wider forms than the Presbyterian: there can be no lasting good done till
then.--Impossible! say some. Possible? Has it not _been_, in this world,

as a practiced fact? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case? Or are we made
of other clay now? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add some new

property to the soul of man? God made the soul of man. He did not doom
any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with

such, and with the fatal work and fruit of such!--
But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really

call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but it
was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On

the whole, cheap at any price!--as life is. The people began to _live_:
they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch

Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James Watt, David Hume, Walter
Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's

core of every one of these persons and phenomena; I find that without the
Reformation they would not have been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism

of Scotland became that of England, of New England. A tumult in the High
Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal battle and struggle over all

these realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we all
call the "_Glorious_ Revolution" a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments,

and much else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men in the
van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz,

and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them
dry-shod, and gain the honor? How many earnestrugged Cromwells, Knoxes,

poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry
places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured,

_bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over
them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal

three-times-three!
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; intrinsically
for having been, in such way as it was 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, wanderforlorn 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 indifferent, 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 sake,
ought to look through the rumors and controversies enveloping the man, into

the man himself.
For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was

not of his seeking; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he
became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; had got a college

education; become a Priest; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well
content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding

it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families; preaching
when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk

by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it; not ambitious of
more; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way

he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who
were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle,--when one day in their chapel,

the Preacher after finishing his exhortation to these fighters in the
forlorn hope, said suddenly, That there ought to be other speakers, that

all men who had a priest's heart and gift in them ought now to
speak;--which gifts and heart one of their own number, John Knox the name

of him, had: Had he not? said the Preacher, appealing to all the audience:
what then is _his_ duty? The people answered affirmatively; it was a

criminal forsaking of his post, if such a man held the word that was in him
silent. Poor Knox was obliged to stand up; he attempted to reply; he could

say no word;--burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth
remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He

felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a
baptism he was called to be baptized withal. He "burst into tears."

Our primarycharacteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies
emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might

be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a
singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there

for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble,
forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his

stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others,
after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had been sent as

Galley-slaves,--some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image of
the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do

it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when the turn came to
him: This is no Mother of God: this is "_a pented bredd_,"--_a_ piece of

wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think,
than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung the thing into the river.

It was not very cheap jesting there: but come of it what might, this thing
to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a

_pented bredd_: worship it he would not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage; the

Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the whole
world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is alone

strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are fitter to
swim than to be worshipped!--This Knox cannot live but by fact: he clings

to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us
how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic: it is the grand gift he

has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectualtalent, no transcendent
one;--a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther: but in

heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in _sincerity_, as we say, he has
no superior; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of

the true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his
grave, "who never feared the face of man." He resembles, more than any of

the moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance,
rigid narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in the name of

God to all that forsake truth: an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an
Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for that;

not require him to be other.
Knox's conduct to Queen Mary, the harsh visits he used to make in her own

palace, to reprove her there, have been much commented upon. Such cruelty,
such coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative

of the business, what Knox said, and what Knox meant, I must say one's
tragic feeling is rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these

speeches; they seem to me about as fine as the circumstances would permit!
Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever,

reading these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they are vulgar
insolences of a plebeianpriest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the

purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible
to be polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the

Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of
his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises, and the

Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's
Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable! "Better that women

weep," said Morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was
the constitutional opposition-party in Scotland: the Nobles of the

country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it;
Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless Queen;--but the still more hapless

Country, if _she_ were made happy! Mary herself was not without sharpness
enough, among her other qualities: "Who are you," said she once, "that

presume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm?"--"Madam, a
subject born within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered! If the

"subject" have truth to speak, it is not the "subject's" footing that will
fail him here.--

We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us
be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is

and has been about it, what is tolerance? Tolerance has to tolerate the
unessential; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be noble,

measured, just in its very wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on
the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate! We are here to resist,

to control and vanquishwithal. We do not "tolerate" Falsehoods,
Thieveries, Iniquities, when they fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art

false, thou art not tolerable! We are here to extinguish Falsehoods, and
put an end to them, in some wise way! I will not quarrel so much with the

way; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was,