feared when he was neither loved nor admired. Knox was a man of real genius, one of the great figures of history.

If others do not admire and love him. Scotland should, for well and tenderly he loved his native land. In a letter to his sister in Edinburgh, he writes thus from a foreign land: "Only this I dare say, that sometimes (seldom, alas!) I feel a sob and groan, willing that Christ Jesus might openly be preached in my native country, with a certain desire that my ears might hear it, although it should be with the loss of this wretched life."

Another great Scotchman, hearing that sob and groan across the ages, responded to it thus: "Knox is, to me, of the select of the earth. What he has suffered from the ungrateful generations that have followed him should really make us humble ourselves to the dust, to think that the most excellent man our country has produced, to whom we owe everything that distinguishes us among the nations, should have been so sneered at, misknown, and abused" (Carlyle in 1868). And the great Englishman, John Milton, recognized the true character and significance of Knox, and expressed the world's ultimate verdict when he wrote: "Knox, the Reformer of a kingdom That great man.”

Knox was the one man who quickened Scotland into higher life and moulded its warring elements into the unity of its modern history. Its earlier history was confused and turbulent. All the world glows at the deeds of the War of Independence and at the names of Wallace and Bruce. But up to the Reformation the interminable feuds of the nobility, the ignorance and poverty of the people, the gross secularization and moral degradation of the Church kept Scotland in a most backward con

dition, and ever and anon plunged it into civil war and almost into anarchy.

In no other country was the Church so corrupt. The ecclesiastical establishment was enormously wealthy. A large part of the benefices were held by the sons of nobles who were only nominally clergymen and whose simony and licentiousness were notorious. The illegitimate daughters of bishops and archbishops were unblushingly married into the highest families. The parish priests were ignorant. The innumerable monks (so picturesque in Scott's stories) were idle and dissolute. Religion was little more than superstition. The mass, with its pretended miracle of transubstantiation, seemed the sum of Christianity. Both morals and religion were dead or dying.

Into this valley of dry bones came the quickening breath of the Reformation, and lo! a great army of living worshippers of the living God stood upon their feet.

Knox was not the first reformer in Scotland. To say nothing of slight movements in the earlier Lollard times, soon after continental Europe felt the influence of Luther's call, the new impulse made itself felt in Scotland. Merchants and travellers carried the news and kindled curiosity and enthusiasm. The high-born and charming youth, Patrick Hamilton, having studied under Luther and Melanchthon in Wittenberg, preached the gospel of free grace in his native land, and sealed his testimony with his death at the stake in 1528. And within a few years many a martyr followed his example, although the sufferings of the Scotch reformers at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church are not to be compared with those of their covenanting successors in the next century at the hands of their Episcopalian oppressors.

By far the most notable of these Reformation martyrs in Scotland was the gentle and yet fearless George Wishart, who exerted a wide influence over all classes, and especially over Knox himself, and who died at the stake at St. Andrews in 1546, uttering this remarkable prophecy:

"God will send you comfort after me; this realm shall be illuminated with the light of Christ's Gospel, as clearly as any realm ever was since the days of the apostles; the house of God shall be built in it; yea, it shall not lack (whatsoever the enemies shall devise to the contrary) the very copestone; neither shall this be long in doing, for there shall not many suffer after me."

By a general infection of the Reformation, which was in the air of all Europe, by the labors and heroic death of the martyrs, by the very infamy of the corrupt and shameless Church, Scotland was prepared for its grand revolt from Rome and its com

plete transformation in religion, morals and even government. For the great crisis God had crisis God had prepared the great

man.

And when the crisis came-it was not, as in some countries, a longdrawn agony, but a short, sharp struggle; and the change was for once and for ever complete. Knox's principles were clear and fixed and firm. He had before him the example of the reformers of the continent and the lessons of their experience. He appealed not only to the nobility but also to the commonality. And the reformation in Scotland was therefore not much, as elsewhere, a matter of court and parliament, of legislation and administration, but above all the outcome of popular convictions, which no recreancy on the part of the natural leaders could pervert and no tyranny on the part of the government could

overcome.

The year of Knox's birth is not certain. But 1505 is commonly named, and the world is in this year 1905 agreeing in celebrating the quatercentenary of that event. Not even the place of his birth is beyond dispute; but it was probably Haddington, a town of some importance, with an abbey, two monasteries, and a school. John Knox was the son of a farmer on the estate of the Earl of Bothwell. After receiving the rudiments of a learned education in the grammar school of Haddington, he repaired to the University of Glasgow, at the age of seventeen. The great ornament and attraction of Glasgow in those days was John Major, professor of philosophy and theology, who profoundly impressed both Knox and his contemporary, the eminent humanist, George Buchanan.

Major taught some very liberal and revolutionary views, which were seed for the harvest of Knox's later life and conflicts-such views as that a general council is superior to the pope and may depose him; that the pope has no jurisdiction in temporal matters; that excommunication is invalid if pronounced on invalid grounds; that the authority of the people is superior to that of kings; that tyrannical rulers may be restrained or even deposed by the community, and that tyrants may be judicially punished even by death. Such modern doctrines we shall hear later from the lips of Knox himself.

Knox read widely in the Fathers of the Christian Church, especially in Jerome, who whetted his appetite for Holy Scripture, and in Augustine, whose Pauline doctrines of sin and salvation prepared so many men for the Reformation, with its return to the fundamental truth of justification by faith alone and its glorious emphasis upon the reality of a conscious experience of grace. Before his twenty

fifth year, the canonical age, Knox was ordained a priest.

