Fighters and martyrs for the freedom of faith

F H

FIGHTERS AND MARTYRS FOR THE
FREEDOM OF FAITH

THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS AT PLYMOUTH,
September 6th, 1620.

FIGHTERS AND MARTYRS

FOR THE

FREEDOM OF FAITH

BY

LUKE S. WALMSLEY

LONDON

JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET

1912

Uo

MY SON AND DAUGHTER

AND THE

" SONS AND DAUGHTERS "
OF ALL THE CHURCHES t

MAY THEY
SEE VISIONS AND PROPHESY

2209313

TO THE READER

" Now preye I to hem alle that herken this litel
tretise or reden it, that if ther be any thing in it that
liketh hem, that therof they thanken our Lord Jesus
Christ, of whom procedeth all witte and all gode-
nesse ; and if ther be any thing that displeseth hem,
I preye hem also that they arrette it to the defaute
of myn unkonning and not to my wille, that wold fayn
have seyde better if I hadde had konning."

Chaucer.

PREFACE

THIS book has come into being by a way of its own. Its aim
is not gain. It should be said that the single figure windows
referred to in the introductory chapter were, for a few years,
set up in the adjoining church hall, awaiting the erection of
the church. For the sake of the young and of the donors and
visitors it was deemed expedient that some biographical notes
would be useful. The result of the suggestion was that the
first eight of the Stories were written and appeared in a
weekly journal. These were afterwards issued in handy book-
let form under the title " Stories in Stained Glass." Seventeen
hundred of these booklets were printed and sold, mainly in
Lancashire, largely among young men's classes and societies,
without appearing for public purchase.

Since then, all sorts of readers, including ministers, pro-
fessors, Sunday school teachers and professional men, have,
with many appreciative words, desired the completion of the
whole series of sixteen Stories. Their ultimate form is now
before the reader.

To name authorities would be difficult, so many are they.
Besides the standard and latest sources, authoritative maga-
zine articles, newspaper reviews, reports of lectures, etc.,
have been laid under tribute. Perforce, leisurely chapters
have been reduced to pages, and pages to sentences. I have
searched widely, and always with a wary eye for facts. How
often I have longed to saunter by pleasant meadows or down
scented byways, but that hard tyrant, limit of space, alway
put forth his arresting hand. Fresh as I am from the full
stores of noble wealth of biographical literature, no reader
can be more conscious than myself of the poor and scanty
nature of these memorials. Sometimes the heart glows with
gratitude to be permitted the lowliest service in keeping
bright these great names ; and moments follow when one's
work appears too mean to place at their feet, and the impulse
rises to toss every scrap into the embers to perish as its only
desert.

Preface

Compression, compression ! has been the cry as of a stern
voice ever at my ear, and sometimes by hint, figure and
symbol, a clue only is given to the imagination and left, I hope
not in obscurity. From their purely literary side the stories
are necessarily creations, else stark dead waxwork they could
only be. Whatever their worth, at least they are not things
of scissors and paste.

In closing this preface, I repeat a passage from the Story of
Cromwell. It applies to all. I declare myself a shameless
robber from dozens of historians and biographers. My
special line is the abstraction of the fine jewellery of fact
from my victims, to be re-set according to my own style and
need. I write chiefly for those busy, hasting tribes of men
who must do their reading as some do their country rambling,
by motor, though always with a sensible and profitable
grace of speed, and who may be induced to take a breezy,
panoramic trip through a biography of chapter-length, but
through a volume — never !

L. S. W.

FAIRHAVEN,
LYTHAM,

March, 1912.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER - - 13

I. JOHN WYCLIF - 21

II. SAVONAROLA - - 37

III. MARTIN LUTHER - - 47

IV. WILLIAM TIN DALE - 68
V. JOHN KNOX - 85

VI. HENRY BARROWE — THE PURITAN EPOCH AND

THE FREE CHURCH MARTYRS - 102

VII. JOHN ROBINSON AND THE PILGRIM FATHERS - 117

VIII. OLIVER CROMWELL - - 138
IX. A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BACKGROUND

SKETCH ... . l62

X. JOHN MILTON - - 1 82

XI. GEORGE FOX - - - 203

XII. JOHN BUNYAN ... - 232

XIII. ISAAC WATTS — HYMNS AND HYMN WRITERS - 257

XIV. JOHN WESLEY - ,.-, 294
XV. WILLIAM CAREY "^" - - 364

XVI. JOHN WILLIAMS • 418

XVII. DAVID LIVINGSTONE - - 456

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

JOHN WICKLIFFE * ... f..jr 21

SAVONAROLA - 37

MARTIN LUTHER ""V '' 47

WILLIAM TYNDALE 68

JOHN KNOX 85

HENRY BARROWE • ? IO2

JOHN ROBINSON 117

OLIVER CROMWELL l62

JOHN MILTON ''-"' 1 82

GEORGE FOX - 203

JOHN BUNYAN 232

ISAAC WATTS 257

JOHN WESLEY * *i :*%**) #» «- t*f 294

WILLIAM CAREY - - *'**'''• 3^4

JOHN WILLIAMS - . - •

DAVID LIVINGSTONE - - - - • "

ERRATA.

Page 15, line 24, "has" for "had."

,. H9, „ 3, "1572" for " 1577."
„ 162, „ 17, "party" for "part."

„ 258, „ 34, " glamour " for " clamour."

„ 435, „ 40, " declared " for " declares."

„ 446, „ 1 7, " thirty " for " thirsty."

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

Fairhaven is a fair place by the sea, lying on the Kibble
estuary, between Lytham and St. Anne's-on-Sea. Quiet
and reposeful it is to sit without throng by the lapping
wavelets on a summer day.

Within a few steps from the bay stands the new
Congregational Church, with vestries, church hall, reception
and other rooms, which rear themselves in a completed and
impressive group. The style is Byzantine — Early Christian.

The ground plan of the church is an irregular octagon with
transepts, thus forming a Greek cross. It is built of a
marble-like material and, with its lofty and commanding
campanile, its flanking towers and domes, is an object of
arresting beauty to the eye of the visitor — a fair temple,
meet for the impressive vista of stained glass within. The
church is lighted by four windows of spacious span,
affording unusual opportunity, in dimensions, for treatment
in stately composition in stained glass.

The front or central window is reserved for the sacred
scenes and themes of our Lord's life — His Cross and Triumphs,
and the chancel window opposite for depicting the wonder
of Pentecost. Along the lower parts of the eastern and
western windows are ranged the sixteen figures which are
reproduced in the illustrations to this book.

These are John Wyclif, Savonarola, Luther, William
Tindale, John Knox, Henry Barrowe, John Robinson, Crom-
well, Milton, George Fox, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, John
Wesley, and a missionary trio — William Carey, John Williams
and David Livingstone. Over the head of each is a winged
cherub who brings the heavenly Spirit, and also the symbol
of special call.

13

EM

JOHN WICKLIFFE

PACING PAGE
21

SAVONAROLA -

37

MARTIN LUTHER

47

WILLIAM TYNDALE

68

JOHN KNOX

85

HENRY BARROWE -

IO2

JOHN ROBINSON

II7

OLIVER CROMWELL

162

JOHN MILTON - ' '

182

GEORGE FOX -

203

JOHN BUNYAN

232

ISAAC WATTS

257

JOHN WESLEY - - <Y»7-- cv»'-'-

294

WILLIAM CAREY

364

JOHN WILLIAMS

418

DAVID LIVINGSTONE ....

456

Fairhaven is a fair place by the sea, lying on the Ribble
estuary, between Lytham and St. Anne's-on-Sea. Quiet
and reposeful it is to sit without throng by the lapping
wavelets on a summer day.

Within a few steps from the bay stands the new
Congregational Church, with vestries, church hall, reception
and other rooms, which rear themselves in a completed and
impressive group. The style is Byzantine — Early Christian.

The ground plan of the church is an irregular octagon with
transepts, thus forming a Greek cross. It is built of a
marble-like material and, with its lofty and commanding
campanile, its flanking towers and domes, is an object of
arresting beauty to the eye of the visitor — a fair temple,
meet for the impressive vista of stained glass within. The
church is lighted by four windows of spacious span,
affording unusual opportunity, in dimensions, for treatment
in stately composition in stained glass.

The front or central window is reserved for the sacred
scenes and themes of our Lord's life — His Cross and Triumphs,
and the chancel window opposite for depicting the wonder
of Pentecost. Along the lower parts of the eastern and
western windows are ranged the sixteen figures which are
reproduced in the illustrations to this book.

These are John Wyclif, Savonarola, Luther, William
Tindale, John Knox, Henry Barrowe, John Robinson, Crom-
well, Milton, George Fox, John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, John
Wesley, and a missionary trio — William Carey, John Williams
and David Livingstone. Over the head of each is a winged
cherub who brings the heavenly Spirit, and also the symbol
of special call.

13

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

These with their accompanying allegories and symbolism,
verily, I think, have come on wings or in dreams. They will
be found interesting, and I hope instructive. In the upper
large spaces are depicted important events of history — scenes
which in their charm and power of colour, along with the
kinship of the themes, unify the whole and, it is hoped, will
have a hallowing, exalting and abiding effect upon the mind,
heart and soul of the beholder. The whole is directed to one
aim — to the greater glory of God, and to the sweet name
of Jesus, His Son.

The historic scenes are : The Trial of Wyclif in Lambeth
Chapel ; Luther Confronting the Diet of Worms ; Bishop
Hugh Latimer and Bishop Ridley being led to the stake at
Oxford ; The Protest of the Five Independents at the West-
minster Assembly of Divines ; The Sailing of the Mayflower ;
and the Scene of the Great Ejection of 1662. These are all
described in the Stories.

The primary and dominant idea of the whole is a reverent
pageant, a crowning of Liberty and a holy offering of thanks-
giving and praise for her precious gifts to the nations. The
sixteen figures are vivid presentations of elect ones who walked
with God, and the visitor may well imagine them as a living
procession of the Faithful, who conferring " not with flesh and
blood " have, by their noble devotion and sacrifice, some
freely yielding their blood and their lives, moulded the des-
tiny, the liberty, and the progress of our own Britain, and
indeed of much of the world. The spirit of the project is
large, catholic, and comprehensive, befitting the genius of
" the people called Independents." It is designed to show
forth the recovery of the pure truth of Jesus — its divine
beauty, majesty and love, as made manifest in the great scenes
of the central window — the fount of the whole. This truth,
blurred and lost in the deepening darkness of ten centuries
of priestly and semi-pagan superstitions, was recovered by
these great Torchbearers of liberty, chiefly in regard to
religious issues, yet civil also ; for liberty, whether civil or
religious, is one in essence. The story is one of daring and
suffering, none more noble and glorious in the annals of the
world's history. The repository of liberty — the ark of pro-
gress— has always lain with the Free Churches of England,
and does so, emphatically so, to-day. As I conceive them,
the Free Church ideals of to-day are the highest, purest and
best possible to man.

14

Introductory

A second and not unimportant motive of these windows is to
point the right way in the use of stained glass for our Free
Churches, and, indeed, for all churches who claim the name of
Protestant.

THE SONG OF COLOUR

The stained glass work is of the highest quality. I must
not be silent upon the project from its art side. Without
some mention of this the reader can obtain but a poor con-
ception of its character and beauty. The portraiture is from
authentic sources. Each window is an elaborate study.
Posing, action, incident, and pictorial background will all
yield interest to the thoughtful observer, and if he linger he
will find much suggestive symbol. A dream -like charm of
colour has been secured, although the use of pure primaries
so much depended upon in church windows has been almost
eschewed. Historic truth has been the supreme consideration
in robing, costume and all the details of circumstance and
place. Each window has received a careful study to ensure
harmonious effect within itself, and this single study has also
had to take into account the larger harmony and the colour
scheme and unity of the whole.

The creative side — the imaginative basis, the choice of
incident, background, symbol, etc., and the general treatment
— had been my task, but the designer, Mr. Charles Elliott,
of London, has brought, as was required, a mind of wide
culture and a pencil of practised skill. And along with him,
the makers, Messrs. Abbott and Co., of Lancaster and London,
have given to the realisation of the whole project that
for which they cannot be paid — sympathy. As compared with
an oil or water-colour painting, stained-glass art has its
limitations, especially in perspective and its power of colour
gradation. The artist -magician is fire, and its spirit refuses
a too rigid control within its own studio. It sends a splash
there unbidden, and checks a gleam there set down. Yet
herein lies the distinguishing character and charm of stained
glass — that while the offspring of fire it is kin to the sun.
Touched by the wizard-wand of a sunbeam, it responds in a
glorified and translucent beauty alone in the arts and crafts
of man, putting to naught the most brilliant dabs upon canvas.
It seems to dance to the pipings of the sun, and to glow in
very song of colour.

Never in my life have I done a work which I felt to be

15

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

more truly religious than this. Full sure I am it shall not be
void of blessing. Some youth or maiden of responsive spirit,
gazing at these inanimate forms, shall see them breathe,
shall hear them speak of their sufferings and sorrows, their
perils, toils and triumphs, and the heart shall be moved to
yield itself to a consecrated service of the same Redeemer.
I am told I must write a small handbook guide relating
to the windows. As a help to church authorities and donors
of stained glass memorials I purpose to incorporate with it
a short treatise on the art -craft of stained glass. Here I
must be content with but a short, general statement.

ART AND RELIGION

Rome has always kept art as well as letters in fetters,
and while the old masters painted pictures of our Lord's life,
unsurpassed to-day for spiritual beauty, yet these in their
representation of the material fact — such as custom, cloth-
ing, buildings, furniture, etc. — are false, and often absurdly so.
By their greatness as works of art, by their lofty ideals of
religious feeling, they held sway, and became identified for
centuries, and almost exclusively, with the illustration of the
Bible story. So it came about that throughout Christendom
from generation to generation the millions lived and died with
barely a glimpse of the fact and truth as to scenes and life of
the Land and the Book. Some fifty years ago Holman
Hunt went to live in Palestine to paint his great picture — " The
Finding of the Saviour in the Temple." He sternly adhered
to truth, broke clear from the shackles of mere tradition,
refused to bow at its shrine. On its exhibition the people
trooped in thousands to see the wonder, and now this idol
(the divorce of the fact of a story from its sentiment) is banished
from serious art.

Only in church windows is it met, and here it still lifts up
its head unabashed, often in a debased, soul-less, ecclesiastic
commercialism truly pitiful. I imagine this is chiefly due to
the recrudescence of ritualism and mediaeval ideals within the
Established Church. With this, as upholders of progress,
Nonconformists have no fellowship.

I do not deny that there is a function even for mere con-
ventional tradition, but it must be impregnated by a living
intelligence. By a manly sanity, it is the function of living
art to do this, as it is also to save nature and realism from
the commonplace.

16

Introductory

Some, more especially the continental, makers of church
windows seem to assume, as a matter of course, that mediaeval
settings, monkish ideals and childish absurdities shall be
perpetuated for all time. I know parish churches where
these obtain to a degree almost repulsive ; even the colour
schemes are crude and vulgar in the extreme, and yet, because
set up in a church, all is tolerated, while in a civic building,
or in the home, such travesty of art would be ridiculed.
Under such conditions there can be no play for a living, healthy
self-respecting art.1

FREE CHURCHES AND THEIR LIBERTY

Let all who wish the art to renew a healthy life be determined
to break with this thraldom and insist upon a natural and
truthful rendering of beautiful Scriptural incident, subject
only to that due restraint which a reverent spirit, an intelligent
and cultured art, and technical limits impose. In a word,
let them claim here the same liberty of judgment and inter-
pretation as is allowed in every other branch of sacred art,
where the way is open for the application of our vastly
increased knowledge of the realities of Eastern life. The
result will amply prove that liberty and truth may go hand in
hand with dignity and beauty. In this they will but claim
that the genius of Nonconformity — the Protestant spirit —
should have due recognition within its own domain.

The Free Churches have never yet risen to the opportunity
of their liberty. They do not realize its greatness. Especially
is this seen in their neglect of the appeal to the reverent
imagination in the environment of their fabrics and worship.
The Roman Church lives upon it. I regard this neglect as a
serious mistake.

I do not forget that they count it as their pride to be shut
out from much of this appeal in the way of ceremonial pomp,
vestments and symbols, appertaining to an episcopal and
sacerdotal church. But this is often sensuous rather than
imaginative. It is assuredly the least noble part of the
wide range of Christian appeal through the avenue of the
imagination.

It is quite wrong to think that the Free Churches are
cramped as to range for this appeal. No, indeed ! Unbishoped

1 It is most grievous that some free churches permit much of this,
I dare say through ignorance how to go about the thing. The handbook
will be found a sufficient help.

17

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and anti-sacerdotal by tradition, they, and they alone, may
take all good from this appeal with absolute safety. The
Puritan Reformation was a revolt of the intellect with liberty
as its consequent, and herein lies the strength of the Free
Churches. There can be no noble enduring art without
liberty as its base.

REVERENT IMAGINATION

The whole world of Biblical story and drama, of parable,
allegory, mystic and apocalyptic wonder, awaits its call, as
also the inspiring pageants of Christian history, both early
and later, of the heroic deeds of them that overcame. Nor
need we fear to give a yard of stained glass to a sweet legend,
or to an old mediaeval saint, if he have some deed or teaching
of love to tell us.

The Free Churches alone, by their unfettered and alert
intelligence, can redeem the sacred story from the servile and
sickening falsity of a dead traditional treatment, and endow it
with the dignity of simplicity and reality, the exaltation and
full nobility of truth interpreted by the music and marvel of
the artistic temperament.

Reverent imagination and intellect must go hand-in-hand
for perfect worship. Children, we know, live, move and have
their being in their imagination ; it is the source of their
City Beautiful, their bells celestial, of their angels and stars,
of awe, reverence, wonder, worship, of the sense of the infinite ;
and the eye is its chief organ.

In the old chapel of my childhood there was not one inch of
flaming glory of colour to help me to make my angels. I could
and did create ghosts in troops from an erratic gas light in the
furthest dark corner under the gallery. For all, but especially
for the children's sake, I plead that the sweet passion of art,
through thehauntingbeauty of stained-glass, may haveitsplace.

I say nothing of the unwisdom of the wide ignoring of the
ancient festivals and song and liturgy of the Church, the
mystic kinship of the ages and our common heritage. Nor
will I more than mention the folly of the Free Churches in
sinking the nomenclature of their churches to the level and
god-fathering of a street. A church is a living building of
souls as well of brick and stone : Fish Lane Chapel, John
Thomas Street Church, forsooth !

Wise, indeed, are our friends of the Roman and Anglican
communions. They uphold their dignity by imposing their

18

Introductory

name upon the district. They strike a bold note of challenge
by recalling a great name or principle to the imagination.
And here again the discreet use of our liberty is our strength.

A GENERAL QUALIFICATION

I have written as a Free Churchman, but never, consciously,
with unfairness. I do not profess to fumble and qualify until
which is head or tail is uncertain. There is, however, one
general qualification I wish to express. With the Roman
Church all wise and just observers distinguish between the
Church with its dogmas and its individual member. The
latter we often know as our neighbour, whom we respect and
trust as a good man and citizen.

Nor can the faith which rose high above a debasing environ-
ment and built the Cathedrals — Te Deums in stone — be ignored.
Nor can the monastic scribes and schools — the saviours of
literature — be forgotten ; nor the artist illuminators who
warmed their cold and lonely cells by the glow of loving
devotion to their works, and by enrichments of imperishable
beauty to their manuscript Bibles and Books of Hours.

And in charity let us remember also that while by reason of
its professed infallibility, its pride, its dread of a seeming rift
in the vast fabric of its authority, the Roman Church keeps
up the dogmatic pretence of the exclusion from salvation of
all who wilfully remain outside its pale, yet its intelligent
members show their doubt of this dogmatism ; nay, in their
hearts they do not believe it. Modern forces are too strong.
The moral instincts of the age forbid, prompted as they are
by purer, truer Christian ethics, ever widening in vision of the
infinitude of the Cross of Love.

Thoughtful lay Roman Catholics (and clerics also) are
daily confronted by the supreme fact of the life around them,
of whole Protestant nations with their ideals of justice, mercy
and brotherhood — of their Protestant brethren given to holy
lives of sacrifice, at home and on the mission field. In England
they hear of the " Nonconformist conscience," and are well
aware it is the backbone of her purity and righteousness. They
know that Christ said not " By their dogmas ye shall know
them," but " By their fruits." No, they dare not pass to
the Last Great Confessional with such belief — such dreadful
guilt upon their souls. Does it not follow that, in blessing
as in cursing, the Church of Rome, as such, with its dogmas
and decretals holding on to the Dark Ages, yet living in the

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

light, in the wide orbit of its sway, is the hngest illogical
system and kingdom men or angels ever beheld ? But charity
is more Christian than logic, and Rome must be illogical to
be Christian. Are not these reflections emphatically confirmed
when we consider the casuistry of some of its Orders, the ways
of its Curia of administration, its crafty worldliness and oppor-
tunism, its convenient devices of reservation, dispensation
and what not ?

The time is not yet when hope and love may bid us put
aside the troublous things of this book. Rome with its present
'syllabus and mandates will not let it come.

We think of the greatest sins of the Papal Church as in the
past of history ; it is not so now, it has never been so. Its
high crime has always been in the living present of its life,
in that it has always sought, and in this our day still seeks,
to keep its children in blindness to the God-revealed light of
the age. There is always a place for authority, but if it be
not used to nurse, to guide and protect liberty it is not used
under the sanction and teaching of the New Testament.
There can be small virtue in assent which is not free and in-
telligent, but it is even more important that belief should be
free than intelligent.

Yet the truly Christian heart longs, and will strive and long,
for the nobler time when love shall reign and walk with truth,
and I must close upon a softer note. Jesus said, " I am the
way, the truth, and the life," and when we divideand allot these
verities between Him and our systems, let us never forget that
justice is better even than kindness, and respect for the in-
dividual convictions of others better than toleration. How
lightly we — all of us — declare our Last Judgments upon each
other. Let not these of earth be remembered against us in
that of heaven ; they mingle subtly, more than we think,
with our prejudices and unforgivenesses. May we all be
given this care of grace.

JOHN WICKLIFFE.

And God said " Let there be light "

I

JOHN WYCLIF

INSCRIPTION.— The Morning Star of the Reformation. First
Translator of the Bible in the " Moder Tonge." B. 1324 or
earlier. D. 1384.

SCENE. — A venerable figure passing from his church, with open
Bible, in devout contemplation. The river Swift and bridge
(Lutterworth) are in perspective. A morning star is arising. A
cherub overhead brings him a closed book with heavenly com-
mission to open. With the other hand the cherub scatters the
seed of the Word.

I remember while at the first International Exhibition of
Paris a friend and myself were sauntering down " The Street
of All Nations." Halting at the Turkish bazaar we were
attended to, apparently, by a handsome Circassian girl of pure
type. We discovered she was English. We passed on in
the proud conviction that our country could, itself, staff " A
Street of All Nations."

Yes, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, Norman-French fused into one
common stock, and as rovers of the seas, invaders, conquerors,
merchants, ever receiving fresh enrichment of blood, it is
little wonder if in the veins of Britons there runs an itch for
freedom. It is not mere boastful sentiment when we sing
" Britons never shall be slaves."

The Gospel probably first reached the British from Gaul
or from the shores of the Levant by merchants or soldiers.
When the Romans withdrew, the natives were largely a
Christianized people. Their country being a Roman colony,
they suffered for their faith from the same arm as did St.

21

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Paul, as did the victims of the bloody amphitheatre and the
catacombs. Only scanty records remain, yet probably the
martyrs were not few. Tradition says that Alban, under the
persecution of the Emperor Diocletian, suffered death at
Verulamium (St. Albans) and two others at Caerleon.

The pivot of religion to the Christian Celt was monastic
and not episcopal ; it was autonomous and national and free
of Rome. The mission of Augustine and his band of forty
missionaries in 597 A.D. under Gregory the Great to the Saxon
Heptarchy reversed this order. They "lived after the model
of the Primitive Church, living themselves in accordance with
what they taught," says Bede. With this spirit they quickly
subdued the heathendom of the Saxons. Though the older
British Christians struggled hard against loss of liberty, they
and their freedom were overpowered by the imperious
lordship of the Roman Pontiff. Yet, as we shall see, the
possession of liberty by the Celts left us instincts which
were never wholly extinguished.

With the Conquest (1066) the Papal bonds over Britain
were vastly strengthened and tightened. William's enter-
prise really was a compact with Rome. For the invasion,
Pope Alexander II. sent a consecrated banner for the Con-
queror's own ship. Italians and Normans were now planted
in English archbishoprics and other sees, and the haughty
claims by the Pope of tribute and supremacy over State, as
well as Church, were, under Hildebrand, quickly developed.

But the Normans were not the sort quietly to suffer this ;
there was continuous conflict, culminating in the slaying
of Archbishop a Beckett in 1170, just one hundred years
after the Conquest. Beckett suffered not for liberty's sake,
but for the abused immunity of the priestly order from the
justice of the common law, and for asserting the Pope's power
in things not spiritual. During the twenty years of Henry II. 's
reign, under " benefit of clergy " a hundred murderers
and innumerable thieves escaped due punishment. " Clergy "
got to include sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, readers and
others really laymen. The scandal and wrong grew intoler-
able. In four years after Beckett's death, Henry II. bowed
to an ignominious penance and the Pope took both joy and
victory of the crime.

Forty years later Henry's son, the weakling King John,
bit the dust of utter and abject abasement to Innocent III.,
to whom he surrendered his kingdom, as vassal to Rome,

22

John Wyclif

receiving it back immediately under oath of fealty and
tribute.

This degradation cut deep into the heart of barons and
people alike ; with indignant voice they revolted and de-
manded Magna Charta, which was signed and sealed (1215)
without a word upon it of Pope-Lordship. And so on goes
the contest down the centuries. The priest, ever wily as to
expedient and method, is subtle and silent to-day, to-morrow
roaring and tearing, yet stealthily, or openly, ever pursuing
with relentless tread one aim and one end — the crushing
of liberty and light by the creation of a terrible dragon of
absolutism usurping the sanctities, powers and penalties of
both earth and heaven.

This is the larger story I have to tell with whatever issue
of helpfulness to the reader I may. We possess reliable
chronicles of a darksome, tragic drama of liberty in the
twelfth century. About 1165 thirty weavers in the diocese
of Worcester were summoned before the Council at Oxford
for heresy. They answered they were Christians and believed
in the teaching of the Apostles and the Scriptures, but as they
made light of sacraments and priests they were scourged as
heretics and cast out of the city to perish.

FORERUNNERS

I must here give a summary line to one or two of Wyclif's
forerunners. Robert Grossete"te (Greathead), Bishop of
Lincoln — a native of Suffolk — a man of learning and mastery
in the sciences and an older friend of Roger Bacon, was the
Reformer of the thirteenth century. Early in life he made
a study of Bible characters and determined to form his own
life upon their model. He studied in Paris and spent thirty-
five years at Oxford University. At about fifty, during a
serious illness, a kind of Puritan awakening of soul, or con-
version, came to him, and he arose with holy resolves of
more complete consecration to the service of God.

As bishop he checks evil customs and festivals, and purges
his see of pluralities and absentees ; declares war against the
impure and worldly, the unfit and unworthy ; makes per-
sonal visitation of monasteries and abbeys, and at a stroke
deprives seven abbots. He assails corruption and dispen-
sations. He encourages the study of Scripture among his
clergy, assembles them for lessons by himself on earnest
preaching, and with apostolic zeal is constantly on the move

23

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

throughout his vast diocese. Especially does he resist the
exercise of civil and judicial functions by ecclesiastics.

Every inch a bishop he yet opposes the Pope and his Legate
in their encroachments on civil liberty. When eighty years old
by his fearless action he successfully resists the Pope in foisting
his (the Pope's) grandson into a rich English canonry. His
long life was a ceaseless conflict for his ideal of a pure and
living Church and for the good of souls. He died at a great
age in 1253. Fifty years later Edward I. spoke the voice of
the nation in a request for his canonisation. No Pope ever
acceded to this. For centuries his name was revered by
the people and the fragrance of his saintly character unfor-
gotten. In Wyclif's works there is frequent reference to him.

William of Occam, born about 1270, an Englishman, a
courtly scholar, traveller, Franciscan dignitary, bold leader
against the grasping tyrannous absolutism of the Papacy —
was a precursor in the true line of Wyclif. Believers, said he,
are the Church — one body — Christ alone its Head. He also
maintained that the authority of the Scriptures was supreme
and that the Church in General Council had jurisdiction
over the Pope, and he advocated a representative basis
of its government. He suffered the dreadful penalty of
excommunication.

Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh, while in London
fell into a valiant and far-reaching contest with the powerful
Mendicant Orders. These had become a serious pest and
moral menace, and sought to exalt begging into the sanctity
almost of a doctrine of the Church. Their " begging " was
thieving, rather, for they entered houses uninvited and
took of the best. They also mingled in the privacy of the
confessional and went their way. Thomas Bradwardine
should also be named.

These forerunners, though not of large evangelical dis-
cernment, were yet men of faith, of moral earnestness and
purpose, whose hearts moved them to speak forth fearlessly
the truth and light within them. So lifted above the worldly
grossness and dullness of their day, we now honour their
names. They were preparers of the way for our great Wyclif
— the Morning Star of the Reformation.

BIRTH — OXFORD — WRITINGS

John Wyclif, Professor of Divinity, Oxford, was born
A.D. 1324, or earlier, and died A.D. 1384. Presswell, a little

24

John Wyclif

village near Richmond, nestling on the picturesque slopes
of the Tees valley, in North West Yorkshire, was the birth
place of our English Luther. His family were local gentry,
and of sturdy Saxon descent. Little is known of his early
youth. History first presents him as an eager student at
Oxford, deep in the scholastic lore and theology of the day, and
as attaining unrivalled skill in the tangled jargon and subtle
argumentation of the schoolmen. This specialist training
supplied in after years an invaluable element to his fearless
eloquence, logical clearness and force, which flashed conviction
into open minds. He was Master of Balliol in 1361 and was
also Fellow of Merton College. Archbishop Islip made him
President of Canterbury Hall, afterwards incorporated in the
stately College of Christ Church, founded by Wolsey. Wyclif
took the degree of Doctor of Theology not later than 1374.
A disciple of Roger Bacon he also pursued scientific research
and was held an authority. This fact alone proves his courage
and largeness of mind. The age generally regarded Bacon
as an agent of the black art ; Wyclif approved him as the
interpreter of natural phenomena and illustrated his own
lectures and writings by facts of optics and physical science.
His writings, for the time, were quite vast in quantity, wide
in subject, and signally able in treatment. They are philo-
sophical, scientific and theological ; sermons and expositions,
catechetical pieces, judgments, public addresses, defences,
personal and polemical writings and pamphlets innumerable
on monachism, the organization of the Church, its worship
and doctrine, its decay and reform, etc. Wyclif was an
original thinker of the first order, a great Churchman and
learned canonist ; an ardent patriot, a sagacious statesman
and diplomatist ; a many-sided man of eager, passionate,
human sympathies, and with intellect, swift, mobile and
piercing as a rapier blade; a strong, sane, high-souled Eng-
lishman. This was he who in his day — and for the good of
all the after generations — stood forth and with never flinching
courage, fought all forms of untruth and darkness, whether
in philosophy, in theology and doctrine, or in morals and
conduct.

HIS COURAGE — HIS DOCTRINES

Begging monk, Cardinal and Pope alike felt his lash
He attacked the central superstitious errors of the Church's
teachings, and denied that the Church of Rome was any

25

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

more the head of the Church universal than any other Church
might be. He exposed the corruptions of Church and clergy,
and denounced pluralities, also pardons, indulgences, and
masses for the soul, as a gigantic system of fraud. Himself
a pure spirit, he saw the face of God, and knew that God is
a Spirit, and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth, and
that all these things, with all earthly powers and human
devices and learning also, were as naught for the soul's salva-
tion. A century and a half before Luther, he taught the
sufficiency of Scripture for salvation, and indeed in some
respects a fuller truth, and struck the light which in the
hands of that great man flamed into the far-shining torch of
the Reformation.

A PROTESTANT BEFORE LUTHER WAS BORN

Perhaps chief of all is he illustrous for his vision and pro-
mulgation of the clear right of the individual soul to private
judgment and decision in things of conscience and religion.
This is really the bed rock of Protestantism, the fount from
which its life must ever flow. He protested against the claim
of the Church to the functions of the civil arm for its own
discipline, either by imprisonment, or other disability. Most
marvellous of all, he discerned and maintained the Con-
gregational economy as the New Testament pattern of Church
government — a truth so foreign and strange to the age as to
be lost in the darkness until Browne and Barrowe's time,
two long centuries later. Wyclif was thus a Protestant before
Luther was born, and a Free Churchman before Nonconformity
was heard of. These truths, so deep, so high and wide, we
know, came not to Wyclif in their ripe amplitude from the
teaching of men, but were born of his freedom and power
of intellect, sanctified by spiritual inspiration and divine
revelation.

Melancthon went so far as to say that Wyclif was totally
ignorant of the doctrine of free grace — or justification by faith.
There is certainly a note of exultant joy in Luther's sure grip
of these great truths, which is absent from Wyclif. I have
wondered if the absence of this mighty joy of endurance was
the secret of the passing of Lollardy. Wyclif was the more
advanced in his teaching of Church polity. He was also
more alone than even Luther was and not less the great light
of his age.

In Prague University there is a hymn (A.D. 1572) in memory

26

John Wyclif

of Huss in the Czech language. It is adorned with three
beautiful medallion miniatures — the first representing Wyclif
striking a spark, below him Huss kindling the coals, and
Luther at the foot brandishing a lighted torch.

But we have in Wyclif's doctrine of " dominion founded
on grace," a peculiar blend of St. Paul and St. James, a sort
of ethical and political Calvinism. Truly it was a lofty
conception of divine immanence and sovereignty and of
man's fealty thereto. God is the great Over-Lord ; Pope,
King, and each individual Christian, are all His vassals. In
themselves dwells no right of dominion, but only through
pure life and faithful service to the Over-Lord. The Lollards
clung unto death to this great, searching, working truth.

Perhaps before passing from these important aspects of his
evangel more precision is as well. First, then, he insisted upon
a ministry which God Himself had appointed — a vocation
of the heart. Second, he upheld the validity of a lay min-
istry, with the fullest right to preach the gospel. Third, he
boldly asserted that in the days of the Apostles presbyter
(the minister) and bishop were one and the same — that is,
there was no bishop at all as we understand him ; only in our
day do Anglican scholars seem to have discovered this New
Testament principle. Fourth, he condemned celibacy of
clergy, worship of images and relics, pilgrimages, and mislead-
ing symbols. Fifth, he maintained that the Bible was before
the Church, conscience before authority, the spirit before the
letter. Sixth, he taught that baptism was not essential to
salvation. Seventh, he vehemently opposed the doctrine of
transubstantiation. Eighth, he anticipated Liberationist
ideals of Church and State, especially in respect of endow-
ments, holding these to be virtually the Church's curse, and
also upheld the right of the State to apply them to other
uses. Ninth, he, with stalwart energy, bore aloft the banner
of Christ, alone the Mediator and Saviour of men, alone head
of His Church. He asserted that the Popes could and had
committed sin and that all things which a Pope did or said
were not right because a Pope did or said them. He further
maintained that the Pope must set the chief example in all
the moral virtues.

THE PROFESSOR — THE GOSPEL DOCTOR

His academic career at Oxford extended to nearly forty
years. The University became the home of the advanced

27

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

thought of the nation. Of all " Oxford Movements " Wyclif's
was far away the greatest. He stood the champion for
Oxford by his fearless assault upon the swarming, lazy, men-
dicant friars, and upon the monks for their usurpation of
authority over the University, and also for the shameless
scandals of their lives. Bishop Stubbs in his " Constitutional
History " tells us " that the majority of the persons or-
dained had neither cure of souls nor duty of preaching.
Instead of personal purity there was licensed and unlicensed
concubinage and appendant to it miscellaneous profligacy."
Our Reformer attacked also the Church's usage of sanctuary,
which besides the benefit of clergy had grown to an intoler-
able abuse, in the sheltering of every lust and villainy, all
the worse as the wandering orders of friars and monks owned
allegiance to no Bishops but direct to Rome only.

The splendour of Wyclif's talents, learning and character
attracted hosts of students, said to be thirty thousand,
who imbibed his opinions. They made him the hero and idol
of the University. He was awarded the honourable title of
" The Gospel Doctor." To the intense chagrin of the eccle-
siastics, he was elected and installed its Professor of Divinity.
He also incurred (as I show below) the wrath of the Pope by
his defence of the King of England against the claims of the
Papal Chair for tribute. The Court afterwards entrusted
him with several important embassies abroad.

PATRIOT AND POLITICIAN

Here I will interpolate a reference to his high service
to his country, more as a patriot and politician during the
momentous contest between the English King and Parliament
and Pope Urban V. On a previous page I have told how, in
1213, Innocent III. had imposed upon England, through
King John, a feudatory tribute. This had remained in abey-
ance ; Urban now demanded it, with arrears. The Popes
also, in spite of resistance, continued to give the best English
prebends and deaneries to Italian Cardinals, and other
foreigners also held fat English livings. On a Bishop's
death the Popes not only exacted the first year's
fruits from his successor, but, by the device of promotion
of several Bishops, blandly took over also several first
fruits. Electoral rights of cathedrals, chapters, abbeys
convents were also usurped to this end. The Papal collector
lived in London like a prince always hostile to English

28

John Wyclif

interests, and his entourage ever the secret spy for the Roman
Curia. From Church dignitaries alone some historians
affirm the Pope took of English gold five times as much as the
King got for his taxes. Unheeding even exceptional distress
the agents impounded vast sums, often used in the Pope's
foreign wars, sometimes aiding England's enemies. J. R.
Green says the Pope " made the clergy pay and the clergy the
people, but of a population of little more than two millions
the ecclesiastics numbered between twenty and thirty
thousand, owning landed property more than a third of the
soil ; their spiritualities in dues and offerings amounting to
twice the royal revenues." The nation had often growled
and kicked at this impoverishing, unchristian prostitution
and degrading yoke. This policy of the Curia of pricking
the English temper on the angry questions of vassalage and
feudatory tribute, the foisting of alien clerics into English
sees and prebends, the abstraction of English money for
Papal purposes abroad, stung the nation, King and Parliament
to a united opposition. In these high affairs Wyclif was
summoned by the King to answer important questions of
law and policy, and he always gave a constitutional rendering.

POPE, KING AND PARLIAMENT
HISTORIC CONTESTS

Edward III. summoned Wyclif to his Parliaments and
during the later years of his reign these vexed and serious issues
were fought out by determined Parliaments. That of 1366
by Act declared that King John had by his surrender of the
English Crown, as a fief to the Papal See, violated his corona-
tion oath, and, further, the representatives of the nation offered
all their resources to withstand the indignity. Ten years
later, on another set battle the Parliament was long and grate-
fully remembered by the people as the " Good Parliament."
From that day Rome never more made claims of feudal
authority or tribute. Later, when darker days fell on England,
Parliament boldly taxed the wealth of the Church.

It was this spirit of national independence which Wyclif
caught at its flood — it also caught him at his strength — and
with trenchant pen he flung himself on the popular side of
the conflict. Urban yielded ; there is evidence our hero was
never forgiven, but the people knew him as a far-sighted and
resolute patriot,

39

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Just now (1378) that unique, that sordid spectacle in papal
history, the rival Popes, thrust itself on the stage of history
with an amazed world for audience, and continued for forty
years. Such a free spirit as Wyclif's could not behold the
rival Popes' parade of the instruments of the worldly arm
without feeling the fatal blow to the prestige of all Popedom.
From this day he regarded the office of Pope as antichrist,
and he was profoundly confirmed in the whole work of his life,
and deepened in the convictions of his later years.

Little wonder that the schism forced upon Wyclif such a
momentous change. Without scruple of means these " Holy
Fathers " assailed each other. Each, in God's name, was
banned by the other in excommunication and damned as
schismatic — cut off from the Church and salvation along with
all his supporters. Bulls and mandates, duels and daggers,
armies and bloodshed were requisitioned to the full. Each
angled for England's favour. Western Europe was rent in
angry factions. Urban by bull empowered Bishops to collect
an army and wage holy war against his rival — to seize, depose,
imprison Clement's supporters and impound their estates.
Crusaders enrolling against Clement were granted a plenary
indulgence and privileges like those of the old Crusaders to
the Holy Land against the Turk.

Mandates and indulgences were circulated throughout the
land and mendicant friars preached the Crusade as a Holy
War. The confessional was manipulated and a rich trade
done in the sale of absolutions. Some of the pardons under
Papal authority extended to the dead as well as the living,
and it passed along that at the Bishop's command angels
would descend from heaven and release souls in Purgatory
and translate them instantly to Paradise.

The war chest quickly filled to the brim ; gold and silver,
precious jewels, rings, plate, ornaments, flowed in to an
incredible value. The English contingent sailed in May, 1383,
its end being ignominious.

Wyclif had early perceived the utter worldliness of the whole
miserable business and had lashed out against it, and his
enlightened judgment and courage were acknowledged.
In 1381 burst forth the peasant rising, when 100,000 men
headed by Wat Tyler and John Ball, priest, marched upon
London. Archbishop Sudbury, judges and officers were seized
and beheaded. Wyclif's enemies quickly laid the onus of the
trouble on his teaching. Biographers are at great pains to

30

John Wyclif

disprove this ; why should they ? The case is quite away
from an actual incitement to revolt and bloodshed. The
peasants of England were then as serfs compared even to the
citizen-trader, yet of the same blood. The poll tax was the
last straw. Christ brought a sword for oppression, and now
under this new and quickening spirit of evangelical truth the
dry bones of centuries were moved " bone to his bone " into life.

Singularly an identical experience came to Luther and, in
his unwisdom, with woful results. Wyclif's life and times
cannot well be understood if these factors are overlooked.
And it is more important still that we remember Wyclif
lived during the dread and panic of the " Black Death,"
the most fearful plague that ever befell Britain. Singularly,
it was preceded by many earthquakes. Breaking out in
Constantinople in 1347, it gripped England in June, 1348,
holding on for ten months. It reappeared in 1361, again in
1367, in 1369 and 1407 and at longer intervals until 1665.
The great fire of London in 1666 burnt up the filth of a
thousand years, and it has not since returned.

These visitations could only be regarded by the great bulk
of the people as the punishment of God for sin. The reader
of these pages should remember this with other indirect
factors. It is only so that the truer philosophy of history
is apprehended.

This great Englishman, Wyclif, was a pioneer of vast force
in popular education. Here Luther, Colet and others were
but followers. It is known that between 1363-1400 the
Lollards founded and conducted no less than twenty-five
Grammar Schools free from ecclesiastical control. He lived
in the age of the meridian splendour of cathedral building,
and his movement influenced its later forms. William of
Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, the great Gothic builder, was
his younger contemporary, and they were well known to each
other.

Chaucer and Gower also were Wyclif's contemporaries,
and both these eminent poets must have come under his
influence. It may be assumed that in England Wyclif
largely created that freer environment and atmosphere of
religion, of politics, and of philosophy, that sympathy with
liberty and culture, which made it possible for these authors
to find audience and for Chaucer to bring forth his immortal
classics of racy humour, rollicking satire and joyous philo-
sophy. Langland's " Vision of Piers Ploughman," became a

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

kind of " Pilgrim's Progress " to Wyclif s followers— the
Lollards. The English tongue was now a language of liter-
ature, but the Bible was yet a sealed book to all but the
scholar, for the partial translations of the learned Bede
and of Alfred and others, being in the old Anglo-Saxon and
scraps of Anglo-Norman, were no more available to the people
than was the Latin of the Vulgate.

THE " MODIR TONGE " BIBLE

Wyclif had long yearned to open the Word of God to the
common folk in their " modir tonge," and now, retired to the
quiet parsonage of Lutterworth, he plodded, oft with tired
brain and hand, for years over piles of old Latin manuscripts
and commentaries, and at last, in 1382-3, for the first time in
her history, England possessed the completed Holy Bible in
the tongue of the people.

Full and great as his life and labours had been, he rightly
regarded this as the supreme work of his life. Nicholas of
Hereford — a disciple of learning — translated the main part
of the Old Testament, but this was finished and revised, it
is supposed, by Wyclif himself. The grand design of a whole
Bible in the vernacular of the people — truly a bold, and ma-
jestic conception for the day — along with the enthusiastic
hope and force requisite for its completion were Wyclif's own.
Sweet triumph and song of holy gratitude filled the heart of
the ageing hero, we may be sure, as he wrote " Finis " on the
last skin-leaf of his Bible.

Yet he regarded all as but the means to be vigorously used.
Copying was now pushed on with amazing rapidity, not only
of the whole, but of portions, for quicker circulation. He
also started a laborious and thorough revision, only com-
pleted a few years after his own death by his devoted and
able follower John Purvey.

Wyclif s New Testament translation is racy, strenuous and
idiomatic, and possesses a high degree of clearness, beauty
and force, and like Luther's for the German, marks an epoch
in the style and progress of the English language. It is
placed by later philologists alongside Chaucer, at least, if not
at the head of Middle English classics.

Its effect is revealed by a quotation from a writer of thetime :

Christ committed the Gospel to the clergy and doctors of the Church
that they might minister it to the laity according to the exigencies of
times and persons' wants ; but this master, John Wyclif, translated

John Wyclif

it out of Latin into English, and by that means laid it more open to the
laity and to women who could read than it used to be to the most learned
of the clergy and those of them who had the best understanding. And
so the Gospel pearl is cast abroad and trodden under swine, and that
which used to be precious to both clergy and laity is made, as it were,
the common jests of both, and the jewel of the Church is turned into
the sport of the laity.

Aye, old scribe, it knocked the priest off his pedestal, as
it was meant to do.

THE " POOR PRIESTS " — A TITLED MARTYR

Notable among the chief instruments of this rapid progress
was the martyr, Lord Cobham, who in youth had come
under Wyclif's spell. He and other kindred souls gave of
their gold and silver for the transcription — writing copies —
(printing was not yet) of Wyclif's Bible and of his other writ-
ings. They also sustained a band of itinerant preachers —
" Poor Priests " — to evangelize the land. These " apostolic
men " Wyclif must have trained and sent forth. The exact
date is not known, but the itinerancy was in full swing in May,
1382. It was the first great movement of its kind in England,
and its fresh and grateful message of " Good News " told
mightily. It is stated that at one time half of the people were
Lollards — followers of Wyclif. Though Cobham was a near
friend of the King's, the power of the Church encompassed
him, cited him, offered him pardon for recantation — the
stake on refusal. He refused, and escaped to Wales. After
four years he was hunted down and betrayed to his insatiate
enemies, and was martyred, with added indignities, on
St. Giles' Fields in 1417.

Wyclif had waited for the consolation of Israel, and, like
old Simeon, he might now say, " Lord, now lettest thy servant
depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."
He had not seen death until there shone full upon his native
land " a light to lighten the Gentiles." Scarcely was his great
task finished ere he laid down his life. It is the last Sunday
of 1384 ; two years ago he had a paralytic stroke and now,
while kneeling in prayer with his little flock in Lutterworth
Church, he is seized by a fatal attack. He lingers speechless
until the following Saturday evening, his own last hours
ebbing out with those of the old year. So passed John
Wyclif. Away back in the dimness of the generations his
figure stands forth grand and alone — in kingly state — a great
noble, strenuous personality. Brave Wyclif ! thy name and

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

fame shall never die while thy " modir tonge " doth live.
Dean Hook says (" Lives of the Archbishops ") : " John
Wyclif may be justly accounted one of the greatest men our
country has produced. He is one of the very few who have
left the impress of their minds not only upon their own age,
but on all time."

PAPAL PERSECUTORS — ROYAL DEFENDERS

I have not broken this brief summary by recounting the
ecclesiastical malice, the restless hate, which beset him during
his active career. Suffice it to say that bulls, mandates and
citations, many and oft, were served on him. Several times he
stood in the ecclesiastic dock confronting enemies thirsting for
his blood. Short shrift would have been his, indeed, but for
the powerful arm of princes and high nobles. These alone
saved him from a quick and fiery doom. The King's brother,
John of Gaunt, " time-honoured Lancaster," and Lord Percy,
Earl Marshal of England, with an armed band and a train of
other nobles, escorted Wyclif to St. Paul's and also to Lambeth
for trial, and confronted and confounded angry Bishops and
wrathful Nuncios, even demanding a chair for the accused.
The people filled the courts and streets acclaiming their hero
and benefactor. The Princess of Wales, widow of the Black
Prince, and mother of Richard II., stood his friend. So
also did the commons of the realm, yet but for the great
Papal schism of the rival Popes, it is not likely that Wyclif
would have escaped the stake. All this has a tale to itself,
which space forbids me to tell.

A paragraph, however, must be spared to recount the scene
of the larger Wyclif window. At the instigation, chiefly, of
the English hierarchy, Pope Gregory XI. signed five bulls
against Wyclif. In virtue of one of these he was arraigned
early in 1378 at Lambeth to defend his nineteen theses con-
demned by the Roman Curia. He put in written answers
expounding and vindicating them. Sir Lewis Clifford
appeared in court and, in the name of Joan, Princess of Wales,
demanded that no final judgment should be passed upon
Wyclif. Citizens of London forced passage into the chapel,
and in menacing attitude stood by the patriot. Their hero
shall not pass to the dungeon a victim, but back to his barge
a free man, and though ecclesiastics gnash with rage, to his
barge he goes, guarded by hurrahing friends. The motive
of this arraignment was both political and doctrinal, and

34

John Wyclif

Wyclif was never so strong as at this moment, when standing
forth as the national champion against Papal abuses.

I have chosen this Lambeth scene in preference to the more
picturesque and perhaps better known citation held about a
year before, in old St. Paul's. This was really no trial at all,
for Wyclif spoke never a word. It was a mixed affair, there
being a deadly feud between the Duke of Lancaster and the
prelates, and the court broke up in a mere confusion of angry
personalities. Besides, the citation to St. Paul's was the
act of the English episcopate only, but the trial at Lambeth
Palace proceeded direct from the central power of Rome,
and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London
sat under special bull, and as the plenary commissaries of the
Pope.

Forty years after Wyclif s death, on a formal decree of
the Council of Constance, the Church gloated in a senseless
revenge and dug up his harmless bones from their peace-
ful rest in Lutterworth churchyard, burned them, and cast
the heretical ashes into the streamlet Swift hard by ; and so
in the famous words of Fuller :

The Swift bore then into the Severn, and the Severn into the narrow
seas, and they again into the ocean. Thus the ashes of Wyclif are an
emblem of his doctrines, which arc dispersed over all the world.

For a thousand years the law and sentence of the Church
upon the heretic had been death, and death by fire. Yet
was Wyclif mercifully preserved in God's providence to die
an old man upon his bed.

The smaller window presents him in years as nearing the
end of his earthly course. He is passing from his church,
where he may be supposed to have been reading his beloved
version to the people. The river also is in view, and a morning
star. The cherub above with one hand offers the closed book
with the heavenly commission to open. Seeds are scattering
from the other hand. The following quotation is so good I
give it uncurtailed. It is from an old book I possess :

Wyclif was the Daniel of his era — he dared to be singular, and to
offend even to exasperation a power the most dreadful and over-
whelming and implacable that then existed. He stood almost alone
on the earth ; unimpressed by example, and unawed by the execrations
of adoring millions, he indignantly refused to fall down before the idol.
He appears to have been a man at once amiable and ardent, bold and
cautious — a lover of civil and sacred freedom, yet one who rebuked
every species of licentiousness with the freedom and severity of an
apostle. In his doctrinal opinions he held the points afterwards

35

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

maintained by Calvinists. In the matter of Church government his views
strictly correspond with those of the Congregationalists. To the Romish
hierarchy Wyclif was more mischievous when dead than while alive.
His books conferred on him a spiritual omnipresence, for by those he
spoke at once in a multitude of places and to tens of thousands. When
the Romanists could do no more, they bestowed an epitaph on their
arch-opponent. This singular article was expressed as follows :
" The devil's instrument, Church's enemy, people's confusion, heretic's
Idol, hypocrite's mirror, schism's broacher, hatred's sower, lie's forger,
flattery's sink — who, at his death, despaired like Cain, and stricken by
the terrible judgment of God, breathed forth his wicked soul to th«
dark mansion of the black devil | "

" Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put
darkness for light, and light for darkness. "

II

SAVONAROLA

INSCRIPTION.— Great Puritan, Prophet, Teacher, Reformer to
the Italians, Liberator of Florence. Martyred in the Piazza.
B. 1453. D. 1498.

SCENE — A corner in the Piazza, Florence. Robed as a Dominican
monk, with impassioned face and gesture, he preaches. An
impressive figure. Above a sweet cherub hovers with a martyr's
crown.

To follow the richer growth from Wyclif's sowing we must
now leave the shores of England. John Huss of Bohemia
in 1415 and Jerome of Prague in 1416 suffered the awful
tortures of the stake, and were faithful to the end. They
had been condemned as Wyclimtes by the Council of
Constance. I must not stay here to tell how their links join
into the chain of our story. Luther claimed them, along with
Savonarola, as Protestant martyrs and as his forerunners.

I pass to a study — but a broad sketch in charcoal I fear —
of our second figure. Strange and inexplicable, a star of
serene beauty, yet comet -like also in dread and portent, was
Girolamo Savonarola to his day and generation. Religion
was then in alliance with impurity and sin, and opposed to
reason and freedom. The world's want was for a prophet
of ethics rather than of dogma; a reformer of morals
rather than of theology. Savonarola was the messenger
of God to this end. A strong ethical motive controls
his sermons and even his visions. Had Italy obeyed
the voice what woe had been saved her ! Ears had she, but

37

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

would not hear ; eyes, but saw not ; and a dismal Nemesis
has been her heritage in centuries of tyranny, ignorance,
superstition and pitiful decadence. In France the black
seal of St. Bartholomew was ruptured only by the blood of
the Revolution. Savonarola is noble, and sufficient in him-
self— in his positive and concrete work making for liberty,
light and progress — to take rank among our great ones ;
yet he also stands, and by intention, as the prophet of warning
to all peoples in every age who by riches, ease or sin grow
deaf and blind to the eternal watching and care for freedom
and truth. I have read and re-read a bulky life of our hero,
the latest and best — Professor Villari's. I am to catch and
fix his soul and setting — nay, the throb of his hot-rushing
blood — in a few poor, paltry pages, that he who runs shall
also read. I cannot — I fail ! This Italian spirit is too elusive
for my touch and ken. He is like a wondrous diamond,
shooting light and beauty from many sides.

He broke clean from Pope and Church in their claims of
authority — surely vitally, if not quite in dogma ; was excom-
municated more than once ; yet was defiant and was even
offered the splendid bribe of a cardinal's hat for silence. He
prophesied the Reformation. Some of his treatises are models
of logical skill and brainy force, in which he anticipates
modern methods of Christian dialectics. To our modern eyes,
scaled by science, law, evolution, he seems weakest on
the side of his visions, and he believed, it would seem, that
God would use him in miracles. And yet — and yet — what
are visions ? What their place ? Do we believe in them now ?
Ah ! how crooked was Jacob until his ladder-vision ! Peter,
three years close disciple ; yet what a pitiful, weak, letter-
bound creature he is until the vision on the housetop makes
him wide-eyed and strong ; Saul is made Paul by a vision.
What is vision ? I know not ; but, gracious Spirit, let
its glad sunbeam come to me to light the grey day, the dull
humdrum of my poor faith, to impart song and militant
step to my Christian course.

GREAT ARTISTS — THE CITY OF THE IMPIOUS

I wish I could dwell upon Savonarola's influence upon the
art of his day. Lorenzo's spirit was almost entirely Pagan.
Our prophet saved art from this. The mighty Michael Angelo
was a close friend and disciple, and received generous patron-
age from Savonarola. The whole of the Delia Robbia family

38

Savonarola

were of his followers ; the lofty Botticelli, Da Vinci, the
youthful Raphael, and many others drank at the fount of
the austere and spiritual beauty of his teaching. Many of
these great names became leaders in the Piagnoni or Puritan
party of the time, springing from the prophet's teaching.
So earnest were they as to impress its spirit upon their whole
work. I have often wondered at the freedom from tradition
and the saint-cult, the fearless realism, of Angelo especially.
The secret is with our monk, for through life Angelo fed his
soul upon his evangel.

The sceptre of Florence had now been held by three of
the sumptuous De Medici. The last of these, Lorenzo the
Magnificent, was now at the height of his power and fame.
He, with his kinsmen, had beguiled the Florentines of their
former glory of liberty by a glory and gorgeous fragrance of
art. His own cultured taste, his ideals and ambition on the
grand scale, and his lavish patronage of art attracted a galaxy of
artists, who made Florence and the period the centre and zenith
of the world's art. Some of these names stand to-day among
the immortals. Twin sister to this was the resurrection of
learning throughout Italy. At the fall of Constantinople she
gave refuge to immigrant scholars. Florence became the
resort of scholars and studious youth from every part of
Europe. The spirit of an eclectic renaissance was on the wing.
The age, however, was coldly classical and pagan in temper
toward art, philosophy and poetry. The qualities of Lorenzo
were intellectual only ; his heart was impure, his life that of
a shameless profligate ; and while art and letters might sing
in freedom, he hated liberty political, and crushed it with
callous cruelty, dungeon and murder. Naturally the life of
the city took on the moral infection of its rulers all the more
easily as the Pope of the day, Sixtus IV., and many Cardinals
were shockingly depraved and wicked in life.

This was the Florence, " lovely Florence the Pearl of
Italy," " the city of the impious," which an unknown and
mystic monk entered in 1481, a fiery and daring spirit, and
betook himself to the gates of the Dominican Convent of St.
Mark's, to spend within its cloisters many bright years, and
some sad ones, and from which he was to be led forth to die.
Divided into so many city-states and nominal Republics,
Italy in the fifteenth century was the prey of petty civil
wars. Our monk had fled from one of these which threatened
his native city of Ferrara.

39

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, YOUTH

Here he was bora, September 1452, the third of seven chil-
dren— Girolamo Savonarola baptized. His family had
followed the professions of arms and medicine, and at this
time his grandfather was Court physician to the reigning
Duke. As a pensive boy passing by in the sweet sunshine, he
often heard the moans and clanking chains of patriot prisoners
from the gratings of the State dungeons below, and the hilarity
of music and revelry in the palace above, and grew up with his
young heart saddened by black contrasts. Sometimes he
talked strangely of liberty and the poor. His mother, whom
he ever loved, encouraged him to learn the lute, yet was his
song plaintive. Too unpretty and silent a boy to be winsome,
he yet was his grandfather's pet, who was bent upon making
him a doctor ; but the old man died and the lad was left
to his will. He pursued the studies of the time, his
family hoping he would still turn to medicine. Not much
authentic is known of his youth. He early showed his doughty
hatred of tyrants, and amazed his parents by refusing to
attend a function with them at the Ducal palace. The grass-
tufted streets of modern Ferrara make it difficult to imagine
its former splendour — a city of 100,000 people, " a big
town of the old style." The reigning House of Este was
renowned for the magnificence of its Court. Popes and princes
frequently paid stately visits, were received with pomp and
pageant, and the city was often alive with gay festivities, per-
haps more heartily jovial and less refined and wicked thanthose
of Florence. Yet was his soul grieved at the excess of these
hollow vanities. With tears he frequented the precincts of
the church and poured forth and eased his heart by prayer.

LOVE'S SWEET DREAM — ITS CUP OF HYSSOP

There dwelt at this time near by his own home a Florentine
exile of noble birth around whom our hero had cast the halo
of the persecuted patriot. One daughter was with him. At
the first glance of the maiden's eyes young Savonarola knew
that for weal or woe the maid held his fate. " He felt the
light of her eyes into his life." For the first time he now
realized the tumultuous deeps of his heart and nature Sweet
day-dreams of blissful hours to come held his fancy— golden
argosies of love softly sailing to port enchanted him A new
world opened, fresh, beautiful and glad. It is ever so with

40

Savonarola

natures strong, vision-seeing and passionate. A silly world
laughs and jeers, but it is mystery and tragedy to those who
endure. Poor Savonarola ! thou knowest it not as yet. Sip
thy nectar and dangle thy dreams. To-morrow thou wilt
declare the one to be hyssop, the other a nightmare ! When
the passion was disclosed the girl added insult to rejection.

He repelled this with some fiery words of indignation, but
yet was crushed, engulfed, in a blank delusion. How may
he relieve this dull blight ? Where now must his bruised soul
find rest ? In his distress he finds his only safety and strength
in prayer, always ending thus, " Lord, make known to me the
path my soul should tread." There is no refuge but God. He
reads deeply in his Bible. He hears a sermon from a friar,
and on the spot forms an irrevocable decision to become
a monk, and is quieted. He cannot tear his mother's heart
by telling her. For a year he waits and struggles. He com-
poses religious poetry — his lute grows more tender and plain-
tive. His mother guesses, and one day piteously turns
upon him, exclaiming, " Oh ! my son ! " and he dare not lift
his eyes.

Next day is a festival, and he flees to Bologna (April, 1475),
and hurries to the monastery. Here he quickly shows the
fibre of an exemplary monk, and by fasting and penance
becomes the mere bony spectre of himself. But his chief
joy is spiritual contemplation, and sometimes his fellow-monks
behold him absorbed in a holy rapture ; they wonder, straddle
to the refectory, and wonder the more.

THE FEARLESS PROPHET

The six years spent in the Bologna monastery were prob-
ably to Savonarola his silent wilderness of preparation, for
he emerged a stern and fearless prophet. While following
a scholastic course his chief study was his Bible. His heart
burned with scorn and indignation at the corruptions of the
Church of his day. With deep grief also he beheld the people
befooled and bewitched out of their liberty by the empty
gaieties of tyrants. He yearns to go forth and openly de-
nounce these wrongs. An opportunity comes. His superiors
send him to Ferrara to preach. This mission is stopped by
alarms of war, and Savonarola is despatched to Florence,
which now again and to the end becomes the scene of our
narrative.

At the city gate a mysterious stranger meets him, and

41

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

commands him thus, " Remember to do that for which God
hath sent thee," and departs.

" Out of the heart are the issues of life." The old words
encompass the secret — the meaning and end of Savonarola's
Florence career. He communed with God. Alongside this,
his natural temperament was of the heart. He was strong
in intellect, too, as we shall find, yet the heart took sceptre
and command over his life. The fair beauty of the queenly
city held him in joy for a brief week or so. He had entered
it with lofty hopes, quickly to be dashed by disgust and
despair. His pure mind shrank with horror as the
months unfolded the truth. He beheld groups of polished
lordlings, and even Lorenzo himself, sally forth to shame
at eve, chanting lewd ballads in the streets. In college
halls he heard endless wranglings among Christian pro-
fessors on Plato and Aristotle, but hardly a mention
of the Bible, of Christian doctrine or literature. Preachers,
refined and scholarly, were but wine-loving pagans,
their sermons were philosophic homilies, of cultured
style and phrase, and the more full of heathen quota-
tions, sceptical and indecent allusions, the better relished.
No one rebuked the stalking sin of the city. Even his
brother monks evinced no genuine mark of their Master's
spirit. All seemed veneer, babel and bubble, a pit of stench ;
and in the city of Dante ! In his quiet cell our hero's pure
soul burned with holy wrath, and forth he must go to smite
hip and thigh even the highest. The ecclesiastic shrugged
and glared. The elegant debauchees heard and laughed. The
bland, courteous cynic smiled. But the monk had not done
with them. With him it was now war to the death against the
vices of the city and the scandals and pollution of the Church.
He now more than ever sought strength and light in ardent
watching, in prayer and in earnest pondering of the Book of Life.

THE SPIRIT'S CALL

Suddenly one day, while conversing, a vision shone upon
him — the heavens opened, and all the future woes of the
Church passed before his eyes, and a Voice charged him to
go forth and cry aloud, " Repent ye, and return to the Lord ! "
From this moment he believed the mission of his life to be
clearly denned and divinely given. He was " not disobedient
to the heavenly vision." In 1484 Pope Sixtus died and
Innocent VIII. was elected. Incredible to say, men soon began

Savonarola

to look back to Sixtus with regret, so steeped were the new
Pope and his Court in vice and scandalous living. The Pope
openly named his sons and called them Princes. At this
juncture Savonarola was sent as Lenten preacher to various
parts of Italy, and in Lombardy stayed over two years. With-
out ceasing he thundered at the wickedness of the Church,
and spared not the mighty, and his name and fame spread
throughout Italy. He comes back to Florence. On August
i, 1489, St. Mark's is filled with an expectant audience ;
people are clinging to the iron window gratings, so great is the
throng. The preacher ascends the pulpit — he is our boy of
the pensive lute. He announces his subject — the Apocalypse,
an exposition, with heads thus : firstly, the Church will be
scourged ; secondly, it will be speedily regenerated ; thirdly,
all this will come to pass quickly. This is his first sermon
in the great church. He is inspired ; with gleaming eye and
menacing gesture he thunders and threatens ; by blunt and
fearless speech, by intellectual force and emotional enthusiasm,
by lofty passion, vision and allegory he sways the vast throng
at will. That day the Florentines depart homewards in fear
and trembling, and know a prophet dwells among them who
fears not the face of any man.

The death of Lorenzo the Magnificent,1 the last of the sump-
tuous De Medici, the invasion of Italy by the French army,
faction jealousy, the revolt of Pisa — a vassal city of Florence
— and other forces threw Florence into tumult and its
government into confusion.

PREACHER, JUDGE, LAW-GIVER

Savonarola saved Florence at this crisis from anarchy.
By sixty years of Medici rule her citizens had lost their former
aptitude for self-government ; the earnest love for it had

1 In the eyes of the Church his death was a tragedy. It was indeed
dramatic. Spectres of the past rose in ghostly terror by his death-bed.
The confessing priests could bring no peace to his soul. Suddenly
he commanded haste to call Savonarola, whose stern visage presently
appeared. Lorenzo confessed three sins in particular.

" There are three others things," said the monk. " First a living
faith in God's mercy." " I have the fullest faith," is the response.
" Second, restore all your ill-gotten wealth " — there is a shock — a
struggle, then a silent nod of assent. " Third, you must restore liberty
to Florence." The eyes of Prince and priest meet in terrible conflict.
The Magnificent collects his strength, turns his face angrily away, and
utters nothing. Savonarola departs. Torn by a dreadful remorsa
Lorenro gasps his last, unabsolved.

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

ebbed sadly. But many hearts were exalted at the golden
chance of restoring to Florence her former glories as the home
of a proud liberty and a splendid citizenship. The people
turned instinctively to the preaching monk as the one trusted
leader. They called him to their aid. He refused ; but
later, persuaded of a Divine leading, yielded. This call was
the homage to moral force, to pure and unselfish character,
of a community familiar with infamies I may not name,
with wild revenges of faction hate, with dark horrors of dagger
and bowl and noose.

For a year Italy beheld an amazing spectacle, a very
wonder of history. The friar seemed to preach a political
constitution into the people, based upon the moral law, up-
built in righteousness. Woe, woe to all iniquity ! Invective
flew hot and hissing as shot against all unrighteousness.
He preached profound political wisdom in detail to the wise
few in the Civic Hall, and in the Duomo swayed the multitude
into unanimous acquiescence.

Florence is transformed from moral darkness to light.

Within a year a constitution was completed which for
sagacious balance, binding unity, and wisdom suited to
safeguard and nurture liberty, has been pronounced a model
by many competent judges. Marvellous monk ! He had
come forth from his cell as the Baptist from the wilderness,
stern in rebuke and ominous in call. In rapturous trance of
eloquence and Apocalyptic vision there was the mark of
Patmos. He had stood in the Piazza a veritable embodi-
ment in one figure of the spirit of the Hebrew prophets,
crying, " Woe, woe unto greed, tyranny, and sin ! Repent
ye ! Awake, awake ! Oh, come, draw water out of the wells
of salvation," and now he descends from the mount with the
tables of stone as lawgiver and statesman — a marvel indeed.
But, then, he truly lived, moved and had his being in the
Bible. It was the daily nurture of his soul and it is said
he committed the whole to memory. Dwelling apart
in his lonely cell, much in vigil and fast, celibate with no
music of childhood and love, he slides into broodings and
visions which sometimes, it must be owned, pass the bounds of
all soundness and sanity— and little wonder ! Yet he foretold
his own martyrdom, the death of a Pope and t wo princes,
with period and circumstances which duly came to pass.

It was doubtless under the pressure of deep study and a
powerful and spacious imagination that he often preached

44

Savonarola

sermons in connected series. Thus he treats the Psalms,
Noah's Ark, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Haggai, Amos and Zechariah,
in sermons, marked by great intellectual insight, yet with
chance interludes of rhapsodical vision.

The Florentines found it easier to follow Savonarola in his
politics than in his morals and religion. What of the Pope
and his minions all this while ? They were furious, and
thirsting for his doom. The Pope cited him to Rome. The
city refused. He would never come back. Cajolery is tried
— even the glittering honour of the purple is offered for silence ;
the bribe is indignantly refused. Plots, wily spies, shifty
deceits and traps are adopted to entangle. In vain ; the
prey escapes.

TRIAL BY FIRE — MARTRYDOM

A strange thing now occurs, probably itself a plot. Vexed
at insult to his beloved master and dared to trial by fire, that
impetuous, that dearest disciple and fellow-monk, Fra
Domenico accepts the ordeal, with the intent that his master
should be saved for greater things. Savonarola perceives the
mistake, and dissuades, but Fra Domenico is eager, and
enemies push the advantage. Another monk will stand by
Domenico, and soon Savonarola is involved deeply in the
maze. What must he do ? His enemies laugh. If he accept
he will die ; if not, the people will scorn him. He resolves to
stand by his monks, and is he not prior of his convent ?
The Pope's agents hurry on the ordeal. The day is fixed, and
a vast throng gathers in the Piazza. But a fair ordeal requires
the other side to dare the test also. They elude it. It is
a trap, and fails. The three monks are led back. Baffled
and inflamed with rage and hate, the Pope (a vile wretch1)
now sends his own commission — creatures of his own ilk —
who boast ere the trial that the impudent monk shall die ;
mock trials follow. His frail, weakened body is put on the
rack with agonies of torture, three times repeated. False
witness is hired ; die he must, and he is sentenced. The sweet

1 Strong ? No, mild. I have all along suppressed shocking details.
It is perhaps necessary as affording some unity and motive to much of
our story and also the true setting to Savonarola's career that I state
that the courts of the three Popes living during his active life were the
headquarters of scandalous and open profligacy. This one — Alexander
VI. — a Borgia, bought his own election — a thing of simple traffic. As
Pope he was father of many children of different mothers — openly
owned. Even worse might be told.

