life. Before he was driven forth, however, he had fired another soul ; and George Wishart, the thrilling prophet of Dundee, takes up in turn the wondrous tale. No grander figure for a martyr-picture than that mighty, merciful man, who went through the " dark days of Dundee " with the spirit of his Master and the waters of life. But time suffers not, and he is not my theme. Him they burned too, on a March day just sixteen years after Hamilton, and on the same spot. Just as the bay of Rome's bloodhounds was bursting near and clear on the ear of Wishart, he turned and said to a strong and brave man carrying a huge two-handled sword, " Gang back to thy bairns ; ane is aneuch the noo !" And John Knox went back at the word of the prophet — went back to be summoned soon to St. An- drews, where furious and frenzied men have slain the blood-stained Beatoun, and are hanging him from the THE PRINCELY PIONEER. 211 very window which Wishart pointed out as the hist resting-place of the cruel man who was thence watcliing and mocking the martyr's agonies : — went back when the avengers have opened the gates of the castle and the pulpit of the cathedral to the free men of Scotland and the free gospel of the Reformation : — went back to preach and administer the full sacrament of the supper, till the Guise party again seized the castle and power in Scotland : — went back to lie in the dungeons of the false foe and pull the slave's oar in the felon's galley : — went back to know John Calvin and his clear gospel and his fully-restored apostolic Christianity and its simple forms, and the free yet orderly .house and city of God : — went back to save Scotland, and with it, as Froude says, " Scottish and English freedom ... for John Knox, broken in body and scarcely able to stagger up the pulpit stairs, thundered in the parish church of St. Andrews ; and his voice was like ten thousand trumpets braying in the ear of Scottish Protestantism :" — 'Went back a great-hearted, brave-souled, devoted, tireless father to his bairns, and they are found in the ancient and reformed Church of Scotland — with her biblical faith and her laudable form and ancient order — the dear "auld kirk," the Jerusalem of the North, which is the mother of us all ! " The cross, if rightly borne, shall be No burden, but support to thee, — So, moved of old time for our sake, The holy monk of Kemper spake. " Thou brave and true one 1 upon whom Was laid the cross of martyrdom, How didst thou in thy generous youth Bear witness to this blessed truth ! 212 PATRICK HAMILTON. " Thy cross of suffering and of shame A staff within thy hands became, In paths where faith alone could see The Master's steps supporting; thee. " Thine was the seed-time ! God alone Beholds the end of what is sown ; Beyond our vision weak and dim, The harvest-time is hid with him. " Yet unforgotten where it lies, That seed of generous sacrifice, Though seeming on the desert cast. Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last." ULRICH ZWINGLE, "They never fail, the kinglier breed Who starry diadems attain ; To dungeon, axe and stake succeed Heirs of the old heroic strain. "Thou hast succeeded, thou hast won The deathly travail's amplest worth A nation's duty thou hast done, Giving a hero to our earth." AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. Zwingle's Works, Commentary, Confession, etc , etc. ; the Church Histories and Histories of the period ; Christoffel's Works ; Biographies by Myconius, Hottinger, Glider, Siegwart ; D'Aubigne's Reformation; Haggenbach, Principal W. Cunningham ; several monographs in Ger- man .and French periodicals ; the articles in cyclopaedias. ULRICH ZWINGLE, THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. " He that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be MADE MANIFEST, THAT THEY ARE WROUGHT IN GoD." John iii. 21. Many are the sentences of the " Westminster Con- fession" which strike the thoughtful and generous student of that venerable and as yet unrivalled symbol, by reason of their sea-like sweep of meaning, their rich suggestiveness, their heaven-like charity and their in- spiriting boldness. Among these splendid and at times startling sayings, that for me is not the least comforting and instructive, because opening so wide and cheering vistas of hope, which honors and glorifies the almighty Spirit of love by the grand and ringing affirmation that he worketh when and where and how he pleaseth ! Sweeping sentence that ! Splendid, because scriptural, Broad Churchism that ! Would God that we had more of it! That fearless yet right-reverent utterance finds a rare and magnificent illustration in the stories of those great men of God who broke the yoke of the papal oppressor by reason of that anointing of the Holy Ghost which each in his own place and peculiar way received. By this gracious, ubiquitous and sovereign Spirit, thousands of hearts were touched and won for God and man about the same moment, in a thousand distinct spots and in a 216 ULRIOH ZWINGLE, thousand different ways. Verily the Church of God had at that reform-epoch a rich Pentecostal shower, which was not confined to Saxony or England, to Scot- land or Bohemia, to Paris or Geneva ; but the elect souls were everywhere scattered abroad — the sovereign and omnipotent Spirit working how and where and when he pleased ! As Ruskin says, " That season was not the day of Reformation so much as the period of Rean- imation. New life was in the air and on the earth." Yes ! the closing days of the fifteenth century and the opening months of the sixteenth form for reverent thought and for world-overcoming faith a most mighty and blessed resurrection-time. The glory-hour of the Spirit of life and beauty was it ! Vitalizing breezes were blowing fast and free, with resistless force and yet with gentle tenderness ; and, just as across nature be- fore the dawn in spring the tremulous murmur of life was heard far and wide, from the oleanders of Italy to the firs and beechwoods of the Baltic, from the stiff- stemmed poplars and the long-tressed willows of France to the trailing vines and sturdy oaks of Hungary, from the pines of Switzerland to the birches of Scotland. Looking across Europe in that " morning hour of the new light," we see simultaneous movements of the Spirit and contemporary and decisive manifestations of the new-given life which are wholly independent of one another, though all are linked to those thousand pre- paratory forces streaming forth from the Father of the ages, and by him made converge and tell on this new '' fullness of the times." Those that slept awoke at the summons of the common dawn ; and they came forth to God's work, not knowing that all around others had awakened and arisen from the sleep of death. A com- THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 217 mon cause was working a common change. There was no collusion, no communication. Often when resting on the brow of some early-scaled peak of the Alps or Tyrol have I looked down through the clear and fresh light into the many soft valleys, guarded by the un- wearying sentinels of the hills ; and then have I seen each separate valley wakening up to the new day which was gently stealing down through it ; each beholding only its own activity, knowing not the stir in the next glen, each wholly busied with itself. The morning was all abroad, yet each valley and hamlet felt only its own sunrise ! Thus we now from our high vantage-ground can see it was in the working of the Spirit of the better dawn. The calling of the Ethiopian eunuch and the arrest of the Tarsus persecutor were not more distinct and independent than the call of Farel and Luther and Zwingle ! As Cunningham (" The Reformers and the Reformation," pp. 213, 214) says, " This fact shows how inaccurate it is to identify the Reformation with Luther, as if all the reformers derived their opinions from him and merely followed his example in abandon- ing the Church of Rome, and organizing churches apart from her communion. Many at this time in different parts of Europe were led to study the sacred Scriptures for themselves, and were further led to derive from this study views of divine truth substantially the same, and decidedly opposed to those generally inculcated in the Church of Rome. And more particularly is it true that Luther and Zwingle, the two men who in different countries may be said to have originated the public revolt against Rome and the organization of Protestant churches, were wholly independent of and unconnected with each other, in the formation of their plans and 15 218 ULRICH ZWINGLE, their opinions ; and both derived them from their own separate and independent study of the word of God." In this marvellous movement, as in all God's works, likeness and unlikeness are beautifully and instructively balanced. The stirring and the strengthening of that fresh life were all of the Spirit, yet nothing of man was lost. In the crossing of each Jordan, Joshua and the angel of the Lord are both fully and distinctly seen, and at once. God has always room for variety, for indi- viduality, for change, for innovations : churches, alas, too seldom. The four Gospels, the four great apostles, the four chief of the church fathers, are not more personal, individual and independent than are the four great Reformation-fields and their master-husbandmen. Eng- land is the field of monarchical reform, Germany of princely and aristocratic, Scotland of parochial and presbyterial, and Switzerland of civic and republican. And in each field is seen the typical man. Cranmer, the king's friend ; Luther, the companion and the confi- dant of the princes and the knights ; Knox, the leader of the yeomanry and the great moderator of presbytery; Zwingle (and after him (Ecolampadius in Basle and Calvin in Geneva), the counsellor and preacher in the republican city. Thus in each case the reform-movement centres in one great formative, imperial soul. God gathers his light into stars ; one star differeth from another star in glory; so God makes his heaven. God puts his life and grace into men ; each man is more himself after God has retouched him than at birth ; so God makes his Church. These distinct men shape the differing movements and determine their varied forms ; and the lonely man is largely made his own distinct self by his THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 219 environment, that is, by the bounds of his God-given habitation. Our homes and our schools we carry to our graves. Not more distinctly in Hugh Miller, with his schools and his schoolmasters, do you see this fact of our childhood and youth outstretching into and ever telling on our manhood, than you may in Savonarola and Huss, in Luther and Calvin, in gentle Wishart and gigantic Knox, in the doubting Cranmer and in the dashing, daring Zwingle, who' was in many respects the most advanced man of the early reform. His breeding and his birthplace made him the distinct man, lonely and lofty, fearless and forward, that he was ; and he stamped himself on his work — a work of vastly more originality, importance and far-reaching influence than is commonly thought. Prejudice, partiality and neglect have made this noble soul of independent thought and of broad charity a half-forgotten man behind Luther, Calvin and Knox. But his is in all truth " One of the few immortal names That were not born to die." The Mountaineer's Boy. His home and boyhood, — let us look at them, and in the keen light of broadest contrast. You remember Savonarola. Though in many features, such as daring, eager thirst for knowledge, in strange attractiveness, in elevation and independence of soul, in political farsight- edness and statesman-like ability, the martyr of Florence and the martyr of Cappel's bloody field were strikingly alike, they were as unlike in their youth and their homes as the countless possibilities of life could well permit. It is interesting to contrast them, and it is in- structive for our immediate purpose. The Italian 220 ULRICH ZWINGLE, pioneer is the child of the lordly palace, the Swiss reformer of the lonely peak. Savonarola heard roaring round him the wild wassail of licentious Italy ; Zwingle was awed by the silence of the Alpine hills. The coming monk-king walked, an honored friend, in the ducal halls, the piazzas and the gardens of Ferrara ; the coming priest-ensign was familiar with the dells and hills, with the peaks and glaciers, of Appenzell. To the doctor's son what a varied and what an instructive world opened in those busy, ambitious cities of Italy in the days of papal glory ; what a warlike life it was, with knights in mail and fearless freebooters ; what a lovely life it was in golden cities and homes of song and galleries of art ; what a learned life it was, with all its revived classic culture ! And to that world, so rich, so stirring, so wonderful and perilous, Savonarola an- swered ; and by it was he educated for his life-work, carrying out from it much of his subtlety, his keen in- sight into men and affairs, his quick judgment, his power of adaptation and of command, his fiery heart and his imperial and iron will. But what was even that world of man's wealth and war and lavish splendor to that all-glorious world of the Almighty which was lying ever open to the eye of the young cragsman, with its gorgeous wealth of sweeping clouds and sleeping mountains, with its awful yet exhilarating war of storm and snow, with its contrasts of stubborn peaks and pit- iless frosts ever wearing the stone away, with its welter of the spring- swollen torrents surging round the grimly- smiling boulders, and all that solemnizing wildness of the day-flooded crag and cataract, all that weird stillness of the night-wrapped hills ? Think of the spring gifts there showered lavishly, and of the summer glories ! THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 221 Hearken to the silver bells of a thousand welling fountains ! Watch the leap and the sweep of the ice- born rivers ! Gladden your eyes with the lowly beau- ties of the rock-guarded valleys ! Search that beet- ling cliff, and see the panting chamois mock the foiled hunter ! Look on the chalets, clinging like nests to the face of the crag ! Shout for joy as you behold the flash of the crystal crowns far up above the clouds ! And as for a few fast-flitting days you see this great lesson- world of God, and walk in those gorgeous halls of truth, whose snowy floors and mountain walls and gran- ite pillars are thick o'erwritten by the Spirit's finger, think that for years — and those the most impressionable years of a curious, watchful and sensitive youth, who ever with deep devotion loved these everlasting hills in their summer glory and their winter grandeur — think that for years these hills and glens, these glaciers and heights, were the streets which Zwingle walked, these the scenes his keen eyes rested on, till vivid and real they came back in manhood to make his sermons bright as their own light and telling as their own strength ; think that these great voices of the everlasting hills were the divine tones that stirred his musical spirit, and you will know the schools and teachers of his earliest hours ! These schools and schoolmasters ap- pear and reappear all down the varied and checkered course of the son of the Alps. The mountains are marked in the man. Steadfastness ; love of the clearest light ; delight in clean-cut forms ; a vast and all-pervad- ing sense of the majesty of God, the loneliness of the soul with God, the all-sufficiency of God, the nothing- ness of man before God ; a keen joy in the unaided activity of God ; a sympathy with God in his love of 222 ULRICH ZWINGLE, beauty and his care of life ; great reverence of spirit, true brotherhood and a ready helpfulness for the endan- gered and the oppressed : — these are the things which a true, devout soul, who is an ardent lover of the hills, learns as he dwells among and answers to the mountains of God. And if any man ever showed these qualities of healthy and holy manliness, it was Ulrich Zwingle of Wildhaus. In that little hamlet on the Toggenburg hills, in a still-standing wooden house, on the first day of January, 1484, did Ulrich or Huldreich Zwingle see the light. The Zwingles were an old, honored and self-respecting family. For Switzers they were well-to-do folk. Their plain but comfortable and hospitable home rang with the merry voices of lusty and kindly childhood. More than even the Switzer's wont were the eight boys and the one girl the companions and the delight of their shrewd, brave, patriotic parents. On the hills by day with his father and his friends, up on the higher pas- tures tending the cattle, climbing the crags in chase of the marmot or in search of nests, watching the swoop of the eagle, guarding the lambs, startling the chamois, leaping fearlessly the yawning crevasse and sweeping in the fierce delight of the furious " glissade " down the snow-clad slopes, — thus did Huldreich, " rich in grace," grow rapidly up into a tall, athletic, sure and swift- footed young mountaineer, who was remarkable even as a lad for bodily strength and grace, for winsome ways, for unselfish heart and fearless courage. The brave boy soon made himself a great favorite. And small wonder that he should, with his keen, far-reaching eyes that were ever ready to soften into a smile or melt in sym- pathy ; with his fair, sharply-cut and expressive face ; THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 223 with his sweet and strong voice rolling out over mount- ain and valley in songs ; with his singular powers of attention, his quick seizure of the points in dispute be- tween contending neighbors who came for the settle- ment of their disputes to father Zwingle, as the petty magistrate of the hamlet. His shrewd father and his priestly uncle were struck and delighted with his rest- less curiosity, his exact way of putting a question, his pertinacity in seeking fullest information, his sharp wit, his unfailing courtesy, and his tenacious memory. Ul- rich became the very heart of the home circle, and was the chosen chief of all the bold youth of the hills. At nights when kindly summer lay around them, he would sit with his father on the bridge-wall or on the great stone seats about the cottage door and hear the men of the commune talk, while his wondering, ever-gath- ering eyes watched the broad brows of the solemn hills grow silvery in the light of the rising moon. At nights when grim winter lay around them, he would lie full- stretched on the warm skins before the blazing wood fire and listen to his grandmother, so ripe in years and yet by common consent the freshest, most vivid story- teller in all the district, as she would tell to the spell- bound group of children and of well-pleased adults the moving tales of her own youth, and the more weird facts and wondrous fables handed down by her own great-grandmother, who had lived to rare old age, and who had carried down with her the far-off traditions of the settlers on these Appenzell hills. Stirring tales these were, and they were strikingly told ; tales of the daring pioneers who had felled the forests, of the un- conquered hillsmen who had stopped on these very heights the advance of the Roman legions, of the deci- 224 ULRICH ZWINGLE, sive battle gained by the Swiss just across the mountains at Morgarten, of the fierce fights that had reddened the Toggenburg, of the mountain men's blood-won and blood- kept rights and freedom. And better and holier tales, out of the old Hebrew past, she told, for that hoary- headed talker was a good woman and full of faith, and often was heard in the night praying for her children and grandchildren. In the vivid pictures of Ulrich's life that have come down to ns we can see it all again, — those glowing fires, the eager youth and the old granddame. Many hotly-contested debates, too, would arise at times around that large old fireplace ; for hither would often come the hillsmen for law, and not seldom to that home of well-known hospitality came travellers for shelter when the storm was bitter and the snow was blinding on the mountains. The times were just then growing very critical for the Swiss, and questions of foreign policy and opinions regarding cantonal rights were often consequently in keen though kindly debate. Father Zwingle was a clear-thoughted, free-spoken and unusually well-informed man, w^ho always encour- aged his children to talk and fully to state their views of the matters in hand. Ulrich, a born controversialist, took early and increasingly his part in these conversa- tions and contests. Men were struck by the lad's mem- ory for dates and facts, by his sound common sense, his quick wit and his apt illustration. He was a precocious boy, but as strong in body as in mind, and as full of fun as he was of love for the wordy war. Thus the hills and his home told, and well, on the lad. " Friend Zwingle, thou shalt make the lad a priest ;" so said the neighbors. " Yes," said the well-to-do " amman," " I have long ago decided him for the schools." The shep- THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 225 herd-father and the priest-uncle of the clever, affection- ate and promising boy had talked it all over in the past summer, and had settled that Ulrich was too good for the herding of goats and for warbling on the hills. The boy of truth who one day said, " Truth is the mother of all virtues," who was thirsting for truth, shall drink deep draughts of it. 1493-1505.] The Pride of the Schools. Such in all truth did Zwingle in his many and im- portant places of education ever prove. His scholastic career was one unbroken and ever-enlarging victory. He was always far in advance of all his competitors. He seemed to drink in the lessons of his masters. Yet he thought as well as received. He questioned as few other pupils, and often made his teachers silent, for the full answer was not theirs to give, and his teachers always learned that only the bottom-reaching answer would satisfy this restless sounder, who with boldness and skill was tireless in flinging his lead out into the dark and mist-laden waters. First down to the little town of Wesen, which is pleasantly situated at the west end of the Wallenstadter See, somewhere about 1493 did Ulrich go. There his uncle, who was very fond of the boy, was rural dean ; and there, too, was a most excel- lent and well-attended grammar-school, one of the best of the time. But soon Huldreich was at the head of his class, and his surprised master told his generous and gratified uncle that the boy must go to the collegiate school at Basle. Basle, beautiful for situation, the home of Holbein and Erasmus, the shelter of Fox and the English refugees, where the " Book of Martyrs " and Cal- vin's " Institutes " were soon to be printed, was even in 226 ULRICH ZWINGLE, Zwingle's youth throbbing with the life of the new day. Here on the historic Rhine, in a most beautiful part of the city, amid near and moving monuments, that were for generous youth full of impulse, stood the then famous seminary of St. Theodore, one of the rich- est and most active schools of Switzerland. Several excellent teachers were in it at the moment of Zwingle's entrance, but the most famous was Gregory Binzli, the chief classical master of northern Switzerland, the friend of Erasmus, and the most stimulating thinker and in- spiration for aspiring youth. Binzli was immediately drawn to the young scholar so far in solid learning ahead of his equals in years, and so soon able to take his place among the quickest and most advanced pupils of the school. Binzli gave himself very largely to de- velop the independence and the originality of the youthful minds that were placed under him. He is re- ported to have once said, " Give them books to read if you wdll; / want to stir up the gift of God that is in them." From Basle of the great council, where not a few of Wycliffe's books had been reprinted and were then well read, where the burgesses showed so high nobility and signal independence, our hero passed next to the capital city of Berne. The man yet to touch Swiss life all round is, you see, touching every side of Swiss life ; and just then Swiss life was touched by all the life of that critical day. In Switzerland you would then meet the busy Englishman, also the Waldensian peddler coming from Lyons with his silks and velvets, and some books of John of Oxford or of Prague hidden in his pack, the papal legates who were seeking soldiers to fight the battles of the Vatican, and the searcher for THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 227 and the seller of the eagerly-sought and quickly-sold Latin and Greek manuscripts. Ulrich, always by his priest-uncle's advice placed under foremost masters, is now studying at Berne under the celebrated Lupulus, one of the chief humanists and philosophers of his time. Zwingle is soon in Berne at his old point, the head of the school ; of him, generous and glad-hearted as he ever is, his fellow students boast with an honest and cheery pride ; to him the masters devote themselves with a keen joy and high hope. He is now giving himself, in spare moments, to the cultivation of his rare voice and his great musical powers. There are others beside students and teachers who have their eyes fixed on the masterly youth and the passionate musician and the rare-voiced singer : the monks of the Dominican convent covet him. There is a deadly feud just then raging between the Franciscans and the Dominicans. They are striving eagerly to defeat and humble each the other before the burgesses and the mob of the great city. The Domini- cans are employing every trick and artifice within reach or to be invented, from bribes and blasphemous false miracles to the improvement of their choirs by the ac- quisition of a splendid voice and the increased power of their pulpit by the winning of the most promising scholar, the best debater and the most popular speaker of the schools. The Dominicans set their traps for Ulrich. But there is a watchful uncle at Wesen, and a resolute father on the hills. They act decisively but secretly, and ere the friars know of his departure, young Zwingle is halfway to Vienna, and has escaped the monks and their damnable and diabolical trickery and projects, which very soon after became the scandal of Switzerland and the shame of the order, if the Domini- cans could be shamed. 228 ULRICH ZWINGLE, Zwingle's father, like Luther's and Savonarola's, hated the monks ; and the Switzer succeeded in saving his bright and chaste boy from the degrading company of the Bernese friars by sending him to the great schools of Vienna. That day was the very heyday of Austrian glory, prosperity, ambition, arts and science. Here another world opened to the young mountaineer her vast and varied stores of wealth, of historic interest, of growing libraries and cultured wisdom. Maximilian the First was emperor, and beside him on the throne sat the daughter of Charles the Bold, who had made Austria richer than ever by the addition of the Netherlands. Standing by the side of the emperor was his royal son Philip, who by his marriage with Joanna of Spain had linked the power and prestige of proud Spain and the wealth of the Indies to the house of the heavy-lipped Hapsburgs. At that time, consequently, Vienna was the very centre of the political world ; and a chief seat of learning she promised to become, for she was, under the fostering care and far-sighted policy of her rulers, quickly drawing to herself not a few of those who were leaders in the several worlds of art, music, science, classics, philosophy and theology. The boy who had made himself the leader on the hills and had stood first in all his schools is now, though but sixteen and a half years, a man in wisdom : and he made that busy, wealthy, plotting, much-frequented, enterprising capital yield to him rich stores for his future fight with royal despots and the papal tyrant. In 1502, Ulrich is found resting and recruiting in the old home at Wildhaus. For that dear house and his brave and self-denying father he ever manifested a deep- ening affection. Thither he frequently turned in after years when worn out by work and worried by men. No THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 229 puling recluse was he, nor morbid ascetic ; he was now a stalwart, full-grown man, but he was as fleet of foot and as full of fun as in the days of his boyhood. He was the first to scale the cliff, the readiest to carry the heaviest burden, the boldest to chase the eagle, the mer- riest and most songful by the fireside, and the purest and most reverent in the village and in his varied schools. After this happy and needful rest he returns to Basle and plunges eagerly into the higher classics, into the profound philosophy and theology of Aquinas and the other great schoolmen. These old thinkers are nowadays by a fashion of speech only derided and ridi- culed ; yet they stirred and exercised the minds and souls, the very loftiest thoughts and most speculative powers, of the many men who have reshaped the philo- sophic and scientific centuries lying between the world of Francis Bacon and the self-complacent world of to- day. The lighter studies and the favorite relaxation of Zvvingle were song and music. He was now a most skilled vocalist and thoroughly well-trained musician. He could take up lute, violin, flute, dulcimer, shepherd's pipe or hunter's horn, and accompany his own inimitable "joedel" or his ringing ballad with skill and taste upon any of these diverse instruments. One of his merry friends asked him one day if he was '' a descendant of the bandmaster on the plains of Dura." In the Novem- ber of 1505 there came to Basle from Tubingen Thomas Wittenbach, the friend and fellow worker of the famous Reuchlin. Round this master of polite literature, of the ancient tongues, of mathematics, and better still of the Holy Scriptures and their fresh theology, all the eager youth of the colleges rallied ; and foremost and most promising was Zwingle. Here for the first time he 230 ULRICH ZWINGLE, seems to open his heart to the joy of the gospeh One day Wittenbach said, " The doctrine of indulgences is a groundless dogma, the death of Christ is the one need- ful atonement for our sins ;" and the soul of Ulrich Zvvingle drank in the life-giving words ; and from that hour, if ever within, he really stood outside the lines of the Church of Rome. Together with this great gain, he made about the same time one of his best life friends, Leo Juda, " the little lion," as Zwingle was wont to playfully call him, a true man who never failed the reformer in many a hard fight and saddening day. With these broadly and richly-cultivated tastes and gifts, with his most liberal education, extensive reading, large and ripe experience, and a goodly band of rare and devoted friends about him, Zwingle stands a well- furnished scholar and untiring student, ready for his life-work ; and right speedily it comes to him. And it comes with a presage of his chief work, — that first labor of the free son of the hills. The large town and parish of Glaris wants a priest and pastor. The pope wants the chief parish of the pop- ulous and prosperous canton for one of his chief favorites, one Henry Goldi, and the people want as priest their young mountaineer. The pope commands ; the intel- ligent, independent people refuse. It is now pope against the folk, and the people win the day. Zwingle begins his public life as the opponent of the Vatican, as the friend of popular rights and the asserter of the lib- erties of the people ; as such he is welcomed by toAvn and country, and as such, though a consecrated priest, he enters on his parish work. The victor in that con- test shall yet be conqueror on a grander and nobler field. THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 231 1506, Dec] The Popular Preacher. Zwingle is now the patient, plodding priest of a vast and important parish. To his exacting and exhaustive work he gave himself with all his characteristic zeal, his wisdom and tact. In that new school he was learn- ing lessons that were already moving him forward on a path he knew not. Face to face with the real wants of men, and dealing with the sick and dying, he soon came to feel and realize that something more than the ceremonial consolations of the Church and her so-called salvatory sacraments are needed to make men live holy lives and die peaceful deaths. The close study I have been making of his life lately, and that which I made in Zurich some years ago, have led me to believe that Ulrich Zwingle was never what D' Aubigne says he was at the early period of his ministry, "just what other priests around him were." He was never an unprin- cipled hireling, nor unchaste. Zwingle was in the Church of Rome, but not of it. He was a Protestant long before he himself knew it. Those opening days of Zwingle's ministry were days of sad temptation for the poor and brave Swiss. They were seduced by the large bribes of the popes and Italian princes to enter their service as mercenaries. Going up and down the hills and dales of eastern and northern Helvetia enrolling troops was one very remark- able man, Schinner. Then he was a high and influential dignitary in the Church, bishop, cardinal, papal legate and the chief recruiting officer of the Vatican. A very few years before he had begged along the road near Sion. A man looked him one day sharply in the face and said emphatically, " Yon'll not beg all your life ; you'll die either prince or bishop." Schinner swore it should be 232 ULRICH ZWINGLE, true. And he made it true ; he was nearing his arch- bishopric at the time when Zwingle was toiling busily in his parish. Schinner, to make his higher episcopal seat secure and soon to gain it, came on a fresh recruiting tour. He stirs all the youth of Graubunden and Glaris; to the Italian wars the}^ flock ; and as olden wont was and cantonal law required, the banner must be guarded by the priest-ensign. Zwingle goes out with the flag. The camp is thus Ulrich's next school; Italy and the rule of the pope his fresh study. But neither parish nor plots nor pope could in this resolute truth-seeker kill the student. The true man will master circumstances ; and Zwingle makes that foray into Italy and the very camp help him in his ever-pushed and ever-progressive studies. While in Italy he collects classical and theological books, and no sooner is he home once more than he is deeper than ever in his Greek Testament and more eagerly than ever is he searching the works of Augustine, Origen and Chrysostom. All unconsciously yet really he is gath- ering stores for the day of struggle with papal pol- iticians and of open breach with the Church of tradition but not of truth. Some months of busy work and of strange preaching for a parish pulpit of that day now passed onward ; then for rest and instruction Zwingle went over the mountains to Basle to pay a visit to Eras- mus, who was busy with his books, poems and satires, impelling man after man to take a step which he had never the moral earnestness and self-denial himself to take. The satirical scholar was quickly and strongly drawn to the young priest of Glaris, whose general learning and knowledge of the classics, whose power of repeating Pindar, Hesiod, Homer and Seneca, astonished the master-humanist of the hour. He gave Zwingle THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 233 his own copy of the Gospel of John ; and from his thin lips and caustic tongue he poured his bitter denuncia- tions of the state of the Church and his scathing expo- sure of the horrible scandals of the time. That friendship, did not last ; but the effect of that conversation lasted : and two other then made friendships did continue through life, and form very important factors in the life and battles and posthumous victories of Zwingle. These two abiding friendships were those with Q^co- lampadius and with Myconius. After this stimulating visit and with his prized Gospel Zwingle returns to his work. Soon the blare of the war-horns is again heard through the glens and across the mountains of Glaris and Schwyz and Appenzell, and once more, but now very reluctantly, Zwingle must take the parish-banner and march with his parish-band. Zwingle has by this time become very strongly opposed to these frequent withdrawals of the youth and manhood of the land to fight these battles of the foreigner. He longs and labors to see the Swiss band themselves together in one strong league against all comers. But here, as in so many other things, he w^as far ahead of his times. He went to Italy, and in due time on to Rome. That visit told. The close sight and face-to-face study of that papal land, and still more of the papal city, sickened the healthy soul of the honest mountaineer. From our other studies of reform times you have learned the scandalous state of Rome and the priesthood, and it is needless to touch that rottenness any more. Zwingle had seen the license and the lusts of the mercenaries' camp, he had seen the Pompeian debaucheries of Flor- ence, he had seen the wantonness of luxurious Vienna, he knew what the villainies of the great cities were, but 16 234 ULRICH ZWINGLE, never anything like Rome had he beheld, and the Vat- ican itself was the Capri of that hour. Those were the days of Leo the Tenth, who jested with his secretary " on the profitableness to them of the fable of Christ." If you would know this Leo, read Browning's poem, the " Bishop of St. Praxed." About this date it was that Zwingle made his next great advance : the special and the devout reading of God's word, and his recognition of it as the rule of faith. We are told by his closest and best-informed friends that he now gave himself almost exclusively to the study of the Holy Scriptures, and that as he searched " Zwingle looked to heaven, not wishing for any better interpreter than the Holy Spirit." At this early date (1515-16), moreover, he was teach- ing his people Bible doctrine and openly stating that the Bible was the sole infallible authority in matters of faith and practice. His parish was moved by his fresh teachings. His foes, political and papal, are accusing and assailing, and his friends like Myconius are rejoicing over a " work altogether divine," saying, " It. is thus the knowledge of divine truth is to be restored to us." The preacher of Glaris has ceased to be a mere mass- celebrating priest, and is now the gospel-teacher of men. Still he does not see that he has broken with Rome. But he is already in this year 1515 the reformer of Helvetia. 