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8 THE PRESBYTERIA*
A PRAYER FOR THE NEW YEAR.
By Frances Ridley Havergal.
Lord, speak to me, that I may speak
In living echoes of thy tone;
As thou hast sought, so let me seek
Thy erring children lost and lone.
O strengthen me, that while I stand
Finn on the rock, and strong in thee,
. oi.civn uui a loving nand
To wrestlers with the troubled sea.
O tench me. Lord, that I may teach
The precious things thou dost impart;
And wing my words, that they may reach
The hidden depths of many a heart.
O give iliine own sweet rest to me.
That I may speak with soothing power
A word in season, as from thee,
To weary ones in needful hour.
O fill with thy fullness, Lord,
Until niv very heart o'erflow
In kindling thought and glowing word.
Thy love to tell, thy praise to show.
O use me, Lord, use even me,
Just as thou wilt, and when, and where;
Until thy blessed face I see,
Thy lest, thy joy, thy glory share.
For Presbyterian of the South.
THE WRITINGS OF JOHN CALVIN.
By Rev. J. A. Gordon.
In one of Scott's novels the graphic account is given
of the singular contest between Richard Coeur de Lion
and the great Moslem warrior, the Saladin. The latter
drew his scimeter of perfect Damascus steel, sharpened
to an almost incredible keenness of edge, held it with
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<;u?c upturned, piaceci a gauze-like veil of finest silken
texture upon it, so light that it floated in the air, then
with a cpiick motion he drew the keen blade from underneath
and the veil floated slowly to the ground in two
parts.
Richard C'oeur de Lion unbuckled the heavy iron mace
which hung at his side, the handle of which was more
than an inch in diameter. Standing it up in the midst
of tile admiring group of celebrated warriors, he seized
his great broadsword and whirling it above his head,
with one mighty stroke, ere the mace could fall to the
ground, severed the heavy bar of iron, and not a nickcould
be found in the edge of his superb weapon.
But the pen of the little sick man of Geneva was
keener by far than Saladin's famous Damascus blade,
and mightier by far than the ponderous broadsword of
the warrior king, Richard Coeur de Lion. Calvin's pen
.1! 1 1
cAtccuingjy nusy. wnen we take into consideration
the labors that he accomplished, we marvel that he
could find time for any composition. But in the comparatively
brief compass of his life his writings were
voluminous. I shall not attempt in this brief n:-.|.er to
review in any sense his works, but merely to point out
in a general way some points that may be of interest
and that may assist us in gaining a better understanding
of the man behind the pen. As to the mechanical
part of Calvin's works, his style of composition, I have
J OF THE SOUTH. January 13, igog.
very little to say, as he wrote exclusively in Latin and
French, and I will have to admit with confusion of
face that I have not followed Calvin in the original
through all of his works. Moreover, my own Latinity is
not sufficiently Ciceronian to render me a capable judge
of Latin style. D'Alembert, the noted French scholar
and linguist, says: "Calvin iustlv enioved n flietinm.ict,
_ . J J ?J - J ? " ""3"
ed reputation, and was a scholar of the first order. He
wrote with as much elegance in Latin as a dead language
admits; and the extraordinary purity of his
French style is even now admired by our skillful critics,
and gives his writings a decided superiority over the
greatest part of his contemporaries." His Latin style
is by competent critics declared to be better than that
of any Christian writer since Tertullian. Even the intensely
bitter critic, the Roman Catholic Audin, says
of him: "Never does the proper word fail him, he calls
and it comes." George Park Fisher, of Yale University,
says of Calvin's '"Institutes": "They were not only a
contribution to theology, but also to literature. By the
dignified and forcible style in which they were written,
they exercised a profound influence in shaping modern
French prose. The Latin edition is also distinguished
for the classical purity of its language." Dr. Paul Henry,
of Berlin, says: "Calvin's style, even in his correspondence,
is almost always classical throusrh its verv sim
plicity. The character of a man may be commonly
discovered in his style; this, at least, was the case with
Calvin. In his mode of writing we recognize the same
simplicity and candor which he shows in his inward and
outward life. As he wrote without circumlocution, so
spoke he in his life. It was with him not nature only,
but principle, to think and to write clearly in short, intelligible
sentences. He scarcely ever indulged in long
periods which would have been difficult to the comprehension
of a popular assemblage."
As we have before remarked, Calvin's pen was very
prolific. We cannot view the work accomplished by
this wonderful man without genuine astonishment. On
alternating weeks he preached every day, besides delivering
three theological lectures every week before the
keen, alert students who flocked to Geneva from all
parts of Europe, among them such men as John Knox.
With all the intense zeal of his nature he devoted his
superb talents to the public welfare, and to this day the
impress of his master mind and will are to be clearly
traced in some of our most highly prized privileges and
blessings.. Among these we may mention, civil liberty,
the separation of Church and State, and the consccpient
religious liberty, Presbyterianism in Church government,
and the consentient reoublican form nf rivil cm\r
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ernment, and last, but not least, in the system of education,
which at an enormous expenditure of care and
time and money he formulated for the youth of Geneva,
we find the principles and the crude essence of the great
public school system of T)ur country. *
At the close of each arduous day, filled often with
nerve-racking contests that called for gigantic expenditures
of will and brain power, far into the night he
would speed his tireless pen. I need not mention here