章节正文
collect money for the good cause in Scotland, and to send him
books for himself - books by Calvin especially, one on
Isaiah, and a new revised edition of the "Institutes." "I
must be bold on your liberality," he writes, "not only in
that, but in greater things as I shall need." (2) On her
part she applies to him for ritual" target="_blank" title="a.精神(上)的；神圣的">spiritual advice, not after the
manner of the drooping Mrs. Bowes, but in a more positive
spirit, - advice as to practical points, advice as to the
Church of England, for instance, whose ritual he condemns as
a "mingle-mangle." (3) Just at the end she ceases to write,
sends him "a token, without writing." "I understand your
impediment," he answers, "and therefore I cannot complain.
Yet if you understood the variety of my temptations, I doubt
not but you would have written somewhat." (4) One letter
more, and then silence.
(1) Works, vi. ii.
(2) Works, vi. pp. 21. 101, 108, 130.
(3) IB. vi. 83.
(4) IB. vi. 129.
And I think the best of the Reformer died out with that
correspondence. It is after this, of course, that he wrote
that ungenerous description of his intercourse with Mrs.
Bowes. It is after this, also, that we come to the unlovely
episode of his second marriage. He had been left a widower
at the age of fifty-five. Three years after, it occurred
apparently to yet another pious parent to sacrifice a child
upon the altar of his respect for the Reformer. In January
1563, Randolph writes to Cecil: "Your Honour will take it for
a great wonder when I shall write unto you that Mr. Knox
shall marry a very near kinswoman of the Duke's, a Lord's
daughter, a young lass not above sixteen years of age." (1)
He adds that he fears he will be laughed at for reporting so
mad a story. And yet it was true; and on Palm Sunday, 1564,
Margaret Stewart, daughter of Andrew Lord Stewart of
Ochiltree, aged seventeen, was duly united to John Knox,
Minister of St. Giles's Kirk, Edinburgh, aged fifty-nine, -
to the great disgust of Queen Mary from family pride, and I
would fain hope of many others for more humane
considerations. "In this," as Randolph says, "I wish he had
done otherwise." The Consistory of Geneva, "that most
perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the
days of the Apostles," were wont to forbid marriages on the
ground of too great a disproportion in age. I cannot help
wondering whether the old Reformer's conscience did not
uneasily remind him, now and again, of this good custom of
his religious metropolis, as he thought of the two-and-forty
years that separated him from his poor bride. Fitly enough,
we hear nothing of the second Mrs. Knox until she appears at
her husband's deathbed, eight years after. She bore him
three daughters in the interval; and I suppose the poor
child's martyrdom was made as easy for her as might be. She
was extremelyattentive to him "at the end, we read and he
seems to have spoken to her with some confidence. Moreover,
and this is very characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic, he had copied out for her
use a little volume of his own devotional letters to other
women.
(1) Works, vi. 532.
This is the end of the roll, unless we add to it Mrs.
Adamson, who had delighted much in his company "by reason
that she had a troubled conscience," and whose deathbed is
commemorated at some length in the pages of his history. (1)
(1) Works, i. 246.
And now, looking back, it cannot be said that Knox's
intercourse with women was quite of the highest sort. It is
characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic that we find him more alarmed for his own
reputation than for the reputation of the women with whom he
was familiar. There was a fatal preponderance of self in all
his intimacies: many women came to learn from him, but he
never condescended to become a learner in his turn. And so
there is not anything idyllic in these intimacies of his; and
they were never so renovating to his spirit as they might
have been. But I believe they were good enough for the
women. I fancy the women knew what they were about when so
many of them followed after Knox. It is not simply because a
man is always fully persuaded that he knows the right from
the wrong and sees his way plainly through the maze of life,
great qualities as these are, that people will love and
follow him, and write him letters full of their "earnest
desire for him" when he is absent. It is not over a man,
whose one characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic is grim fixity of purpose, that the
hearts of women are "incensed and kindled with a special
care," as it were over their natural children. In the strong
quiet patience of all his letters to the weariful Mrs. Bowes,
we may perhaps see one cause of the fascination he possessed
for these religious women. Here was one whom you could
besiege all the year round with inconsistent scruples and
complaints; you might write to him on Thursday that you were
so elated it was plain the devil was deceiving you, and again
on Friday that you were so depressed it was plain God had
cast you off for ever; and he would read all this patiently
and sympathetically, and give you an answer in the most
reassuring polysyllables, and all divided into heads - who
knows? - like a treatise on divinity. And then, those easy
tears of his. There are some women who like to see men
crying; and here was this great-voiced, bearded man of God,
who might be seen beating the solid pulpit every Sunday, and
casting abroad his clamorous denunciations to the terror of
all, and who on the Monday would sit in their parlours by the
hour, and weep with them over their manifold trials and
temptations. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of tea
with all these penitents. . . . It sounds a little vulgar, as
the past will do, if we look into it too closely. We could
not let these great folk of old into our drawing-rooms.