45

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

angels by Fra Angelico on the walls of his convent of St. Mark's
now speak to him as never before — and how often they have
consoled and inspired ! They beckon heavenward and pray
for him, and sob in sympathy ; their eyes gleam comfort,
courage and hope. Ah ! in this thy Gethesemane thou
needest all ; years back thou didst pray " Let me not die
in my bed, but let me give my blood for Thee, even as Thou
gavest Thine for me." Thy prayer is granted. Faithful,
loving Domenico vows he will die with his master, but he is
declared innocent, and it is arranged the culprits shall first
be choked by gibbet and then burnt. Domenico for himself
craves the last first. Florence has got back her liberty but
grown tired of being good. The monk is an irksome menace
to greed and sin. The Pope and his ecclesiastic cohorts are
implacable and fierce for the victim ; the civic authorities feebly
acquiesce. Again a vast multitude surges to the Piazza. ;
again, every dark villain, every hardened Barabbas, is let loose
from his chains to curse and terrify the friendly; again a
solemn procession comes along, and makes for the three halters
and big piles of gunpowder, faggot and pitch. Ah ! where
are now the palms and hosannahs of yesterday ? The loudest
cries heard are echos of the ancient cry " Away with him !
Crucify him ! " There is an awful hitch in the middle noose —
a groan of horror ! — it will not tighten. The people are in
weird dread of a raining judgment, and half expect to behold
the monk ascend to glory in a fiery car of triumph ; now they
see blazing torches lifted, and bursting prongs of flame, but
they know not if he dies by rope, smoke, or fire. All is over.
I stay not for ghastly details.

It is 10 a.m., May 23, 1498. Forty-five tearful and
fevered years are ended. A lofty spirit passes out of great
tribulation, and God already hath wiped all tears away. The
throng disperses. Note the groups. Yonder is selfish greed
callous as gold, muttering, " Let him die " — aye, now heap
up your ducats, by ways fair or foul. Crush the poor, ye are
now rid of the monk's terrible tongue. There turns away
gilded lust, high in Church and State — go down now to your
ways of sin at ease, he sees not nor hears and will never more
cry out " Woe unto them who make evil good and good evil."
See that triumphant leer of the priest, for now the arch-heretic
is silenced for ever. Stay — over there is a band with bowed
heads, stricken in sorrow, and these with many women linger
and weep.

46

MARTIN LUTHER.

" The solitary monk that shook the world"
" ATo mortal heart to be called braver"

III

MARTIN LUTHER

INSCRIPTION.— The Miner's son. The Great Leader of the
Reformation. The Spring of the Modern Age, its Liberty and
Progress. B. 1483. D. 1546.

SCENE. — Declares war against the Pope. His stalwart arm is
lifted nailing his ninety-five Theses upon Wittenberg church door.
A cherub brandishes and hands to him a flaming torch.

Our story now conveys us across another foreign frontier
before returning to the British Isles, this time to a nation of
kindred blood — for we are very sure that neither Luther,
with his masculine sanity, nor Wyclif, with his level head,
could have fallen into the wizard-bewitched trap of " ordeal
by fire " to please his enemies, or friends either, indeed. No
slight is meant here to Savonarola. No ; I took pains to
show how tight in brain he was. The explanation is simple.
These men were of different blood — Teuton and Italian,
and the latter pure and rich in strain. We must remember,
also, that the Florentine was vexed in soul and worn in health.
Yet this scene in his wondrous career is puzzling. I leave it.

Savonarola during his troubles expected help from the
English king. But I have come across no evidence showing
a direct effect of Wyclif's writings upon him. The priests,
however, while burning books, proscribed to the people, kept
copies themselves, and scholarly Italy would certainly possess
Huss and Wyclif in its convent or college libraries ; and as
Luther met with Huss this way, so may the studious Italian

47

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

have read one or both, for Huss was martyred but thirty-
seven years before his birth. But, as was said, the monk of
Florence stands clear and grand as the prophet of Christian
ethics— the one great need of his nation and day. Luther,
the Saxon, broad-based in a slow and stable common sense,
stops Tetzel's drum by hammering his theses on the church
door. A sermon from the prophets would have failed among
the Germans. He thundered in claps of logical propositions.

BIRTH — PARENTAGE — YOUTH

It is St. Martin's Eve, November loth, 1483, when John
Luther and Margaret, his wife, trudge to Eisleben fair from
the upland village of Mohra — a hill country of mines in which
he labours. There is not in all the fair a less noticeable couple.
Frau Luther has just now peculiar needs in mind, and has
come to the fair to lay out each bit of copper to its utmost.
But the tussle and tumult are too trying and she must betake
herself in fear and wonder to quick refuge. In a lowly cot
and with scratched comfort the child is born, her firstborn.
With the morn comes baptism, it is St. Martin's Day — St.
Martin the friend of the poor — so Martin shall be the infant's
name.

The young soul thus obscurely ushered into the world is
destined to become its chief troubler since the wonder of
Bethlehem and the flaming gift of Pentecost. Savonarola
is preparing his lightning in his cell at St. Mark's ; Wyclif
has been dead just a hundred years save one. How vast the
change of outlook ! Gunpowder and the mariner's compass
have been discovered ; Columbus and Copernicus have lived.
The wonders of new worlds across the seas have filled men
with a radiant marvel and hope. The heavens have opened
up their sublime mysteries in reasoned form. Greater and
mightiest of all, the printing press has come, a simple tool
of wooden shapes and screw, yet angel-dropped surely,
for now are not the soul and mind of man endowed
with veritable wings !

All these fresh agencies awaited the strong manhood of
our babe, and all were needed to back and help his puissant
soul for a harder fight than ever was with powder or sword.
For in the main the world of Christendom in things religious
still moved on with the same even swing of a thousand years
and more. Wyclif, Huss and Savonarola had caused local
tremors, but no yawning earthquake had yet riven Europe

48

Martin Luther

in twain. The age needed tempest, earthquake and fire, and
this peasant boy of Saxony was to call them forth. We must
inquire how he gets along.

Johannes Luther loves books and Wo.nts more ; chafes
under hard toil and poor pay ; so he will thrust his strength
and wit forth into a wider world and, when Martin is a crowing
babe of six months, removes to Mansfeld. Here he starts
a wood-cutting business and in time sets up a smelting furnace
of his own, becomes a town councillor, and entertains passing
notables. Trained under Christian precept and virtuous
example somewhat stern, Martin is being schooled and flogged
at Mansfeld. Poor little Martin, already his tongue shapes
ill at paternosters and one unlucky day he receives stripes
fifteen times. From Mansfeld he goes to Magdeburg and
Eisenach, to which place he comes a shy, deep-eyed boy of
fourteen, fond of ghost stories and legendary lore, and whispers
tales of the devil and his demons.

THE MINSTREL BEGGAR

Arriving tired and down in heart and pressed, he takes a
choir-boy's fancy, and turns minstrel-beggar for shelter.
Ursula Cotta, a wise and gentle lady, looks out of her window,
and loves the boy ; opens her door, and gives him home — a
cultured home, large and sunny, wherein he meets the best
folk in town. Here he learns the flute, and in college gains
some skill in Latin.

After four happy years he passes on, but with a mark behind
him, to university life at Erfurt. A stiff day's step of thirty
miles brings him to its gates — a brown, strong-boned lad of
eighteen, with wistful, meditative face and wondering eyes.
A bit monkish, yet an engaging fellow enough, with a sweet
voice and knack of the flute and good Latin. It was now the
first year of a new — the sixteenth — century. At this famed
seat of learning he met the flower of the youth and future
princes of the German Fatherland. He took his B.A. in 1502,
his M.A. in 1505. He went deep into the maze of Aristotelian
philosophy, and won esteem of learned professors.

In his early twenties he was serenaded by torch light
procession as first man. One day, on a walk, when he was
wearing a side sword, as the fashion was for students, the
weapon slipped its scabbard and gashed a large vein in his
leg. It was partly stopped \vhile a friend ran for surgical
help. At one moment he thought his life in peril, and cried

49

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

for help to Mary, and again when during the night the wound
opened he cried aloud to the Mother of Christ. He, in after
years said, " Had I then died I should have placed my
salvation in Mary."

Soon after this, one day rummaging the university library,
he stumbled upon a Bible. His eyes had never before beheld
a completed copy. He read with intense delight. About
this time, as he was walking over the adjacent moors, a storm
burst, and an awful flash of lightning engulfed him, killing
his dear friend Alexis. Martin cried, " Help, sweet Saint
Anne ; save me, save me, and I will become a monk." To
the astonishment and grief of his university fellows, he
straightway fulfilled his vow, and entered the Augustine
monastery at Erfurt. His father, a man of sound and strong
sense, called him a booby and maundering simpleton. Well,
well, had he not for years been sweating at his furnace and
saving hard to make his lad a great lawyer ! But he under-
stood not his own Martin. Possessed and held by the religious
instinct, this, then, seemed to him the way of completest
surrender of his whole being to God. He came later to a
more excellent way of consecrated service. Again, when a
monk, he found aBible, and read in half-dread, and once while
poking among script, as in the university library, he came upon
a volume of sermons by J ohn Huss ; opened it and read ;
and held his breath in horror, feeling as a guilty thing while
this breath of a damned and burnt heretic fanned his face.

THE CELL — THE TREADMILL OF " WORKS "

Being a monk, he must shine as one. He chose twenty- one
saints, and invoked three each day, so that all came round in
the week ; he cheerfully fell to the most menial tasks. In
1507 he was invested a full priest, and, with more zeal than
ever, day by day the long months through he prayed, watched
and fasted. Often chilled to the bone in a cold cell, he starved
nigh to death, stretched upon a flagged floor, haggard and
with fevered eye he gazed on the saints and crucifix. " If
ever monk was saved by monkery," he afterwards was wont
to exclaim, " it ought to have been Martin Luther."

He thus sought to quiet his troubled soul and lift off his
heart-burden of conscious sin. All in vain ; the torment
of soul ceased not, for not by such gross and weary ways is the
infinite to be sought. Poor Martin ! Oh, is it not the sin of
sins to the charge of Rome that so many noble souls, groping,

Martin Luther

agonising for the light, for the fresh, sweet, glad vision of
Jesus, should be blinded and baulked by the thick and fetid
veil of superstition.

Before the Reformation there were many quiet-living
individual Protestants in the Romish communion. These
were not feared, and so were tolerated. Only when any
became loud and defiant did the Church unsheath its weapons.
So it came about that at this juncture a fellow-monk — the
gentle, learned, and enlightened Staupitz — took Martin by the
hand and led him to the light. Protestant in spirit and in his
main lines of theology, Staupitz conversed earnestly and
long with Luther. They read the Bible, pondered deeply
upon the doctrine of grace, and in due time the heavens
opened to Martin in a great light.

THE LIBERTY OF " GRACE "

" By grace are ye saved, through faith." Ended now for
ever was his weary treadmill of salvation by drill or church or
aught but by faith and grace. I must not stay to recount
his joy. His heart went forth in Miriam-like song at his
deliverance.

" This," he records, " was the opening of the gates of
Paradise to me. I ceased from monkish working and entered
through believing into righteousness and rest. All those
texts of terror that had pounded upon me like so many furies
hitherto, they leaped and danced and sang for very gladness
round me now."

Meantime he is ordained, and also becomes Professor of
Philosophy in VVittenburg University, just founded. He is
called to Rome ; its lustrous colour and historic enchantment
intoxicate him into a momentary lapse. Upon his knees
he toils painfully up the noted twenty-eight steps to win
some indulgence, when the words " The just shall live by
faith" pierce him as the point of a stiletto. Before he
leaves the Pope's city he knows its ghastly depravity, and is
disenchanted for ever. In 1512 Erfurt makes him Doctor
Luther.

He now studies deeply ecclesiastical history and the whole
Papal system with the decretals and canon law. He is called
to preach before the great and learned, and startles them.
But now had come the hour and the man when all Europe was
to be shaken as by a thunder-clap. A new Pope — a gorgeous
De Medici, "the elegant pagan" — had stepped into the Papal

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

chair. His grand dream of St. Peter's demanded vast sums
of money to build. How were they to be obtained ? The
Pope cared not. He only cared that the money flowed
in too slowly. Now, with shout and drum, and headed by
the Bull of Indulgence beflagged on cloth of gold, forth went
Tetzel into Germany on his infamous errand. " Buy ! buy !
the Pope's indulgence. Rich sinners, empty your gold. You
poor sinners, bring your copper, and all your heap of sins are
forgiven since birth. Pay silver and go on in the sweets of
sin ! Ho ! have bowels of mercy, and buy your fathers and
friends from purgatory into the bliss of heaven." A cheating
baker buys the bit of parchment and demands absolution
on it from Confessor Luther, who happens to have pondered
much over this showman, his parchments and his drum. His
soul takes fire : " Drum, drumming," he cries, " God helping,
I'll make a hole in his drum." A mighty stir now goes forth
from the old walled town.

THE DECLARATION OF WAR

Doctor Luther sits down and writes his ninety-five Theses,
nails them on Wittenberg church door — in truth, a declara-
tion of war against the Pope — perhaps the most daring and
fruitful act since the days of the Apostle Paul. The spirit-
uality of repentance; that godliness is not to be a thing bought
and sold for gain and commerce ; that God and He alone
can forgive sin — these are the burden of the Theses. They
do make a hole in the drum, for the auction is stopped. This
is the act portrayed in the single-figure window.

" When he has slept off his wine," wrote the Pope, "he will
know better." Luther also wrote thus : " We know,
you know, that we have the word of God and you have it
not. O Pope ! if I live I shall be a pestilence to thee, and
if I die I shall be thy death."

In a fortnight the theses are read throughout Germany,
and fly like wildfire the length and breadth of Europe. They
but expressed what to us are the commonest truths, yet they
smote down a mighty system.

Soon there appeared on the scene the Pope's Legate, the
learned cardinal Cajetan, to overawe, coax, or bully this
audacious monk into silence. He reported thus : "I can
dispute no longer with this beast ; it has two wicked eyes and
marvellous thoughts in its head." Aye, " wicked," for sure,
must have been the flame in those eyes, for shortly after the

53

Martin Luther

Papal legate at Worms averred that " he (Luther) looked
round with the eyes of a demon."

The great man went back enraged and discomfited. Then
followed pageants of arms at universities — intellectual tourna-
ments with mighty knights of Papal theology. They strive for
victory, he for truth. Cited to Rome, our Martin is wily
enough to refuse to be thus smuggled and dungeoned to death.
The elector insists on a trial in Germany.

Luther was still a monk, doubly sealed as a son of the
Church. A stage of transition now seems to beset him.
Can he best go on in his reforming career from within the
Church or from without ? It became his fixed conviction
that it was practical only in his full strength from without.
He was sick to death of the endless round of marching pomps
and fuming ceremonies ; at the glitter and jingle of the mere
apparatus which debased and killed the living truth. Luther
was first a reformer of unscriptural and corrupt dogma.
Compared with Italian cities, German towns were innocent
places, but the attitude of Pope and Church was the same. It
mattered nothing at all how dead or black was the reality if
only it were veiled thickly enough by show of homage of
mere lip and demeanour.

A long and profound study of the Epistle to the Galatians
had filled Luther with a passionate strength and love for its
glad and precious truths — equal sonship of Gentile and Jew,
and salvation by grace through faith. Now he cries out,
" Woe is me if I hold my peace ! " but ere long the cry becomes,
" Woe is me if I speak not in tones of thunder ! " His friends,
even Melancthon, get alarmed and check him, but Martin still
shakes a defiant arm, while ecclesiastics glare and growl.

JOHN HUSS — NOW FLARE THE TORCHES

He writes to his friend Spalatin that he has been deep in
reading the so-called heresies of Huss, and declares that in-
stead of a pest and heretic he is a martyred saint, now standing
before the throne of God. He cries, " Without knowing it,
I have taught and held the doctrines of John Huss, and
Augustine and Paul are Hussites to the letter." Now flare the
torches — now reverberates the shrill trumpet of war ! In
the summer of 1520 Luther published an address to " the
Emperor, Nobles and People of Germany." It is a loud and
militant call to Germany to repulse the Italian power (Church)
from Germany. Quickly its echoes reach the remotest hamlet.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

With giant argument and fearless scorn it assails the citadels
of Popedom— first the sacredness of the priestly class ;
second, Papal infaUibility ; third, the sole Papal right to
call a General Council.

The same year follows his " Babylonish Captivity of the
Church " and also the treatise " Concerning Christian
Liberty " — this being a brief statement, cut clear from theo-
logical jargon, of the priesthood of all believers. He pictures
a little company of Christians cast upon a desert island, with
no bishop, no priest among them — all are equal. They elect
one. He is as much a bishop or priest as the Pope himself.
This was, he declares, the practice of the early Church. All
Christians are kings and priests unto God ; and each stands
in the grace, freedom and faith of Christ. Every Christian
is himself a responsible soul, and cannot transfer this respon-
sibility to Church or priest. He lashes at pilgrimages, Papal
pretences, celibacy of clergy, mechanical prayers, Church
festivals, miracle shrines, Papal dispensations. They are
anti-Christ. In treatment of heretics he denies to the Church
the power of death or death by fire. Treatises, sermons on
the sacraments, etc., follow, exposing the inner and more
personal aspects of Church usage. Germany reads in exultant
wonder, and a great hope glows.

BURNS THE POPE'S BULL

Leo X. is not long in launching his Bull. Among other
things, it orders all Luther's works to be publicly burnt.
Martin's own amazing answer is to gather faggot and fire-
stuff and in mock of big blaze to burn the Bull itself, with the
Book of Decretals. He posts up a notice inviting the students
and burghers to the Elster Gate and himself casts the Decretals
and then the Bull into the flames — at sight of which brave
deed the multitude give a great shout. The students, lifted
into a solemn inspiration, sing the Te Deum ; they then pile
a cart with the works of Eck and others of Luther's opponents,
crown it with a big banner emblazoned with a copy of the Bull
and tumble the load — Bull and books in a heap — into the
still red embers and in sacred triumph again break forth into
the Te Deum.

The modern history of Europe had begun — a new era
had opened — the echoes of those Te Deums have never ceased
sounding since that loth day of December, 1520.

The Decretal Epistles which our monk first threw into the

54

Martin Luther

blaze were the personal findings or rulings, throughout
centuries, of individual Popes when appealed to, as dis-
tinguished from Church or canon law, based upon Courts and
Councils of the Church. The two were not always in unison,
and bitter and long were the battles within the Church as
to which were supreme.

About 800 A.D. a fabricated series of Decretals appeared
running back to 96 A.D. They invented a pontifical supremacy
which subsequent Popes tried to act upon, and by the time of
the imperious Hildebrand (1073-85) the condition was ripe for
the usurpation of a despotic power. The Decretal system now
won a place equal if not above canon law.

The Reform or Puritan party of the Papal Church always
stood for government by Church Courts and canon law, and
it was the scholarship of the Lutherans which unearthed the
shocking crime of the false and forged Decretals. This dis-
covery was not made until a few years later than the date of
the scene described above, and the full significance of Luther's
deed is only perceived in the light of these remarks.

As I have said it was the Decretals that he first cast into the
fire, thus defying the whole line of Popes in their absolute
claims, and asserting the Church's right to government by its
Courts and Councils.

This town-cross bonfire is wonderfully typical. Torches
flashed and blazes rose over land and sea as far as the coasts
of Scotland. The world was ready for a Luther ; Wyclif,
Savonarola and Huss had not yielded strength and blood in
vain. Illustrious scholars like Erasmus were also powerful
forces. The firing was heaped and dry, yet Luther alone
possessed the mystic torch — without him, no fire. Three
years have passed since Tetzel got his drumming stopped,
when Luther discerns the portents of a great storm to be
gathering. He prays much. He is now summoned to the
great and fateful Diet of Worms.

Dr. Luther is a professor at Wittenberg, and eager sons
from many lands have come to sit at his feet to hear his bold
and wonderful expositions of Scripture. Gown and town are
proud of him, and fit up for him a covered waggon and, with
many quakings, fears and prayers, muffled under cheery
shouts, give him a send-off to Worms. They know they may
never see his face again ; so does he. His parting words to
his weeping friend Melancthon are bodeful. " O my brother,
if they should put me to death, preach Christ, Philip ; never

55

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

think of me at all." No illusions here ! He has four friends
with him and they all sit in the hay at bottom of the cart.
At Naumberg an old priest thrusts in front of him a haggard-
worn likeness of martyr-monk Savonarola. It scares not,
but inspires him; the priest is confounded and leaves him
not a curse but blessing. Says he, " Stand by God, monk,
and He will stand by thee." At Weimar he stumbles on
Imperial messengers, dabbing edicts on the walls command-
ing the heretic Luther's books to be brought forth and
burned.

They hint of a bigger fire than of ink and paper. Again
his friends plead, Will he not recant, hide, or turn back ? "I
will go on," he retorts, " though they make a fire to stretch
from Wittenberg to Worms and rise from earth to heaven."
At dear old Erfurt forty members of the University ride out
to meet him and thousands greet him. He halts and preaches
to them from a full heart. At Eisenach he is sorely ill ; but
rallying, he passes along, and after an eleven days journey
full of incidents, red-tiled Worms opens to view amidst the
green vale of the shining Rhine.

At the sight of its ruddy gleams, in premonitory dread, his
escort make a final appeal that he will even now turn back,
and at this moment a letter arrives from Spalatin reminding
him of Huss. The word is prompt and decisive : " I will go,
though there were as many devils set against me as there are
red tiles on the houses ; if Huss was burnt the truth was not
burnt with him."

Diets were a sort of movable court or council for both
civil and religious conference. Germany was a country of
city republics jealous of each other, with no nationality of
legislation and administration, and no central finance system
or army authority. The various classes were often at private
war with each other, having no supreme court. The Emperor
was the one overlord and his power depended upon the measure
of force he could bring. He was now but twenty years old,
and only just elected Emperor. Even now he would, if he
had dared, have quenched the Reformation in blood, but his
outward policy was one of pure opportunism, as, indeed, was
the Pope's also, both playing off each other for their own
private ends. The case of Luther was just now a valuable
piece of barter for Charles and as Emperor he made the most
of it in a secret compact with the Pope against the French
King, before consenting to Luther's sentence of condemnation.

56

Martin Luther

The Diets were accompanied by much feasting, and open licen-
tiousness lasted for months. This at Worms had now been
proceeding for some time.

To meet Luther, the German princes had sent a cavalcade
of knights and men-at-arms who were joined by University
professors and students. The trumpet of the watcher upon
the tower now announces their approach, thousands throng
forth to greet him and many climb the house tops. He
rises and speaks, " A firm fortress is God our Lord " he
declares. There is a thunder of response, with clatter of
armour and prancing of steeds. " His words are like half
battles." All this is full of cheer and promise, yet not for a
moment does the miner's son lose his head, for he well knows
the grim, implacable realities he must face. As he descends
from his waggon, " God will be with me " are his first words.
Well they may, for now he spys the Hall, where to-morrow
another scene will uncurtain itself, himself again the chief
figure, and where he will need his upholding God.

During the wakeful night, pacing the room, he prays,
" Eternal God, stand by me now ; the cause is Thine, it is
not mine ; Eternal God, stand by me then, stand by me,
God, to-morrow ! " On the morrow hurrahing crowds be-
siege his lodging and the herald's trumpet and spear are re-
quisitioned to make way for him, as he treads to the Hall of
Judgment. From this side he hears a weeping petition not
to recant, from that, a solemn abjuration drops upon his
ear, " Whosoever denieth me before men — "

As he enters the Hall, Knight Freunesberg — the bravest of
the brave — grips his shoulder and says, " I have fought in many
a dreadful battlefield, but never such as thou art entering,
but God will help the right — on, little monk." A mystic scene
over-shadows him — he has read in the faces of the people the
mute appeal of the ages ; he has heard the far-away helpless
prayers of the generations, even the speech of the unborn,
to stand fast at this hour of his destiny.

The Emperor, Charles the Fifth, grandson of the late
Emperor Maximilian, half Spanish in blood and King of Spain,
had from the beginning set himself against all Reformation
ideals. This was a true instinct, for he was the secular pope
of his day. But the princes of Germany from the thirteenth
century had possessed large independent power, and were
jealous of their prerogatives and in the main their strength
was cast for Luther's side.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

An imposing assemblage is this Diet of Worms on the
day of April, 1521. Not one in all the company realizes the
historic collision and shock of forces — ancient and modern,
the passing of the old, the uprising of the new.

The Emperor is seated on a canopied throne amidst imperial
pomp of heraldic purple and gold, of halberdiers, trumpeters
and arquebusiers. Near him are the Papal legate Alexander
and also the head Elector. Around are glittering groups of
kingly Electors, of Dukes, and Margraves and Landgraves of
Germany, in helmet, armour and ermine.

In the amphitheatre sit tiers of princes, archbishops and
bishops of the kingdom. On separate benches of the one
side are ranks of uniformed princes, nobles and barons,
knights and ambassadors from far-off provinces, while facing
these, in amplitude of wondrous vestment, red, yellow and
violet, range cardinals, nuncios and prelates, whilst standing
in the rear are dark-cowled monks and priests. The whole
is an amazing throng, strangely mixed in visage from
pale Saxon to olive Spaniard, and a fearsome display for
judgment.

Through the high window of the medieval Diet Hall the
westering sun plays in gleaming frolic among this glory of
silken colour, of glittering gold and steel, of coronet, mitre
and crozier.

Some have come from afar to pay court and homage to the
young Emperor who but recently assumed the imperial sceptre.
Some are here to gaze upon the crazy monk of hammer and
theses and Bull-burning fame — surely stark mad ; or has he
never heard of heretic Huss and of his good riddance by godly
fire ? He has heard of John Huss and yet stands unflinching
as rock amid this throng of stately magnificence and awful
power. Yes, he a low-born monk, pits himself against the
Holy Roman Empire.

Now stands forth Dr. Eck and reading their titles and point-
ing to the books on the table, asks, " These are thy books,
Martin Luther ; dost thou retract, or no ? " Luther's voice
seems to fail him ; they whisper that his spirit is awed and
broken. He begs time to consider his answer. It is granted
till next day. He passes the night in conflict of prayer.
A great calm follows, and next day he makes speech for two
hours, respectful, wise, honest ; as to aught in his books of
human infirmity, anger, blindness, he will be submissive,
but to stultify the Word of God, to eclipse his conscience, how

58

Martin Luther

can he ? " Confute me," he cries, " by proofs of Scripture,
or plain, just argument ; I cannot recant otherwise."

The Papal party, alarmed at the popular spirit, had des-
patched the Emperor's confessor to prevent, by arrangement
or compromise, the hero reaching Worms, but Luther would
have none of it. A poster appears on the walls threatening
that 400 knights and 800 men-at-arms will have vengeance if
Luther is harmed. So there is now parley in the Diet. He
may hold his opinions, but will he be less noisy with them ?
Will he cease to talk and write of the heretics Wyclif and
Huss ? Nay, all possibly may be forgiven if only he will
bow to the authority of the Holy See. For hours cunning
blandishment, smiles and frowns are mingled and pressed
upon him — even friends hope for a show of pliant grace enough
to save himself.

The Emperor understands no German, and asks for a plain
answer " without horns." "Without horns or hoof," replies
Luther, " I declare it."

His last words are " Here I stand — I can do no other, God
help me." No braver words were ever spoken by mortal man.
The world had been poorer to-day, had they been less brave.
The Emperor formally adjudged him heretic, but granted
him safe-conduct home. On his journey back Luther is
seized by masked horsemen, who, first disguising him as a
knight, gallop by winding maze of forest, thence up the lofty
steep of the Wartburg. Hidden in this fortress castle he
rests in safe keeping. His enemies are foiled. The Papal
Envoy signalled to Rome, " It is the Saxon fox." Luther's
habit ever so long now has been much prayer, Bible-reading
and musing. He prays long this night. The morn of May
glow fills his heart with a sweet tumult of exalted joy,
wonder and humility. As the sunshine, so do dear memories
flood his heart, for at the foot of the zigzag crag lies his " dear
town " of Eisenach. He thinks of his lute, his loneness, and
of his gentle mother Ursula. This same boy, now thirty
seven, an arch -heretic and the magnet of Europe ! Is God
in it all ? Yes. He knoweth His own, and is now girding
him. In this safe eyrie of the Wartburg, monk Martin is kept
disguised as " Junker Georg." He poses somewhat loud and
fast with moustache, doublet and sword. With his wary
guard he dons the green of the huntsman, and gallops to the
bugle at the tail of the hounds. So pass the months until the
shortened days come. On this craggy isle of the cloud and

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

plain— his " Patmos " he called it— a " Voice " bade him
write— write to the whole Church, and he now lights his lamp
for serious purpose.

Like Wyclif, Luther divines that the surest and most
direct way to reform is to give the people the true Word of
God. He dives deep in the Greek of his friend Erasmus,
and gives the Teuton the New Testament in the strong and
idiomatic home-bred speech he loves.

He loves it still and regards it as the fount of the noblest
prose of the Fatherland. In the life of Luther by Gustavus
Pfizer we are told that " the translation of the Bible was the
greatest, the most meritorious, the most blessed of all Luther's
works, and he actually finished the New Testament before
leaving his ' Patmos ' ... it may be justly regarded as
the foundation of the present prose." The Old Testament
was the work of a band of scholars under Luther.

Little idea have we what Papal ban and bull meant then.
Even the liberal scholar shrank from the mere taint of the
heretic. For 1,200 years Church law had dealt death, and
death by fire, as the heretic's just fate. But though friends
tremble, Martin keeps his head, and heart, too. He has a
reservoir of homely, broad-bottomed virtues to draw from.
His jolly laugh is infectious. He likes the birds, pokes with
spade and hoe in the garden, has an eye for clouds, and
believes in and enjoys the ministry of jest. In time he mingles
with the busy street, and lets his beard grow. His flute and
love of music are a never-failing solace and joy. He is
conscious of a strange complexity of nature, of impulses to
violence and moods of tenderness. His friend Erasmus once
said of him : " Luther has horns and knows how to use them."

I must hasten. Europe is in a ferment. In Madrid even,
in Stockholm, Vienna and London the Lutheran movement
spreads. Wolsey with much fanfaronade burns Martin's
books in St. Paul's Churchyard. Ah ! well, let him burn
away. In many a manor house and workshop Wyclif still
lives, and Martin is welcome there. In Germany there is a
swell and very tumult of hope as of joyous bells.

At another Diet the Pope's Legate is plainly told that the
Edict of Worms against Luther cannot be executed. Luther
dins away at supremacy of Scripture over Pope and Church.
He publishes an order of service, and a hymn book helps most
of all. Missionaries arise of every class — poor priests and
wandering monks awakened to the new life ; students,

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Martin Luther

burghers and craftsmen. They sing and preach in taverns
and lanes, on market cross and village green. There are
priests who break degrading vows and marry ; and convents
and monasteries which are disbanded. The populace tear
down pictures and images, and threaten to put down the mass.
Luther makes preaching tours and sometimes has outdoor
multitudes to hear the word.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Ten nuns flee from a convent. Luther learns to love one,
and marries Catharine von Bora, and is thereby composed
and strengthened. He is forty-two, she twenty-six. It is
of vast import to the movement. Their wedding bells are
heard in cell and convent, near and far. A cursed and un-
natural spell is broken ; there is a resurrection unto new life
— unto pure and gracious love — for many a lone and helpless
heart, buried awhile. In banter to his wife, Luther professed
that he married " not so much from inclination as for the
purpose of pleasing his father, teasing the Pope and vexing
the devil." He denounces the appalling wrong to the
Church, the awful sin and crime immeasurable attendant
on the enforced celibacy of her clergy. The sufferings of
two steadfast martyrs of Brussels unloose the fount of sacred
poetry, and he sings in noble hymns — a treasure to-day.
Meantime occurs the dreadful sack of Rome by Charles. The
Pope has wars and plots of kings and princes to think of,
which break attention from Luther and his doings. The
Reformation halts not. The new and valiant Elector, Prince
John, stands its stalwart friend, and its march is onward —
splendid, majestic, and terrible too, for it assails an enemy
seated on an unshaken throne of twelve centuries. It is first
a mighty besom of cleansing, a torch of refuse-burning ; it
leaps into a wondrous mystery of spiritual impulse — a revolu-
tion of ideals, a spacious lifting of horizon. Men step forth
from a noisome, dark, barred prison into the sweet scent of
meadows and the open blue of heaven, and the heart chants
a glorious lyric of hope. All things are new. What wonder
if quack prophets arose, if even learned professors lost their
heads and preached dreams and strange fancies. The broad
sanity, the strong and luminous grip of realities, the sagacious
Christian statesmanship, the genius of the leader to suppress
as well as to construct, now come into play, and are not the
least of Luther's great qualities, yet perhaps even greater

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

was it to leash and tame these unloosed and leaping energies
into an ordered and potent march of progress.

And what an all conquering march ! Oh, for space to tell !
The spell of Medievalism is broken, its pall dissolves. The
Papal Envoy comes, and with the wont of centuries lifts his
two fingers to bless, expectant of dust-kneeling votaries, but
they mock him, and shock him, too. Masses, absolvings,
vows tyrannous and inhuman, relic-shrines, fables, absurdi-
ties and impious lies vanish. Burgomasters, Councils and
congregations seek and find pastors of the new mind. The
Pope rallies his forces, makes a treaty with the Emperor
to make the rebel Saxon again bow down and kiss his toe,
even though through blood and fire.

THE GLORIOUS NAME OF PROTESTANT

The German Princes unite their strength and stand eager
and undaunted, and though the Diets issue mandates the
Reformer's march stops not. A notable Confession, mainly
drawn up by Melancthon, and also a protest are published,
and the glorious name of Protestant is born. When Pope
Clement dies, the new Pope, Paul III., a good man, tries
conference and conciliation too late. At one supreme crisis
decision again rests with Luther. It is pronounced and is
again momentous in profane history. The Protestants
will neither halt nor turn aside, but will march on. The
martial stand was the only possible one. Consider the en-
trenched and encircling claims of the enemy : (i) that the
Church and clergy were above the civil law of the land;
(2) that Scripture could not be quoted against the Pope for
he alone could interpret it ; (3) none but the Pope could
call a Council.

Halts not— did I say ? Alas, that was not to be. I fear I
have been sketching an impressionist picture and more
especially of the seven or eight years of glowing promise follow-
ing the day of nailing up the Theses.

A storm now bursts and a time of searching and testing
comes to this man who defies Emperors, Popes and Diets.
Essentially, Luther was not democratic in mind. Nor had he
vision to measure the tremendous forces he was unloosing to
the world— of the new ideas and ideals he set marching ; nor
yet of those wider aspects of liberty such as inspired Wyclif,
Knox, Calvin and the great Puritan and Separatist leaders of
England.

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Martin Luther

This cardinal lack was now to cast a vast and disastrous
check upon the German progress of the New Evangel. While
spiritual and puritan, humanist and moral in impulse it drew
allied forces perhaps more social and political than religious.
The great Reformer did not perceive that when he pro-
claimed the equality of all men before God and the spiritual
priesthood of all believers as living truth, he also proclaimed
a social, economic and political revolution for his age.

Germany was the home of a legion of grades of social caste.
The lesser nobility now rose in rebellion against the exactions
and tyranny of the higher. This doubtless flashed the wild
sparks which set aflame the great " Peasant War." Its
early success spread terror among the ruling orders, and it
was brutally suppressed.

Luther had for years, and rather heedlessly, been flinging
his shot and shell against oppression and tyranny of all sorts.
Whether from this remembrance, or his engrossment in re-
ligious polemics, or from a constitutional inaptitude for social
and political philosophy, certainly for some reason, he, from
the time of the " Peasant War," took on a strong conservative
temper, and in general attitude allied himself with the classes
in their privilege and power and also in their distrust of the
" common man."

During the panic of the " Rising " he had published a tract
" Against the Murderous Thieving Hordes of Peasants." Its
ferocity of language was afterwards seen to be a blunder.
There were excesses, but wisely met and guided by such as
himself, the rebellion might have become a fruitful tree of
blessing to succeeding generations.

From some cause, the war left behind it a blight on Reform-
ation zeal and prospects. The broad and strong currents of
popular aspirations and sympathy were turned aside from
the movement, and it broke into streamlets of parties
and states which prevented the fuller national sweep of the
Reformed Faith, which before seemed to be so sure. At all
this the enemy mocked. But just as the Reformation was too
vast and tumultuous a thing for an unhindered course, so
also it was too great and virile to be baffled and stopped by a
" Peasant War " or any war.

Luther possessed a strain of the wise opportunist and
personally preferred to let old things and ways pass slowly.
He had cast away every rag of the traditional view of Apostolic
Succession, but he believed in bishops and had even no objec-

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

tion to a Pope in Rome as such, but only as means for orderly
government.

His chief reliance was upon an efficient and honest ministry,
preaching the truth from an open Bible and trusting to the
leaven of the Holy Spirit for working honest repentance and
the fear of God among the people. He now troubles less
about cassocks, images or Friday meats, the marrying cf nuns
or monks, or that world of minor things. He has visions of
greater things. He must seek and win hearts for God and all
these things shall be added.

The new conditions proved a potent factor for good in
compelling attention to some intelligent basis for the recon-
struction of the German ecclesiastical system. The Bishops
would do nothing. To this end the first move was to institute
a series of visitations under a commission of clergy and laity.

They started in October, 1528, and penetrated into districts
away from hurrahing towns. The revelation of the actual
conditions of things in rural parts dismayed and depressed
even the heart of the intrepid Reformer himself. Some of the
parishes had never been inspected in the memory of man. All
the parsonages and many churches were in bad repair, some
ruinously so. Many of the priests were drunken, immoral,
ignorant and unfit, some even living away ; but on the whole
few complaints were made, for the people themselves were
too steeped in besotted ignorance, heathenish indeed, knowing
nothing of the Creeds, the Ten Commandments or the Lord's
Prayer, and hardly aught of the nature and name of God.

" Merciful God," ejaculates Luther, " what misery have I
seen ! They live like poor cattle and senseless swine." He
immediately set to work on his celebrated Catechisms, short
and large, and also issued a new and enlarged hymn book.
These were assiduously applied and their effect, though slow,
was sure as the sun upon good seed. These two Catechisms,
with " the Liberty of Grace" tract, are said to contain all that
is essential and best in Luther's teaching. " The Babylonish
Captivity of the Church " applies the principles of " The
Liberty of Grace " to the Reformation, and " The Address to
the Nobility of the German Nation " applies the same prin-
ciples politically and for the renovation of national life.
The bottom things of faith are discerned with such clear
vision and enforced with such vigorous and simple language
as never before, and endow his name with immortal honour.
The triad are commonly known in Germany as the " Three

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Martin Luther

Great Reformation Treatises." The kernel of their teaching is,
as I have before indicated, salvation by grace and not by works,
and the priesthood of all believers. Works were the signs of
faith, not its means, and were to be exercised in joy and
thanksgiving, and also, when received in this spirit, the offices
of the Church were to be treasured as aids to faith, but never
in slavish and blind superstition as ends. Another result of
the visitation was the founding of the common school system
for all Germany, particularly in rural parts. " The Devil,"
said the Reformer, " prefers blockheads and drones."

To return to the visitations, these and the methods they
initiated, with the needs naturally arising, gave shape and
body to the future Lutheran Church, its polity and courts
taking on a medieval complexion in striking distinction to the
trend of the Swiss and the British Churches. The Lutheran or
Evangelical Church took wide hold of the Electorates and
States, and also won to its sway Sweden, Denmark and
Norway. The excluded, because more radical, elements of
the Protestant eruption were classed under the term "Ana-
baptist " and suffered hard persecution. The Reformed Church
after Luther's death grew ever more conservative in temper,
and but for its nearness to the mystical fragrance of Moravian-
ism (that fair flower of Protestantism), its subsequent ration-
alism and State Church apathy would probably have been
even more pronounced.

We have seen that even Luther himself quailed at the new
ideals of liberty which he himself had set aflame among the
nations. This mattered little to the peoples of other blood,
over mountain ranges and seas. They moved faster than
their leader. At the famous Marburg Conference in 1529
between Luther and Zwingli with their respective companies
of divines, there was failure to arrive at compromise on the
Lord's Supper question.

Luther could not shake off remnants of the medieval view of
the Real Presence, and this produced a great split in Protestant
unity. Seizing advantage of this, only the following year, the
Papal and Imperial envoys at the Diet of Augsburg dared
even to forbid Protestant teaching. This called forth a counter
stroke the next year 1531, in the signing of the Protestant
League at Schmalkald by which the Emperor was defied.
These were the signals of the long and tremendous duels of
war in Germany. The kingly personality of Luther is evident
in the fact that for so long he kept Pope and Emperor at

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

bay from invasion. " War " he predicted, " shall be staved
off while I live, but the moment I am gone it will breakout."

The prophesy literally came true. " The happy tidings "
of his death had reached Rome with the tale that a legion of
angels had swooped down upon him with a horrible din, and
that he, Luther, had bellowed like a bull and uttered a terrible
yell as he passed to everlasting fire.

May I here interject a few lines of anticipatory history.
Luther died in February, and in April both Pope and
Emperor were in full swing of arming. They had now taken
brave heart, while the Protestant leaders had lost heart.
A vast horde of Spaniards, Italians, Hungarians and what not
of mercenaries was collected. The catastrophe came with the
rout of the Protestant forces at Miihlberg in April, 1547. The
battle seemed decisive, and at the Diet of Augsburg the next
year the Emperor carried all his proposals. The religious
compromise named the " Interim," while insisting on the
seven Roman Sacraments, vaguely allowed the Lutheran
doctrine of justification by faith and ordered the summoning
of a Council for further questions

The Emperor's victory was short-lived. Apart from the
horrors of gibbet, strappado and rack, beheading, strangu-
lating and quartering, and other kindred operations of pagan
butchery in his train, his troops had left accursed and foul
memories among German women. A whole generation in
a great part of Germany had now fed upon Luther's Bible,
Catechism and inspiring hymns. There were thirty years of
spiritual awakenings and precious memories of noble leaders
and preachers, and of gladsome open-air services. The
great evangelical verities had struck too deeply to perish by
a battle. In 1552 the Emperor had to flee for his life, and the
Peace of Passau assured the final victory of the Protestant
cause.

The Reformation struck nearly the whole of Northern and
Western Europe, grouping itself in three spheres or storm
centres— the Lutheran, the Reformed (Zwinglian and Cal-
vinistic) and the British, each taking on a specific complexion
of its own.

With all his shortcomings, the son of Hans Luther, the miner,
was the very elect of God ! For twenty-five years he is vir-
tually Papa Luther to reforming Europe. In labours abun-
dant, never-ceasing, constantly sought by princes and scholars
for high purposes, he is ever loving and tender to the poor,

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Martin Luther

and stands with them almost alone while ravaging plagues
pass by. Hours each day are given to prayer and his Bible.
In the love of his dear Katharina he passes many years of
serene and homely joy, vexes her by pawning silver cups to
help poor students and by giving away every loaf of bread
in the house to the poor. In playful banter she is " My Lord
Kate," " My Rib Kate." He bites his quill and mends his
children's playthings, writes them pretty letters in absence,
sorrows at an infant's death, is almost broken by grief for
" my own Magdalena," a sweet and gentle daughter of
thirteen. She falls into her last sleep while in his arms.
He cries " I love her ! O I love her ! Yet if it be Thy will
to take her hence, Thy will be done ! " "Dear Lena," he
exclaimed, as they wrap and nail her in the coffin, " thou
shalt rise again and shine as a star — aye, like the sun." The
strong man of Worms Diet Hall now bows his head and weeps.
He had occasionally been taken with sudden pains. Her
death seems to have sapped his health. While on a journey
of peacemaking to brother-princes he is seized by angina
pectoris. In agony thrice he repeats " Father, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit : Thou hast redeemed me, Thou
faithful God." Sinking into slumber, he passes quietly on
February 17, 1546. Strangely, he dies at Eisleben, where
he was born and baptized. They carry him amid sorrow and
weeping of prince and peasant for reverent burial under the
floor of Wittenberg Church. Upon its door he had nailed
his famous Theses when first he went forth to war.

Of Luther's marriage six children were born — Hans, who
became a lawyer ; Elizabeth, who died in infancy ; Magdalena ;
Martin, who studied theology, was always delicate, and died
at thirty-three ; Paul, who became a court -physician ; and
Margareta, who married a nobleman. Luther gave freely,
and seems always to have been poor. Publishers grew rich
through his books, but he himself would never consent, even
against the constant importunity of his wife, to receive
money from them.

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"How beautiful . . . are the feet of him that bringeth
good tidings . . . that publisheth salvation"

IV
WILLIAM TINDALE

INSCRIPTION. — Scholar, great in gift of tongues, Translator of
the English Bible. For this he gaye his life, A.D. 1536.

SCENE. — Intently correcting proof-sheets of his New Testament.
Interior of German workshop, old printing press, etc. A cherub
awaits with crown of martyrdom ; with other hand offers
partly open Bible and bids him open more wide and free.

From Luther's land we now, for the scene of our story,
take ship to the cliffs of old England. There are here big
changes since Wyclif's time. Soon after his death Rome,
noting the marvellous growth of his teaching, awoke, laid her
plans to crush liberty and smother the light by her dread
strength of dungeon and stake.

King Richard II. of England married Anne of Bohemia
in 1382 — two years before Wyclif's death. Anne became a
disciple of the Reformer. Under her wing numbers of her
country folk gathered around her Court, and many students
from Prague university journeyed to Oxford to hear and see
this new star in the theological heavens. Illustrious among
these was Jerome of Prague. Wyclif's evangel travels in
Bohemia, where its light crosses the path of John Huss, who
lifts it high among his countrymen, so that far-flung rays
are cast across the whole of Continental Europe.

Queen Anne died in 1394. Through weak indulgence and
evil ways, King Richard lost his people's goodwill and was
deposed in 1397 in favour of Henry IV. Henry was son of
John of Gaunt, the old shield-bearer to Wyclif. He owed
his usurped crown much to the hierarchy, and the price
must be paid.

68

WILLIAM TYNDALE.

William Tindale

It is said that at the end of the fourteenth century every
other man in the street, learned, gentle or simple, was a Lollard.
This rapid progress was mainly the work of pilgrim preachers
(" poor-priests ") who with staff and wallet went forth, halting
by barn or hall or village green to preach and read the Bible
in the speech of the common people.

For the first time in English history the civil sword was
now to be used to smite down conscience in religion. True,
divergence had never before stiffened into the backbone of
a sect. At the bidding of the ecclesiastics infamous laws were
made, empowering the bishops to arrest, imprison and burn,
and ere long Smithfield and many a market cross sent up their
lurid smoke and flame of English Christian martyrdom. The
fifteenth century opened its age of blood by the burning —
February, 1401 — of William Sawtree, priest and Wyclifite —
the first name in the Book of English Martyrdom.

Oxford as the centre of the Wyclifites and headquarters of
the " Gospellers " is now purged by many scourgings. Its
glory departed, and the next hundred years are the most
barren in University annals. In 1414 Henry V. assumes
the sceptre. His doubtful Red Rose rights also incur debt
to the bishops, and the payment is a still sharper sword of
persecution until his death in 1422. I have narrated the fate
of Lord Cobham, and during this reign other men of title and
note suffered, but it was the lowlier LoDards chiefly, singing
at their looms the new Gospel music to the old songs of Zion,
who were dragged to the faggot, their names unknown to
mortal page, but bright in the Lamb's Book of Life. Men,
and women too, were burned for teaching their own children
the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer in English.
Children were forced to light the fires to torture and burn
to ashes their own fathers and mothers. Mere readers and
possessors of a Wyclif Bible were hunted like wild beasts,
and roped to the stake. To secure an uncurbed hand with
heretics the Popes were quite willing to traffic with the kings
of England in their private ambitions and schemes.

LOLLARDY CRUSHED OUT OF HISTORY

Lollardy is crushed and as a visible force or organization
now passes out of history. Lecky asserts that " the Church
of Rome had shed more innocent blood than any other in-
stitution that has ever existed among mankind."

Our single lives in their harsh and unfathomable riddle

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

sometimes break into pieces our faith. But the destinies of
history exhibit the riddle in manifold perplexity, and the
heart, shocked and aghast, cries, Where is God ? Think of
the fair morn of Lollard promise quenched as by eclipse.
Unquestionably the Powers of Darkness won, not a mere
victory of decades, but a triumph of many generations, per-
haps of centuries, while that one awful night of St. Bartholo-
mew saved France to the Papacy. Well, some of us may
scan the vista of thirty or fifty years and understand how
that which we were sure was evil has been good. In history
God still less exacts His reckonings at quarter-days ; His
ledger here deals in generations and centuries. God deter-
mines His world shall move onward, but man determines the
speed, and here lies the field of his sin. At this moment
France is making perhaps the most momentous change in
her religious history.

Outwardly there now sets in a long darkness in Britain. The
Church sleeps not in tracking heresy. But the Light is kept
shining behind many a barred shutter. Dr. Trench says,
" When the Reformation came at last these humble men (the
hunted, hiding Lollards) did much, as we may well believe,
to contribute that element of sincerity, truth and uprightness
without which it could never have succeeded — this element
was miserably lacking in many who played foremost parts."
In politics determined barons and lawyers insist upon the
Magna Charta being ratified. Jurisprudence and the main
lines of the Constitution get more settled.

ENGLAND HEARS THE HURRAHS OF GERMANY

As religion decays, however, so do learning, philosophy and
poetry. The fierce Wars of the Roses with many kings had
come and gone ; Henry VII. had restored order from chaos
when in 1509 Henry VIII., at eighteen, a prince of high hopes,
mingling the blood of the rival Roses, ascends the throne,
and England wistfully looks for a new era. She listens and
hears the hurrahs in Germany. Under the pushful lead of
the stately Wolsey, the King is soon moving in the field of the
" Cloth of Gold " and other gorgeous pageants and becomes
thickly entangled in high politics with Pope, Emperor and
Kings. Each is insincere, and each plays off the other to his
own ambitions. Henry in his conceit writes a book against
Luther. The Pope flatters him by the title of " Defender of
the Faith." The Reformer dips his quill and replies, and

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William Tindale

scholars smile. Says Luther, " Squire Harry means to be
God and do as pleases himself " — a capital hit-off of the
King's pompous, though real, talent.

A new day dawns. The years march like a splendid
panorama of great men and vast changes — the mystery of
tangled motive, often gross, becoming the instrument of the
most potent, regenerative, spiritual impulses. Everybody
knows the tale of Henry, his wives and the Pope as the out-
ward causes of rupture with Popedom in England. Every
reader also knows of the real and deeper-making forces of the
Reformation. Among these was the revival of Greek culture.
The New Learning — a resurrection of art as well as letters —
was now risen from a tomb of centuries, and all Europe was
feeling the throb of its rich and exultant life. Here, this
revival took a less gay form than in Italy, but flowed in a
fructifying stream for the moral and religious growth and
social ideals of the English people. I must, however, haste
to bring on the scene the fourth figure in our Stories.

William Tindale was born between 1483 and 1495, during
the childhood of Luther and a good century after Wyclif's
death, probably at Slymbridge, Gloucestershire, by the borders
of Wales. Nothing sure is known of his parentage. He had
three brothers, one a London merchant who was fined by the
Star Chamber for circulating William's New Testament.
Another, it seems, was the Crown Receiver at Slymbridge.

Occasionally, for some unrecorded reason, he passes under
the name of Hychyns instead of Tindale. He grows a studious
youth and in 1510, while very young, enters Oxford University.
He gets his full time of scholastic treadmill and takes his
degree in 1515. He then leaves Oxford for Cambridge and
is " further ripened in the knowledge of God's Word." It
was probably at Oxford, under the influence of Colet's
teaching, that the great change of conviction came to him.

CAMBRIDGE — ERASMUS AND TINDALE

Erasmus, the foremost Greek scholar of his age, by his
lectures at Cambridge had aroused great enthusiasm for the
study of Greek. Tindale becomes a diligent student of the
works of the great Dutch Professor whose renowned Greek
New Testament had just now (1516) delighted the wide world
of the learned. Tindale himself is, or soon becomes, an
accomplished Greek scholar and is quickly familiar with the
wonderful new book. As he saunters by the leafy shades of

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

the quiet Cam, or rests in College meadow, the eager young
Englishman earnestly ponders of the deep things of God,
thus restored to fresh and potent life.

At Cambridge he had for contemporaries — names of nascent
greatness — Cranmer, Latimer and Gardiner. We find him
about 1521 at Little Sodbury, within spy of the play-fields of
his childhood, as tutor-chaplain to the family of Sir Thomas
Walsh. He is already ordained, but we have no record of
when or where. Here he gets at loggerheads with beneficed
dignitaries, quotes and pleads Scripture, confounds them in
argument, and for their benefit and his host's actually trans-
lates Erasmus's Enchiridion or Manual of a Christian Soldier —
an attack on ceremonies and rites to the neglect of true piety
and in substance a Protestant manifesto of wide circulation.
He preaches in Bristol ; the clergy in every ale-house talk of
his heresy, and he is summoned before the chancellor. Appalled
at the sordid grossness and ignorance of the clergy and hardly
less at the strange tumult and revolt within his own heart, he
seeks counsel of a learned doctor — a bishop's old chancellor.
The interview brought an epoch in Tindale's spiritual ex-
perience. Said the aged Churchman — " Do you know that
Pope is the very Antichrist which the Scripture speaketh of,
but beware what you say, or it will cost you your life. I
have been an officer of his, but I have given it up and defy
him and all his works."

Profoundly startled, Tindale's wonders, fears and suspicions
now crystallize into certainties. He prays much for light on
his perplexed path, and reads much of his Erasmus's Greek
Testament. His God is girding him, for his call comes as a
burning bush that was not consumed. A glorious work opens
to him ; he must lead the people from oppression and dark-
ness to a goodly land of light and liberty. His heart now
glows and is filled by a great longing to translate this pure and
sparkling fount of God's eternal, ever-glorious revelation of
love to man into equaUy pure and winsome English. This
deepens into holy resolve, and one day in a sudden heat of
discussion an opponent declares, " We had better be
without God's laws than the Pope's." Fired by indignant,
scorn and wrath, Tindale shouts:

" I DEFY THE POPE AND ALL HIS LAWS "

"I defy the Pope and all his laws ; and if God spare me
I will one day make the boy that drives the plough in England

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William Tindale

to know more of Scripture than the Pope does." Ah !
unwary Tindale, a brave saying truly. By thy learning thou
art a man of mark, but thou art now also a marked man —
to be watched in thy doings and tracked in all thy steps.
Beware !

At Little Sodbury there were scores of clergy around him
unable to tell who was the author of the Lord's Prayer or
where it was to be read. He tells us that the great dignitaries
of the Church sought to keep the " knowledge of Scripture
in the mother tongue " from the people " to keep the world
in darkness, to the intent .... through vain super-
stition and false doctrine to satisfy their filthy lusts, their
proud ambition and unsatiable covetousness, and to exalt
their own honour above King and Emperor, yea, above God
himself. A thousand books had they liever (rather) be put
forth against their abominable doctrines than that the Scrip-
tures should come to light. . . Which thing only moved
me to translate the New Testament, I perceived by
experience how that it was impossible to establish the lay
people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid
before their eyes, that they might see the process, order and
meaning of the text." A vivid picture — even in the half-light
of a crippled quotation.

Most humble in his estimation of his own work, he
beseeches others to improve it — to quote his own words —
" that are better seen in the tongues than I, and that have
higher gifts of grace to interpret the sense of Scripture and
meaning of the Spirit than I, to consider and ponder my
labour. And if they perceive that I have not given the
right English word, that they put to their hands to amend it,
remembering that so is their duty to do .... unto the
honouring of God and Christ, and edifying of the congrega-
tion which is the body of Christ." About nine-tenths of
the Gospels and four-fifths of the Epistles are Tindale's
translation. Surely then he deserves place among our figures
as the translator of the English Bible, substantially our dear
Old Version of to-day, which through its music makes the
English-speaking nations one. His Bible was the strong
fulcrum of the English Reformation.

He turns his face to London (1523), for a distinguished
scholar and friend of Erasmus (Bishop Tunstal) is promoted
to the Metropolitan see. Yes ; he will give sympathy and
patronage to his high ambition ; aye, even a room in his palace

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

wherein to pursue the sacred task to which he has given his
whole heart and hand. By way of proving his craftsmanship
he translates an oration of Isocrates. He procures letters of
introduction from the King's Master of the Horse — waits
humbly in simple trust for the great man. They meet ; the
Bishop will have none of his Bible translation, nor give cover
to such disturbers. Poor hope-dashed Tindale ; how now ?
Pending the interview with the prelate he preaches at St.
Dunstan's, and a wealthy cloth merchant, Sir Humphrey
Monmouth, happens to hear him, becomes his fast friend and
offers him home and shelter ; and here for about a year he
works hard and long at his great task. But the ecclesiastics
are on the scent. During that year men around him in London
are led to prison and to death for possessing and reading
Luther's writings. What, then, of his English Testament ?
Sleepless hunting of author, printer, reader, assuredly, and
no mercy. Just then he pathetically writes, " Wherefore I
perceived that not only in my Lord of London's palace, but
in all England, there was no room for attempting a translation
of the Scripture." Our hero takes not counsel of men. If to
finish his appointed work cast him out an exile, then an
exile's lot he will cheerfully take. It is nothing for his dear
Lord's sake. His eyes now turn " to the land of the great
light and great star." In May, 1524, he sails from his native
land, never to see it again.

He tells us his lot is cast now for " poverty, the long exile
from his own native land, the bitter absence from his friends,
the hunger, the thirst, the cold, the great danger wherewith
he was everywhere compassed, the innumerable other hard
and sharp fightings which he had to endure." Such, years
after, was his sad bewailing. He was upheld, says he, by the
" hoping with his labours to do honour to God, true service
to his Prince and pleasure to his Commons." A Christian
patriot, indeed !

SOMETHING ABOUT OUR BIBLE

For an intelligent appreciation of Tindale's high service
as translator it becomes needful that we leave him for a few
minutes' chat about the English Bible. We are told the
English tongue took on a literary and homogenous form about
1250, as Old English— that Middle English begins about 1350
and holds till 1500 ; then onwards the New English. Wyclif's
version, being in early middle English, was largely obsolete in

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Tindale's day. Tindale's name shines the brightest of all
names in the history of the English Bible. He was wonder-
fully fitted for his task of translator. While living at Worms
he astonished the learned. The scholarly Buschius told
Spalatin, Luther's friend, " that 6,000 copies of the English
New Testament had been printed, translated by an English-
man who was so complete a master of seven languages —
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, French — that
you would fancy whichever he spoke was his native tongue."
Wycl if 's Bible was translated into English from the Latin
Vulgate. The Vulgate itself was but a translation, yet a noble
book, and finished within the fourth century by a holy man and
the greatest scholar of his time, St. Jerome. He would
translate probably from the earliest sources. Its object was
to preserve the completeness and purity of Holy Scriptures
by an authorized version. The churches were then in danger,
through the errors or prejudices of copyists, of losing the pure
Word. The Vulgate was the Revised Version of its day, and
for centuries was not universally accepted ; but it became so
sacred to the Roman Church that even now that Church's
English and other translations are made direct from the Vul-
gate. I here remember that the scholars of Savonarola's
day cast slights upon its scholarship. It is much inferior to
our Authorized Version.

As the streamlet is like its spring, so Wyclif's Bible took on
the errors and shortcomings of its fount, the Latin Vulgate.

But the earliest writings of the evangelists and apostles
forming our New Testament were in Greek, not classic Greek,
but the homely vernacular of the people, and this with the
classic Greek had been a lost language in Western Europe for
a thousand years. In Wyclif's day probably no man in
England could translate Hebrew or Greek. On the revival of
letters Christian scholars, as we may well suppose, searched
and groped into every musty pile or volume of early sacred
writings.

We may imagine a pious recluse or university graduate in
Italy, Germany, or even England setting forth with staff and
wallet, the heart possessed by the pure ambition to discover
if but a single leaf or scrap of gospel or epistle used perchance
by an early Church, whose oldest member's grandfather had
seen an apostle. How the heart would glow at the hope of
giving a truer meaning to but one saying of Jesus or Paul !
How buoyant the step up the hillsides and by the vales of

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Asia Minor to inspect ancient convents and cells and worm-
eaten chests.

ERASMUS AND HIS GREEK NEW TESTAMENT

Now, we may liken our English Bible to a structure built
upon three foundation concrete blocks — first and strongest,
ancient Greek manuscripts of the early churches. These
existed in hundreds, were copies of the actual originals, which,
it should be remembered, were all lost, most likely during the
dreadful persecutions of the early Christians. Second,
versions in the languages of early Christendom — Syriac,
Ethiopic, Armenian and Egyptian. Of this last class the
present, generation has witnessed some marvellous finds.
Third, the writings of the early Fathers, who quote extensively
though not always quite correctly, from the whole New
Testament.

The giant Erasmus comes along and sifts these manuscripts,
versions, and Fathers through his searching intellect and
vast scholarship, and his Greek Testament stands forth a
fair and beautiful temple of sacred erudition. Nor did
Erasmus and Tindale ignore the Vulgate. No, indeed, it
was too great a book. Its readings made a clear impress on
our English Scriptures. Our Tindale, so incomparable in
his own gift of tongues, would not, we may be sure, hesitate
to differ even from the great Erasmus. He had already
translated portions from the original Greek, and probably
his translation was more independent of Erasmus than
Luther's. We now begin to see what a pearl of great and
peculiar price we possess in our English Bible. " Ah ! "
some reader exclaims, " you've forgotten the Old Testament."
No ; but for the purpose of my hasty sketch it is enough to
state that, its original tongue being Hebrew, the learned
Jewish Rabbis have always felt a sacred awe in preserving
every jot and tittle. Tindale, it is thought, translated only
the Pentateuch, the Historical Books, and the prophets.

THE MAGIC PRESS

For Tindale, with his magic press and types, how changed
the scene ! How vastly multiplied his power when compared
to that of Wyclif's day ! The only tools then were quill
and parchment — slow and dear ; and though daring scribes
by the score in their quiet cells, from wild lona to English

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William Tindale

monastery, abbey and college, made music by busy scratch
and rasp of pen and skin, how poor the sum of their labours !
Several copyists must spend ten months of time, which, with
parchment, was in value £50 of our money, for one copy of
Wyclif's Bible. Children, forget not this when you buy your
penny Testaments. But they could then buy a pig for f ourpence,
and hire a labourer at a penny a day, and the stipend of a
parish priest was £5 6s. 8d. a year. To read a Wyclif Bible
for one hour a day for a short period a load of hay would be
paid. How touching to read that a girl — Alice Collins — was
sent for to gatherings to recite portions which she knew by
heart !

In Wyclif's boyhood Bibles were willed by deed like land
and houses, and were sold or lent under seal and witness.
To steal one from an abbey or church incurred the Church's
damnation of the soul, and to give one earned quite a super-
abundance of merit for the donor's eternal salvation. It is
a pity for the children's sake I must stop this gossip, but he
who will not sit nor even stand while he reads, but must run,
hurries me along.

Tindale issued his first edition in 1525, and lived to send
forth a well-revised issue ten years later. Several English
Bibles came quickly after Tindale's — Coverdale's or the Great
Bible, the Geneva Bible (the most popular), and the
Bishop's Bible — all made up from Tindale's. The margins
of some of these were adorned by racy displays of politics and
theology, and even by grim jests at the expense of the other
side. Not any could have become the Bible of the nation as
a whole.

FROUDE'S TESTIMONY

In this way came about our beloved Authorized Version of
1611. Learning and textual criticism had greatly advanced
since Tindale, and, besides, a fuller original material was
available. But not these, nor even the ripe scholarship
of the translators, so much as one simple rule, blended
the nation into thankful content in one Bible. The rule
was, "No marginal notes," except purely textual. The
blessing of one Protestant Bible for the English nation
is beyond the power of words to express. Froude says
of the version : "The peculiar genius which breathes
through the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and
majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the grandeur, unequalled,

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unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern
scholars, all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one
man, and that man William Tindale." Two hundred and
seventy years pass, and the Revised Version is given to us.
Never book before was impressed with such evidence of splen-
did erudition. In textual value it is an immense advance
on all before it. Will it put down the Old Version ? We know
not. Some think it doubtful. Somehow, part of the old
homely fragrance has fled.

During this century God may send the elect and gifted
spirit — some lowly shepherd- Caedmon, some princely Tindale-
Milton in one soul, born, perchance, among our kith beyond
the seas — who, glorious and kingly in gift of tongues, shall
give the Anglo-Saxon nations their Bible for centuries to
come.

We left the direct narrative of Tindale's life at the point
of his quitting the land of his birth. During the twelve- and -
a-half years of his exile, he is pitilessly hunted, cloaking and
flitting appearing his only safety. He is often on the move
between Hamburg, Wittenberg, Cologne, Worms, Strasburg,
Marburg and Antwerp.

THE WANDERING EXILE — ON THE TRACK

His ship ports at Hamburg. He proceeds to Wittenberg
and has " conference with Luther and other learned men in
those quarters." Wittenberg was the headquarters of the
Reformation, " the common asylum of all apostates." Every
man from every country, sick of the old death, longing for the
new life, flocked thither. Here Tindale drinks of the wine
his soul sorely needs in Luther's jubilant infectious joy of
his faith, his lion-voice of assurance and defiance, and the
brilliant sparks of his "Table Talk," as he lifts his tankard
in easeful chat.

Here Tindale stays nearly a year and drives away at his
quill, " singly and faithfully so far as God had given him the
gifts of knowledge and understanding " to render the Greek
New Testament into " proper English." Luther's own noble
translation into virile German had now been issued some
two years.

Hallam and writers even so late as Dean Hook have
disparaged Tindale's scholarship. This has been now
established by an overwhelming array of unimpeachable
evidence.

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William Tindale

Tindale had always too great a mind and was too able a
scholar and translator to play second fiddle to Luther, and in
the consciousness of this takes what hints and helps Luther's
version offers, while making a thorough and original trans-
lation of the Greek of Erasmus into English. We may assume
he also used Melanchthon, who was hardly less famous as
master in Greek than Erasmus. Tindale possessed this
advantage, that while these distinguished Germans knew no
English, he himself, speaking German, could take all they
could give him. All this is of the secret of our preciously
unique English Testament. We now find him at Cologne,
scanning the proof-sheets of his quarto New Testament. All
goes well, when the compositors iolly drop a boast that England
will soon rub her eyes. Dean John Cochlaeus hears, plies them
-copiously with wine, learns all. Startled and horrified, he
hastes with the information to the authorities, who demand
seizure of the sheets. He also despatches a hurried messenger
to the English Bishops.

Tindale flies with his precious proofs and with Roye his
amanuensis takes boat up the Rhine to Worms. Here the
Reformation is militant and strong, and he is safe. With
restful mind he now gives the last touches to his proofs. Here
they are first printed, bound, and packed for England, during
the winter of 1525-26, 6,000 of them in all, 3,000 quarto and
3,000 octavo.

But how shall they get into English homes ? Every port
is watched, and bishops' spies have sharp eyes. Ah ! but
Tindale has slyly printed the small size edition to circumvent
these folk, and packed it into cases, barrels and bales of
merchandise, sacks of flour, etc. In four years 15,000 copies
pass the ports, and are scattered far and wide, and Tindale
and his friends laugh. What a commotion is now in England's
ecclesiastic dovecotes ! Later thousands of copies are seized
and burned with pompous ceremony at St. Paul's Cross.
Tindale cares not. If Wyclif's quills so pestered the bishops,
his printing press can defy them. Still the Testament pours
into the kingdom. It is too dreadful, and must be stopped.
My Lord Bishop of London button-holes Master Pakington,
merchant, to buy all Tindale's books up at the printer's abroad.
Tindale is gleeful, for his head is possessed by a new project —
" a new imprint " — and, says he, " I trust the second will be
much better than ever was the first." The Bishop gets all
the old copies to burn. Tindale uses the Bishop's money

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to pay his debts and bring forth his revised " imprint."
Soon this comes into England " thick and threefold," and all
England laughs.

Why this fury of the bishops ? A chaplain discloses the
more special secret. Says he, " By this translation shall we
lose all those Christian words — penance, charity, confession,
grace, priest, church." Tindale denned " church " as " the
whole multitude of them that believe in Christ in a parish,
town, city, province, land or throughout the world and not
the spirituality, the clergy only."

THE GREAT FIGHT OF CENTURIES WON

The Bishop is beaten. He preaches a furious sermon
at St. Paul's Cross, and hurls a copy into a helpless bonfire
before him. Hugh Latimer nobly defends by his great
sermon, " On the Card." The path of the Bible in England
is now open at last. Nor Pope, nor King, nor Bishop can
stop it. Now is the great fight of centuries won.

We do homage to Tindale, in our Stories, for our Bible's
sake, but we must not permit this to obscure his most manful
help to the English Reformation as an original author. " The
Parable of the Wicked Mammon " or " The Unjust Steward "
is an acute, bold and thrustful exposition of the doctrine of
justification by faith. The Archbishop of Canterbury de-
nounced it as containing many " detestable errors and damn-
able opinions." Sir Thomas More dubbed it " a very treasury
and well-spring of wickedness." These, without further
word, sufficiently testify to its value and salty flavour. The
work showing the best of Tindale's mind is " The Obedience
of a Christian Man, and how Christian Rulers ought to govern,
wherein, also, thou shalt find eyes to perceive the crafty
conveyance of all jugglers." This book exerted a powerful
force in the Reformation struggle, and next to his New
Testament excited the loudest rage of Church authorities.

The prelates asserted that it was not needful for Scriptures
to be in the tongue of the people and that disaster might
follow if the layman possessed this privilege.

Against this shocking position Tindale points the full
battery of his argumentative skill. It was enough to be
hunted as heretic vermin, but the bishops also indulged in
moods of invoking the civil arm against the Reformers as
inciters of sedition and insurrection. The " Obedience "
repels this shameful charge and makes war on the camp of

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the Church as the guilty one, by its wholesale exemptions of
clergy, friars, etc., from action in the civil court of the realm,
by its open sanctuaries and corrupt dispensations for criminals.
He carries war into the camp of Ihe Church, puts Church
dignitaries, Church traditions, the shocking turpitude of its
whole order and system in the public pillory with much
straight vivid speech, and picturesque strength of diction.

While at Worms he issued his prologue to the Epistle to
the Romans. The English prelates described it as " full of
the most poisoned and abominable heresy that can be
thought." In a limited degree it was a paraphrase of Luther's
Preface to the same Epistle.

In 1527 we find Tindale at Marburg, then a forward Reforma-
tion centre. It is a restful home and he is soon on good terms
with the University chiefs. Hither strays the gentle and
saintly Patrick Hamilton, the Scottish martyr, who is also
quickly in cordial relations with the University heads. We
may surely assume that the two refugees from the same coun-
try would make friends and that Patrick took Tindale's
Testament to Scotland, whither he soon returned. It was
on the last day of the next year that he glorified God in the
flames.