1516-1531.] The Advanced Reformer. The bold and devoted student who in January, 1513, wrote to a friend that he was now giving himself " to the study of the Greek Testament that out of the fount- ains might be drawn the doctrine of Christ;" the parish priest who had been /or OtfuUyeor witnessing for THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 235 Christ when in 1516 he wrote, " this is the spring time, and is the season for sowing," and the busy sower who always afterwards called that seed-time '' the beginning of the Swiss reformation ;" this brave reformer is now about to appear on the most public highway of Rome, and there point boldly and clearly to the Lamb of God as the only sacrifice for sin and the only hope of sin- ners. Yes, the very highway of Rome is to be the strange scene of his first undisguised assault on the deceiver and the despot ! What Lourdes is to-day, what Loretto has been, that was Einsiedeln at the morn- ing of the Reformation ! The boast and the very gold mine of the mother of mysteries was that old Benedictine hermitage, — the hotbed of superstition and the scene of triumphant priestcraft and of bigotry. There, on a fair and wooded knoll between the lakes of Zurich and Wallen, in the very heart of most perfect scenery and within the easiest reach of the great highways of the land and of its most majestic splendors, halted one afternoon to- wards the close of the ninth century a weary hermit. There he stayed. Thence his fame for sanctity spread abroad, and thither many came for prayer and for con- solation. And a shrine rose beside the hermit's hut, which grew rich in gifts. And thither the brutal forest ruffians came who, one moonless night, dyed the sod with the old man's blood and robbed his cell. On that very spot, it was said by the wonder-mongers of the darkest days of the tenth century, were heard heavenly voices ; and there too had the Vii'gin showed herself to the eyes of the devout ! Unto this annunciation and to this apparition had the pope himself testified, and the bull of Leo the Eighth had made faith in all these alleged miracles obligatory on the faithful. Multitudes flocked 236 ULRICH ZWINGLE, thither on the pilgrimages. Money flowed into the Church cofiers, and the " Hermitage of our Lady Ein- siedeln and the Holy Angels " became the Lourdes of those times. Some sixteen years ago, at the great Sep- tember " festival of the dedication," that gorgeous ab- bey stood before me full in view, and up the roads and along the paths and across the hills gathered and rolled huge tides of human life ; in and in and round and round they poured till, it was computed, some 130,000 men, women and children had congregated together, and for what ? the worship of the black stock of wood, the alleged God-given image of the adored Mary. And to- day, so far as I know, you may see in September that same scene which I beheld, and on Avhich Ulrich Zwin- gie looked when the crowd swelled to 250,000 and no man dared to call the worship fellest idolatry ! No man ! Yes ; soon it will be so called by a man whom God has been preparing for years, by a splendid course that left him without the fear of man, and which had fully freed him from that paralyzing dread of Rome and that awe for her proud head which had silenced many a sick- ened and indignant soul before Zwingle's day ! To this idol-shrine Zwingle had been called a preacher in 1516 ; thither came he nothing doubting ; and there God, who led him, had been making things ready to his hands. At that time of crisis for Switzerland and of nearing battle for the Christ of the gospel and for the liberty wherewith Christ had made his people free, the God of providence had placed at Einsiedeln two men of influ- ence and authority who were longing for light, for hope and the peace of God— Conrad of Rechberg and Theo- bald of Geroldseck. What the Saxon knights and the elector were to Luther in his moment of struggle, that THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 237 were this abbot and this administrator of Einsiedeln to the reformer of Helvetia, for that Zwingle now is. For a time, as was ever his wont, he watched events and studied the situation. All the while he was reading his Bible, advancing in his knowledge of the word and in his spiritual life, and growing in his prayerfulness and his reliance on the Holy Ghost to teach him, as he says himself, not the " letter but the spirit of the written word, for the outward letter cannot establish faith ; only the inward drawing and illumination of the Spirit can do this." " The Scriptures come from God, not from man, and even that God who enlightens will give thee to understand that the speech comes from God." " When I came to see that I must let all lie and learn the mean- ing of God purely out of his own simple word, and when I began to pray for his light, then the Scriptures grew much easier to me, and I came to have an unde- ceived understanding to which I never could have come in following the littleness of my own understanding." Thus was he at Einsiedeln busy reading the two great books of the true preacher and the resistless reformer, the holy word and the wretched human heart. As he mused the fire burned. And right soon and boldly he spake out into the very crowd of the astonished pil- grims. Side by side with those two stirring pictures, the scenes and occasions of which both belong to a later day — the scene of Luther nailing up his theses and the scene of Knox administering the communion in both kinds at St. Andrews — I should like to set this splendid scene and decisive act, Ulrich Zwingle preaching Christ at the Benedictine hermitage ! See the old abbey of Einsiedeln, the countless multitude awed and alarmed, yet charmed ; see the tall, attractive and powerful 238 ULRICH ZWINGLE, preacher of two-and-thirty years of age, with sweetest voice and ripe scholarship and rare art of convincing speech ; see the magnetic man of burning soul who holds that vast audience spell-bound by words which no one had yet uttered to the gathered world of Rome's dev- otees, and in the very stronghold of her mystic rites ; see him deliberately pointing to the image of the Virgin as he says, " Think not that God is more in this temple than in any other part of his creation. Whatever be the land of your homes, God is around you and hears you as much as at our Lady of Einsiedeln. Shall it be use- less works, long pilgrimages, offerings, images, calling upon the Virgin and the saints, that are to obtain for you God's favor ? Of what consequence is the multitude of words that we introduce into our prayers ? What mat- ters a gray hood, a well-shaven head, a long, well-folded robe ; and gilded slippers ?" (on the images to which he was pointing.) " God looks at the heart, and our heart is far from God. Not here is ' plenary absolution to be found from all sin ' " (inscribed by order of the pope on the church door), "but Christ, who once for all hath offered himself on the cross, is the sacrifice and victim that makes the satisfaction throughout all eternity for the sins of all believers." The daring grandeur is sub- lime, — that lone man amid those thousands ! The earthquake had come. That sermon was the crisis. As from Pentecost they went over all the world of Jewish colonies telling of the resurrection and of the baptism of the Spirit; so over the world of Romish fable and superstition they went with the news of Ein- siedeln, and broadly they spread the grand theme of the preacher, "Christ, he alone saves, and he saves everywhere." THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 239 So through 1518 he went preaching sermons that are called by a very competent witness, Hedio, " beautiful^ thorough, solemn, comprehensive, penetrating, evangel- ical, in the power of their language reminding one of the oldest of the church-fathers." Many monks and nuns left the retreats ! The people gave no more their offerings at the shrines ; and everywhere souls were turning to the living Christ instead of that blackened stock ! Rome heard of it. But Switzerland could not be roughly dealt with ; and Zwingle was too much a power in Helvetia for the troop-needing Vatican to pro- ceed to extremities. Hence a long papal brief, urging caution, was written to Zwingle by Pucci, the apostolic nuncio of the wily pope ; and to shut the reformer's mouth Leo created him " acolyte-chaplain." But at the very moment that brief came Zwingle was busy proving to the silenced and defeated apologist for Rome, the lord-cardinal of Sion, who had come to argue with and silence the hot-headed Swiss priest, " that the whole papacy rested on a rotten foundation, as Holy Scripture makes plain." They had silenced by their bribes and their threats Erasmus, but they found a man of other mettle in the "Eagle of Helvetia." Another fight is nearing, and the dauntless lad who had stood alone with God on the snowy top of Sentis is now ready as Christ's champion to stand in the gap and bar the way against the Swiss peddler of indulgences. Samson and Zwingle met ; bitter was the fight ; but the peddler fled to Rome, and the bold preacher stood crowned, with the plaudits of his land ringing around him and amid the laughter of delight at the pope's defeat. Now there is no doubt about Ulrich's place. He is the hero of the Helvetic reform. Ready he is for a grander, wider and 240 ULRICH ZWINGLE, more influential sphere ; and the place is ready for him. Zurich, ever to be henceforth linked with his immortal name and work, calls him to be the cathedral preacher ; and in spite of the bitter opposition of all the papal party now his antagonists, he is soon standing in the chief pulpit of that hour in Switzerland, and " straight- way he preached Christ," not Church, to them. That city of surpassing beauty, girt with the hills and graced with the lake, was in that day the chief centre of religious and political life and interest. Above Berne and Basle and Geneva she then stood. Over against her as foe and hater was Lucerne, the stronghold of the Romish band. Zurich was then the home of brave men and of bold movements ; and needed a master of men, a man who could like Paul be all things to all men for the gospel's sake, a man of far-sighted sagacity and statesmanlike tact, a man who was through and through a patriot, a man who could rescue his fellow citizens from the toils of the papal intriguers, save the brave youth for their own land and win the souls of men to the light of God and to the love of Christ. And the lion-city found her man in the " Lion of Zurich." Zwin- gle stood the bravest mid the brave ! Soon a truer bravery is called for at his hands. God lays him down in sharp and serious sickness. The strong man never bowed before. Work must cease. He must lie and wait and be still. At last he rises, limp, almost lifeless, and goes to the baths of Pfeffers. There in his convalescence the inner man of the heart was strangely enlarged. God was making him fit for a sorer strain, and training him to a holier daring. The ter- rific plague broke out in Zurich. Like Luther and George Wishart, Zwingle sent away the weaker and the THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 241 younger men, and took on himself the work of death. Those dark days of Wittenberg, Dundee and Zurich were the moments when Christly strength and sympathy were seen brightly shining in our Saxon, Scotch and Swiss heroes ; alone they stood with the dying and the dead, despair everywhere save in their own Spirit-sus- tained souls and words. The plague passed ; but Zwingle sank once more, and the word swept like a wail over the land that he was dead. But he arose as from the grave. Now his life was hid with Christ in God. A fuller consecration marked him. His preach- ing grows more expository, more full of the Old Tes- tament glory of God and of the New Testament grace : the supreme sovereignty of the Lord and the solitary sacrifice of the Lamb are the two pivotal points of his theology. Zwingle becomes the beloved centre and the acknowledged head of the " formative forces of the Swiss movement." Learned men are corresponding with him ; and influential cities are sending for him to come for public discussions. Young men rally with enthu- siasm to his side. He is the host and the shield of the Protestant refugees, victims of the persecuting Charles. Rome now fawns, now flatters ; at last plots and threat- ens. Then come great public assemblies and sharp de- bates. Zwingle makes Zurich and the surrounding parts ring with his bold words and full gospel teaching. Out of this year of prayer, of deeper study of the word, of most independent thinking and keen debates, arose the fullest, the freest and most clean-cut form and the most distinctively God-honoring spirituality which the Reformation had yet taken. In 1523 Zwingle col- lected into one body of divinity what he had been teaching for several years. There we see distinctly and 242 ULRICH ZWINGLE, beyond challenge the most commanding man of Switzer- land, and the most advanced, systematic and liberal re- former of that hour. Calvin, who came after Zwingle, surpassed him in many points ; but no other man did. Four kings they are, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingle, John Calvin and John Knox, and to them would I ever, as to the God-given chiefs in that glorious revolt, yield leal-hearted homage. They are like, they are unlike. They are grand complementaries. Together they form a magnificent unity — Luther the conservative reformer, Calvin the systematic reformer, Knox the adminis- trative reformer, and Zwingle the radical reformer. Lu- ther was the cautious and conservative breaker-up of the way, Zwingle was the dashing yet clear-sighted revolutionary, the thorough radical ; Calvin stood strong and vsymmetric between and grasped each by the hand. Using French phrases of parliamentary life, Luther stood on the extreme right, Zwingle on the extreme left, and Calvin was the centre ; each having his own unique and supreme excellencies; each having his faults and his defects. How well it has ended for the Church ! He who gave the complementary forces of the apostolate to the infant Church, who joined Peter and John and James and Paul ; he who gave the balancing and mu- tually-correcting great fathers ; that sovereign and all- wise Spirit, who worketh where and when and how he chooseth, gave in his grace and wisdom to the Church, in the critical day of the grand revolt, the bold and ad- venturous son of the mountains to balance the strong and cautious son of the mines, then made the logical lawyer, the architectural theologian and statesmanlike churchman, John Calvin, follow. To contrast the great contemporaries : Luther was satisfied to get rid of all THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 248 that was contrary to the Scripture ; Zwingle would keep nothing which was not commanded clearly in the word. Luther is determined and. dogmatic ; Zwingle is lively and liberal. Luther is earnest, intense and imaginative ; Zwingle is enthusiastic, comprehensive and logical. Lu- ther is first controversial and then exegetical ; Zwingle is first exegetical and then controversial. In debate Luther stands chief for fire and energy, vigorous imag- ination and bluff humor, for graphic power, contagious passion and anchor-like tenacity ; Zwingle stands chief for calmness, prudence, discretion, consistency, far- sightedness, comprehensiveness, for brilliant illustration, apt classic simile and keen wit. Luther is first in spirit- ual experience ; Zwingle in spiritual speculation. Lu- ther is ever the best master for the Christ-seeking sinner ; Zwingle for the keen-thoughted believer. Lu- ther stands like the Wartburg defying all attacks ; Zwingle dashes like the young Rhone fearlessly against every barrier. The Saxon is the man of stubborn strength, and the Swiss of resistless force. The one, coming from his cell, was too much of a churchman, and the other, coming from his classics, too much of a cru- sader. Noble pair of spirit-born brothers ! Green be their memories ! Honored be their names in the one fam- ily of the apostolic faith ! Each was true to his light ; neither neglected the gift that was in him ; both earn- estly contended for the faith. Let strife and jealousy end on earth as in heaven. • To the Eagle of Helvetia, however, too little honor has hitherto been done. He has been unduly over- shadowed. Prejudice and misrepresentation have sul- lied his noble name. The party of " passive resistance " have maligned him. But he was one of the chiefest 244 ULRICH ZWINGLE, and rarest souls that God ever made ; and I have loved the bright, generous man for years ; to-night I rejoice to lay this poor wreath on his empty tomb. He was the most independent, without exception, of all that royal band ; he was never truly inside the lines of Rome ; he was never entangled in that yoke of bond- age, transubstantiation ; the individuality and self-reli- ance of the mountaineer and the combative spirit of the fighting Swiss made him a doubter from his youth up. Authority as such had neither charms nor terrors for him. As a boy he asked one day, " But what is the real truth ?" That question was prophetic. Next to Calvin, that architectural giant among theologians, he was the most exact, symmetrical and logical thinker of his day. Had he only survived the fatal field of Cappel, it is hard to say what had been his ultimate place. In ray judgment he opened the way which Calvin later trod to happy issues. Zwingle's independ- ence, distinctness, generosity and far-sightedness are seen in his exact views of Scripture ; in his sharp dis- tinction between the letter and the spirit of the word ; in his clean-cut definition of the rule of faith and the regulative principle of Church authority ; in his funda- mental doctrine of the sovereignty and the all-deter- mining will of God ; in his striking and full teaching as to the conception of redemption ; in his statements re- garding the salvation of infants and of those lying out- side the pale of the visible Church ; regarding the power and presence of the Holy Ghost; regarding the source of salvation, and the nature and value of the sacraments. On this last point, on which there rests so much misun- derstanding, if not misrepresentation, I want to say for myself that after a fresh and very careful review of THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 245 Zwingle's own statements, after calling to my mind the fact that many of his so-called false views were uttered in keen and hot controversy to meet and master falser and more dangerous statements, after the repeated reading of Cunningham's unique article on Zwingle and the sacraments, and particularly after weighing Calvin's own utterance regarding the " Consensus Tigurinus," as well as the time and circumstances calling forth these words, that " If Zwingle and (Ecolampadius, those most excel- lent servants of Christ, were alive now, they would not change a word of it," I am myself satisfied that Zwingle held a fuller and truer and more scriptural view of the sacraments than any who opposed him, and that substantially it is now^ the view of all but the '^ sacramentarians." Forward and upward went this Eagle of Helvetia till he reached the famous and saddening Marburg Confer- ence. There he rises in more than royal majesty, true to Scripture and yet full of the noblest chivalry, and the Christliest charity. Thrilling are his appeals for broth- erly kindness, forbearance and mutual consideration. There he anticipates the Evangelical Alliance, and stretches out his hand for peace and friendship. That hand, alas, was not grasped. Fatal mistake ! Weak- ness, alienations, strife, feuds, factions, falsities followed ; and at last the " Thirty Years' War." Ah, what a mel- ancholy grandeur in that hall of Philip the Magnanimous, who so long and nobly labored for peace and union ! the unrivalled men confronting each other ! that table with the chalk words on it, "hoc est meum corpus" ! Luther with his finger on the words ! Zwingle saying, " we be- lieve that Christ's body and blood are present in the supper to the believing soul, but not in the bread and 246 ULRICH ZWINGLE, wine"! Luther saying, "we have done with you, and commend you to the just judgment of God" ! Zwingle, with face ashy pale, lips firm set, eyes first lifted to heaven and then filled with tears that fell in big hot drops on the fatal table ! Few scenes in that dramatic and tragic century like those tears of that hero-soul so generous and loving ! Would God that scene were gone ! and the burning of Servetus ! But they are there to teach us, — put not thy faith in princes ! there is one good, that is God. And now comes the last act in this grand tragedy, the life of the earliest, the boldest, the most advanced and genial of the great reformers of this time ! The Soldier Martyr. Studying, praying for fuller light, preaching sermons of profound depth and exact reasoning, yet of tenderest consolation and a most winsome attractiveness, — min- gling in all the civic and political interests and thicken- ing anxieties of Zurich and of Switzerland, becoming daily a greater power inside the evangelical section of the Protestant party, corresponding and co-operating with fficolampadius and Myconius and Bucer, watching jealously and penetratively the plots of the Romish party to divide and alienate the Protestants, counselling princes and warning the free cities of Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, — on with untiring spirit but with a saddening and burdened heart went this busy and brave struggler. Once more for rest and re- freshment he goes to his native hills. It is his last visit; let us go over the lake and the hills with him, and see the sights that lived with him and so often flashed out in his sermons. It is the closing days of August, 1531, THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 247 when we take our seat in the four-oared boat for our trip across that smiling and enchanting lake of Zurich, " with its bright rippled surface and its shores endlessly varying with alternating hill and valley and height after height in greater variety than the eye can take in, which dazzled by this splendor delighted to rest on the blue range of the loftier mountains in the far distance, whose snowy summits man has been so long familiar with as to name readily." We land, and away across the undu- lating ground we pass with the keen joyance which only strong walkers and lovers of nature ever know. For the night we rest in the shepherds' huts. Then shortly after midnight we start for the summit of the Sentis. Up steadily we rise for four hours of unbroken climbing. Now we have reached the long back of the topmost ridge, and are on the snow. With lengthening strides and with many a leap we reach the base of the summit. Now silently and step by step we conquer the last stiff climb ; we feel the breeze from the farther side ; we see the water now run mv ay from us; and, just as the sun tips the peaks around and far away, we stand on the cairn of the real top. Worth the hard day's walking and the half-night climb ! No wonder that free soul standing yonder alone, out on that point, so loves it ! There in front are the " combs of Appenzell," there the seven-headed Kuhfirsten and the ice-bound brows of " Sommernkopf " and " Altmann ;" there on the north- east are the hills of Schwyz, and there sleeps the Wal- lensee ; out yonder is spread the glassy Constance ; away beyond are the blue heights of Schwabia and of Tyrol ; on the other side lie Graubunden, the old forest cantons and the Glarner Alps, and filling up the remotest distance are the imperial peaks of the Oberland. Gla- 248 ULRICH ZWINGLE, ciers now gleam in the new day ; a score of charming valleys waken neath the kiss of the sun ; you hear the tinkle of falling drops as the ice begins to yield, the hoarse roar of full rivers sweeping fast and strong against the mocking boulders, the frequent thuds of the falling avalanches, the bleat of the -sheep and goats, the mellow tones of the cowbells, the peculiar warble of the herd- boys, and the multiplying echoes ; you are dazzled yet delighted by the sunlight and broad freedom, by the splendor of coloring, by the perfect forms of the Alpine plants glinting out on every side, and by the rich, soft velvet of the grass-patches that shelter and hide in the clefts of the weathered rocks ; you are solemnized by the calmness of this lofty, lonely world that seems to feel that God is oftener here than man or beast; you are strengthened by the quiet power and the long-during patience of these unwearied mountain-guards of the val- leys and lowlands ! Look, the strong man weeps ! He has hidden in yon nook ; and he prays ; and the tears fall! Hark! " Farwohl ! Geliebte !" And now, all emotion swept away, down he hastens to the old home ! And out from that home he goes to the fatal field of Cappel. At that time Zurich was involved in a life-and- death struggle ; she was, — as is commonly the case, — partly in the right and partly in the wrong. One man had seen the wise and the right for Zurich ; but he had utterly failed to bring others to decisive action and clear conclusions. It were needless to go into that cantonal strife with you. SufBce to say that the man who saw clearest was convinced that the liberty of the gospel lay in that struggle. This I will say, and that emphatically, I have but little sympathy with the common, parrot-like denunciation of Zwingle for his part in that struggle. THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 249 Never did I much like the views of civil government obtaining in Saxony. One section of the Church has, I know, held the doctrine of "passive resistance" as its regulative principle in dealing with government in Ger- many and England ; but it is not the section to which I am bound by ancestral ties and by my own choice. The holders of that doctrine were often but feeble folk in the long struggle for the emancipation of the Church from all state control. The blood of the Covenanters' son and of the old revolutionaries grows hot in me as the law of " passive resistance" is laid down as the ideal of action for the Christian Church. Peace at any price is poor policy and worse ftiith. With my noble old teacher, William Cunningham, one of the greatest men of Scot- land and of the Reformed faith, I thoroughly agree in these sentences : " Zwingle has been sometimes charged, even by those who had no prejudice against his cause or his principles, with interfering too much in the polit- ical affairs of his country, and connecting religion too closely with political movements. And indeed his death at the battle of Cappel is sometimes held up as an in- stance of righteous retribution, as an illustration of the scriptural principle that he ' who taketh the sword shall perish by the sword.' Though this view has been countenanced by some very eminent and influential names in the present day, we are by no means sure that it has any solid foundation to rest upon. We do not know any scriptural ground which entitles us to lay it down as an absolute rule that the character of the citizen and the patriot must be entirely sunk in that of the Christian minister, — anything which precludes min- isters from taking part, in any circumstances, in pro- moting the political well-being of their country, or in 17 250 ULRICH ZWINGLE, seeking in the use of lawful means to have the regula- tion of national affairs directed to the advancement of the cause and kingdom of Christ. . . . What John Knox did, was compelled to do and did with so much advant- age to his country, it was at least as warrantable and necessary for Zwingle to do in the small canton of Zurich and in the Helvetic confederation. And while this may be said generally of his taking some part in the regula- tion of the public affairs of his country, we are not aware of any of the public proceedings of Zurich and her con- federate cantons which were clearly objectionable on grounds of religion, equity or policy. It is well known that he disapproved of, and did all he could to prevent, the steps that led to the war in which he lost his life ; and it was in obedience to the express orders of the civil authorities and in the discharge of his duties as a pastor that, not without some melancholy forebodings, he accompanied his countrymen to the fatal field of Cappel. . . . We confess that we are inclined to regard this disapprobation as originating rather in a narrow and sentimental view of the whole subject than in any enlarged and manly view of it ; and to suspect that it may have been encouraged by an unconscious infusion of the erroneous and dangerous principle of judging of the character of Zwingle's conduct by the event, — of regarding his violent death upon the field of battle as a sort of proof of his Master's displeasure with the course he pursued." Yes ! in obedience to the command of the state he went with a sad and foreboding heart; he knew he should never return ! But forth he went the bravest amid a few brave men and too many half-hearted and foolish burghers. Two days pass. The field of battle THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 251 is reached ; but here again Zwingle fails to convince the leaders that his plan was the path to safety and success. Still he would not desert his flag ; and like the noble " Six Hundred," forward he went, knowing that some one had blundered : " His not to make reply, his not to reason why, his but to do and die." And like a Chris- tian hero he did his duty. In the very thick of that fight Ulrich was, and as the brave pastor and chaplain his eye was on the banner ; his hand upheld the wounded ; his voice cheered the fallen and taught the dying. As he bent over one dying man and pointed him to the Lamb of God, he was, alas ! himself smitten to death. A huge stone hurled with crushing force fell upon the stooping chaplain and dashed in the ptout iron helmet. Zwingle falls unconscious. After a time he draws a deep breath. The brutal foemen, hating him chiefly because of his faith, stab him in several places to make sure of his death. Calmly the hero says, " They may kill the body, the soul they cannot." Among eighteen of the most distinguished of the re- forming clergy and chaplains he lay ; around them were sixty-three of the leaders ; and in heaps, — dead, — where they had stood firm against the fierce and bigoted men of Lucerne, that home of papal fanatics, were piled five hundred of the bravest men of Zurich and Kusnacht. Though so sorely smitten and so seriously wounded, Zwingle was not dead. He must witness for the truth and die the martyr's death ! Yes ! He did not miss his martyr-crown, though beaten in the battle. The fierce fanatics of Lucerne light their lanterns ; they sally forth in the night to search the bloody field for the living though wounded Zurichers, for they " will compel these Protestant dogs either to confess and re- 252 ULRICH ZWINGLE, turn to the Church of Rome, or," as they coarsely say, " go all the sooner on all-fours to the devil." One set, and the wildest, under the infamous Vokinger of Unter- walden, come upon " a tall, strong form propped against a pear-tree, wounded severely from head to foot, but every wound in front." " Here is a stout confederate." And Vokinger lifts the sunken head and unloosed the helmet. " Ha ! it is Zwingle. Come — confess." Un- able to speak, he shakes his head. Again they command him on pain of death to confess. Now firmly and re- peatedly he shakes his head. " Die, then ! thou stiff- necked heretic," says Vokinger, giving him his death- blow\ Soon the tidings spread through the victorious camp of the papists. They gather fast and thick. And in the early morning light they build the fire and they drive deep the stake ; they take the mangled, the oft- insulted and basely-kicked body and they chain it to the stake. Then the drums beat the muster ; with the troops the army priests come ; the inquisition is set ; the dead man is tried and condemned as an " arch-heretic," and then with the solemn sanction of the clergy and with prayers 'the fire is lighted and the corpse is burned to ashes. Are they done now ? No, verily ! a dead hog has been burned at the same time ; and lest the ashes of the soldier-martyr and reformer of Zurich should be collected and honored, the two heaps of black ashes are mingled and then mixed with dirt and scat- tered to the winds ! That brutality was the boast of bigoted Lucerne and the joy of Rome. Ay, and it was the battle-word in the Thirty Years War often, and the cr^' often of the men following Gustavus Adolphus in many a terrific charge ! Zwingle died, but Luther lived, and Bucer; and John Calvin came, and John Knox rose in THE HERO OF HELVETIC REFORM. 253 Scotland ; and the great bands of Germans and Swiss and Huguenots and Holland freemen and Scotch Presbyte- rians have waged the war, and the dead is well avenged ! In our happier hours when the generous and biblical theology for which he pleaded is so steadily spreading, in these calmer and better days of nearing churches and of the Evangelical Alliance, in these times of an aging sacramentarianism and a decrepit papacy, in this century of the deeper study of the Scriptures and sharper crit- icism of the letter of the word, we will not forget thee, thou brave, strong and songful son of the mountains ; thou genial and generous seeker for Christian union ; thou lover of exact thought and a logical faith! Great worker in the reform! more radical and daring than Lu- ther, more genial and kindly than Calvin, more cou- rageous and unconventional than Cranmer — Knox and thyself may stand closest together, bold patriots and soldier-souls of the reform host, both of you! " When a deed is done for freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west. And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of time. " Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe When the travail of the ages wrings earth's systems to and fro ; At the birth of each new era, with a recognizing start Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart, And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the future's heart. " Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see. That like peaks of some sunk continent jut through oblivion's sea; Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry Of those crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly ; Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by. 254 ULRICH ZWINGLE. " Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record One death-grapple in the darkness with old systems and the word ; Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, — Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above his own. " Then to stand with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust. Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit till the Lord is crucified, And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. " Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls that stood alone While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design. " By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back, And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned One new word of that grand creed which in prophet-hearts hath burned Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven up- turned. " For humanity sweeps onward ; where to-day the martyr stands On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands ; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into history's golden urn." JOHN KNOX, "He never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with eternal truth for power; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life. He that ever following truth's commands On with toil of heart and knees and hands Through the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevailed, Shall find the toppling crags of duty, scaled, Are close upon the shining table-lands To which our God himself is moon and sun. Such was he ; his work is done. But while the races of mankind endure, Let his great example stand Colossal, seen of every land, And keep the hero firm, the patriot pure ; Till in all lands and through all human story The path of Duty be the way to Glory!" AUTHOEITIES CONSULTED. Knox's Works, collected and edited by D. Laing ; Bannatyne's Mem- oir, James Melvill's Autobiography, George Buchanan's Life and Writ- ings ; Foxe's Martyrs; Burnet's History of the Reformation; Nie- nieyer's Life of Knox, T. Brande's Life of Knox ; Strype's Works ; Life of John Welch ; First Book of Discipline and Book of Common Order, with various recent books and articles thereon ; the Lives of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer and Calvin ; Lorimer's John Knox in England and reviews of same ; Calvin's Letters ; Milton's Prose Works; Pitscottie, Spotswood, Calderwood ; Cunningham, Cook, Robertson, Hume, Lin- gard, Macaulay, Tytler and Wright; Froude's History and Short Studies; McCrie's Life of Knox, with the notes and appendices; Burton ; James Ptobertson ; Green ; Skene, Innes, Veitch, McLauchlan, Ebrard, Moffat and Craighead ; Carlyle's Essays and Portraits of Knox ; Hetherington's Church of Scotland ; Hardwick's History of the Refor- mation ; Brook's, Neal's and Marsden's histories of the Puritans ; Hal- lam's Constitutional History of England, Gardner's History ; A. F. Mitchell's Westminster Assembly, Minutes of Westminster Assembly and various papers ; Westminster Review, July, 1853 ; Presbyterian Quarterly Review, September, 1856 ; Chambers' Journal, vol. viii., 1847 ; Edinburgh Review, April, 1852, July, 1853 ; with many other articles in cyclopaedias and magazines. JOHN KNOX, THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND AND THE FOUNDER OF HER CHURCH. "The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? THE Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be AFRAID?" — Psalm xxvii. L Many of you, I doubt not, are familiar with Gustave Dore's " Plague of Darkness in Egypt," — that weird but wonderful picture with its complete contrasts of peril and peace, of horror and hope, of gloom in the palace of the Pharaohs and glory streaming into the homes of the Hebrews, the silence of despair in Zoar, the stir of life and the songs of faith in the land of Goshen. That gloomy, startling but most suggestive drawing may very fairly be taken as a picture of Scotland, alle- gorical and symbolic indeed, but true to the facts of that land, in the opening years of the sixteenth cen- tury. Just such darkness was there over against light, just such curse of deep night, numbing despair and nigh-coming death upon the one side of the national scene, and upon the other side the God-sent, God-kept beams of faith, truth, hope and growing life. And ex- actly as in the wild picture of the daring draughtsman the darkness is deepest in the palace of the prince, and the defiling, ghastly, deadly things gather fastest and thickest about the courts of the temples and in the 258 JOHN KNOX, chambers of the priests, so in the opening of the cen- tury of " the new light " was it in the Court and Church of Scotland, The death-sword, stern, steadfast fate of the false Stuarts, was once more lying red upon the royal couch ; and as of old dissolute priests, who defiled the sanctuary and once more made the Lord's offering an abhorrence, ruled in the masterless realm. Never was broader contrast seen than in those dark days between court and cottage, the God-forsaking court at Holyrood and the God-fearing cottage at Haddington; and two boys embody the contrast — a king's son ; a yeoman's lad ; the boy-king in his third year, the freeman's child in his eighth. It is October, 1513 ; and round the young prince, James the Fifth, fatherless, and knowing as his mother the deceitful, dissolute, murderous Margaret Tudor, there gather the past tragedies and the coming fates of the luckless line, from whose doomed house the curse and the sword never departed more than from the homes of David and of Atreus. And, sadder still to tell, around that infant king, whose ill-tended and gloomy cradle is the presage of his own wild misguidance of his realm and of his gloomy death-bed, stands the vilest group of guides and guardians that ever marred a life or mismanaged a kingdom. While in that Haddington home and around the brave freeholder's stout lad, child of prayer, of goodly lineage and careful nurture, there gather stimulating and sanctifying memories of the sainted Ninian, the Culdee missionaries, the Lollards of Kyle and others of " God's remnant ;" and round him begins to shape itself, dim and distant but certain, one of the grandest dramas of human history, the very glory of old Scotia's tale, which is also our own heritage, joy and inspiration. THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 259 " Scotland's men ! in hope and creed, In blood and tongue, our brothers ! We too are of the covenant-seed ; And Knox's fame and Melville's deed Are not alone our mothers ! " ' Thicker than vrater ' in one rill Through centuries of story Our common blood has flowed, and still We share with you its good and ill, The shadow and the glory. " Joint heirs and kinsfolk, leagues of wave Nor length of years can part us. Your right is ours, to shrine and grave. The common freehold of the brave. The gift of saints and martyrs." * In that stirring drama the prince shall have but small part : the peasant shall rule each scene, shall never be absent from the stage. Of this splendid life-play, with its pomp and pageants, its moving scenes by flood and field, the stage is worthy, is indeed wonder-working and varied ; ay, and vast, for it stretches from Stirling and St. Andrews in the north to London and Fotheringay in the south, with the courts of Paris and Madrid in the distance. Yet far-stretching and broad as is this historic stage, from end to end it is crowded, and that too with masterly men and marvellous women, each one fit to fill a story. Upon the one side, in the forefront are kings Henry the defender of the faith, and Edward the re- former of the faith, queens Jane Grey, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth of Tilbury ; round these fateful rulers you see the stately forms of the imperial Wolsey, of far-sighted Thomas Cromwell, of ducal Somerset and Northumberland with their high-vaulting ambition, of * Slightly altered from Whittier's splendid " Ode to Englishmen." 