Queen Elizabeth would positively not be eligible for a
housemaid. The old manners and the old customs go sinking
from grade to grade, until, if some mightyemperor revisited
the glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of his
way of thinking, any one he could strike hands with and talk
to freely and without offence, save perhaps the porter at the
end of the street, or the fellow with his elbows out who
loafs all day before the public-house. So that this little
note of vulgarity is not a thing to be dwelt upon; it is to
be put away from us, as we recall the fashion of these old
intimacies; so that we may only remember Knox as one who was
very long-suffering with women, kind to them in his own way,
loving them in his own way - and that not the worst way, if
it was not the best - and once at least, if not twice, moved
to his heart of hearts by a woman, and giving expression to
the yearning he had for her society in words that none of us
need be ashamed to borrow.
And let us bear in mind always that the period I have gone
over in this essay begins when the Reformer was already
beyond the middle age, and already broken in bodily health:
it has been the story of an old man's friendships. This it
is that makes Knox enviable. Unknown until past forty, he
had then before him five-and-thirty years of splendid and
influential life, passed through uncommon hardships to an
uncommon degree of power, lived in his own country as a sort
of king, and did what he would with the sound of his voice
out of the pulpit. And besides all this, such a following of
faithful women! One would take the first forty years gladly,
if one could be sure of the last thirty. Most of us, even
if, by reason of great strength and the dignity of gray
hairs, we retain some degree of public respect in the latter
days of our existence, will find a falling away of friends,
and a solitude making itself round about us day by day, until
we are left alone with the hired sick-nurse. For the
attraction of a man's character is apt to be outlived, like
the attraction of his body; and the power to love grows
feeble in its turn, as well as the power to inspire love in
others. It is only with a few rare natures that friendship
is added to friendship, love to love, and the man keeps
growing richer in affection - richer, I mean, as a bank may
be said to grow richer, both giving and receiving more -
after his head is white and his back weary, and he prepares
to go down into the dust of death.
End
books for himself - books by Calvin especially, one on
Isaiah, and a new revised edition of the "Institutes." "I
must be bold on your liberality," he writes, "not only in
that, but in greater things as I shall need." (2) On her
part she applies to him for ritual" target="_blank" title="a.精神(上)的；神圣的">spiritual advice, not after the
manner of the drooping Mrs. Bowes, but in a more positive
spirit, - advice as to practical points, advice as to the
Church of England, for instance, whose ritual he condemns as
a "mingle-mangle." (3) Just at the end she ceases to write,
sends him "a token, without writing." "I understand your
impediment," he answers, "and therefore I cannot complain.
Yet if you understood the variety of my temptations, I doubt
not but you would have written somewhat." (4) One letter
more, and then silence.
(1) Works, vi. ii.
(2) Works, vi. pp. 21. 101, 108, 130.
(3) IB. vi. 83.
(4) IB. vi. 129.
And I think the best of the Reformer died out with that
correspondence. It is after this, of course, that he wrote
that ungenerous description of his intercourse with Mrs.
Bowes. It is after this, also, that we come to the unlovely
episode of his second marriage. He had been left a widower
at the age of fifty-five. Three years after, it occurred
apparently to yet another pious parent to sacrifice a child
upon the altar of his respect for the Reformer. In January
1563, Randolph writes to Cecil: "Your Honour will take it for
a great wonder when I shall write unto you that Mr. Knox
shall marry a very near kinswoman of the Duke's, a Lord's
daughter, a young lass not above sixteen years of age." (1)
He adds that he fears he will be laughed at for reporting so
mad a story. And yet it was true; and on Palm Sunday, 1564,
Margaret Stewart, daughter of Andrew Lord Stewart of
Ochiltree, aged seventeen, was duly united to John Knox,
Minister of St. Giles's Kirk, Edinburgh, aged fifty-nine, -
to the great disgust of Queen Mary from family pride, and I
would fain hope of many others for more humane
considerations. "In this," as Randolph says, "I wish he had
done otherwise." The Consistory of Geneva, "that most
perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the
days of the Apostles," were wont to forbid marriages on the
ground of too great a disproportion in age. I cannot help
wondering whether the old Reformer's conscience did not
uneasily remind him, now and again, of this good custom of
his religious metropolis, as he thought of the two-and-forty
years that separated him from his poor bride. Fitly enough,
we hear nothing of the second Mrs. Knox until she appears at
her husband's deathbed, eight years after. She bore him
three daughters in the interval; and I suppose the poor
child's martyrdom was made as easy for her as might be. She
was extremelyattentive to him "at the end, we read and he
seems to have spoken to her with some confidence. Moreover,
and this is very characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic, he had copied out for her
use a little volume of his own devotional letters to other
women.