It would seem not unlikely that Tindale was in Marburg
during the historic conference between Luther and Zwingli.
This wider experience, with his strong logical mind, his search-
ing discernment, decision and courage, impelled him to
declarations, much ahead of his contemporaries, even such as
Latimer and Cranmer.

Sailing to Hamburg he is in a shipwreck, and " loses all his
books, writings and copies."

Back to Marburg early in 1531, he puts his translation of
the Pentateuch with preface through the press. With manly
sanity he bids " beware " of allegorical interpretations of
Scripture and pleads for plain, literal, honest renderings. He
also translates the Book of Jonah with a Prologue ; this, with
other scraps and expositions of the Gospels, form his last
contribution to the great and sacred work to which he had
consecrated his life. The bitterest of his treatises is " Practise
of Prelates." It is scathing in its irony and contempt. It is
largely a historic digest of Church history, tracing the prac-
tices by which Pope and clergy grew from early simplicity,
poverty and humility to their present swollen state so opposite.
He was indeed at home on this theme. He takes " the en-
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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

sample of an ivy tree," how " it creepeth little by little, fair
and softly " to the top of a noble tree, then along the branches
until it " sucketh the moisture and choketh and stifleth until
the tree becometh a nest for all unclean birds . . . blind
owls which hawk in the dark and dare not come to the light."

Then he quotes the Beatitudes and sets them against the
" Practises of the Prelates," and ends with an earnest address
to the English King and people. The treatise is full of
forceful thrusts.

I can only name the historic duel of the pen between Tindale
and Sir Thomas More. The exile's New Testament and books,
along with Luther's, were so permeating English life, that the
bishops were at their wits' end. Edicts and curses, bonfires
and stake-fires, had failed. What must be done ? They
would turn upon the enemy their own weapon — the press.
Sir Thomas More was adjured by Bishop Tunstal to take up
the sacred duty. There was no fitter scholar in all England,
a man of fine genius and of incomparable culture and standing ;
if he failed the case was lost.

His dialogue " is considered an able attempt at defence,
but left untouched the gross and obvious evils before everyone's
eyes."

Tindale's answer was crushing. Sir Thomas, conscious of
defeat, grew tedious, and virulent even to Billingsgate, his
opponent is a " beast " venting " a filthy foam of blasphemy
out of his brutish heavy mouth." There was no question
of Tindale's facts, nor in the mind of literary England as to
the victor. Tindale's name and the truth he upheld were
now vastly lifted. Other less important tracts issued from
his tireless pen.

Some two years — 1533-1535 — he spent in Antwerp and
here " he hallowed to himself two days a week, Monday and
Saturday " to visit English refugees and the city poor. Long-
ing to step on his native shores, he hears good news of hope.
He caused a copy of his New Testament to be printed on vellum
and illuminated as a present meet for the Queen. It was
duly given to Anne Boleyn and is now in the British Museum.

His New Testament is his crown of glory, which fadeth not
away.

I ought to state that King Henry had no direct guilt in
regard to Tindale's death. He was too busy with his matri-
monial changes to care much for a poor scholar. Thomas
Cromwell and others tried to save him. The Reformation

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William Tindale

in England was strengthening. The guilt rests on the "oppo-
sition," or Papal party in league with the same party in the
Lowlands — English papists who with double-dyed guilt used
the handy tools of foreign laws and foreign emissaries to
trick Tindale of his life. They acted under the wing of the
Emperor Charles V. whom Luther defied at Worms. Stopped
from his ways of blood in Germany by the Electors, he turned
his cruel hatred to the Reformers in the Netherlands.
Tindale's enemies well knew also of the strained relations
between the English court and Charles, through the treatment
of his aunt, Catherine of Aragon, in her divorce from Henry.
Foiled by his Bible, the priests determined on revenge through
his blood.

A TREACHEROUS VILLAIN — DUNGEON AND STAKE

Tindale shall die — if such end can be compassed by power
of money or loathsome serpents in human shape. A friend
of Sir Thomas More, one Phillips — a frocked and treacherous
villain, drawing his pay from two English benefices — under-
takes the job. He finds Tindale " simple and inexpert in the
wily subtleties of the world," lays his scented trail, smiles,
and worms his way, receives sincere confidences and gives false
ones, and takes his victim's money even. His landlord warns,
but Tindale utterly refuses to listen to suspicions of his new
friend.

The plans being ripe and lurking accomplices ready, Tindale
in simple trust of friendship is decoyed from his house to
" dine," seized and hurried to the dungeons of the Castle of
Vilvorde, the state prison of the Low Countries. The priest
had done his work well as a greater betrayer. It is not on
record that he possessed the same decency of remorse as to
break his own neck. He sties eternally with the Judas brood.
Tindale remains in dungeon sixteen months.

There is a show of a trial. He defends himself ; there is
no doubt of his heresy from the articles alleged against him :

1. He had maintained that faith alone justifies.

2. He maintained that to believe in the forgiveness of sins
and to embrace the mercy offered in the Gospel was enough
for salvation.

3. He averred that human traditions cannot bind the
conscience except where their neglect might occasion scandal.

4. He denied the freedom of the will.

5. He denied that there is any purgatory.

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6. He affirmed that neither the Virgin nor the saints pray
for us in their own person.

7. He asserted that neither the Virgin nor the saints should
be invoked for us.

Poor Tindale, thou forlorn exile ! whose eyes shall not dim
to hear thee, weary by years of dread and poverty, pleading
from thy damp cell " for a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely
from a perpetual catarrh, much increased by this cell. A
warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin ; also a
piece of cloth to patch my leggings. My shirts, too are worn
out." Above all, he pleads for his Hebrew Bible.

Heroic soul, thou hadst once when they burnt thy Bibles
a sad and true foreboding over thy spirit, for didst thou not
say : "If they burn me also they shall do none other than I
look for."

On Friday, October 6, 1536, near the castle, he is strangled
at the stake and burned to ashes. His last words are : " Lord,
open the King of England's eyes."

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" There lies he who never feared the face of man "

V
JOHN KNOX

INSCRIPTION.— "The Prophet of the Scotch" who called forth
"A Resurrection as from Death." — Carlyle.

SCENE. — Preaching, declaiming, in characteristic attitude, from
Cathedral chancel. Stand and hour-glass of period. Rose and
Thistle device on stained-glass window behind. Cast down at
his feet — broken— lie bishop's mitre and staff.

The thoughtful Englishman must sometimes wonder how
it comes about that Scotland is accorded so different a treat-
ment in custom and legislation from his own country. This
difference is probably even deeper than he thinks or knows.
It is most obvious to him in its larger aspects — such as licens-
ing, Sunday observance and conspicuously the national
dealing with education. Remembering the numerical com-
parison of the peoples, he glances at the Cabinet at home,
whether Liberal or Conservative. He lifts his eyes across the
waters where dwell our kith and kin, recalls the names of
explorers, pioneers, the occupants of posts of command and
emolument. He does the same with India and her vast web
of civil official function and life. What meets him ? Scotch-
men everywhere in far larger proportion than is warranted by
the respective populations at home. Our Englishman marvels
the more when he reflects that the soil of the northern King-
dom is more sterile than his own, and the laws appertaining
to it not less feudal ; that her people were always poorer,
and by the heritage of clans more conservative in temper,
and were in the pre- Reformat ion era encompassed by even a
more debased environment of religion, a Popedom with a
Gallic cast by reason of her hereditary alliances with France
and the Latin mixture in the blood of her monarchs. He
knows the make of the Scot is not more elastic or receptive
than the English. He thinks, if he says not, it may be

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somewhat less so. Is he discerning in art, he perceives that
even the technique of Scotch art has the mark of a sombre
strength and assertive quality all its own.

WHY SCOTCHMEN EVERYWHERE ?

Why all this ? Why Scotchmen everywhere ? Who shall
answer the riddle ? John Knox shall answer the riddle. He
was not only the masterful personality, the all-conquering
hero of the Reformation in Scotland which delivered her
from Papal thraldom ; he also set going those potent forces
which sustained and fired the stern heroism of the Covenanter,
and brought victory after a sanguinary struggle of 150 years,
by which Episcopacy was finally thrust out of her border
and her people were set free from the thraldom of a priestly
hierarchy of any kind. He stopped the bishop, come he in
whatever guise, excepting only the past or -bishop of the New
Testament. In Scotland the Reformation was complete ;
in England it never was. She had no John Knox. A bishop
predicates a priesthood, each member claiming to stand upon
his mystic stilts, a menace ever to the people's quest of truth
and freedom and the unfolding eager strength of its manhood.
No bishop, no priesthood. None ? Yea, verily, for " He
that washed us from our sins in His own blood hath made us "
(every one) " kings and priests unto God and His Father."
Blessed and exalting truth !

Luther was the source, the saintly martyrs Hamilton and
Wishart the inspiration, to Knox of his direct revolt against
Rome. But Knox had keener vision than Luther in this one
vital issue — that he perceived, though slowly, and doubtless at
Geneva, not only that the evil tree of Popedom must be hacked
down, but that its root must be plucked up and done with
for ever. He read this secret in his Evangel that the parity
of all ministers and pastors must be made absolute. And so
the laity of Scotland had complete emancipation, with
no priestly bar from entry to the holiest place of her taber-
nacles. But the plucking up was a tougher work and fight
than the hacking down. Both sides knew well the momentous,
the supreme import of the struggle.

BISHOP OR PRESBYTERY — WHICH ?

" Bishop or Presbytery— which ? " might have been em-
blazoned upon every banner and shield— for that query con-
tained the motive and compass of all — of a battle of noble

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John Knox

endurance, swaying now this side, now that, for a century
and a half, of ignoble statecraft and kingcraft, of wiles and
whips, imprisonments and banishments ; of hide-and-seek
worship in pathless highland glens and moorland dells ; of
dragooning and bloody massacre. A cruel drawn-out struggle,
glowing with deeds of holy daring and of faithfulness unto
death, taking rank and place alongside that of the heroic
Waldenses and the great Puritan contest in England.

The rapidity of the Scottish Reformation is a marvel of
history. Only twenty-five Protestant martyrs are known,
and not one Papist suffered death for his faith ; but in the
long, bitter fight with English prelacy, by battle, banishment
and dungeon, some 18,000 met their death.

But what of Scotchmen everywhere ? What has this
homily on bishops to do with it ? Everything. Yes, I do
aver that it is the answer to the riddle. The Reformation in
Scotland, I repeat, was completed by the abolition of prelacy.
In England we well know it never was. This portentous fact
is plainly writ across the face of English history. I may here
only affirm the statement. I hope to offer some proof in the
next story of Henry Barrowe, the apostle, prophet, martyr of
the faith of the Independents.

One question only now. How is it that in Scotland the
golden key of learning has been within reach of the lowliest,
and entrance possible to the beauteous palace of knowledge ?
How is it that in every Scotch hamlet, almost in every farm-
stead clump, all along the generations of Presbyterianism,
some barefooted laddie has been nursing a bright hope in
his heart of college and university, of name and fame, through
kirk or state, and that it has not been so in England ? The
answer, I repeat, lies in the different systems — prelatic and
presbyterian. The spirit, environment and atmosphere they
create — the one unfriendly, the other friendly, to the spon-
taneous spark of lowly ambition and the ladder inviting its
accomplishment. The bishop, as we know him, is no mere
overseer, or administrator. No, indeed. " No bishop, no
Church," says he ; "I am the author of its true credentials,
the fount of its ministry and functions " — a vital distinction.
It is of the fibre and genius of Episcopacy to confound the
accidental with the essential, to quote the Fathers and Councils
instead of the Bible, and to confuse error and noxious
schism with the mere temperamental expression of liberty.
Hence as a system it has persecuted the prophets and been

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

insusceptible to spacious ideals of liberty and progress. These
words, of course, refer to an order and system. We owe an
incalculable debt to individual scholarship. The canny Scot
had divined those traits, when in 1560 Prelacy in Scotland
gave place to Presbytery. Aye, whenever my Lord Bishop
of England hies to the land of the mountain and flood he
may doff his breeches and gaiters at Carlisle, and leave them
behind in the same parcel as his mitre, for over the Border
he becomes a common Dissenter. Through the generations
of three centuries this has been a happy and blessed arrange-
ment, not alone for the Scots, but in measure for the English
also, for thereby an object lesson has been provided them of
a kindred and neighbouring people finding the heavenly way
for their souls unguided by bishops and a more abundant
life for their bodies also. It is odd, yet true, that the most
un-English institution in England is the Established Church
of England. A further reflection, and germane to our theme,
pleads for expression.

THE PRICE OF STATE PATRONAGE

To no mortal eye is given all vision. Knox claimed for the
Church the liberty of her function of life to march onward in
her benign mission, even to the extreme of each congregation
electing its own minister ; but he failed to perceive with the
same prompt eye this were impossible, or always in peril,
while the chain of the State patronage enclasped her and State
endowment chilled and stifled the living energies of her
children. In Scotland after the Reformation, the Presbyterian
polity— a graded democracy — of her Church saved her from
the lordly opulence and somnolence — was this latter the better
luck for England than wakefulness ?— of bishops, as in
England, and the half-pagan worldliness of dignitaries. This
polity saved her from the more sordid attributes of an estab-
lished religion, and the degrading and brutal conditions among
the people which later met Wesley and Whitefield and their
followers in England, where they were sometimes half-mur-
dered by village heathens, while in Scotland they were heard
with respect. Yet during this period Scotland did lose the
sacred fire of her earlier enthusiasm — that lofty passion for
souls in the preaching of the evangel, with the same sweet
simplicity, and winsome fervour. These are too sensitive and
ethereal for the coarse hand of the State to regulate ! Oh, the
pity of this blindness and the troublous years of a lost path !

John Knox

The religious divisions in Scotland after the Reformation
never exhibited the same cleavage as in England, yet such as
they were they were the direct issue of the State knot ; and
it may be added as they still are and are likely to be. Nay,
as one reads the tale of the worldly diplomacy and duplicity
of that dynasty of plague, the Stuarts, of the wasted loyalty
of their Scottish subjects, yet of steadfast suffering for a great
religious ideal, it is safe to hazard an opinion that this fatal
dalliance with State trappings was the cause of half the
Church sorrows and schisms, even from the Reformation
onward to the Revolution.

THE NATIONAL COVENANT

Emerging from a baleful servitude of centuries to the efful-
gent light and beauty of the Reformation, the Scottish people
saw in the National Covenant a very Apocalypse, the radiant
vision of a new Jerusalem, and clung to it through fire and
blood. Truly, a wonderful instrument of good, the welding
as by a sacred flame of the reasoned syllogism, the divine
instinct, the holy vision, the prayer and ideal of a nation.
It was not the thing of Heaven-sent perfection the Scotch
imagined it to be, and they made it somewhat of an idol, and
through this were led into the serious mistake afterwards of
fearing the liberty of the sects in England, and petitioning
for their restraint. The same error drew the Scots into the
crooked dealings with Charles I. to be so bitterly expiated by the
blood of Preston and Dunbar. Yet for the day it was noble
in scope and strength. The Westminster Assembly, in its
relations with the Covenant and the Catechism, left a deeper
mark upon English and Scotch religious development than
is generally supposed.

Later, Cromwell's strong and tolerant arm checked the
harsh-growing bigotry and tyranny of the Covenant and gave
it a push towards the more liberal instrument which has since
moulded Scotland and kept her one nation, while in England
we are, through a State Church and prelacy, cleft in two. The
Covenant, its faith and confessions, made the Scots what they
are to-day — though somewhat dour — a brainy, pushful race.
Notwithstanding the days of her spiritual declension, the
Church of Scotland has been a bulwark of righteousness and
character, has maintained a scholarly ministry, made a Bible-
loving, Sunday-observing people, ever reverent and steadfast
in the pure verities of the Christian faith and the fragrant and

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homely virtues of "The Cotter's Saturday Night." At a
recent Church of England Congress it was stated that ninety-
five per cent, of Presbyterian ministers in Scotland had
graduated, while in the Church of England only fifty-seven
per cent, had this advantage and distinction.

Nor has there lurked in her veins the taint of sacerdotalism
to break out in malign sores in a later day, as in England.
And as her Highlanders swing to the front in battle, so Scot-
land has led the march for the British in education, in tem-
perance, and progress, and this lead, I repeat, she owes to her
Church without bishops. There are signs that she must take
care. But I set out to tell a story, and I am wooed into an
essay, which I fear the reader will skip. Still, one word :
though Presbyterianism has never rooted south of the Tweed,
yet England knows not the measure of her debt to Scotland's
Reformation, for there it grew to the strength of a defiant
young giant, while Elizabeth in England strove to stifle it into
a puling dwarf. The soul — Puritanism — was the same in
both, and the brawny muscle of the Scotch lent some shelter
and more inspiration to the struggling English. Its pure
strain of Calvinism produced a tougher fibre of Protestantism
than even the Lutheran. To aver that Scotland's Reformation
half made that of England might be questioned, but that the
Scotch half saved the English may be ventured, and if of Old
England so also of New England.

BIRTH — A STRANGE SILENCE

John Knox was born in 1505, near Haddington, Scotland.
He passed through Glasgow University as fellow- student with
the learned George Buchanan, who ranks second to Knox
(Moray the Regent excepted) as a force in the great struggle.
Buchanan was its apostle of the pen, and stood in the
highest esteem with the scholars of Europe. He was also
the tutor of James VI. — our James I. Knox took priest's
orders about 1530. He taught in country gentlemen's families
friendly to the reformed doctrines, but until his fortieth year
a strange silence (for so ardent a soul) pervaded his life. At
this point he stepped upon the scene in characteristic style.
The meek and learned George Wishart, whom the landed
gentry, accompanied by armed retainers, flocked to hear
preach the new evangel, was arrested at dead of night, and
hurried off to St. Andrew's Castle. This was done at the
instance of Cardinal Beaton, who summarily condemned

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him to be burnt as a heretic. He was led to the stake in chains,
with a noose around his throat. "Then," says Knox, " the
trumpet-sounding Wishart was put upon the gibbet and
hanged and then burnt to powder." Right Christianly he
suffered. Knox revered him, had shielded him from the
assassin, and, it is said, carried a two edged sword before
Wishart to the scene of death. This was on March ist, 1544.
Within three months the Cardinal's body hung dead over the
battlements of his castle, killed by plot to which Henry VIII.
was privy.

DOWN WENT THE GLOVE FOR FIGHT

Wishart's martyrdom acted upon Knox like Tetzel's
indulgence drum upon Luther — it set fire to his soul, never
to be quenched till death. Down went the glove for fight.
He immediately strode into the front line of battle ; became
preacher to a militant band of reformers in St. Andrew's
Castle, soon besieged by a French force. At its surrender in
1547 he and the rest were shipped to slavery on the galleys of
France. After a bitter nineteen months of this, with heretic
chains and indignities added, prayerful and hopeful he is
released at Edward VI. 's request. The clergy in England were
generally ignorant and sunk in superstition. Cranmer,
after Henry's death, invited Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer
with others from Germany and placed them as Protestant
professors at Oxford and Cambridge. But earnest preachers
must be immediately sent forth. Knox steps into freedom
at this juncture. He comes to England, and Cranmer and the
Privy Council at once give him the precise work he most
loves — " to preach sound doctrines in all the remotest parts
of the kingdom." Later he becomes one of a band of itinerant
preachers the King had instituted. Some of these became
illustrious divines and martyrs. Knox preached two years
about Berwick, attracting multitudes. His bold and con-
vincing earnestness made a vast change among the people.
While here he is summoned to Durham by the Bishop for
teaching and declaring that the " Mass is idolatry." In
a noble and fearless address he confounds the Bishop, and
departs. Strange it is that later Knox should be chief instru-
ment of the Church of England formally declaring this identical
truth ! At the end of 1550 he is in Newcastle, and crowds are
flocking to the spacious Church of St. Nicholas, drawn by his
fiery eloquence and Gospel fervour. As one of the six Royal

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chaplains, he is not subject to the liturgy nor to episcopal veto,
and takes full use of the freedom. He had no small share in the
revision of the second Prayer-book of Edward VI. of 1552,
and its more Protestant impress we owe to the forceful voice
of Knox ; though many " tolerable fooleries," as Calvin
named them, remained, far many more were abolished.

AN ENGLISH REFORMER

He pleaded boldly for the sitting posture at Communion in
place of kneeling. Failing in this, he procured the insertion
of the notable "black rubric" declaration against
any worshipping of the consecrated elements. This stands
to-day. Forty-five Articles were reduced to the present
thirty-nine by the six Royal chaplains, of whom he was one.
We know not how great our debt is to him. Two of the other
five became bishops, two deans, and Grindal became
Archbishop of Canterbury. Of such men was Knox considered
a peer, and so early in his career and in a country not his own.
A masterful will alone could not lift him into such prominence
without great power of intellect and insight. It is fitting
here to state that Knox became an accomplished linguist, being
proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French and Italian.
Though wincing under his plain speaking, English statesmen
yet perceived and valued his sterling qualities. He is offered
the See of Rochester, among other reasons, forsooth, to be
"whetstone to sharpen the Archbishop of Canterbury."
Other preferment is offered. No. Why ? He answers ;
and " they were sorry he was of contrary mind to the common
order." Knox retorts, " he was sorry that the common
order should be contrary to Christ's institution." Two ob-
jections were the kneeling position at Communion and no
law to prevent the unworthy from partaking. The same
month he preaches his last sermon before the King, and
denounces the ungodliness of some of his Ministers. Surely
our hero must now be dreaming of his presbyteries ! Edward
dies June, 1553, but four days after the sermon and after a
reign of six boy-years. Mary Tudor, half Spanish in blood,
ejects Protestant bishops and puts in Papist bishops and
restores the mass. She unleashes her emissaries of dungeon
and faggot ; the gaols are soon filling and the stake-holes
a-digging. By the end of 1554 800 learned Englishmen, be-
sides many others of humbler condition, had fled to the
continent. Yet Knox is at Newcastle so late as December,

John Knox

but flies to Dieppe next month, having first wed an English
dame, Mar j one Bowes, of whom two sons were born. Both
entered Cambridge, and took orders in the Church of England.
In Frankfort, Zurich and Geneva Knox meets bands of earnest
English exiles who, like himself, have fled Queen Mary's
hate of all preachers of the new doctrines. Knox did not
regard his Romanist ordination as his true call to the sacred
office; this was at the hands of the little gathered band of
refugees in St. Andrew's Castle. When they cried " We
approve it " to their call he was overwhelmed at the solemn
responsibility and bursting into tears retired to his chamber.
It was an awakening to the depths. After much prayer he
received spiritual " openings " and accepted the holy charge.
So it was that when his brother exiles formed themselves into
Independent churches his delight was to minister the comfort
and hope of the Word.

THE GENEVAN BIBLE — LOVE FOR ENGLAND

Here also he takes rank among the scholarly exiles who
produced our Geneva Bible, based on Tindale, and for sixty
years the favourite in England, marked by accurate work,
marginal notes on obscure texts, and a Calvinistic bias. It
was also the first Bible to supplant the old black-letter by the
present readable Roman type — the first to be divided into
verses and to omit the Apocrypha ; it omits also the name of
St. Paul as author of Hebrews, and uses italics for words not
in the original — all being kicks of scholarly liberty against
mere traditions.

For a year, 1555-6, he is in Scotland, dares a preaching
tour, and sets ablaze Reformation bonfires in his train. Others
desire his exhilarating presence. He receives letters from the
Independent Church of English exiles at Geneva to be their
pastor and deems it his duty to comply. After his departure,
the Papal party burn his effigy at Edinburgh Cross. The
two following years spent in ministering to the exiles, were the
quietest of his life and perhaps the happiest. He sets no
foot again on his native soil until May, 1559.

Knox spent five years in England, then four and a half on
the Continent, mainly among English comrades. He loved
England, and has impressed his footmark deep upon the
sands of her history. I wish I could quote on this head (Oh,
this vexing haste !) ; yet once I will. In 1554 Knox writes :
" Sometimes I have thought that impossible it had been so

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to have removed my affection from the realm of Scotland
that any realm or nation could have been equal dear unto
me ; but God I take to record in my conscience that the
troubles present (and appearing to be) in the realm of England
are double more dolorous unto my heart than ever were the
troubles of Scotland." A sworn foe of the Reformed faith
now wields the royal sceptre of England and that as with
thousands more is the cause of his " dolorous " heart.

Notwithstanding the vigorous methods under Edward VI.
for propagating the new faith, on the accession of Mary,
the bulk of the nation was content with the easy ways of the
old. During her father's reign, however, one step was taken
of vast significance — that of casting off Papal dominance.
The action brought in its train an atmosphere of liberty and
national competence. There was also now a free and open
Bible. England had been called " The Pope's Garden," and
Mary considered herself as sent of God, not only to undo
her brother's work, but her father's also, and to restore to the
Pope his ancient supremacy.

Her marriage with Philip of Spain was a part of this policy.
Even many Catholics viewed her course with distrust, but
Protestants were thrown into a panic. Insurrection was
soon in the air. That ghastly heathenish spectacle of her
bigotry, the stake, with its horror of human flame and smoke,
revived the terror of the Inquisition. Perhaps the outstand-
ing event in this reign of blood, which fastened upon the
imagination of the people and helped the Reformation, was
the burning (with its shining glory of cheer and prophecy)
of the beloved preacher of St. Paul's Cross, old Bishop Hugh
Latimer, now past four score years, and with him Bishop
Hooper— Archbishop Cranmer watching from his prison and
soon to follow. The successive recantations of Cranmer were
not received by the people with contempt, but filled the hearts
of thousands with tearful pity.

They knew themselves to be like him, in a shuddering recoil
from such an awful death, and his saintly courage at last
restored to him the bright halo of a lofty martyrdom. The
scene forms the subject of one of the larger windows.

All these things were being pondered in the heart of the
nation, and gave strong impulse to the Reformation spirit
and purpose not only in England but, perhaps, even more
strongly in Scotland.

Ah ! it had not to be— yet the human imagination sketches

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its wistful picture of " what might have been," had Edward VI.
reigned as long as his sister Elizabeth, or she been like him.
With Knox as the Luther of England, the wheels of her destiny
would have moved the more quickly by a hundred years.
But I hasten to narrate the story. Forgive these many pages
ere we tread the stage of the greater drama of his life, but
Knox is somewhat of a unique figure. Though he stands in
Scotland, it is with an arm and hand outstretched and an
eager look to England.

The steadfast friend of England, the enemy of her enemies,
it was a grief to him that Queen Elizabeth would never meet
him in audience. In vain Cecil pleaded ; she was obdurate.
Knox had unwisely published a treatise entitled " First Blast
against the monstrous Regiment of Women," aimed at the
three Queens then ruling England, Scotland and France ;
wherein he had summed up Elizabeth as " neither good
Protestant nor yet resolute Papist." It was too true to be
forgiven.

SCOTLAND NEEDS HIS FIERY TONGUE

At the urgent request of the Scottish Protestant nobility,
Knox leaves Geneva in January, 1559. Scotland needs
him — is ripe for his restless foot and fiery tongue. The
bonfires he lit three years ago are still aflame ; nay, their fuel
is throwing off a peculiar sputtering energy of cracks and
sparks, which have spread up glen and brae. A true leader,
though intrepid for his cause, is never rash ; and arriving at
Leith, Knox looks about. He had never trusted Mary of
Guise, the Queen-Regent. As in her daughter, Mary Queen
of Scots, he read a false heart behind her smiles. His mistrust
is soon justified. One has barely a line for asides, yet I must
here interpolate that at this juncture a monstrous plot
develops, concocted chiefly by the Regent's brothers at the
Court of France. It is to claim and wrest the sceptre of
England from Elizabeth, as bastard and heretic, and hold
it for the young Queen Mary of Scots, now living with her
husband, the French Dauphin. Obviously, the first step to
this end was to crush out utterly the Protestant life in Scot-
land. The smile-mask is cast off. She tells a deputation they
" shall all be banished." She summons, for May loth, the
Protestant preachers and leaders to Stirling for trial. Knox
steps upon his native soil in the nick of time, as he said,
for the " brunt of the battle." " I see the battle will be great,"

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he writes on May 2nd. The Papal party are in panic at
Knox's emergence. The Protestants gather. Alarmed, the
Regent notifies postponement, but holds a mock trial all the
same, and outlaws the preachers for not appearing. Little
she bodes the effect of this perfidy. Wellington counted
Napoleon's personal presence on the field at 20,000 men.
So was it with Knox ; the magnetism of his personality was
instantly felt. Yes, he too will face the Regent and stand by
the preachers. He joins them by way of Perth. News arives
of the Regent's action — is buzzed about. The same day
Knox preaches and fulminates against idolatry of Mass and
images.

A SKIRMISH — FIRST BLOOD

It happens some idlers loiter in the church. A priest un-
covers a rich altar, image-bedecked, and proceeds to make
manifest his contempt of Knox and his heretic lies by pre-
paring to celebrate Mass. A boy talks ; the priest smites.
In a trice down come altar, images, church ornaments shivered,
smashed and trodden. Defiant shoutings collect a mob as
by fire ; who, possessed by a sudden flame of irresistible
impulse, fly to the monasteries and lay them in ruins. Knox
dubs them a " rascall multitude." The Regent now threatens
fire and sword ; the Protestants rummage lofts for steel also ;
the grindstone and armourer get busy ; the Regent is prudent.

Knox now interviews Argyll and James Stewart at St.
Andrews, reminds them of the solemn engagement in respect
of the liberty of the Reformers. They admit all. The Lords
of the Congregation (a sort of emergency band of nobles and
leaders) "before the Majesty of God" renew their bond — the
infant National Covenant. Many of the nobility now within
their domains set up an actual Reformation — a Protestant
worship — and abolish Popish ceremonies. The vast change
is possible only because of the visible and putrid sink of
iniquity in which wallows the Church, from Cardinal to
monk, and the thick and sodden crust of ignorance and super-
stition, gross and sordid beyond words. These, with the
Divine coincidence of the lead and protection of a strong and
determined band of nobles, with the masterful genius of
Knox, form the secret of the amazing" rapidity of Scotland's
Reformation.

A wondrous man this Knox, signally great in the
arts of peace, but greatest " on the rough edge of battle."

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John Knox

The English Ambassador writes from Edinburgh, "He is
able in one hour to put more life in us than five hundred
trumpets continually blustering in our ears." Well may the
walls of Popish Jerichos topple to his resounding march !

We meet him now at St . Andrews. The life of Knox comprises
much romantic adventure. While a galley slave, he was
brought in a French vessel actually within sight of St. Andrews.
He was asked if he knew it. Casting reverent gaze at the
steeple, he exclaimed it was " where God first in public opened
my mouth to His glory, and I am fully persuaded, how weak
that I now appear, I shall not depart this life till my tongue
glorify His holy name in the same place."

Let us then now watch him. The Cardinal hears that Knox
means to preach from the Cathedral pulpit, and informs him
that " he should gar him be saluted with a dozen culverins,
whereof the most part should light on his nose." He can
afford this swagger, for he has an armed force at hand, and a
French army of the Regent's lies within twelve miles who will
run to his help. This is gall to Knox ; he remembers Wishart,
and the galleys and the prophecy. The " lords " persuade
him not to risk his life ; for they have but a slender following.
Ah, they do not know of a certain wondrous joy now girding his
heart and soul. He lets the Cardinal know he cares nought
for his culverins, and means to tour Scotland. His mere
presence in the city acts like a magical charm upon the people,
and, somehow, next day he preaches on Christ ejecting the
traffickers ; and also preaches on the three following days.
The country round throngs to hear his reasoned doctrine and
drink at the pure, refreshing fount of New Testament truths.
The effect is miraculous. His daring soul takes reward.

HIS TRUMPET ROUSES ALL SCOTLAND

Provost, bailies, people forthwith set up the reformed reli-
gion, strip away pictures, knock down images, pull down
monasteries. His trumpet echoes over mountain and moor.
Within a few short weeks, in Stirling, Linlithgow, Edinburgh
and other places, images and monks are scarce. During the
restless march of two months nearly all Scotland has set eyes
on our prophet of God and heard his inspiring Evangel. He
is Hebrew prophet to-day, and Paul the Apostle to-morrow
Preaching by day, he writes by night. His wife and children
join him. Meantime the settlements of pastors in oversight
of the infant reformed churches goes on apace. Knox was

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a born statesman. Ah ! That startles the reader, to whom he
stands merely as a figure uncouth, and rude to a fair young
Queen around whose brow a shallow literature has cast a halo
of false romance. Besides the care of all the churches, Knox
had early upon him a great mass of State affairs, and always
had deftly to manage and temper the nobles. A disquieting
aspect now meets him. He perceives that while French troops
remain upon Scottish soil or waters there is no true peace for
the Protestant cause. He writes to Cecil, pleads, argues,
demonstrates that it is England's policy and interest to
despatch an army to expel the French, who had now invested
Leith ; and expelled they are. This policy and success had
a European effect. The expulsion was weighted with good
to both nations ; it broke the French bond with Scotland
and healed old sores with England. Parliament at once
settled the Reformation and established the Genevan faith.

The Queen-Regent dies, and unknown rocks loom ahead.
Knox settles at St. Giles's, Edinburgh, and oft 3,000 eager folk
throng to his sermons. He compiles a Protestant Confession
of Faith, and has the chief hand in shaping the Genevan
Book of Common Order into a working Presbyterian Consti-
tution. A fruitful piece of handiwork, it lives to-day the
wide world over. He renames it " The First Book of Dis-
cipline." The first General Assembly sits at Edinburgh on
December 2oth, 1560. The hand of Knox — the independent
minister — is evident in its first impress of the democratic
spirit. The assembly is composed of forty-six members of
whom six only are clergy. In all this Knox seeks the help of
that virile genius, John Calvin, his dear friend. The Dauphin
of France dies, and his widow, Mary Queen of Scots, steps on
Scottish soil on August igth, 1561. The breath of her whole
life had been a Papal incense. The loyal hurrahs of reception
are quickly choked, for on the first Sunday after her arrival
she directs solemn Mass to be celebrated at Holyrood. Every
Protestant heart quickens its beat. The past was becoming an
old past, a memory only of black night. Had their fair young
Queen vowed its return ? Horror indeed ! Vowed to blast
the fair spring morn of succulent sap and budding green ?

Mary was now but nineteen, yet was already known as an
astute politician, an arch liar and a relentless bigot. Her
French education introduced her to the most dissolute court
in Europe. She was deeply addicted to the cup, and perhaps
this is the key to her shocking relations with Rizzio, Darnley

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and Bothwell. Her high courage, her artful grace and gaiety,
her French flash and tone, flung a spell even over sober
statesmen.

PROPHET AND QUEEN

Knox is summoned to Holyrood, summoned many times.
Space forbids the witness-box here. I may offer judgment
only. I do aver it is shameful imposture to paint Knox as
a callous boor at these interviews. As Elijah went to Ahab
so went he — a prophet of the living God, not as a dandy to a
drawing-room. He went as a physician called in at a perilous
crisis of a nation's life ; a statesman upholding the law ; not
a youth, but a man, nearing sixty ; a man of affairs, of travel,
of knowledge of the world — a man known and honoured by
English statesmen and famous scholars, a master of many
tongues, who knew the traits of nations, and especially of
France. He read Mary through and through. She expected
the flattery and awesome acquiescence to which she was
accustomed. She meets a man fearless, firm, plain and
honest of speech. Doubtless this is crime to a certain sort
who set a pretty face and its smiles and tears against prin-
ciples, or even a breach of the Seventh Commandment. Such
do not lead nations ; Knox did. Our prophet's intuition is
quickly justified. Mary's French uncles had committed the
cruel massacre of the Vassy Protestants — while at worship a
congregation was attacked by an armed force and not even
women and children were spared — and she now gives a ball of
rejoicing at the atrocity. She had been accustomed in France
to such pastimes. Knox goes on preaching, never less than
five times a week ; is called hither and thither by high and low
for purposes many.

THE ARDENT EDUCATIONALIST

He had large ideals of education. Doubtless while in
England he had noted the rapid and beneficent institution
of Grammar Schools. He started the same in Scotland.
His earnest wish was to divert the chief revenues of the
abolished monasteries and abbeys to education, and it was
a real grief to him that the rapacity of the nobles largely
prevented this. English Grammar Schools left the working-
classes in the cold. Even educational benefactions specially
willed to the poor were impounded by the English rich.
Knox and the presbyteries took care that the Scotch system

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should embrace and welcome the common people, and a school
was required in every parish.

The Reformation is now too strong for direct assault. So
the Queen and her abettors are stealthily mining, and Knox
is watchful and anxious. A net of high treason is cast at him ;
it falls short. A price is set upon his life ; yet is he saved.
Knox has now been widower three years, and marries Mar-
garet Stewart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree. The Parliament
of 1564 is far too pliant for him ; the mining is telling. The
Queen marries Darnley, who openly professes himself Papist.
Several nobles follow, and Mary joins the French League to
extirpate the Protestants. There are bubbles of insurrec-
tion. Popish priests furbish up altars for St. Giles, and the
mines are ready for tinder, when Rizzio is murdered ; secrets
are out ; the explosion is stayed. But Knox is harried from
Edinburgh. He longs to see the face of his sons in England,
and needs change. The Assembly gives him mission and
blessing. While Knox is in England Darnley is decoyed and
murdered. With shocking haste the Queen takes Bothwell,
the accredited murderer for husband. These French morals
and manners excite disgust. The nobles sound the bugle.
Bothwell flies and Mary is put in durance. Her infant son is
crowned, and James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother,
installed Regent.

Knox is back in Scotland by July, and preaches the Coro-
nation sermon of James VI., but refuses the ceremony of
unction. He also preaches at the opening of Parliament.
All acts are now ratified to make firm the Protestant religion.
No prince must hold Scotland's sceptre without taking sacred
oath to maintain the Reformed faith. Knox is thronged
with work he loves — preaching, teaching and apostolic
visitation of churches; delicate tasks of jurisdiction and
policy between Church and State ; and starting seminaries
of education. During Moray's splendid Regency superstition
and ignorance are overthrown. There is peace and freedom.
The purified Church strides onward in might and gracious
progress ; a glorious light is in her train, and the people
sing " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
that bringeth good tidings!"

It is a significant fact that, as I have before recorded, not
a single Roman Catholic suffered death for his religion during
the Reformation in Scotland. The Reformers destroyed,
and with fury, but only things not lives.

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John Knox

So it is that the cherub over Knox bids him go forth with
sledge hammer and crow-bar " to pull down and to destroy,"
but also with trowel and square " to build up and to plant "
well and truly.

In contrast to this, Cardinal Beaton hanged three men,
and drowned one woman for eating a goose on a Friday.
What an inhuman thing the ecclesiastic temper may become!

ASSASSINS — PEACEFUL DEATH

Knox dreams of rest. Ah ! no rest for thee, brave heart,
but the heavenly ! Twice has the Regent been snatched from
the assassin ; a third time the bullet is mortal. Knox is
broken in grief, and 3,000 mourners are in tears as he preaches
the funeral service. His heart-sorrow and the confusion
which follows bring on a stroke, at which the priests openly
exult. It is October, 1570. He dies not yet, but lives
and preaches. But die he shall ; a murderous bullet
is aimed through his window. He is saved by accident
— nay, by a watching angel. Though feeble, he yet does
brave work for his everlasting God. His sermons take on a
sweeter note, and linger around the Cross and the Resur-
rection. His beloved work is upon his heart to the last. Near
death he prays, " Come, Lord Jesus. Sweet Jesus, into Thy
hands I commend my spirit. Be merciful, Lord, to Thy
Church which Thou hast redeemed. Give peace to this
afflicted Commonwealth. Raise up faithful pastors who will
take charge of Thy Church. Grant us, Lord, the perfect
hatred of sin." " Have you hope ?" they ask at his last
breath. Pointing upward with his finger he dies, aged sixty-
seven. It is November 24th, 1572.

As in England, so in Scotland, the battle for truth and
liberty had, for generations, still to go on. Martyrs there
had still to be, and many, but of a different type and order.
The Scots had stepped into a new age ; the dark incubus
of centuries was lifted ; the vast imposture of Rome was
broken for ever.

John Knox found Scotland in darkness, he gave her light ;
in prison, he gave her liberty. He found her with the
cretinous gape and stare of the middle ages, and left her with
the alert gaze and spirit of the modern era. He made a new
nation. A vast multitude, solemn and sad, attended his
burying. The Regent's eulogium is memorable. "There lies
he who never feared the face of man."

10 1

Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I
in the midst of them "

VI
HENRY BARROWE

ROBERT BROWNE — THE PURITAN EPOCH AND THE FREE-
CHURCH MARTYRS

INSCRIPTION.— The Dauntless Apostle, Prophet, Martyr of the
Faith of the Independents. For conscience' sake suffered
dungeon and death. A.D. 1593.

SCENE. — Appears in the picturesque dress of a gentleman of the
period. Denounces Archbishop Whitgift before the High Court.
Haggard, dishevelled, defiant, he shows his chains. Nobly proud,
resents the cruelties to himself and comrades. On the floor is an
escaped document bearing the name of John Greenwood, his
companion in dungeon and martyrdom. A consoling cherub
brings martyr's crown and spray of palm.

A fancy comes to me to liken these Stories of great men
to the pillars which stand around the ground of the church
which, by stained glass portraiture, the figures adorn. The
piers hold a continuous chain with one uniting purpose.
The links of our Stories may not be strong yet their orderly
unity should be apparent. And so we now again visit England.
Excepting a peep at Knox during his preaching tours for
Edward VI. we have seen little of it since we hastened from it
with Tindale for his Bible-printing. The dying prayer of
the lonely martyr as he hung by the stake, we learned, was,
" Lord, open the King of England's eyes." Soon answered
was thy prayer, Tindale. How hard for thee so to die, for
in three short years there is a Bible in every parish church.
It has a wonderful front picture by Holbein. In the centre
is King Henry seated upon his throne ; he holds out a Bible
in each hand, and commands the assembled peers and priests

102

HENRY BARROWE.

Henry Barrowe

to " take this and teach." Seventeen years onward and
London is gay with glad shouts as holiday banners, plumes
and glittering steel are swaying by " The Chepe." It is the
State entry of the new Queen, Elizabeth. There is a pause.
Father Time steps forth ; he leads a white-robed maiden
by his side. She is " Truth, the daughter of Time," who
offers to the Queen an English Bible. With both hands the
Queen raises it to her lips, and then, laying it upon her heart,
thanks the City for the precious gift. These are some of our
links and chains. As for the moment we look back we will
take a glance at our Lollard chain in the further distance.

A NOBLE ANCESTRY — NONCONFORMISTS AND LOLLARDY

A spiritual and living ideal, inspired by an ever-flaming
Pentecost, and not an unnatural mechanical theory, is the
true chain of descent of the Free Churches. In British
history, through the Lollards, English Nonconformists possess
a sure line of ancestry more noble and hoary, and of
purer strain, than can appertain to the Established Church ;
there is surely more affinity between their doctrines and
teachings and those of Lollardy than between the thirty-nine
Articles and those of Rome. Further, Lollardy in its motive
was no less ethical than doctrinal : it insisted upon a reform
of life as much as of dogma, and here lies the root of the
" Nonconformist conscience," a plain rendering of which is
" Righteousness exalteth a nation." Yet, while maintaining
an ancestry of ideals and principles as the only real ancestry
in the sight of Heaven, it may here be fitly stated that there
seems good evidence that an actual hereditary descent exists
between some present Nonconformist communities and old
Lollard meetings. In Amersham, Buckinghamshire ; at
" Lollard's Chapel," in the forests of Herefordshire ; also at
a Baptist Church at Hay, Brecknockshire ; and at the old
Congregational Church, Sudbury, Suffolk, distinct traces of
this ancestry are found. In England the Lollards met in
caves, forests and remote farmhouses. Some fled to Scotland
and Wales, where they possessed safer refuge, and from
M'Cree's " Life of Knox " we learn that their influence and
later Tindale's Bible prepared the way for Knox. Green
shows that " Bible men " were strong in England in 1449.
Fifty years after Wyclif 's death England was the model nation
of Europe in constitutional security of liberty by Parlia-
mentary control over the King's despotisms. In spite of

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

gaol and stake, Lollardy, with its Socialistic instincts, had told.
But the selfish and savage Wars of the Roses almost ruined
everything. The fifty years preceding 1480-1490 reek of
blood, and hard-won constitutional liberties are wrecked,
never to be wholly re-won but by Cromwell's sword, and
secured for ever at the later Revolution. But Lollardy
lives, and its pamphlets and martyrdoms continue to Luther's
day, when it largely merges slowly into Protest ant Puritanism.

THE RENAISSANCE

But, before Luther, Lollardy received an impulse of revival
from that Wizard from the East journeying through Italy,
the" New Learning," which was now acting like bursting yeast
upon the effete mass of tradition. Englishmen went to Italy,
and returned filled by its potent wonder. Chief of these was
the English Plato, the learned John Colet, the instructor
of Erasmus, who while Luther was a choir boy taught (under
the shelter of King Henry and Archbishop Warham) much
of the simplicity of New Testament religion and of Lollard
morals. He began in 1496 to lecture on the Epistles of St.
Paul in their plain meaning and with the evangelical spirit.
These lectures, like Luther's at Wittenberg.were thronged
by all classes, and he also was soon suspected of the taint of
heresy. Colet was a bold and vigorous pioneer of the Re-
formation and our early refugees in Germany must have
given as well as received of the good seed. Colet's enlightened
energy had much to do in establishing that system of grammar
schools which in a century covered the towns of England.
Erasmus's Greek New Testament had captured the learned
world; this and Sir Thomas More's golden dream "Nowhere " —
" Utopia" — a commingling of the new gospel of ideals with the
" New Learning," are the topic in every court and university
in Europe. Men are being fed of the Spirit, and sicken of
ceremonial dry bones, of stuffs from " Aaron's Wardrobe," of
things of wood, strings, pulleys, paint, and gilt. " Authority !
Where dwells it ? In Pope, Bishop, King, or the human
conscience ? " The world asks and knocks for answer.
Relics and shrines are scoffed at in every alehouse, the Mass
is lampooned in ballads, the priests ridiculed in the Mystery
Plays. Though a reaction sets in, the final break with the
Pope comes in 1534. Henry VIII., though never much of
a Protestant, is now anti-Pope, and himself displays, apart
from his Minister Cromwell, a fine grasp and capability

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Henry Barrowe

of statemanship, as the majestic fabric of ages of tradition
sways to its fall during the religious revolution of his reign.
He pursues his course with stout Tudor fearlessness, even
while enemies watch for vengeance, and dagger and plot are
ever hovering.

The Reformation was a vast thing. It had to do with worlds
— human worlds — a thousand years in the making, which
it sought to break in pieces to set up new worlds. In the
main it did this — in England more than in Germany. Froude
in stately phrase says, " The paths trodden by the footsteps of
ages were broken up, old things were passing, and the faith
and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream."

LIFE AND TIMES OF BARROWE

In 1535 we meet with Anabaptists in England, and they
send deputies (1536) to a German Synod. In 1545 Henry,
in a notable address to Parliament, encouraging charity, gives
first evidence of the rising status of the sects. Says he :
" Some are called Papists, some Lutherans, some Ana-
baptists." Church of Englandism, as we know it, did not then
exist. In 1551 (Edward VI.), at Bocking, Essex, sixty persons
were meeting on Sundays for the study of the Scriptures,
having refused communion at the parish church for two years.
Even under Red Mary organized Separatist churches existed in
London, Colchester, Much Bentley, Stoke in Suffolk, and
elsewhere. These continued through Elizabeth's reign issuing
during the next century into the main streams of English
Noncomformity — Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist and
Quaker. These glimpses of our chain connect us to a more
detailed recital of the life and times of Henry Barrowe. In
this Story we plunge deeply into the Puritan epoch, through
it and beyond it in vision of New Testament teaching, and in
the fearless shaking off by the Independents of civil or eccle-
siastical bonds and trappings. Their charter is " Stand
fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us
free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage ; "
and " stand fast " they do upon this sure Rock. The Spirit
of God shall not be enslaved. In England we had no Luther,
no Knox, no all-puissant personality to strike priest and
lead king, and during his own life to renew a nation and a
dead Church as by the breath of the living God. By this
England missed the quicker victory, but gained, I think, a
less stereotyped and wider liberty in the ultimate. Luther

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

stopped short, and so did Germany. His, though a great,
was a shorn Reformation compared with the ideal of the
English Puritan Separatists.

ROBERT BROWNE

But another name shares the honours with Barrowe. True,
not in unshaken faithfulness, yet in searching gift of the
divining rod of spiritual truths. Born at the family seat,
Tolethorpe Hall, Northamptonshire, Robert Browne in 1570
matriculated at Cambridge. He was " born of an ancient
and worshipful family," and a kinsman of Lord Burghley,
Elizabeth's able Prime Minister. Becoming chaplain to the
Duke of Norfolk, while barely on the step of manhood he
writes treatises of the most startling and original import.
Inspired by the tremendous upheaval of the time, he is indeed
a dreamer of dreams — a prophet of a religious ideal and liberty
far beyond the horizon of his day. These form part of the
foundation of a structure of positive literature, affording
Biblical and intellectual security to the Congregational
faith and order. Doubtless he had noted but three years
back (1567) the hard fortune of the " Privye Church in
London," a Separatist Church, Congregational in its base.
Some fifteen leaders were haled from Plumber's Hall to
dungeon, and the pastor, Richard Fitz, with Deacon Bowland,
died of gaol fever.

Just now the noted Puritan, Thomas Cart wright, is making
a lively ferment in Cambridge, where he is a Fellow (but is
quickly deprived), by his learned expositions of New Testa-
ment doctrine and Church order. But Browne passes him
by. As he reads the Gospels and Epistles, and of the founding
of the churches in the Acts, a fresh and glowing ideal possesses
him which he must go forth to preach, and with prophetic
and fiery earnestness. In substance he declares these primitive
churches were groups of converts forming themselves naturally
and freely by spiritual affinity, and each separately competent
for its own life and doings. Such heresy upsets both mitre
and sceptre. The Bishops scowl in irate wonder, and are
sharply down upon him. Norfolk and Burghley shield him
until tired. He and Richard Harrison, a graduate of his own
college, start a campaign at Norwich, and a little flock is
gathered into a church. The Bishops crush it by spies and
gaol. " In 1581," says Dr. Dexter, " the little church and its
pastor emigrated to Middleburgh to abide in freedom of

106

Henry Barrowe

faith and worship." In 1583 John Copping and Elias Thacker
were hanged at Bury St. Edmunds for dispersing books by
Browne and Harrison, which " to the number of fortie "
were burned at the execution. Others recanted. At the same
assizes were presented " above forty persons, ministers and
others, for not observing the Book of Common Prayer and
making conventicles."

THE ROBERT BROWNE PROBLEM

In 1583 Browne sails for Scotland. He will mission the
Scots. He has a better evangel even than Knox. Ah, Robert
Browne, great is thy earnestness or thy conceit. He trumpets
forth in the Canongate, Edinburgh. Thus he defines Presby-
terianism, " that instead of one Pope we should have a thou-
sand." This on the Mars Hill of the Scots ! The daring
impertinence ! Behind the gaol-door he goes, really to teach
manners to his tactless tongue, for, quickly out, he speeds on
a preaching tour over Scotland. Returning to England,
he is again soon in the gaoler's grip. Thirty-two times
in all he is thrust into gaol — damp and so dark ; sometimes,
he says, he " could not see his hand." Thirty-two times !
Broken in health, baited and bribed, his father and noble
kinsman angered, he gives up, makes submission and is
elected master of St. Olaves, Southwark. Later he accepts
the living of Achurch-cum-Thorpe, and here he dwells for
forty-two years. At eighty he thrashes a constable, a relative
with a grudge, who rudely pesters him for rates, is carted to
" Northampton jayle," and there sickens and dies. He was
buried at St. Giles's, Northampton, on October 8th, 1633.
Pitiful end ! Robert Browne is a problem. Dr. Dexter, of
America, discovered the long-immured pamphlets by him in
Lambeth Palace Library. In these there is evidence, he
thinks, of a disordered mind, and he concludes Browne's
mental poise was shaken by his sufferings. After his con-
formity he issued a curious tract of " Latine tables and
definitions framed out of God's Word." He seems to have
been absent or secluded for several years while nominally
rector. In recent papers before the Congregational Historical
Society, facts are cited which are strongly opposed to this
insanity theory of Dr. Dexter. Indeed it may be cast aside.
The registers of Achurch are in Browne's own handwriting
and are models of clearness. It appears that Browne kept a
licensed curate during his entire incumbency. There also

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

seems sound evidence that Browne's conforming was little
more than nominal, and strong local tradition and several
important facts go to show that a parson of Achurch was
turned out and built a chapel-house, which still exists, and
ministered to a recusant company.

Browne supped sorrow through a second wife, " a comon
scold," a widow, and left her. He also left the vicarage to
decay, and for this and other faults he was cited many times
before his superiors. These he treated with cool indifference ;
frequently he would not appear, sometimes he would send his
curate or pay a fine. He waived aside suspensions. His
nonconformity was persistent. One of his citations was " for
not using of the crosse on baptism, and for not wearinge of the
surplice, and for omittinge of some parte of the booke of
comon prayer."

There are still some enshrouded years and the problem is not
wholly cleared. But for his relatives and protectors in high
places he must have perished by gibbet or dungeon. Had
faithful martyrdom, like Barrowe's, been his he would have
remained the foremost figure in Separatist history. Browne's
case, I surmise, was that of a young man seeing visions ; ardent
and sanguine, he believes he has only to prophesy and the
world will flock to his message. Instead, in the course of his
proclamation, he meets with stone walls of dullness and preju-
dice, visionless ecclesiastics and pitiless gaolers. Disillusioned
and lacking backbone, he succumbs. But the old fires will flame
up betimes with moods of remorse and ways of eccentricity.'

Browne was the author of many tracts and booklets ; his
greatest is the " Treatise on Reformation without Tarrying
for Anie." It is an appeal, strong in Bible reasoning and
glowing in feeling, to Christians to claim the liberty of their
fight in Word and Doctrine without waiting for the lead or
permit of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical.

* With the press proofs of this page come to hand the "Trans-
actions" of the Congregational Historical Society for January, 1912.
They contain a reference to the first published " History of the Church
of St. Giles, Northampton " — the church in which Browne was buried —
by the Rev. R. M. Serjeantson. From the Instance Books of Peter-
borough Registry this author proves that Browne was actually excom-
municated by Bishop Piers in 163 1 for persistent Nonconformity, In
May, 1632, Browne was further cited to appear "to be removed,
deprived andinhibited from his rectory of Achurch for Nonconformity."
These discoveries relieve Browne from much doubt and misjudgment
and restore him to a measure of honour. From his will it would seem
that he became reconciled to his wife before his death.

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Henry Barrowe

Christ's kingdom must be composed of those of Christ's
spirit, not made up wholesale in parishes by sacrament, but
of individuals of contrite heart, " were they never so few."
Says he, " The Lord's people is of the willing sorte," eternally
and nobly true. " Can the Lorde's spiritual government
be in no way executed but by the civil sworde ? " Magis-
trates " in a commonwealth indeede are first, yet they have
no ecclesiasticall authoritie." All this was a double offence
— to the Bishops heresy, to the Queen's purblind regime
rank sedition. For a while Independent Separatists were
known as " Brownists." In the bigoted intolerance of Arch-
bishop Whitgift Queen Elizabeth found a pliant tool to her
mind. " Too much lenity maketh you wanton," was his
dictum to the recusants. England is in political fever. The
mighty Spaniard and Pope have together sworn a death-hate
to her. The great Armada is clustering her Pope-blessed,
swagger-gilded prows, and saint-beflagged masts. Every
son of Albion is needed, but to Whitgift the crushing of the
Armada is secondary to crushing Separatist Puritanism.

WHO IS BARROWE ?

It is a Sunday morning in October, 1586, two years before
the Armada. In the house of Henry Martin, near St. Paul's
Churchyard, a little company are assembled. John
Greenwood is reading the Scriptures, when the house is in-
vaded, and all are marched off to the Clink prison. Six weeks
later, one Henry Barrowe, coming to London, straightway
makes for the Clink, and asks to converse with Greenwood.
Affection has overcome piudence — the keeper is forewarned,
and promptly turns his keys upon Barrowe, beckons a water-
man, and rows post haste to Archbishop Whitgift at Lambeth,
and is hurriedly back with a warrant for Barrowe's arrest.

Why this gleeful celerity ? Who is Barrowe ? His in-
dictment describes him as a " gentleman." He is of ancient
Norfolk family, and is now B.A. of Cambridge, entered at
Gray's Inn for the law. He had followed the life of a gay
spark. On a Lord's Day he hears, in passing a church, the
earnest tones of a Puritan preacher. " Let us go in," says
Barrowe. " Tush ! " says his companion. In they go. The
hammer of the Spirit strikes home. He comes out in changed
mood. Stricken in woful conviction, he dismisses his old
consorts, renounces the golden goblet of pleasure, seeks
counsel of godly men, and retires to the quiet of the country

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

for reading and meditation. Holy peace fills his soul and
large visions of New Testament truth and of liberty and
service to teach them inspire his life. " He made a leap,"
says Lord Bacon, " from a vain and dissolute youth to a
preciseness (a Puritanism) in the highest degree, the strange-
ness of which alteration made him very much spoken of."
Aye, but for more than its " strangeness " is that " leap "
now " very much spoken of." Let us in far too brief pages
follow Barrowe's doings, and I think we shall give him place
among our elect ones. Through the Separatist Puritans
his influence upon English history was important, and
he has never received the barest justice from the ordinary
historian.

STAR CHAMBER LAW

To return. The Archbishop is impatient to see and harry
his prize. Two pursuivants return with the gaoler, and hale
Barrowe to their master. The prisoner is a lawyer, and
protests he was " put under arrest without wan-ant and
without law " ; refuses to swear and demands formal trial.
Some interesting fencing ensues, and he is secured in the
Gate-house. Eight days later, at a second abortive baiting,
the ecclesiastic breaks out in temper : " Where is his keeper ?
You shall not prattle here. Away with him ; clap him up
close, close ; let no man come at him. I will make him tell
another tale ere I have done with him." The priest is mis-
taken, he knows not his man. After five months of " clap him
up close " dungeon he is brought forth for formal examina-
tion before the High Commissioners. Barrowe scores again
on the oath question and declares, " By God's grace I will
answer nothing but the truth." The Bishops are bent upon
identifying mere Separatism with treason, and angle to force
Barrowe into the net of declaring the Queen is not head of
the Church. Wary limb of the law, he pleads leave to write
answers. I quote a sample. " No prince," he writes,
"neither the whole world itself, may make any laws for the
Church other than Christ hath already left in His Word."
Excellent indeed. The Chief Justice owns that Barrowe had
answered " very directly and compendiously." The Bishops
are furious. Back to gaol with him while another trap is
baited. Question i : May the Church of Christ, if the Prince
" deny or refuse " to rectify abuses in the Church, reform
them " without staying for the Prince " ? Answer ! " Yes,

no

Henry Barrowe

may, and ought, though all the princes in the world should
prohibit the same upon pain of death." Question 2 : " May
the Church of Christ excommunicate the Queen, and, if so,
who is to do it ? " Answer : " Yes, and it is to be done by
the pastor." He parries no longer, but plays his weapon in
straight plunge.

SUFFERINGS OF THE EARLY SEPARATISTS

Six weeks pass, and he, with his friend Greenwood, stand
together at Newgate sessions. The trial is formal mockery.
Their sentence is already given, for the Bishop of London is
both accuser and judge. In gaol they are " clapped close,"
and for the next ten months in vile, foul, and fever-lurking
dens. There are many fellow-suffering Nonconformists.
Barrowe sets forth their harrowing miseries, the horror of
their sufferings, in a " lamentable petition " to the Queen.
Some are bound hand and foot with " bolts and fetters,"
some put in the " myll," " beaten with cudgells." Fifty-nine
sign this petition ; ten have already succumbed to gaol-fever.
John Chandler is of them, having a wife and eight children.
They " conquered death by dying." The petition proceeds:
" Many of us shut up close prisoners for the space of two years
and a half upon the Bishop's sole commandment ; " " many
ending their lives never called to public trial ; some in hunger
and famine ; all of us debarred from lawful audience before
magistrates and from all benefit and help of the law ; "
" separated from our trades, wives and children, daily defamed
and falsely accused by published pamphlets ; '' " kept in
from all spiritual comfort and edifying." Even were one
released, he dared not return to his family until prison sores
and infection had left him. This recital is but a specimen,
remember, of the dealings of Protestant prelates to the early
Separatists, who were loyal to their country and devotedly so
to their Queen as civil sovereign. Burghley and Chief Justice
Wray did not like the Primate's ways, yet the Queen, it would
seem, was willing to acquiesce.

MARTYRS OF THE DUNGEON

The Recording Angel alone knows the number and names
of these patient, steadfast martyrs of the dungeon, not less
noble than those of the stake and gibbet. We read of
" twenty four souls in laste year " done to death in London
gaols alone. Very many they were assuredly. All alike

in

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

died for the faith and freedom we enjoy to day. Bought
with such a price, surely too precious are these for indifference.
Nearly a year of these galling horrors for himself and
helpless pity for his suffering comrades drives the iron deep
into his soul, and when Barrowe is led out for further
examination he faces the Court defiant and with lion-hearted
courage. " The Lord gave me a spirit of boldness," says he.
First came a lively passage with Burghley on Voluntaryism
versus Tithes, and then followed on his historic encounter with
Archbishop Whitgift himself, whom he denounced as a
" miserable compound," " neither ecclesiastical nor civil "
(strictly true — this is the scene of our picture window).
Ah, dauntless Barrowe ! thou hast let loose the surging fire of
thy soul, but had not a wary tongue served thy cause the
better ? Back to durance thou goest for five long years.

A TRIUMPH OF THE PEN

The Archbishop sends able divines and half friendly Puritan
clergymen for conference in prison, or to beguile and entrap.
To no purpose is this wile. Ere this I should have explained
that John Greenwood, who is in orders, and also B.A. of
Cambridge, a spirit of kindred nobility, had been with Barrowe
ever since the Sunday morning seizure, and with but a short
spell of liberty continued his heart -fast companion to their
martyrdom. Barrowe was the elder and the more intellec-
tually gifted and original. Greenwood had been chaplain to
Lord Rich, at whose house many high born were wont to meet
to hear the purer word. Of these meetings Lord Bacon's
mother writes to Lord Burghley, 1584 : " I confess as one that
hath found mercy that I have profited more in the feeling
knowledge of God's holy will by such sincere and sound open-
ings of the Scriptures than I did by hearing occasional sermons
at Paul's well nigh twenty years together." Shut off from
preaching their evangel by tongue, they will spread it by the
mightier instrument of the pen. With unflagging zest they
strive for this end, they say, " with continued tossings, tur-
moils, and riflings." " Every word was clandestinely inscribed
upon contraband paper, with surreptitious ink, by the dim
light of dirty and grated windows," says Dr. Dexter. Letters,
pamphlets and books hitting the mark straight and deep,
surprising in their quantity ; yet greater still is the marvel
of eluding the gaolers with copy, smuggling to Dort in the Low
Count ries for printing, smuggling back and distributing. What

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daring spirits, what glowing hearts, to risk liberty, aye, life
— sometimes Greenwood's wife, or '' Cycely," the maid,
bringing in food (prisoners were then mainly kept by outside
friends) and taking out copy. Altogether the business was a
triumph of patient skill, daring and energy. In the funda-
mentals of pure doctrine the Separatists were at one with
the Thirty-nine Articles. The Puritans went far with
them in objections to portions of the Prayer book and to
ceremonial adjuncts of worship, Popish garments, super-
stitious manners, with a leaning against Bishops. It was
chiefly their ideals of the polity or the operative instrument
of Church order and life which roused such fierce anger in the
prelatist breast. These out-Knoxed Knox, and he, with his
presbyteries, was alarming enough indeed. The Bishops
claimed to be in the line of apostolic succession. This could,
of course, only be through the channel of Rome. So Barrowe
and his disciples would insist with unkind logic in dubbing
them "Anti-Christ," and associating them with the "beast,"
and rubbed the sore perhaps too harshly.

" THE CROWN RIGHTS OF JESUS "

With a lofty High Churchmanship they rejected individual
dictation by the civil power in the realm of conscience
and God. Here they owned only " the Crown rights of Jesus."
They further asserted the right to come together for worship
as independent communities after the New Testament fashion,
free of control from Bishop or Pope, or indeed of Synod or
Presbytery. In this they uphold the noblest charter given
to the human race, that " where two or three are gathered
together in My name there am I in the midst of them."

They denied controlling functions over the " two or three "
to any earthly authority outside themselves, and especially
did they scout the claim that Christ the Son of God had given
over His own authority with the Holy Spirit's awful majesty
of presence and inspiration to be reserved as an episcopal
appendage. The bulk of the nation now regards this pre-
tension as a passable and respectable imposition. The Bench
of Bishops in heart must be conscious that this hoaiy fabric
of arrogance is shattered by their own best scholars. Is it
not time that manly and honest words were of tener said among
our young against this shocking puerility and absurd travesty
of the holiest ?

Apostolic succession is the hugest false thing amongst us,

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and for it we pay a huge penalty ; for is it not the root of our
serious national troubles ? I mean not the simple bishop-
overseer, but your coped and mitred keys-emblazoned priest.
His pomp and port may suit the ends of kings, courts, lords
and millionaires, but are alien, utterly and ever, to the spirit
of the lowly Nazarene. These early Independents and
Baptists proclaimed, as their children still do, that the sacred
deposit of authority and sacrament rested with the whole
body of saints — the " two or three," which is the Church — and
here alone would they yield homage. They further asserted
that the terms " Bishop," " Presbyter," " Elder " are one and
the same in New Testament usage — the one set apart by the
Church to minister ; that the Church makes the Bishop, and
not he the Church. Illustrious sufferers, prophets, martyrs,
your message now sways the master-forces of the world.
Britain, and all kindred over the wide seas, forget not your debt !
A Christian Church on its human side is the simplest thing
in the world. Its founder ordained it a place fragrant of
sweet homeliness and loving social helpfulness. The priest
and tradition have tried to make it everything it is not. It
is a sensitive and living organism. It is made a sort of detach-
able machine of manufacture, priest -turned. In essence a
Church is " two or three gathered together," brethren in the
living bond of personal love and obedient service to Jesus,
their Lord, by His Passion, His Cross, His precious blood,
their Saviour. Congregationalists are the highest of High
Churchmen. They object, not to the High Churchman,
but to the high-priest. They believe in the richest reception
of sanctifying grace at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
and not less so at the solemn dedication and prayerful
consecration of the child at baptism.

SHOULD GLADDEN THE HEART LIKE SONG

Only second in its effect upon the progress of the Kingdom
of God upon earth was the sturdy insistence by Barrowe on
Voluntaryism for the Church's maintenance. Endowment
is the curse of the Church of England to-day, to ministry and
people alike. As to the ministry experience but too sadly
proves that average human nature, when safe in stipend and
place, will seldom give as much of its best as when stipend
and place are dependent upon output of energy and enterprise.

As even bishops now-a-days confess to the world, com-
pared with his Free Church neighbour, the Established Church

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layman has a starved sense of giving. He knows his vicar's
stipend is secure. The faithful ministry of the Word and
truth by the man of its choice is the most evident and natural
object of, and call upon, a congregation's gifts. These motives
have no play in the parish church. Yet in giving of money
lies the great human test of sincerity and earnestness, and
that Church which lifts the principle of Voluntaryism highest,
as a privilege and a part of worship, must reap the richest
blessing. True giving should gladden the heart like song.
Such summary formed the pith of Barrowe's evangel.

MARTIN MARPRELATE

I have said little of the humbler sufferers for conscience'
sake, nor can I ; but a word must be given to John Penry,
the saintly evangelist of Wales. Born a Welsh Papist, edu-
cated at Oxford and Cambridge, he took orders, became a
Separatist and Independent, an earnest preacher, bold pleader
for Voluntaryism, a troublesome pamphleteer against a
worldly clergy and abuses generally, and a thorn to Whitgift.
The arch-prelate stops his pricks by the gallows. The eyes
dim to read his last words, so brave, so sweetly faithful. Says
he, " If my blood were an ocean sea, and every drop thereof
were a life unto me, I would give them all, by the help of the
Lord, for the maintenance of this same, my confession,"
and many more words of like heavenly fragrance. Noble
Penry ! While martyrs remain unforgotten, thy name shall
be spoken of. It should be said that the bishops were just
now smarting under the mordant wit of Martin Marprelate's
Tracts, and suspected Penry. He seems to have disowned the
authorship. The real Martin was never found out, and so
saved his neck. Martin's assault was launched the same year
as the Armada, but with far greater success. He invented
a sort of literary torpedo which with swift and sure aim
bombed awful havoc among the bishops — more especially
the time-serving Whitgift and Aylmer, Bishop of London.
All England laughed at the carnage. Ridicule shook
tyranny when nought else could. Green tells us that now
" a new age of liberty was felt to be at hand." Martin now
sits among the classics.

A TRIPLE MARTYRDOM

Two months before Penry, Barrowe and Greenwood had
also perished by the rope. In too curt fashion I must now tell

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

the pathetic story of their end — a thrice-felt death, a triple
martyrdom. On March nth, 1593, they are haled for formal
trial. Their dangerous quills must be stopped. The indict-
ment is a shameless sham. The bishops know it. They are
condemned to death. The day after the trial they are
" brought out of limbo " ; " irons are smitten off." The
Tyburn cart is waiting. In front of the victims the ropes
are unhanked for grim duty, when a reprieve stops the sad
journey. A new conference is suggested. Barrowe's answer
is touching in its noble resignation. " Our time is now too
short in this world. It should be given not unto contro-
versies so much as unto more profitable and comfortable
considerations." Yet they will not refuse if two brethren in
prison could be joined with them. Nothing results. On the
last day of March " very early " in the morning there is a
second summons to die. Secretly they are carted to the spot
of execution, and " being tied by the necks to the tree were
permitted to say a few words." They speak briefly. Barrowe
says, " In the sight of their Judge that knoweth and searcheth
the heart," expecting each moment the last, when a shout is
raised — a Royal messenger speeds, and arrives with the
Queen's reprieve. " There is exceeding rejoicing, and applause
of all the people, both at the place of execution and in the
ways, streets and houses as we return." So writes our daunt-
less Barrowe as, with fresh hope in his heart, he pens a remark-
able and lucid appeal to a " Countess of his kindred." He
tells the tale of their several reprieves, their trial and their
cause, and pleads for intercession with the Queen. A day or
two after this was dispatched, on April 6th, 1593, both were
hurried to the scene of execution, " as early and secretly as
well they could in such a case." " Two aged widows "
attend, and follow with " winding sheets." " Early and
secretly," there are none but the " widows " to weep. The
deed is done. Six years of dungeon and suffering are broken
and ended. Two noble spirits hear bright angels acclaim,
" Faithful unto death, I will give thee a crown of life " ; they
see the face of the King Himself, and hear His " Well done,
thou good and faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of
thy Lord."

