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10 . THE PRESBYTERIA]
on his death-bed he spoke of his work as "a little labor.*'
11 is courage was undaunted. Well has Henry said of
him?"He was a prophet-like figure, moulded on Old
Testament lines." When Melanchthon was wavering
and yielding in the Interim period, Calvin wrote to
him?''Vacillation in so great a man is not to be tolerated.
I would a hundred times rather die with you
than see you survive a doctrine which you had betrayed."
He was moulded into a type of irresistible
1... I-"'' *
^,1.v.ugi.ii i}\ meiong trials. Listen to his defiance of
the Libertines: "As long as you are here you will have
to obey the laws and if there were as many diadems in
your houses as there are heads, God will yet know how
to remain Master." And when, in 1553, dangers thickened
and death frowned 011 him, on every hand, when
friends were few and his power seemed broken, he
said : "They want to taste my blood, although I doubt
whether they would like the taste as well as their own
sins. But God lives, and this faith encourages me.
And if all Geneva conspired to kill me, 1 would yet cry
out the word, for which they so bitterly hate me?Repent."
Or think of that heroic scene, in St. Peter's,
when he drove the rebellious Libertines from the Lord's
table; or that other scene, when he appeared in the
Great Assembly and stood forth among a bloodthirsty
mob, eager for his life, with bared head and breast and
calmed their passionate fury into sullen shame, by his
withering cbnrp ona _ ?
?0 0 ?...u ma iiicsisuuic acicircss.
Certainly he was a man built on heroic lines!
Strict disciplinarian as he was, he was yet not wholly
austere. Morns tells us of his habit of playing the
game LaCleff with the Syndics and John Knox found
him pitching cpioits in his garden with his friends. But
above all other traits of character stands that of absolute
conscientiousness, and it was exhibited even in the
minutest details of life.
All his life lonf lie hail -- : " "
_ 0 ? .v. vv/nivuu wuii an irasciDie
temper, which he himself called "his wild animal."
Easily condoning personal insult and injury, his wrath
fairly boiled over when the honor of God was at stake.
Thus he flamed up against Gruet and Servetus and Balduin
and the Italian coterie. He suffered under his
weakness till the day of his death. In the memorable
farewell address to the Council of Geneva, he said:
"I own specially that I am greatly indebted to your
kindness for bearing so patiently with my often unbridled
impetuosity. I hope and trust that God will
also forgive me the sins which I have thus committed."
He knew his sin and repented of it; a sign of true
greatness.
One more trait in the character of Calvin must be
touched. His enemies have often repeated the slander
that he was utterly devoid of human sympathy. Nothing
is more evidently belied by the facts in the case.
Distance often "lends enchantment to the view," but
one is rarely a hero to his intimates. Yet those who
kiicw i_.aivin nest, loved him most tenderly. Think of
Farel and Viret, of Bucer and Melanchthon, especially
of Beza! How pathetically tender and solicitous for
their welfare his letters show him to have been! He
bore the burdens of their grief and rejoiced in their
happiness. If any one doubts, let him read the letter to
Farel, writtep on the occasion of the death or murder
N OF THE SOUTH. February 10, 1909.
of his blind Genevan colleague, Conrad, or the Introduction
to the Commentary of Titus and learn how he
loved Farel and Yiret. How he opened the secret doors
of his soul to these bosom friends in his letters! Whoever
would know Calvin, as a man, must read his correspondence.
He loved his wife with an intense, though unostenta- .
tious love. When she was ill. he telle VJret*
, - vw . i'lj Wilt
is ill, hence my thoughts are distracted." When the
prevalence of the plague caused her to leave Strasburg,
he writes: "She flits night ami day before my eyes,
alone as she is and comfortless and without support."
He calls her "Singularis exempli foemina," a unique
example of h woman. We can follow the course of her
chronic illness in his letters to his friends, and when
at last he lost her, he writes to Yiret: "You know the
tenderness, or, far rather, the weakness of my heart,
and therefore you know full well that, if I had not exercised
the whole force of my spirit, to soften my agony,
I could not have borne it. And indeed the cause of
my distress is not a trifling one. I am separated from
the best of companions." And seven years later, in a
letter to Richard de Yalleville, he still expressed the
same grief.
This man, indeed, was a man of like passions with
us, a man not of "ice and granite," but a man of flesh
n A l-U-J T ? i-t- " *
cxiiu uiuuu. in ms correspondence lie stands before us
like a warrior stripped of his armor, and willingly he
shows himself to others as he is; and that man calls
aloud to all who see him thus: "I am a man, and I count
nothing human strange unto myself."
Pres. Sein. of Ky., Louisville, Ky.
"THE GLORY OF THE LORD APPEARED IN
THE CLOUD."
Phillips Brooks once preached a sermon from the
text, "Who passing through the valley of weeping make
it a well." He said there were two ways of treating
sorrow. One may say, "This that I have to bear is
hard, but the clouds will break, and there will come
better days. Compensation is in store for me. It may
not be in this world, but some time it will all be made
up to me." Or he may say: "I will do just what
Scripture tells me to do. I will make of my valleys of
weeping well-springs of joy. 1 will turn sadness into
occasions for rejoicing." The apostle says: "In everything
give thanks." Assuredly we can not be thankful
for everything, but in every experience that comes to
us we may find some reason for giving thanks. When
Jeremy Taylor's house had been plundered, all his
worldly possessions squandered, his family turned out
of doors, he congratulated himself that his enemies had
left him "the sun and moon, a loving wife, many friends
to pity and relieve, the providence of God, all the promises
of the gospel, my religion, my hope of heaven and
my charity toward my enemies." Can you see the glory
of the Lord in the cleud??The Standard.. ?
Pra; cc is the pitcher that fetched water from the
brook wherewith to water the herbs; break the pitcher
and it will fetch no water, and for want of water the
garden will wither.?John Btinyan.