(1) Works, vi. 532.
This is the end of the roll, unless we add to it Mrs.
Adamson, who had delighted much in his company "by reason
that she had a troubled conscience," and whose deathbed is
commemorated at some length in the pages of his history. (1)
(1) Works, i. 246.
And now, looking back, it cannot be said that Knox's
intercourse with women was quite of the highest sort. It is
characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic that we find him more alarmed for his own
reputation than for the reputation of the women with whom he
was familiar. There was a fatal preponderance of self in all
his intimacies: many women came to learn from him, but he
never condescended to become a learner in his turn. And so
there is not anything idyllic in these intimacies of his; and
they were never so renovating to his spirit as they might
have been. But I believe they were good enough for the
women. I fancy the women knew what they were about when so
many of them followed after Knox. It is not simply because a
man is always fully persuaded that he knows the right from
the wrong and sees his way plainly through the maze of life,
great qualities as these are, that people will love and
follow him, and write him letters full of their "earnest
desire for him" when he is absent. It is not over a man,
whose one characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic is grim fixity of purpose, that the
hearts of women are "incensed and kindled with a special
care," as it were over their natural children. In the strong
quiet patience of all his letters to the weariful Mrs. Bowes,
we may perhaps see one cause of the fascination he possessed
for these religious women. Here was one whom you could
besiege all the year round with inconsistent scruples and
complaints; you might write to him on Thursday that you were
so elated it was plain the devil was deceiving you, and again
on Friday that you were so depressed it was plain God had
cast you off for ever; and he would read all this patiently
and sympathetically, and give you an answer in the most
reassuring polysyllables, and all divided into heads - who
knows? - like a treatise on divinity. And then, those easy
tears of his. There are some women who like to see men
crying; and here was this great-voiced, bearded man of God,
who might be seen beating the solid pulpit every Sunday, and
casting abroad his clamorous denunciations to the terror of
all, and who on the Monday would sit in their parlours by the
hour, and weep with them over their manifold trials and
temptations. Nowadays, he would have to drink a dish of tea
with all these penitents. . . . It sounds a little vulgar, as
the past will do, if we look into it too closely. We could
not let these great folk of old into our drawing-rooms.
Queen Elizabeth would positively not be eligible for a
housemaid. The old manners and the old customs go sinking
from grade to grade, until, if some mightyemperor revisited
the glimpses of the moon, he would not find any one of his
way of thinking, any one he could strike hands with and talk
to freely and without offence, save perhaps the porter at the
end of the street, or the fellow with his elbows out who
loafs all day before the public-house. So that this little
note of vulgarity is not a thing to be dwelt upon; it is to
be put away from us, as we recall the fashion of these old
intimacies; so that we may only remember Knox as one who was
very long-suffering with women, kind to them in his own way,
loving them in his own way - and that not the worst way, if
it was not the best - and once at least, if not twice, moved
to his heart of hearts by a woman, and giving expression to
the yearning he had for her society in words that none of us
need be ashamed to borrow.
And let us bear in mind always that the period I have gone
over in this essay begins when the Reformer was already
beyond the middle age, and already broken in bodily health:
it has been the story of an old man's friendships. This it
is that makes Knox enviable. Unknown until past forty, he
had then before him five-and-thirty years of splendid and
influential life, passed through uncommon hardships to an
uncommon degree of power, lived in his own country as a sort
of king, and did what he would with the sound of his voice
out of the pulpit. And besides all this, such a following of
faithful women! One would take the first forty years gladly,
if one could be sure of the last thirty. Most of us, even
if, by reason of great strength and the dignity of gray
hairs, we retain some degree of public respect in the latter
days of our existence, will find a falling away of friends,
and a solitude making itself round about us day by day, until
we are left alone with the hired sick-nurse. For the
attraction of a man's character is apt to be outlived, like
the attraction of his body; and the power to love grows
feeble in its turn, as well as the power to inspire love in
others. It is only with a few rare natures that friendship
is added to friendship, love to love, and the man keeps
growing richer in affection - richer, I mean, as a bank may
be said to grow richer, both giving and receiving more -
after his head is white and his back weary, and he prepares
to go down into the dust of death.