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JOHN ROBINSON.

" Now the Lord had said . . . get thee out of thy country,
and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto
a land that I will shew thee . . and I will make of
thee a great nation "

VII

JOHN ROBINSON AND THE
PILGRIM FATHERS

INSCRIPTION.— A saintly spirit, broad in mind, large in heart.
Pastor of the Exiled Church of the Independents— Pilgrim
Fathers. B. 1575. D. 1625.

SCENE.— Delftshaven Harbour. The Pastor lifts his hands in
solemn, parting benediction. The bark " Speedwell " is moored
to the quay. Above a pennant, " Mayflower," is waved by a
hopeful cherub.

The last of her race, Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, sad
and haggard, lonely and unloved, conscious of defeat by
the Puritan Calvinism she had always hated and bound.
It had beaten her, it also beat the Pope, and the laurel
fell to Britain as protector and defender of Protestantism.
She was too worldly even to understand its noble base of prin-
ciple— the divinity of common manhood (" hi the image of
God "), the sublime majesty of its Godhead, the immanence
of His awful voice and presence ; the direct access to Him
for every seeking soul ; the terribleness of sin ; the eternal
sureness of personal accountability, of death, of the Judgment.
She was too steeped in a thousand lies of shifty intrigue,
in selfish and prideful conceit, to allow its moral curb place
in her motive and conduct. Yet while the " Tables " last

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it is not allowed even to monarch or priest to cut himself
at convenience into separate moral entities. Bat-blind in
spiritual sight, the Queen's religious policy was short in
horizon, low in plane, and mean and small in inspiration.
Her Protestantism was little else than anti-Popism, her
policy mainly an ignoble opportunism. Even the Armada
glory was not hers ; the people led her, and won half in spite
of her. It was the new spirit of Puritan freedom which
manned the bold frigates and saucy sea-dogs of England and
foiled the terrible Spaniard and plotting Pope alike, and
saved England's destinies. The spirit — the men — who beat
the Armada could and would have done anything for their
country, had their Queen possessed soul to appreciate and
vision to seize the splendour of opportunity at her feet.
The like of it never came to other English sovereign. In
vast formative forces the time was the meeting of the ages.
Compared with the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the resur-
gent energy in England of the sixteenth produced three times
the number of great men who were the moulders of history.
The small increase of population could only have had a slight
effect. The later half of Elizabeth's reign is a glorious age
of English literature ; it might also have been the grand
epoch of her freedom, both civil and religious. Nothing
Utopian was required as a first step — only a proclamation of
liberty of worship to all her subjects alike. Strong and
sagacious statesmen were at her side already in partial sym-
pathy with this. Liberty of conscience was understood to be
allowed, but this were a mockery without that of worship.
There was the least danger by this course — the fears lay all
the other way. Elizabeth lived in dread of Catholic menace
abroad to redress Catholic wrongs at home. Liberty
of worship must have built the strongest bulwark against
this dread, and made for loyalty and the strength of her
kingdom, and afforded expansion to the surging optimism of
the day.

GROWTH OF PURITANISM

Spenser himself was a Puritan, and his " Faerie Queen "
was Puritan in motive and soul, capturing the age by its pure
beauty and enchanting grace. The lustrous glory, the mellow
pomp, of the drama in Shakespeare, and even the work of
the coarser playwrights, the marvels of travel— all helped to
a more tolerant, more humane, and wider spirit.

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The unspent passion of indignation at that heathenish horror
of blood, the massacre of St. Bartholomew' (August 24th,
1577), and at the butcheries of Alva in the Netherlands ; the
brawny might of the Scotch Reformation ; the broad temper
of the Renaissance, still strong ; the substantial loyalty of
English Catholics at the Armada crisis ; the echoing hurrahs
of victory ; the thrill and swing of noble joy ; the immense
relief ; the vast sense of security and new-born strength
resulting from the proud Spaniards' destruction — all these
varying, even opposite, forces were one in this — in making for
a more spacious outlook, for the undoing of the ecclesiastic
and the granting of toleration of worship. The universities
were going more and more Puritan ; so were the captains and
merchants, the Drakes and the Hawkinses. These grasped
their rudders and sped their ships to the golden lands of the
sun under a new impulse of dashing adventure and daring
freedom, and, returning, infected the people with the magic
and romance of strange tales of a wide and wondrous world.
A mighty rainbow of hope now spanned the kingdom, rich
in colours of glorious promise. Remember also that liberty
was in the blood and growth of Puritanism.

ELIZABETH'S HAUGHTY WILL

Doubtless for this benison of religious freedom a strong
arm was needed, but never in English history was the chain
of loyalty so strong as in Elizabeth's reign. The Wars of the
Roses had much slackened the constitutional bridle upon the
monarch, and despotic rule had attained a climax in Elizabeth.
But here is the secret — she would not surrender an atom of
personal government, not because her age was unready, but
herself — her haughty will. She was strong enough to rule in
a pitiless repression of religious freedom ; the more easily
could she have ruled in its toleration. It should be said that,
like her father after his break with the Pope, she was in
constant danger of the papist assassins. In any case, what-
ever of political danger there was from Pope and Catholics
and liberty of worship to the latter, political strength only
could result from that liberty to the sectaries, as they were

' In all France, it is varyingly estimated, that 10,000 to 100,000
Huguenots — French Protestants — were massacred. The Pope ordered
a " Te Deum " to be sung, and, amid street illuminations and firing of
cannons, with his Cardinals marched from church to church giving
thanks. Medals were struck, and pictures painted in commemoration.

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loyal to the bone. But the part of the despot was dear to
her ; at whim she treated her prelates like puppets and her
Ministers and their bills of parliament like ninepins. Instead
of showing a timely statesmanship she ruthlessly stopped
her statesmen in any attempt to bring religious liberty and
practice into line with religious conviction and trend. Nay,
even so late as 1583 she committed something like an outrage
both upon the Constitution and the age alike — a set-back
of centuries, chiefly aimed at the sectaries — by which the Pri-
mate was practically invested with personal powers to make
his own religious tests at will, regardless of the law. So came
into being the terrible Star Chamber of tyranny — as an un-
English engine of cruel persecution of conscience. It cost
Laud his head at last.

" A MOUNTAIN -TOP " OPPORTUNITY

Elizabeth was no ignorant bigot. Her father's house
was like a college. There men of great name gathered.
The radiant dawn of a New Age filled it with glowing im-
pulses of knowledge and liberty. There she herself each
morning read Erasmus's Greek Testament and the Greek
classics, and was no mean scholar. Elizabeth knew better,
and there lies her sin. The greatness of Elizabeth's reign
was far more that of her age than of herself. She possessed
her father's qualitiesof fearless courage, of insight and masterful
capability, which in her, as in him, were unillumined, un-
vitalized by high spiritual motive. Her sire could add cruelty
to tyranny ; so could she. If she was great at all it was in a
certain practical instinct making for a safety, or success on a
low plane ; but her opportunity was not that of a low plane,
but of the mountain top — not of one but of the full five talents,
and by this only can she be equitably judged. Her age was
one of faith and wings. She possessed neither.

JOHN ROBINSON

In the story of John Robinson we pass from dungeon to
exile, thence across the Atlantic to the romance of the West,
for it is also the story of the " Pilgrim Fathers." But we
have yet some stay in England. "Theology rules there,"
says Grotius, two years after Elizabeth's death, and Green
avers that " the Bible was the one book which was familiar
to every Englishman." "The whole nation became a

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Church." All the currents of the day streamed towards
Puritan Calvinism and Separatism. Long pent up by Tudor
stakes, the nation is now expectant, perhaps menacing, for
a widening of its life ; its destiny as a Protestant and advanc-
ing nation quite distinctly cast. James I. meets this England
on assuming its Crown. Strangely lifted into a greatness of
dreams, early there is unpeaceful boding. A Stuart, bone and
marrow, he had often wrestled with Presbyteries, and been as
often worsted. " In God's kingdom you are God's sillie
vassal." This to a King ! But then it was said by a fearless
Scotch Calvinist. How much more agreeable was the kneeling
adulation of English bishops, who assured James that he
spoke with the special light of the Holy Ghost and that he was
the greatest of kings since Christ. As King of the Scots he
had discovered a secret and evolved a maxim, often repeated :
" No Bishop, no King." Once possessed of the English sceptre
he will hold no parley with this arch-enemy of kings — Cal-
vinism— nor with its Puritan brood. " I will make them
conform, or I will harry them out of the land," sums up
his policy. The pastor-leaders of the Separatists were mostly
Oxford and Cambridge graduates, and men of intellectual
distinction. Under the hard stress of persecution some of
these, with their followers, had already fled to the Netherlands
for freedom of faith. The prison doors were now put ajar,
dungeons emptied, and ships filled. The hearts of those still
clinging to home and country were made heavy by this " harry
them out " speech.

" GOD HATH CHOSEN THE WEAK THINGS "

About the last year of the Queen's reign in the town of
Gainsborough a Separatist Church was gathered, with John
Smyth, a Cambridge graduate of winning temper, as pastor.
To worship here William Brewster, of middle age and a
gentleman of family and substance, and John Bradford, a
Puritan youth, communed together in a Sabbath day's journey
of ten to twelve miles, from Scrooby and Austerfield. In about
three years Smyth is in Holland, a victim of " harry them
out." Before this, and by friendly agreement, another church
is cradled at Scrooby Manor House, nigh which touch the
margins of three shires — Notts, Yorks and Lincoln. Here
had mused the fallen Wolsey. Here, in the family home-
stead, Brewster "entertained them when they came, making

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provision for them to his great charge." Probably the wor-
shippers stayed indoors all day to elude spies. As a Cambridge
graduate Brewster knew the ways of these folk ; he had also
lived at Elizabeth's Court, the friend and scribe of Secretary
Davison, whose hand it was that signed the fateful death-
warrant of Mary Stuart. Richard Clyfton took pastoral
charge ; he had been rector of Babworth, hard by ; "a grave,
fatherly old man when he first came (an exile) into Holland,
having a great white beard." Seeking refuge north from
persecution, John Robinson, pastor of the Congregational
Church at Norwich, joins this Scrooby community as teacher.

" HARRY THEM OUT "

Little wot these choice and noble spirits of the wonderful
issue of this lowly beginning. Bradford, of good social
position in England, became the famous Governor Bradford
of the new State of Massachusetts, over sea, and has left a
graphic record of the hardships of this historic church.
Quickly are their faith and fortitude tested. They are
" hunted and persecuted on every side," " clapt up in prison,"
" beset and watcht night and day," " fain to fly and leave
their houses and habitations and the means of their livelihood."
" Harry them out of the kingdom," aye, but first make sure
to " harry." This was easy as pleasant, for the law forbade
emigration without permission. In twos and threes they
attempt to escape to Holland, but are caught and punished.
At the fall of leaf of 1607 they plan an escape altogether.
A ship is hired. They are to embark at Old Boston town,
Lincolnshire. When all are safely aboard the King's officers
board also, and, like fish, they are caught in the heap. The
villain captain had better pay from the Government. Even
women are " rifled and stripped of their money, books and
much other goods." In distress and tears they are huddled
in Boston gaol. The magistrates are kindly as they dare.
The main part get back to Scrooby, though seven leaders are
retained in prison. But faith and freedom is their prayer and
song. They falter not. In the coming spring (1608) a second
combined attempt to sail is made. This time a Dutch vessel
has to meet them at Hull. Stormy weather delays sailing —
the pity of it, for on a day when the billows rest and a boat-
load of men are rowed aboard there swoops upon the scene
" a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns
and other weapons." The captain hoists sail, leaving wives,

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children and goods in the hands of rabble soldiery on shore.
Yet worse, the separated families are soon bowed in a deeper
mutual anguish of heart, for an awful storm rages in wild
fury. For fourteen days the emigrants on ship are faced
with a bitter expectation of death. At last they are safe
in the " desired haven," and the first band of the " Pilgrim
Fathers " steps on foreign soil. Of those behind, some escape
in one ship, some in another ; in couples and little groups
they are dropped at this port and that. Finally there is
much reverent joy at Amsterdam when the old Scrooby
friends give the kiss of an all-round greeting once more.
And what stories of perils by sea and privations by land are
told ! Robinson, Clyfton and Brewster " were of the last,
and stayed to help the weakest over before them."

At Amsterdam, that Protestant city of refuge, the emigrants
joined the community of the English Separatists, now num-
bering about 300. Imagine the quick throb of earnest life
and high purpose of these exiles, truly a " Peculiar People,"
and of more than twelve tribes, for they hale from thirty
different counties, mingling their dialects in common greetings
of mutual consolation, hope and cheer, each filled by the same
sacred call. AH are patriots, many of them scholars, the
elect of England for the shaping of her destiny. They form
a little nation of every trade and profession. Their pastors,
Francis Johnston and Henry Ainsworth, are eminent Univer-
sity men ; we are told the latter " had not his better in the
Hebrew tongue in the University, nor scarce in Europe."
Yet it was not a Church of perfect saints , there were quarrels
over trivialities of personal dress.

Disputes arising, John Robinson with his Scrooby Church
moves on to " Leyden, a fair and beautiful city of 100,000
souls." Here, settled (1609) over his flock, Robinson becomes
the true pastor and friend. The church is nurtured in the
strong meat of the faith. In the Divine Providence it is
his high privilege to mould men into the greatness of a great
adventure and for a noble quest. He is equal to the task —
unspotted, godly, lovable, of acute and solid judgment, an
expert disputant, and a scholar of extensive erudition.
Leyden University accords him the distinguished honour of
making him a member. He becomes " most dear " to them.
He possessed that secret of life — the supreme virtue of giving
off a perfume of affection. Perhaps here I may best intro-
duce a few biographical facts. John Robinson was born in

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1575 at Sturton-le-Steple about five miles from Gainsborough.
He first comes in view as a grave stripling of seventeen at
the portals of Cambridge University. Here in every college
hall and quadrangle a brisk hum of religious excitement goes
strong. Men as eminent in learning as in preaching speak
bold and strange things even from the pulpit of St. Mary's.
The Puritan tide is in a breezy flow and Robinson's plastic
spirit is potently moulded by these forces.

STRUGGLE, SACRIFICE AND HONOUR

He owns to his " personal conversion " at this time. He
assumes clerical functions in the national Church. He first
becomes a Puritan only, then passes through deep waters of
struggle and conviction which lead to scruples as to conform-
ing, thence to suspension and sacrifice, into separatism — sacri-
fice, indeed for he is M.A. and a Fellow of his college and later
B.D., with the fairest prospects. Baylie, a bitter Scotch
opponent of the Independents, is constrained to say, " Robin-
son was a man of excellent parts, and the most learned,
polished, and modest spirit that ever separated from the
Church of England." At Norwich, shepherding his small
flock of recusants, " he is worthily reverenced by all the city
for the grace of God in him." In Leyden he is put forth by
the University as Calvinist champion in doughty tourneys —
one of three days duration with the famous Arminian, Epis-
copius. Robinson comes off in triumph. In all, though
feared for his prowess, he is endeared for his knightly heart
of unfailing courtesy. He was also chosen a member of the
great Synod of Dort.

HIS WRITINGS AND DEATH

He soon takes rank as an author. Over sixty essays
we now possess, with sundry letters, unpolemical, besides
numerous others controversial. I have been dipping through
a volume of these to learn of them first-hand, and most profit-
able reading I have found them. Truly, Robinson was the
Father of "The Pilgrim Fathers." Reflecting the man,
they are strong, acute, pithy, broad, and serenely gracious,
expressed in clear and forceful diction, ever controlled by
a Christian charity rare at the time. They abound in scholarly
references to the Fathers and ancient writers. To the brethren
there is much of inspiration, but more of sweet consolation,

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as if tears were never far away. Perhaps more than any man
of the period he possessed the spacious outlook and prophetic
cast. Seventeen years an exile, five years after his flock
were separated by the wide seas he was taken of an " inward
ague," and died after a week's fevered sickness, March I, 1625,
aged fifty. Beloved by his people, honoured in a distinguished
city, his bones were laid in the ancient cathedral church,
the obsequies, it is said, being attended by University and
city dignitaries. He was married, and we know of two sons
whose descendants still bear honourable record in New
England.

For ten to eleven years the Leyden Church under the lead
of Pastor Robinson prospered in grace and sweet amity —
" That which was a crown unto them," says Bradford ;
" they lived together in love and peace all their days," all
" difference " " easily healed in love," " until with mutual
consent they removed to New England."

Edward Winslow, a young English gentleman on travel
through Leyden, is so impressed by the unwonted sight of
this church of apostolic pattern, that he casts the lot of his
life with them, even sailing with the Mayflower. He writes :
" I persuade myself never people on earth lived more lovingly
together and parted more sweetly than we, the church at
Leyden, did." For parting came.

HARPS UPON THE WILLOWS

How the emigrants had lived on their first landing in
Holland the ministering angels only know. Probably the
Amsterdam church, when Robinson joined it, had a half-
dozen university graduates among its communicants. We
know some of these lived on 6d. and gd. a week, with some
roots, and turned porters to earn an honest copper. The
members were of sundry crafts, but most were farm workers.
Even in Holland the English hierarchy continually plotted
to the hurt of the exiles. In their new home there was little
scope for labour. In time their sons were enlisting, and their
daughters intermarrying with the Dutch. Liberty of worship
they thankfully enjoyed, but none of preaching their evangel
outside themselves. The example of Dutch morals was hurtful
to their young. Renewed war with Spain was looming.
And after all they were in a strange land and under foreign
laws. They prayed with their chamber window open " to-
wards Jerusalem." Sometimes they could but " hang their

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harps upon the willows and weep when they remembered
Zion." After " seasons of fasting and prayer " a portion
decide to seek a freer home.

The spirit of nationhood as well as of liberty glowed in their
hearts, and the risk that the blood of their children should be
lost in that of the Dutch was not to be borne.

There was yet even a nobler impulse. Bradford tells us
of " a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good
foundation for the propagating and advancing the Gospel
of the Kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world,
yea, though they should be only as stepping stones unto
others for the performing of so great a work " ; that is,
these elect souls already exiles of liberty, with visions of
becoming pilgrim founders of a new homeland of freedom,
were also inspired by another " great hope " to be the founders
of English Christian Missions.

First thoughts turned towards the West Indies, but were
dropped from fears of the climate, and the dreaded Spaniard.

For several years negotiations were prolonged to settle in
Virginia, the Pilgrims trusting to a wide tract or compound
being assigned to them where they would possess the liberty
they desired. To facilitate success, besides owning assent to
the Articles of the Church of England, they stated seven
articles of confession in which they made large but careful
concessions. Each Church must retain its order of discipline
and elect its pastor. The King was half-willing to consent,
but the Archbishop and the Bishop of London were not.

They had done their best. To this spirit of compromise
they added letters carried direct by their deacons to King
James, couched in simple and affecting eloquence. In their
pleadings we read : " We verily believe and trust the Lord
is with us " to " prosper our endeavours." " We are well
weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country, and
enured to difficulties of a strange and hard land, which yet
in a great part we have by patience overcome." " We are
knit together " in " sacred bond and covenant " to " each
other's good." " It is not with us as with other men whom
small things can discourage or small discontentments cause
to wish themselves home again." Ah ! well it was that the
terrible first winter on the bleak rock of their new home was
veiled from them.

They are urged by friends in London to take the risks
even without the formal authority of the King's seal, and the

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one question now is, Shall they do this ? They decide to lay
the whole matter afresh before the Lord. A day of special
humiliation and prayer is called. The pastor preached from
i Sam. xxiii. 3-4. The sermon ended, one follows another in
wrestling of prayer, in sob and cry to the God of Israel who set
up the " pillar of fire by night," and gave the manna of the
morning. We pray daily — how different the petition when
the soul is wrung under these fateful decisions of life and
death. After prayers they pass into conference. Their
decisions are that only those may sail that freely offer, that if
the majority of the Church elect to sail the pastor goes also,
if a minority, he stays behind; that if the adventure turn out
a failure the emigrants are to be welcomed back, if a success
the pioneers must help the home-stayers in the passage over
sea. The main decision is of solemn import, and as they
wend their wondering way homeward, the shadows of a
February evening drop upon them.

Their God is girding them by a wisdom better than their
own. Yes — they shall find a Canaan in the Great West, but
it shall not be Virginia, for there may lie the way of destruc-
tion. Even while they were debating, news arrived of a
disaster to emigrants bound thither from a sister church at
Amsterdam.

In 1618, 180 had sailed to Virginia, stowed in a ship far
too small ; disease took off the captain and six of the crew,
and the vessel drifted aimlessly, and when at last it touched
land, 130 had perished. Besides a crisis just now came in the
affairs of the Virginia Company, embittered by quarrels of
hostile factions.

Opportunely a Dutch company now offers to transport the
Pilgrims to their settlement of Manhattan, now New York,
and fit them up with cattle and stock. In treating, the chief
stipulation of the emigrants is that they shall be sure of
protection by the Dutch Government. In the end the Stad-
holder rejected the project. But it would seem that before this
rejection, other proposals were moving from England. Ulti-
mately some seventy English " Merchant Adventurers " formed
a company, and offered to finance the enterprise as a business
speculation. The agreement was for a seven year's partner-
ship during which the earnings of the Colonists were to be
pooled in a common purse to be divided between the Colonists
and the Company, but with the proviso that each man
should be allowed two days a week for his personal benefit.

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The Colony was to possess powers of self-government, and
the planters to select their tract of land, the destination being
the mouth of the Hudson.

These articles were signed by both sides, and two were at
once sent over to receive the money. The Pilgrim's goods
and estates were sold and the proceeds cast into the common
treasury, and with all speed the shipping preparations
proceeded.

Their indignation was deep when, as these preparations
advanced, the settlers discovered that without their consent
their chief deputy had agreed not only to the abrogation of
the two days' benefit clause, but also that everything, houses,
land and goods, should be equally divided between the colony
and the Company. Well might they say that the conditions
were fit only for " thieves and bond-slaves." Their agent
alleged that he had no option, one chief " Adventurer " was
crying off, it was these terms or none. Desperate at heart
and weary they perforce sullenly acquiesced in what they felt
to be semi-slavery. But all other doors seemed closed, and
ill omen brooded over the very name of Virginia.

It is mainly the younger and stronger who will sail first,
to find the way — to plough and to harrow. The Speedwell
a craft of sixty tons, will carry them to Southampton where,
for the ocean passage, they will embark on a larger vessel —
the Mayflower.

OH CUSIONHED READER !

No baulking of these stern men ; they had actually sold
themselves (their colony and its yield) into a seven-years
semi- slavery — real enough — to this company of " Merchant
Adventures " for a loan of their ducats, which, added to their
own funds, finance the project. Oh, cushioned reader of this
twentieth century, can thy scaled eyes see into the depths
of the woful bitterness of cost — of this price of Faith and
Freedom — thine, thy boy's — paid by heroes to find whom
"God had sifted three Kingdoms"? Robinson stays in
Leyden with the majority, though his heart sailed with the
colonists. Often he longed to see the promised land, but it
was not to be. Brewster goes as the ruling elder. The
pastor's last sermon to his unbroken flock is from Ezra viii.
21-22. Deep solemnity and emotion reign. I quote a re-
markable passage. He enjoins upon all an open mind for

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truth. " He was very certain the Lord had more truth
and light yet to break forth out of His Holy Word." He
bewailed the Reformed Churches had come " to a period of
religion, as for example the Lutherans. They could not be
drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part
of God's will He had further imparted and revealed to Calvin,
they will rather die than embrace it. So also the Calvinists.
They stick where he left them — a misery much to be lamented ;
for though they were precious shining lights in their times,
yet God had not revealed His whole truth to them, and
were they now living they would be as ready and willing
to embrace further light as that they had received."

The farewell from Delftshaven, Leyden's port, is best
told in Winslow's own affecting words : " At our
pastor's house, being large, we refreshed ourselves,
after tears, with singing and psalms, making joyful melody
in our hearts as well as with the voice, there being many very
expert in music, and indeed, it was the sweetest melody that
ever mine ears heard. After this they accompanied us to
Delftshaven, and there feasted us again, and after prayer
by our pastor, where a flood of tears was poured out, were
not able to speak one to another for the abundance of sorrow
to part. We gave them a volley of small shot and three pieces
of ordnance, and so lifting up our hands to each other and
hearts for each other to the Lord our God we departed, and
found His presence with us ; in the midst of our manifold
straits He earned us through."

FAREWELL TEARS

That volley — how human ! — the way with us all — we play
make-believe tricks with the heart in its bitterest anguish.
And so it was that the Speedwell let go her moorings on
July 22nd, 1620. As she heaves off the older ones surely
recall that terrible fourteen days in the North Sea seeking
their first exile. Yet now, with unflinching heart, they face
the whole Atlantic for an exile lifelong.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go —
Far, far ahead is all her seamen know.

The Speedwell steered prosperously to Southampton, where
the ship Mayflower (180 tons) was awaiting them with some few
other kindred spirits from the Fatherland to join the enter-
prise. On August 5th the little barques hoisted sail down

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the spacious reach of Southampton Water, out by the Solent,
round by the silvery Needles into the open, and gave a
lingering farewell to the shores of the old homeland. The
Speedwell springs a leak. She puts back to Dartmouth,
where every plank of her is once more overhauled. On the
first encounter with ocean swell, 300 miles off Land's End,
she is again false to her name, and is declared unseaworthy.
Back to Plymouth. It is this last — the actual embarkation
for New England which is depicted in one of the great windows.
Tired of these vexatious set-backs the Pilgrims now march
eagerly to board their one ship. Brewster only is elderly,
the others are in their manliest strength. Eighteen only
are left behind. The rest are crowded on the Mayflower,
and on September 6th she gallantly lifts her bows for the
West. The fourth embarkation of this determined band —
the fourth chance for the weak ones to flinch. Away, little
ship, a freight of heroes thine ! Every soul unfurls a heavenly
sail — a prayer — and upon each flies the same legend — " For
Faith and Freedom." They have need of their God, need of
their St. George — Captain Miles Standish ; he is there with
John Alden and Priscilla.1

QUEEN AMONG A THOUSAND

A poor mean thing thou, Mayflower, beside the proud
argosies and the valiant prows of battle, which have unmoored
from this Plymouth Hoe. Yet they are forgotten, and thou
remainest — thy name, written in bronze, queen among a
thousand. All goes well as far as mid-Atlantic. Daily the
Word of God and the songs of Zion rise as sweet incense to
heaven. There are terrible seas in mid-Atlantic. The ship
is now buried by trough and billow, now lifted on scudding
foam and with bare poles chased by equinoctial gales ; a
main beam is buffeted out of place. A passenger has miracle-
luck of a big screw in his locker; it is driven home to its
fullest grip, and by further aid of stout prop the situation is
saved. The timid now shrink. " Onward, though we die,"
say the large majority, and onward she dips and heaves.
A world is compassed within the tiny ship. A man overboard

1 In Longfellow's poem, " The Courtship of Miles Standish," the
characters and names arc real. The names of Miles Standish and John
Alden, and also of Priscilla's father, William Mullins, are early signatories
in the memorable Covenant of Government, made in the cabin of the
Mayflower.

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is saved by the grace of a trailing rope — there is a burial at
sea and a child is born. The same number of souls step on
shore at New Plymouth as left the shore of old Plymouth.
On those long October and November nights one may well
imagine Pilgrim couples pacing the deck in pensive mood
looking at the lonely stars above, and at the dark deeps be-
neath, and thinking either hardly less known than the
home they were seeking beyond. The ship is blown away
from its destination, the Hudson river, and land is first sighted
off Cape Cod. They are weary, and disease is appearing.
After an exploration and survey of the coast in the ship's
shallop they select a spot by the banks of a stream flowing
fresh from the inland lakes. The Mayflower anchors in a quiet
harbour : one hundred and two Pilgrims land upon a rock —
Plymouth Rock it shall be. They " fall upon their knees and
bless the God of heaven," says Bradford, "' who had brought
them over this vast and furious ocean and delivered them from
all its perils and miseries." It is the nth day of November,
A.D. 1620. A new seal is opened in heaven — a New England,
a new world, a mighty nation, are born. A new age begins
on earth of immeasurable and benignant potency.

" And He brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now
towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number
them ; and He said unto him, So shall thy seed be." " So
shall thy seed be ! " Ah ! but at the end of that dread first
winter were it not rather like wasted heroism to many a
sorrow-bowed " pilgrim," for half the hundred colonists
rested in an exile's grave.

" God has sifted three kingdoms, to find the wheat for this planting,
Then has sifted the wheat, as the living seed of a nation.' '

Such is the mystery of the ever-continuing ways of God
to man : " Yesterday, to-day and for ever."

An American writer says : " Their descendants, direct
and collateral, may number a million. They are found in
all States of the Union, and among Christians of every name.
By them the heroic Pilgrim ancestors have been transfigured ;
their story has been embalmed in art and poetry, and kept
alive in monuments and celebrations. Descent from a
Pilgrim father or mother is like a patent of nobility. New
England societies, Congregational clubs, and churches of
many names from Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate annually
recount their merits and retell tneir story. In all lands where

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

the English tongue is sweet to the ear their name is honoured.
Their fame has gone throughout the world, and their glorious
testimony to the ends of the earth."

Here, in strict sense, perhaps, my story ends, but the last
sailing of the Mayflower from English shores being the scene
of one of the largest windows, and the issue of it of such vast
import in human history, I am sure I anticipate the reader's
wish in offering the briefest summary of the early years of
subsequent history of the Pilgrim Fathers and also of the
growth of New England.

Let us first take a quick glance at the English exiles of the
past. We learned how Tindale, with many others, must
flee their country, he to print his Bible. In the Marian
persecution the central and favourite city of refuge for our
countrymen was Geneva. It was a city and a time of mar-
vellous intellectual and Reformation energy, and of revelation
of the things of the Spirit, Protestant, Puritan and Calvinist,
with a developing bias for a Presbyterian form of Church
government. The great French theologian, Calvin, was
then also a resident exile. The reader may have been im-
pressed by the curious fact that the British exiles discovered
closer affinities with French and Swiss Protestants in Switzer-
land than with German Protestants in Germany. This was
among the results of the pitiful failure to agree, when Luther
and Zwingli met in conference at Marburg. From Luther's
hovering mist of sacrament arianism and lack of clear vision
at that moment, German Protestantism suffers to this day.
There is a state paper of 1572 which proves that there was a
serious idea of an English Puritan settlement in Ireland.
It did not, however, capture Elizabeth. Lord Morley, I
believe, hazards the opinion that had the Puritans then gone,
we might have been saved the legacy of our Irish trouble.
Later was too late. Abroad, Amsterdam in the Low Coun-
tries seems to have offered the most sympathetic atmosphere
and cordial welcome. In 1581 we read that Robert Browne
and his church fled from Norwich to Middelburg. When the
Scrooby Church arrived at Amsterdam, already two churches
of Independents, with a sprinkling of Baptists, had found
shelter there.

In one sentence I must pass by those English emigrants,
who sailed from the Downs on New Year's Day in 1607 for

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Virginia. As marsh willow is to the oak, so were these to the
Pilgrim Fathers.

There were one hundred and forty-three of them, mostly
gentlemen- home- failures, and lazy ne'er-do-weels. Two
years later five hundred more followed, and Captain John
Smith described them as " unruly gallants," '• packed thither
by their friends to escape ill destinies." The description
sounds familiar three hundred years later. Suitable clerical
monitors accompanied them, and it was ordained that at the
tolling of the bell all must repair to Church even on working
days, on pain of whipping or the galleys. For persistent
Sunday neglect the penalty was death. Hobson's choice,
however, was their best monitor as they seemed to have
mended their ways somewhat, yet their feckless ease cost
them an awful price, for in March 1622, three hundred and
forty-seven of them, men, women and children, were massacred
by Indians.

Returning to New Plymouth, a novel situation presents
itself, the Pilgrims' Adventurers' Company have no Charter
rights in the parts where they have put in port and can give
none. Absence of this authority is unexpected, and liberty
from it carries dangers, for may not anyone now go his own
way of gain and repudiation ? The leaders discern the
peril and call a conference of adult males, and in the cabin
of the Mayflower the memorable compact is signed
which later formed the basis of the constitution for the
infant Colony.

The delays through the quaking timbers of the Speedwell
throw them too late for the growth of food stuffs and also into
the thick of the cold, rainy and frosty seasons. They first
set to work and build a common shelter house twenty feet
square. They then divide themselves into nineteen families
and fall to building houses. The first is needed for a hospital
for the sick ; by February, thirty-one of these have died. Soon
after their first landing, a shower of Indian arrows had scared
them into the realities of their new home, and the howling of
wolves disturbed their nights.

Much as they loved peace, it was soon clear that a military
band must be formed under Captain Miles Standish. They
built a platform — Fort Hill — and on its top planted their
five cannon, commanding all the approaches. Later the
church was erected here, " a large square house with flat
roof," " solid, substantial, of timber rough-hewn from the

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firs of the forest," and the guns again stood guard from the
roof. The building served as church, town hall and fort.

In April the Mayflower makes ready to lift anchor for the
old home. With wistful eyes and " swelling hearts " the
Pilgrims watch the topmost masts dip from sight. Since
she bent her sails landwards, but six short months past, there
is a changed and sadder world for them. Yet not one returns
with the ship, though the new land has stricken their lives
with sores never to be healed. There, upon the brown hill-
top, " the hill of death," half a hundred dear ones lie buried,
their graves flattened as the common earth lest the Indians
shall learn of their weakness.

" Much endeared to them all, as something living and
human," is this Mayflower ship of wood. With her will go
" all hope of escaping." They fall down and pray; and as
they prayed their dead ones " seemed to awake in their graves
and join in the prayers that they uttered." They arise
comforted and take courage.

In times of danger they can dispatch no galloping messenger
to a civilized race for help, for the nearest whites are five
hundred miles to the north in Nova Scotia, or five hundred
to the south in Virginia.

I have said little of happier days, but the glory of summer
leaf and flower came, and accompanied with the music of
running brooks. There were other sweet idylls of love than
that of John Alden and Priscilla — " old yet ever new and
simple and beautiful always."

There were other maidens like " Bertha the beautiful
spinner." Children are born and play, and mothers spin
at the wheel and sing for them. How quaint their names !
Besides Priscilla and Barbara, Phcebe and Patience, Prudence,
Faith, Hope and Charity, we get Mercy, Fear, Deliverance
and Consolation. How pathetically suggestive ! each denotes
a solemn experience. Slowly travels the news to them ;
King James had been dead a year when they knew.

In November, 1621, the ship Fortune arrives with thirty-five
emigrants, mostly from Leyden. She took back cargo value
£500, which was captured by French pirates. At the close
of 1623 about one hundred and eighty settlers survived out of
two hundred and twenty-three who had landed at New
Plymouth. These form the stock who may be classed as
" The Pilgrim Fathers." Secret spies were not unknown
among the last English batch, who with underhand

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manoeuvring by home letters sought for imposition of
episcopacy. Some unfit ones were promptly shipped back at
the colony's expense.

How different the character and motives of our Pilgrims
from those of the early Virginian settlers ! The great civil
war of two-and-a-half centuries later between North and
South — Virginia Land and Pilgrim Father Land — was but
the natural growths of these plantings. Perhaps it is worth
noting that the Pilgrims sailed without an ordained minister
among them, the best of all proofs that their religion depended
not upon man or ceremonies.

They sought not gain or caste, theirs was a nobler quest ;
that of a fuller life for the conscience and soul in worship.
To them alone, as pioneers to the West, belongs this unique
honour. Yet pioneers only, for their feeble numbers and
slow growth could never have overcome the Indians, expelled
the Dutch and French powers, and saved a vast continent for
British traditions and speech. This was the work of the
larger New England which, with all her faults, became and
continued to be the watch dog of liberty and the home of
the oppressed.

The Pilgrims, I have said, built their log church on the
crest of the hill, and set their cannon on the top. Captain
Miles Standish at several perilous junctures drilled his men and
kept them on sentry night and day. After the news of the
Virginia massacre they spent weeks in stockading the settle-
ment from the shore in a strong palisade with four flanking
bastions.

The Captain, with splendid daring, accepted challenges
from Indian enemies, and defended tribes whom they had
made friendly allies. Brewster stood for the missionary
spirit and peace, and their policy with their Indian neighbours
was, on the whole, one of trifling bloodshed, sagacious states-
manship and enduring peace, and their example always
Christian, effective and salutary. These faithful and able
leaders are seen as foremost figures on the window.

Elder Brewster the cultured, courtly, Puritan gentleman,
" covered with snow but erect." William Bradford the long-
time honoured governor of the Colony and its graphic
historian. Captain Miles Standish, I repeat, veritably their
valiant St. George. " Short in stature he was, broad in the
shoulders, deep chested with muscles of iron." Edward
Winslow, gentleman, their brave and winsome ambassador

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to the Indians, who in peaceful mission made nought of
scalping-knife perils, and Dr. Fuller, a skilful physician
and gentleman of birth.

For a while hunger and privation were the lot of the May-
flower planters. Work was the best medicine for their sorrows,
nor will the stomach tarry too long on tears. Often they
went to bed with no sight of food for the morrow. We read
of Brewster offering grace over his wooden plate of boiled
clams and cup of water. There were droughts and famines
and many times of fasting and prayer ; tiresome and serious
difficulties, too, to overcome with new comers, needing much
Christian wisdom and patience.

To some few of the baser sort of these who had come out
from England with meaner motives and rosier dreams, the
earliest colonists, with their begrimed patched clothing
and faces weathered and pinched, seemed as guys, and after
an Indian fight or two and a taste of colonial life, they did
the best thing in shipping themselves back at the first chance.

The simple communistic life of the first two years broke
down, and was modified, and it must be owned with far greater
yield of labour and crops.

Meantime in Old England the sharp goad of tyranny
wielded by the King and Laud is exasperating the best strain
of English life. They discern with alarm and dread the
whole power of the Court and the inner executive of Church
and State, by secret means or open, working to effect in
their own words, " a change of our Holy Religion more precious
unto us than our lives and whatever this world can afford."

Numbers turn their eyes to the West and behold the vision
of a New Jerusalem. Between 1628-9 and 1640, hundreds of
ships sail with Puritan colonists.

They are not Separatists like their English brethren already
there. They are at pains to make it plain that, while Puritans,
they are loyal conforming members of the Protestant Church
of England. The distinction is vital, and the reader should
never forget it in perusing these Stories. While holding a
difference of principles upon the expediency of a State Church,
a liturgy and bishop or presbytery, they, in subsequent
years, practically assimilated their worship to that of New
Plymouth ; the surplice, even the Book of Common Prayer,
were in the main discarded. They claimed also and practised
the conduct of Church government without Bishops. Indeed
they grew identical with their Separatist friends in the great

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fundamentals : (i) in requiring for admission to Church
membership and privilege the personal confession of a change
of heart and of its proof by pure life ; (2) in maintaining,
that in each separate community of Christians should dwell
the power of its own discipline.

Between the arrival of the Mayflower and the year 1640,
24,000 English Puritans had settled in New England. Laud
had now fallen, and the exodus stopped, and for a hundred
years there was no further emigration of moment.

Four separate colonies grew into being, and these, always
good friends, in 1643 confederated under the name of
" The United Colonies of New England," and were the first
Federal Union on the American Continent.

In the 26,000 settlers there were ninety University men,
three-fourths being from Cambridge. There were high-
souled women and men of gentle birth, along with wealthy
merchants of commerce, who had left homes of luxury.
There were sturdy Puritan farmers, and large traders, all
braving exile from the same lofty motives. Were there ever
such emigrants ? They were worthy indeed to be the founders
of the great home of liberty.

They were the uncles and cousins of Cromwell's Ironsides,
and the fathers of the later generation, who wrung for them-
selves complete independence from the blind tyranny of an
English King.

I close with a remarkable testimony which I take from
" Essays on the Sacred Gospel," by Harnack. He declares :
" Lutheran Protestantism produced nothing to be compared
with the spectacle of refugee communities of the Reformed
Church, Presbyterians in Scotland, and Huguenots in France.
The Puritans, indeed, who founded the States of New England,
were for whole generations a standing proof that a community
in which religion and morality are as powerful as law is possible
upon earth."

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" Guided by faith and matchless fortitude.
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed "

MILTON.

VIII
OLIVER CROMWELL

INSCRIPTION.— Lord Protector of England. Saviour of his
Country — her civil and religious liberty.

SCENE. — Stands in kingly pose, in full military dress ; with search-
ing, almost menacing look, he rests a hand on his sword-hilt.
Behind the soldierly form is a view of the old House of Commons,
Table, Mace, etc. An eager cherub, with both hands, offers a
sword as a symbol of his prowess.

In " Cromwell's Place in History," by S. R. Gardiner, we
read : " With Cromwell's memory it has fared as with our-
selves. Royalists painted him a devil. Carlyle painted him
as the masterful saint who suited his peculiar Valhalla. It is
time for us to regard him as he really was, with all his
physical and moral audacity, with all his tenderness and
spiritual yearnings, in the world of action what Shakespeare
was in the world of thought, the greatest, because the most
typical Englishman of all time. This, in the most enduring
sense, is Cromwell's place in history. He stands there, not
to be implicitly followed as a model, but to hold up a mirror
to ourselves, wherein we may see alike our weakness and
our strength."

How shall I begin ? How go on and end about this man,
Oliver Cromwell ? Why write at all ? Why, indeed !
Are there not Green, Firth, Morley, Harrison, Gardiner, and
others ? Are their bright pages not better far than my pale
scribblings can be ? Aye, as the east is far from the west.

I am a shameless robber from these, but then, so
are the mightiest scribes of history from each other. My
special line is the abstraction of the fine jewellery of fact from

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Oliver Cromwell

my victims, to be reset to my own style and needs. And
truly, I dare not ignore Oliver. Behold his soldierly form,
central among our great ones ; he alone with weapon of
blood. In kingly pose, he rests a hand upon his sword,
flings a menacing gaze at one, and demands his due among
his comrades.

Consider well this Englishman — Cromwell. The Royalists
not only had a high principle to fight for — loyalty — but also,
what is much more, its visible embodiment in the person of
the King. Parliament on its side had little more than dim
abstractions. Oliver lifted these into a living principle —
liberty. He transfused this principle, as a sacred passion,
through every squadron of his model army — his own creation —
— " men with a conscience " whom he led to scores of battles
and who, in their godly prowess, never lost one of them.
Consider this man, I repeat ; who is he ? An obscure farmer-
squire as innocent of war, of its arts and drillings, its cam-
paigns, stratagems, manoeuvres and tactics, as was his cowman
Hodge.

" I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in consider-
able height nor yet in obscurity," said the Protector to one
of his Parliaments.

In 1494 Morgan Williams, whose family hailed from Gla-
morganshire, married Katherine Cromwell, sister of Thomas
Cromwell, later Earl of Essex, the Reformation Minister of
Henry VIII. This Katherine's son, Richard (the Wily) took
his uncle Cromwell's surname. He helped his uncle in his
monastery campaigns of suppression and hangings of rebellious
abbots and monks. The Priory of Hinchinbrook, near
Huntingdon, and the rich Abbey of Ramsey, with other fat
possessions, fell to his lot in that grand spoliation. At the
King's espousal to Anne of Cleves there was a grand tourna-
ment on May Day, 1540. Richard Cromwell was one of six
champions who rode forth with sword and lance, and main-
tained the honour of England against all comers. His
prowess won him renown and high favour with the King, who
made him a knight. Groaning in blank disappointment with
his wife, Henry, in a fit of high Tudor temper, struck out all
round, and Thomas Cromwell, as chief victim, was led to the
Tower block. Sir Richard, however, kept in the King's
countenance to the end, and died in 1546, much increased in
honours and lands even since his uncle's fall. Sir Richard's
son Henry built Hinchinbrook House, a palatial edifice.

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Here Elizabeth was received in stately pageant. She knighted
Henry, and he became Sheriff of Huntingdonshire four times.
He passed as the " Golden Knight." His heir, Sir Oliver,
was not less lordly, for with reckless splendour and pomp he
entertained James I. four times, and wasted his substance.
He was M.P. for the county during eight Parliaments. The
Golden Knight, Sir Henry Cromwell, had a younger son,
Robert, who was father of Oliver the Great. Robert
inherited a fortune of £300 a year (equal to £1,000 now).

OLIVER'S MOTHER — HIS BIRTH AND EDUCATION

He married in 1591 a young widow, Elizabeth Lynn,
daughter of William Steward, of Ely, of good family and good
estate, a woman of sterling and lovable character. Her great
son lavished his honours on her to the end. Our Cromwell
was born at Huntingdon on April 25th, 1599. He was the
fifth of ten children, and the only son who battled through
infancy. Around the lad Oliver wonderful stories gather ;
dreams of greatness and crowns, a story of an ominous spurt
of Royal blood, drawn by Oliver's fist from Prince Charles's
nose, during a visit of King James at his uncle Oliver's.
While these are doubtful, certain it is he was early a pupil
of Dr. Beard at the Grammar School of Huntingdon, and
that at seventeen he was admitted a fellow commoner of
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, near by, under Dr.
Ward. Both Dr. Beard and Dr. Ward were able scholars,
sincerely religious, and strongly Puritan. The former
proved to the hilt that the Pope was anti-Christ. In
his " Theatre of God's Judgments " he collects examples
of God's vengeance upon sinners and tyrants of every hue.
The latter attended the famous Synod of Dort in 1619,
was one of the translators of our Bible, and his college was
singled out by Laud as a pestilent nest of Puritanism. So it
was that our mighty Oliver drank and was nurtured upon the
richest meadow milk of the Protestant -Puritan faith. We
should not forget that every word of the Old Testament was
then believed in its raw and awful strength as literally as the
New. Often his young blood must have tingled at the deeds
of Joshua, Gideon and Jephtha, of Saul and David, and his
soul have stood in awe at the stern grandeur of the prophets
—at the wilful sin of the Hebrews and their doom of bitter
exile. After Oliver had been a short year or so at Cambridge,
his father dies, and he must leave to comfort his mother and

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to aid in family affairs. It is not sure that he ever entered
into further studies. In his education he seems to have made
a passable figure of himself. He was no scholar, of course,
and wholly untouched by the gay spaciousness of the Renais-
sance— then, indeed, fast waning. The pity of it — nay, that
I dare not say. His limitation was his strength, and made
him the mighty force of history. It is said that, had Dickens
been a B.A., his novels would never have been written.

Oliver's ideas of education, and doubtless his own acquire-
ments also, are reflected in his advice to his son Richard. He
wrote : " I would have him mind and understand business.
Read a little history ; study the mathematics and cosmo-
graphy. These are good, with subordination to the things of
God. These fit for public services, for which a man is born.
Take heed of an inactive, vain spirit. Recreate yourself
with Sir Walter Raleigh's History ; it is a body of history,
and will add much more to your understanding than fragments
of story. The tree of knowledge is not literal or speculative,
but inward, transforming the mind to it." A glimpse only,
yet showing sound insight of both thing and purpose, and
also revealing somewhat of the man himself.

MARRIAGE — THE HUSBAND AND FATHER

On August 22nd, 1620, he married Elizabeth Bourchier,
the daughter of a wealthy merchant. They loved each other.
She frets for oftener news from him in marching and battle.
She writes him, " My life is but half a life in your absence."
Gently chiding, in reply he concludes, " Thou art dearer to
me than any creature ; let that suffice." These missives
pass some thirty years after the honeymoon.

As a father also Cromwell's love was strong and tender.
Mrs. Cromwell bore nine children. Four sisters and four
brothers grew up ; seven married. There are many descend-
ants, but the last of the male line, Oliver Cromwell, died in
1821, and his daughter in 1849. The romping music of the
home was broken by sorrows and tears. Robert, the eldest
son, a lad of budding promise, died in 1639, and Oliver later
from smallpox. The saddest loss of all, the death of his
beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, in 1658, broke Crom-
well's great heart. In three weeks he himself was dying.
Not among battles were his thoughts. He called for Phil,
iii. 12 and 13 to be read to him. After the last glorious words,
" I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,"

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he said, " This Scripture did once save my life when my eldest
son died, which went like a dagger to my heart ; indeed it
did." He had learned that our human loves of home are
also a sweet burden and discipline, that the peril or loss of
our dearest ones is the hardest test of our faith.

For eleven years Oliver stayed at Huntingdon, and was
elected M.P. in 1628. He then removed to St. Ives, some
five miles down the river, and stocked a big farm ; but he
forgets his cattle at every gathering mass of dark cloud. His
uncle, Sir Thomas Steward, leaves him goodly lands, and in
1636 he removes to the solemn shades of Ely, and there his
home is until 1647. His house becomes a refuge for the
victims of Laud's cruel bigotry, and is ever open to the poor
and oppressed. He stands up for local rights against grasping
landlords and far and wide is known as a defender of rights.
He attends regularly the parish church, and there his children
are baptized.

Cromwell now steps upon the historic stage. Before
exhibiting this larger drama of his life some prelude seems
required.

FLOODS OF HIS JORDAN — CONVERSION

From before 1628 to 1635 he passed through the floods of
his Jordan — that searching and tragic experience of Puritan
conversion. As a movement Puritanism was always more of
a faith than a creed, but as the latter to a seeking soul, think
of its grim face, in essence thus : Before the foundation of the
world God decreed in secret council some to immortal glory,
some to endless and hopeless damnation. Awful creed we
say ! What millions of souls have knelt in agony of torture
at its shrine ! Oh, of which — which am I ? What seas of
mothers' tears ! Oh, to which is my child destined — my own
flesh and blood ? Yet this creed was God's evolutionary
instrument for the age. Its fateful and imperious fascination
awoke the nations, and filled them with heroes ; awoke them
from a doom infinitely more dreadful — sacerdotal death.

Cromwell emerged to clearer light about 1638. A friend writes
of him as " lying a long time under sore terrors and tempta-
tions,"— " kept in this school of affliction till he had learned
the lesson of the Cross, till his will was broken in submission
to the will of God." Religion " laid unto his soul with hammer
and fire." He himself writes of this crisis : " I was a chief —
a chief of sinners. . . Yet God had mercy on me. He

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will, I trust, bring me to His resting-place. . . He giveth
me to see the Light." But for this conflict and victory of
the soul there would have been no ever-victorious Cromwell
of history. It is the master key. In thankful surrender he
continues, " If I may honour my God either by doing or suffer-
ing I shall be most glad. Truly, no poor creature hath more
cause to put himself forth in the cause of God than I have."
That " doing " of thine, Oliver, is to be quickly needed, for
even while thou speakest the shrill war-pipes of the Scots are
sounding.

A TASTE OF STUART KINGS

The reader of our last Story will remember the clamorous
cry in England at the end of Elizabeth's despotic reign of
forty-five years for a wider life, both civil and religious, and the
determination of King James not to grant it, and his " harry
them out " outrages. His first Parliament requested a reform
of the cruel abuses of power by the Star Chamber and Eccle-
siastical Courts. He answered by granting new canons, and
enforcing more rigid uniformity, and driving from the Church
300 of its clergy, the salt of its life. He thrust the same
fatuous spirit and policy into the civil realm by imposing new
Customs duties at his own will, by sending members to prison
for speech within the House of Commons itself, and forbidding
the House free debate. For ten years he maintained a close
alliance with Spain hateful to his subjects. To humour Spain
he had Raleigh beheaded. He put his family's interest
before his country's, and hoped to wed his son to the
Spanish Infanta and her big dowry.

His reign was an unceasing strife, open or guerilla, for abso-
lutism, for twenty-one long years. His son, Charles I., on
assuming the sceptre followed in the same mad course of Stuart
perversity. The father, thanks to his training, was the only
Stuart who understood the inwardness of the Reformation,
and was in his way sincerely Protestant. Charles was prob-
ably as sincerely Roman Catholic. His wife, a girl of fifteen
at marriage, was sister of the King of France, Bourbon and
Medici in blood, and a devotee of the Pope. To the English
this was an odious blend. She possessed splendid energy
and courage, and was a devoted wife, yet his evil spirit.
Through her came the doom of the Stuart race. She knew
her brother held a secret treaty from her husband as part of
her marriage settlement to grant to her co-religionists

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toleration of worship. The wedding was registered in perfidy,
for both he and his father had promised in England that no
such thing should be done. He had observed similar ethics
in his errand of wooing in Spain. At Buckingham's death
Charles actually became his own Prime Minister, levied
tonnage and poundage on merchants, imposed taxes and excise,
invented ship money, made forced loans, imprisoned the rich
who refused, and press-ganged the poor, without sanction of
the Commons. Worse still, judges, upon Hampden's bold
stand, decided the King was right. But then he dismissed
judges who judged against him, and promoted divines who
preached for him. That noble patriot, Eliot, proclaimed in
the House that " those rights, those privileges, that made
our fathers free men are in question." He was done to death
in the Tower. Imbecility was the note in foreign affairs,
and English arms were in disgrace.

POPE LAUD

The English people were even deeper cut to the quick through
the assaults upon religious liberties, by methods, of ruthless
fines and loathsome dungeon which the ecclesiastic always
loved. William Laud became Bishop of St. David's in 1621,
of London in 1628, and Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633.
From James's reign he was an able and masterful figure,
quite knowing his mind and policy. They are summed in
a word — rank anti-Puritan, if not anti-Protestant. He
scrupled at nothing for his end. Laws, old and new, were
strained and bent ; even royal absolutism was ridden and
driven to its utmost. He operated mainly, of course, in the
religious sphere, but now religion and politics were rapidly
becoming one and the same. At Elizabeth's death, at least
two-thirds of the nation were Protestant ; at James's this was
considerably increased.

The English home as we know it was the creation
of Puritanism. The small Geneva Bible had entered
every home and woven itself into the texture of its
closest life. The Bible was now perhaps more widely read
and loved than ever since. The reformed Prayer-book and
the thirty-nine Articles had made the impress of seventy
years or more. The high themes of the soul and its destiny —
Divine Sovereignty and Free Will, Predestination and Final
Perseverance — were discussed by parson and his carpenter
alike. Neal tells us, " You might walk the streets on the

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Lord's day evening without seeing an idle person or hearing
anything but the voice of praise or prayer from churches or
private houses." Popish vestments and practices, with their
medieval atmosphere, had passed out. This ambitious priest
set himself to stem, nay to turn back, within the King's domain
these tidal forces of the Reformation, and to restore, though
not the Pope, yet a Papal absolutism, and with Popish ex-
ternals of ceremony and vestment. The Pope knew the sure
goal of Laud's policy of " Thorough," and secretly offered him
a cardinal's hat. Romish emissaries and Jesuits with Laud's
connivance were now welcomed at the English Court, and some
ninety Catholics were in places of trust there. Perversions in
high life were frequent. Popery in England was lifting,
and not slowly, its dread head. The best life of England
noted these darkening portents with anxious foreboding.
The Bishop of London was installed Chancellor of England —
medievalism with a vengeance. Since the valiant Mayflower
found the land two hundred more ships had sailed to the
West, and 20,000 Englishmen, weary of tyranny at home,
found refuge there.

JESUITS AROSE IN THEIR MIGHT

But abroad still more ominous are the signs. All move-
ments of deep source and great issues move in ebbs and flows.
At the time of its highest swell the Reformation seemed easily
destined to wrench from the Pope the whole of Europe,
excepting his hearth and home — Italy and Spain. But the
Jesuits arose in their might to break its force. A titanic task,
truly. Their majestic plan, their awful daring, their stealthy
patience, brought them partial successes which, in their means,
rank among the marvels and atrocities of history. St.
Bartholomew, the Armada, our Gunpowder Plot, the shamble
horrors of the Netherlands, nets of Court intrigue, smiling
lies, dark plots, crouching assassin, dagger, cup — anything,
everything which Hell could suggest to Hate, were the means,
and held to be justified. Their unholy ethics eventually
checked the success of their success.1

1 The Jesuits were untiring agents in plotting the assassination of
Henry, Elizabeth and Cromwell. No severer condemnation could well
be of the Order and its methods than the terms of the famous Bull of
suppression by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, demanded by the Catholic
kingdoms which had expelled them from their borders. " This step
was necessary in order to prevent Christians," so runs the Bull, " from
massacring each other in the very bosom of our common mother, the
Holy Church."

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Even in England the Reformation was never really safe
until the Revolution. That gory struggle unto death — vitally
between Catholicism and Protestantism — the thirty years'
war in Germany was turning its fair cities into black ruins.
English Puritans heard these war-drums beat, and followed
the fortunes of battle with eager anxiety, and longing to
help. When the heroic Gustavus fell their hearts sank.
But this prelude, a mere clue, must end. How fascinating
to pursue the story ! A clue only — yes, but Cromwell
and his comrade members of Parliament were spectators of the
open field of this huge, this portentous unrest, when they met
at Westminster in 1640. The King had now ruled eleven years
without a Parliament. He had told the Commons in 1626
that " Parliaments are altogether in my power for their
calling, sitting and dissolution ; therefore, as I find the fruits
of them good or evil they are to continue or not to be." A
genuine verse of Stuart gospel. Not even now would Parliament
be called ; only not a peg can he stir for want of money. In
his shifts he has put up peerages for sale and debased the
coinage. During his embarrassed reign fifty-six peerages
are bestowed. The office of Master of the Rolls he sold for
£15,000. £600,000 is the ordinary revenue, and there is now
£1,200,000 of a debt. He has begged for loans from Spain
and France ; not a coin will they lend him. Under this
stress the Short Parliament is summoned. Cromwell is re-
turned for Cambridge. He stamps and stammers in maiden
speech fury. In noble passion, the House, instead of voting
supplies, thunders forth its three famous resolutions against
Popery, Arminianism and unconstitutional exactions by the
King in tonnage and poundage. In an angry fit, Charles gives
it its quietus after a life of twenty-one days.

How blows the wind in Scotland now ? " No Bishop, no
King," repeated King James, and both King and King's
son, on to the present, had harassed the soul of the Scot by
attempts to fasten on him the yoke of prelacy and " Popish
rags," and now Laud imposes a service-book after his own
heart upon the Church of Scotland.

On July 22nd, 1638, opens a stirring drama of memorable
scenes. Jenny Geddes hurls her magical cutty stool at the
head of the " false loon " who first reads from the service book
in St. Giles's. In a passionate flame the stalwarts rush to
Grey Friars churchyard, and upon the gravestones of their
sires seize the quills and pledge their blood to stand by the

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Covenant. Charles retorts, " I will die rather than yield to
their impertinent and damnable demands." To quell the sons
of Knox he asks money and men from the Pope. His Holiness
knows better. By May, 1639, ne *s at t^e border with
20,000 men of a sort. The Scots are there, too, with equal
number, better led and fed, angered and eager to defend
the sacred heritage of Knox. Their banners wave " For
Christ's Crown and Covenant." The King quails, makes the
treaty of Berwick, promises everything " to gain time until
I may be ready to suppress them." The Scots are fooled, and
return. So ended the first "Bishop's War." In August,
1640, another army is moving north, but again the Scots bar
the way, and again the King makes truce. But he has played
with fire — the great Civil War has in truth begun. Battle has
been joined. The Scots are in England, the King's ways and
wiles are unmasked and sixty king's men lie slain at Newbury.
There is a cry for Parliament. In extremest straits the King
calls it. The Court struggles to fashion the election ; all is
in vain. Cromwell again comes for Cambridge. The famous
Long Parliament now assembles, November 3rd, 1640, and
lasts thirteen years.

DOWN WENT THE STAR CHAMBER

In England neither party wished for war. Prolonged
declarations and counter declarations to the nation were made
by both. I make no pretence to trace the maze of nice argu-
ings around prerogatives of Crown v. Commons and of the
raging against Bishops, or to tell of the " Petition of Rights."

The vital issues were clear as the sun to all practical heads.
Cromwell himself thus defines them in a sentence : " The
maintenance of our civil liberties as men, and of our religious
liberties as Christians."

Men were looking deep into those historic words, Royalty,
Loyalty, Treason, and were discovering their older and truer
meanings. The Parliaments of England had deposed kings
and set up kings. There was a nobler and more clamant
loyalty than that to a king, and this was not small — fealty
to the constitution, to the nationhood, to the commonwealth,
to the necessities of its expanding genius — its very life,
body and spirit. Yes, the bottom question was life or death
for any sort of national nobleness, not to speak of progression.
Well might Selden cry aloud " Liberty before everything."
So then, this greater loyalty must be paramount, and he who

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conspired against it, be he bishop, noble or king, became the
real traitor. In May, 1642, the Commons issued a declaration
indisputable as fact, that the Government of England was one
of law and order, definite and recognised. True the supreme
right and duty of its enforcement and preservation rested with
the Crown, but there was no right to break it up or over-
step it capriciously. The executive office carried a trust to
fulfil the law and the traditional functions which were not to be
put aside at the arbitrary will of the office holder. It was an
unwonted experience to arraign a king and it was impossible
that the constitution should not feel a strain at some point.

Each generation, to live its own life, must make its own
precedents, and this fighting one of the seventeenth century
was -not exempted. The Parliamentary leaders were great
Englishmen and intensely eager for lawful sanction in all
their doings, but they were not prepared to see the spirit of
the constitution killed by the letter of it. They were not
willing to stand quietly while being robbed of their liberties
through fear of being traitor to the King's person, or of
cries of '• Rebellion the sin of witchcraft." born of the devil
and his brood.

In some of its vital elements the British Constitution,
as we know it, was now being established. The leaders were
dimly feeling their way to our system of Cabinet responsibility.
After the dissolution of the Short Parliament Stafford told the
King that he was now free from all Constitutional chains. The
Commons beheaded him. They did their best to separate
the person of king from the office but Charles would not have
it except when it suited his wiles.

Let me here indicate the sort of authoritative claims for the
king which they had to combat. In 1640, after the King, in
haughty haste, had dissolved the Short Parliament, Convoca-
tion sat to deliver judgment upon the situation. In outrage
of all constitutional precedent it solemnly passed and put
on record the following Canon concerning the regal power,
that " The most high and sacred order of Kings is of divine
right, being the ordinance of God Himself founded in the
prime laws of nature." " Under any pretence whatever "
to resist, " whether directly or indirectly," " is cunningly to
overthrow the most sacred office which God Himself hath
established and so is treasonable against God as well as the
King." Further, " For subjects to bear arms against their
king, offensive or defensive, upon any pretence whatsoever

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is, at least, to resist powers ordained of God ; and though they
do not invade but only resist, St. Paul tells them plainly,
' they shall receive to themselves damnation.' " We must
be careful not to identify the Established Church as a whole
with this Canon business. The sinister power of Laud
breathes in every line, and we must not forget that the bulk
of the country clergy were Puritans. Still, only two bishops
withstood the King, and many clergymen, says Green,
" preached passive obedience to the worst tyranny. They
declared the person and goods of the subject to be at the
King's absolute disposal. They were turning religion into a
systematic attack on English Liberty." One was made a
bishop. He had preached before the King and declared
" that he needed no warrant of Parliament to levy taxation
and that to resist his will was to incur eternal damnation."

Among the laity, even among those strongly royalist, there
would be, of course, degrees of qualification of these tremend-
ous claims, but they substantially stated the militant royalist
position, which was sufficiently menacing. Most certainly they
proclaimed the sure, inevitable, operative course if victory
went for the king. Pray observe what this issue of the
struggle meant — not this or that tax without sanction of
the Commons. Not merely the King's puppets on the bench
of justice dispensing injustice and ermined robbery, not alone
the pillory, cruel mutilation, murder by loathsome gaol, etc..
but the destruction, all along the line, of liberty, life, consti-
tutionalism— even, in practice involving Magna Chart a and
the law of Habeas Corpus. " Divine Right to govern wrong "
was indeed the High Church maxim. It was the brazen
dragon of absolutism, claws and teeth ; at pleasure he shall
sleep, at pleasure he shall devour — nay it was rather worse,
for resist him and damnation shall come upon your immortal
soul. The insulted and indignant manhood of the nation
arose in sacred wrath against this travesty of history and
Scripture.

Perhaps here it is pertinent to state that in various
respects the Parliamentary order during the Commonwealth
was superior to ours of to-day. It required neither king nor
Protector to set it going. Oliver was fairly well tied up ;
if he should delay to summon Parliament at its appointed
time, the Lord Chancellor must do it ; if both these conspire,
then county and municipal authorities must proceed to
elections and return members, though no writs had been

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received. The veto of the Protector was suspensory only ;
after twenty days Parliament, if still wishful, could then pass
into law the disputed measure. Perhaps best of all there
was no House of Lords.

It is part of a Puritan's religion that his country should
be well governed. The Commons House now arose in its
own sovereign majesty as the voice of the people ; passed the
Grand Remonstrance, a solemn indictment of the King's
doings through the whole fifteen years of his reign and a
declaration for " root and branch " reform of Monarchy and
Church ; and recalled its ancient power of impeachment.
Wentworth and Laud were both impeached, sent to the Tower,
and later to the block. Sycophant judges and bishops were
impeached. Down went the detested Star Chamber and
High Commission. Prison doors are flung open and patriots
set free — a vast multitude swings them along in triumphant
march, strewing laurel in the way. The House declared all
taxation, exaction of ship money, sundry fines, etc., illegal
without grant of the Commons ; demanded triennial Parlia-
ments, limitation of. power of bishops, and their abolition
from the House of Lords.

NOTHING FOR IT BUT BULLET AND BLADE

The King, alarmed, wobbles and wonders what to do and
takes the wrong plunge, removes the guards around the
House, and dramatically invades it, but on a King's honour
gives security against violence — a Stuart's honour, for the
same day he impeaches Pym, Hampden, Holies, Haslerig
and Strode, and next day perfidiously sends 400 armed men
to arrest them. They escape. He demands their surrender.
Petitioners by the thousand pour into London to support
their representatives. The King's desperate blunder fails.
He installs an obedient swashbuckler in command of the
Tower, and makes great parade of armed cavaliers, provoking
angry bouts with citizen's clubs. Bishops are hustled and
their gowns hang in tatters. Without doubt Parliament
was claiming new powers and securities. It declared these
to be necessary to save the constitution. The King's Minister,
the astute and fluent Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon the
historian) made the most of these new claims.

There were many who, while agreeing with Parliament in its
political demands, were in straits of fear, and with good
reason, as to the serious danger to the Church in the

Oliver Cromwell

impending storm. Never before in English history and
never since have the two institutions and interests of Churcb
and State been so inextricably entangled.

The Queen takes the Crown jewels to Holland and pawns
them for war supplies. A northern port is important, and on
April 23rd, 1642, Charles is at the gates of Hull, demanding
admission, and is refused. On July 6th Parliament resolves
to raise 10,000 men, and appoints the Earl of Essex general.
On August 22nd the King unfurls his standard of war. There
is nothing for it now but bullet and blade.

O ! war, the direst,

The cruellest — when brothers die in hate
One mother weeps for both.

What a sifting and a weighing now ! About 175 members
of the Commons and eighty peers leave to follow the King's
flag. Nearly 300, with 30 peers, stay and stand for popular
liberties. It is a serious business — my head or thine all
round, by battle or block. Quickly there is din of much
small battle, headed by county folk. The King despatches
a troop to Cambridge to take its plate and money.

Largely at his own cost, Cromwell has raised a troop of horse,
stops the King's men and himself captures the valuables,
appraised at £20,000. He also seizes the county magazine,
with other strokes of bold and masterful strategy for which he
is given the thanks of Parliament. While himself a man of
few words he has a way of making others talk, and a keen
sagacity in divining character and discovering secrets. While
strong for discipline he mustered and mastered his men by
personality and inspiration, not by machine discipline. His
name is already locally notable. Fourteen thousand on each
side meet on October 23rd, for the first serious set battle at
Edgehill. The result is dubious, but Oliver is there, and
learns the reason why, and tells his cousin, Hampden.

Says he : "I told him I would be serviceable to him in
bringing such men in as I thought had a spirit that would do
something in the work. ' Your troops,' said I, ' are most of
them old decayed serving men, tapsters and such kind of
fellows ; do you think that the spirits of such base, mean
fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that hav«
honour and courage and resolution in them. You must get
men of spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go,
or you will be beaten still ? " " Excellent," retorts Hampden,

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

" but impracticable." Is it ? Obtaining leave of absence
in January, 1643, off rides Oliver into the eastern counties.
Years later he thus describes the result :

" I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, and
made some conscience of what they did, and from that day
forward they were never beaten — they beat continually."

" Such men as had the fear of God before them and made
some conscience of what they did." In that single pregnant
sentence lay the issue of the whole bloody struggle. It in-
voked a more puissant principle than loyalty to an earthly
king — even to the King of Kings. For two years the Civil
War drags through a drawn duel of waste blood and treasure.
The titled Commanders of the Parliamentary forces, Essex
and Manchester, though brave, were incompetent, and also,
Cromwell declared, " afraid to conquer." They feared victory
as much as defeat. They allow advantages to slip by. Oliver
expostulates. The secret slips, too. " If we beat the King
ninety-nine times," says Manchester, "yet he is King still,
and his posterity ; if he beat once, we shall be hanged, and
our children be slaves." " Why," retorts Oliver, 'k did we
take up arms at first ? If so, let us make peace, be it ever so
base." Just so.

No peace yet for Cromwell. He alone sees with sure eye
the way of final victory, and goes at it with might and main,
and unswerving purpose. He has one resolution as a shining
star before him — that the king shall not come out of this war
master. By May, 1643, " he hath 2,000 brave men well
disciplined ; no man swears but he pays his twelve pence ;
if he be drunk he is set in the stocks, or worse ; the counties
where they come leap for joy of them." They are in drilling
time for Winceby battle (October nth). Cromwell leads
them in the van. We are told that " Colonel Cromwell fell
with a brave resolution upon the enemy ... his horse
was killed under him at the first charge, and fell down upon
him and as he rose up he was knocked down again." Colours
and prisoners fell to the Ironsides. This, with other skir-
mishes, was fine training for the fateful and crimson clash
of Marston Moor the next year, where these fellows were
to rout the dashing Rupert, and receive from him the proud
nickname of Ironsides. Hampden falls on Chalgrove Field,
June i8th, 1643. Bristol is captured by Rupert : the whole
of Cornwall goes strong for the King. The year 1643 ended
gloomily for Parliament/ The vital need all along was for

Oliver Cromwell

generalship and strategy on the large, the campaign, scale,
even more than for skilful tactics in actual battle. To this
end the Eastern Counties — the homeland of Cromwell, and,
be it not forgotten, of the Scrooby Church, and the " Pilgrim
Fathers " also — federated into an " Association," and stood
solid as rock against all assaults by Cavaliers. Broadly put,
North and West went for King ; East and South, or a little
over a third of England, for Parliament. The fleet is staunch
for liberty — bad for the King. The New Year, 1644, opens
with new face indeed. The Scots in January cross the Tweed
with 20,000 against the King. Charles counters this by
shipping over his Irish forces. These are beaten off by
Sir Thomas Fairfax, who, with Manchester and Cromwell,
is marching towards York to unite with the Scots; at York is
the Marquis of Newcastle, holding the North for the King,
and pushed back here by the Scots.

BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR

But Rupert is marching too, and flies over the Lancashire
hills to the succour of Newcastle. On July 2nd the armies
face on Marston Moor : for Parliament, English and Scotch,
about 26,000 ; for King, about 18,000. Cromwell is posted
at the left wing with some 2,000 to 2,500 of his " model "
horsemen. Rupert faces Oliver with the flower of the
Cavaliers. The battle line extends a mile and a half ;
infantry in centre, horse on each wing of both sides. " And
now," says an eye-witness, " the sword must determine
that which a hundred years' policy and dispute could not do."
These high stakes of destiny are felt by both, to be settled ere
the sun goes. For hours neither dared the risk. The Puritans
fell to chanting the inspiring songs of David. About five
there is a premonitory stillness, and soon the rival hosts spur
and leap into full clang and cleave of battle. Oliver falls
upon Rupert and routs his first line, but is checked at the
second — the Scots support, and now there is grim, hand-
to hand throttle of blood by sword, pistol, pike and butt.
Rupert's rearmost line breaks, " scatters before them (the
Ironsides) like a dust." But what of the other end of the
field ? A woful sight meets Cromwell's victorious fellows —
the right wing of their horse, led by Fairfax, is cut down, its
centre of infantrv reeling. Nay, one wing of it is in full
flight. Cromwell's genius saves the day ; he takes in the
whole at a glance, re-forms, and with help from the Scotch and

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some English foot sweeps across the moor, instantly wheels
into fighting position, attacks the Royalist rear, and by dusk
the victory is complete. Oliver gets a pistol shot in the neck.
He writes, " God made them as stubble to our swords. I
believe of 20,000 the Prince hath not 4,000 left. Give all the
glory to God." More than 4,000 lay, gashed and stark,
dead upon the moor ; over 3,000 of them had rushed to
battle shouting " For God and the King ! " To the King a
crushing defeat.

THE NEW MODEL, BATTLE OF NASEBY

But the gain of Marston Moor is nearly undone by feeble-
ness and jealousy among leaders and the need of strong and
consistent policy in directing the war. Cromwell and others
speak out in indignant voice. Parliament determines to
raise an army of 22,000 upon Cromwell's pattern, and the
New Model army springs into being. In divine elevation of
motive and aim, never in this world were soldiers their equal
and none their superior in going forth conquering and to
conquer — " men with a conscience in what they do " ; an
army based on faith and discipline ; Bible warriors, led by a
veritable David — the most wonderful soldiers since the days
of the fighting Hebrews. Cromwell claimed they were never
once beaten. In some sixteen months the Ironsides win over
sixty encounters with the enemy ; take some fifty strong
places ; more than 1,000 cannon, 40,000 arms, and 250 colours.
They are ready for Naseby (June 4th, 1645). About 10,000 on
each side form in battle order. Though Fairfax is chief,
Oliver commands the whole of the cavalry, 6,000 strong.
Space forbids any description. It is a smaller Marston in
brilliant tactics, perilous chances and decisive results. The
battle word for the King is " Mary"; of the Ironsides " God
is our strength." Cromwell again wins, not only for himself,
bat snatches victory from defeat of his left under Ireton.
The Cavaliers are chased -fourteen miles up to Leicester,
pounded and cut to pieces ; 5,000 prisoners captured, with
vast train and baggage, and Charles' private papers, disclosing
treacherous intrigues. No one counts the slain. The King
escapes ; his army is annihilated. It is the last he ever leads.
From castle to castle, town to town, Cromwell and Fairfax
ride fast, strike hard, and in August, 1646, the first Civil
War is over. The King surrenders to the Scots — a wily
proceeding.

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Oliver Cromwell

Parliament had grown dominantly Presbyterian. As the
price of help by Scotland, Pym had accepted the Covenant
for England ; but the army would have none of this Covenant
yoke any more than the prelatic, but demanded full Bible
liberty and toleration all round. At every mess the
Ironsides had thumbed their Bibles in eager debate, and
mainly became convinced Independents and of the " New
England way." With artful insincerity the King pits
one against the other, " and," says he, " I shall be
King again." In the same breath in which he promises
liberty of worship to the Independents he sells their
liberty to the Scots and Presbyterians. There is a
triangular duel. The august name of King still stands
for a deep and mystic force. Religion and politics are
in a tangled twist. It becomes evident the Presbyterian
leaders may snatch the game by agreement with Charles,
ignoring the army — its sacrifice of blood and valour a waste.
Nay, they may even declare the army traitorous. It is a
real peril. For weary months, Oliver vainly goes backwards
and forwards, the ever-sane statesman, the moderating
diplomat. The Commons had outgrown its authority and
touch with the nation. The army was really more repre-
sentative, and organized itself into a political body, electing
representatives to a Consulting Council. It claimed no legal
status, but did claim a voice. Parliament is bent on disband-
ment ; the army growls in mutiny. Some bold, quick,
masterful strokes now change the scene as by magic. On
June 2nd Cromwell joins the army ; the same day a troop of
horse seize the King's person. On the loth is issued the army's
great Manifesto for " settling a just and lasting peace " of
the kingdom, freedom in religion, two years' Parliaments,
and a limited monarchy. This before disbandment. Par-
liament refuses. The army marches into Westminster in
impressive order and array of artillery, drums, trumpets and
crowns of laurel. Parliament now agrees — and again refuses.
Again for months Oliver is in constant negotiation with the
King, now direct. Conservative by instinct, he is no repub-
lican ; passionate for liberty, yet sure a King is best, in loyal
patience he pleads and hopes until his faithful Ironsides
grumble in mutinous wonder. Has their trusted chief become
a hypnotised courtier ? " Traitor ! traitor ! " is heard in
camp — even threats on his life. At last the mask falls ; he
sees the King through and through — it has been all craft and

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trap, shuffle and deceit with the King. Incurable perfidy
streams through his every vein. He disgusts both Parlia-
ment and army. Fierce is the wrath of the Ironsides at this
two years' hideous duplicity. Only blood shall atone. " A
Solemn Sacrament " and a three day's prayer meeting are
ordained — a whole army rises from its knees and goes forth
to war.

" DARWEN'S STREAM WITH BLOOD OF SCOTS IMBRUED " (Milton)

Over the Border there is division, but the Duke of Hamilton
collects a force, the bagpipes now scream for the King and the
suppression of the Independents, and an army (hapless
mothers' sons) of 20,000 marches into Lancashire: blind
Covenant-fanatics, these Scots have made a secret treaty
with Charles, trafficking English liberty for the establishment
of intolerant Presbyterianism in England. " False North !"
Wales flames up for the King ; slumbering fires burst into
blaze. There is a second Civil War, and real danger of anarchy
— Cromwell's dread. He spurs fast, and quiets Wales. He
marches into Lancashire ; falls on the Scots at Preston
(August ijtli, 1648) ; hot and swift as a thunderbolt cuts
them clean in two before they fully awake. This is the vital
tactic of battle, to stop concentration, as they are three to one
against him, and to force the main body south. Then follows
a rude, Hebrew, hacking-down chase of three days. Over
3,000 slainlie scattered in the track, and by mercy 10,000 more
are spared as prisoners. The escaped hide and flee north
in scared, bleared, smeared, bandaged, hobbling remnants.
Hamilton realises now it is "that deil " Cromwell who is at them.
" No peace now," is the cry, " but by a King's blood." On
January 3oth, 1649, the head of King Charles I. drops from
the block, and with its blood went out the life of age-long
feudalism and absolutism from England for ever. The
Restoration was no restoration of these, and the Revolution
but gave to their banishment parchment and seal. The King
died more nobly than he lived ; in death he redeemed to
himself a measure of the respect which in life he had lost. In
June Prince Charles, landing in Scotland, was there proclaimed
King of the three kingdoms. Oliver hunts the Scotch
army, and that marvel of battles since Gideon's — Dunbar,
September 3rd — dismays the Scots. He falls sorely ill, but by
midsummer the North is settled. The Prince is let march to
his doom in England. Cromwell follows.

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Oliver Cromwell

At Worcester the Prince is hemmed in by converging
forces, and crushed utterly. The Ironsides' battle cry is the
same as at Dunbar, " The Lord of Hosts is with us." Triumph
and honour are thrust upon the conqueror. He bears him-
self in all modesty. For nineteen months he sinks himself, one
of a council, and falls to hard, routine work. It becomes
patent that the chaos of disruption can only be coped with
by a new Parliament, and a strong executive head. The
Commons is decrepit ; half are blind pedants, selfish oppor-
tunists, and rigid Presbyterians. It refuses to disband and
renew its life and mandate from the nation. The army sternly
insists that Britain shall reap the fruits of its sowing of blood.
Long negotiation failing, in plain clothes Oliver makes appeal
in the House, in vain. He then calls in musketeers, who
disperse the House, and " take that bauble (mace) away."
In December, 1653, he becomes Lord Protector of the Com-
monwealth. Later he refuses the crown. It is not necessary
to present Oliver Cromwell as the perfect man. His arbitrary
acts (not few) were to him the dictation of the day for his
country's good, never for his own aggrandizement. Worse
than pitiful was the bloodshed in Ireland, but there succeeded
both here and in Scotland a degree of settled prosperity
the countries had never known before.

At this point an impulse arrests me to slacken haste and
stand quietly before this Englishman, perchance to get
closer glance into the heart of him. Pray remember that
while all Englishmen have always known much about kings,
bishops and an Established Church, Puritanism in its height,
depth and compass is so much a thing of the soul that it
can only be justly appraised by one of its own blood. How
shall I, how can I, in my scant space exhibit the true Oliver ?
It is impossible by any tolerable recital of his doings ; I will
mark some very few of his sayings which, if the reader will
be patient lo ponder, will show him deeper into the inward
man than any preaching of mine.

I will, however, first give brief chronicle of a characteristic
deed. When a prisoner of the Independent Army the King's
one dread was the assassin. On the mere supposition of some
Puritan maniac attempting this, Oliver redoubled his watch-
fulness and it is said warned Charles. He also wrote to
Parliament describing such a thing as horrible. True, this
had been the convenient fashion in such cases all down the
medieval centuries and in the whole Papal world. It was not

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

the Puritan way. Cromwell had once declared that if he
happened to meet the King in open battle he would shoot
him like any other man of the enemy. As prisoner,
if the King die other than naturally it shall not be
by such cowardly and hideous devices as assassination, but
as the open, purposeful, solemn act of a nation given judicially.
When Cromwell became Protector the Royalist party (not
surely its better part) requited this treatment by a continuous
plot against his life. Now as to a few sayings.

Major-General Crawford, a Presbyterian, writes to his com-
mander, wishing to dismiss a certain Colonel Parker. Does
he swear, is he drunken or unclean in speech ? If so the
answer had been " Yes — quick ! " He is none of these but
an Anabaptist. In reply the chief banters, — is he sure, etc.,
and then he sternly commands thus : " Sir, the State in
choosing men to serve it takes no notice of their opinions.
If they be willing to serve it faithfully that satisfies." Oliver
applied full grown religious equality where he had power.
He connived at episcopal services though unlawful. The
priests, both Anglican and Roman, were such dangerous pests
in political intrigue that he could not dare what he would.
Consider the following most notable instance. When the
Ironside army made the king prisoner Cromwell immediately
restored to him his episcopal pastors, of whose ministries the
Presbyterian Parliament had deprived him. Just here it is
pertinent to say that he earned discredit with his Council
through his efforts to abate the persecutions of Royalists,
wishing even for an Act of Oblivion.

Lord General Cromwell is in Edinburgh ; the Presbyterian
clergy have deemed it prudent to leave their pulpits and
anathematise the Independents and their preaching colonels
from behind the Castle walls. The " Great Independent "
retorts thus : " Your pretended fear lest error should step
in is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country
lest men should be drunken. It will be found an unjust and
unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon
a supposition he may abuse it. . . The truth would more
appear by your conviction of him. Stop such a man's word
by sound words which cannot be gainsaid." That is — liberty
even with danger, both civil and religious, is better than
slavery with safety. He goes on : " If a man speak blasphem-
ously or to the disturbance of the public peace let the civil magis-
trate punish him." Mark, not the priest. In Oliver's time

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Oliver Cromwell

it was blasphemy to deny the Trinity or the infallibility of the
Bible or to assert the natural humanity of Christ — these are
pure spiritualities, yet shall not the clerics judge. " Notions,"
said he, " will hurt none but those that have them." He
craved for " that real unity which was more glorious because
inward and spiritual."

In March, 1654, the Protector Cromwell issued an invitation
for general prayer. He searches out the essentials and com-
mends them thus : " Do we owe one another more for the
grace of God and for the spiritual regeneration and for the
image of Christ in each other, or for our agreement with each
other in this or that form of opinion ? " " Do we first search
for the Kingdom of Christ within us before we seek one with-
out us ? or do we listen to them that say concerning the
coming of Christ, ' lo here and lo there,' that is in this or that
form of worship or Church government ? Do we not more
contend for saints having the rule over the world than over
their own hearts ? " These are deeply cutting and pertinent
words for some of us in this twentieth century. We see
what short patience Cromwell kept for those who put ortho-
doxy before liberty, or Church forms and dogma before the
Christly image, secrets of the life divine we are but slowly
learning at this day. He took this impatience of theories
and abstraction — this same insistance upon the realities — into
the spirit of his whole Protectorship. To this end he would
knock down and set up, and turn high judges and potentates
of hoary ceremonies aghast. The reader will note the injunc-
tion to his son when at College that " a man is born for public
service." There is a Milton echo in the noble Christian ideal
embodied in the precept.

The Stuarts had dissipated the awe which hung around the
Tudor sovereigns. Puritanism had revealed a new vision of
the mystery and illimitable capacities of the human soul, and
had created a fresh world of hope. Its influence upon the
nation, its literature and social life, and especially upon
character, was immense, and added to this was the quickening
power of a great war. The settlement of the kingdom was
now a more difficult task than even that of the war had been.
Were not kings and bishops the living symbols of law and
order — nay of western civilization itself — and these were gone.

The Protector sought a settlement mainly along three lines
of reform, perhaps four : (i) The Law and its administration ;
(2) Education and the Universities ; (3) " Reformation of

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Manners " ; (4) The Church and Religion. Vigilant atten-
tion was also given to means for extension of trade. He
insisted upon humaner legislation, with ready, cheap, prompt
justice. He set up machinery for overhauling the general
educational system throughout the kingdom, both schools
and universities, granting easier access. He planned a new
University for the North and also for London. Oxford and
Cambridge became " seats of learning more profound and
exalted than had been known since their foundation." Par-
liament allocated £20,000 a year for educational work. In
invading the customs of the people Parliament went beyond
the readiness of the times. It was not content with suppres-
sion only of such debasing exhibitions as bear-baiting, bull-
baiting, cock-fighting, betting, swearing, ale-house debauchery,
etc., but laid hands on more innocent things. In this
crusade of morals vast good was done notwithstanding
its extremes. Cromwell personally did not favour too drastic
methods. He was no sour Puritan frowning on healthful
jollity. He avowed his strong belief that the only sure way
of abolishing beastliness in these customs was through educa-
tion and religion. He himself hunted, hawked and played
bowls like a country squire, while at home he had regular
musical evenings. As regards Church and religion I have
said enough already; his statesmanship was sure, based
upon insight and wisdom, learnt by the observant eye
upon the broad way of humanity and inspired by sympathy
with chequered human experience. He must have a living
legislation and a lifting hope at work among the common
people. He was indeed the people's statesman. He sought
and strove to bring into their homes, as their daily bread, the
blessings of good, earnest, sympathetic government. Charles
Firth, the historian, declares that the Protectorate was the most
tolerant government since the Reformation, and that Crom-
well was the " Greatheart " of his day and country. In
briefest recapitulation we may truly affirm that, under the
opulent and benign strength of his Protectorate, justice, trade,
commerce, education, learning, temperance and religion
prospered. He encouraged science and music, and saved
to England Raphael's cartoons. From the birth of his first
troop he based his army on liberty of conscience, and now
in peace, with a noble insistence, he contended for toleration
to Quakers, Anabaptists, and every crazy oddity of an " ism."
He even protected Catholics, and gave restful asylum to Jews

160

Oliver Cromwell

after expulsion for three centuries. In daily peril from hired
assassin, with kingly mercy he gave life to enemies caught
crouching to take his own. It is the lofty, the unique dis-
tinction of his Court that no foulness came near it ; that it
exacted the same measure of pure life from men as from women.
It was no friend who said, " All over England these were
halcyon days." Under his sway England grew a Power
of first rank. The proudest Court craved her alliance. The
Pope and every tyranny the wide world over quaked at the
gleam of her sword. For the first time in her history she
wrested command of the seas, and wheresoever sailed Blake
with her fleet there waved the flag of civil and religious liberty,
and of hope and succour for the oppressed. On the day of
Dunbar and Worcester, September 3rd, 1658, Cromwell died
in peace. In war, among the mightiest ; in peace, among
the greatest ; illustrious Cromwell, who is thy peer ?

161

a

IX

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
BACKGROUND SKETCH

A thunderous century was this seventeenth for Britain.
Save for twenty months of the infant Oliver, within its span
and upon its turbulent field four of our heroes spent the whole
of their mortal course — Cromwell, Milton, Fox and Bunyan.
It also comprised the full half, and the whole historic part,
of Robinson's career. Watts was born in 1674, ere the heroic
age of Puritanism had passed, was nurtured among its sombre
echoes, and before the century expired his heavenly lyre had
inspired the people with " a new song." Never in British history
was there such jangle and wrangle, such toss, jumble and
mixing of religion and politics. I could not attach this sketch
to one only of these six characters for it pertains to all, nor
could it be repeated for each. The only alternative then was
to present it in this detached form, and still there may be
echoes of repetition.

Injustice, and even persecution, were not absent from the
part of liberty, and afford ground for comment, and properly
so, by historians. If Cromwell could have had his will, Common-
wealth history would have been nobler still. In the army,
when he held unfettered command, he insisted on equal
religious liberty for all. On the same policy, in his civil
administration, he was often at breaking strain with his
council. He convinced Mazarin, the French Prime Minister,
of his sincerity in doing the utmost possible to secure tolera-
tion for Roman Catholics. This, although his life was always
in such serious jeopardy from hired assassins that an elaborate
counter spy-agency, both home and foreign, had to be kept
in vigilant order, and with such success as to amaze and abash
his enemies. The Puritans felt that between the methods

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OLIVER CROMWELL.

A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

of their foes and their own there was a gulf — unholy ; and this
condition of things could not be overlooked when the time
of victory and power came to them in the forties of the seven-
teenth century. But the case of the Puritans cannot be justly
weighed without intimate knowledge of at least one hundred
years of previous history. Of this period the reader of the Stories
will possess some helpful idea ; permit the barest recapitu-
lation. Calvinism was the intellectual son of the Reformation,
of broad brow, and manly prowess. Puritanism was the first-
born and stalwart child of Calvinism. Its further offspring,
the Independents and Baptists, were, by Elizabeth's Protes-
tant bishops, hanged and dungeoned to death by scores;
James, Charles and Laud harried them to exile by thousands,
Star-Chambered them in fines, imprisonments, and horrible
mutilation.

When power changed hands from " thorough " Prelatist
to " root and branch " Puritan, human nature could hardly
in short months or years forget these scars of generations,
or, if this were possible, the late King and his bishops had
left too many raw and bleeding wounds. Why should common
Puritan human-nature be expected to be exalted so high above
Bishop human-nature ? It is notable that all disqualified
Anglican ministers were allowed one fifth of their stipend ;
contrast this with the treatment of the ejected 2,000 of 1662.
The case at first was really one more of forgiveness than of
principles or aught else. Further, the case was not one merely
of religious toleration as standing alone. The heads and forces
of English Episcopacy had deliberately elected to cast in their
fortune with the King — had, without scruple of law, justice,
or mercy, helped him in all his ways. They were abettors
of the King in his claims of divine right to govern wrong and
his assaults on long- won liberties. The case involved the
battle all along the line of civil as well as religious freedom.
Milton could not forgive the bishops, or judged toleration for
the time impolitic. No man lived more capable of equitable
judgment. If so spacious a mind as his stumbled, the world
may settle the question that the fulfilment of the perfect ideal
was impossible to the imperfect heart of man. The Puritans
had vision and insight to apprehend and risk life for enduring
principles ; they were human enough to fail in their full
application to their enemies. They did set marks of vast
advance never approached before. Their opposition to the
English Churchman was not so much because of hi8 worship,

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its forms, liturgies, or even ceremonies, but from dread
of bishop and priest, whom all history convicted as the un-
relenting foes of freedom. Nor really was it the men of the
passing day, but their ideals and principles, which were on
trial, and it is only in the perspective of history that these
can be judged. So judged they stand before the world
triumphant. To-day, as ever, Rome forbids liberty to the soul ;
we know the record of English bishops in regard to English
liberty and mercy since the Restoration. Who can deny that
it is to the children of the Puritans, always the Ironsides, the
saviours and guardians of her freedom, that Britain owes her
onward march of progress ? But this is not all the case.
Contrast the degree of the humane temper, the Christian
spirit shown to opponents during the Commonwealth, with
the eager ferocity of the Restoration — not to speak of respect
to the Tables of the moral Law, and also to the realities and
the whole structure of Christian truth and life.

THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES

The reader may have stood at the west front of Westmin-
ster Abbey and wondered what may be the low, black, wart-
like projection to his right. Its nether regions seem vastly
like an old boneshouse or haunt of ghosts. Its upper floor
of mullions and light is the Jerusalem Chamber. There is no
sign of a way in — that is behind and under the cloisters' gate
where every step is redolent of sequestered reverie and hoary
romance. Within the historic chamber we behold the scene
of battles, which, while not unto blood, were not less real and
grim than Marston Moor. The high dignity of the memorable
Westminster Assembly of Divines (begun July ist, 1643)
is attested by the fact that it was opened by an impressive
ceremonial and sermon in the Abbey — that its members
were enrolled under oath, and that its first home was that
gem of beauty, the Royal Chapel of Henry VII. As winter
neared it removed to the Jerusalem Chamber. It was set
up by the Long Parliament as an Advisory Committee to settle
the kingdom in things religious. It nominally reckoned one
hundred and fifty members, including ten lay peers, twenty
Commoners, eight Scotch Commissioners, a few bishops and
Episcopal laymen, and five Independents. The prelates quickly
dropped off, and it settled itself into a company of divines some
sixty strong, Puritan stalwarts all, many of massive scholar-
ship, some even keeping their diaries in Greek. The sittings

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A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

covered most of five-and-a-half years, and were i ,163 in number.
Each member received four shillings a day, less a fine of
sixpence if late for prayers at half-past eight in the morning.
They worked from nine till two, with days off for fasting and
prayer. In some respects it is the most notable Council, if not
of the history of the Christian Church, certainly of the Protes •
tant era. It was never a Convocation. It was in reality a
sort of third House of Parliament.

Its furious battle of tongues was part of the selfsame cam-
paign as the sterner one outside. The sacerdotal energy of
Laud and the Catholic heart of Charles had revived a dread
spectre to the people. They had imagined that peril from
Rome had gone to the bottom of the sea with the Armada.
Not so now. Not alone the sectaries, but the Puritan element
in the Established Church had perceived the danger, and also
that it lay much in the tree of prelacy. The cry with many
was " Hacking at branches is useless if the roots flourish.
Let us uproot and destroy." But as later it was found
difficult to fill the place of the King, so now men pondered
what to substitute for that of bishop.

AUTHORITY MUST LIE SOMEWHERE

The Scotch had solved the problem two generations ago.
At first the Assembly was purely English, and its instructions
were to cleanse the Thirty-nine Articles " from all false doc-
trine and heresy." By the end of August it had Calvinised
the first fifteen. But the war goes badly for Parliament, and
the King is offering big baits for the Scots to come to his
camp. Eventually they decide for Parliament, but at a large
price — viz., the " Solemn League and Covenant " for England,
and Ireland also if possible. This was not identical with the
" National Covenant " of Scotland. In the stress it was
reluctantly conceded. It was at this juncture the eight Scotch
Commissioners joined the Assembly. The change was much
as after a battle, and facing a new destiny. The great things
were settled, Episcopacy was doomed and the Articles were
now shut up in pigeon holes.

The Assembly quickly passed the Covenant, Parliament
enacted it, and ordered it to be sworn to by the whole nation,
down to common householders. It became a sort of shib-
boleth of loyalty to Parliamentarianism. The Assembly
now plunged into the thorny problems of Church officers and
offices, and soon the battle covered the whole field of

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Presbyterian goverment versus Congregational. A red spectre
now emerges, fearfully crimson to the Scotch — it defiantly
waves a flag on which gleams one word, " Toleration." The
English bow down to no Knox. There are hoarse rumblings
against the Covenant, and scurrilities upon the four-shillings-
a-day 'law-makers.

Now, the " Covenant " stood for a polity of Church govern-
ment as sternly as for a body of theology, and it is with the
former I am now chiefly concerned. It is a huge mistake
to speak lightly of polity. The laws of the land reflect the
will of the people only as the franchise permits. The polity
or franchise of a Church largely determines the measure of
its life, and the strifes of religion have always been less upon
the things necessary for salvation than upon issues of
authority, status and honour and emolument. It is still so.
The Assembly ploughed at its stupendous task. Its instruc-
tions embraced a compacted scheme for a national Church,
its faith and worship, its government and discipline — to
arrange a Directory in place of the Book of Common Prayer,
a business more difficult even than that of bishop — to con-
struct a Catechism and Confession of the true faith, and this
with an eye to the Reformed Churches out of England as some
guide of pattern. The new thing to the world was that the
Assembly's masters were laymen. Its decision never wholly
received the sanction of Parliament, but from 1646 to the
Restoration a partial system of Presbyterianism was set up.
It could not however have been the landmark it is in Protestant
history but that the two Catechisms and Confessions and
the book of Metrical Psalmody which were the fruit of the
Assembly are still the standards of faith and worship to the
Scottish people in every part of the earth.

MARSTON MOOR IN THE ASSEMBLY

Although the Assembly was as intolerant of toleration as
Laud, yet there was gain. No bishop, no priest, that was vast ;
further, the appeal was to Scripture, and not to tradition
and councils. The five Independents had already made their
position quite clear in printed form, bearing the fearsome
title of " Apologetical Narration " ; and were as five sharp
thorns to the Assembly. For forty days it debated angrily
whether a congregation had or had not rights of self-govern-
ment. Never in history did the early chapters of the Acts
of the Apostles receive such close and learned scrutiny.

1 66

A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

There was little doctrinal difference, but the demand of
the Independents for " Indefinite Toleration " was odious
to the Assembly. These notions from New England and
Amsterdam would lead to Amsterdamnation as Dr. Masson
humorously puts it. The Independents had no dream of
knocking out the Presbyterian form as the national one
for England, but simply pleaded for a place for outside sects
without the old exile, but this would spoil the symmetry of
the Scotch system. It is doubtful if the rigid majority
would have given toleration even to the Independents.
In justice it should be said that the most dreaded thing
was the multitude of budding sects, some already with
awful reputations. Let us think the majority were honest
in their fears, but as young fledglings of liberty, in its
bolder flights were timid of wing. Presbyterianism
was a thing known. Had not Papists always said the
Reformation would open the floodgates of blasphemy — yes,
and toleration to Congregationalism ? Oh ! But a thunder
bolt gathers. Since the acceptance of the Covenant, Marston
Moor had happened, and with it uprose the clamours of the
Tolerationists. The Scots of the Assembly had prayed,
without answer, for some victorious feat of arms from their
troops, and, after Marston Moor, would not have it that the
" Great Independent " (their own description) Cromwell was
its hero. But the army knew it. Parliament knew it, and
when the hero marched to his place in the Commons one day,
and moved to instruct the Assembly for Toleration the House
agreed, and the Marston Moor of the Assembly was won also
for liberty. But the pity of the fight. This was the golden
chance of history for Presbyterianism. Had its leaders added
wisdom to knowledge and vision to their learning, the history
of England, and Scotland, too, might have been less troubled.
Let me again remind the reader that the whole Christian
Church had for immemorial ages deemed dogmatic error the
most malignant of sins. To deny this hoary but dread
axiom — itself the cruellest of all errors — still demanded a
mind and a courage of an uncommon order. These protesters
perceived that liberty was first, that truth and progress could
only fight and find their life through and by liberty, that in
matters of religion and conscience man's attitude to man
must not traverse God's way with His creatures in the freedom
of will. They were not the discoverers of this Evangel ;
it was, as we know, implied in the teaching of Browne, Barrow

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and Robinson, but they rang it forth with a wider vision and
greater clarity. Probably it was this more spacious ideal
which uprose somewhat suddenly as an insistent vision of
fairest beauty, which, more than any particular preference
of Church government, converted Cromwell and his troopers
into Independents. Milton illuminated the ideal by the
most august prose in English literature.

The precise relation and degree of influence between
doctrine and life in the salvation plan will, to the end of time,
be difficult to define. As man is spirit and body, so his
religion must be of faith and works. He may, if a true
disciple, get along without much of a conscious creed, but
not so a nation. When Christ said, " Believe on me," He
meant a personal fealty of love and service as always first.
Yet a man's drift or a nation's policy is largely determined
by creed and belief. Liberty of conscience and worship rest
upon the rock of Protestantism ; yet not Luther, nor Calvin,
nor the early Puritans, perceived the truth in its fulness.
In things of God we always build greater than we know ;
it is the Divine method of inspiration. We of this generation
are but slowly coming to the greater light in the conception
that both creed and life must yield the heavenly flower of love.

The reader may recall that for two or three years Knox
was pastor of a Congregational Church at Geneva, and also at
Frankfort, and possessed a ripened experience. Under prayer-
ful thought, and with advice from Calvin, the Presbyterian
form evolved itself as the best for Scotland. For the infant
Reformed Church there — broken communities bent on abolish-
ing prelacy — it was the ideal order. But the conditions in
England were entirely different and now the Scots made the
grievous mistake of giving these no heed.

But to return to our stalwart five. At least three of them
were returned exiles, and they were all scholarly men. With
a few laymen among them — one being Seldon the great
jurist — they kept the pass of argument with a courage out
of all proportion to their numbers.

The example of Amsterdam and Leyden was not lost.
The story of the Pilgrim Fathers and of New England had
told ; so also the return of men like that seer of freedom, Roger
Williams, and of young Sir Harry Vane, who had beheld in
concrete form communities worshipping in godly amity without
either bishop or presbyter. Pamphlets flew broadcast, the
tumult of arms sounded, the heart of the nation beat high.

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A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

As I have said the lofty beauty of the ideal of " Indefinite
Toleration " had captured Milton, Cromwell and the Ironsides
of the army. Milton pealed forth his trumpet, and it settled
into reasoned conviction. The Independents, with the
Baptists, and later the Friends, formed the central force
which converted the ideal into history, and the liberty and
glory of England are the children of that victory. And so we
honour the stalwart five, and their noble protest is the subject
of one of our larger windows. The figures are portraits, and
their names are Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson,
Jeremiah Burroughs, William Bridge. Goodwin was D.D.,
and became President of Magdalen College, Oxford ; Nye's
eager ability earned him such eminence as to be among the
excepted from the Indemnity Bill of the Restoration ; Bridge
had been a thorn to Laud, and became the famous preacher,
first as the parish minister of Norwich, and later at Yarmouth ;
and Simpson was master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.

The other week I was shown a will of the seventeenth
century. Its parchment was torn, crumpled and faded, its
contents dim — now worthless, yet it had served its day and
generation in years of crisp life. I handled it tenderly. So
let us do with the Westminster Assembly — its jangle and
findings, rejoinders and rebutters, surrejoinders and surre-
butters. Great principles dawn slowly ; the members of
the Assembly walked in the half-clearing mists of an ancient
world of thraldom and tradition, where sincere error was
heresy, and heresy the blackest sin.

THE ENGLISH SAVONAROLA — A HOTBED OF SECTARIES

Through the long centuries of English history between
Wyclif and Wesley, in their purely religious aspect, the figure
of George Fox is the most outstanding and his message is the
most original and the most searching and tumultuous in effect.
He is the English Savonarola of the seventeenth century.
His origin and life are nearest to the spirit of the Apostolic
age. Chapters of early Quakerism read like chapters in the
Acts. Knox did a far more complete work, but over a far
less field, and his evangel was not his own. Yet more than
he knew, Fox was both child and heir of the Puritan era.
This in its best time was instinct with prophets and prophecy.
There was nothing quite like it anywhere else in Europe as a
resultant of the Reformation. In that tremendous upheaval,
to which we owe everything that is precious, Germany and

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Scotland were each too much controlled by one great light to
permit the shining of lesser lights with equal spontaneous
freedom, and this trend hardened after their death.

England throbbed with an intense individuality, bold, and
often defiant, in expression. This was so not only in the
lower realm of ritual and polity — of authority versus liberty,
of Prelacy and Presbyterianism, and later of Independency —
but also in the supreme one of theology. Though in this
the nation had as a whole followed a main current, as sub-
stantially expressed in the Thirty-nine Articles, there were
numerous by-streamlets — bands of " seekers " but dimly
seeing, yet yearning and conscious that there was some more
gracious, more humane revelation of God's will and truth
than the prevailing Calvinism.

The Westminster Assembly had set hundreds of tongues
and pens going. I have in previous Stories told how aglow
this spirit was in the Parliamentary Army and how Cromwell
upheld it. The spirit was the child of that exultant might
which made the havoc of the Armada.

From this crucible of the Westminster Assembly was pro-
duced that Puritanism — that splendour of character — which
Morley says " came from the deeps," and which more than
any other force has shaped English history. The Authorised
Version of the Bible (1611) had united the British people
upon one Book, which became not merely the law and testi-
mony upon religion, but also the record of a wonderful history
and a lofty literature, which was appropriated by every
Puritan in a very especial sense for lesson and inspiration.

London was a hotbed of sects and sectaries. Besides
Papists there were Prelatists, Presbyterians and Independents
of varying shades, Catabaptists, Anabaptists, Seventh-day
Baptists and Baptists of various brands ; there were Anti-
nomians, Familists, Millenaries, Seekers, Expecters, Soul-
sleepers or Mortalists, Arians, Socinians, and other anti-
Trinitarians, with more still, presenting a human medley of
serious cranks, of crabbed conceit or phantasy, of the sincere
effervescence of temperament or mystic frenzy. As one casts
a survey over this period of English history since the Reforma-
tion it all seems a quite natural rebound. I venture the
statement, strange as it may sound, that before the battle
of Marston Moor England had never known a state of perfectly
ungyved, blithe freedom and glamorous hope, wherein to
stretch her limbs to their full measure, and take free, full-lung

170

A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

breathing of the inspired oxygen of the Reformation. Milton,
with his spacious sanity, rejoiced in it all. It was the sign
of liberty and life, and would find its own level of truth and
reality. The sectaries multiplied during the Commonwealth,
and there is no greater testimony of Cromwell's masculine
liberalism than that, amidst frantic clamour for suppression,
he held his head and gave shelter ; but Quakerism seemed
the quintessence of all craziness, and he could not protect it
as he desired. Dr. Masson gives a long list of samples of
beliefs and enthusiasms. It is intensely interesting. Sound
and of good report are many, but as to others — " hell let
loose " was the verdict of staid orthodoxy. If the reader
could, on this head, look up Masson he would be rewarded
tenfold beyond my poor pages. The exclamation rises, " Truly
there is nothing new under the sun." If some of our modern
prophets would read and digest, prideful assurance might
be abated. Now Fox was in the heart of this ferment when
in London in 1644-5 seeking light and rest for his soul. He
stayed with an uncle Pickering, a Baptist. He " could not
join with them," but says, " I was fearful, and returned home-
wards." Distributed among these surging groups I find,
potentially, all that Fox taught. Conscious he may not have
been, yet I cannot but surmise that here seeds were sown
which in his " great openings " blossomed into such wonderful
fruitage.

I am tempted to a personal reminiscence. In 1862-3 I
lived in London, and in the same house dwelt an aged widower
— a mysterious recluse, thoughtful and well read. He was
bent upon converting me from the peril of my wilful ways in
going to old Surrey Chapel and the old King's Weigh House
to hear Newman Hall and Thomas Binney. Sometimes
I went to the Abbey, St. Paul's, or the Temple Church, or
even to behold a cardinal. I daresay I enlarged youthfully
on my eclectic tastes. He lent me books, and one Sunday
took me for worship through a passage in old Soho, up some
winding stairs, into a curious old-world conventicle. Never
shall I forget the scene — people and preacher. They called
themselves " Splits from the Splitted Splits." I now believe
they were Antinomian Baptists, with a strain of mystic fer-
vour ; I wonder if a survival of this seventeenth century
ferment. The declamation of the preacher was most ponder-
ous and fearful, but my Christian home-training had been
too sunny and solid to be moved.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

THE RESTORATION — ENTRY OF CHARLES II

As fourteen years of Milton's life, two-thirds of Fox's public
life, and more of John Bunyan's, come after the Restoration,
it is necessary that I continue this sketch of historic setting.
On the 25th of May, 1660, Charles II. landed at Dover, and
made a Royal progress, amidst the shouts and welcome of
a great multitude, to Whitehall. From the windows he waves
greetings to the applauding throng — the same windows from
which eleven years January last eager faces watched his
father's head drop from its body — the solemn result of
deliberate trial.

What a contrast of scene ! The more remarkable as
we call to mind during those eleven years the steps forward
to a prosperity of trade and commerce and glory of arms,
fame and prestige unsurpassed in English annals. Yet such
is the fact of history. What its cause ? A brief narrative
may best exhibit the various contributory elements. Richard
Cromwell was weak, and without healthy Puritan fibre,
unsure in politics, and a suspected Royalist even. A mighty
hush and awe fell upon the nation at the great Protector's
death. An awful storm shook houses and forest trees as
by an earthquake. Cavalier and Ironside, Prelatist and
Independent alike knew the sudden peril to the State, and
quietly acquiesced in the only possible successor. But the
spirit of reaction soon recovered its fright.

Oliver, it must be owned, had not stepped evenly to the
yoke of his Parliaments. Reluctantly he had accepted the
headship of the State, and only as a call from God. He held
strong, honest convictions that large executive powers should
rest with a single person — the head, as distinguished from a
system of Cabinet responsibility. Those great pioneers
of constitutional practice and liberty — Eliot, Pym, Hampden,
and others — discovered, if but dimly, this sure anchor of
freedom. The difference was important, yet natural. Oliver
was a military genius of front rank, and hardly less gifted as
a civil administrator — that is, in swift and sure instinct of
the right course for the moment. He chafed at the bridle,
not merely as a bridle, but also because its ways were slow,
and because he believed that the pull was sometimes for
the wrong turn.

On the main principle Oliver was wrong. With sorrow
of heart he mourned the conflict. He would pass words of

172

A XVI I th Century Background Sketch

pathetic fear in respect of it. Of the mere personal tyrant
he showed not a strain. Yet every child knew he was a
country squire-farmer, come to his high place by the sword,
and in the rough imagination of the populace it was retained
by the same power. Cromwell tried his best to put down the
appearance of military rule, but the currents were too strong.
Such rule was hateful to the English people. In the settlement
after the war the army enforced its decrees upon Parliament —
they were good decrees, but as sword-forced were unwelcome.
The quelling of Scotland and Ireland and general policy had
required the army, which was still undisbanded, over 50,000
strong, and a ready instrument of prompt and decisive power —
a new thing indeed — a possible menace to liberty. Had it
crushed a monarchical absolutism to set up a military one ?
So cried some with an axe of their own to grind. It mattered
not that the army was always anxious for a constitutional
settlement upon broad lines of liberty.

Quickly after Cromwell's death it was in strife with
the Commons against reactionary tendencies. It now re-
established its old council of officers. This was an affront
to a law-abiding people. The army became odious and its
cost a burden. Charles II. never dared beyond a small
home force, and in William III.'s time Parliament insisted,
as a peace footing, upon a reduction to a harmless 7,000.
The army now forced Richard to dissolve the House, over-
awed Parliament, and brought in the Rump. The cry arose,
"A Free Parliament." Symptoms of Royalist risings
appeared in the country. While the army stood solid its voice
was absolute, but now a rift is apparent. This was especially
seen in the division in Scotland, where Monk, in command, had
marched to the Border. Met here by Lambert, Monk staves
off conflict by negotiation, lures Lambert into inaction,
enters into intrigue with the army's enemies, keeps his counsel,
and crosses the Border. Mobs now gather. The " Free
Parliament " cry flies as a trumpet blast before him. He
appears in London on February 3rd, 1660. His own rank
and file are still stout for " the cause." He also makes
lavish profession of loyalty to " the cause," and while adroitly
breaking the army into detachments is treating with the
exiled Charles, who assures a general pardon, religious
liberty, satisfaction to the army, and is effusive in fine promises
all round. Monk's reward was membership of Charles's Privy
Council and Ministry as Duke of Albemarle.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

A BALD CALVINISM — A WILD JOY

This curt narration exhibits the chief operative forces of
the Restoration. But there were others not less real. A bald
Calvinism and rigid Puritanism could not fill the life of the
English people — the kith and kin of Shakespeare. Here I
repeat that in the supreme domain of liberty to the religious
conscience Oliver was conspicuously in advance of his day and
his Parliaments. When his Council refused his request for
liberty and asylum to the Jews he quietly ignored the refusal
and gave them home and rest. He yet prayed that Britain
might be God's peculiar people for the Protestant Puritan
redemption of the world. Milton and he had said in their
hearts,

" I vrill not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till wt have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land."

He had fondly hoped to win England to a more excellent
way than bull-baiting, cock-fighting, the beery jollity, and
coarse theatricals of vagabond clowns in the village. A vain
hope — not in one, two or three generations could this be.
They were the customs of centuries in every hamlet and
market town. The people in the lump loved them, and re-
sented interference. The strife between Presbyterian and
Independent was still bitter. The Quakers and, as we have
seen, scores of queer sects had found birth during the fever
of the wars and the liberty and shelter of Oliver's arm. Their
vagaries shook the nerves even of the friendly, ignorant
or timid, while to the old crusted Royalist the whole batch
of them were odious, dangerous fanatics, fit only to be sold
to the galleys, or better still, well gagged and hanged. A
wild joy filled the heart of the Episcopalian in orders at the
bare hope of coming to his ancient own again. Oliver created
few hereditary distinctions ; it was only human nature if a
large and powerful class were unwilling that this should
continue for ever. The glamour of a King, the pageantry of
a Court, ran like a steel cord through British history, and like
a golden thread through its romance, poetry and literature.
Is not the marvel rather, not that the Commonwealth and
Puritanism went down, but that the latter survived as a
force to mould later history, for it had small affinity with
monarchical principles ?

174

A XVI I th Century Background Sketch

The fair, virgin freshness of Puritanism had waned some-
what, and too much of its preaching had become rabbinical
and sapless. The easefulness of possession and supposed
safety of its ideals had allowed its nobler tone to droop, and
its more or less unlovely traits to appear. There were oppor-
tunist hypocrites loud in twang. Milton's nephew wrote
satires on Puritan hypocrisy. Two daughters of the great
Puritan preacher, Stephen Marshall, turned actresses. Men
in confusion will fall back upon a mere vague hope which they
yet half dread. Since the Constitutional struggle with
Charles I. and Laud began, a generation had grown who knew
it not, nor did the elders believe the old days of tyranny and
persecution, as before the war, could possibly come back.
Some even hoped the better time might be made more secure
through a king. Milton alone saw, and warned — by a last
agonised pamphlet cry.

His prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. Amongst the
saddest matters of reflection to the student of history is the
burial of noble ideals in their external vestments — the earthly
mould of their bodied form. In the shining glow of early
beauty their vesture is transfigured and not seen. Time
brings a reversal. Yet God is not mocked; in due season
He commands a resurrection. The Puritan faith created
an heroic age. What other creed than the Puritan of the
seventeenth century could have come forth the final con-
queror— in the colossal and historic struggle ? Only its
tragic depths and sublime heights could have trained souls
fit to endure through triumph and downfall. Its absolute
certitudes and unquestioned decrees, and its very sternness,
were elemental in the fibre of the iron soldiery. It is
singular that its awful decrees of Reprobation and Election
never operated in paralysis of the will to produce indifference
to life, as does heathenish fatalism, but in an opposite direc-
tion, in producing an alert and upright manliness and dignity.

THE DOWNFALL OF PURITANISM

But Puritanism and Independency were now to fall, and
great was the fall — yet only for both to rise again in chastened
and more enduring strength ; the soul was indestructible.
Says Green, " The history of English progress since the Restor-
ation on its moral and spiritual side has been the history of
Puritanism." He might have added that of political freedom
also. Yet now for twenty years a Puritan was a byword for

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

a jibe. I have no space to tell of the flood of craven, para-
sitical and turncoat flattery, which now swept over much of
English life. The Scotch Parliament became a mere abject
tool in the hands of a Government bent upon undoing the work
of John Knox. The old Knox manliness and the soul of Jenny
Geddes were fled. There came a day of bitter repenting.
Ere long the Court was a sink of shameless iniquities. The
King had no lawful wife, but owned to five natural children
by three different mothers. His present favourite is a Mrs.
Palmer — her husband living ; she moves openly amidst
bishops and chaplains, and sometimes relieves the tedium of
chapel by flirting behind the hangings. The King is a secret
Roman Catholic, and has a secret policy with the Pope for
England's conversion. Of course he is the anointed head of
a Protestant Church — that is all the better. As if God were
not mocked enough, Whitehall is opened for cure of King's
evil, and every Friday wretched dupes flock in scores, and
kneeling receive the Royal touch, the chaplain repeating,
" He put His hands upon them, and He healed them." To
read the ghastly mock of solemn pomp at his coronation, of
the kneelings and anointings, etc., with Holy Communion,
of his early departure from the banquet to seek Mrs. Palmer,
must have struck a shiver through the heart of many a Puritan.
After his marriage with the Portuguese Princess he forced
Mrs. Palmer upon her. The Queen, as a Roman Catholic,
had her chapel, confessor and Papist entourage. So also had
the Queen mother, who now returns to England, leaving
strange whispers behind her. The King let loose some five
hundred Quakers, who were imprisoned during the Common-
wealth. But quickly the show of mercy is changed, and bitter
is the cup of all who had trusted in princes. Power must be
sweetened by revenge, and the King's abettors are more lustful
for this than himself. Many concerned in Charles I.'s death are
each hanged a moment, cut down while still alive that the
victim may see himself disembowelled. (One of them while
half dead struck his butcher.) The severed head and heart
are then held up for gaze and shout. A large number, the
best strain of England's life, are done to death in the Tower.
Cromwell's effigy is burnt in with that of the devil. His body
is pulled from its grave in Westminster Abbey, carted and
mock-hanged at Tyburn, buried under the gallows, and the
head stuck on a black pole between Bradshaw and Ireton,
on Westminster Hall, where the skull remained for twenty

176

A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

years. (Now immediately below in kingly pose stands his
statue.) The bones of the patriot Pym and the brave Blake,
of Oliver's mother and others are hauled from graves in
the Abbey, and flung into a common pit in St. Margaret's
churchyard close by.

Heaped upon much rigour of persecution came a succession
of ferocious Acts of Parliament designed to suffocate Dis-
senters to the very death and to the uttermost " two or three."
First was the Corporation Act, which cut them from civil
and political place and power. Next, a cruel Act to compel
Quakers to take oaths. Then followed that epochal folly,
the Act of Uniformity, which passed the Commons only by a
majority of six. It compelled " unfeigned assent and consent
to all and everything contained and prescribed " in the Prayer-
book. This was impossible, and not customary with the old,
but even this was made less Protestant. " Minister " was
changed to " priest," " congregation " to " church." Kneel-
ing at Communion, in disuse since Elizabeth's time, was
restored. For the first time since the Reformation Episcopal
ordination was imposed upon all, even upon aged and saintly
men like John Howe, who was ordained by Presbyters.
Altogether it was designed to harry out the Puritans, and
did it. At the bottom it was a trumpet call for a stand for
Protestantism — " Choose you this day whom ye will serve."

The clergy who were deprived during the Commonwealth
were in the main morally unfit, yet, as already stated, their
families were allowed a fifth of the stipend. Now, the ejected
are men of purest life and conscience, embracing names the
saintliest in history, yet no provision was permitted — nay,
by a refinement of harshness Parliament refused to date the
expulsion from Michaelmas, when the tithes were due, and so
nearly a half-year's earned stipend was lost. But the response
was noble. Two thousand, the flower of the English Church,
with an added five hundred silenced just previously, made the
great renunciation and obeyed the call. None but angels ever
counted their sorrows. They went forth into the wilderness
dependent upon the manna and pillar of Heaven. A world of
sweet ties was ruthlessly broken — farewell to the graves of
dear ones, to homes of happy and godly ministry, to the dear
affection of flocks. The Act was more than ejection, it was
silencing — a rankling chain on the soul's desires.

It is fitting that this historical event should form the subject
of one of our larger windows.

177

12

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

The Act came into force on August 24th, 1662 — the Black
Bartholomew of the State Church. It drove an ever-deepen-
ing wedge into its centre, cut the nation in two, and converted
the Church into a sect, separating it from the Scotch and other
Reformed Churches of the Continent. This dire retribution
is described in the quotation given below from J. R. Green,
the historian.

" By its rejection of all but episcopal orders the Act of
Uniformity severed it (the Established Church) irretrievably
from the general body of the Protestant Churches whether
Lutheran or Reformed. And while thus cut off from all
healthy religious communion with the world without, it sank
into immobility within. With the expulsion of the Puritan
clergy, all change, all efforts after reform, all natural develop-
ment, suddenly stopped. From that time to this the Episcopal
Church has been unable to meet the varying spiritual needs
of its adherents by any modifications of its government or
worship. It stands alone amongst all religious bodies of
Western Christendom in its failure, through two hundred
years to devise a single new service of prayer and praise."

A pitiful condition — yet each decade only shows it the more
evidently true.

In this current of reflection, it is important to remember
that during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. many Church
leaders wrote against Episcopacy, and that before Laud re-
vived it the theory of Divine Right or Apostolical Succession
had largely ceased to be a serious belief among responsible
Churchmen and scholars. Bishop Barlow who consecrated
Parker as Archbishop of Canterbury for Elizabeth is supposed
to be amongst them. No record can be found of his
consecration.

Dissent was now to be swelled by Nonconformity, and
any dream of comprehension in a truly national Church for
the English race was broken for ever. The ejected were
ordained to a vicarious suffering, making for that manliness
and virility which can only breathe in a free and voluntary
Church and people. A new era now opens of ever-widening
potency for the faith and freedom of England.

THE CONVENTICLE ACT

But the Act fell on ministers. The people still gather for
worship somewhere. They also must be stopped, and the

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A XVIIth Century Background Sketch

Conventicle Act is passed. Every person meeting in a con-
venticle, or with more than five persons besides the family
in a house for any religious purpose not in conformity with
the Church of England, shall be fined £5 or be three months
imprisoned ; for a second offence double ; for a third trans-
portation or £100 down. Still the people manage to pray
together without book. The blasphemy cannot be tolerated,
and the abominable Five Mile Act is passed in the autumn
of 1665. It enacted that no Nonconformist ex-minister or
teacher, unless passing along the road, must come within five
miles of any city, town, corporate or Parliamentary borough,
or within the same distance of any parish or place where he
previously preached or taught, under a penalty of £40 for
each offence ; also that no person that did not take the oath
of passive obedience to the King and frequent divine service
as by law established should teach or have pupils. This
added starvation to privation in the case of hundreds of
scholarly men, who, with their dependent families, were
ekeing out bread by teaching, and were now forced into
obscure villages. The Solemn League and Covenant is burnt
at every market-place. Literature takes on a licentious
coarseness before unknown in England.

It is a moonlight night of storm and gust in June, 1667.
Across the full face of the pallid orb black clouds scurry along.
Ah ! that ghoulish screech ! Two men start and glance
upwards at the three black poles shooting high from West-
minster Hall, topped with three white skulls. Surely the
centre one laughs grimly, and its empty sockets fill with flicker-
ing gleams of wrath. So feel the pedestrians — they still hear
the Court carousals at Whitehall, and whisper of England's
shame when last week the Dutch sailed up the Thames, burnt
English ships, and blew up fortifications. They think of
Oliver's days, and ask, Does God or the Devil reign among
men ? True ? — yea, a hundred times over.

JAMES'S " BLACK REIGN "

After four days of successive fits Charles II. went to his
account on February 6th, 1685. He had never known a real
belief for his soul or a pure love for his heart. A disguised
monk is smuggled into the chamber. " Sire," says the Duke
of York, " he comes to save your soul." " Welcome," is
the dying whisper. Rites follow, and — Rome takes charge
of the soul. Stuart duplicity is full-blown even in death.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

The monk is cloaked out and the Protestant bishops, befooled,
let in.

Charles's brother, James II., is the first open Roman Catholic
monarch since Queen Mary, and the Romish Mass is now
celebrated at Westminster with pomp and splendour. His
one aim is to re-establish Popery in Britain. Never did the
idol of Established Churchism make good men bow in such
servile sycophancy as did now ecclesiastic and university
heads. They permitted James to pursue his will to an amaz-
ing point of peril, but at last they turned, and bravely stood
for the Reformed Faith. The King appointed judges for
their servility and packed the benches to do his ordering.
At whim he put aside the Test Act, and turned Oxford
colleges into Papist seminaries ; he put his own father con-
fessor with other Roman Catholics on the Privy Council and
placed Papist officers in army command, and massed a large
force to over-awe London. Jesuits and monks and Papist
processions were seen flitting about. A strange sight indeed.
He revived the hated Star Chamber. Head of the Church,
why should he not place his minions in the Church ? He is
baulked by the acquittal of the Seven Bishops who withstand
him, and the country is wild with joy. And here came the
crisis, when the saving of Protestantism seemed to depend upon
whether the King could barter with the persecuted Noncon-
formists— terms, their liberty for their support in his doings
with the Established Church, their persecutor. There had
been twenty-five years of dismal dungeon, broken health, torn
affections, privations uncounted, of stealthy, hushed worship,
with watchers and handy trap doors ; they were loyal, yet
treated as traitors ; pure and honourable, yet outcasts — and
all mainly at the behest of the Church ! To tempt them James
strained his prerogative, and issued his famous Declaration of
Indulgence, and they now assembled in the light, and sang
without fear. The bait was big and sweet, but failed to catch.
Protestantism and country are before liberty, even when
spiced with deserved requital. From this stalwartness came
forth a miracle — a temporary brotherhood between Con-
formist and Nonconformist. Together they saved the Faith
of the Martyrs. The reign is among the shortest and vilest.

William of Orange landed at Torbay, November 5th, 1688.
The King fled, and England had done with Stuart kings for
ever. The punishing of sectaries by Charles had been as with
whips, that of James was with scorpions. It was a time of

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A XVI I th Century Background Sketch

horror. His reign will be black for all time, if only by reason
of his atrocious creature and butcher-bully, Judge Jeffreys, and
his " Bloody Assize." At least 320 persons, the flower of
citizens, meek and saintly women, youths and maidens, were
hanged, and 840 shipped for transportation to die like flies
in hideous holds or saved for the worse fate of slavedom, the
Queen taking blood money of their sale. Ministers of gracious
name like Baxter were treated as vicious criminals. Even
the stake was set up, and a woman burnt — the last in England.

ONE ACT OF MERCY

In the reign one act of mercy concerns us especially. Early
in 1685 the King liberated some 1,500 Quakers. William
Penn, now back from America, had been a close friend of James
in their young days, and now became powerful at Court. By
this act, however, the King took the grace to set free a larger
number of Roman Catholics, but no Nonconformist other
than Quakers.

Between the Restoration and the Revolution 60,000 persons
were persecuted for their religion, of whom 5,000 died in prison.
A heavy toll of martyrdom for their children's sake. Are we
worthy sons ?

The Revolution was essentially a Protestant -Puritan up-
rising. The manifestoes speak of " Jesuit counsels " bringing
" tyrannical government," of determination not " to deliver
our posterity to such conditions of Popery and slavery."
The aim of the Revolution was, broadly, the same as that of
the Commonwealth rebellion — to save faith and freedom,
and the later is the complete justification and triumph of the
earlier. Next year, 1689, the Toleration Act was passed —
the seal of victory to a noble struggle of four generations.
The great principle of " Liberty of Conscience " and of worship
received constitutional sanction and security. The Non-
conformists had no peals of bells to ring out joyously, but for
many a long year they preached eloquently on the anni-
versary of the " glorious Revolution." King Saul had gone,
King David had come. The days of captivity and weeping
were passed, the harps were lifted from the willows, and they
sang gratefully the ancient song, " When the Lord turned
again the captivity of Zion we were like them that dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with
singing . . . the Lord hath done great things."

181

" Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour ;
England hath need of thee

Oh ! raise us up ; return to us again ;

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, 'power.

Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart ;

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea"

" We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held."

JOHN MILTON

INSCRIPTION.— The greatest Prophet of Liberty of the modern
age. With Shakespeare twin Prince of English Poets. B. 1608,
D. 1674.

SCENE. — In rich coat and cloak with Puritan collar he stands a serene
and pathetic figure, with early greying locks, blindness upon him ;
yet pen in hand, will trace his musings while faintest gleam of
light is left him. Background — interior of parlour ; garden view
from open door. A cherub brings lyre of sweet poesy.

John Milton was born in Bread Street, City of London, on
December gth, 1608. His father, also John, was by profession
a " scrivener," or a writer of deeds, charters, manuscripts, etc.
In the family chronicles there is a dubious page concerning
wrecked fortunes in the Wars of the Roses. We are sure
the poet's grandfather, Richard Milton, was a substantial
Oxfordshire yeoman, able to support his son at Christ
Church College, Oxford. Here he moves among eager
spirits — Pilgrim Fathers in the making — changes his religion,
and is cast off by his father, who is still an ardent Papist.

For fortune this son now turns his face to London. In
Bread Street he hangs out the sign of The Spread Eagle,
and in due time, by " industry and prudent conduct of his
affairs," is possessed of a " plentiful estate." The Spread
Eagle seems to have been used as a family crest. At the
sensible age of about thirty-five he married Sarah Jeffrey,
daughter of Paul Jeffrey, " Citizen and Merchant Taylor,"
London. She was about twenty-eight, proved a good wife,
and, her great son says, " a most excellent mother, particu-

182

JOHN MILTON.

John Milton

.arly known for charities." Of the marriage (about 1600) six
children were born during the following fifteen years. Three
only survived infancy — Anne, John and Christopher, who was
seven years John's junior. He also was schooled at St. Paul's
and Cambridge, and became a judge, and was knighted.

The children must have romped and skipped to the swing of
Bow Bells. Bread Street, then inhabited by prosperous mer-
chants, who lived over their shops, dives off Cheapside towards
the river, then still a great highway. Our pensive boy must
often have strolled there to hear the jolly waterman's song —

Row the boat, Norman, row to thy leman,
Heave and low, rumbelow.

His young eyes must often have glowed with interest at the
gliding beauty of busy craft, at the processional pomp of
painted barge and gilded poop and banner, and at the glory
of the dipping sun. Emerging into the Cheape there would
meet him an enchanting perspective of gabled roofs and over-
hanging windows, of carved beams and boss and quaintly-
timbered fronts, of rows of picture signboards or a swinging
array of resplendent effigies and monstrous beasts of wood.
There, is the " standard of the Cheape," a sculptured shaft
of dim antiquity, redolent of romance of Wat Tyler and Jack
Cade. Yonder, a Gothic Queen Eleanor Cross of clustering
spires and crocketed grace, fragrant of sweet loveliness.
He peeps into a shop window and sees strange things from
afar. The Cheape is the hub of City gaiety, of fat feast and
costumed " companies," of revelry, of drum, pipe and banner,
and marching Guild — every pageant, civic and royal, passes
through the Cheape. Ah, I forgot the hoary glory of old St.
Paul's, and the talk on last Sunday's sermon from the famous
St. Paul's Cross pulpit, embowered by trees. Amid such,
and much more, dwelt the youth with his imaginings.

A PURITAN HOME

At the sign of the Spread Eagle was a happy Puritan home
of peace and industry, of grave and sweet piety. There was
regular, serious reading, with devotional exercise and regard
for religion as the chief concern of life. Yet, withal, a home of
liberal culture and pleasant evenings, spent often in the study
and delight of music. The house contained an organ and other
instruments, and little John learned to sing ere he learned to
talk, and in time, under his father, became an accomplished
organist. The scrivener was a musician of the true line. He

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

composed madrigals and important pieces, and his name is
classed with the first composers of his time. His hymn tunes,
Norwich and York, which he either composed or harmonized,
still survive, and so popular was the latter that many church
chimes were set to it. The Mermaid Tavern, where the great
dramatists met to put " each their whole wit into a jest,"
was also in Bread Street, and it is pleasant to fancy the child
John Milton catching wondering sight or sound of the gay
and noisy wits as they betongued one the other passing by,
" tasting the air they left behind them." He was only eight
when Shakespeare died, but twenty -nine when Ben Jonson
departed. The family attended " All Hallows " where the
Rev. Richard Stocke, an able preacher and "zealous Puritan,"
was minister.

We may well suppose John was of " unusual promise,"
as he wrote poetry at eleven. At this age a portrait of him was
painted by Cornelius Janssen, the Dutch painter, then in
England painting for the Court. This portrait still exists
and presents a grave but most winsome face. Another at
twenty-two is seriously handsome, a third at sixty-two is a
sad, strong face, full of haunting pathos, furrowed by many
sorrows and settled by intellectual stress into rugged lines
and deep shadows.

John's education is well looked after — first under the private
tutorship of the Rev. Thomas Young, a Puritan divine of
note, who became minister to the Church of England mer-
chants at Hamburg. Between this master and his pupil a
lasting affection grew, and it was he who first led the boy to
the sweet pastures of poetry. John goes later to St. Paul's
Grammar School, near by, and remains some five years, and
is again in good fortune with his head master — a Mr. Gill. He
becomes an eager scholar, and pays a pitiful penalty. He
relates himself that " from the twelfth year of my age I scarce
ever went to bed from my lessons before midnight, which was
the first cause of injury to my eyes." And little wonder, for
when about fifteen he read in Latin, Greek and French, and
probably some Hebrew and Italian, and he had acquired also
" some not insignificant taste for the sweetness of philosophy."
Of course there were " frequent headaches."

CAMBRIDGE — A NEW WORLD

On I2th February, 1625, as a youth of sixteen, he is entered
at Christ's, Cambridge, the first severance from his quiet,

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John Milton

dear home. Cambridge lifts the curtain to a new world of
faces and figures and doings, of queer names and queerer
tongues, collected from every county in the land — some 200
of them in his own college alone.

It was the age of the great drama, and the custom of plays
at public schools was now at its height. The performances
often drew visits from Royalty and great personages. Written
sometimes in Latin, and original, the plays were mostly of
only passable merit. The lad could but perceive his own
superiority, and keeps his head, mingling only as he deems it
expedient with the whistling, smoking, whooping, scoffing
students, or their plays, odes and orations. He writes verses
in Greek, but prefers Latin or English.

There is early a big buzz of talk and whisper after his enrol-
ment, for on March 27th King James dies, and the prayer
formula now becomes " Carolum Regem." On May nth
next the young King is married in Paris by proxy to Henrietta
Maria, the French Princess. The whole university is on
tiptoe for news, especially of the " black-eyed, brown-haired
young Queen." In May also the Plague strikes London, and
by autumn it claims 35,000 victims from a population of some
200,000. Though Cambridge is free, the colleges are closed.
He ponders over the stalking horror of the plague, and his
soul is troubled.

The next year finds him " tied night and day to his books."
There is a halt through a quarrel with his tutor, Chappell, an
able but narrow ecclesiastic, whom Laud later made Bishop
of Cork ; there is no worthy evidence of his being whipped,
but the affray is serious. The Puritan student will not be
forced to the drudgery of the scholastic treadmill. He takes
a holiday in London, and writes of the " pomp of the theatre,"
hardly in the style of a starchy Puritan. In the university
he is nick-named " The Lady of Christ's " — it is partly
compliment to his girl-like grace and partly the froth of envy
and a skit upon virtue. I must not omit mention of a fan-
tastic mystery of first love. It comes with the blossoming
of May, 1628, and while he was in London. He is by chance
in a public place, when a lovely form passes him by, and he is
struck as by a heavenly vision. For brief moments the portals
of Eden open, and as suddenly close. The enchantress is
gone, and he never again sets eyes upon her. " Immediately
unaccustomed pains were felt in my heart," he records. He
is " divided in two," " inly burns," is " sweetly miserable,"

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

is " all one flame." He seeks relief in a rhetorical elegy.
Eighteen years later he dubs it youthful folly, but the experi-
ence was well for him. He could not otherwise have so finely
appraised that strange, wilful, whimsical, omnipotent thing —
the heart human, nor the mystery of casual circumstance
and its affinity to destiny.

LEAVES CAMBRIDGE — " THE WHITE FLOWER "

Milton takes his degree of B.A. in 1629, and his M. A. follows,
both as early as are allowed. His stay at Cambridge lasts
seven years. He departs, esteemed for " his extraordinary
wit and learning," with " very good applause," " loved and
admired by all the University." A change, indeed, from the
sneers on the " Lady." He tells his college the secret — that he
" by living modestly and temperately, tamed the first impulses
of fierce youth, and by reason and constancy of study had
kept the heavenly strength of the mind pure and stainless."
What a beautiful saying, what charm of manly restraint !
Stately chastity of soul was ever the living fount of his power.
Milton wore the " white flower " upon his breast unsullied to
the end of life. His " Comus " in motive is a noble hymn to
chastity. " The pure in heart shall see God," and thus it
was that Milton saw celestial things, without which vision
there could have been no " Paradise Lost." He tells us he
discerned " that he who would not be frustrate of his hope
to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be
a true poem — that is, a composition and pattern of the best
and honourablest things."

God made Milton a great poet, and whatever century had
been adorned by his birth a great poet he must have been.
But his age made him the Apostle of Liberty, the Cromwell
of the pen, the mightiest pamphleteer of Christendom. His
kingly eminence as poet has so overshadowed this latter that
the Anglo-Saxon race has never realized the unpayable debt
owing to Milton in respect of this more practical influence
on its life and destiny. It is as the stalwart torch-bearer
of freedom that he takes rank in our procession of great ones.
But the greater glory of his muse must shed lustre on his
stand as patriot, and there never was a braver, truer patriot.
Most happy it is, and cause of deep gratitude to heaven, that
he, the

God gifted organ-voice of England —
Milton, a name to resound for ages,

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John Milton

should have stood a very pillar of liberty, and of the Puritan
ideal of it, based on righteousness, during the shock of the vast
upheaval of the seventeenth century, perhaps the most perilous
crisis of English history. Yet here a warning rises for ex-
pression. While the above is mainly true, Milton cannot be
parcelled off in sections. I had projected a neat sort of divi-
sion of his life — poetry, politics, theology, but only in a loose
way can this be. Milton was too sincere a whole, and when
roused he became fiercely upright. Often he deftly thrusts
the shuttle of his politics and Puritanism through the warp of
his poetry, and, his great epic is his religion, though it also
is something more.

In Milton Nonconformity won a king to its side and through
him a proud heritage of princely might. The Reformation,
especially in Britain, stands for the supremacy of conduct.
Milton stands the representative Englishman to interpret
and exhibit this in both life and letters. He lived indeed as
he avowed —

" As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."

At eighteen he essays his first original poem, " On the Death
of a fair Infant," his niece. As a youth of fifteen he seems
to have been attracted by the figurative grandeur of the
Psalms, and paraphrased Psalm cxxxvi. and others. " Let us
with a gladsome mind " moves along with a lofty simplicity
and promise of greater things. Our hymn books offer about
a third of the twenty-four verses. There are four or five
more equally fine and suitable. There are several Latin elegies
composed while at college, and seven Latin " Prolusiones
Oratoris " (academic essays) delivered there. His " Ode on
the Morning of the Nativity " flows with so sweet a charm and
soaring beauty that this poem alone must have secured for
its author an enduring place in English letters. " At a
Solemn Musick," the epitaph on Shakespeare, and a number
of other epitaphs also follow during the Cambridge years. In
the worst of this youthful verse there leaps out here and there
a flame of the true Milton.

Besides Latin and Greek he is now accomplished in French,
Italian and Hebrew. He had learnt the art of fencing and
was an expert swordsman. Leaving the precincts of the
" reedy Cam " at twenty-three, Milton is faced with the
serious query of what to do with himself. In earlier years his
mind had turned towards the Church, but he now perceives

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

" what tyranny had invaded in the Church " ; he will not,
he declares, " subscribe slave " nor stand being " Church-
outed by prelates." Possibly the Church lost Milton through
taking Laud. What if he had crossed the threshold ? What,
indeed ! Law is put aside also.

" ONE TALENT WHICH 'TWAS DEATH TO HIDE "

He turns with joyous relief to high literature. He is con-
scious that his style, " chiefly in versing, by certain vital signs
it had, was likely to live." He " has one talent which 'twas
death to hide " ; but what of his father ? There is some
remonstrance ; it is quieted by an affectionate earnestness of
the son. An ideal grows. He has " a religious advisement
how best to undergo — not taking thought of being late,
so it give advantage to be more fit." Such was the heart of
the young Puritan. How could the scrivener resist such a
spirit, especially as he has now retired, with moderate com-
petence, to Horton and the haunts of his own youth, a fair
land of pasturing kine and bending corn, of warbling bird,
of orchard, wood and stream, and in sight of Windsor towers,
" bosomed high in tufted trees." As the reader may saunter
around the walls of the Royal Castle, let him reflect that amid
such vistas of tranquil beauty and colour, of " meadows trim
with daisies pied, shallow brooks and rivers wide," several
important poems received inspiration and birth — his " Sonnets
to the Nightingale," " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso,"
" Arcades," and " Comus." This last written in 1634. It is
supposed that " Lycidas " was finished November, 1637,
in London. It was written in sad memory of his college
friend Edward King who was drowned. Milton had now six
more years added to his life. Happy years, " away," he cries,
from the " profane " ; be " far off watchful cares, be far off all
quarrels." " I spent there a complete holiday in turning over
the Greek and Latin writers." He had taken occasional
excursions to London to buy books, and also learned, says he,
" something new in mathematics and music, in which sciences
I greatly delighted." As Savonarola and Luther, after the
manner of their time, were girded for their prophetic office in
" the studious cloisters pale," so Milton, also a prophet of the
true consecration, during these six quiet years at Horton
is fed of the same heavenly impulses for the same high function.