1^60 JOHN KNOX, " the impetuous Oxford, the graceful Sackville, the all- accomplished Sydney," of proud Leicester, chivalrous Essex and dashing Raleigh, of learned Colet, studious Linacre and conscientious More, with the bigoted Gar- diner, the brutal Bonner and visionary De La Pole; and (confronting these Romish ecclesiastics are the cautious Cranmer, the stout Latimer and the sunny-souled Rid- ley. Upon the other side in advance are James of Flodden, James of the Solway Moss and James the First of England, Mary of Lorraine, Mary Stuart, Francis and the Dauphin of France, the great Charles the Fifth, cool and bloodthirsty Philip of the Inquisi- tion ; and around these rulers are beheld Alva of the Dragonnades, the princely and priestly fiends of the Bartholomew-hell, and the doomed Huguenot chiefs ; while behind are grouped the shifty Maitland, the daring Graeme, the plotting Hamilton, the good Regent Mur- ray, Mar the crafty and Morton the stern, with the un- fortunate Darnley and the brutal Bothwell, the Beatouns and Gordons, Chastelard and Quintin Kennedy, Rizzio and Ruthven. And the background of this striking stage is filled up with warring troops, with spies and as- sassins, with headsmen's blocks and martyrs' stakes and tragic graves ; while over all you read as on cloudy scroll, " He maketh the wrath of man to praise him." Upon that stage are two central figures, the masters of the situation, the shapers of great destinies. They are two commoners, the one English, the other Scotch. William Cecil, confidential secretary of Elizabeth and real ruler of England in her hour of deadliest danger, and John Knox, commanding counsellor to the lords of the congregation, ruler of Scotland in her years of crisis and savior of the Reformation in the day of THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 261 threatened defeat. And of the two, the greater, the faithful and forceful holder of the key of the fate-fraught situation, is the Scotch reformer ! This calm, deliber- ate estimate I make, not so much as Scotch-blooded and intensely Presbyterian, but rather as a lifelong student of these events, as lawyer and judge, after a fresh and very full examination of one of our greatest Anglo- Saxon life-crises, upon the clear, exhaustive evidence of those who have given chiefest attention to this period and have poured unlooked-for light, sharp and startling, upon this interesting field filled with so conflicting actors and with so perplexing incidents. This opinion is, moreover — a fact for you of more moment than my estimate — the deliberate judgment of a historian, very different from the showy, unsympathetic Macaulay, the skeptical Hume, or the biassed Lingard, a man who has the tireless patience of a true seeker of wisdom, a man who makes old cabinets yield up torches to light dark ways, and old caskets tell their ghastly tales of death, a man who, for his noble and final vindication of our slandered heroes, Luther and Knox, deserves and de- mands honor and affection from every honest holder of the truth that maketh free, a man who cannot, like Kostlin or McCrie, be twitted with national and eccle- siastical prejudices ; I mean, of course, that master- chronicler, James Anthony Froude, who pronounces this John Knox, whom some sneer at and too few honor aright, to be " the most extraordinary man of this extra- ordinary age." To this clean-handed Scotchman, to this firm-souled hero in the faith-fight, to this independ- ent Bible-student and church-founder, to this living centre of a real world-crisis, who saved the Church he had loved and reared' and finished, " and with it saved 262 JOHN KNOX, Scotland and English freedom," it is now my duty, by your own special request, to turn your attention as we close our study of the " Breakers of the Yoke." Not unwillingly, nor with fear, do I myself turn to watch afresh this all-unselfish life, but gladly, thankfully, rev- erently, yes lovingly. It is easy for me, adapting Kingsley's words, to say of John Knox — " I have marked this man, And that which has scared others draws me towards him : He has the graces his hour wants : — his sternness I envy for its strength ; his fiery boldness I call the earnestness which dares not trifle With life's huge stake; his coldness but the calm Of one who long hath found and keeps unswerving Clear purpose still : he hath the gift which speaks The deepest things most simply." Never, verily, did this soul of earnestness trifle with his life's huge stake — this disciple of Wishart, avenger of Hamilton, friend of Calvin, companion of Cranmer and Ridley, chaplain of King Edward, con- fidant of Cecil, bulwark of the Reformation, maker of Scotland, father of the Church of the Covenant, teacher of Milton and the Puritans, model to the men who saved Derry and sounded forth the first Declaration of Independence ! Ever honored be thy name, John Knox, fearless in life, faithful to death, famous forever ! Many are the points of view from which we might with profit study this many-sided life. " This most extraordi- nary man" is at once the embodiment and exemplar of the Reformation ; then he is the link between the English and the Scottish and the Continental churches ; then he is the counsellor and indeed captain of " the Congregation ;" he is the ruler " in the wild crisis " of THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 263 Scotland and England ; he is the first and great " Mod- erator." Hence we might consider him from this point of view — Scotland's condition before the Reformation and independent of it ; or from this — Scotland's after-history both in the British isles and " the Greater Britain ;" or from this — the opinions, efforts and failures of his ene- mies, who hated and feared him above all their united opponents ; or from this — the contrasts between him and the great leaders both of the Reformed and Romish hosts. A simpler method I have chosen, but not me- thinks less suggestive, and in the end, I hope not less satisfactory. I. — The Monument of the Reformation. In following from rise to final success this great lib- erating work of God's anointing Spirit, and the story of its faithful, consecrated instruments, we see now the pioneers, now the masters, and now the monuments of the change. We see here the strong men who were writhing under the yoke ; we see there the stronger men who actually destroyed the fetters ; and again the men not less strong from whom the bonds were loosed that they in turn might lead others into the liberty of the gospel. We look upon Wycliffe, that great soul, teacher of English freedom, father of home missions, of field-preachers and of Lollards, sire of our English Bible, to whom Macaulay bears this well-deserved testimony, '' The first and perhaps the greatest of our English re- formers who had stirred the public mind to its inmost depths :" we look upon faithful Huss, upon eloquent Jerome and volcanic Savonarola ; and we have the pioneers. We turn to the conservative Saxon, the chivalrous Switzer and the constructive Frenchman ; 264 JOHN KNOX, and we have the masters. And then we set Knox be- fore us, and in that splendid Sfcotchman we have the monument of the Reformation, himself first made by it all he was, and then completing it and securing its sway in Scotland. And nobler trophy there is not to that great day of emancipation than fearless Knox and his fruitful work. In the winter of the year 1513, all Scotland from the blood-dyed borders to the storm-beaten Orkneys, but especially that part which lies between the old Roman wall and the Tweed, and which has determined the his- tory and faith of the country, was ringing with these fatal words, " Flodden field," " the queen-mother," " Henry of England " and the " strong-handed Bea- touns." Even brave men's hearts were fiiiling them. What, they asked, will become of this hapless country with its slain king and its infant prince, with its vile queen-regent and her selfish Frenchmen, with its jealous nobles and wicked priest-despot, with its English con- queror and his restless troops ? The pall of death lay upon the wide realm. Not a house that lamented not some warrior dead. The whole land was in mourning, and grieved to its heart of hearts ; for on yon dark 9th of September had fallen on Flodden's height the disso- lute and reckless but cultured, handsome and most popular James the Fourth : round him in ghastly ram- parts, grim and defiant in their bloody mail, twelve earls, thirteen barons, the head, the heir, or some mem- ber of every noble family in Scotland, with many of the smaller lairds and freeholders. No wonder that when dauntless Randolph Murray, all hacked and hewed from the fight, brought back the rescued banner, and told the horrific tale, there should be THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 265 " Woe, and woe, and lamentation ! What a piteous cry was there ! Wives, maidens, mothers, children, Shriekino-, sobbing; in despair ; Through the streets the death-word rushes Spreading terror, sweeping on. . . , " But within the council-chamber All was silent as the grave, Whilst the tempest of their sorrow Shook the bosoms of the brave. " Like a knell of death and judgment, Rung from heaven by angel hand. Fell the words of desolation On the elders of the land ! " Hoary heads were bowed and trembling. Withered hands were clasped and rung ; God liad left the old and feeble, He had ta'en away the young." And amid that sorrow, it was known how the licen- tious Margaret Tudor was infuriating the nobles by her intrigues and unblushing sins ; how the resolute Henry of England was planning and pushing the marriage of his little daughter, Mary Tudor, with the infant James the Fifth, plotting selfishly as the Scotch thought, pur- posing with far-sighted wisdom as the after years proved, for the union of the two realms ; and how through the powerful but dissolute and detested Beatouns, France and Rome were seeking to make Scotland a dependency of Gaul and a yet more submissive feudatory of the pope. It was a stirring time to live and labor : more stirring still and stimulating wherein to grow and to learn. John Knox was then a lad, beginning to think. There were, moreover, scandals, murders and threats of poison in the palaces of princes and prelates ; there were undying feuds among the noblest families, which 18 266 JOHN KNOX, involved their retainers ; there was dissatisfaction, re- volt from feudal service, yes rebellion, rising up among the smaller lairds ; there was unrest all over the land. There were three great parties in the realm : the Eng- lish, which was progressive ; the Romish, which was reactionary, French, and false to the core ; and the National, which was aristocratic, conservative and intensely, though not wisely, patriotic. As yet, though there were many traders and mer- chants were multiplying, there was no true burgher party or commoners ; that force had yet to be created — the man who was to be its father and fosterer being but a boy. The smaller lairds and more prosperous yeomen were attached by the ties of blood and affec- tion, and by the still strong bonds of feudal service, to the chief nobles. These parties, English, Romish and Scotch, were now busier than ever plotting and counter- plotting, combining and dissolving their forces, discuss- ing national questions and denouncing as traitors their opponents, often breaking out into fierce faction-fights, and at times actually marshalling their retainers for most stubborn struggles. The minds and the hearts of men and women were full of these burning ques- tions. The boy Knox felt the great heart-throb of his land. Moreover the thoughts of the reflective, shrewd Low- landers were just then strangely quickened and sharp- ened ; new ideas were streaming in upon them, strange stories coming to them from abroad, partly through the influence of the more peaceful and prosperous England, partly through more frequent and familiar intercourse with France, partly through enlarging trade with Spain, Germany and Holland, and partly through the stern THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 267 struggles between the rival prelates of Glasgow and St. Andrews. And amid all the moral darkness and wild crimes and foulest sins of that troublous year were found some earnest souls who did indeed hear " the knell of death and judgment rung from heaven," who longed for God's light and purer Mth, and cried " How long, Lord ! how long ?" This activity of mind and quickening of conscience were very strongly marked in certain districts of the Lowlands, and among the members of two nearly- allied classes, the younger sons of the country lairds and the more prosperous and pious yeomen : — lairds like Erskine of Dun and Cockburn of Ormiston, — peas- ants like " George Campbell of Sesnok and Andro Shaw of Polkemmate." John Knox was a Lowlander and the son of one of these small lairds. Near the Giffordgate of Haddington, upon what is now the property of the Earl of Wemyss, stood at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and was for many years preserved under the title " Knox's Walls," a small, plain but comfortable and substantial house be- longing to William Knox, the younger brother of the Laird of Ranfurly. His wife was the thrifty and strong- brained daughter of a pious and respectable family, the Sinclairs. Such homes were found here and there through the Lothians, Ayr, Galloway, Dumfries and Renfrew ; and they were the hope and the salvation of Scotland. In them were guarded and fostered the tra- ditions of Ninian and the old British church, the rem- nants of that hoary and hallowed Christianity of the Culdees which deserves well your attention ; in them survived the words of Crawar and of Huss, the lessons of Wycliffe, the gospel knowledge and the sturdy pro- 268 JOHN KNOX, tests of the Lollards of Kyle ; in them too were found the real Scotchmen of promise, the sturdy soldiers of the Congregation, of Langside and the Covenant ; in them lived on the Culdee-British folk, with the blend- ing blood of the Cymri, and Scandinavians and earlier Saxons. And in them remained in spite of spies and of stakes, flourished and rose finally to triumphant strength, the old sound Culdee morality, the native Briton's deep religious fervor, and the Lollard's leal- hearted devotion to God's truth. Among them from Hamilton's lips was eagerly welcomed the first message of Luther's revival and reformation, and among them it bore speediest and largest fruit. Out from them came the Covenanter's resolution to have no master in faith but Christ; out from them strode that calm, shrewd, iron-nerved Christian patriotism which spurned as un- manly and unscriptural the lie of " passive resistance," which saw God first and then the king, which mocked and mastered the bloody Guise and the lying Stuart, the despotic Laud and the butchering Claverhouse. Yes, out of them came the Scotch to Ulster, the Scotch and the Scotch-Irish of " the Eagle-wing," and of Penn- sylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Ken- tucky, who blush not as they stand beside the men of "the Mayflower" and of the New England shore. Thoroughly well I know what I aflirm ; for years I was the parish minister where the people cherished the memories of Peden and Cameron, the tales of the Cov- enanters, and the traditions of Melville and Knox. And from hoary-headed witnesses in the Route of Antrim and among the hills of Down have I heard of the lads who went out to stand at Valley Forge and fight at Yorktown. You have more to thank John Knox for THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 269 than nowadays is commonly told. Fronde, whom very few things have escaped in his unequalled search of records and study of this strangely-critical period of Knox, may well say, as he contrasts the palaces of the princes, the fortified castles of the warring bishops, with these really sacred homes of the earnest, sturdy people, — " Happy contrast to the court with its intrigues and harlotries, its idle and petty schemings ; we need not wonder at the regeneration of Scotland when she had such men among her children ; when the war began and was fought in such a spirit, the issue was certain.'' Out of such a home came Knox. In such Scottish homes there has been from time immemorial one chief gathering-place, the great, com- mon fireside. What you see in the " Tales of the Bor- ders," in Burns' " Cotter's Saturday Night," in Carlyle's picture of his granitic father and his house, was to be seen four hundred years ago in Scotland, family and neighbors cosily grouped in the ingle-neuk, beneath "the muckle lum." There sat the passing visitors; there rested the privileged gossip, the " Edie Ochiltree" of the day and the district; there was refreshed the never-unwelcome " traveller," the honorable and recog- nized parish beggar ; there questioned and were ques- tioned the cousins from the borders ; there the trader and the peddler showed and sold their wares and books. There too rose the sound of the harp and the song of the minstrel, long-lingering proofs of the old British stock. And about the date of our story there would swell forth some of the lately-versified psalms, just beginning to be sung in these parts of Scotland, as we know from Dalyell's " Cursory Remarks ;" there would be heard some of those "gude and godly ballates 270 JOHN KNOX, chainged oot of prophaine sangs for avoiding of sinns and harlotrie," forerunners of the times when men should hear " ' Dundee's' wild warbling measures rise, Or plaintive ' Martyrs,' worthy of the name ; Or noble 'Elgin' beat the heavenward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays." By such a fireside, and at that momentous hour of Scotland's history, did John Knox grow up. And if we would know our man and understand him, we must see his home and his surroundings while he is taking shape, for it is largely, but not wholly, true, as Macau- lay says of Luther, " it is the age forms the man and not the man that forms the age." In his home and in those perilous and prophetic hours that boy with the quick eye, large mother-wit, and keen sense of the ludi- crous and true Scotch canniness, would listen to the earnest debates of those shrewd, strong, solemn souls, would slowly come to know his own folk " so fertile in genius and chivalry, so fertile in madness and crime," among whom "the highest heroism co-existed with preternatural ferocity; where the vices were vices of strength, and the one virtue of indomitable courage was found alike in saint and sinner; where power, energy and will are everywhere." There he would be thrilled by the wild tales from the border, and the wilder stories of Pict and Gael, of which that district was, till lately, full. There he would, not unlikely, at some time be awed by the reading of a few treasured parts of Wyc- liffe's Bible, or be amused at some strolling bard who would recite tales from Chaucer or passages from Piers Plowman or David Lindsay. There he would be moved to the inmost depths of his brave heart, so sympathetic THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 271 with all fighters for truth and righteousness, by what live on for us in his own graphic pages, the stories told by a Lollard Campbell of Kyle, or Reid of Carrick, or Shaw of Cunningham, who would paint out the famous scene before James the Fourth between the persecuting bishop and the fearless Adam Reid, and then go on to tell of martyred Risby, the disciple of Wycliffe's school, and the burning of Paul Crawar, the Bohemian mission- ary who came to Scotland to preach the gospel of John Huss. These sentences are not mere fancies. I know the habits of these Scotch homes. I know the long lives of these people, and their wonderfully-tenacious memories. Night after night have I sat beside an old mother in Israel, who had nearly completed her five-score years, who out of a richly-stored memory could recall and repeat the stories of her great-grand- father, and so took me in 1850 back to the plantation of Ulster, the times of Melville and the union of England and Scotland, while the tales of the Covenanters and of Cromwell were sharp and vivid to her as are to us the narratives of Washington and the war. Such talkers would the boy Knox hear. The school and the scholar were well matched. He was learning to know his coun- try. That lesson he mastered, and he made it tell to the defeat of the Guise, of Rome and of France. At eight years of age, John with the keen, gray-blue eyes, with the long, steady, piercing glance, is studying hard in the excellent grammar-school of Haddington, to which his well-to-do father was able to send him. This school was orisrinallv monastic, and was born of that public spirit which showed itself among the Scotch in favor of good education even before the Reformation. There were also schools at Aberdeen, Perth, Stirling, 272 JOHN KNOX, Dumbarton, Killian and Montrose. These six institu- tions, with that of Haddington, were the forerunners of those institutions which have done so much for Scotch enlightenment, and then for common schools in Britain and our own country. Knox learned the value of the local school in his boyhood. Having completed his full course in Haddington, and having learned Latin from some priest whose name has gone lost down the noisy years, Knox enters the old Glasgow University, famous mother of famous men, and writes not the meanest name verily on her long and glittering roll — " Johannes Knox," 1522. When that youth of seventeen began his college course, teachers were lecturing within the old walls who, if not the very ablest of the new day, were by no means routine talkers. They were men who stimulated the curios- ity of youth, started fertile, far-reaching tlioughts, boldly pointed out the scandals of the times in both Church and State, who told out clearly the fiery hopes of the ardent spirits of that momentous hour, and forced their pupils to face the fast-nearing changes. John Knox and his distinguished friend George Buchanan felt the spell. The times were electric. The Diet of Worms had just passed. Mark the years of Luther and of Knox. Knox is born the year that Luther enters the Augustinian monastery of Erfurt. Knox is twelve when Luther nails up his theses, fifteen when bold Martin burns at Wittenberg the papal bull in December, 1520; and just as he begins his university career Luther leaves the Wartburg. Think you that was all unknown in Scot- land, and that John Knox, whom nothing ever escaped, was ignorant of the " beginning of the universal revo- lution "? Nay, verily! And if he had been, he now touched a man who would make him learn it all. For THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 273 me the watching of growth is a joy, the growth of a plant with all that curious chemistry turning earth-salts to fibre and heaven's sunshine and shower to radiant colors and fragrant breath, the growth of a city with that varying play of honest heartwork and rascally scheming, the growth of a colony to a nation. But the growth of a soul! — of an epoch-making soul, of a soul condensing into itself the life and energy of past centuries and shaping the destinies of ages to come — the growth of a Wycliffe, of a Luther, of a Knox — nothing like watching such a growth ! The patience, aye the perfection, of the divine working is learned thereby. The man who, in 1522, was linking the young stu- dents of Scotland with the revolutionary thought of France and Germany was a scion of the best old English stock. John Major, born near North Berwick in 1469, trained first in Oxford and Cambridge, then pupil and at last professor in the splendid University of Paris, mother of noble scholars and nurse of sturdy workers for reform in things civil and sacred, was the student of the fertile records left by the reforming Councils of Pisa, Constance and Basle, the scholastic disciple of John Gerson, Peter d'Ailly and Clemengis, who, though de- voted Papists, had sown seed that bore fruit for the leaders of the Reformation ; and he was now the most stimulating and suggestive of the Scotch masters. Ac- cording to McCrie's excellent summation of the chief topics of this too-much-disparaged man, Major taught " that a general council was superior to the pope, and might judge, rebuke, restrain and even depose him from his dignity ; he denied the temporal supremac}^ of the bishop of Rome, and his right to inaugurate or dethrone princes ; he maintained that ecclesiastical censors and 274 JOHN KNOX, even papal excommunications had no force if pronounced on invalid or irrelevant grounds ; he held that tithes were not of divine right, but merely of human appointment ; he censured the avarice, ambition and pomp of the court of Rome and the Episcopal Order. . . . On civil matters " he taught that the authority of kings and princes was originally derived from the people; that the former are not superior to the latter collectively con- sidered ; that if rulers become tyrannical or employ their power for the destruction of their subjects, they rnay he lawfully controlled hy them^ and proving incorrigible may he deposed by the community as the superior power; and that tyrants may be judicially proceeded against, even to capital punishment." Mark well these proposi- tions, especially those italicised, they are far-reaching, fruitful ; they will appear and reappear ; they will be met in Knox's Counterblast, in his preaching, in his memorable answer to Queen Mary, in his letter to Elizabeth ; they will be heard from the Covenanters, from Milton and the Puritans ; and they will be re- echoed by Patrick Henry and John Witherspoon, and re-embodied in the War of Independence. Cherish your colleges! and let bold-souled, free-spoken. God-fearing men teach in them! Distant days of glory will show the splendid outcome ! One great characteristic, one sharp, distinct feature of the Reform.'ition leaders, and of John Knox in particu- lar, now begins to show itself very clearly in the Glas- gow undergraduate : independence of mind, self-reliance, the bold, free step of a brave man on his own path, resolved to search into appearances, to see the truth and find the real. The historic man of solid common sense and of stubborn facts is now standing forth. While THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 275 pursuing steadily the ordered studies of their course, both Buchanan and Knox select their own favorite pur- suits and follow them, each by himself, with dogged fixedness and enlarging success. Behold the man who will ever tread his own calmly-selected path to the end where the goal shall be reached and the crown shall be won ! Like all his fellow workers in the Reformation, John Knox distinguished himself among his fellows; and, according to some fair authorities, was on gradua- tion "laurelled" by his fellow students and designated as worthy of an assistant professorship. Be this as it may, he did teach ; and speedily in dialectics and rhet- oric, in sound judgment, in singular far-sightedness, in fearless boldness to state his sharp, clean-cut opinions in telling words that forced men to listen and fired them with pleasure or anger, Knox surpassed his most cele- brated teacher. Before the canonical age, he is clothed with the priesthood ; and this early ordination appears to be wholly owing to his great powers and his eminent success as a teacher. Men have had their eyes so fixed on Knox as a worker that they have lost sight of, and hence rather undervalued, the thinker. After somewhat careful reading of his multiform writings, from sermons and liturgies to letters and state papers, I find that I meet a man with much of Wycliffe's dialectic skill and power of terse, true speech and of Savonarola's subtlety and statesmanship ; a man with the thoroughness and sim- plicity of Huss, with the resolution and fearlessness of Luther in seeking and shedding forth God's light, though Georges might fume and Maries might weep, with the quick repartee and thoroughgoing daring of Zwingle and the theological definiteness and churchmanship of Calvin. As priest and professor he is free to pursue his own 276 JOHN KNOX, studies ; and so now, silently, resolutely, he is doing. Late springs often bring large harvests. All God's workers do not, like Calvin, finish their "Institutes" before thirty. Moses grew slowly. While he is teach- ing philosophy and sharpening for after-days his keen wits among the sophists and speculators, Knox is, also, eagerly bent over the great masters of all the reform- ers, those grand old leaders on the paths of philosophical theology and biblical truth, Augustine, Chrysostom and Jerome, with Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas ; he is also searching — fertile field ! — the documents and decrees of Pisa and Constance. All the reform-making forces are now playing upon him. The great schoolmen throw, for Knox, sudden and startling lights upon transubstantiation, the mass, and the allied dogma of a real priesthood ; the great fathers send the searcher straight to the Bible and to Paul, their master; the great councils fix the sharp, through-piercing eyes of this man of reality, of honesty, of purity, upon the Scottish Church with its cardinals and prelates, which, as we have seen in our sketch of Hamilton, was the vilest thing of Rome's making in all the papal world. Yes ! the Romish Church of Scotland was in Knox's day actually worse than the Spanish Church in the quiet hours of the foul Isabella ! As with Wyclifi'e and Cob- ham, Huss and Jerome, Savonarola and Colet, Luther and Zwingle, Farel and Calvin, philosophy and theology, the Bible speaking forth God's truth and law in contrast with the lies of the ages and the traditions of the elders, Christ and his apostles in contrast with the prelates and popes of the corrupt Church, made John Knox revolt against Rome in spirit long before he broke the papal yoke and loosed him from his degrading bonds. THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 277 At that moment of crisis, when this strong and daring soul is stirred to its inmost depths, came the Scottish Stephen back to his land and to lead forth by his work the Scottish Paul. Patrick Hamilton, herald of Christ, is making all the centres of thought thrill. The colleges feel his ardent spirit's power. With him revive Lollard, Wycliffe, Culdee ; with him, fresh from Marburg, Luther and Lambert stalk sturdy and aggressive into the very strongholds of Romanism ; with him comes the gospel to St. Andrews, and the convulsion of mind is great. The reports flew flame-like across the country, and the disputation was loud and fierce and universal. Knox, wherever he may have been, was certainly not the man to let aught of this critical struggle pass unmarked and unmastered. He was remarkable for his broad and hawk-like sweep of view, from which nothing concerning his country ever escaped unseen. But calm, self-poised, canny and shrewd, as even few Lowlanders are, he was not swept away by any wild enthusiasm. John Knox was not the wild radical, not the fiery mob-master, some have painted. Then came the horrid slow fire of the six hours on the headland, Knox felt Hamilton's reek ! Significant fact, — Knox begins his inimitable " Hys- torie" of the Reformation at that point : " Beatoun held and travailled to hold the treuth of God in thraldome and bondage till that it pleased God of his great mercy, in the year of God 1527, to raise up his servand, Maister Patrick Hammyltoun, at whome our Hystorie doith begyn." Almost immediately after this tragic event Knox is himself at St. Andrews ; and is now teaching doctrines so bold, revolutionary and anti-Romish that the blood- shot eyes of the beast-Beatouns are fixed menacingly 278 JOHN KNOX, upon him. He is also for himself " drinking deep of St. Leonard's Well " — as the phrase went to describe the re- ception of the gospel truth. The Reformation is making him day by day bolder, clearer-eyed, more command- ing over man, better read in the Bible, more dangerous to the Beatouns and to the papacy. Therefore he has to flee ; and God hides him, to train slowly and sys- tematically for the doing of the most solid and thorough- going work ever done in any country of the Reformation — a work that is national, a work whose rich and far- reaching influences are still unspent. Very silent and very slow was this training of God; but when the God- led man entered the gap of battle, God's work was seen to be thorough : the prophet spake in the land. II. — The Minister of the Revolution. Some twenty years have passed away since Hamilton died. The Lord, who bade them tarry of old, has given his Greatheart time to grow strong for the hardest and most perilous fight any of the reformers had to wage ; not the longest fight, but the fiercest, almost the fatal fight of the faith. During this time of real growth, many moving scenes have passed before the watcher's eyes. The fires of the Inquisition have all across Scotland been consuming Christ's faithful mar- tyrs ; all over England and Europe the fugitives for the faith are scattered, that they may escape the Beatouns meanwhile, and returning in some happier hour of the future may swell the army of the congregation and strengthen the Church of the Covenant. Yet up and down through the Lowlands, through the districts of Stirling and Perth and the eastern coast, Christ and his gospel are daily winning faithful men and fearless THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 279 women. Aless has spread the fame of Patrick's faith and the tale of his creed ere the cardinal-persecutor and his worse nephew have him driven forth to the conti- nent. Henry Forest, in the spirit of Hamilton, is hur- rying from village to village with the glad tidings, knowmg that his time is short. Tyndale's Bible, Wyc- liffe's reprinted tracts, Luther's theses and Calvin's teaching are spread by the travelling traders, and many nobles and strong lairds are now turning to the light. With one of the strong-handed Douglasses Knox has found his protector and his Wartburg. There teaching the Douglass and the Cockburn boys, the hunted man is in safety at Langniddire, though the spies of Rome are eagerly searching for him, and the well-paid assassins of the Beatouns are gripping their ready daggers to plunge them home to the hilt into his heart whom the able, keen-eyed, strong-souled cardinal recognizes as the dead- liest foe of false France, of plotting Rome and the Beatouns' bloody house. During that shelter-time Knox meets the reforming priest, Thomas Williams, afterwards chaplain with Rough to the fickle and feeble Arran, and by him is led into the clearer light of the gospel. But the true father in the faith of the Father of his country was George Wishart, the prophet of Dundee, who came back in 1544 from his work in England and his resi- dence in the University of Cambridge. If we remem- ber Militz with Huss, Staupitz with Luther and Farel with Calvin, shall we not with interest, delight and gratitude recall in connection with Knox that sweet, strong soul, that most lovable and eloquent apostle and martyr, in whom, as Hetherington says, we may " trace the features of a character of surpassing loveli- ness, bearing a close resemblance in its chief lineaments 280 JOHN KNOX, to that of the beloved apostle John, so mild, patient, gentle, unresisting, his lips touched with a live coal from off the altar and his heart overflowing with holy love to God and compassionate affection to mankind." This saintly man, whom Tytler has slandered but McCrie and full research have triumphantly vindicated, came down the Lothians preaching some time in 1545, and, on reach- ing Haddington, was surprised and saddened by the smallness of the waiting congregation. In it, though so disappointingly and unusually small, was one man who counted thousands untold, — John Knox. Under Wis- hart Knox graduated as master in the school of the gospel ; with him John went henceforth up and down the country hearing those sermons that filled barns, crowded cross-roads and bound " great fields " of hearers round Wishart through the spell of his sublime, prophet- like eloquence. Then and there was it that Knox learned the deep piety of the Scottish Lowlanders, and was shown the power