From the time of his University career to the year 1546 we know next to nothing of Knox. It is because this period of obscurity and silence is so abnormally long, that many suppose an error in the year named for his birth, and incline to put it ten years later. In 1546 we find him serving in the capacity of tutor in a noble family not far from Haddington. Whether he had been converted in his opinions during this interval, and come into that deep spiritual experience which he most certainly enjoyed in his subsequent career, or whether the great change was due to the teaching and example of George Wishart, is uncertain. This we do know, that Knox was an ardent admirer and loving disciple of Wishart, that he once bore a sword to protect Wishart from assassination, and that he would fain have followed the martyr to his trial and execution. "Nay," said the latter, "return to your bairns (i.e., pupils), and God bless you: one is sufficient for a sacri

fice."

The death of Wishart was brought about mainly by the infamous Cardinal Beaton, a man whose zeal against heresy was surpassed only by his unblushing licentiousness. While gentle George Wishart burned at the stake, Beaton cynically watched his sufferings from his palace window. But this was too much. Soon after five gentlemen burst into the palace and avenged the death of Wishart by the murder of the Cardinal. Then, in their own defence, they seized the castle of St. Andrews, and with a body of men like-minded, held out for months against the government. In their midst was Knox, who probably by this time was a suspected person, and his young pupils. Doubtless Knox, though not privy to the assas

sination of Beaton, was the more inclined to cast in his lot with the defenders of the castle, inasmuch as he certainly held it lawful that persons guilty of flagrant crimes, whom it was impossible to reach through the ordinary channels of justice, should be brought to punishment, even capital punishment, by private individuals.

During these months in St. Andrews a supreme crisis occurred in the life of Knox. He was teaching his pupils not only grammar and such ordinary subjects, but also catechism and the Gospel according to John. The fame of his instruction to his pupils came. to the other inhabitants of the castle, and they importuned Knox to preach to them. But in vain. He did not feel a call to such duty. However, one day, at the instigation of Sir David Lindsay and other gentlemen, the garrison preacher, John Rough, unexpectedly addressed himself in public to the astonished Knox:

"Brother, you shall not be offended, although I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this: In the name of God, and of His Son, Jesus Christ, and in the name of all that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that you refuse not this holy vocation, but, as you tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ's kingdom, the edification of your brethren, and the comfort of me, whom you understand well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labors, that you take the public office and charge of preaching, even as you look to avoid God's heavy displeasure, and desire that He shall multiply His graces unto you.'

The whole congregation joined in this solemn appeal. Knox was overwhelmed, burst into tears, and rushed from the assembly to his own room. Only after a struggle of several days could he bring himself to yield to this call. Then he preached such a sermon as gave promise of all the power of his great career. He had hesitated to plunge into such responsibility, to rush into such conflicts as

he clearly foresaw in those troublous times, awaiting the faithful prophet of the Lord. But the die was cast. There was never again a moment's hesitation, or reluctance, or indecision. Having put his hand to the plough he never looked back.

In 1542 James V. died, leaving his widow, the clever Frenchwoman Mary of Guise, and his infant daughter, the beautiful and ill-fated Mary of Scotland. From 1542 to 1554 Arran was regent of the kingdom. French influence naturally prevailed, and it was with the aid of French forces that the regent finally captured the castle of St. Andrews; its gallant garrison capitulating to the French commands on July 31st, 1547. The easy and honorable turns of capitulation were shamefully violated at the instance of the Scotch clergy and the pope. Some of the prisoners were incarcerated in France. Others, and among them Knox, were sent to the confinement and hard labor of the galleys. To judge from some casual references which Knox makes to this long imprisonment of nineteen months, the iron must have entered his very soul. Unless he was treated otherwise than the galley slaves usually were, he was chained by day and night, herded with vile companions, half starved, forced to toil by the lash of overseers, and allowed to sleep at night only under the bench on which he sat to row all day.

His galley plied up and down some of the rivers of France. One day on the Loire a painted image of the Virgin was brought into the galley and the Scotch prisoner was ordered to kiss it in adoration. On his refusal, the officer attempted to press it to his mouth. Instantly the prisoner seized the image, flung it into the river, and exclaimed: "Let our lady now save herself; she is light enough, let her learn to swim!"

During the summer of 1548 the galleys were off the coast of Scotland, and one of the Scotch prisoners, Sir James Balfour, pointed to the spires of St. Andrews, and asked Knox if he recognized the place.

"Yes, 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 persuaded, how weak soever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life, till that my tongue shall glorify His godly name in the same place."

In February, 1549, Knox was set free, and immediately went to England, where, under Edward VI., all was favorable to the Reformation. For five years Knox threw himself heart and soul into the work of the Church of England, preaching in Ber

wick, Newcastle, and London with great power and acceptance. He was made one of the six chaplains to the King, was offered a living in London, and was even offered the bishopric of Rochester. He also seems to have had a hand in the framing of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

The rubric against the adoration of the elements in the Lord's Supper is attributed to him. The prolocutor of Oxford University, in the following reign, complained: "A runagate Scot did take away the adoration or worshipping of Christ in the sacrament. ... So much prevailed that one man's authority at that time."

The Church of England had not yet become sectarian enough to cut itself off from the fellowship of the