Yes, he turns over, but with secret purpose, the story of the
many gods — it shall serve that of the one only God. His

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John Milton

genius needs no crutch of copy — it uses as it lists, it trans-
mutes, it burns with such pure, fierce flame that all grossness
departs, and he absorbs naught but good. He is under the
will of heaven to do something the world " will not willingly let
die." " What am I thinking of ? " he writes to a dear school-
fellow ; " why, with God's help, of immortality ! Forgive
the word, I only whisper it in your ear ; yes, I am pluming
my wings for a flight." But before he can make his poems
he must make himself — the poet's inspiration is from heaven.
Says he, " this is not to be but by devout prayers to that
Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and know-
ledge, and send out His seraphim with the hallowed fire
of His altar to touch and purify the life of whom He pleases.
To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady
observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and
affairs ; till which in some measure be compast I refuse not
to sustain this expectation." An ascription and hope truly
Pauline in spirit and trustful might. Oh that rising youth
could mark ! May I suggest, also, that in Milton there recurs
the same echo of noble egotism as in the Epistles. I wonder if
now the reader perceives some dim, poor outline of the true
Milton and his making ? I fear — sometimes all heart goes
from me ; in front of me lie five big volumes of Dr. Masson's
monumental life, the source of all others, and also Mark
Pattison's scholarly volume of 220 pages. What of my
twenty ?

A GREAT JOY — VISITS ITALY

Milton has now a great joy, the fulfilment of the long-
cherished desire of his heart to visit Italy. He arrives in
Paris, April or May, 1638. Having good introductions he is
received by the British Ambassador, and by him introduced
to the learned Grotius. From Nice he sails to Genoa, thence
to Leghorn. He now stands by the shores of the
Mediterranean, the great sea of classic lands, its eastern
strands the scene of ancient lore, heroes, and gods he knows
so well. He can now tread the cities of the great Renaissance
and home of art and letters. He moves in a new world, animate
and inanimate, of movement and colour, of costumes, figures,
flowers and sky, of olive groves and marble villas, of stately
churches and gorgeous ceremonial, of cowled monks and saint -
beflagged processions, and muses amid the glory, the sad
splendour, of immortal ruins.

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He turns inland to Pisa, the city of the Leaning Tower and
Duomo of glowing marble — on to Florence, " the pearl of
Italy," the city of his romance, the home of Dante. Here
he lingers two months, August and September. In the flush
of early morn, and the quiet, pure moonlight of eve, he
wanders by the Arno. The charm of climate, the wine of
historic romance, intoxicate his impressionable spirit with a
sensuous witchery, and he longs to make Florence his home.

He is at once sought and lionised by eminent scholars and
the best society. He records : " I contracted the acquaint-
ance of many truly noble and learned men ; " he also mingles
much in their academies, and they compel him to recite some
" trifles " of his own ; he makes many friendships, " delightful
and pleasant," which " time shall never destroy." Discover-
ing what he is, they concede him full liberty of expression on
his religion ; while never obtruding, he makes no secret of
this. In turn they confide to him how the " Inquisition
tyrannises " over learning and " philosophic freedom,"
" bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst
them was brought — that this was it which had dampt the
glory of Italian wits, that nothing had been written there
now these many years but flattery and fustian" — a verdict
on the ways of Rome from those who knew best. The
learned write farewell stanzas to his honour. He is taken
to see the great Galileo, now blind and old, and he comments
thus : " I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old,
a prisoner to the Inquisition for thinking in astronomy other-
wise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."
This memory is immortalised — Satan's shield is " like the
moon whose orb through optic glass the Tuscan artist views."

He passes to Rome, and stays " nearly two months." He
is conducted on the round of sights, St. Peter's being but
recently opened. From Rome he goes to lovely Naples and
" thunderous Etna." Sicily and Greece are in his pro-
gramme, fairest of all. He is stopped ; his own words are :
" The sad news of Civil War coming from England called me
back, for I considered it disgraceful that, while my fellow-
countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be
travelling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes." He
defends his religion freely at Naples, is warned that at Rome,
as his journal records, " snares are being laid for me; " "To
Rome, therefore, I did return." He is not molested. Re-
turning by way of Florence, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, the

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Alps, Geneva, Paris again, he once more steps on English soil,
in late July, 1639, after about fifteen months of touring, at
a cost with his one servant, of £1,000 in our money. Truly
his father was good as gold. To the journal of his tour he
thinks it well to append these words : " I again take God to
witness, that in all those places, where so many things are
considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all
profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me,
that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could
not the eyes of God."

Before going abroad Milton had buried his mother, aged
sixty-five, in Horton Church, and his brother having married
he could with peaceful mind leave his father in good care.

A SORROW — A STATELY DREAM — A PATRIOT'S SACRIFICE

His home-coming is shadowed by a shock of grief — news
of the death of his bosom friend Charles Diodati. He im-
mortalises his memory in " Epitaphium Damonis," said to be
the noblest of all his Latin poems and deeper in passionate
grief than "Lycidas" — the pity of it, that it was not done
in English. He quickly learns of all his country's tumult,
and must dwell in the heart of it. He takes lodgings in St.
Bride's Churchyard, but soon removes to " a pretty garden
house " in Aldersgate, and receives gentlemen's sons to teach.
Up to this it would seem he had not earned a single groat.
Probably for years there had been floating in the poet's mind
the dim shapes of a heroic poem. " The great -soulled
heroes " of Arthur and his Knights are first passed in review ;
and also early North British romance. " The Apocalypse "
and other Bible themes are pondered over ; finally his grand
dream of " a high and stately tragedy " soars and takes
company with " the apostate Angel " and " the embattled
Seraphim." There are seven pages of painstaking " jottings "
and four drafts of " Paradise Lost," and we discover that this
epic was planned out twenty years before publication. Milton
is now confronted by an anxious decision — Will he sacrifice
this " highest hope and hardest attempting," this pluming of
" my wings for immortality," and enter an unknown realm
of noisy wrangle and of uncertain end ? There is no halting.
" The spacious circuit of her musings " may wait ; his coun-
try cannot. He will, he declares, " transfer into this struggle
all my genius and all the strength of my industry." The
surrender cuts deep ; it is pathetic. For twenty years his

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regal song is silent, his " singing robes " are hung away.
His days hitherto so sunny, so soaring, now become lurid,
and are shadowed to the end. Was it well ? The chequered
years could but yield the riper fruit of wisdom. Usually an
artist in a wrangle loses if he wins. Milton alone was com-
petent to judge. Mark Pattison, so fine and sane, is (I
venture the opinion) wrong in declaring Milton's plunge into
pamphleteering a blunder. His fulness of knowledge and
critical insight are most engaging, but he lacks sympathy — he
is the scholar, not the Puritan. Below, the reader will find
what a stir and a rumpus is roused by the anti-bishop
pamphlets. Somehow the Bible gets to be the drill book of
the Puritan warriors, and a spirit of surging quest, of vision
and might, moves in and through their ranks ; and this it
was truly which won the war.

There are hoarse rumblings of coming storm and tempest.
A " rabble rout " of 'prentices at midnight go swearing and
thumping at Laud's door at LambethPalace. The King, after
eleven years of absolutism and no Parliament, issues writs.
In dire stress for cash he has squeezed Lords, Bishops and
clergy until even they squirm. The Commons, led by Pym,
will give no ear to money business until grievances are dis-
cussed, and after sitting some three weeks the " Short Par-
liament " is dissolved, April-May, 1640. But gold Charles
must have. The Scots are again marching ; nay, are far over
the Border, waving high the flag of the " Covenant." They
will have none of the King's Bishops, nor Laud's Prayer-books
either. Charles makes show with an army against the
" damnable Covenant," but quickly finds his " rabble " is sure
to run before the fierce onslaught of the praying Covenanters
and again yields to terms. It is gall. So closed the second
Bishop's war. But the Scots are on English soil, and mean
to stick there at the King's charge until settlements are assured.
Nor are the English Puritans sorry. Money, money, the King
must have by hook or crook, or the whole fabric of forty years
schemings, of Divine-right ideals, of " no bishop, no king "
maxims, built up by his father, Laud and himself, will totter
and shiver to pieces. Again writs fly forth, and on November
3rd, 1640, the historic " Long Parliament " assembles.

In respect to details of the looming conflict I refer the
reader to the preceding chapters. A unique struggle, both in
magnitude and tangled issues ; there was as urgent need for
the philosopher who could plumb the depths and the idealist

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with vision of the heights, as for the man of action. The hour
and the men synchronised. Both Cromwell and Milton en-
listed for battle as a sacred duty, with prompt and terrible
ardour and with the invincible resourcefulness of genius aflame ;
and the assured conviction that Jehovah was with them —
their patriotism was Hebrew in strain — for Zion's sake.
Sincere patriotism cannot be denied to both " Court Party "
and "Country Party," but there surely was more of the nobler
type in the latter. They fought for no exclusive privilege of
caste or order, had little ancestral estate to save, and in
chance of defeat ran far the greater risk of reprisals and exile.
The way now seems cleared for the narration of the specific
part played by Milton during the Civil War and Commonwealth
period. I here repeat that for the purpose of our stories,
this is the more important work of his life. I fear, to the
reader, it may be the less interesting.

WAR — THE CONQUERING PAMPHLETEER

The vast bulk of the ponderous propositions, the maze of
syllogisms which stirred good and learned divines to violent
temper and wrathful fire, are now dead as mummies. But at
least there is one question as alive as ever — the status of
bishop, its Scriptural basis, its historical claims, its peril to
liberty in Church and State. Church matters were just
now as hot in controversy as politics, and the King was not
more betongued than my Lord Bishop. Was he not the root
of the evil tree and of tyrannies manifold ? We know how
Milton's knowledge and dread of this had been quickened in
Italy. From mountain pass and wild loch the Scots had
trooped, and wrested their country from prelatic yoke.
Why should not England be also delivered ? It was this
aspect of the strife to which Milton addressed himself in fine
Miltonic form. An authorised Commission was presently
to report to Parliament on the subject. Pamphlets flew
about like hissing bullets, petitions rolled in the Commons'
House ; even the women stood at the bar, and in passionate
words pleaded for the exclusion of bishops from Parliament.
The present age should remember that this exclusion was
once the Constitutional law of the land. The King, after
persistent refusal, did at last sign the enactment of Lords and
Commons. Then, as now, there were three parties in the
Church — High, Middle, and the Low or Root and Branch
party. These differences just now centred more upon polity

TQ3

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than doctrine — that is, the question of bishop. The " High "
stood by the bishop as of divine right ; the " Broad or Middle "
party upheld him on grounds of usage or expediency ; the last
demanded his abolition, and a Presbyterian model substituted.

Bishop Hall, of Exeter, stood forth the champion of the
High Church party in a pamphlet designated " A Humble
Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament." To this
an answer appeared, entitled " Smectymnuus." I spell it
out that the reader may take a good laugh at the ponderosity
of the time. It scents of the old oak of the Jerusalem chamber
after the " Assembly of Divines " left it. The title is formed
of the initials of the five authors. It is supposed Milton may
have added a spark, but it was too tame for him, and more in
his way to shoot his own gun. He lets fire his own blast thus : —
" Of Reformation touching Church discipline in England,
and the causes that hitherto have hindered it." A tremendous
roar it makes. His thesis is that the European Reformation
begun by Luther had been arrested by England at a point less
advanced than that of other countries — that in consequence
she had been oppressed as by a nightmare but half cast off.
He girds at " the chaff of overdated ceremonies," " Jewish
beggary of old cast off rudiments," " the new-vomited
Paganism of sensual idolatry." Would they " make God
earthly and fleshly because they could not make themselves
heavenly and spiritual ? " They deck, they fume, they
sprinkle, " not in robes of pure innocency, but in deformed and
fantastic dressses, in palls, mitres, gold, and gewgaws fetched
from old Aaron's wardrobes." The priest with his " liturgies
and his lurries " " overbodying " the soul, breaks her pinions ;
she " forgets her heavenly flight," and is content " to plod on
in the old road and drudging trade of outward conformity."

Milton demands to know why England — blessed by a
Wyclif , and the first country in Europe to wake out of the long
night of Romish medievalism, and sharing also the Luther
wakening — should be behind in the Protestant race ; and
so on. He then passes on to a summary of the personal
influence of the monarchs from Henry VIII. to James and the
present. The " causes " are mainly three classes of persons —
" Antiquarians " (not antiquaries, but dry-as-dusts),
" Libertines " and " Politicians." The first seek to control
the present by the dead hand of the past ; the second, detesting
reins and discipline of any sort, stand by that Church which
gives godlessness least trouble ; the last are time-serving,

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selfish opportunists. Upon each of these he pours the vitriol
of Miltonic wrath. There is a magnificent sweep of argument
from Scripture, from the fathers, with surveys of the Roman
Empire after Constantine, thence on to medieval Europe.
He asserts " that the practices of prelates, beginning with
Elizabeth to present day, would fill a volume like Ezekiel's roll
with lamentation, mourning, and woe." He rolls out his
thunder boom after boom. Dr. Masson gives a lengthy
quotation of its finish, and says, " It is a passage of prose
poetry to which I have found nothing comparable as yet in the
whole range of English literature." The whole is encompassed
in an old adage, " The Bishop's foot hath been in it." The
reader will be content with the foregoing specimen.

I must now plead his patience for a bald enumeration of
Milton's pamphlet work. There were twenty-four more pam-
phlets of a political character. Of these four were in Latin and
twenty in English. Of the latter, nine are upon Church govern-
ment or things ecclesiastical, eight on the different aspects and
crises of the political strife, two are personal vindications,
intensely interesting, valuable for their autobiographical detail ;
and another of permanent interest is the " Areopagitica,"
a plea for printing of books free of the licenser's veto. The
whole extend over a term of twenty-five years. Milton
delighted to let fly at the biggest game. The great and
moderate Archbishop Ussher, of the " Middle Party," had
defended a limited episcopacy. Milton's second pamphlet is an
onslaught on his Grace, entitled " Of Prelatical Episcopacy,
and whether it may be deduced from Apostolical Times." By
an adroit move he casts confusion on his adversary — Epis-
copacy must be either human or divine : Scripture only and
not the fathers can determine this, and to Scripture he
appeals. So plain is the case to him that his argument at
times takes on a flavour of banter. But sometimes, in another
vein, the torrential flood of his earnestness, with his vast
capacity of emotion and vision, lifts him, as on wings, from
the feet of his argument, and he finds adequate expression only
in prayer. Listen : " But Thy Kingdom is now at hand,
and Thou art standing at the door. Come forth out of Thy
royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of all the earth ; put
on the visible robes of Thy Imperial Majesty; take up
that unlimited sceptre which Thy Almighty Father hath
bequeathed Thee, for now the voice of Thy bride calls Thee —
all creatures sigh to be renewed."

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Three other pamphlets quickly follow — " Animadversion,"
a sting on Bishop Hall ; " The Reason of Church Government
Urged against Prelaty " ; and an " Apology," a further
castigation of Bishop Hall and the assailers of " Smectym-
nuus." " The Reason " is accounted the greatest.
" Prelaty " does not contain the true nature of New Testament
Church government ; its form is " pomp," " ceremonies,"
which deform the true Church, which is a " spiritual body."

MARRIAGE AND THE DIVORCE TRACTS

In the early summer of 1643 Milton, telling nobody, suddenly
journeyed into the country. He returned in a month with a
wife. She was accompanied by her " nearest relations."
Mary Powell by name, the third in a family of eleven, she
was the daughter of Richard Powell, Esq., J.P., strong
Royalist of Forest Hill, near Oxford. In deeps of debt, his
estates are partly mortgaged to the elder Milton. She is
a girl of seventeen ; the husband is going thirty-five. He had
probably known her as a little girl, for the families were
acquainted. Great Milton — foolish John. Ere the honey-
moon music ceases, when her mother and sisters have
returned, she pines, and begs to go home on a visit. Strangely
he consents. She does not come back. The husband writes
for her ; there is no reply. Other letters ; still no reply.
A messenger is despatched, who is " dismissed with a sort of
contempt." Two years pass. The King's cause has drooped ;
a rumour reaches the Powells that the husband is to marry
again. A conspiracy of friends contrive a meeting in a kins-
man's house. Mrs. Milton is brought in, and falls at her
husband's feet penitent. He is astonished, but forgives
with " noble leonine clemency." He is still receiving gentle-
men's sons to educate, and removes to a larger house in the
Barbican, and here he actually takes in his wife's family.
Mrs. Milton becomes mother of four children — three daughters
and one son who dies in infancy. She dies at the birth of
of her fourth child, Deborah, at twenty-six — nine years
married. She is said to have been stupid and shallow — even
granted, one cannot yet withhold sympathy from the girl-
wife. What could the simple country-reared girl know of
her queenly responsibilities ? We may imagine Milton not
every day the most amiable man to live with — it is the great
man's test. He could make troops of angels more easily than
live like one. A wonderful woman she needed to be to fit the

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situation — wife to this kingly man of moods and flights. One
wonders at the mystery. Possibly weary of waiting for the
grand passion to fill his big heart — longing for heart com-
panionship— in an unlucky hour he beholds the girl at her
sweetest, robes her in a poet's fancy — all golden ; a word
slips and honour binds.

She proved but common clay. And what of him ? His
marriage was as night to all hope — as chains to his soul — as
fate disastrous. The bitterness of this experience was the
spring of Milton's four divorce tracts. With no hint of his
own case, he maintains the notion of the sacramental sanctity
of marriage to be superstition invented by the clergy, and that
incompatibility, contrariety, with mutual consent, is a suffi-
cient reason for divorce. These views he issues fearlessly
to the world, owned and signed, to the dismay of his friends
and the joy of his enemies. He cares not. He scorns " con-
siderations." The truth as he saw it must go forth. The
famous Westminster Assembly, then sitting, lifts hands
of horror at the heretic. He is denounced in every pulpit
in London, and is " in a world of disesteem." Yet in sober
truth it may be averred that no poet — no prophet or priest —
ever proclaimed and lived a more chivalrous and potent ideal
of chastity or a purer pattern of the holy sanctity of sexual
love. Yet he would hardly satisfy the heroines of this day,
for Adam is " for God only ; she, for God in him."

THE BOMB " AREOPAGITICA "

Milton had issued his divorce tractates in defiance of
licensers, and — a benison to the world — he was prosecuted.
In mighty ire he fills up his inkhorn, and there blazes forth
the " Areopagitica " — a speech for unlicensed printing ; it
broadens into an impregnable rock of liberty. It is his most
famous pamphlet. Truly, a wonder of bypath information,
sharp wit and rich humour, of sound reasoning and historical
buttressing, of homely thrust and vivid phrase, all shot with
Miltonic fire and throbbing eloquence. " As good almost kill
a man as kill a good book." " A good book is the precious life-
blood of a master-spirit embalmed and treasured up on pur-
pose to a life beyond life." He regards sect and schism as
" zealous thirst after knowledge." In vision he sees " a
noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks," or " as an eagle
renewing her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at

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the full mid-day beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused
sight of the fountain itself of heavenly radiance."

Virtually it was the death-stab to the tyranny. In the same
year comes forth the tract on Education. It bore the
usual mark of the daring reformer. The following defini-
tion expresses precisely what we are seeking to-day. Says
he : "I call a complete and generous education that which
fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously
all offices, both private and public, and in peace and war."
He advocates theatres under magisterial oversight as to
decency, as now practised.

No blood was spilt by the anti-episcopal pamphlet
cannonade. There is a vast change in England since its last
thunder. It was early shut off by real warfare. The Scots
had lent their aid not to win civil liberty for the English,
but to get their Presbyterianism made the established religion
of England, and with no toleration for the Independents
and sects. Up to this time Presbyterianism had been a
strong fulcrum for reform in England. Events had now
convinced both Cromwell and Milton that " new presbyter
was but old priest writ large." Both cast their lot with the
Independents, perceiving that with the Independents alone
could the sacred ark of Liberty of Conscience securely rest.

A TILLAGE OF BRAVE BLOOD — THE STATE SECRETARY

To pass on, Marston Moor, Naseby, Preston, Dunbar,
Worcester, have each left a tillage of brave blood on the
fields of Britain. The King has heroically met his fate
at the scaffold. The sword has silenced a whole theo-
logical Babel. Not only are bishops mute, but presbyteries
also. The Independents and enfranchisement of conscience
are in triumph. England breathes a new atmosphere,
and lifts her face in a glowing hope and sense of a spacious
freedom. Milton is the very first of Englishmen of mark
openly to attach himself to the new Government. Within a
fortnight of the King's execution he defends its lawfulness
in a pamphlet, " The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates."
The roar of horror and rage is soon silenced, and it is felt
that the judicial act of execution had broken " Divine Right "
in pieces and given birth to the spirit which has moulded
modern Europe. It was the deliberate deed of great patriots
daring on a tremendous precedent for their country's good.
As his noble sonnet proves, Milton was the steadfast admirer

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of Cromwell ; it is tantalising to have no record of what the
soldier thought of the poet. He is offered the post of " State
Secretary in Foreign Tongues," accepts, and removes from
High Holborn to Whitehall. His work never deals with
questions of policy or statesmanship. Latin is the diplomatic
language, and his duty is to draft, examine and translate
dispatches and documents. He is also the accomplished host
for conference with foreign personages. He is entrusted
with high literary commissions by the Council of State, and
becomes really a sort of Minister of Attack and Defence in
Literature. During this period appear his fine sonnets to
Fairfax, Cromwell and Vane. I will here interject a last word
of tribute to his old father. For some years he, and his
wife's father also, had found hearth and home with Milton.
They both died the same year, 1646-7, his father, whom to the
last he held in grateful honour, being over eighty. This same
year a tiny volume appeared, the first edition of " Poems by
Mr. John Milton."

His first official tractate was on " Peace with the Irish
Rebels." More important far was " Eikonoklastes " (Image
Smasher), a counterblast to the notable " Eikon Basilike "
(Royal Image), purporting to be a book of prayers and
meditations by Charles I. himself. It was translated into
various tongues ; there were fifty editions, with wide circu-
ation. It became venerated by Cavaliers as a sort of Bible.
The Royal family and a few others knew it to be an imposture,
being written by a Dr. Gawden, rewarded in due time with
a bishopric. Milton's fourth official pamphlet, " Pro Populo
Anglicano Defensio," was a tremendous blast in Latin against
Salmasius, the most famous scholar on the Continent, and
now Professor at Leyden. The exiled Royal family of England
engaged him to write a book against the Commonwealth.
The great man was savagely mauled, and left a gory heap.
Europe laughed. Milton's fame on the Continent as " the
English Mastiff, "and hardly less as a Latinist, was prodigious.
In counter replies Milton is shamefully vilified, and he returns
to the fight with " Defensio Secunda," which competent
judges say is the most terrible and merciless thing in English
literature. His sight grows dim, and more dim. He knows
and elects to dare the mournful cost of all this excitement
and strain. About now — May, 1652 — in his forty-fourth year,
he becomes totally blind. He mourns that he must embark
in these " hoarse disputes," but it is " in the cause of his

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country and liberty." Yes, " Liberty before everything "
stood as the flaming text of all his pamphlet writing, sweet
liberty, erect in beauty, glory and majesty. Popes, bishops,
kings, systems, press licensers, Presbyterianism, Canon
Law-ism, he fought one and all when the foot was upon
liberty. Milton was human. There are passages of coarse
personality — replies to worse, no doubt — but his soul was too
lofty to be thus sullied. Never one drop of ink left his quill
upon a mean or selfish mission. There is dull reading in his
pamphlets — he must quote and follow the argument of his
opponent. For style merely, his prose works form an imperish-
able monument of the English tongue. It is impossible
to estimate their power in the flux and crises of their day.
It must have been very great. During the sickening
debauchery of the Restoration they would be turned over
by many a patriot, and we know not their influence upon the
Revolution, for that downfall of pure despotism was the work
of Cromwell and Milton in resurrection. By his pamphlets
Milton was as famous in Europe as the champion of liberty,
as was Cromwell with his sword. He had projected a History
of Britain, a fragment only was published and abounds in
racy Miltonisms. His Latin Dictionary is the basis of all
subsequent ones for English use. Much matter was published
which space forbids me even to name. His eagerness some-
times led him to waste time and ink on worthless opponents.
At death he left a mass of manuscripts.

AFFLICTIONS — A PROPHECY — HIS GREAT EPIC

Troubles come not alone, and in this year of his blindness
his wife and only boy are laid in the grave. In November,
1656, he married Katherine Woodcock, daughter of an Iron-
side captain. In fifteen months he is again widower, for
mother and newly-born babe again are buried together. In
a sonnet he lays a sacred tribute to her memory. His daugh-
ters, much left to themselves and stepmothers, afford him
little solace, even when up grown. Deborah is best. Cheated
and worried by servants, he married, in February 1662-3, a
third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of good Cheshire family,
who is excellent wife, nurse and comfort to the end.

Poor Milton, calamities upon calamities crowd upon him !
Cromwell dies. The nation whispers in fear and dread.
Milton issues an agonised plea to save the Republic entitled
" A Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth,"

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and later a second and third edition more anguished still,
and with violent denunciation of the royal family and
prophesy of degradation to England and doom to liberty.
All are vain ; huzzas for the king already echo in the streets,
and on May agth, 1660, Charles II. makes triumphant entry
into London. The deluge of the Restoration engulfs all.
Milton hides, and the common hangman makes bonfire of
his pamphlets. So ends the long, bitter battle of twenty years.
How he escaped gibbet or axe is a standing historic riddle.
Let us say Heaven itself stooped and saved him, to hand
on the splendour of English literature and to a glorious
purpose. For all time he stands the " great Independent " —
the princely genius of English Puritanism. Space permits but
summary closing paragraphs. While claiming a modern
fearlessness of interpretation, and with some singular opinions,
he retained to the end the profoundest reverence for the Bible.
Distinguished friends clung to him.

In later years, the sweet lyric note of earlier years had
passed ; the severer diapason — " the organ voice " — succeeds.
The change is born of manifold sorrows and of afflictions of
body ; he had " trod the wine press alone." It is all heaven's
own discipline for his heavenliest task.

I may not tell of the priceless poetic heritage he bequeathed
to his countrymen — of the lines of tender and exquisite dirge,
of the matchless pastoral grace of "Lycidas," of the solemn
and stately beauty of his sonnets. I may not tell of " Comus "
a literary gem of rarest workmanship, fashioned with loving
skill to set forth the fair and beauteous form of Chastity;
her divine panoply and puissance ; her " sun-clad power " ;
her " sublime notion and high mystery." So precious that
" If virtue feeble were, heaven itself would stoop to her."
Nor can I tell of the weird, pathetic, Hebrew majesty of
" Samson Agonistes," really an autobiographic mirror.
The wide world knows of the soaring grandeur, the dread
pomp, the awfulness, the majesty of his immortal epic.
Dryden, with others, cries out, reading the sheets of " Paradise
Lost," " This man cuts us all out, the ancients, too," and
foreigners cross seas to look upon his face. Excepting a
brief flight from the plague to Chalfont St. Giles, in Bucking-
hamshire, for the last ten years of his life he resided in Artillery
Walk, Bunhill Fields. Here he completed " Paradise Lost,"
and wrote " Samson Agonistes " and " Paradise Regained."
His habit is to rise at four in summer, five in winter. He

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first hears read his Hebrew Bible, then writes with his reader,
and afterwards " contemplates " within himself till noon.
After dinner he saunters or sits in his garden or plays his
organ, and sings with his wife and dictates to his amanuensis
the rest of the afternoon. At six, friends may turn in and he
is " delightful company," " lively with dignity," " pleasant
but satirical." We are told " that he was no friend to sharp
or strong liquors." About nine " he smoked his pipe and
drank a glass of water, and went to bed." In his " gout fits
he would be cheerful and sing." Though blind, his eyes seem
clear, and beautiful hair still falls over his shoulders. He
loves to live over the sweet, happy, sacred days of his boy-
hood home. His gout is hereditary, his finger joints being
swelled with chalky deposit, and " of gout struck " (gout fever,)
he passes peacefully away on Sunday, November 8th, and
is buried beside his father in the chancel of St. Giles's
Cripplegate, November I2th, 1674. " All his learned and
great friends, not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar,"
reverently follow his remains to the grave. At last he dwells
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,

Where the bright Seraphim in burning row
Their loud uplifted angel-trumpets blow.

202

GEORGE FOX.

" Believe in the Light that ye may be the children of Light"

INSCRIPTION.— "If Milton was the poet of the Puritan age and
Cromwell its soldier-statesman, George Fox was its prophet — an
elect soul, with visions and ' great openings.' who has not yet
wholly come to his own in the world's estimation." B. 1624,
D. 1690.

SCENE. — Preaching from the hill-side, presumably to one of his vast
congregations among the vales and fells of Lancashire and
Yorkshire. A shepherd — sheep are grazing on the herbage. A
winsome cherub brings the olive branch of peace and scroll of
prophecy — the symbols of Divine commission.

The chapter entitled " A Seventeenth Century Background
Sketch " affords a setting to the stage upon which George
Fox moved and spent his life. Out of the mist he stepped
upon it, with the " voice of one crying," startling as the
Baptist's ; garbed, if not with camel's hair, yet uncouth
enough in suit of leather, probably his own youthful freak of
craftsmanship by awl and pitchband, fashioned stout and
sensible for trotting through rain and storm or sleeping under
a thorn hedge. Of all the cranks of this cranky age, this
fanatic is the craziest, and surest to end his breath by the
rope, say the multitude of respectables who pass him by.

What saj's he of himself ? " Now was I come up in spirit
through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God " " beyond
what words can utter." Shod with the spirit he had ascended
the Holy Mount, bowed before the Ineffable, and descended
in the might of a revelation. He brings a sword for every
class. The Papist or Laudian priest scowls to hear his orders
flouted, and sacraments cast away as obsolete. The Calvinist
is struck with horror, for the foundations of eternal repro-
bation and the very gates of hell are endangered. The soldier

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laughs sardonically. The Royalist is enraged, and judges
stare, for the madman refuses oath to the King. Courts and
constables are dumbfounded, for he walks into their awful
presence with his hat on. Everybody who thinks himself
somebody bristles to the eyebrows, and the great and the rich
are aghast to be accosted by " thou," " thee," which custom
gives to menials only.

In the holy wrath of the Hebrew prophets he will go forth
and with their command — " Blow ye the trumpet and sound
an alarm " — he will cry out, " Awake and weep," " Be ye
ashamed," " Gird yourselves and lament," " Sanctify a fast,"
for " thus saith the Lord," " Woe unto them that are at ease
in Zion."

He tells us, " professors, priests and people were whole and
at ease in that condition which was my misery." " I saw the
harvest thick on the ground as ever did wheat, and none to
gather it, and for this I mourned with tears."

He must first come with a sword to destroy and to burn.
Down with " idol temples," " pulpits that priests lolled in,"
" Jewish and heathenish ceremonies," " rudiments of the
world," "gotten up since the apostles' days!" Stop all
" offerings, tithes and covetous priests," " hirelings who
make the gospel chargeable, and showed them the wrong
ways," " false prophets " all ! War ! war ! upon the whole
Church structure, unsound from base to top. The professors,
we are told, " fed one another upon words," " trampled upon
the life — the blood of the Son of God which was my life." A
terrible indictment from this gentle shepherd ; possessed of such
child-like purity of soul that he shrank from " the carnal talk
and talkers " of the street.

Never had the priests received such a tremendous denial —
away with man-learning and priest-making ; away with the
heavy blinds of dogmas which so encumber and darken the
chambers of the soul ; let in — let in the glad free effulgence of
God's blessed light and love. In this sweet might he comes
not a foretelling prophet of One to come but of One already
come, yet lost awhile. He comes not a preacher crying " Flee
from the wrath to come ! " but " Here and now receive the
Light and Love." He comes a prophet, with an engaging,
angelic authority in his very presence, breathing " the eternal,
glorious power of Christ," and ever with a clear-sounding
" Thus saith the Lord." In mystic exaltation he had gazed
upon the new Jerusalem, and " saw no temple therein," and

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George Fox

in the [light of that vision he goes forth among men, with
strenuous fervour, to open to them the wondrous beauty of
that fair City of God.

FOX BRINGS BACK THE IMMANENCE OF GOD IN DAILY LIFE

George Fox's case was peculiar. No " professor " had shown
him the way of peace. He had sought but found no brother-
hood. It was but natural he should feel sure that much around
him in the religious world was hollow profession. Not a long
crow-fly away, another young spirit groans in even darker
rack of soul, but the Bedford tinker meets those who lead him
to the Light. Fox goes to and fro on the earth seeking, yet
no human hand or Church does this effectually for him. He
writes : " Though I read the Scriptures that spoke of Christ
and of God, yet I knew Him not but by revelation as He who
hath the key did open, and as the Father of Life drew me to
His Son by His Spirit." It is important to note this peculiar
fact. His progressive steps seemed to him as shining gleams,
streamings, " openings " within himself — direct from God
and shedding upon him an effulgent confidence and power.
It is this experience, as a whole, of the truth and its reception
which gives that distinctiveness to Fox which sets him apart
from the hosts of good men and women of the Puritan day
who passed through deep tribulation of spirit.

The pure in heart shall see God, and it was in this trans-
figured majesty of a pure soul that this lowly craftsman
became a chosen High Priest, to whom the Holiest was
unveiled. In place of credal legalism Fox brought back
mystery and wonder to religion, and the rich, loving immanence
of God in daily life. He taught that Christ was not a far-off
Saviour or hidden in creeds, but living, present and near
He restored Christianity as a life first, and not a credal system,
any more than a thing of official sacrament. He upheld right
conduct, justice and mercy as better than sound doctrine.
He combined the serene piety of Thomas a Kempis with the
unceasing activities of Wesley; he was a mystic in action.
We see with what lofty ideals and potential principles Quaker-
ism came to birth. Its early disciples brought to its service
an imperishable lustre of passion and suffering devotion. Its
clear discernings of the realities, its lofty separateness from the
heavy dulness, doctrinal, and earthly complacency of the day,
its disdain of tactics and opportunist expediency, its stalwart

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practice of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, and the
broad humanities, its illustrious efforts for the slave and the
oppressed, for peace and liberty, its moral beauty, have won
for it a crown all its own. Can we wonder that the age to
Fox was dull, coarse, eye-scaled, hypocritical, and that the
priest or his semblance, any side of him, and his whole
entourage, were anathema.

Books and pamphlets with opprobious titles were hurled
at Fox and his followers — such as " Hell broken Loose,"
"Quakers no Christians." They were "semi-Atheists and
Jesuits." Yet in the grand essentials they were always one
with the Christian world. This is evident from Fox's declar-
ation in his letter to the governor of the Barbadoes, afterwards
inscribed in the " Book of Discipline." They preached no
Calvinism, and to the sound Puritan salvation was barely
thinkable outside this. They possessed such glorious fulness
of the Spirit and its fruits that mere doctrinal statement was
forgotten, and so the early Quakers were much a riddle to the
Puritans. They yet proclaimed things of startling and
profound difference.

Let us note these more closely as they appeared to the
various Christian sections of the time. Perhaps the important
things may be grouped under three heads.

i. Fox claimed for every soul the high privilege of receiving
the truth first hand from the Fount of all Truth, equally with
the Apostles and writers of the Bible. Hidden at the back
of the universal conscience is that which responds to the
magnet — Christ and His Spirit — and bursts into light and
power with obedience. The Scriptures were a unique revelation
yet one only in an endless chain. That is, the doctrine of the
" inner light." It is hard for us to gauge for that day the
astounding and far-reaching nature of this proclamation.
This granted, everything and anything might follow. It
seemed to cast down every standard and proclaim rank
anarchy in the whole kingdom of Church authority and also
of dogma, and to heap contempt alike upon ancient councils
and scholars, and the piles of learning and theologic lore of
centuries. Further, the outstanding result of the Reformation
to the Protestant was that in place of authority, tradition, or
Church, the Bible was the sure law and rock of faith, every line
of it inspired by God's awful power. Was not all this also
endangered by the jabbering of this ignorant, sheep-mongering
cobbler ?

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George Fox

2. This inward light, this salvation, was for all men — even
the heathen — a cannon ball through the fabric of Calvinism.
Where now was God's Sovereignty as operating in election,
reprobation, and what not ? It was more, it was also a
missionary proclamation 150 years in advance of the Protestant
Churches. These were as yet stone-blind to what Fox saw
with clear vision. In the full graciousness of his doctrine he
was two centuries ahead of his day.

3. Christ was not only the power of salvation from eternal
doom, but was equally the direct power of salvation from sin
during this earthly course. This put both priests and legalists
in a rage ; it upset their everyday practice. Was it not a
subtle blow at " final perseverance " and an open scoff at
" sacerdotalism ? " While credalists were splitting up God —
defining Him as Lawgiver, Judge, God of Wrath, etc. — George
proclaimed Him simply as a God of Love.

He tells us they were " all pleading for sin and imperfection,
and could not endure to hear talk of perfection and of a holy
and sinless life." Said he, " Keep in the daily cross, the power
of God," and " ye have liberty and victory over the flesh and
its works." This teaching of Christian perfection aroused
controversy lasting well on for a century, until the Methodists
championed the Quaker's side. There was room for honest
difference. Fox never taught a stationary perfection — there
must be " daily warfare." Indeed " Growth in the truth "
and " We are nothing, Christ is all " were watchwords.
Jesus was the Redeemer of the whole man — here and now ;
the penitent, seeking, obedient soul shall not live in quaking
dread of the devil all his earthly days. King Jesus shall reign
in His own. " The Kingdom of God is within you." " The
Kingdom of God is with power." Man shall walk, as in Pente-
costal days, in the rosy orient of light and power. Christ
came to bring a more abundant life here. " Yea, the earth
is the Lord's and the fulness thereof," and the sons of God
shall come to their heritage and rejoice.

It was this conscious, pervading potency, this spaciousness
and permeation of the Spirit's power within every willing soul
which was the secret of the wonderful march and conquest of
early Quakerism. Its glow and passion were indefinable ;
spirit speaking with spirit, operating as the magnet, mys-
teriously and unseen. Its evangelists were not missionaries
only, but prophets. To Fox's pure vision there was such a
thing as setting up the Bible in place of the Spirit, Creed in

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place of the Cross, and the Cross in place of Christ. We see
why Fox dubbed all ministers priests alike. From his view,
to preach salvation as if through the door of a credal legalism
was little better than to speak of sacraments and works. We
see why a paid ministry was odious, for every disciple was
of the priesthood, and equally at the call of the Spirit. We
see why any set forms, liturgies, aids of sense, even music,
were put away as superseded, for they that worship Him must
worship Him in spirit and in truth — in their pure aloneness.
Apart from the right or wrong of it, the lofty originality
and splendid daring of Fox and his message are seen perhaps
most conspicuously in his setting aside the sacraments of
Baptism and the Lord's Supper. It was not this or that
theory about them, but the Ordinances themselves. These
holy mysteries and precious symbols were wound around
the heart of the Church universal, unquestioned, unbroken
through the long, dim centuries. They stood at the centre
and citadel of its faith. Councils and dogmas might come
and go, but these remained as a rock immovable. And now
this unlettered upstart casts them down. This action could
not result from any competency in historical or textual
criticism, but followed indirectly upon his " openings."

ENGLAND'S FIRST SOCIAL REFORMER

Perhaps also this high-toned sensitiveness prompts George
to become England's first practical Social Reformer, and with
a vengeance. He says : " When the Lord sent me forth He
forbade me to put off my hat to any, high or low, and I was
required to ' thee and thou ' all men and women without res-
pect to rich or poor, great or small." " O the blows, punch-
ings, beatings, ill-usage, danger to life we underwent." Fox
pleaded before courts for better prisons for all, more humane
justice ; wrote to judges against capital punishment for
smaller crimes ; stood up in markets for honest dealing ;
defended servants at hirings and fairs against unfair con-
ditions ; exhorted schoolmasters as to their high responsi-
bilities ; and reasoned with innkeepers not to sell to cus-
tomers " more drink than would do them good." He urged
magistrates to fix a liberal wage.

Two " openings " alone issuing from his evangel will shed
lasting lustre upon the brow of George Fox — those relating
to peace and woman. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, and His
kingdom is not established with carnal weapons of blood.

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George Fox

This was not a pious theory merely, but was constantly put to
hard test. Think of that triumph of noble daring — a scene of
history — when William Penn, unarmed, assembled the Indian
chiefs to treat for land already purchased from the King of
England. So won over were these wild braves of blood that
ever afterwards, when the fate of other whites was the scalp-
ing knife, Quakers remained untouched. No human blood
was shed in the colony during the seventy years that the
Quakers retained power. Their spiritual sensitiveness turned
them from shedding of blood and from all brutal compulsion.
The age was possessed by an incurable notion of the
inferiority of woman and this obscured any true reverence for
woman as the very symbol of Heaven to man. This mystic
halo is the fount of the old romance of knightly venture.
Without reverence for woman as for holy things man cannot
reach unto the holiest height even in this mortal sphere.
Fox declared that woman was equal with man in the rights,
and ranks of her outward life. He upheld these equalities
among his followers. She also should prophesy as she was
moved of the Spirit. The women of our day should raise a
statue to his honour. It was all so strange to his day, and
perhaps to many these smaller things obscured his greater
message and he was regarded as a half-crazy meddler. It
was but taking Jesus at His word, with the simplicity of His
teaching, and no greater shock could be. And so Fox came
with his big spade to shovel away the customs, traditions
and dogmas — the tippings of centuries. Only by the power
of a true apostolic commission could this be achieved, and,
like them of old, he went forth careless of purse, scrip, or
fortune, and a man of little learning.

BIRTH, PARENTAGE, YOUTH — THE CALL OF LIFE

The following pages of narrative and fact are from Fox's
Journal. I can only select mere peeps. The journal, like
Wesley's, is incidentally most valuable and interesting history.

George Fox was born in July, 1624, of middle-class parents,
in Fenny Drayton, Leicestershire. His father, Christopher,
was a weaver, and so upright as to be known as " righteous
Christer." His mother, Mary Lago, came of the stock of
martyrs, and we may be assured a well-thumbed copy of
Foxe's " Book of Martyrs " would adorn the homely book-
shelf, and the lad's heart often be stirred by its heroic annals.
" The mother was a woman accomplished above most of her

209

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degree," " tender and indulgent " to her son's grave ways.
Their home and church were distinctly Puritan. The vicar,
Nathaniel Stephens, was numbered among the ejected under
the Act of Uniformity. Nurtured by a mother's prayers
and watchful care, George writes "At eleven years of age I knew
pureness and righteousness, for while a child I was taught to
walk to be kept pure." His mother taught him to read, and,
fond of his Bible, he grows a silent child, caring little for play,
and becomes known for truth and candour. He is hurt to
see the loose living of up-grown people, and resolves, when a
man " my behaviour will not resemble theirs." As a boy the
Lord showed him " to keep to yea and nay in all things " ;
also to master appetite, and eat and drink only as much as
nature needs for bare support. A peculiar youth, he is a butt
for gibes from other lads, but goes on his way. There is an
intention to make him a clergyman, but eventually he is put
to a shoemaker and grazier. So trusted is George in trading
that when his " Verily " is once said the whole village world
believes. Doubtless the winter work of last and awl would
be liked less than tending sheep in the quiet, summer beauty
of green fields, communing with his soul upon the deep things
of God. In the summer of 1643 a trivial incident occasions
the sudden call which turns the current of his life. Going
to a fair on business he meets a cousin, and is asked to join
him with a friend over a jug of beer. Thirsting, he
assents. After a glass round, the others, calling for more,
propose drinking healths, and he who will not to pay for all.
George had joined them because they were " professors,"
and that he " loved any that had a sense of good or that
sought after the Lord." There is jar to his sensitive soul;
his " Nay " is instant. Down he lays his groat, and declares,
" If it be so I will leave you," and departs.

The jar deepens into shock, and with the darkness he goes
not to bed ; but now kneeling, now pacing to and fro, passes
the night watches in meditation and prayer. He is " grieved
that professors of religion should do so." To his fresh, pure
soul the incident had, as by a flash, revealed to him something
deeper than itself — the awful gulf between reality and profess-
sion. The Lord tells him all around is vanity, he must there-
fore " forsake all, both young and old, and be as a stranger
to all." He writes : " Then at the command of God, on the
ninth day of the seventh month, 1643, I left my relations
and broke off all familiarity or fellowship with young or old."

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George Fox

So begin his long years of journeyings and sufferings. He
or his family seem to have possessed some private means.

Just now he is in search of the " inner light " for his own
soul, without thought of others. Surely, oh, surely, there are
some in this great England — is there even one among the
thousands of spiritual guides, who can point the way of light
and peace, he must find him. His heart is insistent, and
cries out for the living God. He passes to Lutterworth (shade
of Wyclif, pity !) on to Northampton, Newport Pagnell, and
is in Barnet the following June. He has become shy of pro-
fessors, they " did not possess what they professed," and
" is under strong temptation to despair," and in such urgent
soul-anguish as to go " to many a priest for comfort, but found
no comfort from any of them." Says he, " When it was day
I wished for night, and when it was night I wished for day."
Ah, but among " the great professors of the City of London "
there is help for him, and thither from Barnet he goes. Alas !
even they are " under the chain of darkness." In bewilder-
ment of " great misery and trouble," and hearing his people
are anxious, he returns home. Here there are effusive recipes
for his condition. He must marry. No, say others, enlisting
is the thing. Idle stuff ; he " is grieved, being a tender youth,"
and gets out of it to Coventry. After " some time " he is
back home, and is " about a year in great sorrows and
troubles " ; and, his Journal runs, " walked many nights by
myself." Vicar Stephens tries his hand, but quickly exclaims
of Fox, " Never was such a plant grown in England." An
" ancient priest counsels him to take tobacco and sing Psalms."
He walks seven miles to another " experienced man ; " he
is an " empty cask." Priest Macham, of " high account,"
prescribes physic and bleeding, but he tells us they can get
" not one drop of blood from me, arms or head," being " all
dried up with sorrows." Ah, there is a great Dr. Cradock,
of Coventry ; he will tell him the ground of his " temptations
and despair." They walk in the garden. George chances
to step on a bed, and off in rage flies the saint. The seeker
returns worse than he went — " miserable comforters " all. At
Christmas he refuses invitations to weddings, but visits widows
and orphans with alms.

Early in 1646, going to Coventry, worn in health and spirit,
pondering over the words " all Christians are believers, both
Protestants and Papists," he receives the message that to be
a Christian means passing from death to life, and that only

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

such possess the true life. Later, walking in the fields
one Sunday morning, it is revealed to him that to be
bred in Oxford or Cambridge cannot qualify a man for the
ministry, at which he marvels. He further discerns there
is nothing holy in priest, temple, or ceremony — " God dwelleth
not in temples made with hands." One by one these outward
things drop away — the mists are moving — his " great
openings " are on their dawn. Still, dark temptations
come and go ; he yet fasts much, and loves lonesome places,
sits in hollow trees wherein to meditate with his Bible ;
at night, we learn, walks " mournfully abroad by myself,
for I was a man of sorrows in the times of the first workings
of the Lord with me." Early in 1647 he is moved to go into
the Peak country, and is still " up and down a stranger in
the earth." His long quest for peace is vain and fruitless.
He saw "there was none could speak to my condition." All
hope in men or outward things is gone, gone — what now shall
he do ? Ah, his own extremity is his God's opportunity.
He proceeds : " Oh ! then I heard a voice which said, ' There
is One, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' '
Now his " heart did leap for joy." " Then the Lord did
let me see why none else" could, "that I might give Him all
the glory."

NOW, FORTH FROM THE WILDERNESS — FIRST PRISON

New visions of sin and the way of grace appear. " Then
the Lord gently led me along, and let me see His love, which
was endless and eternal, surpassing all knowledge in the
natural state, or by history, or books, and let me see myself
as I was without Him." At twenty-three he began at
Dukinfield, near Manchester, his long years of public ministry.
Some received his word well ; others, " professors," were
" in a rage, pleading for sin and imperfection." " But the
Lord's power was over all." Sore temptations of doubt still
beset him. The " Lord showed him how He was tempted
by the same devil," and he himself may have victory by the
same source of power. " All things come by Nature " is the
gloomy, dreadful thought which possesses him as he sits one
day by the fire, but soon a voice says, " There is a living God
which made all things." Peace is near ; walking alone, he
is consumed by the greatness of the love of God, and clearly
sees that all was done by Christ, and how He conquers and
destroys the tempter, the devil, and all his works, and " is

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atop of him," and that his own " temptations are but trials
of his faith." Now, forth from his wilderness, strong in spirit,
he roams far afield, wherever the Spirit leads. Of active
habits, indifferent to weather or fatigue, a barn, furze bush, or
haystack, if nothing better is handy, will satisfy him for shelter
or sleep. Fastidious as to clean and good linen, swiftly from
place to place he goes by foot or saddle. Tall, strong, firm in
leg as an oak, a countenance of great sweetness, framed by
luxuriant hair, eyes which softened in pity and love or flashed
in dispute, with heart aflame, and a voice of great power,
he draws vast crowds to hear him in the open air, and holds
them in command for hours. His marvellous power in
prayer hushed turbulent multitudes into awe.

His eager, earnest spirit forced him sometimes to make
the most of a custom by invading the churches to oppose
the parson's teaching. He writes, " The earthly spirit of the
priests wounded my life." His first taste of prison is at
Nottingham in 1648. Spying the town from the top of a hill,
he beholds the " great steeple house," and " the Lord said
unto me, Thou must go and cry against yonder great idol and
against the worshippers therein." Already there are disciples
here, and first he visits the Friends' meeting house, " where
the mighty power of the Lord was among us."

He steals off to the church, where we are told, " The
people looked like fallow ground, and the priest, like a great
lump of earth, stood in the pulpit above them." The text
is, " We have a more sure word of prophecy, whereunto ye do
well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark
place until the day dawn and the day star arise in your
hearts." " And he told the people that this was the Scriptures
by which they were to try all doctrines, religions and opinions."
Fox continues, " Now, the Lord's power was so mighty upon
me that I could not hold, but was made to cry out and say,
' Oh, no ! it is not the Scriptures,' and I told them what it
was — namely, the Holy Spirit by which the holy men of God
gave forth the Scriptures whereby opinions, religions and
judgments were to be tried. The Jews had the Scriptures,
yet they persecuted Christ and His Apostles," and so on.
While speaking " officers came and took me away, and put
me into a nasty, stinking prison." The parson's exposition
was simply that of every Protestant pulpit, and this George
could not now stand. I think I have previously said that the
age could only see religion through spectacles of creed. All

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sermons were based upon doctrine, and if the text did not
square with the doctrine all the worse for the text. The
preacher's duty was to make it do so. One may imagine the
earnest intensity of the intruder and the excitement of
the half -affrighted worshippers. The message struck with
power, and many were deeply stirred. Afterwards the Sheriff
asks Fox to his house. Meeting him in the hall, the
mistress takes Fox by the hand and cries, " Salvation is come
to our house," and tells him that she, her husband, children
and household are much changed by the power of the Lord.
Meetings are held in the Sheriff's house. Scandalised, the
Mayor puts Fox into the common gaol, but cannot
imprison the message, which still moves and awakens the
town. Released without trial he travels on — this week beaten
by an ignorant mob, next haled before bleary mayors and
hard magistrates, set in the stocks — a feast for gibing louts.

HE HEALS THE SICK — THE LION BECOMES A LAMB

With stalwart converts, he now visits the sick, disputes
with Baptist or Independent ministers. In one town a woman
suffering from mental derangement is being held by force
while doctors bleed her, " her hair loose all about her ears."
George asks them to stand aside. In the name of the Lord he
bids the woman be still, soothes her overwrought nerves by
kind words, and her eyes and heart are opened to Gospel
power ; her reason is restored, and henceforth she is restful
in God. At Coventry he visits and cheers prisoners for con-
science' sake. At Derby, in 1650, he, with two others, enters
the church. There is a great gathering of officers and priests,
and a colonel has to preach. He is " moved to speak what the
Lord commands me." An officer takes him before the magis-
trates. The bold fanatic interests the Court. He tells them
" All their preachings, baptisms, sacrifices would never sanc-
tify them " but " Christ in them " ; and says he " The power
of God thundered amongst them ; they did fly like chaff
before it." " Have you no sin ? " they ask. The reply is :
" Christ, my Saviour, has taken away my sin, and in Him
there is no sin." To ensnare, they ask " Are any of you
Christ ? " " Nay, we are nothing ; Christ is all," is the
answer. They deride his raptures, and yet hold parley until
" the ninth at night." " Six months as blasphemers " is the
sentence. His relatives come and offer £100 bail. Will he
come no more with his ranting ? He will not be bound. An

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enraged justice strikes him, crying, "Away with him, gaoler."
He has liberty to walk a mile alone, preaches in the market,
and returns to prison, where he writes epistles to ministers
and magistrates couched in a prophetic tone. He is the talk
of the town, and many awakened Puritans visit him. Into
their hearts he sees before they speak, and knows they will not
endure his message of Christ's power to save from sin in this
life. " If your faith be true it will give victory over sin and
the devil," he tells them, but, blinded by an iron mask of
creed, they perceive it not.

The gaoler is a " high professor," and has treated Fox with
cruelty. Later he confesses to Fox, " I have been a lion
against you, but now I come as a lamb, and, like the jailor
who came to Paul and Silas, trembling." Earnest, seeking,
Cromwellian troopers visit him, and a strange scene develops.
The common soldiers demand the preacher for captain, and
he is brought to the market-place and publicly offered the
honour with " flattering words." " I trampled it under my
feet," says he. Probably taken for a disguised Royalist,
he is again stowed for six months in a " lousy," " stinking
prison, without any bed, and among felons." And so this
wandering disturber goes along his way, a riddle to learned
and simple alike.

George and his followers would never give or allow bail to
appear at courts for trial, and they became so trusted as to
be often let free upon mere word of honour — always more
binding than money.

THE STRANGEST THING OF HIS LIFE

I must here narrate the strangest of all the strange deeds
in the life of George Fox. At a distance he beholds the three
spires of Lichfield Cathedral. " The Word of the Lord "
comes to him. Leaving his friends at a house, he scampers
towards the city in a straight line, over hedge and field.
It is winter, yet a mile away he casts his shoes. His
Journal goes on : " The Word of the Lord was like fire in
me. Within the city the Word of the Lord came to
me again, and I went up and down the streets crying with
a loud voice, ' Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield.' " It
is market-day, and to the market-place he goes; "and to and
fro in the several parts of it made stands," crying as before,
" Woe to the bloody city of Lichfield," " and no one laid
hands on me." The marvel ! He proceeds : " There seemed

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to me to be a channel of blood running down the streets, and
the market place appeared like a pool of blood." He returns
and gets his shoes. Afterwards he wonders at the thing,
and " came to understand that in the Emperor Diocletian's
time a thousand Christians were martyred at Lichfield."
The incident is alone during the whole of George's life.
Steeples and their bells had a peculiarly inflaming effect upon
him, they " struck his life " ; they were symbols of much of
that mere " professon " he hated. He saw " beyond the
priests." His health must have been impaired by imprison-
ment, and already he had received " great openings concerning
the things written in the Revelation." Perhaps that is enough
for the aberration. Let me once for all say that Fox, aside
from the high level of spiritual exaltation in which he lived,
was the subject of strange states. At one time he seemed
"as if he were dead, and when he recovered after about
fourteen days his body seemed to have been new-moulded."
With the recovery came a power of new discernment of the
things of the Spirit. Besides these states of vision or semi-
trance there are several instances of prayer or faith -healing,
which he believed to be miracles. He often subjected his body
to long fasts of ten days until some " weighty work in hand "
was " accomplished." He himself was the subject of pro-
phetic utterance from dying people and himself, " was moved "
to tell Judge Fell a fortnight before the event that the
Long Parliament would be broken up. Years before the
Great Fire he had a vision of London in heaps and ruins
and warned both Oliver and Charles. I dare not pretend
to any earthly explanation of these things ; there are modern
oracles who will.

Passing through Beverley he enters its beautiful fane, and
puts the clergyman to discomfiture. Of his message here a
lady declared, " There came an angel or spirit into the church
and spoke wonderful things of God." " It astonished both
priests, professors and magistrates," and he makes a fast friend
of Justice Hotham. An intrusion into York Minster is less
pleasant, for he is hustled to the door and cast down the steps.
With untiring step and unwavering courage he journeys,
preaching his evangel on village green and market cross or in
steeple house. Sometimes he is dragged, beaten, and stoned,
" all over besmeared with blood and dirt " ; nor will he appear
against his persecutors, not even when pressed by friendly
magistrates. But there mingle happier times of gracious

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plenitude of blessing, the harvest of years of patient suffering
and faithful daring and sowing.

It was amongst the dalesmen of Yorkshire, Lancashire
and Lakeland that Fox found his readiest converts. From
the top of Pendle Hill, Lancashire, he has a vision as of Canaan.
He tells us " The Lord let me see in what places he had a
great people to be gathered." Near Sedbergh a big con-
gregation regularly assembled, and once, a little west, at Fir-
bank Chapel, he sat upon a rock and preached for three hours
with such power that two Independent ministers came under
the spell of his message, and John Audland and Francis
Howgill became eloquent and undaunted messengers of his
evangel. Edward Burrough, a strict Presbyterian, hailing
from a mountain farm near Kendal, also joined Fox, and a
life of saintly service was crowned with prison martyrdom.1

At Swarthmore Hall, near Ulverston, dwelt Judge Fell,
M.P., in the Long Parliament, one of Cromwell's judges, and
afterwards Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. His wife,
Margaret, a lady of rare character, gives hospitable welcome
to wayfaring preachers. Fox is introduced by a friend. She
thinks well of her minister, and is troubled to learn that
George had already had discussion with him. On the Sunday
Fox entered during service. All is stale and unreal. " They
sang unsuitable to their states," says he. " I was moved
of the Lord to speak," and speak he did, and with impressive
power on one at least.

" I STOOD UP IN MY PEW AND WONDERED "

Says Mrs. Fell, " I stood up in my pew and wondered at
his doctrine, for I never heard such before." " Then he went
on and opened the Scriptures ; they were the prophets' words
and Christ's and the Apostles' words, and as they spoke they
enjoyed and possessed. Then what had they to do with the
Scriptures but as they came by the Spirit that gave them
forth ? You will say Christ saith this and the Apostles say
this, but what canst thou say ? What thou speakest is

1 The most recent researches indicate that, about 1551-2 whole
bodies of "Seekers" already organised in Westmorland, North
Lancashire and Yorkshire joined themselves to Fox. Howgill, Audland
and Burrough, with others were their leaders and preachers. It was
at the time of this adhesion that the true and stable foundations of
Quakerism were laid. Perhaps it was from this period that George
boldly began to invade and attack whole congregations — deeds of
aggressive and inspired courage alone among great Reformers.

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inwardly from God. It cut me to the heart, and then I saw
that clearly we were all wrong, so I sat down in my pew again
and cried bitterly, and I cried in my spirit to the Lord, ' We
are all thieves, we are all thieves ; we have taken the
Scriptures in words, and know nothing of them ourselves.' "

She but dimly remembered how Fox denounced the false
prophets and priests of the day. Justice Sawrey is in church,
and orders that the disturber be put out, and though Mrs.
Fell pleads to hear more, out goes George, and concludes in the
graveyard. He proceeds on a preaching tour in adjacent
places. Judge Fell, returning from circuit work, is met and
told that his family is bewitched. Vexed and prejudiced, he
arrives home. His gracious wife puts him in quieter mood,
and at Fox's return, with the Judge's consent, a meeting is
held in the hall parlour, and next day another. Hearing
discussion where to hold meetings, he broke in, " You may
meet here if you will." Without mingling he would listen
with the door open, and until his death, in 1658, his powerful
arm shielded the swelling ranks of disciples in the North.
Swarthmore Hall became a sort of Friends' General Post Office,
where to learn of the whereabouts and welfare of each other —
a refuge for Quaker evangelists scarred and wounded, broken
by travel and suffering — a sequestered spot of sweet fellow-
ship and refreshment. Margaret Fell was as a mother in
Israel to the movement, and her home the very Zion of the
early generation of Friends. Fox is " moved " again to speak
in " Ulverston steeple house." Justice Sawrey incites a
brutal rabble and George is nearly killed. At Walney Island
a woman gives out that he had bewitched her husband, and
forty people set upon him with clubs and fishing poles, crying,
"Kill him! Kill him!" Some forty clergymen indict
him for blasphemy at Lancaster. Judge Fell stands by
him while he addresses the Court. He writes, " It was a day
of everlasting salvation to hundreds of people." He is set free.

Fox now makes a royal march of soul-winning. Multitudes
gatherat Cockermouth and around, and the "steeple houses"
have to close for the hearers have all turned Friends. On
to Carlisle, where the authorities threaten hanging as a
" blasphemer, a heretic, and seducer." He is thrust into a
loathsome dungeon among murderers and thieves. " They
were made loving and subject to me," says he. The magis-
trates are determined to hang the fellow out of the way, but
judges will not convict, and a letter from Parliament alarms,

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George Fox

and Fox is set free. Unscared, over hill and dale steps the
prophet, halting here and there as the Spirit bids. From east
and west and north sturdy yeomen and dalesmen gather for
preaching on the fell sides in multitudes of thousands. " I
had mighty great meetings," he relates, " the everlasting
Gospel and Word of Life flourished, and thousands were turned
to the Lord Jesus Christ and His teaching." " The glory of
the Lord did shine over all." There is great convincement
throughout Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland, West-
morland, Lancashire and Yorkshire, and " many mouths
were opened to His praise, yea, to babes and sucklings He
ordained strength."

From about this time the movement gathers quickly in
cohesion and power, and becomes more one of leader and
disciples. The blind are made to see, and the tongue of the
dumb is unloosed. Small bands of unlettered dalesmen,
whose names live only in the heavenly record, aflame with a
fervour which not dungeon nor surety of death can quench,
start forth to preach the new light burning within their own
hearts. Some sixty disciples travel the country ; and the
great scenes of sacred history live over again. Power comes
not of orthodoxy or of learning, but of consecration, and in
an ardent simplicity they went forth. In pure and heavenly
quality of their Apostleship they were unsurpassed, if equalled,
since the earliest annals of Christianity.

The reader will now possess a fair picture of the personality
of Fox, and also of his pioneering achievements, and our
narrative may now be less personal. The leader now gives
more attention southward. There are rumours of dark plots
against Cromwell's life, and at Whitstone troopers break up a
meeting and arrest Fox. He may go if he promise to hold
no more meetings. He is innocent of plots " and all such
works," and " must have my liberty to serve God," he
protests. Then he " must go before the Protector," and off
he is marched. Oliver sends word he requires only a written
promise that he will not take up arms against him. At this
Fox " was moved by the Lord to write a paper." He is
against " a carnal sword " for any man. His mission is " to
turn people from darkness to light."

GEORGE AND OLIVER — A HAPPY DISCOVERY

The great soldier is interested, and Fox is admitted at
Whitehall to his presence. " Peace be to this house " is George's

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greeting. They have much conversation. Oliver asks, why
quarrel with ministers so much ; " Nay, they quarrel with me
and my friends," retorts George ; his Journal proceeds :
" I gave let to my soul frankly for ever so long, but people
coming in I drew back, and as I was turning he catched me by
the hand and with tears in his eyes said ' Come again to my
house. If thou and I were but an hour a day together we
should be nearer one to another.'" Few incidents show the
real Cromwell more truly than this. The ordinary creed-
bound Presbyterian scowled at Fox as a vagrant fanatic,
hardly less dangerous to the truth than a Roman Catholic
emissary. The Protector afterwards befriended Fox and his
followers, but his Council was much less liberal than himself.
He could not control the details of administration, and matters
of weighty State policy were always heavy upon him. Fox
would have fared less graciously with Milton who had no
patience with his peace notions. After some stay in London
George " was moved of the Lord to go down into Bedford-
shire to John Crook's house, where there was a great meeting."
This, the first General Meeting, was held in 1658.

The leader now goes westward, and the more its wings are
clipped the faster flies the movement. At St. Ives he and
Edward Pyot , from Bristol, are arrested as suspects, and sent to
Launceston Castle. At Redruth he requests halt for Sabbath
next day, and preaches to the soldiers, as does Pyot to the
people. The guard hurry on their strange wards who, spend-
ing the night at Falmouth, again converse with the people on
the things of God. Some " were convinced, and stood faithful
ever after." On their arrival at Launceston, visitors appear,
and go away convinced. " Priests and professors " grow
jealous, and expect the Quakers will be hanged. In the court
Fox openly girds against the jury taking oaths. It is sedition,
says the Judge. The indictment is proved false, but the Judge
imposes fines for keeping hats on in court, and no liberty until
paid. Back go Fox and Pyot to dungeon, " a nasty, stinking
place," " all like mire, in some places to the top of the shoes
in water." They will not bribe, and the gaoler is hard ; " they
had much ado to get victuals." Pyot's wife sends a cheese ;
it is searched for treasonable letters. Cromwell is petitioned,
and orders investigation. Meanwhile Friends preach outside
without molestation ; and sympathy for the prisoners spreads
widely. Followers come from many parts of England, and
preach the evangel throughout the western counties. Says

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George Fox

Fox, " The Lord's light and truth broke forth," " many were
turned from Satan's power." A baronet's daughter visits
the prison. " She grew in the spirit, power, and wisdom of
God." A Mr. Lower declares, "George Fox's words ran
through me like a flash of fire," and he and his relatives
turn Friends.

The gaoler, possibly bribed, conspires with a conjurer to
come with his knife and have the blood of Fox. He prays
earnestly, and the gaoler quails. ' ' The Lord alone did preserve
me out of their bloody hands" is the evangelist's comment.
Sore of heart sympathy, Friends often offer to go " body for
body " to prison that brethren in the faith may be let out,
and now some tramp to London, get audience of Oliver, and
make offer to go for Fox. Deeply touched at such devotion,
he says it is against the law, but sends Major-General Des-
borough, and liberty follows seven months of hard prison, and
there is a joyous and " blessed meeting." A few days later
" a big meeting for the whole county " is held in an orchard,
when " the Lord's power was over all." As Fox passes through
Exeter to Bristol, news of his arrival flies widely and quickly,
and thousands assemble. There is opposition from a
" jangling Baptist," "but the mighty power of God came over
him and all his company." " We had a glorious meeting,
for many hours did I declare the Word of Life." " A blessed
day it was, and the Lord had the praise." In such wise did
the West hear the " glad tidings." He makes a preaching
progress by Marlborough, Newbury, Reading, to London.
Fox spies a big crowd in Hyde Park. Cromwell is coming in
his coach, and George rides up, but is driven back. The Pro-
tector happens to see this, and bids him ride by his side, and
later there is another interesting interview at Whitehall.

Wales must hear the message. Here he attracts a Welsh
follower, John-ap-John, and Fox renews his love of hillside
preaching. In Radnorshire vast crowds flock to a meeting,
and he is told " they lie like a siege." " If thou hast anything
for them from the Lord, speak to them in Welsh," orders
Fox to his comrade. " I felt the power of the Lord over the
whole assembly, and His everlasting life and truth shone over
all." " All were bowed down under the power of God," is his
comment. At Dolgelly John-ap-John preached through the
streets, and two Independent ministers argue. Fox joins,
and " opened up the Scriptures to them, and turned them to the
the Spirit of God, which would reveal mysteries." Large

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numbers attended meetings, accepted the message, and
" suffered much for the cause of Christ." Thus the " inner
light" must shine in Wales. Returning, they preach through
Chester and Liverpool on to Manchester, where they share a
bad time, being pelted with stones, coals and clods. Rescued
by officers, George goes to court, and admonishes the justices
then in session.

INVADES SCOTLAND— A FLUTTERING IN DOGMA DOVECOTES

Hence northward to Carlisle, where he dares again his
would-be gibbeters. For some time he had felt " drawings
on his spirit " to proclaim in Scotland his message of the
" Inner Light," with its eternal glory, for every man, and now
he invades the home of Calvinism and Covenant, of Election
and Reprobation, of colleges and man-learning, and he expects
that if whips were his portion in England, here it will be
scorpions. At the Border he is met by Colonel Osborne and
Robert Widders, " a thundering man," he warns us, " against
hypocrisy and deceit, and the rottenness of priests." Robert
and George combined promise lively doings. They proceed
by way of Dumfries to the Highlands, and are quickly thick in
dispute with " Calvinistic priests." George is but a poor
stick at theology, and is soon overwhelmed and bemuddled by
begowned D.D.'s. Ponderous bundles of syllogisms and logic
clinching this doctrine and that are cast at his stupid head, but
the fellow goes on all the same proclaiming his " Inner Light,"
scoffing and storming away at election and reprobation, and
actually preaching that Christ died for all, and that salvation
is free to all as the mountain rills, and calls it " glad tidings of
great joy." Oh, what a fluttering is there in dogma dove-
cotes. The fanatic also jabbers of their " chaffy light minds,"
that they make white seem black and prove " that because a
cock had two legs and each of them had two legs, therefore
they were all cocks." There is a mighty hubbub ; the crank
must be stopped in his arrant blasphemy — he denies the
sovereignty of God with His creatures. Hath not the potter
power over the clay to make one vessel to honour, another to
dishonour ? " The voice was " that the heretic must be
silenced. The "priests," George relates, draw up in concert
articles of curses to be read in their several churches, ordering
the people to say " Amen " to each. Here are a few :
" Cursed is he that saith every man hath a light within him,
sufficient to lead him to salvation " ; " Cursed is he that

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George Fox

saith faith is without sin " ; " Cursed is he that denieth the
Sabbath Day " ; and let all the people say " Amen."

Clergy petition Cromwell's Council at Edinburgh to banish
him. George goes there and preaches ; is met with an order
to appear in five days before the Council. Appearing, he
greets them thus : " Peace be among you and wisdom from
above." Why did he trouble Scotland ? "He had come to
visit the seed which had long lain in bondage under corruption,
and to bring the whole nation to the knowledge of the true
light." How long does he stay ? "I say little to that ;
I stand in the will of Him who sent me." He must be gone
that day week. " What is my transgression ? " he asks.
They refuse further parley. George has defied great folk
before, and has no intention to quit until moved of the Spirit.
He not only stays, but preaches away in Edinburgh, assails
the Council by a letter of remonstrance, and some are troubled
in conscience. At Heads, curses are threatened on all who buy or
sell to his converts and Highlanders attack them with pitch-
forks. They " escaped, being preserved by His power." At
Stirling soldiers arrest, but officers release, and " a brave
opportunity " is seized for preaching to crowds returning
from races. At Leith he learns a warrant is out for him,
because he has not left Scotland. He cares not, and declares,
" if there were a cartload of them, the Lord's power is over
them all," and sets his face to Edinburgh, awes sentries, and
" rides up the street to the market-place," as it were, " at
the sword's point. Next day, at the meeting house, many
officers and soldiers came, and the meeting was a blessed
one." Fox and his companions now leave Scotland, and, he
avows, " The truth and the power of God was set over the
nation, and many were turned to the Lord Jesus Christ, their
Saviour and Teacher, whose blood was shed for them." He
preaches through Dunbar, Berwick, on to Durham. Noble
George, bravery for God and conscience had full reward. I
do not find that he got any dungeon in Scotland.