of the preached word by which he should himself in later days convulse Scotland ; then and thus he was taught how to tame his fiery heart into the calm strength that could wait as well as work ; then and thus he was so won by the Christly charity of Wis- hart over against the satanic cruelty of Beatoun that to defend his friend's life against the assassin Knox girt him with a huge Douglass sword and guarded Wishart from that day till the Dundee prophet, on his way to the stake, turned to Knox and, in the name of God and by his own seer-like authority, commanded his guardian to go back to his " bairns " and save himself for his coun- try and the cause of Christ. The saintly confessor was murdered and martyred on the 2d of March, 1546, by the bloody Beatoun ; and on the 28th of May, after a THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 281 night of debauchery and sin, that monster "of unscrupu- lous ambition, far-reaching treachery, deliberate malice, gross licentiousness and relentless cruelty," whom no prejudiced novelist or Ij'ing historian cnn ever white- wash, David Beatoun, cardinal-archbishop of St. An- drews, was slain in wild retribution by fierce, vengeful, maddened men, avengers of outraged homes, of mar- tyred Hamilton, Forest and Wishart. John Knox went back, not in fear, but in sad, solemn submission to what he took as God's will. Therefore is he now on this 10th of April, 1547, standing forth in the days of blood and battle, of wild confusion and wild crisis, the minister of the Revolution. We are once more in the breezy and beautiful St. Andrews, on whose mournful headland we gathered to see that long and ter- rible fight in the slow fire, where the faithful martyr won his crown, and where gentle Wishart likewise wit- nessed the good confession. We are now within the strong castle of St. Andrews, whither Knox has been with his Douglass and Cockburn bairns very reluctantly forced to betake himself for refuge, for a very tempest of fury and vengeance is abroad, and Mary of Lorraine and the priests are the spirits of the storm. What a world was that on which Knox looked out from the battlements of St. Andrews ! In England, that strange mixture of good and evil, of generosity and selfishness, of lust and honor, of tyranny and patriotism ; that elevator of the commons and lover of his English people ; that able and tireless prince who really made England and boldly carried the struggling state through many a deadly crisis to success and victory ; that far- sighted man who saw that England and Scotland must ere long be one nation, and longed to achieve in his day 19 282 JOHN KNOX, that end, but was foiled by his own overhaste and the Romish Beatouns, — Henry the Eighth had passed away. Edward, the good and wise prince, was reigning, with Seymour, the selfish Somerset, as protector. The Eng- lish Bible was multiplying by thousands, and many copies were passing through Newcastle and Berwick into Scotland. The Reformation was stirring the great towns and stealing through the country. The party of prog- ress in Scotland, growing out of " the Assured Scots," was delighted with the establishment of Protestantism in England, with the dissolution of the monasteries and the distribution of their funds. And the plans of Thomas Cromwell and his master were steadily ripening. In France, which through Mary of Lorraine, the queen-mother, was working so actively and ruinously upon Scotch politics, the two great parties of the Guise and of the Huguenot were taking shape, and the signs of the coming death-fight were appearing. The Dauphin, hating England, the Reformation and the Protestant party, was the leader of the ruling party. There was a storm brewing here for both Scotland and England. The great Council of Trent, which had been called together in December, 1545, was now for safety holding its sessions in Bologna ; for the Smalcaldic League is dis- solved ; Duke Maurice of Saxe has deserted his old allies and has joined the emperor Charles the Fifth ; the elector and the landgrave of Hesse are put under ban ; and the war is about to begin which shall end in the disastrous defeat of the Protestants at Miihlberg, and the imprisonment of John Frederick the elector, Luther was dead. The Protestants were divided. There was darkness over all that field, Zwingle's fore- bodings stood out facts. And in Italy the pope, Paul THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 283 the Third, was advising the victorious soldier-emperor to invade England, depose the heretic Edward, place upon the throne Mary the daughter of Catherine, overawe Scotland and sweep the accursed Protestants into the sea. There were ominous threatenings and thunderings from the Vatican. The outlook upon the nations directly influencing and dealing closely with Scotland was alarming ; the inlook upon the hapless land itself was worse. The fatal fight at Solway Moss, only second in its destructive defeat to the battle of Flodden, had killed James the Fifth, had left Mary Stuart a fatherless infant, had established in power the crafty, resolute, unscrupulous papist and Guise Mary of Lorraine as the queen-mother, and had made the weak, vain and vacillating Arran regent of Scotland. There was now open and bitter conflict in the land. The strong and determined party of Mary of Lorraine, guided by her Guise friends, had united with the archbishop of St. Andrews. The Beatouns and the queen-mother, as the pliant tools of France and Rome, had made the most of the folly and the cru- elties of Somerset's invading force to overthrow the English party and the Protestants. Arran had been fully cajoled and mastered by them ; he had been flat- tered and frightened alternately till he basely apostatized from the reformed faith ; he had sold his old friends, and had been at last driven by the priests, by the faction of the murdered archbishop and the furious Mary of Lorraine, to besiege the castle of St. Andrews, where the leaders of the Protestants, the party of progress and the friends of England, had gathered. Into the castle had fled for protection and self-defence against the Guise ftiction, against the persecuting prelates and the fierce 284 JOHN KNOX, Hamilton, many of the noblest and purest-souled men in Scotland, who had neither part in the murder of Bea- toun nor sympathy with tyrannicide. Prominent among them were Sir David Lindsay, Rothes, Henry Balnaves, the learned lawyer, and John Rough, formerly chaplain to Regent Arran, with Hugh Douglass and John Cock- burn. The times were full of peril. In the British isles and on the continent of Europe everything threatened deadliest danger to the divided Protestants. Somerset's arrogance and pride had once more cloven an ugly gulf between the Scotch "men of the gospel" and England; Charles the Fifth, the papists of Germany and the pope were pushing the brave elector and the landgrave to the wall ; the king of France, the Guise princes and Cath- erine de Medici were hatching their diabolic plots, whose outcome should be rivers of blood and a long curse on France. In Scotland the body of nobles longed for the lands of the Church and the treasures of abbeys and monasteries, but cared nothing for the truth. And in England King Edward was marked even at that hour for death, and Mary Tudor, the life of the popish plots and the hope of Spain and the Vatican, was evidently the coming ruler. But three men saw the whole field of danger and death — Thomas Cranmer, William Cecil and John Knox. Cranmer had convictions and conscience, but little cour- age ; Cecil had convictions and courjige, without much conscience ; Knox had all three, and in fullest degree. That strong, retiring man, who was yet to hold the key of the British position and so decide the fortunes of European Protestantism, had become during those long years, to the eye of flesh seemingly wasted years, in the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 285 country-house of the Douglass a truly single-eyed servant of God ; like all the single-eyed, he saw very clearly. Retirement, prayer, meditation, God's word, Wishart's teaching and God's spirit have made him a rarely-de- voted man, relying on God, truly surrendered to Christ's cause, singularly ready to wait God's time for work. What the shepherd-years wrought for Moses, and the Arabian loneliness for Paul, that did the still years at Langniddrie for Knox. When God spake, he never conferred with flesh and blood. Here I have found the secret of his far-sight and fearless strength. From his quiet retreat he had been with those rare gray eyes of his looking out steadily, searchingly, upon the whole fate-fraught situation. His place of outlook was singu- larly favorable. The lairds of Langniddrie and of Or- miston knew all the secrets of the Reformed party at home, and were in constant receipt of the English tidings. Of necessity this twofold knowledge involved the knowl- edge of the court plots, the French intrigues, the move- ments of the English papists, the designs of Charles and the pope, and the fortunes of the Lutherans and the Reformed in northern Europe. In addition to this in- formation, Knox had lying open before him another field, the wealth of which he daily esteemed more highly — the religious peasantry. He knew, from his walks with Wishart, what they wished and what at the right moment they would dare in order to gain their resolute aim. He knew, further, only too well what the iron-hearted Mary of Lorraine and the pitiless prelates were ready and still able to do for the hindering of the gospel and the harrying of its confessors. This clear- sighted and ever-reflective man, at this date forty-two years of age, was now fully matured, marked by that 286 JOHN KNOX, shrewdness, deliberate caution, dauntless heroism, stern love of righteousness, fiery moral earnestness, keen, never-to-be-baffled insight into character, which were ever his characteristic features and were destined to make him master in the great decisive, closing fights for Scotch and English freedom. As Lord Advocate Moncrieff says, " We can imagine how in the deep re- cesses of that man's heart, during those long years of quiet and silent meditation, the light of truth had grad- ually worked its way — how to conviction succeeded in- dignation, and to indignation the deep resolve that when the time should come — be it early or be it late — he at all events would lift his voice and hand to free his native country from her intolerable oppression. And we can afterwards trace how much of knowledge and of learn- ing, not merely of the schools — for he threw dialectics away when he came upon the arena in which he was destined to conquer — not learning merely of the schools, but learning of all kinds ; knowledge of the human heart, knowledge of man, knowledge of affairs, as well as the higher and better knowledge, the result of deep religious impressions, he had stored up in those long, silent years. One can see how all those great resources were grad- ually and silently accumulating within the man, and when the time did come, with what force and vigor, in defiance of fortune and of fate, he wielded them in the cause of his native land." But the time had not yet come, and John Knox knew it. He had marked the course of events ; he had measured the men of the hour. He knew those red- handed men would work no true deliverance ; he was sorry to see better men allying themselves with them. He had formed his cool, exact estimate of the garrison THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 287 of St. Andrews ; he knew the weakness of Arran, the strength of the resolute queen-mother ; he understood Somerset and discounted his promises; he saw the coming French fleet and forces ; he had forecast the issue, and he would have nothing to do with that castle- shelter. Yet shelter he must have, for as the recog- nized strength of the " Gospellers " he is now hunted after with bitter haste and murderous aim by the base- born John Hamilton, successor of Beatoun. To Eng- land he would not, like many of the Scotch freemen, retire, because he had no faith in the blundering, vain- glorious Somerset and no sympathy with the yet half- popish Church of the land; in his own words — "of England then he had no pleasur, be reasonne that the Paipes name being suppressed, his lawes and corrup- tions remaned in full vigour." His wish and plan were to betake himself to the continent, there visit the Re- formers and the great Protestant leaders, and study in some of the best schools. But at last Knox was con- strained by the persistent urging of his patrons and pupils to enter the castle. No sooner had he decided than with wonted energy he began to show his wisdom and his worth. He saw at once " the weakness and foolish content" of the garrison. Instead of brave men's wise measuring of their danger, there was noisy brag- ging ; instead of the cautious and sturdy self-reliance worthy of the champions of a great and momentous cause, there was a lazy leaning on what Knox knew to be but a broken reed — the Protector of England ; in- stead of fortifying to the utmost of their power their vulnerable point, the seaward defences, and thus of an- ticipating the most dangerous attack from the French, who were their strongest foes, the chiefs of the gar- 288 JOHN KNOX, rison laughed away as idle fears the advice of Knox and his warning that the English fleet would forsake them just when most needed. Though the leaders thus showed no f)xith in the schoolmaster as a cool-brained captain and far-sighted statesman (the bitter issue taught them during flight, and in dungeons and in galleys, to change their minds regarding Knox), they had fullest faith in him as an inspiring preacher, and they would have him become the chaplain of the garrison and the gospel-teacher for the townsfolk. How small are the pivot-points of life ! On that wish of these rude men really turned the life of Knox. Into that garrison he had to go at once to learn his own power of speech, and to teach young Scotland to trust him. Verily God leads the blind by ways they know not. Now come out into clearest light three marked fea- tures of the character of Knox, for which from his de- tractors, and the shallow-brained, lazy mob who follow their lies instead of honestly for themselves studying the facts of history, this noblest of Scotchmen and real man of God never gets credit ; and these features, the ever-present marks of highest Christian greatness, are modesty, enduring patience and deepest reverence. Like Savonarola he was summoned to the front ; like the quiet monk of Erfurt he never designed to be a revolutionary. Never during his long, checkered, most romantic career, — and I have read everything available written about him by foes and by friends, — have I found this all-true hero-soul, so strengthening and stimulating to all hearts of freedom and of faith, — never have I found John Knox thrusting himself as braggart forward or running without a divine call. In St. Andrews, THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 289 within the slaves' galley, in England, upon the conti- nent, and again in his native land, he is called authori- tatively to the front and commanded to hold the pass. When called and convinced as to duty in his own clear conscience, he never failed. You need not fear to place him, brave, modest, beside Luther of Worms or Zwingle of Zurich ; he is true as steel ; God's metal there, not earth's dross. Patience ! patience for twenty years under Rome and the Beatouns ! patience with a hot heart like his, with power like his, with self-assertive- ness like his, with stern daring like his, with fierce hates for bad men and worse women like his, with withering scorn of tricksters and shufflers and liars like his ; and these strong passions, these fierce fires, like those in the strong souls of the Hebrew prophets in the days of Jeroboam and of Ahab, were his. I came here neither as apologist nor as advocate. I know nothing to apologize for. Knox needs before an honest jury no advocate. I am here to state, too feebly by far, the grand facts of a grand life. The facts are fame, and without a stain ! Patience ! the patience of Knox is sublime. Remark- able, too, was his steadfast waiting on Providence ; he never fretted, he trusted, and God led him. God's hour was ever for him the fullness of time. But now neither modesty, nor patience, nor reverence, could longer shelter him from the perilous prominence of leader. While many in the beleaguered garrison and town recognized the power of the quiet tutor, there was one man, destined himself to noble work in England and Europe and the martyr's crown at Smithfield, who felt that God and God's cause in Scotland demanded the immediate forth-stepping of their mightiest champion to meet the blaspheming Goliath of Rome in the deadly 290 JOHN KNOX, gap of battle ; and that one man knew himself all unfit, and John Knox to be the David, With a noble modesty and an affection like Jonathan's, John Rough resolved to take second place at St. Andrews and in the fight. He, shrewd and canny, called the leaders quietly together, forcibly stated his convictions, laid before them to their great amusement but joint approbation a plan by which John Knox should be constrained to abandon his reso- lute retirement and be compelled to accept the post for which all hailed him as supremely fitted — the post of leader of the Reformed party in Scotland. Word is quietly passed round from man to man that next Sabbath shall be marked by a memorable scene. The church is packed. The scene is memorable for all time ! John Rough is in the pulpit ; his sermon is upon the election of ministers, and he passes on to speak solemnly and strongly of the power of Christ's congre- gation " over any man in whom they supposed and es- pied the gifts of God to be, and how dangerous it was to refuse and not to hear their voice." Then he pauses ; the church is silent as the grave, on every face save one is expectation, the very air trembles with spirit- ual influences ; the preacher turns to one seat where calm, all unsuspecting, sits the chosen man ; out bursts this summons to John Knox — " Brother ! in the name of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ, I charge you that you refuse not this holy vocation, even as you look to avoid God's heavy displeasure." Startled from his seat, his face ashen gray, his strong heart heaving, his great piercing eyes full of piteous sorrow, John Knox stands in amaze. Now the preacher summons the congrega- tion forth — " Was not this your charge to me ? And do ye not approve this call ?" Then with a great, deep- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 291 throated, one-hearted cry comes the answer till the church rings — " It was ; and we approve it !" One eye-sweep of anguish over the congregation, the strong man bursts into floods of tears and rushes from the church. Oh, terrible tears, when such men weep ! We shall have other tears ! tears of foiled craft ! tears of fell cunning ! tears over which hollow sentiment has for years poured forth its maudlin pity ! Here are tears God will place in his bottle ! the tears of a God-fearing- hero, the tears of conscience, conscience facing God, God's call and God's work with its tremendous respon- sibilities and never-ending issues. Those tears are pledges of a commensurate triumph. Days of agony followed for Knox. At last he surrendered. At once he took up his work. Strife from the outset. " That rotten papist," Dean John Annan, had worried and had worsted simple-minded, straightforward Rough. John Knox challenged and conquered him. That first strug- gle led to a second and sterner strife in the parish church, where the stout John Knox, the old master of debate, faced " a convention," — to use his own hu- morous terms, for this misunderstood man is full of humor, — " of Gray Friars and Black Fiends," and so routed them that the people of the town accepted the Reformed doctrines. Sermons followed that led many souls to Christ; and the Supper of the Lord followed as seal of their faith, and to strengthen Knox and many others for their coming slavery. Through the unutterable folly and selfish baseness of English statesmen, countless instances of which meet and infuriate you as you read the tale of this life-and- death struggle of British Protestantism, and the thence- growing Presbyterianism of Scotland and Puritanism of 292 JOHN KNOX, England ; through the dogged resolution of the prelates and the queen-mother, and above all through the French troops and the deadly plague, the garrison was compelled to surrender. But upon clearest conditions of personal safety and liberty the defenders yielded. These terms were at once basely violated, through the falsity of France and the rascality of Rome. The end was slavery ; for some in the French dungeons of Brest, St. Michel and Cherbourg, and for others in the more horrible holds of the felon's galley. Knox went to the galleys. But the man who in St. Andrews " abashed byrst forth in moist abundand tearis and withdrew himself to his chalmer " is now the unquailing confessor. No more tears ! Let the weeping preacher of the garrison stand over against the warring protester in the galley ! Fet- tered as a felon, with the knout-like lash, the branding- iron, the heavy axe full before his view, John Knox has, one day, violently thrust to his face " a painted board, what they called Our Lady," that he may kiss it. Four officers stand by : the image is forced into John's hand. He looks them in the face " advisitlie, takes the idole, casts it in the rivere, and says, * Let Our Lady now save hirself, she is light aneuch, lett hir learne to swyme.' " Cool daring that ! cooler than the sailor's who steps forward to the bomb and flings it overboard ere it can burst. Knox adds, with his dry wit, "After that was no Scottish man urged with that idolatrie." Ah, Knox ! God-given Greatheart of our Church ! how many such fights didst thou wage that we might not be " urged with that idolatrie " ! But the galley's chains, hard toil, foul air, scant food and untold cruelties well-nigh wrought what the Boa- THK FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 293 touns' daggers failed to compass — his death. Knox, who stepped out of the castle a healthy and vigorous freeman, lies now a wasted slave, at the very point of death with galley-fever. His friends, Henry Balnaves and James Balfour, almost broken-hearted, carry him on deck, to die, if not on his native land, at least with it in sight. It is in the gray dawn of a summer morn ; they gently raise the dying man, turn his face to the land, — to which for its continued oppression the galley-slaves had just brought the French ships and troops to fight England for the pope and the Guise ; they direct the dimming eyes to the steeples of the town, and ask him if he knows the land and the town. The wasted form thrills and stiffens ; the livid ftice flushes ; the eyes fix themselves and steadily brighten ; God has touched him, and John Knox says, " I know it well, for I see the steeple of that place where God first opened my mouth in public to his glory, and I am fully per- suaded, how weak that ever I now appear, I shall not depart this life till my tongue shall glorify his holy name in the same place." Balnaves and Balfour are still in wonder. Knox lived. The same faith that upheld Savonarola when lying faint on the road between Brescia and Florence, the same deep confidence in God that nerved the Saxon witness to say, " Here I stand, I can do no otherwise : God help me : Amen !" buoyed up the heavy-weighted Scotchman in that death-stream. Through life he was marked by that unfaltering confidence. Under Paul's great word, as he calls the hero-roll — " By faith" — you may indeed write all of Knox's deeds ; you may read with but one changed word that great Moses-verse, and vou will therein condense the Scotchman's life — " By 294 JOHN KNOX, faith he forsook Rome, not fearing the wrath of the king, /or he endured as seeing him who is invisible." Nor was he put to shame before Balnaves and Balfour or the foes ; for in February, 1549, Knox was released by the influence of the English ambassador in Paris, and at the personal solicitation of Edward the Sixth. Otit of his nineteen months' captivity in the French galley, Knox steps forth the very life and hope of the Protestant party in Scotland. From the galleys this resolute and active man had sent many a cheering mes- sage to his land ; he had, besides, composed and dis- patched several doctrinal tracts, and had written a preface and commendation for Balnaves' treatise on Jus- tification. His views of truth were all by this time distinctly shaped and finally fixed ; his opinions on church order were fully formed ; he was Augustinian and Pauline and Presbyterian before even he had reached Geneva or conferred with Calvin. And he was well known in England, esteemed for his abilities and virtues by the king, and highly valued by Cranmer before he had ever met prince or bishop. III. — The Missionary in England. From 1549 to 1554, John Knox, the sturdy Presby- terian, who with all his firm principles and fixed creed was full of kindly charities and marked by broadest toleration regarding things indifferent, was the trusted missionary of the king, a recognized minister of the English Church without the once-dreamed-of insult of reordination, and the confidential friend of Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer. In all truth we may write after Edward Tudor, as has been written after William of Orange, " of glorious, pious and immortal memory." If THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 295 ever there was a king whom his land should not cease to mourn, because of the rare virtues lost in his too- early death, and on account of the miseries and narrowly- escaped ruin that followed, if ever there was a prince whom our reformed churches might canonize and hail as saintly, and whom Protestant historians might fearlessly eulogize for his rich, rare promise, it is Edward the Sixth. " Come hither, Eno;land"s hope. If secret powers Sucrgest but truth to my divining thoughts, This pretty lad will prove our country's bliss. His looks are full of peaceful majesty ; His head by nature framed to wear a crown. His hand to wield a sceptre ; and himself Likely, in turn, to bless a regal throne." Thus had many wise, truth-loving souls like Latimer said of Henry's only living boy. They thanked God for his coronation. Gifted richly by nature, and care- fully as well as variously trained and taught, Edward stands forth wealthy with the best qualities of that force- ful Tudor line, with the sagacity and firm will of Henry without his cold-blooded selfishness and his brutal lusts, with the resolute convictions and determined devotion of Mary, his sister, but with independence of thought and freedom of faith, with a true English bravery, patriotism, love of his people and hatred of Romish ag- gressions like Elizabeth, without her intolerable vanities, her disgusting coquetries, her paltry meanness, her loath- some falsity and her irritating whims. Alas ! that with this moral and spiritual strength and wealth, he has the blighted body of all the Tudor boys ; for as you look upon him early girding himself to his perilous work, you see that his, indeed, are 296 JOHN KNOX, " The king-becominf;; o;races, E'en justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness. Devotion, patience, coura<;e, fortitude." That sight of the magnanimous prince and of the Pres- byterian minister working together in one Church for the fuller triumph of the gospel and the completer puri- fication of the Church touches me deeply. The possi- bilities there unfolded are indeed vast ; their realization would have been a thrilling triumph of truth and charity. Had Edward only lived, and had the reforms been car- ried out which Cecil and Cranmer, Knox and Latimer discussed and planned in old Lambeth palace, which Calvin had approved and the king had set his heart on confirming, there might have been one grand British Church from Land's End to Dunnet Head — one in its creed, various in forms, free as to organization, and there might never have been known the dreadful days of dis- sension and distress, of blight and blood, that agitated and anguished the land and its best hearts from Mary of the Smithfield stakes to William of the Boyne ! This truly Protestant prince, Edward, was the sincere lover of good men ; and John Knox was specially trusted and honored of him. That affectionate and leal- hearted Scotchman repaid this royal favor with large in- terest by his noble homage, his faithful devotion in very difficult fields to the interests of the king, by hard and successful work where the prince and Protestantism both sorely needed a hero and a statesman. Prince and preacher were worth}^ of each other. Though his strong frame was now forever shattered, his sound health fled and his diseases were many and painful, Knox, with intrepid spirit and full consecration, THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 297 accepted the king's appointment. If Mary of Lorraine and the persecuting prelates made it impossible for him yet to return to Scotland and there resume his reform- atory work, he would with glad cordiality accept the king's urgently-pressed offer of an English pastorate, or rather mission to the godless garrison and stubborn pa- pists in the north. Thence he could easily communi- cate with the faithful yeomanry of the southern Scotch shires, steadily cheer them in their trials and watch the progress of events. Never was there more eager worker, more zeal-eaten reformer, than Knox in the days of his English exile. With that remarkable shrewdness and far-sighted policy which the boy-king very early showed, John Knox was sent to the field of special danger and battle, the field needing coolness and nerve, the soldier's dash and the statesman's sagacity, the fullest knowledge of the local dispositions and the tact to deal with them, the sleepless watchfulness of a sentinel and the zeal of a true-souled missionary. That field was the north of England. This district was a troublous part always, a very land of peril to the throne, the home of strong and factious leaders and their reckless followers from the days of Harold down to those of James the First. At the date of our story the North was full of powerful Catholics and plotting priests, who outwardly conformed to the new order while in heart they were papists and were watching eagerly for the king's death or an oppor- tunity to excite a revolt in Romish Mary's favor. The chief prelate was Cuthbert Tonstall; and he, though con- forming, was in real sympathy with the bigot Gardiner, with De La Pole and the pope rather than with Cran- mer, Latimer and Edward. His see of Durham and 20 298 JOHN KNOX, the adjoining districts were a very hotbed of sedition. Moreover it was the easy and the open pathway into Eng- land's heart from Scotland, where the Guise party under the queen-mother, and the Romish prelates under the per- secuting archbishop, were concocting with France and the Vatican that fell conspiracy against England and the re- formed faith in Britain which ofttimes, through Somer- set's blundering and Elizabeth's caprices and selfishness, almost succeeded, and which ended only with the execu- tion of Mary Stuart and the destruction of the Armada. On this high place of the perilous field is set the man who is there to watch the plotters and study their plans that he should outwit and defeat them ; and there with great courage takes up his task that good soldier so ready to endure hardness ; and there without delay begins his labor that sickly preacher with the clear, all-reading eyes, with the cool brain quick to plan, shrewd and fer- tile in resource, with the unfailing insight which no masked face could deceive nor craftiest snake in the grass escape, with the daring that no foe could shake, and with the ringing, rousing speech which like pealing trumpets stirred men's blood. Minister of Berwick-on-Tweed, in the English parish- church, now stands the reforming missionary. It was a battle-town, a key-fortress of the borders. Here was a strong garrison. The soldiers were of all the English troops the hardiest dare-devils, many of them wild, licentious, godless. They had met their match, manlier than their manliest, more fearless than their boldest. Knox knew troops. He had begun his work as the sol- dier's chaplain, and had since seen the felon's life in the French galleys. With rare humor and quick wit, full of Christian boldness and charity, Knox knew how to THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 299 deal with such men. The camp bowed to his power ; and that garrison in later days furnished Elizabeth some of her bravest and trustiest troops. Then the town felt his influence ; and the church was crowded to hear a full gospel and very bold reforming, Protestant truth. Out passed the untiring missionary through the wide district over which the royal commission gave him unchallenge- able right to itinerate. At the crosses of the towns, upon the highways, everywhere he preached his stirring sermons. His zeal consumed him and fired the people. His words were like battle-axes. No more than Wycliffe did he use mincing words. His Protestantism was no shadowy, hollow thing, but solid, pure and clean-cut. Cuthbert Tonstall, furious at this invasion, has him in- dicted to appear for heresy, schism and treason, and an- swer for himself before the Council of the North. Like a warhorse snorting in the battle-breeze, Knox wel- comes the fray. He has been longing to unmask that same hypocritical and lying Cuthbert, The challenge is accepted ; the glove of the English mass-monger is in the Scotchman's bonnet. The lists are stretched at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The day of the encounter comes. Knox touches Tonstall's shield with the bare point of his lance. There will be no quarter. Neither was there. Before a vast crowd of witnesses, John Knox, with all the skill, subtility and swiftness given by his old train- ing, with bold, heavy strokes and rapid turns, proved himself a deadly antagonist to Tonstall and his fellow prelates and priests. The idolatry of images, the blas- phemy of the mass, the falsehood of transubstantia- tion, Peter's primacy and priestly absolution, — the hy- pocrisy and the deceit of Tonstall himself, and the dis- section and criticism of the bishop's last sermon, — the 300 JOHN KNOX, exposition and defence of the full reformed faith, — were that day stated so skillfully and convincingly, with irony so keen, with sarcasm so cutting, w^ith volleys of such resistless wit, that the people laughed for months, yet turned to the Saviour with a faith that never faltered during Mary's bloodiest days. Knox was master of the North, and soon was transferred to that city of his triumph as its pastor. While in Newcastle he did most efficient service down the east of England and along the Scotch borders. But the king wants his help in and around London ; and now you find our resolute Presbyterian one of the six royal chaplains. These chaplains with Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer formed the Revision Com- mittee of Edward. The king was quite dissatisfied with the degrees of reform permitted by his father ; he would, have it carried very much farther ; he desired the thorough purgation of the prayer-book, which had been largely the translation of the old Missal and the Bre- viary ; he longed to bring the Church of England into very close conformity with the reformed churches of the continent, and particularly of Geneva. His trusted agent was Cranmer, and Cranmer was, through Knox, in correspondence with Calvin. The part John Knox had in the revision of King Edward's time was very considerable. McCrie, Mon- crieff, Lorimer, Froude, an interesting article in the Edinburgh Review, prove this most suggestive fact. His friends Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, and his foes Weston and Cox, for different reasons refer to the large share Knox had in that revision of the Liturgy, and also in the changes made in the Articles. And to this hour John Knox's spirit presides over every communion in the evangelical churches of the Episcopal family ; * THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 301 for we know from himself, and even more conclusively on such a point from his fiercely-hating enemy, Dr. Weston, who in a discussion at Oxford, in 1554, ac- cused Latimer of aiding and abetting John Knox in the alteration, " that the renegade Scot did take away the adoration of Christ in the sacrament. So much pre- vailed the authority of that one man at that time." Sacramentarians have always hated the very name of Knox for what he did in England and more effectually established in Scotland. It had been well that Knox's authority had prevailed more and lasted longer. Under Edward there was no more influential man in the king's council. And in carefully reading over Cranmer's re- vision I can often trace Knox's hand. Any position in the English Church might have been his possession. He is presented to the commanding post of the rectory of All-Hallows. The king and Northumberland, who is now protector, offer him the princely see of Rochester. Both the living and the bishopric he politely but positively declines. The proud duke and the amazed Council are sorely disappointed and greatly dissatisfied. They needed the strong man. They summoned Knox to appear and account for his conduct. He came; and, courteously thanking them for the honor, plainly told them his reasons — Episco- pacy was unscriptural, unapostolic, ruinous to the inde- pendence and liberty of the Church. The strong man would work for them, content with his ^£40 a year, but he would not take a palace, a peerage, thousands of pounds, and soil his conscience. He would not force them to think with him, but he will not be forced to think with them. And John Knox walked out the su- perior of them all ; a grand, good man, splendid in his 302 JOHN KNOX, catholic spirit and his loyalty to conscience, in the full maturity of his convictions and his courteous recognition of their kindness, in his sturdy independence and his noble elevation above human ambitions and sordid aims. Speedily came the black and bloody days. Edv^ard is dead, Mary reigns ; fires flame and blood runs. That tale of horror must some time be told at St. Paul's with Latimer at the stake. Thousands fly for life and liberty, bishops even. Knox, without his £40, — as in his unfailing fun he tells us, — holds his ground, preach- ing for a full year boldly in Buckinghamshire. At the end of November, 1553, he returns to Newcastle. His friends hear that the bloodhounds are upon his track, and they wisely compel him to retire to the continent. He finds friends and shelter in Dieppe, whence he watches for some anxious weeks the course of the Marian reac- tion and the wild, disastrous recoil from the strain to which Somerset and Northumberland had subjected