End
- spiritual [´spiritʃuəl]
a.精神(上)的；神圣的 (初中英语单词) - instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- variety [və´raiəti] n.变化；多样(性)；种类 (初中英语单词)
- description [di´skripʃən] n.描写 (初中英语单词)
- disgust [dis´gʌst] n.厌恶 vt.令(人)作呕 (初中英语单词)
- christ [kraist] n.基督 int.天啊! (初中英语单词)
- forbid [fə´bid] vt.禁止，不许，阻止 (初中英语单词)
- conscience [´kɔnʃəns] n.良心；道德心 (初中英语单词)
- remind [ri´maind] vt.提醒；使记(想)起 (初中英语单词)
- interval [´intəvəl] n.间隙；(工间)休息 (初中英语单词)
- extremely [ik´stri:mli] ad.极端地；非常地 (初中英语单词)
- attentive [ə´tentiv] a.注意的；殷勤的 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- volume [´vɔlju:m, ´vɑljəm] n.卷；书籍；体积；容量 (初中英语单词)
- plainly [´pleinli] ad.平坦地；简单地 (初中英语单词)
- absent [´æbsənt, əb´sent] a.不在的 vt.使缺席 (初中英语单词)
- patience [´peiʃəns] n.忍耐(力)；耐心；坚韧 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- terror [´terə] n.恐怖；惊骇 (初中英语单词)
- emperor [´empərə] n.皇帝 (初中英语单词)
- freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- ashamed [ə´ʃeimd] a.惭愧；不好意思 (初中英语单词)
- dignity [´digniti] n.尊严，尊贵；高官显贵 (初中英语单词)
- retain [ri´tein] vt.保持；保留；留住 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- character [´kæriktə] n.特性；性质；人物；字 (初中英语单词)
- inspire [in´spaiə] v.鼓舞；使感悟；吸入 (初中英语单词)
- affection [ə´fekʃən] n.友爱；慈爱 (初中英语单词)
- edition [i´diʃən] n.版本；很相似的 (高中英语单词)
- geneva [dʒi´ni:və] n.日内瓦 (高中英语单词)
- characteristic [,kæriktə´ristik] a.特有的 n.特性 (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- mighty [´maiti] a.强有力的 ad.很 (高中英语单词)
- porter [´pɔ:tə] n.守门人；勤杂工人 (高中英语单词)
- solitude [´sɔlitju:d] n.孤独；寂寞；荒凉 (高中英语单词)
- attraction [ə´trækʃən] n.吸引(力)；引力 (高中英语单词)
- intercourse [´intəkɔ:s] n.交际；往来；交流 (英语四级单词)
- edinburgh [´edinbərə] n.爱丁堡 (英语四级单词)
- metropolis [mi´trɔpəlis] n.首都；大城市 (英语四级单词)
- delighted [di´laitid] a.高兴的；喜欢的 (英语四级单词)
- reputation [repju´teiʃən] n.名誉；名声；信誉 (英语四级单词)
- fascination [,fæsi´neiʃən] n.魅力；强烈爱好 (英语四级单词)
- treatise [´tri:tiz, -tis] n.(专题)论文 (英语四级单词)
- divinity [di´viniti] n.神性，神；神学 (英语四级单词)
- pulpit [´pulpit] n.讲坛 (英语四级单词)
- manifold [´mænifəuld] a.多样的；多种特征的 (英语四级单词)
- vulgar [´vʌlgə] a.粗俗的；大众的 (英语四级单词)
- bodily [´bɔdili] a.身体的 ad.亲自 (英语四级单词)
- uncommon [ʌn´kɔmən] a.非常的，非凡的，罕见的 (英语四级单词)
- ritual [´ritʃuəl] n.典礼；礼节 a.典礼的 (英语六级单词)
- reformer [ri´fɔ:mə] n.改革者；革新者 (英语六级单词)
- martyrdom [´mɑ:tədəm] n.殉难；牺牲 (英语六级单词)
- inconsistent [,inkən´sistənt] a.不一致的 (英语六级单词)
- depressed [di´prest] a.消沉的；萧条的 (英语六级单词)
- beating [´bi:tiŋ] n.敲；搅打；失败 (英语六级单词)
- clamorous [´klæmərəs] a.喧闹的；吵吵嚷嚷的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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