THE ST. PATRICK OF QUAKERISM

William Edmundson is the St. Patrick of Quakerism. A
native of Westmorland, while a reckless stripling he enlists
under Cromwell, fights at Worcester, and is drawn to the
persecuted Friends. In 1652 he married and settled in
Ireland ; prosperous, he returned next year to buy goods.
Hearing Friend James Nayler preach, he and some relatives, he

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relates," were all three convinced of the Lord's blessed truth ;
then I knew that it was the Lord's hand that had been strong
with me for a long time." On passage back with the goods
he was strongly tempted, seeing an easy way, to avoid paying
duty, but conscience prevailed. His religious experience
deepened. " All things were rugged and rough." At his
house in Lurgan the first meeting of Friends in Ireland is
held. The company is three — his wife, his brother and him-
self. Soon four more join and more still. English preachers
come, and in a few years the message of light and liberty
spreads far and wide. Under earnest wish to see Fox, he
again comes to England, and meets him at a great assemblage
in Warwickshire. In an orchard the two pray together, and
Fox gives him a brief letter for the brethren in Ireland. On
return he finds the fiery tongue of Edward Burrough and the
polished elooquence of Francis Howgill at work, and the Word
moves with might. Edmundson founded a Quaker colony,
and it is beautiful to read of its sacred simplicity. Suffering
was his portion also. Six months in a loathsome cell at
Cavan is typical. In 1671 he sails with Fox for the West
Indies, and later a second time, and passes through experiences
stranger than fiction. In the subsequent years of battle and
bloodshed in Ireland the Friends sheltered Catholic and
Protestant alike, and bore perils great and many. " Yet kept
our meetings ; " " The Lord preserved wonderfully," he
records, He knew only four Friends killed by " violent
hands all the time of this great calamity." Edmundson had
the joy of tramping Ireland with Fox, and lived to hear
William Penn in 1698 preach to vast multitudes in the Green
Isle. At eighty- three he journeyed 200 miles to Munster to
encourage the faithful. He died in 1712, aged eighty-five,
honoured, and " in sweet peace with the Lord, in unity with
the brethren, and goodwill to all men."

Turning back to Fox and his doings, we must skip quickly.
We left him at Durham. Here he meets a gentleman about to
establish a college for students for the ministry. George so
impresses him that learning cannot make a man a true
minister of Christ that he gives up the project. In London
a bragging Jesuit in the Spanish Embassy challenges the
Quakers to dispute. Fox and Burrough engage him, and the
people are glad that they vanquish the Papist. Hearing that
Lady Claypole, Cromwell's daughter, is distressed in mind,
Fox writes her a long letter, which was " a blessing to many."

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George Fox

Admitted again to Oliver's presence, he sternly warns him
not to take the title of king. " He seemed," says he, " to
take well what I said to him, and thanked me." On a later
occasion, taking boat to Hampton Court to present the cruel
wrongs done to Friends before the Protector, he meets him
riding in the Park. He tells us, "I saw and felt a waft of
death go forth against him." " He looked like a dead man."
Cromwell bade him come next day, but was then too ill, and
rose no more. We may well thank the Quaker for so good
a bit of history.

Fox again goes preaching through the country ; troopers in
Yorkshire try to stop meetings with the blare of trumpets, but
only to make them the more glorious. Through Skipton he
makes for Swarthmore. Judge Fell has been dead two years, and
Fox is arrested under warrant from Lancaster, and suffers
abusive treatment on the way to prison. He is charged as a
disturber of the peace and an enemy of the King. Margaret
Fell and Anne Curtis journey to London and beseech the King
to hear Fox in his defence. Yes, he will. George appears at
the King's Bench and is set free. The silly raid of the " Fifth
Monarchy " men brings calamitous sufferings upon all Separ-
atists. They are as innocent as Cavaliers, but it affords a
ready excuse for venting a fierce enmity of reprisals. The
Quakers suffered shameful wrongs under the Commonwealth.
Charles on coming to the Throne released 700 Quakers, yet in
two years 500 Friends in London alone were in gaol, and
thousands in the country. Returning to Lancashire, Fox is
again haled before magistrates, now at Holker Hall. " You
are a rebel and a traitor," they tell him. He knows some before
him as turncoats and retorts, " Nay, in Oliver's day what did
you for the King ? " Off to Lancaster Castle he goes, in durance
strict and close. Half-suffocated by smoke, rain drifting on
his bed, his Journal records, " all that long, cold winter I was
so starved with cold and rain that my body was greatly swelled,
and my limbs much benumbed. I was so weak I could scarcely
stand." He is transferred to Scarborough; this prison is no
better. After much entreaty with the King he is liberated
after three long, bitter years. Every joint is swollen, and
" each finger is large as two," yet in spirit he is undaunted.

The years George spent in prison total about twelve, yet the
evangel flagged not. In 1669 there were in Bedfordshire 1,000
Nonconformists, of whom 390 are returned as Quakers, 277
as Baptists, 220 as Independents. But the strongholds of

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Quakerism were in the North — what there ? The success is a
wonder of history.

HIS MARRIAGE — THE EVANGEL FOR NEW ENGLAND

In 1669, at forty- five, George Fox married Margaret Fell,
with the cordial consent of her six daughters and their hus-
bands. Great grand- daughter of Anne Askew, the martyr,
she, too, had suffered trial of her faith by four-and-a-half years'
prison life in Lancaster Castle, with confiscation of her estates.
It was a happy bond. George had now a home of sweet
comfort, but the cause is first, and only few of the twenty years
of union are spent together. After marriage, Margaret is
again prisoner in the Castle, but is released on petition by
women to the King, " who went in faith of the Lord's power."
Her estates also are restored to her, and there is a glad re- union
of daughters and grandchildren at Swarthmore Hall. Fox
is too ill to travel and be present. Persecution grows more and
more fierce for all Nonconformists.

The planting of the Evangel in New England in 1656 is a
story of persecution and martyrdom, the more regretful as
inflicted by those who were themselves exiles from religious
oppression. It should be said that the wildest reports about
Quakerism must have reached the colonists, for on arrival the
Friends were examined for marks of witchcraft and searched
for " hellish pamphlets." Following their wont, they per-
sisted in re- appearance after deportation, and even after fines
and cruel whippings, and at last two men and one woman were
hanged. There had been previous refusals of toleration of a
strict Prayer-book faction, and the historian Gardiner allows
there was sound reason for this course, and without incon-
sistency. He says the case was wholly different from that of a
strong home Government. Toleration so early within the
struggling infant colony might have resulted in defeat of even
toleration for themselves and the ideals for which the colony
was founded. There was no danger from the Friends, but they
knew it not. To give harbourage refused at home would seem
specially perilous. Ere long, pity and sympathy were evoked
— the majesty of meekness conquered. Be it remembered
that the whippings and tragedies occurred not in Plymouth
colony, the home of the Mayflower Pilgrim Fathers. There
were now three other colonies of later and different origin —
composed of Puritans of the Church of England, not Separatists
—and these colonies were less wide and tolerant of view.

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George Fox

The four colonies were now confederated, and the leaders of
Plymouth Colony — the children of the Pilgrim Fathers,
one being Isaac Robinson, the son of Pastor John — were them-
selves persecuted for refusing to persecute the Quakers.
Curiously Fox relates of these New England persecutions
thus, " I had a perfect sense as though [it were] myself and
as though the halter had been round my own neck, though
we had not at that time heard of them." He was then in
an English prison.

In June, 1670, George, with ten men and two women, sails
in a leaky craft to give breeze to the flag in America. On
the voyage they are saved as by miracle from pirates and
slavery. Arriving at Barbadoes the party splits into three
for missionary work. Fox is too weak to proceed, but in three
months is in Jamaica ; thence he goes to Maryland and
encounters a strange jumble of hardships. Travelling
towards New England, he has adventures through forests and
swamps, bogs and great rivers, by boat, foot, and horse, in
cold and storm. Unarmed they visit and preach to camps
of scalping Indians, who are " very loving to them." Fox
attends the "yearly meeting;" "weighty things" "are
settled," and there is " a glorious power of the Lord." There
is fair tolerance ; " many were reached," and " confessed
the truth." After a terrible voyage, Fox steps ashore at
Bristol in April, 1673. There are glad greetings with his wife
and her family. Arranging for all to meet at the old home,
George speeds on a preaching tour through the southern
counties. \Yith his son-in-law he is soon cast into gaol —
weary gaol ! — merciful God, when shall it end ? Released, after
fourteen months, nearly dead, he cannot be moved, but must
recruit awhile before the long journey to Swarthmore, where
now for a year and a half, under sweet tendance, he gains
strength, and is ever busy among his papers and epistles of
gracious counsel to the brethren.

It is now upon him to visit Holland, where through brave
evangelists Quakerism had already a strong footing. Penn
and the scholarly Barclay are with him, and they pass on to
Germany, and have an interview with the Princess Elizabeth,
aunt to George I., who receives them kindly. Through
interpreters Fox argues with priests and judges, Socinians,
Baptists and Lutherans ; preaches at fairs and wayside inns,
visits the Hague, and stands before courts and great ones.
In 1684 he again visits Holland for the " yearly meeting " ;

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

there are " large and blessed meetings." Frail and broken,
he is unable to attend the " Friend's general meeting " at
York, but sends a gracious message exhorting love and
" heavenly joy," concord and unity, warning the young from
" running into fashions of the world " and the old from
" cleaving to earth." On a winter's day in 1690 he goes to the
Friends' meeting in Gracechurch Street, London, and addresses
a large company, and prays. He takes a severe chill, feels
" the cold strike to my heart." " Yet I am glad I am here.
Now I am clear, I am fully clear." Shivering fits follow.
Conscious his last hours have come, he sends for dear friends ;
thinking not for himself, he earnestly exhorts them to industry
and faithfulness in spreading the faith in the world. And
now he declares, " All is well, though I am weak in body, the
power of God is over all, and over death itself " — " death
itself," the last enemy, hath no terrors for his pure soul,
and, " faithful unto death," he passes to receive his " crown
of life." One writes : " Lying in a heavenly frame of mind,
he quietly departed this life in peace, and fell asleep in the
Lord, in perfect love and unity with his brethren, and in peace
and goodwill to all men, on the i3th day of the eleventh month
(O. S.), 1690, in the sixty-seventh year of his age." " After
a solemn waiting upon the Lord " "a great concourse "
followed his body to the Friends' burying- ground near
Bunhill Fields.

He lived to see the dreary years of cruel dungeon and
suffering pass, and the dawn of the new era of peace and
liberty ushered in by the Revolution.

As a leader, George Fox was possessed of great personal
attraction. Penn, in a preface to Fox's journal — a tribute
among the most beautiful I know — says of him, " His very
presence expressed a religious majesty," "yet he never abused
it, but held his place," " with great meekness and most en-
gaging meekness and moderation," " as servant of all." " His
authority was inward, and not outward." " In all things he
acquitted himself like a man, yea, a strong man, a new and
heavenly-minded man." " God has visibly clothed him with
a divine preference and authority." It was this mystic
authority, with humility, which was the secret of his magnetic
personality, and which clothed his commission and message
with such marvellous power of success.

No record of early Quakerism would be fair even without
mention of the band of disciple- preachers which Fox drew

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George Fox

around him. Nothing had been seen like them in England
since Wyclif's " poor preachers." Poor and illiterate, for the
the most part herdsmen, ploughmen, craftsmen, soldiers,
sailors, some slow of speech, yet gifted in power to stay howl-
ing crowds, some men who were settled as successful and
beloved ministers, Independent and Baptist chiefly, illumined
by the new " Light " and inspired to fresh eloquence — they
all become wandering, suffering messengers of the new
evangel. There are those also of high degree who, forsaking
all, learn the sweetness of a great renunciation. Noble
women suffer and do even more incredible things than men.
Bitter to me is this tyranny of space, forbidding even bare
mention of " these children of light," " who through faith
subdued kingdoms, out of weakness were made strong, waxed
valiant ; had trials of cruel mockings and scourgings ; yea,
moreover, of bonds and imprisonments ; they were stoned,
were tempted, wandered about, being destitute, afflicted,
tormented (of whom the world was not worthy) ; they wan-
dered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of
the earth."

Fox did not institute any special garb for his followers ;
their habit of dress sprang instinctively as a sign of consecra-
tion and separateness from worldliness as it did among the
early Puritans. It has been a common custom in Christian
history.

Fox would not admit that the Friends were a sect. He put
it that "they are in the power of God which was before sects
were." Certainly the Quaker movement was essentially not
one of dogma. It never had any taint of the historic here-
sies. Fox did not, nor can any prophet, bring anything new
to the old truth once delivered. The Founder of Christianity
enunciated principles rather than details. His followers have
often reversed this order. But Fox, by his vision and fresh
emphasis, did restore a great principle. The "Inner Light "
was, of course, always a doctrine of the Church, for upon it
was based all its life and historic continuity, but it was re-
vealed to George Fox in such large and luminous spaciousness
and overpowering intensity that through him it became
revolutionary.

Quakerism made the same mistake that Puritanism with its
Calvinism made, and even in larger degree. In its first glow

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and passion, it ignored natural instincts — the love of music
and beauty — forgot to gauge human nature by history, and
strained it to a tension which must snap or languish under the
average conditions, sure to come, of later generations. God
has made man spirit and flesh, body and soul — a mysterious
unit, and to attempt a sundering is most surely to court
disaster. Religion must provide for the whole man.

Fox had little gift of method or idea of organisation and
discipline. This lack, in course of years, allowed a loose drift
of sundry perils among his followers. The earliest efforts at
organisation were prompted by motives of sympathy and
help for imprisoned brethren and their families, for he had
not worldly wisdom enough to foresee the inevitable and
provide for authoritative direction and discipline in cases of
ill-balanced conceits and vanity. He sadly realised the peril
when James Nayler, an unlettered but eloquent disciple
issuing from gaol, was met by six Ranter followers who had
espoused some of his vagaries and escorted him, himself on
horseback, into Bristol, casting their scarves in front of
him and chanting " Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of
Hosts " — a grotesque travesty of a sacred scene. For this,
against the protests of Cromwell, Nayler was, by order of a
Puritan Parliament and to its shame, pilloried and whipped
through London streets, bored through the tongue with a red-
hot needle, and branded on the forehead. The victim was
afterwards deeply penitent and restored to the Friends. This
experience produced a marked effect on Fox's subsequent
ideas and methods, and he realised the need of more authori-
tative and corporate unity in binding together the scattered
groups of disciples all over the land. Rules were issued as
to marriage and internal economy, directions as to united
attitude upon national questions, manifestoes of belief, etc.
These regulations were the more effective and imperative as
Quakerism had absorbed the " Seekers " and other weaker
sects so numerous at the day.

"The Light which lighteth every man," hitherto, so strong,
splendid and triumphant, as a marching word of command,
proved unsure in later years. The lamp being human, the
"light " occasionally became defiled, obscured, deflected ; and
George must now at times have had a heart of musings upon his
harder sayings about "priests and professors" in the lump and
on Church order, especially after the Act of Uniformity, when
the 2,000 came forth into the wilderness for conscience' sake.

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George Fox

The movement for organisation ultimately assumed the
form of the " Monthly Meeting " in a convenient area, the
" Quarterly Meeting " usually for the county, and the
" General Meeting " for the whole kingdom, held in London.

Fox and other leaders always tried to keep these bonds of
organisation free and elastic, yet they provoked a serious
schism which stood for the early individual liberty, main-
taining the " inner light " as sufficient. After many years
the schism melted off. In 1784, a "Women's Yearly Meeting "
was established, and now in all questions of importance this
meets in joint session with the Men's.

In the study for this sketch I have been beset by regretful
wonderings as to the reasons of the vast decline of Quakerism.
In a later story I may offer conjectures. No greater blessing
could come to Britain than that the mantle of George Fox
should fall upon some prophet with the twentieth century
gift of illumination and power, and for Friends once more
to cover the land with a new evangel of simplicity, peace and
love.

231

"It (' The Pilgrim's Progress') follows the Bible from land to
land, as the singing of birds follows the dawn"

DEAN STANLEY.

XII

JOHN BUNYAN

INSCRIPTION.— Soldier of Cromwell, Converted Tinker. Bold
to preach, was cast twelve years in gaol ; there in the spirit wrote
"Pilgrim's Progress." 8.1628. D. 1688.

SCENE. — Bedford gaol — barred window — straw bed — Bunyan stands
in reverie — with pen in hand. On the prison walls, in dreamy
dimness are discerned the forms of Christian with his burden, on
journey, and also of the dreadful combat with Apollyon The
attendant cherub hastes with the sword of the Spirit and the
shield of Faith.

John Bunyan is a charmed name, alike in cottage and
palace, for gentle and simple. Where Milton claims his tens,
the Bedford dreamer counts his devotees by hundreds. Of
all books, the Bible alone excepted, the " Pilgrim's Progress "
has been most widely read. Elstow, Bunyan's birthplace,
lies a good mile from Bedford, on the London highway. It
is a restful spot, with a due share of the quaint charm of an
English village, nursing its life in a long street, broken by
picturesque, half-timbered houses, here and there the gabled
and dormered stories overhanging. A peep in at the doors
of the better sort, showing the oaken staircase, reveals fallen
fortune. Here on the Green stands the scarred trunk of the
ancient Market Cross, around which for centuries have clustered
the rustic games, the babble of markets and hirings and fairs,
under charters from Henry II. Also on the Green stood the
Moot Hall, of oak and brick — a fifteenth century erection
of some distinction. The massive church tower we now see
is the same Bunyan saw, the doorway the one he entered, the
bells the same he tolled and rang. The Squire's Hall — the House
Beautiful — a mansion in English Renaissance, and supposed

232

JOHN BUNYAN.

John Bunyan

to be designed by Inigo Jones, was in its early beauty in
Bunyan's time. There are towering elms of grateful
shade, meadow walks and stiles, winding streamlets with
miry banks, his " Sloughs of Despond " and what not in
miniature.

As early as 1109 we read of Bunyan's ancestors. For
centuries they were small landholders. The house in which
our dreamer was born had been the property of his family
from time immemorial. His immediate forbears seem to have
come down in the world, for Bunyan's grandfather, Thomas
Bunyan, who died in 1641, describes himself in his will as
a " pettie chapman." This grandfather had a son, also
Thomas, born 1602-3. This child Thomas was from infancy
brought up by a stepmother, and married in his twentieth
year Anne Pinney, who died childless in 1627. The same year
the young widower again comes to Elstow church ; this time
to marry Margaret Bentley, who becomes mother of the world-
renowned John. Margaret was born the same year as her
husband, and the couple must have known each other all their
lives, for Margaret's folk were old Bedford people, and her
grandmother had died in Elstow in 1613. We might quite
reasonably fancy the pair as children romping and racing
at ball around Elstow's old Cross.

Margaret's mother, John's grandmother, died a widow in
1632, and made an interesting will, bequeathing her belong-
ings. On reading it a picture rises of shining pewter and cosy
corners, and proves her folk to have been quite of respectable
middle class. Bunyan's father in his will describes himself
as a " braseyer," which at one time meant also pewterer and
plumber. It is not just to think of him as a sort of half -gipsy,
prowling tinker. He had a settled home, a proper trade and
workshop, where, at his forge, farmers and neighbours brought
tools, pans and odds and ends to mend. Of course there were
strolling and welcome rounds to lonely hamlets and farm-
steads for the " mettle-man," and doubtless Tom Bunyan
could quaff his foaming tankard at the village hostel, roll out
racy jokes, and tell his merry tale with the best.

Bunyan's references to his parents are surprisingly scanty ;
they are little more than names to us. In a mood of abased
humility, which we should not take too literally, he says,
" For my descent, then, it was of a low and inconsiderable
generation, my father's house being of the rank that is meanest
and most despised of all the families of the land.'

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" 1628 John the Sonne of Thomas Bonnionn Junr, the
3oth of Novemb." Such is the commonplace record in
Elstow Church of his christening. There are nineteen others
in the same list, but only as to this one does the world care.
The mind of the reader of these Stories may have flown back
to another " Novemb." day, to another birth of a first-born,
also son of a " mettle man," even greater than this child of
Elstow — him of Eisleben. He will recall, also, that Milton
just now is the " Lady of Christ's," and twenty years old
save nine days.

How interesting the study, face to face, of the scholar
and the tinker ; of the same stormy age, nation and tongue ;
of the same strenuous faith and sympathy of aim in the
struggle of their day ; noble sufferers alike for conscience'
sake, and for the same cause. Brothers in the religious
hope and character of impress upon their country's heart
and life, doing their greater work in mature years, and passing
at a similar age, yet at opposite poles of contrast. How
delightful to follow this track in their greatest legacies !
" Pilgrim's Progress " and " The Holy War " are but other
titles of rustic genius for the " Paradise Lost and Regained."
While Milton is the greater, Bunyan stands aloft as next and,
we may say, the last of the heroic Puritans. Macaulay
brackets these two Puritans as the only great imaginative
minds of the later half of the seventeenth century. It is not
likely that Bunyan was ever a scholar in Bedford grammar
school, as is stated in some earlier " Lives." He tells us,
however, that, " notwithstanding the meanness and incon-
siderableness of my parents, it pleased God to put into their
hearts to put me to school to learn both to read and write, the
which I attained according to the rate of other men's children."
" I never went," says he, " to school to Aristotle or Plato,
but was brought up at my father's house in a very mean con-
dition, among a company of very poor countrymen." Happy
indeed for the world, for a college and classics would assuredly
have spoiled John for his dreamings of a poor " Pilgrim's
Progress." Well it was that the lad must catch his stickle-
backs in the streamlet which hummed by his father's door-
step. Ah ! laddie, catch thy biggest and shout thy loudest,
for thy sunny hours are quickly to pass for ever. All his life
among the tools, and during his father's rounds left at home
for push-jobs, at sixteen a sharp lad, he would be fairly skilful
with forge and hammer, punch and brazer.

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John Bunyan

GONE — ALL SUNNY HOURS — A CROMWELLIAN SOLDIER

His heart is to be now seared as by red-glowing iron. In
June, 1644, his mother dies, and within a month his playmate
sister Margaret is carried to the same grave, and in another
month his father brings another wife, but not mother, to the
home. No marvel if John's eyes were wet and his heart wild
in resentment at the indecent indignity on his mother's name,
and that in a few months he is enrolled in the Parliamentary
Army. There has been some dispute as to which side he
fought for, but anyone reading Dr. Brown's summary of
evidence can be in no reasonable doubt. The irresistible
sweep of county and local circumstances would decide.
Nearly all the shouts and hurrahs heard in Bedfordshire were
for Parliament. Here the King had not " any visible party
nor one fixed quarter." We may well assume that the young
tinker was drafted into one of the levies ordered by Parliament,
and just now being briskly enrolled among the villages of
Bedfordshire, and marched to the important garrison of New-
port. He had just passed the regulation age of sixteen.
The battle of Naseby in June, 1645, virtually ended the first
Civil War, and young Bunyan is soon back at Elstow, and
dependent upon his tinkering.

His spell at soldiering could not have been longer than a
short year, but to his picturing soul was vastly formative and
valuable. He himself does not assure us, but it would seem
he was present at the heroic defence of Leicester against the
assault of Prince Rupert. Two hair-breadth escapes
impressed him through life as special Providences. He tells
us, " Once I fell into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped
drowning." Further, " I with others was drawn out to go to
such a place to besiege it, but when I was just ready to go
one of the company desired to go in my room, to which, when
I had consented, he took my place, and coming to the
siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a
musket -ball and died." What a school for this dreamy rustic
— these marchings, and campings with stern troopers and
Ironsides ; at mess thumbing their Bibles and scouting at
bishops ; their majors and captains leading a fray of blood
and death to-day, to-morrow expounding a Psalm or an
Epistle r What moving incident, what deep impress of
character and personality, all faithfully and vividly repro-
duced in the attacks and defences of Mansoul. What a

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

school, I repeat, for this young, eager, cribbed spirit of
hallooing, gaping, storing, dreaming ! Here it was he beheld
the grim fight with Apollyon, and made fast friend with
Greatheart.

Bunyan could barely have reached twenty when he took
to himself a wife, and little wonder, for the old home could
now be no home to him. We possess no particulars of his
wife's kindred or whence she came. She, however, proved a
good and loving helpmeet and made a cottage hearth of com-
fort and peace, humble enough truly, for, says he, " this
woman and I came together as poor as might be, not having
as much household stuff as a dish or spoon between us both."
A picture of the glad content of humble love and mutual trust
in honest heart and willing arm. Ah ! I have known those
now faring sumptuously who, looking back fifty or sixty years
to similar early days of whole-hearted simplicity and buoyant,
wedded hope, declare those days when climbing the hill
together, to be the happiest of all their lives.

Bunyan's wife brought him a dowry more precious than
silver and gold — the legacy and training of a pure and
Christian home. She tells him what a godly man her father
was, and how " he would reprove and correct vice, both in
his house and among his neighbours ; what a strict and hoty
life he lived in his days, both in word and deed." Her sole
property was two books of her father's — " The Plain Man's
Pathway to Heaven " and " The Practice of Piety," both of
large circulation, and uncontroversial. The former won its
way by a style of pictorial vigour and racy proverb, which
suited Bunyan's vein. The latter, for its day, was some-
what after the manner of James's " Anxious Inquirer " of
our fathers' time. Converse with his wife and pondering
over these books lead Bunyan to the portals of a new
life — a serious mind and attitude to things unseen. He
begins to go " to church twice a day, and that with the
foremost."

Whoever would know Bunyan must know his " Grace
Abounding " ; it is the mirror of his soul. It is among the
most intensely faithful and microscopic autobiographies in
literature. It describes his own " Holy War." But not everyone
who reads " Grace Abounding " will read with eyes of sym-
pathetic understanding. I am not sure if the present genera-
tion, in the rough lump of it, may not be classed as of this
type. Up to some sixty years ago this book was regularly

236

John Bunyan

read and seriously discussed. I myself remember echoes in
my father's circle ; and the book, with a row of Puritan
divines, held front place in the family bookcase. How vast
the change since then ! Greater than that of the previous
two centuries ; I fear not all for good.

There, are two kinds of biographers who mis-read " Grace
Abounding." Intellect and learning, observation and experi-
ence of the world and its ways, may afford power of approxi-
mately just judgment in wide fields of human life. But when
those with these qualifications only, enter the spiritual realm
without the Spirit's equipment they lack the sympathetic insight
essential for judgment. Such make light of the awful times
of soul-struggle which Bunyan in burning, sometimes lurid,
words describes, and with a shallow preception they point to his
exemplar^/ life as proof, unaware that when sin turns inward
for its field, and with eyes Godward, it takes on an infinite
quality and range ; then truly " the heart is desperately
wicked." The village Methodist exhorter, learned in the
wisdom of the Spirit, may bid all such stand aside. What of
some of the psalms, parables and epistles, and indeed of all
penitential literature of the Christian Church ? The great
souls who have made Christian history, from Paul and
Augustine on to Savonarola and Luther, Cromwell, Fox and
Wesley, had first to make themselves through dire conflicts
between the soul and Satan. Passionate abasement before
the face of the pure and living God, awful in majesty, has
been the law of all great renunciations, and of all noble life
and deed for love of souls for Christ's sake.

The other class who have mis-read " Grace Abounding " is
at the other extreme, chiefly early biographers, who have been
thoughtlessly quoted. Themselves of hard creed, and viewing
its author through a rigid Calvinism, they take the dreadful
experiences as literal truth, and use them to point the moral
of the awful sinner saved by grace. They were not the truth
for any such purpose, but only for sympathy. Bunyan was
never the vilest of sinners. In youth he had a habit of bad
swearing and lying, but was never unchaste, never a drunkard,
or of lewd speech. During the terrible years depicted in his
" Grace Abounding," his poor soul tossed and buffeted as
on an angry sea, his health suffered, and unquestionably he
was the victim of a measure of hallucination, as are gifted,
highly-strung souls. Even sane Luther flung his ink-pot at
the devil's head. Bunyan's imagination was so abnormally

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

strong and realistic, that when it was let loose intro-
spectively upon an awakened conscience, no judge but the
Infinite could define where the straight level of sanity deflects
into hallucination. As a whole, he is a personality grandly
strong and sane.

I will now endeavour to pass before the reader glimpses of
" Grace Abounding," for it is, I repeat, the key to our dreamer's
life. It is a volume of some 45,000 words. " God did not
play at tempting me, neither did I play when I sunk as in a
bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold of me ;
wherefore I may not play at relating them, but be plain and
simple, and lay down the thing as it was." Such are the
concluding words of a characteristic preface. I must impress
upon the reader the fact that a belief in a real personal devil
and in a real hell of eternal torture was then common to the
whole Christian Church ; and also that the vivid and peculiarly
turgid colouring of the picture portrayed can only be viewed
through the lens of a stern Calvinism, yet this should be
remembered never for sentence, but only for a true judgment
and sympathetic interpretation. He proceeds : " As a child
I had but few equals, considering my years, both for cursing,
swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God."
" These things, I say, when I was but a child, but nine or ten,
did so distress my soul," even " while asleep, with appre-
hensions of devils and wicked spirits." But the " terrible
dreams " pass by, and he tells us " I soon forgot," " as if they
had never been." " I did still let loose the reins of my lust,
and delighted in all transgressions against the law of God, so
that, until I came to the state of marriage, I was the very ring-
leader of all the youth that kept me in company in all manner
of vice and ungodliness." This seems puzzling, as later he
vehemently denies ever being unchaste, and we know he was
no drunkard. It must be interpreted by the tenor of the
whole, and by this we are quite justified in supposing it not
to refer to sins of the flesh. Dr. Brown does not even notice
the passage.

Soon after this he feels it a sin to continue a ringer of the
church bells or throw a cat in a game on the Green. While
in the Puritan camp Bunyan would be summarily locked in
the stocks for even swearing. To continue, he trembles at
" hearing one to swear that was reckoned a religious man."
" But God did not utterly leave me." He is twice saved from
drowning, and once from an adder's sting.

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John Bunyan

THE CITY OF DESTRUCTION

It is after marriage the real straggle begins. His wife's
books he finds " somewhat pleasing," though he " met with no
conviction " ; but they beget, however, " some desires for
reform." Now, he records, as a regular churchgoer, he
" would very devoutly say and sing," " yet retaining my
wicked life." Conscience is rousing without light, lead,
or hold, and finds an outlet in superstition. " I adored,"
he declares, " both high- place, priest, clerk, vestment,
service, and what else." " Thus man, while blind, doth
wander, and knoweth not the way to the City of God." At
a sermon on Sabbath-breaking he tells us " I felt what guilt
was, though never before that I can remember." " There
was a great burden upon my spirit." " But, hold, it lasted
not." " To my old custom of sports and gaming I returned
with great delight." The same day, while playing cat, " a
voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said,
' Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins
and go to hell ? ' At this I was put to exceeding maze."
" I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had seen the Lord
Jesus," " hotly displeased," and threatening " grievous
punishment." It " was fastened on my spirit that I had been
a great and grievous sinner," but " too late to look after heaven,
for Christ would not forgive me." He debates his miserable
plight — why not stick to the pleasure of his sins, for, he argues,
" I had as good be damned for many sins as be damned for
few." This drama occurs on the spot, with the villagers as
spectators. It marks an acute stage of conviction. In despair
he gives up, and, as a lost soul, proceeds. " I returned
desperately to my sport again," for there was no "other
comfort." " One day, as I was standing at a neighbour's
shop window, and there cursing and swearing and playing the
madman after my wonted manner," " she was made to
tremble to hear me, and told me that I was the ungodliest
fellow for swearing that she had ever heard in all her life, and
that I by thus doing was able to spoil all the youth in the
whole town if they but came in my company." After this he
is cured for ever of his swearing, " but how it came to pass "
says he, " I know not."

Ah ! an angel of grace hovers around him, though as yet
he perceives not. He continues, " I now betook me to my
Bible," " the historical parts thereof." " As for Paul's

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epistles and such like Scriptures I could not understand."
" I fell to some outward reformation," " did set the Command-
ments before me for my way to heaven." His neighbours are
amazed. As well might " Tom of Bedlam become a sober
man." " I was," he confesses, " proud of my godliness."
" I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly," " though
as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite." " I
continued thus for about a year," " but my conscience begin-
ning to be tender," " I would go to the steeple-house, but
durst not ring " (he is a bell-ringer). " How if one of the bells
should fall ! " It " might kill me ! " He stops longingly at
the door, but is, he relates, " forced to flee for fear the steeple
should fall upon my head."

He loves dancing, and says, " I was another year before I
could quite leave that." He is now the village model, and
avows, " I thought no man in England could please God
better than I." " But, poor wretch, I was ignorant of Jesus
Christ."

EVANGELIST AND HOUSE OF THE INTERPRETER

A new day dawns. In Bedford one day, we read, " I came
where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door
in the sun talking about the things of God." It is strange,
and " out of my reach." " Their talk was about a new
birth," " as if they had found a new world." " My own
heart began to shake — the new birth did never enter my mind."
He goes much among them, and soon marvels at two things in
his experience — " a great softness and tenderness of heart "
and " a great bending in my mind " towards godly meditation.
Before long he is praying thus, " O Lord, I am a fool, and not
able to know truth from error ; leave me not to my own blind-
ness." Such is the blessed way.

He now reads " the Bible with new eyes," and especially
St. Paul. The change, he records, is " sweet and pleasant to
me." " I was never out of the Bible," " still crying out to
God that I might know the truth and way to heaven and
glory." In Bunyan's own " plain and simple words " the
reader has now been led to another stage of his soul-struggle ;
not Sinai alone, but Calvary is in sight. Ah ! but how the
clouds soon lower and lift, now opening in bright gleams, and
shutting again in gloom, with shivering blasts. Has he true
faith ? How can he know but by power of miracle ? There
are no mountains to move, so he will bid the puddles of the

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road be dry, " but go under yonder hedge to pray first." And
he concludes, " I will not try yet," lest the test should prove
him " a castaway and lost." Just now blossoms forth his
wonderful gift of day-dreaming. Those good people at the
cottage door are seated on the sunny side of a high mountain
bathed in " pleasant beams of the sun," " while I was shiver-
ing " in frost, snow, and cloud. A wall shuts hinroff. Pray-
ing, he finds a " narrow gap," and " by a sideling striving "
" wriggles through," " and sat down in the midst of them."
The mountain is " the Church of the living God," " the sun
that shone " " His merciful face." The wall is the world
which separates from God. But the enemy gives him but
a short shrift, for now his soul is assaulted with fresh
doubts — " Whether I was elected ; how if the day of grace be
past and gone ? " Ah ! that ancient haunting dread, and
the misery of it !

He goes on, " I was driven to my wits' end," for " it is not
of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of Him that
showeth mercy." He is " more loathsome than a toad ; sure
I am given up to the devil, a reprobate. O that I had sought
mercy years ago ! " He hears a sermon on " Behold, thou art
fair, my love." He repeats the text " twenty times together "
and hugs it as a precious thing, lest it fly away. It drops as
healing balm on his sore heart. " Thou art my love, thou art
my love ; " he cannot stop the " joyful sound," and on the
way home feels he can preach of God's mercy " to the very
crows that sat upon the ploughed lands." A gracious truce is
vouchsafed — he dwells by green pastures and still waters ; his
soul is restored. Says he, " for surely I shall not forget this
forty years hence."

THE FIGHTS WITH APOLLYON

Alas ! in forty days it has vanished, and in its stead he
hears a grisly voice behind, and turns his head to hear the
awful doom, " Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee."
Louder it sounds for a half-mile. His poor soul is now tossed
upon a turgid tide, he avows, " twenty times worse than all I
have met with before." A horrible darkness of doubt, floods of
blasphemous thoughts — such as "whether there were in truth a
God or Christ," or if " Holy Scriptures were not really a fable
and cunning story," or " was not Paul even a subtle imposter ? "
— gather force to sweep down and engulf his soul " as with a
mighty whirlwind," and he concludes that " God had in very

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wrath to my soul given me up." He longs to swap conditions
with a dog or a horse, " for they had no souls to perish." Oh !
that dreadful night when the stars fall to the earth, when souls
in black despair cry to the rocks, " Fall on us and hide us ! "
But when the will, that central fort of the soul and arbiter of
its destiny, is bravely kept — though the assaults of temptation
win here and there — the soul in the end shall have victory. It
is not temptation which determines fate, it is yielding ; it is
not wavering even, it is decision. So was it with Bunyan — his
everlasting God is watching. His Shepherd leadeth ; again he
gets " a sweet glance " of " still waters," such as " For He
hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin ; " " Nothing
shall separate us from the love of God ; " " If God be for us
who can be against us ? " "He hath made peace by the blood
of His Cross." Precious words !

The women he met at Bedford had led him a short while ago
to the ministry " of holy Mr. Gifford." Much of Bunyan's
trouble, in the human sense, had arisen from sheer illiteracy,
and false interpretation of texts, which, though terribly real to
him, were delusions. With knowledge and sympathy, and
with a kindly hand, he is now led into a surer way of stable
peace. He stumbles just now on a crumbling copy of Luther's
" Commentary on the Galatians ; " it breathes the life of a
kindred spirit, its strife and victory — no happier fortune were
possible just now. It fits him, he relates, as if " written out of
my heart " ; it renews his weary soul with strong nectar.
Now, he better knows the way of victory, and well it was, for
his tempter is marshalling for his fiercest assault of all. For
a whole year, day and night, he now tells us, he is beset, and
beset " for whole hours together." " My very body would be
put in action by way of pushing or thrusting with my hands
and elbows."

HIS WEARY BURDEN — FALLS AT SIGHT OF THE CROSS

He has to leave his meals to pray. There rings in his ears,
" Sell Christ for this or that ? " " No, not for thousands,
thousands, thousands of worlds," he answered " twenty
times." But Satan said, " Let Him go if He will." " Now
is the battle won ; down fell I as a bird shot from the top of a
tree, into great guilt and fearful despair." For some months
again he is shut up to a dreary time. But one day there shot
into his mind the words, " The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
cleanseth us from all sin," and he is steadied. Later there are

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dark wonderings if he has committed the " unpardonable sin."
He, however, is getting firmer intellectual hold of the verities
of faith. Still he continues with alternations, though less
crude, from gloom to glory. Years afterwards he records of
this weird and dreadful time that once when the sun in the
heaven seemed to grudge him light, and the very stones and ti'es
to cry out against him, a voice dropped sweet consolation
upon him, saying, " This sin is not unto death," and that
" the power and sweetness and light and glory that came with
it also were marvellous." One night, going to bed, the
precious assurance is borne upon him : "I have loved thee
with an everlasting love." O how fresh to his weary soul !
" He is able," " Thy righteousness is in heaven," are dear
words, which sustain him through fearsome hours.

THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS

He now perceives that it is not his good frame of heart or bad
frame that makes his righteousness better or worse, because all
that is with Jesus Himself, " the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever." Now break his chains ; now is he loosed from
his irons. He cries, " Christ, Christ ; there was nothing but
Christ before my eyes." " I could look from myself to Him."
" Now Christ was all, all my wisdom, all my righteousness,
all my sanctification, all my redemption."

Let us not forget that the weird phantasms of " Grace
Abounding " and the celestial visions of " Pilgrim's Progress "
are both the product of the same qualities of mind and imagin-
ation, and, further, that in the growth of the author's soul the
one is seed, root and plant, and the other the flower.

A Separatist Church was founded at Bedford not later than
1650, and from 1652-3 it became the religious home of Bunyan
for thirty-five years. Its minister, the " holy Mr. Gifford,"
had been a stout Royalist soldier, was made prisoner, and
adjudged to the gallows. Somehow he saves his neck, and, as
a drunken gamester, finds his way, a stranger, to Bedford to
practise medicine. Here he is converted, and turns earnest
preacher. About 1655 Bunyan left Elstow for Bedford.
Very real sorrows now crowd upon him. He is " suddenly
and violently seized with weakness," probably a nervous
breakdown. He fears consumption, and no doubt every
other mortal ill. The fears vanish. He is still betimes under
inward conflict, when his wife dies, and she solemnly bequeaths
her four young children to his care — one a blind daughter,

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and dear to the heart of the father. He is called, in one of the
meetings of the brethren, to speak a word of exhortation, and
it is made plain that it is as a preacher he must find the
vocation of his life. With the true passion for souls, he longs
to preach in " the darkest places," and for this no library and
no commentary is so efficient a help as the experience of his
own life. He devotes himself to the work with full and grate-
ful heart, and with every power of mind and soul. He is
able to present the grand verities of salvation with such
massive and solemn fervour, such homely figure, and pictur-
esque force, such thrust and smart, that men are roused to
cries and tears, and " poor souls did groan and tremble."

He is tempted to a brief pen fight against the mysticism
of the Quakers, but he cares not to meddle in the small things
of controversy. He is concerned with the great things of
awakening souls to sin, with lifting up the Cross for the re-
mission of sin by the blood of Jesus, thereby to grip and save
souls. He was " laden with pain, and travailed to bring forth
children to God." It is touching to read of his modest doubts of
fitness to preach, or fears of pride, and of pleadings for prayers.
He tells us : " I went on thus for the space of two years, crying
out against men's sins." " After which the Lord did come
upon my soul with some sure peace and comfort, wherefore
I now altered my preaching, for I still preached what I saw
and felt. Now, therefore, I did labour to hold with Jesus."
" God led me into something of the mystery of the union
with Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits to the
world." A welcome and gracious progress of experience.
Known as a tinker, he is scoffed at ; his right and orders to
preach are demanded by some who know better, but there are
other good clergymen who invite him to preach in their
pulpits.

The shelter of the Commonwealth passes with the death
of Cromwell, and at the advent of Charles II. all is changed.
Bunyan has the high honour of being a first sufferer for con-
science' sake at the downfall of liberty and Puritanism. He
had preached by village chestnuts and farmstead elms, and
had now, November I2lh, 1660, gone to conduct a service at
the hamlet of Lower Samsell, some thirteen miles from Bed-
ford. It is said he had often preached there under a gnarled
hawthorn, but this time the service was inside the house.
Before beginning he is warned by friends of a warrant to take
him, if he preach. They beg postponement to save him.

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" No," says he, " by no means. I will not stir." He walks
a few minutes in the garden, and commits himself to God.
After prayer and reading, commencing to preach, he is arrested
and marched off to Harlington House, the home of Squire
Francis Wingate, a Royalist quite ready to strain the law.

The constable tells the justice that the meeting was one of
peaceful, harmless folk. Turning to Bunyan he demands
what he is doing there and why he cannot mind his own
business. The answer is, " he had simply come to instruct the
people in the Word of God, to get them to forsake their sins
and come to Christ." Losing his temper, the magistrate
declares he will break the neck of such meetings. Bunyan
says " it might be so." Sureties are now called, but hearing
he must be kept from preaching until his appearance at
sessions, Bunyan declares his sureties released, as he shall
preach. This ended all parley, and the justice retires to make
out the commitment to Bedford gaol. In his absence the
vicar turns in and reviles the prisoner for his tinker preaching
— where are his orders ? The tinker replies that he possesses
the right the Apostle Peter gave, " As every man had received
the gift even so let him minister the same." Nonplussed,
the parson falls to abuse, and Bunyan thinks it well, he
states, to ' ' answer a fool not according to his folly."

They now start for gaol, but a little down the road meet
two friends, who cry halt. Surely something can be done, and
themselves hasten to the squire. They return with a message.
If Bunyan will say certain words to the justice he shall be
released. With earnest gaze Bunyan asks if they are such as
he can say with a good conscience, else he will not say them.
A village Luther indeed, and in God's decree of its potent
issuing, this scene, on canvas, would not be unworthy to hang
near that of Worms — " Here I stand. I can do no other ;
God help me." There was small hope in returning, but all
went together back to the justice. " Wherefore as I went,"
records Bunyan, " I lift up my heart to God for light and
strength to be kept ; that I might not do anything that either
might dishonour Him or wrong my soul, or be a grief or dis-
couragement to any that were inclining after the Lord Jesus
Christ." A petition worthy of liturgical honours. It is
dusk, and a lawyer brother-in-law of Wingate's now appears
with a candle. Bunyan is haled under an old Act of Eliza-
beth's reign, and, possibly uneasy, the lawyer makes much show
of affection for the prisoner, and " with a tongue smoother

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than oil," says Bunyan, argues and flatters — he need only
promise not to preach just now. All is futile ; the simple
tinker will have no sort of wily bartering of his conscience,
and off for gaol he is marched, and, says he, "I had much
ado to forbear saying to them, I carried the peace of God with
me, but I held my peace ; and, blessed be the Lord, I went
away to prison, with God's comfort in my poor soul." Kept
in durance through the night, next morning under strange
musings Bunyan along with his constable trudges the muddy
thirteen miles to Bedford, and arrives at the old prison on the
Bridge ; its gates swing open and swing back, and, locked and
barred, he must now dream instead of preach. Thus ends
the first, and thus begins the second half of the great dreamer's
life — November, 1660.

FAITHFUL AT VANITY FAIR — TWELVE YEARS' PRISON

Consternation quickly filled many hearts. He must have
bail. Justice Crompton is offered sureties. He would like
to act, but will not . The prisoner learns the result , and by much
prayer he rests in God's will. " I did meet my God sweetly
in prison," says he. " Here I be waiting the good will of God
to do with me as He pleaseth." " Not one hair can be hurt
only as my God permits." " When they have done their
worst " " we know that all things work together for good
to them that love God." At the sessions in January he is
indicted for " devilishly and perniciously abstaining from
coming to church to hear divine service, and for being a
common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conven-
ticles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good
subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our Sovereign
Lord the King." The dreadful tinker !

The chairman, Sir John Kelynge, a barrister and bitter
Royalist, long kept from place, is thirsting for reprisals,
and even a poor, canting tinker will do to start with. In court
there is some short sparring and foolish sneering, with quiet
thrusts from Bunyan. Why does he not go to church ? He
does go to God's church. The Prayer Book is mentioned, and
the Bench learns that the rustic can pray very well without
book. Oh ! the impious fellow ! He is possessed of delusions
and the devil ! With amazing erudition Bunyan is informed
that " the Prayer-Book had been since the Apostle's time."
Where is his right to preach ? Again he supplies his creden-
tials. "As every man has received the gift," etc. ':Bah!

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You have a gift of tinkering ; follow that " " or you must be
had back to prison for three months, and, if you persist,
will stretch by the neck for it." Says Bunyan, " their much
sayings I passed over. The Lord forgive them." He leaves
for gaol with the parting thrust : " If I were out of prison
to-day I should preach again to-morrow, by the help of
God," and is again behind locks and bars. In the last week
of the three months the clerk of the peace visits him, and by
threat, argument, and persuasion plies for promise not to
preach. All in vain. The tinker is unflinching as his iron
anvil. A few weeks later of the King's clemency at his
coronation hundreds of vicious felons obtained freedom, but not
the tinker-preacher. His lawful sentence is for three months,
yet in spite of Habeas Corpus he is kept prisoner for six years.

CHRISTIANA — A STORY OF NOBLE PURITAN WOMANHOOD

In brief space I must now narrate a story of noble Puritan
womanhood. The following August (1661) Sir Matthew Hale
is judge on circuit at Bedford Assizes. Bunyan had married
a second wife, and through her he presents a petition to the
judge, praying for liberty. He is kind, and will do what he
can, but others on the Bench frown. Next day she bravely
throws another petition in at his carriage window as it passes
from the Swan Inn to the court. It is caught by Judge
Twisden, who angrily shouts that her husband cannot have
liberty without promise not to preach. Ah ! but she has
heard that Sir Matthew is Christian, and good, and in some
pauses of court business in the desperation of love and hope
makes her way through a throng of astonished lawyers and
witnesses to the judge. Again he is kind, but others declare
her husband to be a hot-spirited fellow, and duly convicted.
One voice alone cheers her — honour be to his name — Edmund
Wylde, the High Sheriff. He bids her, when the Assizes
are over, to come to " the Swan Chamber, where the two judges
and many justices and gentry of the county were in com-
pany together." At this function there is a scene worthy of
the brush of an R.A. Elizabeth Bunyan, a lowly peasant
woman, " with abashed face and trembling heart," treads
through the great people to the judge, saying, " My lord,
I make bold to come once again to your lordship." With
sweet pleading she explains that her husband had never
been lawfully convicted. Twisden is again angry. Sir H.
Chester, a local magistrate, cries, " It is recorded, woman,

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it is recorded." Turning to Sir Matthew she presses her suit,
and tells how she had journeyed to London and petitioned
Lord Barkwood, who had consulted other peers, and that he
told her he had committed her husband's releasement to the
Judges of Assize, and to them she now came. Chester keeps
on crying out, " He is convicted," " it is recorded," " he is
a pestilent fellow." " Will he leave off preaching ? " demands
Twisden. " My lord, he dare not leave preaching as long as
he can speak." " What's the use of talking further, then ? "
" There is need, my lord. I have four small children that
cannot help themselves, of which one is blind, and we have
nothing to live by but the charity of good people." "Thou
art but a young woman to have four children," said Sir
Matthew pityingly. She pleads she is mother-in-law (step-
mother) to them, not herself being married two years, and,
explains that, through the shock of her husband's arrest, "I
being smayed at the news, fell into labour, and so continued
for eight days — but my child died." The judge is touched.
" Alas ! poor woman," says he ; but others cry out she is
but making poverty a cloak, and that her spouse is a pestilent
fellow. " What is he ? " asks Hale. " A tinker— a tinker,"
shout voices. " Yes," says she, " he is a tinker and a poor
man, therefore he is despised, and cannot have justice." Sir
Matthew, in sympathy, tells her to sue the King, and apply
for a writ of error. Learned jargon to her. Twisden gets
into a rage, and she fears he may strike her. He cries, " He
preaches ; he doeth harm." " No, my lord ; God hath owned
him, and done much good by him." " God ! " — " His doc-
trine is the doctrine of the devil." She replies with apt and
severe dignity, " My lord, when the righteous Judge shall
appear it shall be known that his doctrine is not the doctrine
of the devil."

I have thought it well to narrate at fair length this story
of Bunyan's imprisonment and of resolute heroism for his
release. It is but typical of hundreds. In the following
spring strenuous efforts were made for Bunyan's freedom,
but in vain ; he was never allowed to plead his case before a
judge.

THE DEN AND THE DREAM

In one's young days the frontispiece to " Pilgrim's Pro-
gress " was a pretty picture of an old toll or gate-house on the
central arch of a bridge spanning a fine river. Below we read,

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John Bunyan

" The prison where : Pilgrim's Progress ' was written." For two
hundred years this tradition remained unquestioned. Then
arose doubters, who presented fair evidence, but now Dr. Brown
has restored the pleasant picture-memory of childhood.
The facts seem as follows. Bunyan spent the first three
months in this hold on the bridge over the Ouse. After the
sessions, his misdeeds being an offence within the county,
he was committed to the county gaol, also in Bedford town,
and here he remained six years. After a few weeks of liberty
" they took him again at a meeting, and put him in the same
gaol for six years more." He was set free under the King's
Declaration of Indulgence, but this being withdrawn by Par-
liament as unconstitutional, in three years Bunyan was again
cast into dungeon, and this time dealt with by the town
authorities, who placed him in their own prison by the bridge.
He is released in six months, and during this brief term the
first part of " Pilgrim's Progress " is written. He tells its
origin. While writing of the " Way and Race of Saints "
fancies of allegory troop along like sparks.

Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast,
I'll put you by yourselves.

There are differing opinions upon the harshness of Bunyan's
life in prison. This would vary with the spirit of the Ad-
ministration of the day, the temper of the local justices, but
most of all it depended upon the gaoler — that is, upon money.
Bunyan was poor, and we know was " sometimes under cruel
and oppressive jailors." We may suppose Bedford gaol
to be neither better nor worse than others, and these, in all
conscience, were bad enough. Hardly any prisons in the
seventeenth century were even decent ; some were hideous
dens of fever-breeding filth. At thirty-two, when he entered,
he was in the flower of manly strength, and of sturdy build
and pure living, yet, looking worn and aged, he died at sixty,
while his father lived to seventy-four. Without doubt the
gaol robbed life by years. The reader knows the man — his
godly yearnings to preach the Word, and the fruitage of his
growing power, and also the conditions of his wife and family.
Consider, with this, the deprivation of liberty for over
twelve long years, and the rankling sense of a wicked tyranny
in a high-spirited Englishman of such imaginative genius.
And for what crime ? At this time prisoners had to provide
their own maintenance, so that with his family there were

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six mouths to fill with bread and no hand to earn it. He learns
to make " long tagged laces," and these aid the brave wife
and friendly brethren, with the little ones. While thus his
fingers ply busily, so do his brain and pen, for during the first
six years in gaol nine literary ventures, through the help
of friends, find their way to press, viz. : " Profitable Medita-
tions," " Praying in Spirit," " Christian Behaviour," " The
Holy City," " Resurrection of the Dead," " Prison Medita-
tions," and " Grace Abounding," ; also two poetic pieces.
These were as wells from the fresh springs of his heart. He
had two books only in prison — the Bible and Foxe's " Book
of Martyrs."

The common room of the county gaol was a room of fair size
and at times was crowded with saintly men and women,
there also for dear conscience' sake, through the dragooning
of the Conventicle Act, and its hired spies. To these Bunyan
ministered with a grateful power of upholding and consoling
faith. Some of these sermons expanded into books ; in this
way " The Holy City " found birth. With a subject suited to
his genius, he dwells upon the vision of the New Jerusalem
— its twelve gates and wondrous walls and streets — with
glowing fulness of imagination, of beauty, and suggestive
imagery. " Praying in Spirit " is in a high spiritual vein.
It is a plea for cry and prayer from the depths ; his large soul
cannot but gird against dead forms and vain repetitions.

We know much less about the second six years' imprison
ment than the first. Two books are produced — " Confession
of Faith " and " A Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by
Faith." On May Qth, 1672, Bunyan is granted licence to
preach under the " King's Declaration of Indulgence," and
probably about this date is liberated from his long bonds of
suffering, borne with unwhining Christian patience, resolute
courage and hope. And so the conqueror comes forth into
God's sunlight, and beholds once more the living green of the
wide fields, the budding hedges and nesting birds of an English
springtime.

RENUNCIATION — THE HILL DIFFICULTY — THE PALACE
BEAUTIFUL

In touching words of disciplined grace he tells of his crushing
burden, and also discloses the secret of enabling power to bear.
" I was made to see that if ever I would suffer rightly I must
first pass sentence of death upon everything — myself, my wife,

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my children, health, my enjoyments." And, second, " to
live upon God that is invisible." " The parting with my wife
and children hath often been to me in this place like pulling
off the flesh from my bones," " especially my poor blind child,
who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides." Yet,
" thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it cut
to the quick to leave you." Nor did he venture in vain, for
he continues : "I never had in all my life so great an inlet
into the Word of God as now." The Scriptures are made " to
shine upon me." Jesus was " never more real ; " God
" stands by me all the time ; " "I could pray for greater
troubles for greater comfort's sake."

Bunyan's stalwart endurance of suffering for principle, along
with his preaching and books, notably " Grace Abounding," had
already lifted him into leadership. Just now some relaxation
of the hard rigour of persecution was in the air, and seven weeks
before his release the church of which Bunyan was a member
at his arrest had elected him pastor. This faithful people,
watched, as all such were, by paid spies, had been hunted as
homeless vagrants for twelve years, yet held on their broken
life by secretly assembling for mutual cheer and spiritual
consolation in cottage, wood, or dell, so that when Bunyan
stepped forth to freedom he was the acknowledged head of a
Church of Christ. Very soon a barn, with an orchard, which
becomes the burial ground, is purchased for £50, and licensed
for worship, and now the free expression of devout thank-
fulness and sweet rejoicing ascends to heaven. Here he
preaches until death. Upon the same hallowed spot the same
church still continues its worship of the same everlasting God.

" BISHOP BUNYAN " AND " ISMS "

Bunyan's preaching is fresh and sparkling as a mountain
spring, and the barn, though spacious, is often thronged to
overflowing. With his own, he had procured licences for
twenty-five other preachers, and he early becomes organising
preacher over a wide district, and means to redeem the years
of his captivity to the utmost, and perforce takes fatherly and
tender shepherding of many flocks of believers. The jest
" Bishop Bunyan " became sober truth. In lonely musings
with his Bible and " Book of Martyrs " Bunyan had dwelt
too long in the region of lofty realities to care for external
forms. He had suffered as for dear life itself, not for this or
that cut of garment. He taught his church this spirit of

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large catholicity, and its watchwords were Faith and Holiness
of Life. It will tolerate no narrowness on questions of
baptism or brotherhood in the cup and bread of Communion.
In all this he was but treading the way Mr. Gifford had set.
It is significant that at the death of Pastor Gifford the Bedford
Church invited Mr. Wheeler to succeed him. Wheeler was a
member of the Independent Church at Newport Pagnell.
Further, in May, 1672, Bunyan applied for a licence to preach —
along with his own and others — for Mr. Gibbs, pastor of the
Newport Pagnell Church. Gibbs is referred to as a Presby-
terian— a common synonym of the day for Independent.
By implication, Bunyan has been supposed to be of Baptist
sympathies. Dr. Brown doubts even this, and lays out the
evidence impartially, and it would appear that he had no
strong feeling either way. He sharply assailed the Baptist
position when rigidly applied. He had no patience with the
tyranny of mere ritual. For himself he would be known as
" Christian " rather than as Baptist, Independent, or Presby-
terian. Congregationalist he must be to save his liberty, but
Baptists are this as much as Independents. A prophet
centuries ahead of his day, we learn " he did believe a time
should come " when these " distinguishing appellations "
" would be buried." He and his church steadfastly stood for
character and sainthood, and to protect this, and in protest,
refused to transfer members to Particular Baptist Churches
who practised close Communion.

At least three of Bunyan's children were baptised in infancy
— one a year after his own admission to the Bedford church by
Mr. Gifford, and another after his twelve years' imprison-
ment for conscience' sake. There are no records of baptisms
in his church annals. Baptisms by fire, the life, its liberty
from thraldom of tradition, were the sacred things. This
freedom, however, in Bunyan's mind would hardly extend to
doctrine — but the reformed standard was questioned by few.
Let me here say that the ruling aim of these Stories is to regard
Independent and Baptist as brothers ; the latter has always
raised a special frown from the ecclesiastic, and deserves the
honour of it. Bunyan's pen is restless as his tongue, and his
double fame as author and preacher secures him welcome in
London. A day's notice calls overflowing hundreds for
audience — it is said, at seven in the morning even when dark.
Dr. John Owen told the King he would willingly exchange all
his learning for the tinker's power of touching men's hearts.

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John Bunyan

We know his written word is unique ; what of the throb and
the fire of the spoken word ? In vain is the imagination cast
for one to compare. We learn that he was tall, comely, grave,
and of impressive presence, and with eyes to shoot flame —
" of rich anointing of the Spirit ; " "a son of consolation to the
broken-hearted, yet a son of thunder to secure dead souls ; "
hearers " wept for joy " and groaned for fear. But to jealous
rectors, once a tinker, a tinker for ever, and his gaddings
about and his pratings are intolerable. More than ever
he is a "pestilent schismatic," "infamous," "impudent,"
his firebrand tongue must be stopped, and they cry for
his re- arrest.

SUSPICIONS ON THE IMMORTAL PILGRIM

When the manuscript of " Pilgrim's Progress " was shown to
friends there were blinking of eyes and shaking of heads —
did it not smack of the playhouse ? But there was also the
sparkling smile of appreciation, and so he will himself settle
the question.

Since you are thus divided,

I print it will, and so the case decided.

The spelling of the early edition (the first published, 1678) is
amusingly rude. At a bound the "Pilgrim" leaped into
popular favour, and three editions were demanded within
a year, and to these sundry characters were added. Space
curtly forbids but a hasty glance.

Walking through the wilderness of this world the writer
lights upon a den, where, sleeping, he dreams. He sees a man
(Christian) in rags, reading a book, and with a heavy burden
upon his back, who, " as he reads, weeps and trembles."
Filled with soul- anguish, the man meets Evangelist, who
directs him to fly by way of " yonder Wicket Gate " at the
shining light ; whereat he began to run," crying, " Life !
Life ! Eternal life ! " His family call him back in vain,
and neighbours Obstinate and Pliable run to fetch him back.
He i? fleeing from the City of Destruction, and dare not return.
Pliable and Christian soon fall into a miry Slough of Despond.
"Bedaubed" enough, Pliable turns back. Meeting Mr.
Worldly Wiseman, of Carnal Policy Town, Christian is
beguiled, and takes the wrong turn, to " Mr. Legality's house,"
and his burden " seemed heavier." Evangelist again puts
him right, and he reaches the wonderful House of Interpreter,
where he receives great enlightenment. On leaving he

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gets sight of a Cross, and, oh the joy ! down falls his burden.
Three shining ones here salute him, replace his rags by a
" broidered coat," " set a mark upon his forehead," and " give
him a roll with a seal upon it," his token of entry at " the
Celestial Gate." Climbing the Hill Difficulty, he passes the
chained lions and, coming to Palace Beautiful, is sweetly lodged
by Discretion, Prudence, Piety and Charity, and is shown a
distant view of the Delectable Mountains. He is equipped
in suit of armour, with a sword, and well it is, for coming to
the Valley of Humiliation, he is met by the fiend Apollyon.
The fight is " the dreadfullest sight " he " ever saw." Victori-
ous, he journeys on, gets into the Wilderness and the Valley
of the Shadow of Death, with its horrors of deep ditch and
quag. With happier fortune, he comes up with Faithful,
and Talkative of Prating Row joins them. Passing through
Vanity Fair, the only way to the Celestial City, Faithful's
fate is a martyr's crown. On the march Christian encounters
Mr. By-ends, " a subtle, evasive knave," of Fair Speech Town.
He pushes ahead with Hopeful, but their feet are "tender;"
for " easiest going " they are tempted to leave the " rough "
way by a stile into Bye- Path Meadow, and are quickly in a
dungeon of Doubting Castle and in the raging grip of Giant
Despair. Christian now remembers the Key of Promise
in his bosom, and the prison doors fly open. Presently the
Delectable Mountains and Emmanuel's Land come into view,
and shepherds feeding their flocks counsel the wayfarers.
Escaping from Ignorance and Flatterer and the Enchanted
Ground, they enter the country of Beulah, and hear the
singing of birds. Treading through the King's orchards,
vineyards and gardens, they behold yonder the City of pure
gold, resplendent in heavenly glory. Meeting two " shining
ones," they arrive at the dark brink of a deep and bridgeless
River. Alas ! For the shining ones tell them it must be
crossed, but that it is shallower or deeper as they believe in the
King. Entering the water in fear, Christian sinks, but Hope-
ful keeps up his head, and repeats, " \Vhen thou passest
through the waters I will be with thee." Christian's feet
now touch ground, and they are safe. A heavenly host comes
forth to welcome them, and, with the King's trumpeters, they
are escorted to the gates of the Celestial City. They hear the
sound of sweet joy-bells, and behold the crowns and golden
harps of the Redeemed.
The supreme genius of " Pilgrim's Progress " is attested by

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the marvel of the universality of its winning appeal. Printed in
a hundred tongues, it is the delight of people of every speech,
faith, colour, clime and condition. Says Dean Stanley : " It
follows the Bible from land to land, as the singing of birds
follow the dawn ; " and Macaulay declares that " while other
allegories only amuse the fancy, this has been read by
thousands with tears." The " despised " tinker triumphs.
Truly, " He hath exalted them of low degree."

MR. BADMAN — THE HOLY WAR — SIEGES OF MANSOUL

In 1680 Bunyan published " The Life and Death of Mr.
Badman," intended by contrast to show the way of the
ungodly to hell. It dissects and depicts with shrewd skill
the life of a wily scoundrel who makes " hat-fulls " of money —
the crooked ways of a soul " unmaking " itself swift for
destruction, and pictures also the vulgar side of village life.
But it did not take hold as in any way supplementary to
" Pilgrim's Progress." In 1684-5 the second part issues from
the dreamer's pen, wherein Pilgrim's wife, Christiana, and
children, set forth to the Heavenly City. The way for the
most part is similar to Christian's, and by the help of stalwart
Greatheart and faithful Old Honest, they arrive safely. Imi-
tators, plagiarists, impostors arise. For some, the Pilgrim is
short of dour dogma, and prompts too much to " lightness and
laughter." This must be mended. The menders live but to
gasp and die.

I have just read every page of " The Holy War made by
Shaddai upon Diabolus for the Regaining of the Metropolis of
the World, or the Losing and Taking again of the Town of
Mansoul." It is about the same length as " Pilgrim's Progress."
It is a marvellous book. In allegorical audacity and in subtle
analysis of the devious ways of the human soul and the wiles
of its Tempter, it is greater than " Pilgrim's Progress," but
it is too obviously credal. It is as a picture in mist ; its
characters move dimly as semi- abstractions. It is far inferior
to our favourite in alert figures and bright colours, in the
spangle of engaging characters, and the music and movement,
the sound and stir of human life. One may imagine Milton's
lengthening face, could he have read the last assaults upon
Mansoul by Diabolus. One division, 10,000 strong, is the
" Doubters." They are the veterans of the whole army ;
The different regiments are the " Election Doubters,"
" Vocation Doubters," " Grace Doubters," " Perseverance

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Doubters," " Salvation Doubters," and " Glory Doubters."
The " Election Doubters," with whom Milton must certainly
be numbered, are the " Life Guards " of Diabolus, and are
led by Captain Rage ; he had Standard Bearer Mr. Destruc-
tion and the great Red Dragon for escutcheon. Some 10,000
" Doubters " had already been slain in a previous battle.
There is again much slaughter of them, and their dead are
buried, every splintered bone of them, to be for ever out of
sight, name, or memory of the unborn. Some are caught
lurking in the town, conspiring in a " Diabolonian
Conventicle," and are summarily tried, sentenced guilty, and
executed by crucifixion.

CROSSES THE BRIDGELESS RIVER AND ENTERS THE CITY OF

THE KING

Bunyan's creative gift, with his rich and tragic depths of
experience, we see in the making of his books. He tells us he
' ' never fished in others' waters. My Bible and Concordance are
my library in my writings." A questionable procedure for any
man. In August, 1688, Bunyan starts on horseback from
Bedford, never to see it more. Like Luther, his last journey is
as peacemaker. He succeeds, and opens the door for an
erring son to return to his father. His journey is two-fold,
and he rides on from Reading to London in driving rain, and
is drenched through. He puts up at the house of a friend
in Snow-hill. He has with him the manuscript of " The
Excellency of a Broken Heart." On the igth he preaches
his last sermon from John i. 13.

While busy with proof sheets he is seized by " a violent
fever," or " sweating sickness." Skill and love are vain to
save, and on Friday, August 3ist, his own pilgrimage is over —
the river past — and he hears his own joy-bells of welcome
to the New Jerusalem. Sixty years old, he was the author
of sixty books. He was buried in Bunhill-fields.

Six children were born to Bunyan — Mary, Elizabeth, John
and Thomas, by his first wife ; Sarah and Joseph by the second.
Mary, the blind one, died before her father, the rest surviving,
as did his faithful wife, but only by a year and a half. No
descendants can be traced, except through Sarah, and these
are numerous.

256

ISAAC WATTS.

" And they sung a new song'''

XIII

ISAAC WATTS

HYMNS AND HYMN WRITERS

INSCRIPTION.— Founder of English hymnody and of childhood's
sacred song ; standing in a decadent day for liberty, learning,
pure and exalted piety. B. 1674, D. 1748.

SCENE.— Library in Sir Thomas Abney's house ; view of park.— The
Poet stands composing, with face lit up with sacred emotion.— On
the table lies a little book inscribed "Charles Wesley's Hymns,"
on the wall shelves, volumes show authors' names — Latimer,
Bradford, Browne, Knox, Fox, Locke, Owen, Baxter, Defoe,
Howe, Matthew Henry. A cherub endows with harp of
heavenly song.

It is the quaint and ancient town of Southampton during
the winter of 1674-5 ; "the swelling flood " of Southampton
water stretches in fair expanse, but its beauty is unseen by
the lady sitting near the beach — a fair young wife with her
babe nestling at the breast. She glances betimes up to the
square grim building with barred windows — St. Michael's
gaol — for her husband, Isaac Watts, is behind those bars,
and she waits perchance to gain admission to him.

Is the prisoner thief, forger, murderer ? No ! a Dissenter,
a deacon of the Above Bar Congregational Church — that
is his only crime. He is already held in esteem as a citizen,
and continues so to the end of a long life.

The young mother is the daughter of Alderman Taunton,
and the town folk say she is kin to a Huguenot who escaped
from the bloody peril of St. Bartholomew. The babe, as the
first born of nine, takes his father's Christian name and be-
comes the world-famed "sweet singer of Israel." The father
turns cloth factor, but later becomes master of a boarding
school of superior standing in the town, to which come pupils

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

from America and the West Indies. In the year of his death
— 1736 — he is described as " a Southampton gentleman."
Out of prison, he is quickly back again on the same charge,
probably under the Conventicle Act, and in 1683 is compelled
to flee from home and family, and there is much domestic cloud
and suffering until the happier days after the Revolution.

Our poet sprang of good stock, the name of his grandfather
Taunton, through his public benefactions, is still fragrant in
Southampton. His grandsire Watts, during the Common-
wealth, commanded a man-o'-war under Blake and was an
officer of courage, adventure and prowess. He was also of
some skill in music, painting, and poetry. While he was in
the prime of his life, during the Dutch war, his ship exploded.
The widow could tell a rich store of tales of wonder of her
sailor husband's exploits at sea, and among wild animals in
the Indies. She had much to do with her grandson's education,
instilled him with high principles of the fear of God, kept him
in a life and atmosphere at once noble, gentle and patriotic,
and of placid and gracious piety, yet spent in a hushed ex-
pectancy of dark days for conscience' sake.

Isaac was born in French Street, Southampton, July I7th,
1674. Before he could barely talk he would hold up his penny
and cry, " A book, a book, buy a book." At four he began
Latin, and whilst yet a child possessed a fair acquirement of
Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was early sent to Southampton
Grammar School — a spare, pale, nervous child — and became a
prodigy of youthful proficiency in these tongues and also in
French. Though the son of a stern Dissenter, he won the
affections of his master, the learned vicar of the parish, and
afterwards honoured his memory in an ode. A proud and
happy place was Southampton for a dreamy boy to be born in
and play about, with its quaint nooks and rambling corners,
its historic gateways and archways, its hoary Bars and Roman
Roads, its ancient clamour of Kings and navies, with the glory
of its palmy days when stately argosies from fair Venice and
the Indies sailed up its great water and anchored within its
old port.