the people. John Knox learned in England and in Dieppe that you cannot force a real reformation; you must edu- cate by the truth and conquer error by moral and not by material weapons. He had seen the utter hollow- ness of much of Henry's work ; he had seen the pliancy of the nobles and the hypocrisy of the prelates ; he had seen that the strength of English Protestantism lay in the burghers of the towns, in the country gentry, in the freeholders and the yeomen, those ancestors of the Puritans and those forerunners of the Ironsides ; and that lesson he never forgot. Scottish history and suc- cess are its realization and embodiment. During those February weeks, the first calm and silence this earnest, devoted man hns had since John Rough startled him by his summons to his life-service, Knox is engaged in a THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 303 thorough, scrupulously-exact study of his life and re- view of his ministry. He is alone with God, and humbly but carefully he tries himself and his work. No wonder that work was so mighty ! After this reverent, purifying self-examination and communion with God, John Knox writes a long, affec- tionate letter to his mother-in-law, a cheering pastoral to his old friends, and an eloquent appeal to the Prot- estants of England. The pastoral concludes with these remarkably prophetic words — words foreshadowing the work of Knox in Scotland in resisting tyranny, and of his Puritan children in England : " If I thought I might have your presence, and the presence of some other assured men, I would jeopard my own life, and let men see what may be done with a safe conscience in these dolorous and dangerous days. But seeing that it can- not be done instantly without danger to others than me, I will abide the time which God shall appoint. But hereof be assured, that all is not lawful nor just that is statute by civil law ; neither yet is everything sin before God which ungodly persons allege to be treason." The appeal is entitled " An Admonition to the Professors of God's Truth in England." It was written on hearing of the imprisonment of Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, and is a very fervent and at the same time a very ve- hement exhortation to constancy. He denounces the return to popery in a strain of unmeasured severity, sparing no amount of invective even against the queen herself. One passage, which came to be of note, may give some idea of its general style : " In writing hereof, it came to mind that after the death of that innocent and godly king, Edward VI., while that great tumult was in England for the estab- 304 JOHN KNOX, lishment of that most unhappy and wicked woman's authority — I mean, of her who now reigneth in God's wrath — entreating the same argument in a town in Buckinghamshire named Hammershame, before a great congregation, with sorrowful heart and weeping eyes I fell into this exclamation : — " ' Englande, now is God's wrath kindled against thee ! Now has he begun to punish, as he hath threat- ened a long while by his true prophets and messengers. He has taken from thee the crown of thy glory, and hath left thee without honor, as a body without a head. And this appeareth to be only the beginning of sorrow, which appeareth to increase. For I perceave that the herte, the tounge, and the hand of one Englyshe man is bente agaynst another, and devision to be in the whole realme, whiche is an assured signe of desolation to come. " ' Englande, Englande ! doest thou not consider that thy common wealth is lyke a shippe sailyng on the sea ; yf thy maryners and governours shall one consume another, shalte thou not suffer shipwracke in shorte processe of tyme ? "'0 Englande, Englande! Alasse ! these plagues are powred upon thee, for that thou woldest not knowe the moste happy tyme. of thy gentle visitation. But wylte thou yet obey the voyce of thy Lord, and sub- mitte thy selfe to his holy wordes ? Truely, yf thou wilt, thou shalt fynde mercy e in his syght, and the estate of thy common wealth shall be preserved. " ^ But, Englande, Englande ! yf thou obstinatly wilt returne into Egypt; that is, yf thou contracte mariage, confederacy or league, with such princes as do mayntayne and advaunce ydolatrye (suche as the em- pereure, which is no lesse enemy unto Christe then THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 305 ever was Nero) ; yf for the pleasure and frenshippe (I saye) of such princes, thou returne to thyne olde abhominations, before used under the Papistrie, then assuredly, Englande ! thou shalte be plagued and brought to desolation, by the meanes of those whose favoures thou seekest, and by whome thou arte pro- cured to fall from Christ, and to serve Antichrist.' " This strong but stirring appeal found its way into England — how does not appear. That it did reach its destination, however, and did produce alarm among those it denounced, is certain. Then he resolves to see the churches of Helvetia, and converse with the faithful and famous men of the Refor- mation that he might test by comparison his own work and his own views of truth and church order. Every hour Knox is a student ; every opportunity he is using for the struggle soon to begin in Scotland. Wherever the now familiar and honored friend of Cranmer and Ridley, the brave witness in the French galley, and the king's chaplain, goes, he is welcomed with open arms. Round him the pastors, teachers and learned Protest- ants rally, and he talks to them in fluent, forcible Latin of England's past glory and present gloom. To him at each great centre come for consolation the exiled bands of the English fugitives. Completing his tour, and yearning like Paul for news of his children in the faith, Knox hurries back to Dieppe to get his letters, and then to return to the fight and perchance the fire in England. But he is dissuaded, not without much difficulty, from that certainly foolhardy if not fatal attempt. To Mary and her fierce advisers and agents in her bloody cru- sade, Gardiner and Bonner, John Knox was more hate- ful than any reformers save Cranmer and Latimer. 306 JOHN KNOX, To Geneva Knox now goes, and meets for the first time his life-friend and distinguished brother in the faith, John Calvin, preacher-prince of the city, and master-teacher of the reformed churches. Soon Calvin, who immediately took Knox to his confidence and af- fection, persuades the matured and eloquent Scotchman to take charge of the English congregation at Frank- fort-on-the-Main ; and the faithful man, whose toil and pain never made pause in his work for souls and his Master, takes up the labor, pushes it with tact and suc- cess, till the ill-omened coming of Cox and his bigoted high-churchmen, who, worshipping their prayer-books and their liturgy rather than Christ, rend the congre- gation, lay a cowardly and lying charge of treason before the magistrates against Knox, and stop the pleasant united services. Characteristic and prophetic act that ! There will be many such, till they end in Cromwell and Puritanism ! Driven forth again by persecution, — no wonder John Knox liked neither high-churchism nor bishops, — the patient and forgiving man, for such he showed himself in all this scandalous and most vexatious affair, returns to Geneva, where with Christopher Goodman he becomes pastor of the English church. For five years he is, though exile, the happy pastor in the city of the lake, then the very life-centre of the reformed churches. " Sweet retreat for the weary ! I ween. How beauteous is the scene ! The snowy Alps like walls of heaven Rise o'er the Alps of green. Neath steel-blue sky with flashing lights, Stretched out below your gladdened eye, You see the lake serenely lie Beneath the shadowy, crystal heights." THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 307 Five restful, work-filled, growth-filled years ! Those GeneA^an hours with Calvin and Beza, with Christopher Goodman and the many good and devoted fugitives whose names glisten on the pages of the "Livre des Anglois," were the very Sabbath of this busy, battling life ! — the only Sabbath he should know till God gave him rest from his labors in the little room at the Neth- erbow Port, Then and there the student, statesman and saint ripened into perfect maturity for his last and his immortal work. God seems to give to many of his chief servants these Sabbatisms on earth, quiet periods of growth, like what the Scotch and the Ulsterman calls the still days of July — " gray, filling days " — when the grain is swelling and maturing : Wycliffe had them in Oxford, Huss in his retirement at Tabor, Savonarola in his two silent years before his Brescian ministry, Luther upon the Wartburg and Zwingle at Einsiedeln, and Knox in Geneva. Before the chief life-effort the Master said, " Come ye yourselves and rest awhile." And out of that Genevan rest the Exile steps to become the Father of his Country ! Those five years of quiet, of watching, of silence ! how much they explain ! There slowly gathered, as the fire and the storm in the slowly, silently-massing clouds, the intense, concentrated fires and fullness of resource that kindled into strong and steady flame the Scotch hearts, and never failed till a new church and a new country rose. There Knox grew as familiar with the rival courts of Paris and Madrid, with the spirit, aims, powers and allies of the parties of the Guise, the Medici and the Huguenot, as with those of the Romish, the National and the English in his native land, with the distractions and divisions of the Protestants of Europe, the secrets of their weakness and 308 JOHN KNOX, the mistakes in their civil policy and church-forms, with the daily-strengthening popish reaction, the plots of com- bining courts against the reformed faith, and the plans of the Vatican to unite ambitious princes and bigoted papists in a new crusade whose forces should march through E-ome-ruled Scotland to the full subjugation of England and the final obliteration of Protestantism in that stubborn stronghold. There, too, Knox so multi- plied wise and watchful friends across the continent that he had a correspondent at every strategic point, and a reliable informant at every plotting court. There, too, he measured the whole Scottish field, surveyed the possible forces, saw that not with plotting princes and selfish nobles, but with pious peasants and stout burgh- ers, he must win the battle, just as Cromwell, his great successor in the long fight for freedom, saw half a cen- tury later. There he lived in silence, thinking, not idling, but waiting " In the calm Of one who hath long found and keeps unswerving Clear purpose still." At times one cannot but wonder at that long, weary waiting-time : those years in the hiding-place, those health-shattering months in the noisome galley's hold, the years of English ministry, and now the years of exile. " Known unto the Lord is the end from the beginning." "What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." And now it is plain that nothing of the knowl- edge thus gained of the Lowland peasants, of the condi- tion of England, of the French designs, of the projects and plans of the rapidly-maturing League, can possibly be spared if Knox is ever to rally a force whose battle- word is " No surrender," is ever to convince the astute THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 309 Cecil, is ever to baffle Maiy of Lorraine, is to outwit the cunning Maitland, is to master the ablest and most deceit- ful woman of her day and defeat the craftiest and deadli- est conspiracy ever hatched by the Ahithophels of Rome. Late in life, you say, to step forth to this great task of remaking a country and reforming a church ! Late ! " Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty ; Sophocles Wrote his grand Qidipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years ; And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer at Woodstock with his nightingales, At sixty wrote his Canterbury Tales ; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty years were past. There are, indeed, exceptions ; but they show How far the Gulf Stream of our youth may flow Into the arctic regions of our lives. When little else than life itself survives." Yea, verily, right notable work the world has seen wrought by men past fifty ! In the East a new day began with the Hegira of Mohammed, then fifty-three ; and in the West, with the grasping by Oliver Cromwell, when fifty, of the helm of the commonwealth, and the landing of John Knox, when fifty-four, in Scotland, began what Green calls " modern England, the England among whose thoughts and sentiments we actually live," that memorable and momentous era " more glowing and important in the history of the human mind than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo," the age of Bacon, Spenser and Shakespeare, of Melville and Knox, of Cecil and Elizabeth ! the age of the true freemen, of the free parliaments and the free gospel ! 310 JOHN KNOX, IV. — The Maker of Scotland. If Scotland, her sons and grandsons, her ideas, prin- ciples, story and religion, be of any interest to mankind and any value to heaven and earth ; if Scotland be no mere wild welter of turbulent factions and clans, no wilderness weary and wasted ; if she be no more either England's foe and perplexity, like the Ireland of to-day, or the hiding-place of base traitors and cowardly assas- sins, or the easy, open pathway for England's invaders ; if she be a true power working mightily for truth, faith and liberty ; if she have saving and ennobling forces to use for the world's to-day and to-morrow, anything to stir men's blood withal, — and without either impertinent arrogance or paltry pride we may claim for Scotland and her own Ulster, for the Scotch and Scotch-Irish, at least that meed of praise, — then this reformation and trans- formation must have adequate cause : that cause under God is pre-eminently one man, one Spirit-born and Spirit-guided man, with his faith and his work. Chris- tian, Presbyterian Scotland has poured forth into the world and still continues to pour a vitalizing and puri- fying flood, a social and moral Gulf Stream ; and this river of life — this broadening river of the free civil life, of the strengthening, sanctifying spiritual life, — this river blessing many nations of earth, and making more and more glad the Presbyterian city of God, — flows straight from one spring, a spring God-given, God-kept, God-filled — the deep heart and matured faith, the life and labors, of John Knox. Before him was no such Scotland ; after him Scotland has become and continues to be one of the true rulers of the world. Her monu- ment will be found in her own Presbyterianism and its THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 311 outgrowth, English Puritanism ; their work is pre-emi- nently this Republic of the West. If, then, you seek Knox's monument, look around ! . Knox came back to Scotland in a dark day when all things seemed conspiring and co-operating to make the luckless land of his birth and of his anxieties the en- slaved province of France, a nation which has always degraded, ruined and finally lost her conquests and colonies. John Knox barred that way of death. He came back to Scotland in a day when there w^as no true Scottish people, no sturdy commons as now known in history. There were warring, jealous nobles, patriotic somewhat but selfish rather, as we see from the stories of the Balliols, Comyns and Hamiltons; there were restless clans, feudal retainers, some promising burghers and traders, and a loose mob of common folk, but no people. John Knox changed that dismal state of things. He came back to Scotland when the reformed faith was verily in the death-gasp ; he restored life and nursed it into victorious strength and robust health. He came back when there was no organized church of the gospel. The resolute reformer founded the " Auld Kirk," and the great moderator made her the most compact and symmetrical church in Christendom, so far as organization and form are concerned. He came back to Scotland when there were no com- mon schools and but six grammar schools. He planned and labored to have a suitable school beside each church ; — religion in his land was not to be uneducated, nor education irreligious. And Knox left behind him a steady, conscientious. God-fearing nation, a sturdy, school-loving, courageous 312 JOHN KNOX, people, a conquering, colonizing Presbyterian people, guarding liberty and loving the Bible, God's Magna Charta of fullest freedom, singing " Scots wha hae" and raising " plaintive Martyrs" or " wild Dundee" amid the snows of Sutherlandshire and Canada, by the banks of the Lagan, the Schuylkill and Susquehanna, on the walls of Quebec and Derry, in the frosty blasts of Min- nesota and the sultry air of Katiawar, upon the hills of Down and Virginia, across the wheat-fields of our own great West and along the sheep-walks of Australia. "Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land !" And it was John Knox made these lines possible. " Scotch literature and thought, Scotch industry ; James Watts, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns," — (and must we not now add that true son of Knox, the rugged but real Scotchman whose words these are, — Thomas Carlyle ?), — " I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of those persons and phenomena ; I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland ?" To us, Scotch and Scotch-Irish, race of resolute freemen, well may the name of John Knox be ever a battle- blast and household boast ! father of Scotland, founder of the old church, framer of the sacred covenant ! oh, men of the blue banner, forget not the great standard- bearer of your King ! Come, now, let us study his work somewhat in de- tail, — this splendid formation, this making of historic Scotland. John Knox saved his country. He foiled the queen- mother, the Romish faction and France. In 1555 the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 313 reformer had made a flying visit to Scotland ; and into the brief months of this stay he had by his far-seeing plans, his zeal, his contagious enthusiasm and his pow- erful spirit really condensed the toil of years. Like Elijah coming out of his periodic retirements, Knox burst forth and wrought with a concentrated purpose and power that in a short time accomplished a great revolution. Many converts were won to the reformed faith ; the halting became decided ; many lairds allied themselves with the Protestant party, and also several nobles. These lords and peasants separated themselves from the Romish communion and formed the nucleus of the coming church of Scotland. After the departure of Knox to resume his work in Geneva, he was summoned to appear before the Romish bar, he was condemned as a pestilent heretic to be burnt alive. This sentence was executed upon his effigy, and a fresh decree of outlawry and of major excommunica- tion pronounced. Probably Calvin's city was the one only place where he could have remained three years in peace and safety. But in 1559, after repeated calls from the leaders of the patriotic and Protestant party, which had been gradually rising from pressing entreaties almost to posi- tive commands, John Knox returned, just ten years after he had been so treacherously carried off to slavery in the galley. He landed on the second of May at Leith. He had been forbidden through the paltry spite of Elizabeth, that proud stickler for the divine right of kings, to pass through England. Forever let the first May-days be in Scotland red-letter days ! The great jubilee-trumpets sounded on that happy May-day ! Knox came with the fullest knowledge, and with posi- 21 314 JOHN KNOX, tive evidence just acquired on shipboard, of the Guise- Romish plot against Scottish and English independence. Active correspondent that he ever was, he had searched carefully into, and been thoroughly informed of, the subtle and complicated plots of Rome, Paris, Madrid, Holyrood and St. Andrews, and also those of the Cath- olics in London and the north of England. Shrewd questioner that he was, he had discovered on board the very vessel in which he sailed an agent of France and Mary Stuart going to the English papists and to Mary of Lorraine ; and from him Knox ferreted out the whole secret. The keen-eyed watcher was therefore fully prepared for the arrant treachery of Mary of Lor- raine ; and hence it in no wise surprised him, though it roused his honest indignation, fired his zeal and decided his course, to see his friends in their simple- hearted truthfulness so vilely duped by the wily regent. On meeting the Lords of the Congregation he learned that the false Guise woman, having served her purpose by its proclamation, had now decreed the revocation of her lately-given, yes, her solemnly-pledged edict of tole- ration, had outlawed all the Protestant preachers, Knox in particular, had banned the congregation, and had in obedience to the behests of her brothers and her bishops commenced fresh persecutions. By many of his friends Knox was urged to fly once more. No ! he knew the time for action had now come; he knew Scotland, and that she was ready for the first great struggle. That character- istic act of the queen-mother, now regent, was the spark to the powder which had been massed, ready for explo- sion, since yon fiend-like burning a few months ago at St. Andrews of Walter Milne, the beloved and the hoary-headed reforming priest of the blameless life and THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 315 the sweetest charity. John Knox would not fly ; he resolved to fight ; he reheartened the lords ; he pealed the trumpet of defiance, and the Lowlands answered back the cry and the Perthshire Highlanders re-echoed it. The Lords of the Congregation, name as memorable in the annals of Scotland as Egmont and Horn in the Netherlands or Pym and Hampden in England, took heart again, regrasped their abandoned arms, summoned the daring yet shrewd Knox to their side and their councils, and prepared now in earnest for the first great fight in Scotland on behalf of Christ's crown and cove- nant. John Knox, the master of the storm and the very soul of the party of freedom, said, " Satan rageth to the uttermost, and I am come, thank God, in the very brunt of the battle." Brave hero of the good fight ! he never left that battle-brunt till death ! In Scotland, as in Zurich and Geneva, and as ulti- mately was seen in France during the Guise-Conde struggle and in Germany during the wars of Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus, the separation of religion from politics and great national questions was a complete im- possibility. Piety and patriotism went together ; yes, the Bible and battle. That fact must be borne in mind if we sincerely wish to understand this memorable era and to deal justly with its memorable men. Then min- gling with the work of the Reformation and thwarting, yes largely marring, the labors of the Scottish reform- ers and their infant church, were the plans of the ever- selfish nobles, the rival projects of the jealous houses ; there were the plots of France, England and Spain ; and behind all these now co-working and now conflicting forces there were the ceaseless conspiracies and the* deadly designs of Rome. It was a stern hour, needing 316 JOHN KNOX, and filled by strong men ; the stronger man has now come. Knox sees at once that freedom can be won for land and conscience only by force, and he is ready for the strife. His old master, John Major, had very early shown him the unstatesmanlike and unscriptural nature of " passive resistance," and the right and the duty of the community to take strongest measures for its self- preservation and the deposition of tyrants. And his own life and his study of the continent had amplified and confirmed these opinions. These bold views, now so familiar and so fixvored of all freemen, form the most striking parts of his grand appeal to England, and his rousing blast against Mary Tudor, for which she hated him and on account of which mean-spirited Elizabeth never forgave him. The Tudor instinct took alarm at the man who began the revolution in which was lost for- ever the divine right of kings. Knox is now in the midst of the congregation and with its armed, resolute yeoman-soldiery. He cheers them forward to the good fight. He is in himself an army. He does not ap- prove, nay, in terms he disapproves, of the Perth riots, and the consequent destruction of the church and mo- nastic buildings, saying they were the acts of " the rascal multitude." He encourages to the fullest, how- ever, and guides by his larger knowledge and unfailing foresight the Protestant leaders ; he preaches cheering and earnest sermons to the brave burghers and yeomen in the steel bonnets ; he rushes like a prophet of fire through the Lowlands and along the borders ; he stirs to fresh activity the English ambassador, utterly disheart- ened and disgusted by reason of Elizabeth's stinginess, vacillation and dislike of Knox; he corresponds with Cecil, who is full of admiration for Knox's ability ; THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 317 he foils and perplexes the Jesuit and the Guise, the French allies and the emissaries of the pope ; he draughts and pushes to a happy conclusion, by Cecil's aid, the famous and pivotal treaty of Berwick by which Elizabeth and England for their own safety came at last to the aid of the Congregation, the Estates and the reformed Scotland. Thus for a year, scarce waiting even to sleep, wrought, despite his weak body and oft- times most painful disease, this ruler of the wild crisis ; till the lords were victorious, till the French in Leith were by siege starved to surrender, till their troops went home, and the ever-plotting, resolute, daring, de- ceitful Mary of Lorraine went with broken heart and ruined plans, with wasted frame and lost life, down to her unlamented grave. To Scotland Cecil himself comes down, and finds that his best helpers are the three men who are Knox's best friends and most trustful as- sistants, Argyle " the goodly gentleman, universally honored of all Scotland," Lord James Stuart, like " a king's son in person and qualities," and Maitland, " most in credit for his wit." That triumvirate and the minister of St. Giles now ruled Scotland. The treaty of Edin- burgh was concluded ; " the objects for which the war had been undertaken were obtained. The Scots were left to their own resources to go on with the Reforma- tion. Elizabeth's crown was secured. The Catholics had seen their opportunity fade away amidst the diplo- matic perplexities of Europe." Scotland was saved from her last deadly peril save one, and Knox saved her. Knox calls forth the Commons of Scotland. Durinn; the past year and in the opening months of this 1560, Knox has been prosecuting an even more fruitful work ; has been achieving a grander victory than that over 318 JOHN KNOX, the queen-mother and the French, certainly a much more permanent triumph, — the creation of the Scottish Commons and their introduction into public life. A new power now exists in the state. It is the party and power of conquest. The Scottish people begins to be. The people of a land are its real princes. Too much has history of old been a heraldry of princes, a genealogy of kings. Many readers long felt that method to be a very serious fault of the older annalists. Macaulay and Froude, Motley and Green, have proved it to be a fault, and have made their better way win the world through their lifelike and unfading pictures of the masses and their masters. What are the people of a country ? what are their native peculiarities, gifts and powers ? what have been their religions, their contests, victories, defeats ? what were their original conceptions and cus- toms as shown in their speech, usages, ballads and traditions ? how much or how little has there been of foreign elements mixed with the original stock ? — these ethnical, popular, vital questions are now felt to be the questions of chief importance to the students of great critical movements, and their fuller, if not final, answers will yield fresher and more fruitful themes than the study of the family rolls of the Angevin or the Guelph. These remarks are specially applicable to Scottish story, and pre-eminently to the tale of this " wild crisis," this period of Knox and the Reformation. That war for freedom and faith was very largely a "peasant-war;" though it was a peasant-war immeasurably distinct in its aims, and different in its results, from that of Ger- many. In Scotland there had been of old nobles, lairds, retainers, chieftains, clansmen ; but no commons, no banded burghers, no middle class. The people as found THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 319 in England, the Netherlands and Germany, the burghers meeting us in the Lombard and Hanseatic leagues, the organized commons as presented in Nuremberg, in many free cities and their territories, did not in the opening of the sixteenth century exist in northern Britain. There were present, indeed, splendid and unsurpassed materials. There were in the Highlanders, but specially in the Lowlanders, the representatives of the grand old British stock, enriched with a strong dash of the blood of Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Scots. In southern Scotland, which is, so far as the Reformation* and its consequent, the national revolution, are concerned, the chief, indeed almost the only, factor of importance, there was a mass of sturdy, self-reliant, shrewd peasants, fairly represented by the Lollard Reids, Shaws, Camp- bells and Chalmers of Ayrshire, by Craig and Knox of the Lothians, by Armstrong and Kerr and Brown of the borders. They were a mettlesome set of folk, some- what rude and rough, used to the chase and weapons, familiar with the flame of the bale-fires and not loath to hear the battle-call; but religious and fervid withal; thoughtful, argumentative, slow to be convinced, but stubborn as unyielding granite when persuaded ; fond of their homes and lands, passionately patriotic even for Scotchmen, cherishing affectionately their ancestral memories and deeply moved by them ; poor, but thrifty and full of the practical sagacity, the hard-headed sense and the heroic perseverance taught in the stern school of necessary self-denial. So they meet us in the pages of ^neas Silvius, in the pictures of the sharp-eyed because selfish Frenchmen who desired to serve them- selves of the land, in the letters of the Spanish secre- taries and of Cecil's assents, in the ballads, the minstrelsy 320 JOHN KNOX, and tales of the borders. Of Highland lineage though I be, I do not hesitate to say that I know no people of richer blood, of finer traditions and more romantic story than these Lowlanders. Theirs was the land of the cist, the cromlech and the cairn, the land of the Strathclyde Britons and of the Cymri down to the days of Malcolm ; theirs was the land of inspiring romance, of weird tales, of heroic ideals, of ballad minstrelsy, of simple epics, the land, according to Skene, Glennie and Veitch, of Arthur and Merlin . theirs the land of the sturdy Angle with his moulding laws and language and his civilizing customs, whither to make the race richer in qualities came the Norseman and the Gael; theirs was the land of Kentigern, the St. Mungo of Glasgow, " the saint of the Clyde, the Tweed and the Teviot to the Reformation," and also of St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne ; theirs was the land whose glens and rivers and hills and rocks, whose crowding histories, daring deeds, " tradition, legend, the contin- uous flow of song, ballad and music, wholly native, have moved the feelings and moulded the imagination not only of the people of the district, but of the whole land of Scotland." ..." By peculiarities of physical features, by a very ancient history, by fusion of races, by lan- guage and social manners, by the written and unwritten poetry of its people, these southern uplands have so influenced the whole history of Scotland that without considering them we cannot understand our present na- tionality, nor would that nationality have been as it is." These were the people that treasured the memories of Wycliffe and of Cranmer; these were the people among whom safely moved the Lollards from Kyle ; these were the people that caught up the words of THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 321 Hamilton, comparing them with their hereditary mem- ories of better and brighter days ; these were the people who furnished the earnest and awed groups gathering in kitchens and barns, in village streets and at cross- roads, yes, and not seldom those great field congrega- tions which in hidden glen or beside the sheltering clumps of trees gathered with firm-set face and yet fired hearts around Aless, Forrest, Williams, Wishart, Milne, and now around John Knox. There and then they grew from the Tweed to the Tay what some of us have seen, loved, yes, lived and labored with, what more of us through reading know, the hard-faced, firm- eyed, close-mouthed, hot-hearted, deep-souled foes of tyranny and lovers of God, the resolute, stiff-necked, unconquerable commons of the Lowlands. These were the true sires of the true Scotchmen. These were the people that rallied to the wild alarm-cry of the sickly man from the galley ; the people that put on the steel bonnet, gripped the oft-hacked sword of the old Bor- derer, and shouldered the shafted scythe for the army of the Congregation and for the stubborn defiance of the queen and Rome, and won because they believed in Deity and not in defeat ; the people that calmly drew blood to sign the Covenant, and then more calmly shed it all to defend Christ's crown and covenant ; the people that gave birth and battle-cry to the English Puritan, his immortal band and his immortal work ; the people that kept alive the fundamental ideas and principles of the great act of 1560 ; the people that accordingly never ceased to strive against absolutism and for constitution- alism, and gave birth to the " Fifty Years' Struggle" for free laws and free churches ; the people that met on mountain and moor, that dared the rage and died by the 322 JOHN KNOX, bloody hands of Claverhonse, yet defied and defeated the brutal rage of that murderous miscreant, the bigotry of his master and the persecutions of his intolerant church ; the people that planted, pacified and trans- formed Ulster, that held Derry against the Stuart and his Redshanks, and a third time saved the liberties of Britain and the cause of Protestantism ; the people whom Jeremy Taylor and the Episcopal Church per- secuted and defrauded, and despotic landlords oppressed and drove maddened across the sea ; the people that so largely made this grand Commonwealth, that first raised in the Mecklenburg Declaration the cry of independence, that supplied through the Synod of Philadelphia and John Witherspoon many of the terms and more of the thoughts of our Great Charter, that gave to the army of liberation Wayne and Knox and Morgan and Lach- lan Macintosh, with thirty-six more as generals and a very legion of officers, that bravely fought and freely bled for their republic ; that people, our own people, yes, our own flesh and blood, then began as a people to be. Knox, the Reformation, the Gospel, Presbyterian- ism, the Covenants and Catechisms, really made the Commons of Scotland. Never, therefore, let the relation of John Knox to this country be forgotten ; nor ever let the relation of his Scotch and his Scotch-Irish children to this land, its revolt and its victory and its growth, be forgotten. Here with the blood of the Puritans in me, — for I do draw direct my blood through one straight channel from not the least brave and worthy of the Ironside leaders, a man whom Cromwell loved and trusted in many a rugged crisis without orders, — here with the blood of the Puritan and the Presbyterian mingling in me, I say THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 323 solemnly what God, the God of battle, of peace, the God of church and state, our God and our fathers' God, what God hath joined in the splendid and sacred wedlock of pious heroism and God-taught independence, of Scottish Presbyterian and English Puritan, let no man put asun- der. As a child of the Commonwealth and the Cov- enant, I bar and forbid, in the name of God and of his- tory, of the mother-lands and of our own republic, the unhallowed divorce. We are of the one family, spring- ing from the Mayflower and the Eagle-wing ! To that people living, to avail myself of Moffat's closing sentences, in those very " parts of the country which in earlier ages had been the special scenes of the evangelical work of Ninian, of Kentigern, of Columba and their respective followers, and where Palladius found believers in Christ," to that people "in whom survived through all the obscurity fond hankerings after the earlier faith, and in whom these were now awaking again to activity in the warmth and light of the liber- ated gospel," to that people " whose hereditary mem- ories, holding on so amazingly for centuries," were now conscious, vivid, present, potent factors, came John Knox, the flame-like apostle of the Church and the Christ of freedom. Often had their fathers thrilled, grasped their familiar arms and rushed to the foray or defence of their homes when the bale-fire " Waved like a blood-flag on the sky All flaming and uneven." And these, their children, rose as fast and strong and brave at the signal of Knox. Under him they started into fiery action ; by him they were moulded and shaped ; and ever since John Knox has been model and 324 JOHN KNOX, inspiration to the pious peasantry of Scotland and of Ulster. No paternity was ever deeper marked on child's face and character. The Ulster volunteer and tenant- righter are as manifestly the children of John Knox as Samuel Rutherford or Janet Geddes. Some singularly favorable opportunities have been mine to trace this likeness. Many a month have I walked the fields of the Route and studied their farmers ; among the firm- hearted yeomanry of Connor lay my first parish ; and for years was I daily in contact with the free men of Down. To this very hour these sturdy and splendid children of the Plantation are a marked Scotch colony of Knoxlike Presbyterians ; and they present those remarkable yet ever-present peculiarities of vigorous colonies wherever they are isolated by being planted in a strange land and amid aliens in faith and feelino:s, the stern retention and the resolute conservation of the features, speech, proverbs, traditions and songs, yes the very prejudices and hatreds, of the mother-country. The work, the teaching, the battling, the strong dislikes, the far-seeing- fears, the sternly-plain Presbyterianism of John Knox are to-day as plainly met along the Sixmilewater, the sides of the Sleamish and Carnerney, the moors of the Route, the vales of Derry and the rolling hills of Down as they could have been seen in the Kyles of Ayr, by the banks of the Clyde, upon the fields of Renfrew or Dumfries, when Peden preached or Brown was martyred. A right powerful peasantry and noble yeomanry did Knox make of them in his flying visit in 1555, and still more so in 1560, when for a long year he rushed, defi- ant of disease and weakness, of soldiers, of assassins' daggers and bullets, not as with fiery cross, but as " a flaming evangelist" with the living gospel, from the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 325 Forth to the Solway, from Berwick to Stirling. Upon this great mission Knox started at the most opportune moment. Three stakes and their three martyrs had stirred the country people and the townsfolk alike to the very soul-depths, — Hamilton's, Forrest's and Wis- hart's, — and now came the martyrdom of the venerable Milne. The people were at white heat. John Knox struck them and they bore the image of the King. To no people is Christ as king more dear. In that mission, so memorable and so widely momentous, Knox touched two master-chords in the Scotch heart, creed and coun- try. Their whole manhood thrilled to his touch and responded. Not country and creed, as Dean Stanley said in his brilliant but unhistoric and misleading lec- tures upon ecclesiastical questions and parties in Scot- land, but first creed and then country. To the heir of the old British believer piety must ever be more than patriotism ; and yet our race is patriotic, but patriotic because it is pious. Yes, ever since that day of Knox for the true Scotch Presbyterian and his descendants it has been first Christ's Crown and Covenant, then our Land and Liberty. That mission of Knox was it that filled the army of the Congregation, and bound and held all together till the Guise was baffled and the French withdrew ; that made a pious peasantry rise in revolt when Elizabeth would force back upon them the be- fouled, bloodstained Mary Stuart, and baffled the papist party in Scotland, and prepared for the defeat of the Catholic League. Knox founded the Church of Scotland. If the Commons of Scotland were Knox's work, still more truly was the Church. He was the "first planter and the chief waterer" "of the Reformed Church of 326 JOHN KNOX, Scotia, with her laudable form and rite," the Auld Kirk, the world-known Kirk, " the Zion of the North," " the City of the Great King." The illustrious reformer came back to his country when the faith of the gospel was literally in the death-throe ; he saved the life of the cause, he nursed it back to health, he fostered it, he watched over it, wrought, prayed and warred fearlessly for it till it was planted God's vine in the land and es- tablished for the ages to come. That new life Knox embodied in an organized form, in a Church which all, friends and foes alike, confess to be most compact and symmetrical, most conservative of order and reverent forms, yet a Church progressive, elastic, self-adapting and complete in republican freedom and consonant with popular demands and rights ; a Church " whose laudable form and rites " we believe to be nearer than any other to the pattern seen upon the apostolic mount, yet hon- oring all true communions of believers, sympathetic with all, generous to all, unchurching jiobody of the Spirit-born and the blood-washed believers, saying, " Ubi Christus, ubi Spiritus, ubi Veritas, ibi Ecclesia Dei." Regarding this Reformed Church of Scotland, the foundation and the fostering of Knox, regarding her rise, her forms and her ordering, I have, in late years, somewhat changed my mind through larger reading and maturer thought. The Church of the Covenant is not a transplantation from Geneva ; it is a true Scottish stock. No doubt there are Genevan features ; perhaps several characteristic forms, titles and procedures in church-courts. But in the main this Zion of the North is designed by a Scottish mind and built by native hands. Its style is of the age, the architect and the land, strong, solid and simple, perhaps stern, but, we do THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 327 not fear to say, undeniably scriptural. We are not ashamed of our Church, her confession or her catechism, her character or her career. Let us very briefly review her rise and completion ; we shall see Knox " the light of Scotland, the comfort of the kirk" everywhere in this " planting and watering of the vine." And we shall probably in the end take a somewhat different view from Burton, " that Knox was no deviser of creeds and organizations ; he had nothing original about him but his individuality of character and his power over his native tongue." When Knox began his ministry in St. Andrews, he was a studious, matured man of forty years who had been living amid the distinct memories of an old, apostolic Church, who had been conversing familiarly with a people, never giving their rulers the unquestioning obedience elsewhere by subjects rendered to their sovereigns, and having the very strongest native tendencies towards republicanism and very good reasons for hating bishops and despots, — a people whom that poor pedant and bigot, James the Sixth, understood when he pithily put their creed thus : " No bishop, no king" ! Moreover Knox had been prayerfully and meditatively searching God's word during those long, silent years, and had drawn thence what all find who keep to it alone, what notoriously all the continental churches have found, Lutheran and Reformed alike, what the oldest in Bohemia and Saxony, and the youngest in Belgium and Spain, have manifestly found, — that there is neither priesthood nor prelacy in the New Testament Church, that the Supper is not a sacrifice, that the be- lieving band of the spirit-born and blood-washed is God's Church, that the call of this worshipping company is the audible voice of the Lord summoning to and sanctioning 328 JOHN KNOX, the full work of the pastorate, that the recognition by the already existent ministry of that call, and of the gifts and graces justifying it, is true, valid, scriptural ordination, that the believing band with its teachers and taught forms a divine society having a divine right to the fullest liberty in working out, subject always but only to the Bible and conscience, upon its own plan the Lord's will, that church-liturgies and human canons, while at times very helpful and under conditions clearly permissible, are not obligatory, and that human authority may in all matters of faith and worship be refused and should ever be resisted if contrary to conscience and the Word of God. John Knox had reached this Scottish Presbyterian- ism before he conferred with Cranmer or had seen Cal- vin. How do we know that such w^ere his principles and practice ? By his whole course and his avowed con- victions ; by his acceptance of the call to the ministry at St. Andrews, and by his memorable actions while in England. He was broad-churchman enough to recog- nize everywhere Christ's people as Christ's Church, to worship with them, to preach and labor wherever God gave him opportunity ; but he was Presbyterian, Scot- tish, to the backbone, refusing to use the liturgy when ordered, and declining, because prelacy was in his judg- ment contrary to God's word, the splendid see of Roch- ester when it was pressed upon him by his friends Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, when he was strongly urged by the Duke of Northumberland to accept it, and besought to do so by the king whom he loved to the depth of his big heart, and whom he ever lamented. Episcopacy and Ritual he faced in England for five years. He was ever a watchful, reflective man, of a THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 329 judicial mind. During those years, as we know from his foes Tonstall, Cox and Weston and from his friends Lat- imer and Ridley, Knox opposed priesthood and prelacy, preached against all sacerdotalism and sacramentarian- ism, and conducted the worship of the sanctuary at Ber- wick, Newcastle and in London, yes before the king, in what he considered a more excellent way than the An- glican, a way which the king and the archbishop would have finally adopted had Edward lived and Cranmer been successful. London was the scene and Lambeth Palace the spot where Knox matured "the laudable form and rites of the reformed Church of Scotland." Geneva was the scene of verification and completer fin- ish. Nor does this fact that John Knox, the fully-ma- tured Scotchman of fifty years, gained in Calvin's city not the inspiration of his doctrine and discipline, but their confirmation and completion, unmake anything for Calvin : his princely position and peculiar pre-eminence are too well assured to be thus affected. But the historic truth does make much for the independence and individ- uality of our manly and masterly reformer. . From the pastorate of his Genevan church, w'ith his large experience of various forms of church government, with his own prepared form of worship and long-held convictions as to creed and constitution, and from his observation and approbation of the French reformed Church, Knox came to found and finish the Church of Scotland. Here too, as in the stirring and summoning forth of the Commons, he begins his work at a singu- larly-fitting time. God's hand may very clearly be seen in the whole chain of events. That " handful of corn " which the outlaw had five years ago sown was now a broad field of waving grain. From castle Campbell 22 330 JOHN KNOX, where to the aged Argyle and his son Lorn Knox had preached the gospel of grace, to Duns, where, just ere he was forced to fly once more for his life, he had dis- pensed the sacrament to the men of Mearns and had framed the first covenant, the reformed faith had lived and spread ; and lairds, traders, burghers, yeomen and peasants had kept their vow sacred, had prayed and waited for the time of their redemption, and, defiant of foes and of death, had worked for the quicker coming of the hour when Knox might safely and forever return. These souls of faith and heroism formed " the congrega- tion ;" and their leaders were " the lords." The lords and the Congregation, finding that they had but few preachers, had chosen readers and formed the famous and fertile " societies," the congregational prayer-meet- ing, the little conventicles where "the king's remem- brancers " ofttimes gathered, where pious peasants grew heroes, and where in later days of the Laudean perse- cution the Covenanting martyrs became strong for the stake and the sea, the battle and the pistols of Graeme. This steadily-enlarging company welcomed the sturdy Presbyterian reformer. The crystalline matter was ready; one touch of Knox's hand and it became the symmetrical crystal, solid and clear. This notable event really, though not officially, took place in old St. Giles upon that glorious day of national rejoicing and thanksgiving, the 19th of July, 1560. Then, just three days after the departure of the defeated French, and twelve after the signing of the Edinburgh treaty by the fast-dying queen-mother, by which were secured a free country and free parliaments, free faith and a free Church, the Congregation assembled, thanked God for the marvellous deliverance, and stood forth the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 331 Church of Scotland. John Knox preached and prayed that day. Would that time permitted to repeat his solemn and sweet prayer of thankfulness and joy! Upon the 17th of August assembled "the great par- liament," the fullest, most truly representative of the people and most memorable that Scotland had yet known. It was this parliament which formally estab- lished the reformed faith and Presbyterianism, which confirmed the acts, accepted the Confession of Knox and his fellow laborers, and appointed them still further du- ties in organizing and ordering the Church. In a short time followed the first Book of Discipline, which was submitted to the Council and signed " by the greater part of the members, accepted by the mass of the peo- ple and at once carried into effect in all its principal regulations." There were the following office-bearers : the minister or pastor, the doctor of divinity or teacher, like our theological professor, the elder and the deacon. There were two special workers, the reader, who was just our colporteur, and the superintendent, who was just an itinerating missionary invested with powers similar to the moderator of a synod, commissioned to special work. "Public worship was conducted according to the Book of Common Order " — a book which Knox had used in Frankfort, and for his own use had perfected in Geneva. In regard to the Confession of Faith and the Book of Discipline, one of the six Johns who prepared them. Row, says in his history, " The ministers took not their example from any kirk in the world, no, not from Ge- neva ; but laying God's word before them, made refor- mation thereto." Organization became complete on the 20th of December, 1560, when at Edinburgh the General Assembly held its first regular meeting. Thencefor- 332 JOHN KNOX, ward that name means power. Dodds, in his admirable and interesting book on " The Scottish Covenanters," says, " In England (I am referring to the times subse- quent to the Reformation) the Parliament was always the people's organ in their pursuit of constitutional gov- ernment. The Church, from its birth a creature of the court, was either kept under close tutelage by its august parent, or, if ever chafed to show a little anger, could only afford a feeble and second-rate opposition. Hence the ideas and language of the English constitutionalists were in the main political ; and it was only by accident if religious influences or ecclesiastical dogmas mingled in the unrest. In Scotland the reverse was the case. The Parliament, from radical defects in its structure, was either the mere echo of the court or the instrument of some dominant faction of barons. But from the days of the Reformation, the kirk — the world-renowned kirk — was the true organ of the Scottish people. It com- bined within itself all the functions, all the energies — and can it be wondered at if sometimes also it fell into the excesses — of those three great organs of popular opinion. Parliament, the press and public meetings. Through it was it that the Scottish masses uttered all their complaints, demands, threats, resolves. By the kirk they were guided and inspired in all their public movements. It was their rendezvous in the time of alarm and commotion; their asylum in the hour of danger; the fortress from which they defied the fiery darts of the oppressor. It was more. It was more than any parliament or any mere earthly association can be to the heart and soul of man — of man a spiritual being and acted upon the most powerfully by spiritual faith, spirit- ual impulses and spiritual institutions. The kirk was THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 333 the Mount Zion of the land, ' beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth,' ' the city of the great King.' There Jesus Christ executed his office as a king ; guaran- teed its purity and final triumphs ; and woe to him who should lay upon it unhallowed hands, — who should seek to wear its crown or presume to dictate its laws or or- dinances ! It was sacred, imperishable, invincible, and laughed to scorn alike the rage of tyrants, the plots of hierarchies and the gates of hell itself! Hence the kirk of Scotland was always but the people of Scotland in a different embodied form ; and although in conse- quence of this peculiarity, which distinguishes the his- tory of Scotland more than that of any other country I know of, the language and the dogmas of the period may be strongly ecclesiastical and tinged with some theocratic pretensions foreign and perhaps offensive to modern conception, yet the principles at stake and the objects which were really struggled for were the same as in all ages, nations and circumstances have animated the true and the free in struggling against their oppress- ors — freedom of thought, freedom of worship, freedom of religious and social assemblies, judgment by law, and law the expression of the national will. I have to premise that much of this struggle will seem to turn upon ecclesiastical questions ; and oftentimes, in con- sequence, philosophers and men of literature have been repelled from the study of this particular period of Scottish history, or have only treated it as a foil to set off their own brilliant wit and refined contempt for priestcraft and fanaticism. They imagine that it can involve nothing of universal human interest ; that it was but another amongst the numberless squabbles of rival priesthoods ; that it was a mere running fire of 334 JOHN KNOX, Presbyterio-prelatic controversies, in which the welfare of the nation had no manner of concern. " But this is an entire mistake. It often happens, as every one knows who is versant with the minuter de- tails of history, that in revolutions of vast magnitude and far-reaching consequence, the questions, the discus- sions, the public documents of the period, shall seem to have very little significance indeed ; they are dry bones in which no life appears. But when vivified by reflec- tion, by patient thought, and by an imagination and sympathy which can translate the dead-looking forms of the past into the strong, warm feelings of the present, one gradually awakens to the universality and grandeur and everlasting human interest of the principles which those old bygone formulae half conceal from observa- tion. Many a superficial reader, if not warned before- hand, would glance over the clauses of Magna Charta or the Ninety-five Theses posted by Luther on the gates of the castle-church of Wittenberg, and never perceive that in the former lay imbedded the seeds of constitutional government; that in the latter was the fountain from which the Protestant Reformation issued forth. So in the struggles of the Scottish Covenanters. Underneath much that is strange in their dialect, local in their views, polemical in their dogmas, we shall trace, if we search aright, a substratum of principles in which all men and all generations are vitally interested. But the want is, to lift up the veil under which the men themselves are hidden — to wipe the dust from their brows and show them with their faces to the sun, that you may see they are not men to be forgotten and de- spised as poor silly fanatics, but men of every species of talent, of every variety of character, — faithful wit- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 335 nesses for principles yet sacred to yourselves, — heroes whom, if you cannot always agree with, you cannot Ml to admire, — patriots who in life and in death were ani- mated with the noblest zeal to make Britain a free, a pure, a brave, a religious nation, and always the first Protestant power in Europe." Knox planned the school system of England. Yet one great task more and Scotland is made. John Knox and his chief friends in the council and associates in the church and the reformation-work were all lovers of learning. Row was one of the most cultivated men of his day. His home was a truly literary circle. The pictures of it sketched for us by graphic writers, who were personally familiar with the far-travelled chaplain and the scholarly ways of his household, are very sur- prising and singularly attractive. Knox was himself, through the bitter persecutions of his many foes that made him an exile in France and Switzerland and a pastor in Calvin's city, a man of large continental expe- rience, the companion of learned men in London and in Geneva, and was a student all his days. He had him- self known the signal advantage to gifted and aspiring lads of the grammar-school ; and he had eagerly availed himself of all the instruction it could yield to the ardent youth of Haddington. And now this old Haddington schoolboy, the Glasgow disciple of Major, the able dia- lectician, the patient student of Langniddrie, the friend of Cranmer and Ridley, of Calvin and Beza, is practi- cally the master of Scotland, the leader of the kirk, and thus the guide, yes and the trusted guide, of the people of Scotland ; he will not have the schools for the people and the colleges of the land forgotten. As may be seen from the seventh chapter of the First Book of Disci- 336 JOHN KNOX, pline, the far-sighted and liberal reformer aimed at having a true system of national education established and securely provided for ; beside each parish church should stand the school where all the youth of the dis- trict should receive secular and religious instruction, and where promising scholars might be prepared for college. Then there were further embraced in the pol- itic plan local colleges, which should occupy the inter- mediate but most important place between the school and the three fully-equipped universities. These uni- versities were to be enlarged till they should be the equals and rivals of Paris, Leipsic and Prague in their palmiest days. The state should provide funds for the elementary teaching and collegiate training of the poor ; and the noble and wealthy be compelled to educate their children in a manner and to a degree worthy of their station and their means. To a very considerable extent this scheme was carried out ; Scotland soon felt the im- pulse, and her sons were soon known as teachers and leaders in the continental schools. And if these wise plans, and even more splendid projects, were not then to their utmost realized, Knox is not to be blamed, but rather pitied ; because, though exerting all his persua- sions, moving the assembly and carrying the people with him, he was thwarted by cunning Maitland and defeated by the base selfishness and unrighteousness of the great nobles, who, caring little for education and less for religion, but much for wealth, had by strong hand seized swiftly and were now with watchful jealousy guarding the appropriated church-lands and the richest livings in Scotland, Still very much was done. It is this schoolwork of Knox and his far-seeing plans which have stirred the righteous enthusiasm of a great Scotch- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 337 man, himself made possible only by Knox, his labors and the peasantry he educated, Thomas Carlyle ; who in his essay on Sir Walter Scott thus bursts forth : — " Honor to all the true and the brave ; everlasting honor to brave old Knox, one of the truest of the true ! That in the moment when he and his amid cruel trials, in convulsions and confusion, were still struggling for life, he sent the schoolmaster forth into all corners, and said, ' Let the people be taught ;' this was but one, and indeed an inevitable and comparatively inconsiderable, item in his great message to men. His message in its true com- pass was, '■ Let men know that they are men, created by God, responsible to Grod, who work in any meanest mo- ment of time what will last through eternity.' This great message Knox did deliver with a man's voice and strength, and found a people to believe him. The Scotch national character originates in many circum- stances ; first of all in the Saxon stuff there was to work on ; but next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian gospel of John Knox !" Yes, Scotland was made by Knox and his gospel. More splendid monument never had child of earth ! He was now the very heart of the new country, the saved land, reformed Scotland. Not nominally, yet really through his work and power, through his friend- ship and his commanding influence with the regent, and his unchallengeable but willingly-conceded place in the Church, he was the ruler of the land. His life was now most laborious ; he was preacher in St. Giles, parish minister of Edinburgh, incessant controversialist with the papists, correspondent of Cecil and of many friends on the continent, fosterer and guide of the young Church, chief counsellor and very right hand of Murray 338 JOHN KNOX, and the Lords. And yet it was a pleasant life. His devoted and beloved wife and his boys are once more with him ; his friends, loved and loving, about him ; and he, ever glad to see them, spreads his board for them ; merry and full of humor, he laughs heartily in their midst, telling his dry Scotch jokes and his graphic tales, and for better cheer orders up from the cellar some of his old Burgundy. Neither morose nor austere, Knox at home is the loving father and the generous host. Right truly, therefore, does Carlisle say : " This Knox has a vein of drollery in him, which I like much in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. His History with its rough earnestness is commonly enlivened with this. When the two prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence, march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter-staves, it is a quaint sight for him every way ! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone ; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage ; not a loud laugh, you would say a laugh in the eyes most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man ; brother to the high, brother also to the low, sincere in his sympathy with both." But just as Knox stood on the highlands of victory crowned with success, honored of the people and blessed of God, just as he was beginning to taste the joy of that stainless and splendid conquest won by his freemen of the faith, and just as he was realizing once again the sweet- ness of quiet home-life, the heavy blow fell upon him. Down from the height of his triumph and out of the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 339 day of gladness the strong man is suddenly hurried into the valley of death, and sits alone in the black night of a speechless sorrow. John Knox sits beside his dead wife. Ah, ye frivolous glow-worms of fashion, ye foolish devotees of the debauched, doomed Stuarts, ye fierce haters of the stubborn Presbyterianism of Knox and his kirk, ye call this man hard, cold, insens- ible, unsympathetic ! Have ye followed the true ro- mance, the sweet tenderness, of the courtship of John Knox and of Margery Bowes, whom Calvin calls " sua- vissima," " most sweet wife "? do you know aught of the noble girl's devotion to her hero-lover beneath her father's frown and in spite of the bitter, persistent op- position of papistical relatives ? have ye read how she bravely wedded the outlaw just when hunted forth by Mary's bigot bands ? have ye followed their hairbreadth escapes ? have ye looked into their happy home in Ge- neva where Calvin often rested and Beza and the noble reforming band gathered round her " like to whom few are found "? have ye beheld the holy household, parents and children, reunited and rejoicing in their little home at the Netherbow Port ? Nay, I trow not ! How many have been moved by the lying tales of Mary Stuart, and the silly romance of that wretched creature the Pretender, and Flora Macdonald ; and nothing is known of the stirring romance and the sad tragedy of a noble pair and a pure home ! Oh, what a contrast to Mary Stuart and her lovers ! to Kirk-a-field and Dunbar ! As in the soon-fading light of a winter day I watch this Greatheart of Scotland, now broken in health and sorer broken in his heart, bending over one who had entered so truly and fully into all his hopes, his efforts, danger and victory, in a grief that dried up tears, and as I fol- 340 JOHN KNOX, low the current of his thoughts thus alone with his dead and his God, and as I see him seat upon his knee his " puir mitherless bairns," and lift his eyes of piteous appeal to God, methinks I could easily write a tale of John Knox and " the desire of his eyes " that would move your deeper and finer feelings ! He is no hard, unloving man, but a tenderly-sympathetic hero. But draw the curtain ; leave him with his true wife and his God ; he is learning lessons soon to be needed ; his Father is imparting grace and strength soon to be exer- cised and strained to the very uttermost, in the last great battle of Knox for Scottish faith and freedom. Like Ezekiel, Knox passed from his wife's grave to God's hard prophet- work. " It was a time Of tumult and reproach, and God, who clothed My soul with thunders, made me utter them To all the people, whether they would hear Or would forbear. So went I on my way And spake unto the people, for the hand Of God was strong upon me. In my heart The arrow quivered, for the Archer dread Had driven home his bolt. Yet I held my soul Fi'om mourning, as a strong man holdeth back His steed upon the sudden brink of some Wild dark abyss. There on the brink I reined My startled soul. This is no day to fail Nor be discouraged. In the work of God No man may turn or falter, when God Ilath need of him." The time of need has come. The land is, without knowing it, upon the very brink of a " wild dark abyss." The great storm is gathering fast, though the sky is clear and smiles. It is time for the skilled and weath- erbeaten helmsman, aged but still firm-handed, stout- hearted and God-trusting, to take his old post. John THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 341 Knox neither " turns nor falters " in the hour God has need of him. Mary Stuart is in Scotland. John Knox steps out to his last work, his hardest work, and his crowning victory. V. — The Master-Spirit in Britain's Wild Crisis. Mary Stuart, the widow of Francis the Second, sailed from France on the 14th of August, 1561, and five days after landed in Scotland. The abyss begins to yawn. The crisis-moment for Scotch and English faith and freedom strikes. The work of years is in peril. En- vious eyes are upon Elizabeth's crown. The mine is started. Yes, Protestantism is in danger. The storm that shall beat for years and shall leave lamentable wrecks behind now begins. And all with the coming of a young queen not twenty years of age. Yes ; but a woman this of terrific power whom only one man truly measured and completely mastered. Mary is in Leith ; and Knox enters upon that perilous and momentous field where he revealed himself the magnificent master in what Froude calls " the wild crisis " of Britain, where under God he won and secured the grandest and most far-reaching triumph of his life ; and yet this is the very field where he has been most shamefully misrep- resented and scandalously maligned. Too often the world's best workers have been the belied of the cen- turies. That such men as Savonarola and Cromwell and John Knox should " be compelled to fight against shadows and Howlettes that dare not abide the light is a thing most unreasonable " and intolerable ! In but few words of Carlyle does noble anger speak out more justifiably than in his outburst against the deliber- ate and purposeful lies of pro-papists and hangers-on of 342 JOHN KNOX, royalty and nobility : " It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world, in- trinsically for having been, in such a way as it were then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen ! Had he been a poor Half-and-half he could have crouched into the corner like so many others ; Scotland had not been delivered ; and Knox had been without blame ! He is the one Scotchman to whom of all others his country and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable' Scotchmen that need no forgiveness ! He bared his breast to the battle, had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms, was censured, shot at through his windows, had a right sore fighting life ; if this world were his place of recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for Knox. To him it is very indiffer- ent these two hundred and fifty years or more what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, — we for our own sakes ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man into the man himself" " Rest in the Lord," says the old Hebrew watcher of life and student of God's way, in that sublime thirty- seventh Psalm, " and wait patiently for him. And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." And the light has come for Knox ; in spite of papists and ritualists, absolutists and novelists, for him it is noonday ! At last men, who love simple facts rather than smooth falsehoods, are coming to recognize what the splendid peasantry of Scotland THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 343 ever held sacred as a creed, the more than royal grand- eur of Knox, his lonely greatness in the wild crisis of the land. The romance of his ever-changing life culminates in this stirring, sorrowful, fate-fraught decade. Most dra- matic incidents and episodes ever and anon break up the steady, sober march of simple, stern-faced facts. Jets of merrirpent, bursts of hearty, bluff humor, spurts of fun rising out of keenest sense of the ludicrous, up- rushes of a pathetic irony, start surprisingly out of the hard fields of cold history like the boiling waters from the frost-bound Icelandic soil. The most weird tales, darksome tragedies and hellish murders multiply. Ver- ily it was the fitting time for the old playwrights to arise in, and in which the master-spirit of them all should be born ! Truly it was an " extraordinary age." And one of its chiefest marvels — its women. The period is filled with wonderful women, moves around them, is largely moulded by them. Now it is Jeanne d'Albret,now Mary of Lorraine, now Mary of Tudor, again Catherine de Medici, and again Elizabeth of Tilbury, that fixes your attention as the Juno of the hour. But above and beyond all is one, at once the ruin-spreading Venus and the plotting, cool-brained Minerva of the hour ; at once the strongest and the weakest, the most winsome and most wicked, the most ill-starred and yet often nighest to supreme victory, the most miserable yet mischievous, the most dignified yet degraded and diabolic of them all. Yes ! in the very centre she stands, Mary Stuart, the fair and foul, the first hope of the Catholic league, Rome's potent partisan, Elizabeth's chief enemy, Scot- land's dark fate, the Kirk's terrible Jezebel, sowing the wind, reaping the whirlwind. And over against her 344 JOHN KNOX, one old, diseased, poor man ; and yet the only man whom Mary Stuart, plotting in France her far-sighted, able and deadly schemes, really feared, the only man whom she never blinded, the only man who in Scotland told her truth and foiled her in the full sweep of her power, — John Knox, the simple, unselfish seeker of truth and righteousness, whose eye was single and whose soul was full of light. He stood safe and supreme facing this real historic Vivien. In this hour of tempta- tion and fall Knox was the Ithuriel of the scene. There are two points upon which Knox has been very widely censured, and with somewhat merciless severity, and for which those who hate his politics and his creed and his Church would fain have him condemned to deepest and lasting disgrace. These are his alleged vandalism in the demolition of the old Scottish piles, and his alleged brutalism in his treatment of Mary. Falsehoods are they both ; arrant falsehoods ; only and always falsehoods. Disproofs abound. The truth may easily be reached. Henceforth ye who have been blessed through Knox, nail them both in the most open ways of men as lies. The first allegation has no foun- dation in fact ; the second is a deliberate suppression of some important, and a wicked perversion of other, facts. As to the destruction of the old houses, abbeys and cathedrals — that vandalism was chiefly the act of Henry the Eighth, of Hertford, Somerset and the plundering Scotch nobles. And in the case of the very few monas- teries and churches dismantled or destroyed during the frenzy of the popular outbreak, John Knox was not present at one of them, never incited to one such act, never approved of these wild deeds of a turbulent land. THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 345 and in terms condemned them as the lawless work " of the rascal multitude." The fever of iconoclasm showed itself first at Perth. Knox had left the church some time before the outbreak took place. It was a Romish priest who really caused the riot and is wholly respons- ible for the results. This defiant man proceeded with the most cool and daring but foolish and irritating deliberation, right in the face of the vast congregation now won to the reformed faith, and with their hearts fresh-fired by the trumpet tones of Knox, to celebrate mass with unusual pomp and display. A foolish, yes if you will a wicked, lad made an impertinent remark. Upon that boy rushed the furious priest from the altar and beat him severely. The boy threw a stone, the stone struck an image ; in a sudden frenzy the people rose, destroyed the altar and the images. They touched nothing more. The time was one of war. The air was electric. The plots and the lies and the troops of Mary of Lorraine had made the country furious. The town- mob gathered and rushed to the monasteries. Where was now John Knox ? At the provost's house, gathering the magistrates and summoning the town band ! Forth he led them and placed the guard round the houses of the monks, and himself watched for their protection during the entire night at the post of most imminent danger. In the morning all seemed quiet. Knox and his guard departed. No sooner were they gone than the* mob regathered. There were husbands, fathers and brothers who had sworn to cleanse the town, and they did thorough work. The flame spread, as another flame somewhat similar, not unnatural, not all unright- eous, spread in France at a later day; and at Lindores, Scone, Stirling and Cupar the demolition proceeded. 23 346 JOHN KNOX, At St. Andrews the destruction was the deliberate deed of authority ; the rulers did that work. And they were right. This castle had been made by the Beatouns a tyrant's keep, and the cathedral a den of plotters and a garrison to overawe the people. The time had more than come to end that reign of terror and of crime. Where is Knox's coarse vandalism to be found ? No wonder Baillie, in his indignant truthfulness, proclaimed Bishop Maxwell a liar in these plain words : " What you speak of Mr. Knox preaching for the pulling down of churches is like the rest of your lies." True, when pressed once regarding these furious deeds of frenzied men, he did in his hearty, Latimer-like humor say, "Pull down the rookeries and the birds'll no re- turn." And so would you have said if you had been in the heat of that life-and-death struggle, if you had had the "foul birds" underneath your eaves, perhaps in your own home, if you had had soul enough to see and to feel the meaning of that battle, and had been a Chris- tian lover of men instead of a heathen worshipper of stones. Pshaw ! sirs, it is high time to be wholly done with this paltry drivelling about abbeys and monasteries ! Better a clean ruin than a foul house ! What are stones to souls ? What are even finished cathedrals and their Gothic work in an age of crisis to the fate-filled centu- ries thence born and the human wants then to be met ? You can rebuild the minsters ; you cannot recall the men of the crisis, nor remake the moments big with. the destinies of earth. Hear what a lawyer, Lord Moncrieft', says regarding this false charge of vandalism : " Much has been bitterly said — and it is one of the vulgar topics of reproach against the memory of Knox — about the destruction o THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 347 the ecclesiastical houses at the Reformation. But the truth is that Knox is very little responsible for this offence, if it be one. He did what he could to restrain the populace at the first outbreak. In fact, the crown and the landed proprietors of Scotland who swallowed up the revenues out of which alone these buildings could have been supported are quite as chargeable with the loss of the architectural remains. There are not wanting other instances of a similar destruction in edi- fices not ecclesiastical and by hands not reforming. The royal palace of Dunfermline was entire or nearly so in 1G90. Now, scarce a vestige of it remains. That of Linlithgow was in perfect preservation in 1745. It is now only a splendid ruin. More than one beautiful abbey has been forced to part with every carved stone it possessed to build the fences in the adjoining fields. The result of the confiscation of the church lands and the payment of a stipend only to the parish minister" — the work of Mary's friends and supporters in direct op- position to Knox — " left no fund whatever to preserve these buildings from decay. But had it been otherwise, what then ? In those ' dolorous and dangerous days,' as Knox termed them, it was no time to dispute on the carving of a doorway or the beauty of a transept. We may lament for the sake of art that so much is lost ; but if we bought our liberties at no higher price, they were very cheaply purchased." Hear what Professor Veitch says in his " Border His- tory and Poetry ": " These grand ruins are now very much as Hertford left them. And we should be spared for the future all ignorant talk about the reformers and Cromwell having been the malefactors. They were saved the work, if they had had the will. It was done 348 JOHN KNOX, five years before the Reformation, and fifty-four years before Cromwell was born." " The ravaged abbey rung the funeral knell, When fierce Latoun and savage Evers fell ; Fair bloomed the laurel wreath by Douglas placed Above the sacred tombs by war defaced." Hear what Principal Tulloch — no excessive eulogist of the reformers, as Cunningham showed — has said in his " Leaders of the Reformation": "The explanation of this iconoclasm, and so far the defence of it as a mere historical adjunct of the Reformation, is its very irrationality. Who were to blame for such a state of irrational and violent feeling among the people ? Sure- ly not Knox. He can in no way be held responsible for the existence and outbreak of this spirit. In point of fact, the blame of this, if it lies anywhere save with the general barbarism of the people, must lie with the very system against which it was directed. It was this system which, after centuries of unlimited rule, had left a people so untrained in social instinct, so coarse and undisciplined in moral feeling. This was all that its elaborate training and service, its con- ventional beneficence and education, had come to. It had inspired the people so little with any spirit of order or respect even to the usages of worship that when for the first time they heard of a living God and Saviour, and a divine righteousness and truth in the world, they could do nothing but rise up against the churches and demolish them. If this be not one of the worst condem- nations of the old Catholicism of Scotland, condemna- tion certainly ceases to have any meaning. It is hard, indeed, to blame the Reformation for an odious inherit- ance of social disorder transmitted to it by the corrupt THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 349 system which it displaced. A system which not only left a people unblessed with truth, but failed even to animate them with any instincts of self-control, is twice condemned, and was well hurled from its place of pride and power with an indignation not more than it merited and a lawlessness which had grown up under its own shadow." Hear what is said in a remarkably-able essay in the Westminster Review, July, 1853, p. 15 : " By a simultaneous movement over the entire Low- lands, the images were destroyed in the churches, and the monasteries laid in ruins. Not a life was lost, not a person was injured, no private revenge was gratified in the confusion, no private greediness took opportunity to pilfer. Only the entire material of the old faith was washed clean away. " This passionate iconoclasm has been alternately the glory and the reproach of John Knox, who has been considered alike by friends and enemies the author of it. For the purification of the churches there is no doubt that he was responsible to the full, whatever the responsibility may be which attaches to it; but the de- struction of the religious houses was the spontaneous work of the people, which in the outset he looked upon with mere sorrow and indignation. Like Latimer in England, he had hoped to preserve them for purposes of education and charity ; and it was only after a warn- ing which sounded in the ears as if it came from heaven that he stood aloof and let the popular anger have its way. They had been nests of profligacy for ages ; the earth was weary of their presence upon it; and when the retribution fell, it was not for him to arrest or in- terfere with it. Scone Abbey, the residence of the 350 JOHN KNOX, Bishop of Murray, was infamous, even in that infamous time, for the vices of its occupants ; and the bishop himself, having been active in the burning of Walter Milne, had thus provoked and deserved the general haired. After the French garrison was driven out of Perth, he was invited to appear at the conference of the lords, but unwilling or afraid to come forward he block- aded himself in the abbey. A slight thing is enough to give the first impulse to a stone which is ready to fall ; the town people of Perth and Dundee, having long scores to settle with him and with the brotherhood, caught at the opportunity, and poured out and sur- rounded him. John Knox, with the provost of Perth and what force they could muster, hurried to the scene to prevent violence, and for a time succeeded — Knox himself we find keeping guard all one night at the granary door ; but the mob did not disperse, and prowling ominously round the walls, in default of other weapons made free use of their tongues. From sharp words to sharp strokes is an almost inevitable transition on such occasions. In the gray of the morning a son of the bishop ran an artisan of Dundee through the body, and in an instant the entire mass of the people dashed upon the gates. The hour of Scone was come. Knox was lifted gently on one side, and in a few minutes the abbey was in a blaze. As he stood watching the de- struction, ' a poor aged matron,' he tells us, ' who was near him, seeing the flame of fire pass up so mightily, and perceiving that many were thereat offended, in plain and sober manner of speaking said, " Now I per- ceive that God's judgments are just, and that no man is able to save when he will punish. Since my remem- brance this place has been nothing but a den of whore- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 351 mongers. It is incredible to believe how many wives have been adulterated, and virgins deflowered, by the filthy beasts which have been fostered in this den, but especially by that wicked man who is called the bishop. If all men knew as much as I they would praise God, and no man would be offended." ' " Such was the first burst of the Reformation in Scotland ; we need not follow the course of it. It was the rising up of a nation, as we have said, against the wickedness which had taken possession of the holiest things and holiest places, to declare in the name of God that such a spectacle should no longer be endured." So much for the first slander. And now for the second allegation and more widely-spread slander, the heartlessness and brutality of Knox in his six inter- views and general dealing with Mary Queen of Scots. Oh what pathetic pictures have been painted of these scenes ! They are as unjust to Mary as to Knox. They are as absurd and laughable to the patient student of this period as to the Bible-reader would be the painting of the able Jezebel as a gentle martyr with Elijah as a grim inquisitor. It is wondrously easy for those who would change their faith as often as fashion and self-interest dictated ; it is easy for those who have never had one deep con- viction in their lives save the value of money and the supreme importance of the world's favor ; it is natural for those who hate Calvinism, Presbyterianism and Puri- tanism, with all that belongs to their aggressive forces and their unconquerable resolution and power ; it is to some extent necessary for those who would do away with all that is of the essence of the Reformation ; it is thoroughly characteristic of the sacramentarian and Ro- 352 JOHN KNOX, manizing party everywhere to take up these falsehoods and repeat this cuckoo-cry about Knox and Mary Stuart ; but for those who loA^e truth as truth and seek for his- toric evidence, who care not to retain the idols of any tribe, the question is, What are the facts, the whole facts ? can we have keen dry light poured on this field of study ? can we summon forth the witnesses, and hear- ing their full and varied testimonies judge for ourselves? How did Knox act ? What did he say ? And why and under what circumstances did he act and speak just thus ? The facts abound; history is speaking out plainly and fully. You may make your choice. You may carry a lie in your right hand if you will. You may say. We prefer the romance and the picture, and will work in the dim misleading light of fancy and falsehood. But say so. Do not pretend to have read evidence when you have not. Do not give Walter Scott, and Miss Yonge, and Stuart-flatterers like Aytoun, as historians and au- thorities. Do not repeat the perversions of Lingard and the lies of the Bishop of Ross as reliable testimony, nor palm off the oft-disproved falsities as realities. If you will not acknowledge his greatness and goodness, at least do not slander the one man who walked closely with God, warred successfully for the faith and won God's free- dom for the people who made this land. For an Amer- ican Puritan or Presbyterian to be ignorant of John Knox is a shame ; to defame him is a scandal and a sin. As I said before, so say I once more. The facts of Knox's life are fame, and that fame is stainless — clear now "as noontide of the day," We can actually wit- ness each of the six interviews ; we can hear both Knox and Mary. The simple facts survive. Seeking those facts, not fancies, we find ourselves, so to speak. THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 353 in a historic ellipse ; at the one focal point stands Eliz- abeth with Cecil and Walsingham, with Leicester and Essex, and behind Sadler and Knollys and the marvel- lous throng of England's worthies ; at the other point is Mary Queen of Scots, with Knox and Murray, Darn- ley and Bothwell and Rizzio and Chastelar, and the four Maries and the court behind. How romantic it all is ! how tragic ! and the romance is most thrilling and the tragedy most terrible where Mary Stuart, in her beauty and with her wealth of resources, stands the royal widow and the reckless wanton. " The great religious drama of the sixteenth century," says Froude, " was played out between five countries, England, Scotland, France, Spain and the Netherlands." And Scotland was the key of the whole position ; Mary came to seize that key and hold it for the pope, and thence to ruin England and make the League of the Guise and of Philip triumphant. That woman is one of the most remarkable personages in history, verily a tremendous force in that critical and formative time, almost the deadly fate of Scotland. She has been immensely underrated ; her ability was vast, her aims imperial, her activity varying and tireless, her allies the strongest powers of that day. The com- mon estimate and frequent pictures of this Stuart-Guise Mary, as the weak and gentle woman and the pitiable, deeply-wronged princess, are wholly erroneous. They are the fiction of romancists. A libel really they are upon this Rome-known and Rome-trusted woman her- self, who had returned to Scotland with a clear purpose and a completed plan to overthrow all the reformers' work, drive forth the Protestants, dethrone Elizabeth, lay Britain once more at the feet of the pope, so make it easy for Spain to crush the Netherlands, France the 354 JOHN KNOX, Huguenots, and then for combined Catholicism to stamp out all heresy in Germany and Sweden. It was a project of startling splendor ; and the skill, the training, the daring and many resources of this beauty of twenty, justified that faith in herself that never faltered till she saw the headsman. Verily she rose every inch a queen among the famous and forceful women of that day, Jeanne d'Albret, Mary of Lorraine, Catherine de Medici and Elizabeth of England. Her singular powers of fas- cination were alone a weapon of seldom-resisted force. In a few weeks after her landing she had broken up the bands of nobles that defied her able and resolute mother and bound them nearly all as her slaves. " In her looks What, snares in strangest wise all sense of men, That special beauty, subtle as man's eye And tender as the inside of the eyelid is." And there was also " Her cunning speech, The soft, rapid shudder of her breath In talking, the rare, tender little laugh. The pitiful sweet sound, like a bird's sigh. When her voice breaks ; — her talking does it all." And then too there were " Her eyes with those clear perfect brows, It is the playing of those eyelashes Plucks all souls toward her like a net." With all this grace of face and form, and with all her perfectly-cultivated powers of attraction and fascination which she with familiar art wielded at will and ever with a purpose, Mary joined a strange vigor of body and a stern force of will. She rode the fleetest horse and hunted the longest and most boldly of all her train, THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 355 now upon the borders and now in the Highlands. Fear she knew not ; fatigue she scorned. With the dash of the cavalier and the daring of a crusader she joined the bold courage of a Stuart, the practical shi'ewdness of a Tudor and the deep cunning of a Guise. She was able to cope with the shrewdest and strongest men of that day ; in plots with the most politic, in recklessness with the most desperate, in duplicity with the most deceitful, in unforgetting, deadly, merciless hate with the most passionate and vengeful of that blood-stained time. In working out her deep designs she made tools of her three husbands, agents of her many lovers. She aided and abetted four murders, she connived at five others, she hatched numerous treasons and conspiracies, all in the end blood-drenched. Among the merciless, mightiest of womankind she takes her place, with Jezebel and Herodias, with Messalina of Rome and Catherine of Russia. Had she only had chastity and conscience, or chastity without much conscience, she might have been unchallenged queen of Scotland, easy conqueror of Eliz- abeth, welcomed sovereign of England, proud mate of Spain and mistress of a Catholic world ! But her loves baffled her at the very nerve of the crisis, and her lust blasted her when the hour was big with fates. There was one man, keen-faced, keener-eyed, who looked her through and through with his long, steady gaze, under- stood her, never underrated her, never changed his clear, calm estimate ; and he made Cecil see. And Knox and Cecil saved Britain and her faith. The aims of this singularly-able woman were just as remarkable as herself. Mary Stuart had a life work ; the same as the Spanish Philip's, as definite, as steadily fol- lowed, more promising by far, often well-nigh accom- 356 JOHN KNOX, plished. To-day that life work, the restoration of Roman- ism, and the extinction of the Reformation at least in Britain, lies open to the eyes of the world. Mary Stuart, "born in sorrow and educated in treachery," met that work in her cradle ; she laid it down only in her coffin. Upon the very day her unscrupulous mother deceived Sir Ralph Sadler and misled England, to aid the deception she lifted upon her knee the infant Mary from her cra- dle ; that same Sadler watched the whole life of that child and saw it end at the block. Her opening seven years Mary Stuart, from her very birth the centre and the cause of ceaseless intrigues, spent under the tute- lage of her Guise mother, the Beatouns and their party of persecution and of crime. In 1548 she was at Had- dington betrothed to Francis the Dauphin, and soon afterwards carried to France; where for ten years more, in the vilest court of Europe, in the very hotbed of deadly intrigues, and in an atmosphere laden with lies and reeking with the most pestilent vapors of popery, she was under the guidance of her Guise uncles, who were then, with Philip and Alva, the very pillars of Rome and the Inquisition. On the 24th of April, 1558, she was married. The object of that union was the same as her whole education. That hour was the brightest the papacy had known since the great revolt. Everything was promising victory to the Vatican. Spain had stamped out the last footprints of the Castilian heretics. Mighty was the counter-reformation. Germany was divided, and the Protestants. Alva was master in the Nether- lands. England was full of plotting traitors like Nor- folk and Tonstall. The Huguenots were doomed. The Guise uncles, the kingly flither-in-law, the princely hus- band and various relations of Mary Stuart were all flame- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 357 hot with a stern resolve. One great league was forming at Bayonne for the extirpation of Protestantism ; Cath- erine de Medici and Alva were there. That grand cru- sade was the dream of her husband, Francis the Second, and the passion of Mary herself Upon the accession of EHzabeth to the throne, and ever after till the block at Fotheringay, these projects were linked, — the destruc- tion of Protestantism, the invasion of England, the de- feat and death of Elizabeth, and the union of the king- doms under Mary as Rome's servant. Francis and Mary openly assumed the royal arms of England, openly ne- gotiated with the Catholic nobles and secretly plotted with traitors and with assassins against Elizabeth. For Mary in her widowhood the plan remained as clear and complete as ever ; and she came back to Scotland avow- edly to work it out. Burton says, " To Mary at Vitry in Champaigne came John Leslie, afterwards the bishop of Ross. We have his errand from himself. He repre- sented the party of the old Church, especially the lords Huntly, Athole, Crawford, Marshal and Caithness. He says he offered the duty of his party and it was thank- fully received. . . .This was no less than 'the offer of the power of the north to strike at once a great blow at the congregation and for the old religion.' " And in James Robertson's " Statuta Ecclesise Scotise " will be found Mary's own correspondence with the pope and her Guise uncles, announcing her deliberate resolution to restore the old religion and to root out heresy. Lord Advocate Moncrieff says, " It is now proved beyond a doubt by documents which cannot be mistaken that this was the intention with which Queen Mary set sail from France. In the collection of Prince Labanoflf, a work compiled with infinite pains and labor in order, as the 358 JOHN KNOX, author thinks, to raise the reputation of the unfortunate queen, letters are found from the day she landed in Scot- land down to the day of her death which prove the un- broken constancy with which her plans were pursued. With the Cardinal of Lorraine, the ministers of France, the Duke of Alva and Philip the Second, the pope, and in short all the heads of the Catholic party in Europe, her correspondence was unremitting. It proves her to have been a woman of great ability, devoted to political intrigue and an accomplished dissembler. No one knew better how to use her advantages, and if she did not succeed in enlisting Knox on her side, it was be- cause his honesty and sagacity were proof against al- lurements which even strong and earnest men had been unable to resist." Yes, the one clear-eyed, simple-minded man, ever busy with his continental correspondents, un- derstood it all. Burton remarks, vol. iv. p. 219, " Knox also had his correspondents on the continent, and seems to have known the steady consistency with which the queen preserved her communications with France, Spain and the court of Rome. For all the skill with which she had represented herself as a simple, unprejudiced person seeking knowledge and open to conviction, his sagacity early revealed to him that she was an assured, unwavering champion of the old faith. So early as Oc- tober 1561 he wrote thus to Cecil." And her allies were numerous and mighty : the dis- appointed and Romish peers and prelates, and the many hidden but active priests of England and Scotland, the whole force of France, the power of Spain, the army and skill of Alva, and the continuous and all-pervading influences of Rome. Mary Stuart almost succeeded. But she was met THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 359 and finally, though not without stern battles and blood of peer and peasant, mastered by one lone man who feared none and fully trusted in God ! What, one man ! John Knox left alone of all his old friends and co- workers ! Yes, twice in this last great struggle for the reformed faith and for Scottish freedom Knox stood absolutely alone, deserted by every leader of the once- united party of progress and Protestantism. In Scot- land every man of power had, by Mary's craft or spells, been led to forsake Knox ; and the kirk-party, from the clever Maitland, the Ahithophel of Edinburgh, and the brave Kirkaldy of Grange, to Murray, so long the staunch friend of Knox and yet to become more devoted to him than ever, all laughed in Mary's laughter at Knox ; all derided his counsel ; all mocked his fears about Mary's one mass. They all reaped the whirlwind ; and they remembered sorrowfully, like Grange and Morton, their fatuous blindness. In Knox's plain common sense lay safety ; but in the flames of the throne the moths now delighted ; death came to them all in turn, from Mait- land, dying, old and forsaken, by his own hand, to Darnley, dying through his foul wife's craft. But was there not Elizabeth of England ? The least said regarding that too-much-bepraised woman in this connection the better ! This Elizabeth Tudor was never a very pleasing object in my eyes ; and the more I search and think, the more rapidly she grows less pleasing. As the king and Daniel saw in the panorama of empire iron and miry clay joined, so here in this Elizabeth very miry clay and very true iron are seen united. As a queen, she was in many respects admir- able ; as a woman, she seems to me in most features simply abominable ; and to call her to-day the bulwark 860 JOHN KNOX, of Protestantism is a sheer absurdity. The best foil and most effective apology cruel and crafty Mary Stuart has is that vain and vacillating coquette, who, if it had not been for her own throne and her own neck, would have forced Mary back at the sword's point on Scotland, convulsed the kingdoms and wrecked the Church. If mean hatred of Knox because he was a republican and a Presbyterian, if jealousy of Scotland, if deep dislike of the thorough Protestantism of Luther and Latimer, Calvin and Knox, if pride and petulance, if lies, du- plicity and parsimony, could have ruined the cause of truth and left all Britain at the feet of the papacy, and herself an outlaw and a victim, the career of Elizabeth would have wrought this ruin. From the exhaustive pages of Knox, Froude, McCrie and Burton I have counted forty-three instances of this almost fatal folly. Her selfishness, wrought on by Cecil, who was ever alive to her peril, did at last force her to help Scot- land ; but the Church and the man who really saved her she hated. Every man and woman in Britain did Mary Stuart outwit save one : the whole Scottish court and council, her own brother Murray, though he knew her so well, her ablest adviser Maitland, who, next to Cecil, Wal- singham and Knox, was the shrewdest man of the hour. She utterly blinded Elizabeth for a time ; she repeatedly befooled Randolph ; twice tricked most laughably the keen-witted Knollys, and once disarmed the suspicions even of William Cecil. Never once John Knox. That extraordinary man and that remarkable woman measured each other exactly, quietly as duellists. Knox was the only man whom Mary Stuart, as we know from Throck- morton, dreaded in Britain. Tytler gives us the fol- THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 361 lowing letter of Throckmorton to Queen Elizabeth, which shows exactly Mary's estimate and fear of Knox : " I understand that the queen of Scotland is thoroughly persuaded that the most dangerous man in all the realm of Scotland, both to her intent there and to the dissolv- ing of the league between that realm and your majesty, is Knox. And therefore she is fully determined to use all the means she can devise to banish him thence or else to assure them that she will never dwell in that country as long as he is there. And to make him the more odious to your majesty, and that at your hands he receive neither courage nor comfort, she mindeth to send very shortly to your majesty the book he hath written against the regiment of women, thinking thereby to animate your majesty against him. But whatever the said queen shall insinuate to your majesty, him I take ... to have done and to do daily as good service as any for the establishment of a mutual benevolence and common quiet between the two realms." And Mary Stuart was not appreciated as the ablest woman of the time by any but Knox. The woman knew her dead- liest antagonist ; the man recognized his hardest fight. There are two great sections here : John Knox deal- ing with Mary Stuart up to the Darnley marriage ; John Knox resisting Mary after the Bothwell union. One short week has hardly passed since her Leith landing until the clever and resolute woman and the clever and resolute man look one another in the face. " She set herself to gain Him, the most famous man of all those times." The queen is pleasant and the master of young Scotland is polite. John Knox was a gentleman, the companion 24 362 JOHN KNOX, for years of peers and gentlefolk, the friend of a king. He was no fawning fool, but he was never wanting in courtesy. Calm and self-possessed, he knew the posi- tion he had won in his land and which God had crowned, and he spoke without fear — and without brutality. That story is false, and only false. That day Mary Stuart claimed as queen the divine right to do what she liked ; and John Knox in clear, cogent sentences proved to her the divine right of the people to make kings rule right- eously or abide the consequences. He would not yield, and the queen wept. Tears of defeat those were, not of an ill-treated woman. " And Vivien ever sought to work the charm Upon the great Enchanter of the time ; As fancying that her glory would be great, According to his greatness whom she quenched." Three more interviews : Knox quiet, self-possessed, plain-spoken, but well-bred as a gentleman, — Mary clever, sharp-tongued, quick to seize any advantage, and failing ever in her plans and foiled by the brave. God-fearing commoner, closing the interview with tears because her efforts were vain. With the court party the queen triumphed. The mass was restored, the priests flocked back, and the old Scottish faction were already assured of victory. " The court set the example of profligacy. Mary's own conduct was at first only ambiguous ; but her French relatives profited by what Knox calls the recovered liberty of the devil. The good people of Edinburgh were scandalized with shameful brothel brawls, and not Catherine de Medici herself presided over a circle of young ladies and gentlemen more questionable than those which filled the galleries of Holyrood. From the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 363 courtiers the scandal extended to the queen herself, and in two years two of her lovers died upon the scaffold under very doubtful circumstances. Even more offensive and impolitic was the gala with which she celebrated the massacre of Vassy, the first of that infernal catalogue of crimes by which the French annals of those years are made infamous ; and at last she joined the Tridentine league, which was to execute the Tridentine decrees and extirpate Protestantism. Knox from his pulpit in St. Giles week after week announced these things ; but the knights of the holy war were all wandering enchanted in the Armida forest, and refused to listen to him. The people, though they lay beyond the circle of the charm, were as yet unable to interfere. Yet in Knox the fire which Mary dreaded was still kept alive, and she left no means untried to extinguish it. She threatened him, she cajoled him, sending for him again and again." She challenged his speech about that same dancing of her- self and her court over the bloody graves of the Prot- estant martyrs; and she got this quiet and manly answer : " And of dancing, madam, I said that although in the Scriptures I find no praise of it, and in profane writers that it is termed the gesture rather of those that are mad and in frenzy than of sober men, yet do I not utterly condemn it, providing that two faults be avoided. The former that the principal vocation of those that use that exercise be not neglected for the pleasure of dancing. Secondly, that they dance not as the Philistines their fathers, for the pleasure they take in the displeasure of God's people." Thank God ! there were then two Scotlands — the Scot- land of the Court and Convenience — the Scotland of the Church and of Conscience. To the latter John Knox 364 JOHN KNOX, was steadily speaking from his pulpit-throne at St. Giles. The people heard and heeded ; and the country was lost to the court. The army of the Congregation would be ready for the fight when the trumpet of the Lord sounded. Mary and Maitland forgot that Scotland no more meant the peers, but was now the people. Knox understood the queen, and he at last unmasked the plans of the papal devotee before the people. Upon an August Sabbath in 1583, up from the Netherbow Port towards the High Street "One, stooped somewhat in the neck, Walks, with his face and chin against the wind, Lips sideway shut, — a keen-faced man ! 'Tis Master Knox, Who carries all these folks within his skin. Their hearts beat inside his ; they gather At his lips like flies in the sun." Ay, the people ; peers, no ! He passes up the old ways alone ; the people draw aside and stand bare- headed ; he enters, full of thought, the old church. He is deeply stirred by the memories of other days ; the stakes of his friends rise up before him, and the graves of the soldiers of the Congregation ; he thinks of the determined and repeated refusal of Queen Mary to ratify the solemn treaty of Edinburgh, and the traitor- ous acts of Maitland and the council in their wicked connivance with her; he reviews the cunning and suc- cessful devices of the queen by which the Protestant party has been divided, and the steadily-pursued plans of the Romanists. The fire burns hot within his soul. Moreover the lynx-eyed sentinel upon the kirk-wall, from whose steady gaze nothing long lay hid, has just discovered the famous Granville-D'Arschot project to marry Mary Stuart to Don Carlos of Spain, and so THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 365 secure " the reduction of the kingdom of Scotland and of England to the Catholic faith." It lies all open now to us in the pages of Labanoff, Mignet and Froude. But that August day only Knox and the plotters knew it. The church is packed. And the court-spies are not wanting. A sermon of thrilling power is poured forth by Knox. The hearts of the people are throbbing fast and strong. Then comes an appeal for faithfulness from the old man, which was melting by its deep pathos and its tender personal reminiscences of the old days of battle and of victory. And then is shot the thunder- bolt, the story of the Spanish marriage and the Romish plot. That sermon convulsed Scotland, convinced of their danger the Protestants of Britain, and confounded the court. Mary was wild with rage. Then followed the celebrated scene where that foiled and furious papist- schemer insulted by her insolent question this prince of God, in whose presence she was not fit to appear, as she sneeringly asked, " What are you in this common- wealth ?" and where the calm, self-possessed gentleman and right noble freeman made the splendid reply, " A subject born within the same, madam ; and albeit I be neither earl, lord nor baron in it, yet has God made me, — however abject I be in your eyes, — a profitable member within the same." Search literature and find a more sublime reply ! Flaming forth in her passion which in her fiercer moods she could never master, Mary cried, " I vow to God I shall be once revenged!" "White was her cheek : sharp breaths of anger puffed Her fairy nostril out ; her hand half clenched Went faltering sideways downward to her belt, And feeling ; had she found a dagger there She would have stabbed him ; but she found it not : 366 JOHN KNOX, His eye was calm, — and suddenly she took To bitter weeping, like a beaten child, A long, long weeping, not consolable. Then her false voice made way," — I shall be revenged ! And she tried it ; first a trumped- up charge of treason before the Council, where he stood alone to say, " I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth ; and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list ;" and second, the dag- gers of the assassins. Both failed. And of Knox "she could in nowise be quit ;" and in him lived on the true Scotland. The churchman and not the courtier is mas- ter. For some two years Knox remains in partial re- tirement ; but ever watchful, busy with the Church and with Cecil and Randolph, who rely on that old man as the strength of Scotland and the shield of England. Now come the Murder Months. Chastelar, with whom Mary had toyed in Paris while her first husband was dying, whom she had shamelessly caressed on ship- board and lured on to desperation, has been sacrificed to shield her name. Darnley, who has been the hope of the English and Scotch papists because the heir of the Tudor line, and to whom for solely political objects Mary Stuart was married on Sunday, July 29, 1565, has just had David Rizzio murdered, now known to have been not only the queen's favorite but also the supple, subtle Romish emissary, like Raulet, Chesein, Yaxley and Chambers. Mary swears revenge, and here the oath fails not. Darnley, licentious fool, soon per- ceives both his doom and his successor. He falls sick, and poison is strongly suspected. The sick man is re- covering of the smallpox and the drug, if such were really used; but on the 9th of February, 1567, the sick THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 367 husband, whom his wife persuades to leave his father's care for Craigmillar Castle ; the blind weakling, whom this consummate hypocrite induces on the way to ex- change Craigmillar for the ruinous Kirk-a-field ; the doomed victim, whom gentle Mary has petted out of his strong fears into quietness while the powder is being piled below his room, and then with a lying excuse leaves to be blown up while she feasts and dances, — Henry Darnley is foully, basely murdered by Mary and Bothwell. Then comes the scandalous ride to Dun- bar, the more scandalous stay with Bothwell, and the most scandalous enforced divorce and the blood-dyed marriage. Just at that storm-swept and sin-laden time John Knox returns from his visit to England to be confronted with a convulsed capital and a clamoring country. The whole evidence is laid before him. At once he speaks out ; he loathes the crime so doubly black ; he de- nounces the wedded criminals. It was murder foulest, most cowardly, damnable. Was it less so because a beautiful woman wrought, as adviser and accessory, the unutterable, detestable deed ? Queen though she were, she was as black with lust, as red with blood, as Both- well. Do you love the snake that stings to death be- cause beautiful ? does the rank of the criminal change the character of the deed ? Nay, verily ! So thought Knox, and said so. Was she guilty ? John Knox proposed the fair and true course : let the queen be tried, and if innocent stand free, if guilty be dealt with as eternal justice de- mands ! We now see the evidence her brother, her lords, Knox, Cecil, the French and Spanish courts, had ; we have her own letters to Bothwell ; we have the tes- 368 JOHN KNOX, timony of Bothwell's servants, the confessions of the conspirators, the oath of her brother before the York Commission, the A^erdict of Francis Bacon and of the English Council, the despatches of the French and Spanish ambassadors to their respective courts, the dec- laration of her guilt by the very Duke of Norfolk once about to marry her, and finally the exposure of Mary by one who knew her better than any but Knox, the Bishop of Ross himself. The evidence is superabundant. And the historic Mary Stuart must take her place henceforth as more determined, deceitful, deadly, than the Lady Macbeth of poetry. The dry, keen, pitiless light of full day is poured upon that lie-blackened, lust-stained, blood-soaked field. Knox demanded justice. Well had it been had he, the one wise, firm-souled, clean-handed man of Scot- land's leaders, been obeyed. The lords dared not do the right. Their own hands were not clean. They im- prisoned Mary at Lochleven. But once again they had sowed the wind ; soon came the whirlwind. The land is in an uproar. Murray, who has in those dark days turned back to his true friend and wisest counsellor, Knox, has been called to govern, and is proving himself what a grateful country called him, and what history at last endorses, " the Good Regent." Mary conspires with the jealous Hamiltons and the plotting papists ; and through George Douglas, over whom she has cast her glamour and fatal spell, escapes upon the 2d of May, 1568. Civil war begins between the Scotland of the Court and the Scotland of the Church. To the side of Murray Knox calls the young land ; to the side of Mary rallies the party of the old nobles and that old Church ; but the blanket-banner of the Glasgow burghers and the THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 369 Lothian yeomen waves triumphantly at Langside, while Mary and her supporters flee across the border. Then come the years of plots and conspiracies. In the centre stands, cool, crafty, pitiless, this blood-stained woman. Elizabeth will force this foul queen back on a reluctant people. The regent rises up, strong and noble, to the call of the hour ; and Knox cheers him on, and the country supports both. Then by another diabolic plot, of which Mary Stuart was a well-pleased abettor, and by an assassin for whom Knox had just prayed for- giveness, whom Murray had just pardoned, ay, an as- sassin his gentle sister Mary thanked, and pensioned for life — the one supremely brave and unselfish peer in Scotland, the Good Regent, is murdered on the 23d of January, 1570. As you stand beside the black block of Fotheringay, remember that there is a God who reigneth in righteousness, while the headsman's axe gleams above the murderess of her husband Darnley and her brother Murray ! Now all Scotland seems rushing fast to doom. All England shakes with conspiracies. In Scotland, Mait- land, Chatelherault, Huntly, Ross, are plotting with the Spaniards and the papists ; in England Elizabeth actu- ally quakes, Cecil himself is alarmed, the Catholics of the north are arming and Norfolk is at their head. The crisis has come in all wildness ; and if Elizabeth be swept to ruin, she richly deserves it. But one old, strong-souled, firm-faithed man saves her. He knew the north of England, the plan of the Catholic leagues, the plots of Maitland and the Ilamiltons, the projects of Alva and Philip, the meaning of Mary's victory and re- turn to power ; and he made Scotland know. Out from St. Giles sweeps the wild, mighty, rousing slogan of 370 JOHN KNOX, Knox. The Lowlands have started, the armies of the Congregation march, and war begins. Out from St. Andrews, to which for safety from Mary's assassins the old man has been forcibly carried by his friends, swell the trumpet-tones of Knox, putting, as Randolph wrote to Cecil, " more life into men than six hundred trump- ets." "Out from the pulpit up to which the old man must be helped, but in which he waxes strong and stalwart as though he would ' ding it in blads,' pour those heart- stirring calls that move Scotland." The steel-bonnets gather ; and they stand firm till Knox moves Cecil ; till Cecil and Walsingham and Randolph move Elizabeth, now alarmed for her crown and her life ; till English troops join these armies of the Congregation ; till Edin- burgh is taken and Scotland saved. One man stood in the gap of death, and barred the way against Mary's party and Rome's partisans. Now back from St. Andrews where the prophet has been the joy and the pride of the students, who play their shows before the hearty, genial old father, and race about him and cluster fondly around him sitting in the college grounds, the old man comes to die, — yes, and of a broken heart. In the midst of their own joy and their own victory they hear of " black Bartholomew." For his last great effort God's prophet ascends the pulpit of St. Giles ; and the sermon is thrilling. At its close Knox turns to the French ambassador and pronounces God's doom upon his master's bloody house — the never- departing sword. Unable to fill St. Giles, the dying prophet is preaching his last words at the Tolbooth. One sermon of peculiar beauty and tenderness was preached in the Tolbooth on the 9th of November ; then Knox and the congregation moved up to St. Giles, THE FATHER OF SCOTLAND. 371 where the dying man, who had never recovered that Bartholomew blow, installed his successor, and then took his long, lingering farewell of his church and his con- gregation and his country. And then down the sloping street, through the lines of bareheaded men and sob- bing women and awed children, leaning on his staff went the father of his church and country. In his little room he laid him down to die in the calmness of a hero, in the humility of a sinner, in the faith of a Christian, in the submission, hope and joy of a home-going child, yet with a broken heart. Bartholomew's blood lay spread out before his eyes, "and he was weary, weary of the world." He calls his servants, pays them their wages, speaks to them kindly and dismisses them with a bless- ing. His friends pour in and would flatter, but the humble man said, " Peace; the flesh of itself is over-proud." His old foes, like Boyd, come and visit him, and the large- souled man forgives them. The new Regent Morton visits him, and the brave man questions him, ere he welcomes him, if he was clear of Darnley's blood ; and then he speaks words which Morton will recall in the after years upon the scaffold. It is Monday, the 24th of November, 1572 ; the last pain has seized his aching heart, — " not a painful pain," says the uncomplaining hero, " but such a one, I trust, as will put an end to the battle." Beside him wait the faithful Campbell of Braid and the devoted Bannatyne. His loving wife, Margaret Stewart, for twelve years his worthy mate, reads to him as desired the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the dying man says, " Beautiful ! is it not a beautiful chapter !" It is evening ; the pain grows sharper, and the man is fighting his last fight with the tempter. The victory is gained through humility and faith. It is 372 JOHN KNOX. night — ten o'clock ; it will soon be over. " Read me the chapter where I first cast anchor." The seventeenth chapter of John is read ; and then in a few minutes, with hand lifted up in token of his unfaltering faith, he passes from the Memory of the great High Priest and the Echo of his prayer to the Presence of the King and the Sound of his voice and joyous greeting, Well done, good and faithful servant ! Yes, it was well done. Ver- ily he was faithful. His country mourned over him, as children for a father. His country gathered round his grave in the old churchyard of St. Giles. Morton said over him : " There lies he who never feared the face of man." The noblemen and freemen of Kyle and Cunningham called him "the first Planter and chief Waterer of God's Church." But his own words are best. " What I have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. Yet what hast thou that thou hast not received ? By the grace of God I am what I am : not I, but the grace of God in me." No man knoweth his grave ; but his memory lives in the hearts of countless freemen, and his monument is found in Scotland, in her Church and children with their works of faith and labors of love. OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. "Thus far our fortune keeps an upward course, And we are graced with wreaths of victory." OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. " So THEN, BRETHREN, WE ARE NOT CHILDREN OF THE BONDWOMAN, BUT OF THE FREE. StAND FAST THEREFORE IN THE LIBERTY WHEREWITH Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with THE YOKE OF BONDAGE." — Galatians iv. 31 and v. 1. West of the Rhine, and east of the Haardt Hills, where a vine-clad stream joins the torrent river of the Fatherland, stands a little city. The colonizing Ro- mans knew it as Noviomagus ; old German kings and Salic princes named it " Wine-home ;" bishops and jur- ists spoke of it as the " City of Diets ;" antiquaries visited it as the " Sepulchre of German emperors ;" but we and all our posterity will honor this old Speyer as the City of the Immortal Protest. From Heidelberg we run fourteen miles to the south- west, crossing in our way the Rhine, and at last reach the war-wasted place. The fiendish violences of the Mordbrenner Krieg have laid it low. Only portions of its cathedral and that tottering wall beside the old im- perial palace are to be seen. Yet regard that wall with reverence ; it is the grim relic of a grand revolt. In 1529 that wall was the one side of a historic hall, and there were gathered the chivalry, the scholarship, the jurists, the priests and princes of Europe. The forces of the progressive North and of the reactionary South were marshalled for battle. 376 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. On the 7th of April began the struggle, for then was revoked the toleration-edict granting liberty of worship and freedom of evangelistic work to the restorers of apostolic Christianity. That revocation, accomplished through the craft of the now once more reconciled pope and Emperor Charles, fired with indignation John the Steadfast, noble and learned Philip of Hesse, the sturdy Margrave of Brandenburg, Anhalt's brave prince, the able Chancellor of Luneburg, and the bold deputies from Strasburg, Nuremberg, Ulm, Constanz and other free cities. Hearing of that treacherous revocation, they start from their seats, they gather together, they consult, they retire. Who are they ? Descendants of those who in princely halls and poorest homes have learned to love the Bible and God's pure waters of life. On the morrow, standing once more in the hall, calm but pale, they face the imperial president of the diet, Ferdinand the Fickle, princes and prelates and the hosts of Rome, and canonists and priests. What do they ? They deny ; they demand ; they affirm. They deny all human supremacy over God-given con- science ; they demand liberty of gospel worship and freedom for gospel work ; they affirm^ " Each man must stand alone before God ; the truth is God's word, pure and simple, and nought that is contrary thereto, " Now, seeing that there is great diversity of opinion as to the true and holy Church ; that there is no sure doctrine but such as is conformable to the word of God ; that the Lord forbids the teaching of any other doc- trine ; that each text of the Holy Scriptures ought to be explained by other and clearer texts ; that this holy Book is in all things necessary for the Christian, easy THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 377 of understanding, and calculated to scatter the dark- ness ; we are resolved, with the grace of God, to main- tain the pure and exclusive preaching of his only word, such as it is contained in the biblical books of the Old and New Testaments, without adding anything thereto. If you yield not to our request, we protest before God, our only Creator, Preserver, Redeemer and Saviour, who will one day be our Judge, as well as before all men and nations, that we, for us and our people, neither consent nor adhere, in any manner whatsoever, to the proposed decree, in anything that is contrary to God, to his holy word, to our right consciences, to the salva- tion of our souls, and to the first edict of Speyer." No ! they thunder to all the traditions of the elders ; Yes! they write under all God says. And ih^y protest against all power — the Csesarism of the empire and the Csesarism of the papacy — which would add anything to Scripture or bind the conscience of which God alone is King. There and then those noble men, who have glorified their age, gained their immortal name — The Protest- ants. That sublime movement of God's Holy Spirit, the Reformation, took bodily shape in this hour of crisis. This movement, seen in its earliest development or studied in its full-bodied and well-grown strength, proves itself a true and real resurrection of primitive Christianity — the old and indestructible life in a new form, and that in a new world. Protestantism is not, as Dorner develops in his his- tory, merely the negation of Romanism ; it is not a mere protest against the Church of the pope ; it is not the accidental union of tendencies, feelings and views 378 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. adverse to Rome considered in herself; but holding in its breast a proper principle of vitality, it is the neces- sary outgrowth and forthputting of a life repressed for centuries. Thus Protestantism has an union, a vital connection, with the ancient Church of the Apostles. Cradled in ancient Christianity, it was nurtured by the most earnest minds of the middle ages. Thus born and nurtured. Protestantism, judged by its authoritative symbols, embodies two grand principles — one negative, one positive. A negative — for Protestant- ism is a Bible-born revolt against all class-authority in regard to church control, creed and conduct ; and in that revolt are involved the right and duty of each individual to search the law and testimony for himself, and to decide as to its meaning on his own responsibility. A principle positive — the proclamation and inculcation of certain doctrinal, moral and ecclesiastical views, as founded on, agreeable to and authorized by holy Scrip- ture ; and herein are involved the supremacy of God over creed and conduct and the consequent limitation of the freedom of the creature, who is at once moral and responsible. Thus Protestantism confronts alike the Csesarism of the prince and the worse Csesarism of the pope, and fights for the freedom of the individual. But, at the same moment. Protestantism confronts all lawless individualism, and asserts the supremacy of God's law and truth. Like the ark of old, it prostrates the Dagon of sacerdotalism. Like David, it masters, in Jehovah's name, the boastful and blasphemous Go- liath of lawless humanism. Thus, fair to man and just to God, Protestantism carried man with it, and found the Almighty its shield and sword. THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 379 Not mine to-night the thrilling task of repeating, but simply of referring to, its early success. After many faint flushings of the sky — the gray -roseate prophets of the dawn — the day broke, and rushed, like a full trop- ical sun, fast and furious into full-orbed glory ; and the slumbering life of the most forceful nations started into more than Samsonic energy and power. But, as with many of our brightest days in sea-girt isles, the glory too quickly paled. The Reformation seemed suddenly to have lost breath, and its race to the goal of universal supremacy was slacked. In the exhaustive works of Ranke, in the histories of Hallam and Macaulay, and in the half-truths and unwilling admissions of Spalding, we may behold a double set of causes for this reaction. One set inside the Church of Rome. The Roman court, after the peace with Charles the Fifth, began to con- centrate its strength upon her spiritual field ; the Coun- cil of Trent gave compactness and unity to her dogmas ; the monastic orders, under the influence of some dis- tinguished men, practiced a new and severe discipline ; the wealthier church livings were freely given to the sons and nephews of ruling princes ; under the frenzied genius of Loyola, the mightiest organization the papacy ever wielded rose in the army of the Jesuits ; and in the hands of the followers of Dominic de Guzman the Inquisition became an engine of indescribable power for the suppression of the truth. Without the Church of Rome, but influenced by her power and policy, the Catholic powers of Spain, Ital}^, France and Austria persecuted to death and utter de- struction the infant churches of the Reformation. Prot- estf^nt powers, by their insane conflicts, weakened each 380 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. other so frequently that they were often overpowered by the Catholic League. Among the Protestant churches we find sad causes : the lamentable and notorious imperfection of the Eng- lish Reformation, the bitter dissensions between Luther- ans and Calvinists, and the scandalous cupidity, luke- warmness and formality that were too soon manifest in the Lutheran Church. Co-operant with all these forces checking the Ref- ormation was a power that threatened Christianity itself — the skepticism of the seventeenth century. Following upon this beclouded period came a time in some respects even worse — that eighteenth century, "age of the trifling head and the corrupted heart." But at the eventide there is ever light. Into that age of " civilized barbarism and disguised animalism " the God of history stepped. By terrible things in right- eousness he made answer to prayer upon the continent. In England and America he replied by the dews and soft showers of his reviving grace. France was con- vulsed by the volcanic revolution. Germany had, as Bauer shows, an agonizing new birth in her " wars of independence." To England, Scotland, Ireland and America fresh faith and spirit-strength were given. The saintly fathers Beveridge and Doddridge gave birth to Whitfield and the Wesleys. Then came re- vived churches. Sabbath-schools, care for the poor, new-born missions, the holy war for emancipation, and the sublime lives of Howard, Wilberforce and Thomp- son. The darkness passed, the true light shone once more ; and since it has gathered force and fullness and freedom every hour. Like travellers journeying in autumn's changeful THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 381 days from mountain top to top, we have gone from the gleaming peaks of the glorious Reformation-century downwards through the fading light, gathering gloom and freezing mists of the seventeenth century ; through the lifeless deserts and awesome nights of the eight- eenth we have hurried, sick with the stench of its corruptions, feeling it a very valley of death's shade ; and then up through the thunders and lightnings and tumults of the morning of our age we have pressed, the air growing purer, the prospects brightening and widen- ing, our hearts lightening, our voices ringing out with a growing gladness, and now on the high land again we stand ; and it is day, thank God, once more, with God's light and life, power and promise in it. Day again ! Not all cloudless ; but the mists and clouds are hurry- ing quickly from our view. And from Pisgah heights we see stretching far out- ward a goodly land of peace and plenty, the ark of the Lord in her, God's smile on her; in her the A^aried tribes of Israel dwelling separate, yet one ; everywhere this banner seen — Jehovah Tzidkenu ; the common song of the Lamb rolling in sweet harmony from the vine-dressers of the South to the hardy mountaineers on Hermon's slopes, from the shepherds' tents on the East to the fishers and the sailors of the great sea. Protestantism, fallen by the falsity of kings, by the ferocity of persecution, still more by her own faithless- ness, has risen Antseus-like, with new vigor fronts the fray, shakes her invincible locks, and "meets the foe with manly and awful-eyed fortitude." It is day again for her — the most promising since Luther and Zwingle disputed at Marburg. Of this revived Protestantism what are the hopes 382 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. and prospects ? When we speak of the prospects of Protestantism we survey a narrower field than in studying the prospects of Christianity. Protestant as I am to my soul's deepest depth, and thou, my dear Roman Catholic brother, I will not forget that we both profess a common Christianity — that ours are Augus- tine, Athanasius and Chrysostom ; that mine and thine are Patrick and Boniface, Anselm and Bernard ; that mine and thine are Savonarola, Huss, Francis, Bona- ventura, Thomas Aquinas and Lacordaire. I dare not forget that we both believe in one Father's home, in one crucified and risen Christ, in one Holy Spirit, in one divine revelation ; and yet, dear brother, thou art wrong, and going daily farther wrong, under the fell guidance of this ultramontane Jesuitism, which has now placed a deified man, a priestly Caesar, on the throne of highest glory in the house of God ; and, brother — noble, loving, devoted, self-sacrificing brother — with thy deep religious soul hear and believe that all God's forces, that God in nature, God in history, God in grace, are against thee in thy hopeless, sinful opposi- tion to free consciences, the unshared mediation of Jesus, and the never-delegated authority of Jehovah one and supreme ! Speaking then of Protestantism's prospects, we sur- vey the field wherein Protestantism and ultramontane Romanism struggle. Though pleasant and easy, it is unfair and unwise to sneer at and underestimate a foe using a mode of warfare wholly different from our own. Very hard is it for thoughtful and generous Teutons to understand Celts. It is immeasurably more difficult for a Protestant to measure the force of Romanism. From a very careful study of her power and seductive THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 383 attractiveness, I have come forth with an awed admir- ation of the perfect union of pagan power and Christian graces visible in this mysterious Church. Like a mod- ern frigate, she is the highest product of human force and wealth and skill, richly furnished through the lav- ish gifts of many lands, and finished by the thousand- yeared experiences of good and evil men. Before humanity Rome rises at once queenlike and motherlike, in her gorgeous historic glory, in her seemingly-death- less vigor and unscarred beauty, hoary with eld's white- ness, yet fresh as childhood — rises to present an au- thoritative teacher, speaking in earth's tones heaven's certain truth ; to present a compact, consistent yet comprehensive theology, releasing from vexing thoughts and solving doubt; to present her priesthood in close and effective relations with the spiritual world, thus made near and tangible ; the easily-acquired and easily- grasped pledge of salvation; the alleged highest and only real sanctity in this life ; the long and magnificent register of venerable heroes and saintly heroines ; the hallowed association of the highest arts with devoutest worship ; and the loud, steadfast claim to the only power capable of conserving society and regenerating the world. Thus Rome attracts from opposite sides the sentimental and religious, the rationalistic and skeptical. But in this practical and critical age Rome's awful as- sertions expose her to fatal attack. Such claims chal- lenge, yea compel, keenest search. Did Rome ever make them good ? has she succeeded ? In the past she relied on superstition, vicarious religion, pious frauds, human authority, persecution, trust in outward priv- ileges. Where to-day the power of these forces ? Vanishing like mists. Along the entire line of olden 384 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. struggle Rome is a beaten foe. For what did Wycliffe, Huss, Jerome, Savonarola, Ridley, contend ? What in them did Rome resist ? Ask the past ; then see who have won. History crowns the martyrs as the victors of the persecutor. Rome claims to be true. Have not her own exasperated sons turned upon her, and in " Janus," in " The Council and the Vatican," in Hefele's " Councils," in Dollinger's recent lectures, exposed her shameless series of fearful forgeries ? Rome claims to be unchangeable. We place in the light the countless variations of popery, her suspension of canon laws in the lands where the Jesuits toil, her recent develop- ments by which councils lose their old powers and bow slaves to an infallible pope. Rome claims to be one. We ask her to explain the fact of three popes, each holy, and all anathematizing one another ; the wide divergencies on morality and theology within her pale ; the fierce animosities of her varied orders ; and the latest schism in her body. Rome claims a power of perpetual progress. We ask where is the possibility of any reconciliation between the independent minds of the present and the future and the enslaved, reactionary Church of the syllabus and infallibility? Rome has broken with her own past and with the divine future. Regarding her present attractions, the one insuper- able argument against them is history, the pitiless logic of events. Her assertions are hollow fictions. Recent facts in Italy, Spain, France, Mexico, West Indies, Ba- varia, Austria, have written again on Babylon's wall — Tekel ; and disappointed races are cursing and hating the deceiver. Like Germany in the late campaigns, Protestantism fronts an unmasked pretender, and faces a weakened THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 385 enemy, robbed of her fame, her banners and her fairest provinces. And in this struggle with the Jesuits' Church, Prot- estantism fights in alliance with all modern civilization ; with all intellectual, moral and purely sacred forces ; yea, with the fountain of all force, Jehovah, who gives not his glory to graven images. The civilization of the age is our ally. By civiliza- tion is meant every element in tripartite man's perfect development and highest well-being, in the completest constitution of refined and highly-organized society, in the noblest, freest and purest political condition, to- gether with all the germs of indefinite progress in the future of individuals, society and states. Once the mediaeval Church was the conservator of civilization; but the Council of Trent began a separation, and it grew till the syllabus of this Jesuit-ruled pope declared dead- liest opposition to all modern culture. Historic facts have taught the nations that, while Protestantism has a necessary connection with, and a felt need of, broadest civil and religious liberty, liberal education and the downfall of all monopolies, Romanism has never dis- avowed the right to persecute, nor renounced the con- trol of conscience, nor resigned her claims to mtermed- dle with the jurisdiction of states, nor given up the absolute lordship over all lords, and her supreme exal- tation above every human law and opinion. Hence the nations have drawn back the secular arm that supported, and withheld the temporal benefits that nurtured, this deadly viper of ultramontane Caesarism. Further, we see the gifts of civilization and the results of thought and science so quickening intellect and sharpening curi- osity that there rules a critical spirit, making credulity 386 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. most difficult and undermining superstition. And all this works mightily against Rome, and for her who says, " Judge ye what I say ?" Again, the whole tendency of civil government is to free the masses, to destroy castes, to give prominence to the man, leaving the indi- vidual independent within his own proper world, and limiting him simply as he would limit his neighbor. Now the outcome of such state-action is the necessitat- ing of private judgment, stimulating freedom of soul and deepening the sense of individual responsibility. Against whom do all these modern improvements tell ? History and the syllabus say Rome. For whom ? His- tory and the Evangelical Alliance say, Thank God, &r Protestantism ! At the Reformation Protestantism, attacking the papal Csesar who succeeded and surpassed the pagan Caesar, redowered the individual with his proper and regulated freedom, and ever since she has nourished the free energy, both intellectual and moral, of each subject, till a resultant self-respect, self-control, self-reliance, mental activity, inventive capacity and energy of character have made her best sons the won- der of the age. And for proof, you may contrast Ger- many with France, Holland with Portugal, England with Spain, the United States with Mexico. Which religious system will the progressive societies of the future adopt ? And here we are led to ask, On whose side are ranked modern military science and strength, commerce and the great colonizing forces ? Surveying the fields of gory Mars, of fleet-footed Mercury and restless Neptune, where see we the greatest power and promise ? So far as I can judge, the only hope of the Vatican is in a war ; and yet, the great military powers are all anti- ultramontane, including both Italy and Austria, while THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. o87 the very strongest are Protestant — England, Germany and America. Where lies the force of colonization? Unquestionably with the hardy sons of Protestantism, who are making the Greater Britain and the New Ger- many and the Larger Scandinavia. Compare the miser- able Latin colonies with the vigorous settlements of the Briton, the German and Norwegian. The past testifies that the rise and growth of commerce powerfully under- mined the lordship of the hierarchy, and the Dutch merchants and English sailors soon renounced the sway of ecclesiastics. Commerce, producing a keenness of intellect, practical sagacity, social progress, generous sympathies, rapid intercourse, and liberalizing indus- tries, arts and studies, has ever wrought for Protest- antism. And to-day who own London and Liverpool, Glasgow and Belfast, New York and San Francisco ? Regard now the purely intellectual forces. In every progressive society, secular instruction, popular educa- tion and knowledge are rapidly spreading. Men must have newspapers, books, schools, colleges, free investi- gation and discussion, and earnest appeals to public opinion. Even Rome makes her justifications before public society, publishes her purposes, prints her books and sends forth her eloquent Manning and oratorical Burke to plead her cause. What a change from the olden day, when she never defended, but only burned ! Is this condition of mind and education the helper of Romanism or Protestantism, judging by their actions and histories ? Which system demands culture ? To the Roman, culture is confessedly needless, and at the best is an intruder whose action must be chained. To the Protestant, education, knowledge, mental enlightenment, are indispensable, for the strength of our reformed faith 388 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. lies in the thorough search and intelligent study of that Bible which calls for the highest cultivation of mind and spirit. Educate, educate, educate ! cried Luther and Calvin and Knox ; never since has the cry died, and now the masses have caught it up, and demand freest, fairest, fullest education. And education and Protest- antism are united as light and heat. Mightier than the intellectual are the moral forces. On whose side are marshalled the holy love of self, the love of truth, the love of man, of home and country ? Thou shalt love thy better self — thy free will, higher aspirations. God-fearing self-reliance, thy direct respons- ibility to God ! And the mightiest races, daily rising in their esteem of these glorious possessions, cry Amen ! Where is this sacred love of the noble self most secure ? Thou shalt love truth — solid, pure, broad, real, per- sonal holiness ! Men cry Amen ! and proxy-sanctity avails no more. Where is the weightiest wealth of moral character — in Scotland or in Spain ? Thou shalt love man ! Where are the masses freest and most cared for ? Where is the labor question most fairly faced ? Where is slavery most abhorred and most fully abolished ? Thou shalt love thy home ! And men know where their hearts are most sacred and their homes the safest. Is it where celibacy and the confessional are laws ? Thou shalt love thy land ! The voices of the human heart and of heaven's law harmonize here. What church would destroy true nationality, declaring the principle of separate nationalities barbarous and anti-Christian? The Romish — Manning and Mivart being witnesses. Dr. Manning deliberately declares that intense love of THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 389 native land which rejects the rule of the Vatican to be revived paganism. We affirm that patriotism, calling for a free church in a free state, to be ancient and eternal Christianity. Freemen ! hear it — true patriot- ism, intense nationalism, is paganism ! We say, your love of land is one of the finest features of your loving, noble and impulsive natures. Again, in this battle we have with us strange yet strong allies. Within the Church of Rome we have our forces. Not to enchained consciences, not to fet- tered intellects nor restless households, refractory priests and oppressed Gallican or Hibernian freemen, not to multiplying schools, unavoidable education, and rebellious students kicking against the syllabus, do I refer; but to Rome's recent abandonment of her old position. As Dollinger, Fromann and Hefele demon- strate, she has broken with her traditional past, is now new, and that with blasphemous arrogance ; second, having lost her liberty and comprehensiveness, she has dwindled to a sect, and that of the fell Jesuits ; third, by her infallibility decree she has made all reform im- possible ; fourth, by her present attitude she has made herself the propagandist of universal revolution, and hence the nations are rising against her. The battle is already begun in Switzerland, Italy, Austria and the grand old Fatherland. And with the battle comes the new revolt, the wondrous Old-Catholic movement, born in the strange cradle of the Vatican, attaining maturity in Constanz, and now, fully organized, walking forth in power, refusing the hand of the Romanizing anglican, while sending loving greetings to the Evangelical Alli- ance. All these favorable forces lie outside of Protestant- 390 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. ism, and the issue of them depends, under God, on what the Protestant churches are and shall do. Studied from within, Protestantism never had pros- pects half so bright. Her churches are now fuller of life and light, closer drawn, instinct with a purer spirit than ever — the might of God and man with her. And the finest and most striking proofs are the later meetings of her Alliance, the grandest in men, mightiest in moral force, most attractive in generosity, enthusiastic in mission zeal, united in hope, Christly in charity, and divinely one in aim and sympathy and work, her children have ever known. Recall the glorious New York conference. Hearken to them, as from every kindred and nation and tongue they tell every man in his own tongue the marvellous works of God. We know the story England, Scotland and Ireland tell. Joyfully speaks Brown from Russia of the many points of agreement between the Greek Church and evangelical Christendom. Kalkar of Scandinavia tells of new life, more scriptural preaching and growing missionary zeal. Protestant Germany speaks through young Krummacher of fresh faith everywhere, of generals preaching the gospel, of a pious emperor and a revived Church. Stuart from Rotterdam describes thus the Protestantism of Hol- land — Calvinistic in creed, Presbyterian in organization and Puritan in rite — and declares that everywhere are prognostics of a better future. Anet from Belgium, Fisch and Lorriaux from France, Reichel from Switzerland and Prochet from Italy tell a hopeful tale of even those papal lands. Classic Greece and torpid Turkey speak their words of cheer. Then voices from the great mission fields cry, " Good news ! glad tidings ! Jesus reigns over countless subjugated hearts !" THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 391 Now look within that church. The feast of charity, the table of Christ, is spread. There the Judah of Episcopacy and the Ephraim of Nonconformity, vexing no more nor envying, meet in love. One not in dead uniformity, but one, as nature is, with unity and variety — one in God, one in will, in work, one in Christ, one family on whom the one Father smiles. As the grave, sweet melody of grateful song swells from the hearts of those united representatives of about 100,000,000 Protestants, may they and we not say, What hath God wrought ! The Lord hath done great things for us ! Who may measure the greatness ? Back to the early witnesses and martyred fathers of Protestantism we look, and then around, to cry again. How great ! In England long and hopelessly did Wycliffe plead for a free Bible, and to-day in over sixty tongues men read of Jesus. Now the colporteur stands in the Madrid streets, and the Bible society has its place in the Roman Corso. In Bohemia and at Constanz Huss and Jerome preached and prayed and died for freedom of conscience and of worship. To-day no secular arm obeys the Inquisition, and the Vatican itself cannot exclude the sound of the Protestant psalm. At Florence the eloquent Do- minican proclaimed " the triumph of the cross," and Rome burned him. To-day thousands, in his own Tuscan, sing the song of the Lamb. At Cologne and Lou vain Wessel whispered of justification by fjiith. To-day millions tell boldly " the old, old story." To-day we look around in grateful gladness, witness- ing in the Protestant churches a deepening humility, an ever-growing spiritual power, a progressive life of increasing symmetry and beauty, a steadily-swelling 392 OUR HERITAGE AND OUR HOPES. light, fed more plentifully by the oil of the Spirit, a diviner strength, derived from closer communion with Christ, a widening, more tender, generous charity, which, with love's quick insight, is catching more quickly the lineaments of Jesus in every Christian face, and hastens to greet it with the kiss of peace. Lovers of Jesus, drawn more powerfully by his own attractiveness to himself, are nearing each other. In Geneva the Catholic priest says to the Protestant pas- tor, " Give me your hand, brother ; we are one in Jesus." And within the reformed churches nearer and nearer draw the servants of the common Lord. Sep- arated sections of the same ecclesiastical families are everywhere uniting into single and compact bodies, unified by love and by the spirit of peace ; and distinct denominations are strongly possessed by the faith that alliance in God's work is a- grand and simple possibility even in this moment, despite a thousand distinctions, and that it will form a blessed preparative for that real union which shall disregard dull uniformity, and seek the higher unity and hallowed harmony of Christian likeness and unlikeness. Daily rises higher the banner of peace with this device, " Let there be no strife, for we are brethren." And God, the Author of concord and Father of the one family, smiles. Beneath that smile the desert blooms and the waste grows Edenic in its beaut}' and heavy fruitage, and the Spirit-breath sweeps soft and vitalizing across the paradise of a reviving Church, and it is spring in the garden of the Lord. Up from this reviving Church rises prayer — one mighty prayer — hearty, believing, sharply-pointed, sa- credly passionate, prevalent in the resistless determina- THE PROSPECTS OF PROTESTANTISM. 393 tion of holy boldness and sanctified resolution, — rises to be caught by the High Priest and presented to the Father; and the prayer is for the "promise of the Father," for the suppliants have learned by the past that not by might nor by power, but by God's Spirit, they shall conquer; and so lower still they bend. " Not unto us, not unto us, but unto thy name, be glory." We have no holy father but God, no holy priest but Christ, no holy unction but the Spirit. Thou art our all in all. Look up ! As they bow and plead the bow stretches outwards, downwards — the emerald bow of covenant- promise ; and the old words fall with new power on our ears, " Them that honor me I will honor, but they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Therein is told the doom of Rome and the coming glory of the Church of Christ's pure evangel. The hour nears when angel voices shall cry, and earth take up the shout, " Babylon is fallen — is fallen — fallen to rise no more." " The world is old. But the old world waits the time to be renewed, Towards which new faithful hearts must quicken . . . Developed whence, shall grow spontaneously New churches, new oeconomies, new laws Admitting freedom, new societies Excluding falsehood : he shall make all new." 26 Date Due M R - ■-'z^ 5 ^'-'27 n gdy =i4i- VH BW1915.M15 The breakers of the yoke : sketches and Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00082 5762