Presumably the elder Isaac was well to do, for the house
in French Street was roomy and substantial, set back, and with
a garden behind. Here it was that Watts composed his first
and many hymns. He often journeyed thither when a
celebrated man to see his parents, his father living to be
eighty-five.

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Isaac Watts

Fourteen years old at the Revolution, Watts as a thoughtful
boy could not have remained unaffected by the years of
political and religious unrest and the march of great events.
His earlier manhood also was not without inspiration other
than that of classic lore and theology, for Defoe, Boyle,
Barrow, Newton, Locke, and Wren kept their day very much
alive. The later decades of Watts's life were passed in sylvan
serenity.

A GREAT SACRIFICE

Young Isaac's attainments and character stood so high
that Dr. Speed, a physician of the town, offered, on behalf of
himself and several others, to pay all the costs of a University
career for him. But this involved conforming to the
Established Church and was respectfully but firmly declined.
Two friends, both his inferiors, who did conform, attained the
rank of Archbishop.

Watts at this time " fell under considerable convictions of
sin," and the year following he writes, " and was taught to
trust in Christ, I hope " — note the wistful doubt. The same
year, 1689, he had " a great serious illness." These recitals
drop from one's pen in cold ink, but the living experiences were
mingled with hot tears and fervent prayers, and were the
formative forces of the poet's career — their blossoming the
holy songs which became the sustaining inspiration and sweet
solace of generations of countless souls.

In 1690, when sixteen, Isaac leaves the grammar school and
proceeds to Stoke Newington Academy, London, under the
headship of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, where some few years
earlier Defoe had studied.

The early Puritan and Separatist leaders were distinguished
for scholarship ; they passed through and took degrees from
the ancient universities. After these were closed to Non-
conformists, the old tradition was maintained by Dissenting
Academies which spread over the kingdom during the century
following the Toleration Act. These were the source of
the scholarly tone which continued to characterise the Non-
conformist ministry. Many lights of the State Church re-
ceived their classic impulse from these humble schools, amongst
them Butler, of " Analogy " fame, and Seeker, Archbishop of
Canterbury, whose first communion and sermon were in a
Dissenting church. The path to worldly name and place
was only by comformity. With some of these Watts

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maintained a life-long friendship. Watts, like Milton, was a
cultivated scholar when he left the school of his boyhood.
Entering Rowe's Academy his mind is now fixed to prepare
for the ministry of the Congregational order. He feels the
call to be holy and imperious. Leaving Stoke Newington he
stays during 1695-6 at his old home.

HIS FIRST HYMN

While at worship at the chapel of his childhood his cultured
and poetic instincts rebel against the poor stuff called psalmody
as beneath the dignity and beauty of Christian praise. The
grumbler, so goes the story, is told by his father to produce
something better, and the answer is the moving hymn " Behold
the glories of the Lamb." It was truly a "new song," and
the author being entreated to compose another and another
for successive Sabbaths, a little volume came forth, but
for years the hymns were sung from manuscript copies. In
October, 1696, when twenty-two, Watts entered the home
of Sir John Hartopp, as tutor of the young heir. The mansion
was Elizabethan, with a stately air of opulence in its ceilings
and appointments, and lay in the sylvan tranquillity of
extensive grounds, spreading elms and cypress shades, in Stoke
Newington. Here General Lord Fleetwood died, and Baxter
planned and probably wrote "The Saints' Everlasting Rest."
It possessed secret chambers, hangings and wainscot doors for
hiding and escape ; for during Charles II. 's time it was as a
city of refuge for hunted Nonconformists.

The knight was of ancient lineage, an ardent patriot, of
accomplished learning and literary pursuits, and an eminent
Independent of his day. Lady Hartopp was grand-daughter
of Fleetwood and from him inherited the estate.

Two sons and seven daughters filled the home with bright
music and movement, withal softened by an atmosphere of
sedate piety. It was such a home as could be seen nowhere
but among the Puritan homes of England. Perhaps had the
daughters been fewer the poet had not died a bachelor.
Among the books and gardens of this house of felicity Watts
spent six prolific years. The family attended Mark Lane
Chapel, a former minister being the great Dr. Owen, Cromwell's
chaplain and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. The congregation
numbered a grand-daughter and other relatives of Oliver's,
members of noble houses, several baronets with their ladies,
aged and scarred veterans of the civil wars, and the proud sons

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of other fallen Ironsides. Here sat a bronzed exile returned
to the old home to die, and there a figure with whitened head
and clerical garb, one of the ejected of 1662. There were also
many prosperous merchants and traders. It was a congrega-
tion permeated by an aristocratic flavour and with a scholarly
tone. They assembled to listen to elaborate sermons with
interminable heads and sub-heads which to us would be
intolerably tedious, but to them were a rich feast of fat things.
There were many similar congregations scattered about London
and its suburbs. The city itself had been, and still remained,
a citadel of liberty. These congregations in their day stood for
great principles and causes, but as the decades rolled by and
the old sufferers died off, the pressure waned, the old fire
cooled, and no missionary spirit took its place. Nothing so
keeps the doctrine of our ascended Redeemer pure and
undimmed as being a follower of His life. So it was that some
of these churches, especially later, settled into a self-centred ease
of pious complacency — spiritual gardens walled around — and
losing the living spirit of consecrated service, they fell into
lapse from pure evangelical doctrine, only to be waked from
sleep to marching life again by the mighty trumpet of the
great revival led by Whitefield and Wesley. After much
searching of heart Watts, in 1698, became assistant minister
to this select church at Mark Lane, and in 1701 was ordained
to its full charge. His ministry was broken by frequent
illness, compelling long rests at Bath, Tunbridge Wells or
Southampton. Fragile of figure, always ailing, always feeling
his thorn in the flesh, it is marvellous how he built such a
monument of solid, useful, literary labour. It is singular
that, as a preacher, the poet kept such strong curb upon his
rich gift of fancy and trope so manifest in his hymns. It
is but like the man ; he probably felt preaching too sacred.
In the pulpit he was not noted for declamation or brilliancy,
but rather for a quiet solid flow of consecrated learning,
suffused by a personality of engaging affection and earnest
piety. Though in bodily presence insignificant, being but
a trifle over five feet, distinguished in some way he must have
already been to be called so young to minister to such a people
in the highest things.

A WEEK — OF THIRTY-SIX YEARS

Illness compels his removal to the Mmories, near his chapel,
then open fields, under the shadow of the Tower and washed

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by the silvery Thames, and so early as 1703, a co-pastor,
Mr. Samuel Price, is appointed. In 1712 a violent fever
takes him and he is absent from his pulpit for four years.
There now comes, providentally to Watts, the happiest fortune
of his whole life. Worn to lingering weakness by years of
recurrent fever and infirmities, borne in loneliness and probably
with inefficient nursing, he is invited by Sir Thomas and Lady
Abney for a week's change to their magnificent mansion,
Theobalds, Hertfordshire. The week prolonged itself into
thirty-six years — until his death.

The knight was of good family, and passed through the
honours of Alderman, Sheriff, Lord Mayor, and M.P. for
London, and also Director of the Bank of England. He was
a sturdy Nonconformist and a stout supporter of William III.
At the knight's death, the guest still remained, as the honoured
friend of Lady Abney and her daughter. Among the peaceful
solitudes and embowered walks of the park, the grateful
amity of fellowship and polite pursuits, aided by the ready
tendence which affluence and affection could supply, Watts's
fragile frame is quieted, fair health restored, and much of the
solid work of his life is accomplished at Theobalds. He hangs
round his rooms the portraits of eminent men and himself
decorates the panels, while his lute and telescope lie on the
table with his Bible and his treatise on logic. Theobalds had
been the home of the stately Burghley, Elizabeth's minister, and
here the Queen often rested when on her progresses. Richard
Cromwell had lived close by under the name of Mr. Clark.

Thomas Gunson, a dear friend of Watts and brother to
Lady Abney, had purchased the manor of Stoke Newington,
and built an elegant house ; dying young he had bequeathed
the whole to his sister, who removed thither from Theobalds,
and here Watts spent the last thirteen years of his life, in the
neighbourhood associated with his earlier happy time.

The mighty city has long ago engulfed the secluded village,
and Lady Abney's grounds have become the famous Abney
Park Cemetery which, since the closing of Bunhill Fields,
has received the dust of numerous Nonconformist worthies
of hallowed memory. Dr. Watts's statue is a commanding
object in the midst of their tombs.

THE STRANGE DESTINY — HYMNS verSUS LEARNING

During the eighteenth century, and well on into the nine-
teenth, the name of Dr. Watts stood high in the letters and

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learning of Great Britain, perhaps of Europe also. In his own
day his eminence was due to his learning, but when, in
addition, his fame as hymn writer was established, few names
were more familiar to the whole English speaking race. His
hymns, by which he is now, and ever will be " called to re-
membrance," were to himself in their composition a recreation
and relief, and were regarded as a small part of his labour and
sen*ice to his age.

Not seldom is this the strange way of destiny. In offering
the briefest summary of Dr. Watts's prose works it may be
affirmed that this generation has not the remotest notion of
the large place he filled for probably a full century in the
educational equipment of the English people, alike for palace
and cottage, school and college.

His books range over every department of knowledge
deftly adapted to every age. For the very young there were
his " Art of Reading," " Writing and Pronouncing English,"
his " First and Second Catechisms " and " Divine and Moral
Songs ; " for the older youth, there were his " Astronomy,"
" Geography," and "The Use of the Globes," " The Assembly's
Catechism with Proofs," and his charming " Catechism of
Scripture History." His " Treatise on Logic " became the
accepted text book in our universities, and in 1740 had
reached a seventh edition. Its simplicity and clearness as
a grammar of thinking were refreshing, after the ridiculous
jargon of the schoolmen. Watts's " Improvement of the Mind "
exercised immense influence for generations and continued to
be a gift book up to my own boyhood. Watts tells us it
embodied the matured wisdom of twenty years' quiet thought.
I have the volume before me and have been closely scanning
its pages. While there is no royal road to learning, there are
roads better and worse ; and Watts points out the better.
The orderly system of the book, its robust sense, its ripe
experience and general thoroughness make one wonder why
it is not revised for present day use. Dr. Johnson said of it,
" Few books have been perused by me with greater pleasure."
There are also volumes of " Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose
and Verse ; " " Short Essays and Composures on Various
Subjects," full of sound and useful instructions, freshly and
interestingly set forth — a sort of Christian Rambler and
Spectator of the day.

Watts was gifted with a large, alert and speculative mind,
and for his " Enquiry concerning Space," his " Innate Ideas,"

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" Nature of Substance," and other writings was, in an age of
great philosophers and metaphysicians, held in high esteem.

A PURITAN PARLOUR — SABBATH EVENING

The degree of D.D. was conferred upon Watts by Edinburgh
and Aberdeen Universities without his knowledge and with
every mark of honour. In the sphere of theology and
religion his " World to Come " belongs to the type of
Baxter's " Saints' Everlasting Rest," and is fragrant of the
Puritan parlour, and of Sabbath evenings at home, when
the Christian loved to dwell in pensive meditation, and in
sacred reverie and rhapsody, upon the glories of the elect
in their heavenly home of endless joys and perfect peace — the
New Jerusalem, the city of pure gold, with gates of pearls,
" The shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home."
I heard their echoes in my childhood, and I frankly confess
to a longing to hear them again. Now-a-days there seems
neither heaven nor hell to talk about. Parts of the " World
to Come " passed into the languages of Europe and only
recently were in vogue in the Levant.

Watts was sound as a bell in all the evangelical verities.
He withstood the aggressive tide of Arianism so strong in his
day. His " Humble Attempt towards the Revival of
Religion " quickly reached several editions, and proves his
alert perception of the dangers and needs of the time. He
was always marked by a high tone of honour and gentle-
bearing. Throughout life he upheld the ideal stewardship
by the practice of proportionate giving. The reformer of
clear brain and bold step is clearly evidenced in everything
he wrote. Nor does he shield " the cloth." In a piece on
" Preacher and Preaching " his sturdy sense tilts at the
absurd custom, even of eminent divines, of running up heads
and particulars and " branching sermons" (he dubs them) as
high as "seven and twentiethly, until all rememberable
aim is lost." All his books were pervaded by one ruling
purpose — usefulness. His ideas were large, ample in build,
with a proverbial compactness and a sense of credibility,
suffused always by a strong love and observation of nature.
His style was noted for clearness, ease and dignity. He did
much in breaking down the classic trammels, the affected
diction, and the pedantic literary fopperies and vanities
of his day. Dr. Johnson, so honest and sturdy in dislike of
Dissent, who could barely muster a pleasant word for Milton,

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finds plenty for Watts. Says he, " Few men have left behind
such purity of character or such monuments of laborious
piety. He has provided instruction for all ages, from those
who are lisping their lessons to the enlightened readers of
Malebranche and Locke, he has left neither corporeal nor
spiritual nature unexamined ; he has taught the art of
reasoning and the science of the stars."

The end of Watt's life touched the middle of the eighteenth
century. It was an age of high play and ruined fortunes,
of courtly artificiality and stilted gaiety : of geometric gardens,
shaped yews, shrubberies, and tulip beds, yet with a certain
Watteau-like charm. Perhaps no age in English history
reveals a baser servility to mere birth, however vicious. As
we shall find in the next Story of Wesley, it was an age of lurid
contrasts, of polished infidelity and sordid sin, and of a vast
fall in things of the soul from the ideals of the Commonwealth ;
but in the destined courses of God's will, the man and the hour
had already met to fuse into a great light to lighten the
darkness and mark the highway for a new England.

Apart from his merely literary circle and occasional visitors,
such as Whitefield, there clung around Watts a cluster of dear
and notable friends, loving him for his lovable nature, for
his graces of character and his sanctified life. Among them
were Philip Doddridge, the saintly Hervey, Colonel Gardiner,
Mrs. Rowe, and the Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess
of Somerset.

There is a tradition of a tender mystery between Watts and
Miss Singer, afterwards Mrs. Rowe. Paxton Hood thinks
with no reason "beyond idle tattle"; they were certainly
close friends. She was the author of " Devout Exercises," a
little volume of soaring raptures and fervent soliloquies which
she left sealed for Watts to publish at discretion. He issued
it with an interesting preface. The lady, it would seem,
refused the hand of Ken, and Mrs. Barbauld believes of
Watts also, for she writes of her, " Seraphic Ken and tuneful
Watts were thine."

On November 25th, 1748, in his seventy-fifth year, not more
ripe in years than in honours and in holiness, Watts passed
in serene and conscious faith to that

land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign.

They buried him in Bunhill Fields, and shortly after his

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death his name was honoured by the erection of a monument
in Westminster Abbey.

I WILL SING WITH THE SPIRIT — I WILL SING WITH THE
UNDERSTANDING (l Cor. xiv. 15).

"What is a hymn ? It is something more than sacred
poetry. I have several hymnologies before me and each
contains several definitions. All are really embraced in
two words — poetry, worship; fire and faith — the lyric
passion and holy aspiration — these wedded in mystic union.
Worship, in the large sense in which we daily use the word :
penitence, praise, prayer — a conscious communion of the
human soul with a personal God. A hymn must lift and lift
to the Holiest. Perhaps no form of human expression more
subtly reveals the delicate chords of temperament, of lofty
moods and pure emotions than the hymn. It is poetry
transfigured by worship. All noble art is by the grace of
God ; a noble hymn is doubly so. Limits of space rudely
arrest any desires to portray the beginnings of the hymn
in the triumphs of Hebrew history, as in the songs of Miriam
and Deborah, or in the Davidic Psalms where the harp of the
soul — its every string — vibrates with passionate touch, or
forward to the New Covenant in the Virgin's lyric of grateful
and wondering rapture, in Zachariah's holy song of prophecy,
in the pathetic ascription of the aged Simeon or the vision
of the startled shepherds,

When such music sweet,

Their hearts and ears did greet

As never was by mortal fingers strook ;

and after the triumph song of the Psalms, how the heart lingers
wistfully over the Hallel (Ps. cxiii. and cxviii.) of the Last
Supper. One might rehearse the wondrous visions of St.
John of the golden harps and the " New Song."

The " Psalms of Solomon " of the century before Christ
breathe the songful note of Messianic hope. The companion
series, the " Odes of Solomon " long known to exist and
brought to light by Dr. Rendel Harris, are of profound
interest as showing this pre-Christian hope to have " turned
into a great reality, and the first low matin chirp has grown
full quire." These " Odes " are full of the hymnic spirit.
They were written, says Dr. Harris, probably not later than
the Book of Revelation, within a hundred years of Christ's
death.

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I can only afford a hurrying glance at the early Christian
hymns. They were not metrical. It is supposed that the
" Gloria in Excelsis " was the morning hymn of praise, and
the evening one, the lovely " Hail, Gladdening Light."
There is fair certainty that metrical compositions were not
known until the fourth century, when they became an
established part of the ordinary service in the Syriac Church.
We soon afterwards read of metrical hymnody in the Greek
Church at Constantinople. It travelled westward and we
find Ambrose, when Bishop of Milan, forming bands of hymn-
singers. The hymns of the East were unknown to our
fathers and we owe gratitude to Dr. Neale and others for
their skilful renderings, chiefly from the Greek into English.
The translations are necessarily free and of the thought
rather than the Eastern form. " Art thou weary — art
thou languid," " The day is past and over," and the evening
hymn of the shepherds, " Christian, dost thou see them "
are among them.

The singers of the early Eastern Churches embalmed the
larger facts of Christ's life in songs for use at their festivals.
The hymns of the Latin Church were less florid and more ethical
in spirit.

Ambrose is regarded as the founder of Western hymnody.
He and his school held possession of the Church's hymnody
throughout Europe for twelve hundred years, attaining their
highest excellence in Veni Creator and Veni Sancte Spiritus.
Perhaps the best known translations of hymns by Ambrose
are " O Jesus, Lord of Light and Grace," " Now that daylight
fills the sky," and " We praise, we worship Thee, O God."
We possess ninety-two examples, and it is supposed twenty-
one may be by Ambrose himself.

The Te Deum is ascribed to Ambrose, but it is probably the
product, by fragments, of the inspiration of ages. As in later
centuries, hymns and their use braved long contests before
winning their way to general usage ; we read of this so late as
the ninth century. It is notable that in these hymns of the
early Christian Church, Eastern and Western alike, there is no
trace of the carnal aspects of Christ's death which so completely
possessed the Church in later centuries to a revolting degree.
They dwell upon the facts and ethical lessons of Christ's life.
Indeed this is also true of early Church literature, its creeds
and liturgies, while in the catacombs we learn that the most
consoling fact was Christ Ascending, and the best loved symbol

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Christ as the Good Shepherd. Think of the gross conceptions
given to children by the Stations of the Cross in the Papal
Church ; these, though possibly good in the rude centuries
of dark ignorance, are surely beneath the respect and dignity
due to the twentieth century.

FORTUNATUS AND GREGORY THE GREAT

There occur two names that link the earlier hymnody with
the medieval, Fortunatus and Gregory the Great. The former
from a gay troubadour warbling his ballads at weddings
and festivities became Bishop of Poitiers ; he cast a dash of
colour upon the sombre Ambrosian style. Among the
illustrious figures of Church history stands Gregory to whom
England owes the mission of Augustine. From Gregory
(d. 604) comes the plainsong which for centuries held the
imagination and the emotions of the Church, and for that reason
Gregorian music is not likely ever to be wholly forgotten.
The Ambrosian singing had been antiphonal, congregational,
natural and melodious. Gregory thought this frivolous,
and invented the plain monotone with slight variation of
notes and no measure of time, and sung by the choir only.
Its cloister-like wail is beloved of the ritualistic school.
Was this change unintentionally the beginning of the great
historic declension from a living religion, issuing in the dark
ages ?

Most authorities ascribe Veni Creator Spiritus to Gregory,
though some still give it to Charlemagne. This hymn " Come,
Holy Ghost, our souls inspire " is the only one in the English
Prayer Book.

Our own venerable Bede (673-735) wrote hymns in Latin —
one of quaint simplicity on the Ascension.

Theodulph of Orleans (d. 821) gives us "All glory, laud
and honour."

The Dies Irce, written by a lonely monk, Thomas of Celano,
about 1250, and Stabat Mater by Jacobus de Benedictis, a
reformer of his day, are the best known medieval hymns.
The former is accounted the most dramatic and sublime, the
latter the most pathetic hymn of the Middle Ages. The
Stabat Mater has been set to music by several musicians of
eminence.

Dr. Neale says the medieval hymnists " all culminate in
the full blaze of glory " in Adam of St. Victor. He is little
known in English versions, as the marvellous beauty of

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thought, expression, style and rhythm are impossible of
adequate translation.

There are two names made sweet to English ears which
bring us over the middle of the twelfth century. Bernard of
Clairvaux — " the holiest monk that ever lived " said Luther
of him — and Bernard of Morlaix or Cluny. From a long
poem Jesus dulcis memoria, we get the three centos, " Jesus
the very thought of Thee," " O Jesus, king most wonderful,"
and " Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts." Paul Gerhardt's
hymn, " O sacred head sore wounded " receives its inspiration
from this monk. From Bernard of Cluny, born of English
parents, come to us, " Jerusalem the Golden," " To thee O
dear, dear country," " Brief life is here our portion." They
are parts of a long poem of some three thousand lines —
singularly, a satire and exposure of the sins of the Church.
The title is " The Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix," the subject
the Advent of Christ to Judgment. I have before me Dr.
Neale's translation of a small portion ; it is delightful to
peruse its treble notes of lyric sweetness. Bernard believed
a special inspiration was granted him in its composition, the
metre being extremely difficult.

From these two monks the Church universal receives a
precious heritage — the most dearly loved hymns of Jesus,
and of Heaven. The reason is — they sing in the open
sunshine of the heart, unshadowed by the dogmatic or
ecclesiastic cast.

THE HERETICS AND REFORMERS ALWAYS THE SINGERS

The term Lollard is supposed to be derived from the German
" lullen," to sing low and softly. Writers assume too con-
fidently that the Lollards were " sweet singers." It is re-
markable and unfortunate that no hymns by Lollards are
known. Their persecution was severe. It is probable they
sang, and if so, assuredly in their mother tongue and likely
in metrical form, for, as we know, the poetic spirit was then
in strong flow.

It is curious that in all ages and nations of the Christian
Church it has been the protester and nonconformist, the
heretic and unruly sect, who have brought to their services
the sweet evangel of hymn and song. This is true alike of the
Syrian, Greek and Latin Churches. Rome has never wel-
comed these, yet they have been her saving salt. She has
always opposed knowledge in living forms coming to the

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people. She distrusted the Word itself in the " moder tongue,"
and so also song. Prior to the Reformation public worship
was performed in Latin. In the main the people were shut
out from intelligent participation ; to them it was spectacular,
something apart and afar off. The ancient hymns I have
named were seldom sung in open worship, and then by priests
and choir only. As early as 1467 John Huss, when forming
his followers into a separate Church, set them singing hymns
of his own in the Bohemian tongue, and these with others
formed the first Christian vernacular hymnal of any western
nation. The " Dark Ages " were also silent ages in song. It
was the Reformation which broke down the silence of genera-
tions, gave speech to the dumb centuries, and song to songless
nations ; that supreme movement of modern history appealed
to the people, they were its fulcrum and its strength. They
must sing their " New Song " and in words they could know
and also learn to love by wedding them to a pleasant lilt
of music. Luther's hammering and thundering were mightily
helped by the lusty voice of hymn singing.

One day from his window hearing a blind beggar sing the
Creed, " Oh," cried the Reformer, " if I could only make Gospel
songs that would of themselves spread among the people."
His vigilant instinct quickly perceived that he must give
the people not only the Bible in the tongue of their hearths,
but also their book of sacred song. He knew its power by
that far-off day when, as a lone and tired student arriving
at Eisenach, he turned minstrel beggar and won the heart
of Ursula Cotta. In schools which he and Melanchthon
afterwards established, one third of the teaching was
devoted to hymns and music.

Luther composed at least twenty-one original hymns and
made many translations of the best Latin hymns and also new
versions from the old German. Into these he infused the
potent throb of his own exultant soul. Wandering students,
pedlars and carriers sang the hymns in town and market, in
village fair and farmstead porch. Such simple words as
"Jesus," "Gospel," "Grace," "Believe and be saved,"
" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," rose everywhere
in sweet strains as watchwords of the new evangel.

Rome learned from her emissaries that " the people is
singing itself into Lutheran doctrine," and when the great
leader marched to the Diet of Worms triumphantly singing
his own famous hymn — that Marseillaise of the Reformation —

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A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon,

the multitude tramped around his waggon in resolute and
joyful chorus.

ENGLISH HYMNOLOGY — METRICAL PSALMODY

For the evolution of the hymn for the English, I must turn
aside for a summary page on the Metrical Psalms.

The apparent force behind the English Reformation was
less spiritual than that in Germany. There was no Luther
and no hymns. Possibly from fear of Romish taint, or from
ignorance or indifference, no Tindale translated the pre-
Reformation hymns I have named. They never indeed
found English dress until the later decades of the nineteenth
century.

Luther strongly desired to augment his hymns by a Psalter ;
he only partially did this by vernacular versions of a few
psalms. Miles Coverdale, the Bible translator, whose prose
translations of the Psalms (based on Tindale) is still that of
the English Book of Common Prayer, was the author of
" Ghoostly Psalms and Spiritual Songs." There were
thirteen of the psalms in metrical form and twenty-six of
the songs, and they were set to " Gregorian tunes and
German Chorales." The book was burned as heretical in 1539.

" The Guide and Godlie Ballates " or " The Dundie Psalms "
were written by the second, and revised by the youngest, of
the three talented brothers Wedderburn. Both Coverdale
and they drank at Luther's fount during exile. There
were twenty-two metrical Psalms with a number of hymns,
and all were set to popular tunes with the avowed aim of
" changing many of the old Popish songs unto God-like
purposes." It was Psalm li. of this verson that sustained the
martyr Wishart in his last hours.

The earliest complete metrical Psalter was the French one
by Clement Marot, the distinguished poet. The version
took his name, though only fifty Psalms were his ; two were
by Calvin and the rest by the Reformer Beza, to whom belongs
a good share of its fame. Marot's portion was published in
1538 ; the Sorbonne sentenced it as heretical, and a second
time he had to flee, and at this juncture turned to Geneva.
After his death Calvin requested Beza to complete the Psalter
and to Calvin's inspiration much of its excellence is due.

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He also sought the aid of the first musicians of Europe and of
his countryman Bourgeois for tunes suited to the sacred
words, and to his exertions we are indebted for many stately
tunes, the " Old Hundredth " being one. It was also the
influence of Calvin which procured the general singing of the
Psalms, not alone in Geneva but in all the Reformed Churches
outside Germany. All this may sound strange, but his views
are strongly and even eloquently set forth in his " Institutio,"
and also in a long and notable preface to the Genevan edition
of the Psalter published in 1543.

This French Psalter became the book of Praise Song for all
French-speaking countries ; it was used alike in castle and
college, at loom and plough, and was even a favourite at Court
supplanting the love songs of gallants. It gave popular
swing to the Reformation. Wrathful ecclesiastics demanded
its suppression, but King Francis refused. Stopped it must
be, and the Sorbonne decreed the song-singing heretics must
have their tongues slit out. The Huguenots printed a tiny
" glove Psalter " two inches long, for easy palm-hiding,
and the singing heretics still multiplied apace. Possibly the
Psalter's success precipitated that blackest of all crimes,
the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Wherever to-day the
French sing a metrical version of the Psalms, Marot's is still
used.

This French Psalter had a marked force in shaping the
" Old Scotch Psalter " of 1565. The " Old English Psalter "
known as " Sternhold and Hopkins' " was a growth from
1548 to 1562. In 1548 there appeared " Certayne Psalms drawn
into English metre by Thomas Sternhold, groome of ye Kynges
Maiesties Roobes." There were nineteen Psalms and the
volume was dedicated to Edward VI. Next year Sternhold
died, and there came forth an edition of forty-four Psalms,
nine being by John Hopkins. The English exiles in Geneva
had a strong hand in its final making, for in 1556 they printed
an edition, and in 1561 another, " enlarged to four-score and
seven Psalms by Thomas Sternhold and others, together
with the Song of Simeon, the Ten Commandments, etc."
The book, when completed in 1563, received royal sanction.
This year and again in 1565 an elaborate edition in four
volumes was published with music in parts, both vocal and
instrumental. It was this completed version which was
adopted by the Established Church, and which became so
venerable. It was also the one in use by the Separatist exiles

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in Amsterdam and Leyden up to 1612, when a version by
Henry Ainsworth, the Teacher of the Amsterdam Church
came into use ; but both were doubtless taken by the Pilgrim
Fathers, and from both the songs of Zion would arise from the
deck of the Mayflower, and upon the black rock of New
Plymouth. The celebrated Bay Psalm book, or New England
version, was published in 1640.

On the accession of Elizabeth, Archbishop Parker had
printed a Psalter, but it had no effect upon Sternhold and
Hopkins' version of which 309 editions were issued for English
use before 1700, when it was slowly giving way to Tate
and Brady's version. With a trifling interference by " Barton
and Patrick's " collection it held on among Nonconformists
until tardily ousted by Watts's Psalms, these for a while being
used only as supplemental.

" THE OLD SCOTTISH PSALTER " — A NATIONAL INSTITUTION

In brief paragraphs I must now follow the fortunes of the
Metrical Psalms in Scotland, for here, as nowhere else, they
took firm grip as a national institution. The earlier version
used by the refugees in Geneva found its way to Scotland,
and small wonder, for John Knox was then the faithful
pastor of the exiled flock there, and in happy friendship
with Calvin and others who became figures in the British
Reformation.

The Genevan Psalter also contained the Genevan Directory
for public worship. Surely there is call here for pause. We
see the mountain spring which becomes the mighty river ;
we are in the presence of the cradle and nursery of a nation.
The little book was destined to come to a great kingdom.
John Knox was back on his native shores in 1559, for his
heroic Reformation campaign, and promptly and strongly
urged the issue of an authoritative statement of Church order.
The Presbyterian " First Book of Discipline " was the result.
The same was done with the Psalter, and, though there were
amplifications in both, the Geneva book was the true mother
of both, and indeed mother of the " Solemn Covenants," and
of centuries of history and destiny. This version was the " Old
Scottish Psalter " whose official life lasted from 1565 to 1650,
and which inspired and sustained a great people through the
most critical and formative generations of their history — a
solace alike in dungeon, exile and martyrdom. From its
pages sprang the marching orders for many a battlefield for

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faith and home. There was substantial similarity to the
English book, with differences only in forty- one instances. It
clung more to the Genevan version and possessed a far wider
range of metres, some being imitations from the French psalter.

This Service Book came to be dear, and ever more dear.
We know the fate of Laud's high-handed attempt to oust it,
although the book he tried to impose upon the Scots contained
a metrical version partly by King James himself. Yet for a
generation a desire had grown for a more up-to-date Psalter ;
this was owing to changes in the vernacular, to the new
translation of the Bible, and I should say, to a growing ideal
for more unity in an unprelatic form of worship among the
Puritans of the three Kingdoms. It was not accomplished,
however, until 1650, and was doubtless expedited by the
acceptance of " The Solemn League and Covenant " by the
English Parliament.

Most singular is the fact that from England should proceed,
not only the authoritative code of doctrine of the Church of
Scotland, as in the " Larger " and " Shorter Catechisms,"
but also its final book of praise — prepared by Francis Rous,
Provost of Eton College, an Englishman and ardent Crom-
wellian. The Commission of the historic Westminster
Assembly of Divines included that of a " Book of Praise."
Rous was a member, and had, before the Assembly's birth,
published a Metrical Psalter.

There were several rivals for supremacy, and after battles
many, Rous's version emerged victor and was taken over by
the Scottish General Assembly. With some additions, revision
and re-revision, it was finally adopted in 1650. Since then the
press has shed countless editions upon the world and to this
day," where'er Scot meets brither Scot " in a British colony
the wide world over, it is their authorised Book of Praise. To
a whole nation it has become dearer than blood. Prior to
1650, Scotland possessed, in the older Psalter, a wider range of
worship song in what were termed " Scriptural Songs " and
" Spiritual Songs," but partly through a supposed " Churchy "
taint, yet probably more from weariness at delay in revision,
these were dropped from the Psalter of 1650. After near a
hundred years there arose a growing longing for the restoration
of this bolder wing in praise, and, resulting from forty years'
efforts, there were added to the Psalter, in 1781, sixty-seven
paraphrases and five hymns. They are all virtually hymns,
though preserving a distinctive relation to the Bible as to

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suggestion or incident. A third are from Watts. The reten-
tion of the old nomenclature probably helped the stem old
Covenanters to quiet their souls at the innovation.

Since then many have been the conferences for revision,
and all fruitless ; Sir Walter Scott was an unswerving and
doughty opponent. One wonders if the Mother Church will
ever call together her widely scattered children, tenderly to
revise the hallowed book to modern style. Perhaps there is
not now the same need, for in 1891 a great effort began to
secure one hymnal for all Churches — mother and offspring — of
the Presbyterian faith and order, of the whole united King-
dom and also of the Colonies ; and, once so backward in song,
this historic Church has now nobly come into line. " The
Church Hymnary " was issued for the new century, Sir John
Stainer being the musical editor, and himself composing
fifteen new tunes for the volume, while thirty- one others were
specially written for the collection. Of course the old version
of the Psalms is still kept in use.

As to Wales, several patriots tried their hands at metricising
the Psalms, but not until 1621 was any vernacular version
printed, when Edmund Prys published his own.

MILTON'S FAILURE

I should add that Milton joined the number of rival version
makers, and in 1648 " turned nine Psalms," and in 1653
" did into verse" eight more. He must have left the task
from sheer weariness of the business. He could only have
assumed it from some sense of religious duty in an age ob-
sessed by version making. The pity of it, that he, the king of
religious poetry, is saved from obscurity in worship song by
one hymn only — " Let us with a gladsome mind," written
when he was a boy of fifteen. The lad cuts himself adrift
from mere verbal exactness, and the twenty-four verses swing
along with a lyric march quite absent from any other. It is a
hymn pure and simple, with Psalm cxiv. for its theme. " The
Lord shall come and not be slow " has fine thought but not the
same lyric step. Perhaps in that degree in which a man is a
true poet is he unfitted to metricise the Psalms, for is not the
excellence of this in the fidelity and skill of mere verbal
transposition ? Milton knew this, and plumed himself on
its observance. There must be the clipped wing, the forced,
limping accent, the commonplace pat of rhyme. Besides,
the soul of Hebrew poetry lies not in syllabic accent or rhyme,

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but in the rhythmical balance and march of its sections of
thought. Is not the thing a compromise which misses the
best qualities of both sides ? To an Englishman, who for
fifty years has chanted the Davidic lyrics in the noble English
prose version, and who chances to hear the paraphrase, all
this comes home strongly. But hallowed associations, like
distance, lend enchantment ; and it is well so for the feeling is
one of the founts of reverence. We must remember that it is
easier to sing the songs in metre form, than to chant them in
prose, and also, that musical education has been a matter of
slow growth and evolution. I well remember over fifty years
ago in a large town chapel a battle royal by brave chanters
who won.

When writing the stoiy of Milton I was beset by two regrets
— that he did not immortalise the Pilgrim Fathers in a poem,
or at least a sonnet, and that instead of wasting his time in
the impossible task of training David, the king of lyrics, to
the bridle of English rhyme and metre, he did not lend his
" God- gifted organ voice " to original hymnody. I hazard the
opinion that no man has ever lived during the Christian
centuries, so capable of enriching the Church with a heritage
of noble worship song. We see this promise in his " Hymn to
the Nativity," written when twenty-one ; there are verses
with the hymnic glow, and of wondrous beauty and imagin-
ative power. Surely, some selection, not unsuited, might be
set to music.

Remembering the noble English poetry existing at Milton's
death, it is indeed strange that there were so few English
singable hymns. The explanation is that the conception of the
hymn, pure and simple, had barely entered the English mind.
In a very real sense Watts was the founder of British hymnody,
and besides, as we shall see, was victor over a bitter prejudice.
In these facts lies half his renown.

This excursion into the realm of metrical psalmody was
required if the reader were to have a connected and intelligent
survey of this story of Watts. His masterful hymnic genius
supplied the evolutionary link between the age of metrical
psalms and that of pure hymns, for his " Psalms" possessed
the nature of both. He transfused the sacred lyrics of noble
Hebrew imagery and lofty emotions with the more gracious
spirit of the New Testament teaching and ideals. " He
Christianised the Psalms." By his interpretation they become
infused with the Messianic vision and spirit. Says he, " they

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ought to be translated in such a manner as we have reason to
believe David would have composed them if he had lived in our
day." Again, " What need is there that I should wrap up the
shining honours of my Redeemer in the dark and shadowy
language of a religion that is now for ever abolished." In
further words of devoted modesty he records his exalted ideal
and insight into the greatness of his task.

" WATTS'S WHIMS " — THE BATTLE OF THE HYMN

The reader may be astonished to learn that the hymn,
— the ministering angel of our day — had, at birth, and well on
to stripling years, many a fight for dear life. Although, as
previously noted, Calvin was so insistent upon music in
worship, unlike Luther he confined it to metrical versions of
the Psalms, or words of Scripture. The English and Scotch
followers who adopted his system of doctrine did the same,
and grew averse to the introduction of hymns, thinking them
a departure from the inspired word, and a dangerous innovation
of mere human composition upon the province and absolute
aloneness of the Bible, which was taken as inspired, every
word and dot.

There was also the dread of lurking doctrinal error, of other
growths of human forms and traditions, and of a seeming
conformity to the lax system of the established or prelatic
Church. Nor must we overlook the remarkable growth
and strength of Quakerism with its songless example. The
battle of the hymns raged high, strong and long, and Churches
were rent in twain. The sneer passed of" Watts's Whims."
There were " great searchings of heart " whether the " ' New
Covenant ' permitted, with tunable and conjoined voices of all
the people together, as a Church ordinance, any song or hymn
that was so composed to be sung in rhyme by a prelimited and
set form of words." The quotation reveals the soul of the
objection — a human " set form of words " as " a Church
ordinance." The prejudice existed so strongly among the
Baptists that in one Church — the original of that to which
Mr. Spurgeon ministered — a majority having decided to
introduce even metrical Psalmody only, " a minority took
refuge in a songless sanctuary." Still, the age was not
hymnless, the eminent Baxter went strong for the hymn ; he
even composed a few, and helped in making collections.
There were writers and collectors, such as George Withers.
There was Ken, who wrote his immortal " Glory to Thee," and

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Addison with his " When all Thy mercies." Barton's
Collection, and Mason and Shepherd's were published during
the latter half or near the close of the seventeenth century.
There is much obscurity as to the extent of their use — it was
certainly small, either by Conformists or Nonconformists ;
they did not catch the popular ear.

It was under these untoward conditions that in July, 1707,
a little volume, by name, " Hymns and Spiritual Songs,"
modestly ushered itself upon the world, followed two years
later by " Psalms and Hymns." These two volumes, with
their later completed editions, were born to a great destiny.
They were the creators of a revolution in English worship song.
The revolution was won as by a two-edged sword. Besides
his hymns proper, Watts, as the reader knows, transformed
the Davidic lyrics into pure gospel hymns ; a great and daring
feat, especially in the face of frowns from such great con-
temporaries as Romaine and Adam Clark. As editions of
Watts's hymns came forth, " songless sanctuaries " departed.
The " seal " of music was opened, and England " sung a new
song." Later, Charles Wesley took up the strain in joyous
lyric splendour, adding wings to his brother's evangel and,
in time, town and village the island over rang with sweet and
gladsome gospel melody.

Dr. Watts disclaimed to be of the peerage of the poet.
Appealed to by The Gentleman's Magazine for a poetical
judgment, he says, " Though I have sported with rhyme
and have published some composures to assist the worship of
God, yet I never set myself as a poet of the age." In 1705
he had issued his " Sacred Lyrics." The book was well
received as poetry but only few pieces possessed the full
hymnic quality. He was a scholar and knew the great
masters, and his modesty sprang from his lofty ideal of the
poet. Yet a poet he was of the true line, for he sang because
he could not help. His stately elegy on William III., at the
king's death is in the grand style of the day, and was regarded
as among the finest in the language.

The intention of this Story is to offer the reader, in
broadest lines and tints, a sketch of the history of hymnody.
How crude the picture is I regretfully realise at every
page, yet it is more useful to the reader that I take this
course rather than exhaust the rigid limits of my pages in a
sort of examination of an array of hymns and authors,
proving this or that excellence or superiority. I must

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move along with but cursory comment, and mainly upon
general characteristics.

A MAJESTIC " RIVER OF THE WATER OF LIFE "

Our English hymnody is now surely the noblest in the
world. It is as a majestic " River of the Water of Life," on
" either side the ' Tree of Life ' ' yielding its fruit ' for the
healing of the nations." Its early and main flow was formed
by the confluence of two, or perhaps three contributaries,
those of Watts, of the Wesleys, and of the Olney Hymns.
There is a crystal streamlet we must gratefully note — that of
Dr. Philip Doddridge. How vastly poorer Christian experi-
ence would have been without " Hark ! the glad sound, the
Saviour comes," " Ye servants of the Lord," " Grace, 'tis
a charming sound," or, " O God of Bethel, by whose hand,"
the consolation of Livingstone through his lonely wanderings.
Doddridge' s hymns never went beyond manuscript during his
lifetime. A dear friend of Watts, and of his school, he also com-
bines, in degree, the spirit and lyric liberty of Charles Wesley.
I can but name a few others. John Byron, 1691-1763, was
author of our rousing sacred Christmas carol, " Christians,
awake, salute the happy morn." Quite wonderful is the origin
of " Jesus and can it ever be," written by Joseph Gregg at the
age of ten. We owe to him also " Behold a stranger at the
door." John Cennick (1717-1755), a true hymnist, gives us
" Children of the Heavenly King," " Jesus, my all to heaven is
gone," " Ere I sleep," and, with Charles Wesley, " Lo, He
comes with clouds descending," and others. Toplady
(1740-1778) wrote over a hundred hymns ; " Rock of Ages "
alone will survive, but what a glorious legacy ! A world-
wide favourite, it is also among the literary mysteries of
hymnology. The worshipper may be conscious of its medley
of imagery and broken unity, yet as he feels his soul swayed
by its solemn majesty and pathos, the overwhelming help-
lessness of the sinner, the abounding and sheltering grace of
the Cross, what cares he for mere literary form. Thomas
Oliver's memory is kept green by one noble ode, " The God
of Abraham praise." He was a converted shoemaker,
awakened under a sermon by Whitefield, and became a
faithful and notable evangelist of John Wesley.

These, with many others, we may class as echoes or refrains
of the great masters, Dr. Watts and Charles Wesley.

I should name Edward Perronet (1726-92). Long will be

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the day before we cease to love " All hail the power of Jesus'
name," to the tunes of " Diadem " and " Miles Lane." We
must now proceed to the masters.

Possibly the thoughtful reader of these Stories may glean
a larger impression of the growth of English hymnology than
from the usual manual, for he will discern the inward and
deeper historic forces which made the hymn-makers. He
will consider also the vast differences of individual conditions
as between Watts and the Wesleys. Watts was twenty- nine
when John Wesley was born, Charles being five years younger
still ; but, as the reader knows, in the personal experience of
Watts and in the general historical consciousness and out-
look the difference was as an age. Think also of their contrast
of atmosphere in college life, of the evangelic certitudes ol
Watts, of the High Churchism of the Wesleys, of the early
call of the one, and the long search for peace of the others.
Think of the Calvinistic world of awful problem and burden
which confronted Watts, its heights and depths, of his
scholarly, cultured, sylvan environments and cloister-like
contemplative life, his frail body and broken health — contrast
these with the restless Wesleys, and with their larger and more
gracious doctrinal hope. Remember also their association
with William Law the mystic, with the Moravians, and their
life of strenuous activities, moving and living amid the
wonderful incident and inspiring power of a revival among the
greatest in religious history. Watts' s hymns possessed their
own character. They grew from the religious history and
the needs of the Independents and Puritan Nonconformists,
whose spiritual life must be fed in song by their doctrinal
beliefs. These psalms and hymns saved Nonconformity
from a drugged trance of Arianism and frigid formalism, and
preserved an evangelic Dissent to be the guardian of English
liberty.

Watts was in an eminent degree the poet of the Atonement.
His hymns served their day and a glorious day it was. The
vast bulk are not for us any more than are the scars of the
Conventicle Act, the Five- mile Acts, or a legalised slave-trade.
They move in an atmosphere of an arbitrary, far-away and
awful God. It is surely unhistoric and unphilosophic to
judge them from our standard either in their compass of
thought or hymnic literature and form. This applies also to
Charles Wesley's hymns. Yet both he and Watts were high
prophets of God sent in due time.

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THE DECLINE AND DEATH OF FAVOURITES

In the degree in which a hymn is possessed by credal
tinctures, it must pass with its creed. It can only live by the
sweet and staying verities of our common faith with high
literary quality and hymnic tone. So it is that old favourites
drop from us. There are 515 psalms and hymns in the old
Watts's hymn-book as numbered, but really 717 full hymns, for
while Psalm cxix. is counted as one, there are eighteen
separate divisions. Other Psalms are treated similarly, so that
Watts's "' Psalms of David," while numbered as 150, count to
341. The remaining 365 " Hymns and Spiritual Songs" in
three books make 376. Watts composed in very few metres ;
he had no conception of our present large variety.

Among the Independents and largely also among the
Calvinistic sects of England and of America also, his hymns
held exclusive and undisputed sway for over a hundred
years, and with a ministry always scholarly. It is said that
this fact is unparalleled in history. Watts's hymns became
invested with a reverence approaching to superstition. This
position was slowly invaded by supplements ; the first I know
is before me, Roby's of Manchester, dated 1797. In 1836,
the first official " Congregational Hymn Book " was issued.
It contained 620 hymns, not as supplanting, but as supple-
mentary to, Watts. This collection, edited by Josiah Conder,
was of great excellence and with the advent of pure Psalm-
chanting inaugurated a new era of hymnody. In 1859 tne
" New Congregational Hymn Book " came forth, a supple-
ment following in 1874. In this book of 1,000 hymns, 393
were by Watts, but only 57 are retained in the present
" Congregational Hymnal " of 757 hymns. During the next
fifty years half the fifty-seven may be slowly dropped, the
rest remaining among the immortals.

The Baptist Trust issued in 1856 the " Enlarged New
Selection " of 963 hymns, which retained 263 by Watts.
" The Baptist Church Hymnal," issued in 1900 — the one
official hymnal — retains 55 by Watts.

HIS QUALITIES AND PLACE

Watts is difficult to appraise. It is surprising he should
be sometimes so careless in structure. Occasionally a hymn
of much sonorous beauty and power is spoiled by a verse, or
worse still, by lines quite commonplace. This is just the

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sort of thing we find in the metrical Psalms of his day. Was
it that he failed to escape wholly from their influence ? Many
of his hymns were composed while in his early twenties and
much as recreation from severe study. The}'' were hardly
regarded by him as more than incidental to the work of his
life. His brother and friends had difficulty in persuading him
to publish them.

While hymns may not be strongly didactic, they may —
or must — reflect the spirit and colour and emphasis of the
author's spiritual life with its doctrinal lights and shadows.
Who but a Calvinist could have written " Before Jehovah's
awful throne," and " Our God, our help in ages past." It is
the Calvinistic temper which colours the muse of Watts, and
which chiefly distinguishes him from Charles Wesley. The
emphasis is on the awful attributes of God rather than on His
love. We hear the cry of the penitent soul to the hidden will
of a Sovereign Deity, and helpless in haunting dread, in its
hope and fear based upon a conditioned love. Yet the note
of shadowed longing, of soul- agony in Watts appeals to a
deep instinct of the heart. From the same source, during
seasons of illuminating faith and joy, spring the rapturous
strains of seraphic adoration and thanksgiving which are so
distinctive a feature of Watts's hymns. It is a shallow
experience, as a rule, that never knows a doubt or fear.
I can well remember the dropping tear of an aged saint as
he hummed the plaintive quest :

Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought.

And what hallowed remembrances of those honoured and
loved crowd on the heart, as one recalls the quavering notes
of:

When I can read my title clear

To mansions in the skies ;
I'll bid farewell to every fear

And wipe my weeping eyes.

or,

O could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,

or,

O may I hear Thy heavenly tongue
But whisper ' Thou art mine."

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Watts loved to dwell on the veiled wonder, on the remote
grandeur, of the Godhead. Sometimes there arise bursts of
Miltonic strength, visions of white- throned radiance, and
soaring rapture of the immortal glories of the elect.

Mr. Conder, himself no mean writer of hymns, in his preface
to the supplement to Watts, of 1836, records his surprise at
the then poverty of hymns on the Divine Perfections. Says
he, " The truth is that for psalms and hymns of direct ador-
ation and thanksgiving, the Christian Church is more indebted
to Dr. Watts than to any other individual, not to say, than to
all others." He further declares, " As the poet of the sanctu-
ary, Watts still stands almost alone." For hymns of an
experimental cast Conder had to turn to Charles Wesley,
Cowper and others, for missionary hymns to Montgomery and
others.

It is remarkable that Watts, a bachelor, should be the first
hymn-writer for children. Up to his time they were treated
in the worship of the Church as negligible items. During
his years with the Hartopp family, he learned the child-secret,
and to divine that sweetest and noblest blessing that ever fell
on mortal ears, " Suffer the little children, etc." Watts
perceived the mystery and beauty of this saying as no writer
had ever done. Millions of copies were sold of Watts's
" Divine and Moral Songs." What Sunday school but sang :

" I sing the almighty power of God,"

"Whene'er I take my walks abroad ; "

"There is beyond the sky"

" How doth the little busy bee,"

" This is the day when Christ arose,"

" Lord how delightful 'tis to see,"

" 'Tis the voice of the sluggard,"

and many others.
What mother did not rock her babe to the lullaby of

Hush my babe lie still and slumber,
Holy angels guard thy head.

It was inevitable that here and there should come an ugly
verse or line of dogma which we now drop. In the lump they
were grandly wholesome. It is impossible for this age to
realise their ministry of incalculable good in the moral educa-
tion of generations of the young. They were the nursery
treasures alike in castle and cottage, the spiritual nurture to

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budding childhood, the monitor and guide to growing youth,
and became precious to the memory of unnumbered souls.

THE PRINCE OF LYRICAL HYMNODY

In company with Charles Wesley we move in another
world from that of the invalid and secluded scholar ; a world
of stirring action and often of noisy clamour. Around his
hymns gather a wealth of thrilling incident, story and romance.
Brother in the flesh, and brother also in the spirit and work of
the apostle of the great revival, some reference to his life will
appear in the story of Wesley. Born in December, 1708,
Charles was thirty before, says he, "I received the first grain
of faith." He died in March, 1788, thus giving fifty years'
faithful service to his Lord. He is said to have composed
7,000 or more hymns — being an average of nearly three a
week. He had learnt a system of shorthand and would
stop his horse by the roadside and, upon cards carried for the
purpose, dash down his inspirations on the instant ; or often
the steed would graze while he composed, seated upon hedge
or stile.

As distinguished from Watts's hymns, there is in Charles
Wesley's less of aspiring objectiveness, less of the ineffable
and timeless, and we tread the way of the multitude in its
plane of lowly human experience. There is a louder trumpet
call upon the seared and slumbering conscience, and the
crooked will, and upon the lost sinner, for active effort in his
own salvation. It is interesting to note that in the hymn
book section entitled " Seeking full Redemption," in the
wrangle of the day termed " Perfectibility," there are so many
as eighty hymns. Charles's glowing song is the offspring of
a living experience. Born in the spirit of the proclaiming,
arresting, and convicting word, fired by the flaming tongue
of regenerative and conquering power, and by the glad tidings
of pardon, of peace, joy, sainthood, and heaven, with princely
bounty his hymns dispense succour for the soul in travail,
direction to the pilgrim believer during temptation and
conflict, teaching for obtaining liberty from the flesh, with
all cleansing power, inspiration for service, and the gift of
joyous assurance and possession as the high privilege of
the " sons of God." He plays upon the full keyboard of the
heart and is the prince of lyrical hymnody.

He had caught the divine breath from the Moravians and
often his muse is suffused by their mystic fragrance which

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adds to its tender and searching power. While the wrath
to come is not forgotten the emphasis is on love — " O Love
Divine, how sweet Thou art."

He composed in far greater variety of metre than was known
to Watts, and his hymns are said to exhibit a greater average
excellence. It is probable that a similar number of each will
live as a beloved heritage in the worship-song of the future.

If Charles composed 7,000 to 8,000 hymns he was a far
greater offender than Watts. This indulgence in facile com-
position could only engender a habit at once uncritical and
unfortunate. We may wish that instead of the thousands
we had the qualities of the whole compressed in fifties or
twenties. But he sang for the needs of the hour ; he was the
child of his day, and by his song was also the nursing mother
of the great spiritual upheaval. We may not judge.

Watts and Wesley could not, of course, have our present day
high ideal of the hymn, a whole — every line of it — of inspired,
impressive nobleness and beauty. The English Bible, with
Shakespeare and Milton, possesses the regal power of ennob-
ling common speech within the peerage of the classics, but not
to \Vatts or Wesley belongs this gift. In a burst of magna-
nimity, unjust to himself, Watts declared that Charles
Wesley's hymn on Jacob wrestling was worth all that he,
Watts, had ever written. With this in mind it is pleasant to
remember that the dying words of John Wesley were those of
Watts's hymn, " I'll praise my Maker with my breath."

Before 1780 the Wesley s had issued some fifty
collections of hymns, probably mostly hymn- tracts. The
chief of these was the issue of 1753 which contained 120
hymns, setting forth the elemental doctrinal themes of the
preachers. It was inscribed " for the use of real Christians
of all denominations."

In the final hymn book issued by John Wesley in 1780 there
were 539 Irymns, not quite all by Charles. Some were by
John Wesley himself, a few were by Watts, and there were
also translations by Wesley from the German and Moravian
hymns, with their sweet and tearful pathos. Owing to this,
the hymnal was never like that of \Vatts amongst the Inde-
pendents, the exclusive work of one man, and in this particular
was the superior hymnal.

With the addition of forty hymns this remained the hymnal
of Wesley ans until 1830.

In the Wesleyan hymn book issued in 1830, and in use

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until quite recently, there were 769 hymns ; 623 were by
C. Wesley, and Watts actually supplied 66. In 1876 by
further supplement of the modern spirit the number was
increased to 1026. " The Methodist Hymn Book " — the new
one just issued — contains 981 hymns, with ten ancient hymns
— the Te Deum, etc. ; 430 are by Charles Wesley, and the fact
that less than a third of his hymns are dropped after a use of
123 to 160 years (the first hymns were published in 1737)
proves their hold on the Wesleyan Church. But the first
step in rejection has been taken ; the next will come with
comparative rapidity. The boldest and most profound in-
novation lies in the fact that it is one book and not the dual
thing of Book and Supplement. True, it seeks to preserve
a continuity of evangelic spirit and divisional method, but the
old Wesley personality is gone for ever. The book is the
product of a new age and breathes a new spirit. Obviously
a new Tune Book was required, and Sir F. Bridge, as editor,
has doubtless impressed the volume with the best traditions
of Church music. The vast change must have brought a
very crown of sorrow to many a venerable Wesleyan saint.
Ah, well, although the old book his father handled must be
brought from chapel as now useless ; by the fireside he may
still turn to the familiar numbers, sure of the loved favourites ;
and in the " Better Land " he, with countless multitudes of
the Redeemed, shall keep its memory sweet and ever green.

THE OLNEY HYMNS

John Newton was " once an infidel and libertine " — so
he declares in his own epitaph. He was fond of a seafaring
life, but, deserting his ship, was put in irons and publicly
whipped. Later he traded in slaves. Homeward bound in
1748, to pass the tedium, he takes up Thomas a Kempis and
the thought hits like a shot : " What if these things be true ? "
That same night a terrible storm arises ; shipwreck and doom
stare him in the face. After exhausting work at the pumps,
he takes his turn at the helm. During these awful hours his
whole life of scoffing sin rolls before him with panoramic
vividness. The ship is saved and the sinner too. He begins
to preach in 1758. All through life somewhat of a student,
he was ordained by the Bishop of London, and in 1764, at
thirty-nine, became the minister of Olney. A man of
intense conviction of sin, a brand plucked from the burning,
he was ultra-Calvinistic in view, yet his hymns are favourites

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with all sections of Christians — they spring from the deeps.
He died in 1807, aSed eighty- two.

Of the " Olney Collection," Newton wrote 280 and Cowper
some sixty- eight hymns.

Christians will never cease to love " How sweet the name
of Jesus sounds," " Quiet, Lord, my froward heart," " Glorious
things of thee are spoken." " While with ceaseless course the
sun " is a hymn of much solemnity ; " While troubles assail "
was commonly sung in my youth.

William Cowper, that gentle and clouded spirit, formed, at
Huntingdon, a close friendship with a Mr. and Mrs. Unwin.
At the death of Mr. Unwin, Cowper with the widow, at the
invitation of Newton, removed to Olney. Here Cowper,
Newton, Rev. William Bull, the Independent minister, and
Mrs. Unwin made a circle of affectionate friendship and de-
lightful Christian communion, among the most fragrant in
literature. They held regular meetings for spiritual edifica-
tion, and it has been said, " Of all the men I ever heard pray
none equalled Mr. Cowper " ; one may well believe it. I need
not refer to the sad lapses of his reason nor to his poetry,
which, Macaulay says, " was the forerunner of the great
restoration of our literature." As in his poems, so in his
hymns, the chief charm lies in their intense and living
earnestness.

Cowper co-operated with Newton in the " Olney Collection."
Often the hymns were written for their meetings, and the
Collection was partly intended as a memorial of a happy and
consecrated friendship. Like Newton's, Cowper's hymns
also issued from the depths. Neither Watts nor Charles
Wesley could ever have known their night of agony. We
hear its echo in such strains as " Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,"
" God moves in a mysterious way" ; " O, for a closer walk
with God ; " " Far from the world, O Lord, I flee ; " " Ere
God had built the mountains " ; " Jesus, where'er thy people
meet." The soul of these is felt in their first lines.

In the Olney hymns it is remarkable how a narrow theology
is softened, widened and overborne by a tender strength of
the saving and gracious realities. Though a larger proportion
of them won general favour than did those of Watts or Wesley,
yet no organised body of churches made them their own as
in the case of Watts and Wesley. The Established Church,
of which both Newton and Cowper were members, was too
steeped in a stipended sloth. In doctrinal sympathy with

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the Watts book, could they have been added to it ? Perhaps
an idle thought, but, if so, what a reviving and gracious
wealth had been earlier shed on the Independent Churches.
Cowper died of dropsy in April, 1800, aged sixty-nine. His
name adorns hymnody. For whatever reason, it is a regret
that the great names of English literature and poetry figure
in so small a degree in its hymnology.

Oh ! how mean and dull I feel my pages to be on these
hallowed songs of church and home. Only in the " Book of
Life " can it be recorded what countless souls have been
awakened from ways of sin to righteousness through their
ministry, how upheld and comforted through hardship, sorrow
and tears, the toil and moil of their earthly pilgrimage, and
in peace and triumph have passed through the dark valley
on to their home of heavenly rest.

EARLY MEMORIES

There flits across my childhood's remembrances the figure
of an aged Methodist saint — a Lancashire mill worker in the
era of long hours, yet a self-educated and able lay preacher.
A relative of mine used to tell the story that once in the
earlier years of the last century, calling upon him, she found
the family without a crust of bread, yet singing " How happy
is the pilgrim's lot." She had never forgotten the sweet
content which beamed over his face as he sang the lines

No foot of land do I possess,
No cottage in this wilderness,
A poor wayfaring man.

I record the incident as but the type of thousands. The
hymns served other good uses. My aunt — a saintly mother
in Israel to a struggling Primitive Methodist cause — received
her offer of marriage in the well-known words —

O, that I could for ever sit
With Mary at the Master's feet,
Be this my happy choice.

For answer the lover was referred to the second half of the
verse —

My only care, delight and bliss,
My joy, my heaven, on earth be this,
To hear the Bridegroom's voice.

Mary was her name and the union was truly happy. That
is a peep into the ways of many Methodist folk in the early

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twenties of the last century ; a similar spirit was prevalent
among Independents and Baptists.

Little wonder if the reverence clinging to these hymns dies
hard, yet the best good of the Churches demands that they
must stand or fall on merit and fitness for the twentieth
century. The goal of one generation must not be the block
of another. The aim and scope of this Story more properly
ends with the Wesley era, and my space is exhausted ; yet
nineteenth century hymnology (I am bold to say it) is hardly
less interesting and important than that of the whole previous
centuries of the Christian era. A startling statement indeed
and the reader may well doubt.

Let him examine Dr. Julian's monumental compilation or
any up-to-date hymnology. The twentieth century opened
with a list of 1400 English hymnists ; only 197 of these
lived before 1710. To save time and patience, the reader
had better turn to W. Garrett Herder's " Hymn Lover."
This is not a mere catalogue or bald commentary, or string of
biographical epitomes, but a scholarly history and stud}',
and without a dull page. It is discriminating and illuminative,
full, yet succinct, and its contents are set forth in helpful
sectional chapters. The volume has been of good service to
me. I must here also acknowledge my debt to Paxton Hood's
lovable life of Dr. Watts ; it is far the best.

A NEW LINE OF HYMNISTS — A NEW BEAUTY OF
CHURCH- SONG

Following the great revival came an aroused England — a
stirring in the valley of dry bones, bringing an enrichment of
hymnody from many and varied sources. There was the
great missionary awakening, with its glowing visions of
Pentecostal command and splendour of hope ; the still
flowing tide of itinerant preaching and evangelical fervour ;
the rise of Sunday Schools ; the Oxford movement of vast
portent ; the influence of the Broad Church, and later that
of the Keswick School.

Nor should we overlook the Moody and Sankey and other
similar revivals, for these pushed off the music hall inanities,
and filled the streets with haunting refrains, and their effect
was broadly to aid a wider liberty of worship-song. Thin ?
Aye, too often both words and music, but they touched the
common heart and still do. and have their place. Our musical
life cannot wholly be fed on anthems and oratorios ; and the

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

prayer meeting and the Sunday school may require a more
homely strain than the church.

But the greatest force of all, which moulded all others, was
the slackening of the dogmatic temper, and a wider scholar-
ship, the uprise of a purer vision of God, and the re- discovery
of His Son Jesus Christ. I say nothing of science, of the vast
revolution affecting the whole orbit of Christian thought and
conception.

These, with others, were the generative forces, creating a
new line of hymnists for both root and flower — a new soul
and beauty of church song, making for a larger, softer, sweeter
and more gracious hymnody and upon a more human plane of
truth, tenderness and love ; finding also a more cultured
expression, less fleshly, harsh, sharp and unpoetic, more veiled
by figure and symbol and more finely spiritual in appeal.
This in the general ; but it must be owned that Watts and
Wesley occasionally rose to a level never exceeded. One
conspicuous instance is Watts's hymn, " When I survey the
wondrous Cross," the third verse reads :

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down ;

Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown ?

I know no one verse of more intense, searching pathos and
spiritual beauty in all hymnody. One always feels it cries for
a tune of deeper pathos than " Rockingham."

As I see our old chapels, every stone of them dear, yet often
mere ugly sheds of shelter, give place to temples of crocketted
spires, of patterned tracery and beauty, it all seems as a
parable of the changed spirit of their song.

The Free Churches were joyful hymn-singers for long,
long years before the Established Church took up the practice
with heartiness. She had hymn-books, but none generally
acceptable. In 1858 a score or more of clergymen met
determined on a remedy, and the issue of " Hymns Ancient
and Modern " was the result. The sale has been vast. It
may now well give place to one far away better, for the Church
of England has now nobly redeemed her former barrenness in
English hymnody, and very many of the sweetest and best
loved hymns, now sung by all sections of the Church universal,
are from the pens of her children.

From the German we receive a sprinkling of hymns with a
strain of mystic power quite their own. From our kinsmen,

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the descendants of the Pilgrims of Liberty, a welcome heritage
comes which might be larger. How we should miss Ray
Palmer's " My faith looks up to Thee ; " Pierpoint's " O
Thou to whom in ancient times ; " Whittier's " Dear Lord
and Father of mankind," and others by Bryant, Emerson,
Beecher, Hedge, etc. American poets of first rank often
consecrate their genius by w?riting hymns. There is some-
thing in the social air of England which stifles this. What is it ?
What a mockery our hymnals make of religious bitterness !
What scorn and ridicule they pour upon exclusive claims !
Monks shoulder with Lutherans, cardinals with heretics,
Puritan Separatist with State Church Prelatist, Arminian links
with Calvinist, Evangelical with Ritualist, Unitarian with
strictest Presbyterian. All meet in peace and join in one
noble anthem of full organed splendour to the same God and
Saviour. For many years a dream has possessed me, that
as there is one Bible for the Protestant English race, there
should be one hymnal, which like the Bible should become
loved as a manual for private devotion as for public praise.
I know the dream will long remain a dream, but why should
not the Free Churches make it a reality for themselves ? It
is the one way of securing closer vital union and the sense of
spiritual brotherhood, without any sacrifice of healthy varieties
of Church order.

WHAT ABOUT TUNES ?

"You've told us about hymns, what about tunes ? "
says the reader. That is another story, but not mine. A
good tune has perhaps a more subtle tenacity of life than a
hymn, and the affinity, sympathy and helpfulness between
certain words and their music is a mystery of union which can
be compared only to that of marriage. No native sacred
tunes are known prior to the sixteenth century. Of ancient
English music we may possess more than we know, lost yet
found through the mist of ages, by adaptations and
arrangements. We are, however, not sure of any such
tunes before the sixteenth century.

We saw the power and use of the chorale in Luther's hands,
and how some of these German chorales were brought to
England by Coverdale and other refugees during Mary's
reign. When in 1549 Sternhold and Hopkins' Metrical
Psalms saw the light, somehow tunes arose for them. The
English and Scottish exiles carried these tunes to Geneva
with the Psalms ; and it was well, for they were in Double

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Common Metre, one not known in Geneva or by the Huguenots.
John Knox, with a committee, drew up their Genevan form of
service, and attached both Psalms and tunes. This was
published in 1556, and again two years later, and is known as
the Anglo-Genevan Psalter. It contained sixty-two Psalms,
with forty tunes, also the Ten Commandments and the Song
of Simeon, versified with their separate melodies. This book
is said to be the rock-spring of English psalmody, the tunes
being in regular use in English worship for over two hundred
years. No doubt it was influenced by the Huguenots, who
had their own Psalter, and later the Puritans infused a larger
German and French strain into English additions ; it was
further influenced by Tallis and other Elizabethan musicians.

Calvin objected to harmonised forms and also insisted
on the one-syllable-one-word principle, and all English Church
singing was probably in unison ; though harmonised music,
both singing and instrumental, was common as a pastime.
Some fair advance was made in the early seventeenth century,
after which the sword and revolution, rather than the pipe
and staves, absorbed the nation's energies.

With the advent of Tate and Brady's version, new tunes
arose of more suited feeling and dignity. Watts's psalms
and hymns do not seem to have greatly inspired the musicians
of the period, probably because they were out of touch with
them, being chiefly organists of the State Church, then both
blind and deaf to the things of the Spirit

The Independents established lectureships and teachers of
psalmody to go round to the meeting-houses, and many stray
tunes came into life. When Charles Wesley poured forth
his glowing song it was much a case of do or die. John WTesley
was no recluse like Watts, but a leader of insight and active
purpose. His evangel demanded that to his brother's words
must be given wings of music. Melodies and harmonies must
be created, collected, selected, and put into handy authorised
tune books, and to John Wesley we owe the strongest force
communicated to the swelling tide of English hymn music.
His Moravian friends sang nothing but German chorales and
of these he added a fair strain.

Handel composed tunes to three of Charles Wesley's
hymns, " O Love Divine," " Rejoice, the Lord is King," and
" Sinners, obey the gospel word."

So early as 1742 Wesley issued his first tune book, and
throughout nis life a stream of new editions followed.

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The great Wesley and Whitefield revival slowly affected
the whole of English life, but especially and quickly the
Nonconforming sections.

The village chapel, the back street meeting-house of the
town became centres of a new life — what great preachings
and happy singings ! what glory of fiddle, bass viol, clarionet
and bassoon reached to the very heavens. Quite a good list of
tunes, the joy of our fathers, are the offspring of these times of
sacred enthusiasm in the hearts of humble workers at the hand-
loom, the last, and bench. A new tune was an event to be
"pricked" and " repricked " for nights of prodigious sol-fa-ing
practice ; for was not next High Sermon Sunday in a month ?

An important musical milestone was set up in 1805, when
Dr. Miller published a second important collection of tunes
with the title of " Dr. Watts' Psalms set to New Music."
This formed the basis of tunes for the next forty years. Many
of the old tunes are worth preserving, yet we could not now
relish them as our staple fare. Still, who does not love a
Sunday among these rolling fugal favourites ? And how our
grandfolk that day issue forth on crutch and stick to join their
thin and broken notes, or may be only to listen and shed
tears. But the old Hallelujah era began to fade with the
advent of new hymn books with music, following the
publication of Novello's series of " The Psalter," 1833-1845.
Dr. Binney, at the King's Weigh House Chapel, Dr. Allon at
Union Chapel, Islington, with Dr. Gauntlett as musical adviser,
were also early in the movement for more dignity of style.
Then came the birth of a great and new age ; and as the
nineteenth century hymnists, in endless metres, unstopped
their founts of chaste and spiritual verse, there uprose a new
line of cultured makers of tunes.

Sir John Stainer used to say the kind of hymn really is
responsible for the class of tune — that a tune as a rule carries
as much weight as the hymn will bear. It follows also that
the tune should interpret even the mood of the hymn. How
true this is, is proved by the wealth of beautiful hymn music
bequeathed to us by Dykes, Barnby, Stainer, Redhead,
Steggal, Elvey, Smart, Sterndale Bennett, and others.

The Pope, in a recent manifesto, would fix a sixteenth
century period for Church music as the standard for all time.
As Protestants we believe that each succeeding age has its
newer light and also its rights, which are entitled to welcome
and reverence.

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" Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your old
men shall dream dreams ; your young men shall see visions"

XIV
JOHN WESLEY

INSCRIPTION.— A strong soul who walked with God. A Trumpet
Voice to awake a dead age. Founder and unwearied Apostle of
Methodism. B. 1703. D. 1791.

SCENE. — With benign countenance and gesture is preaching in the
open air. His father's church is seen behind. A roadside milestone
displays a poster whereon we read — "George Whitefield will
preach" — "Jesus, lover of my soul." — A trumpet is blown by the
cherub above.

As one enters Westminster Abbey instinctively the hat is
lifted, a hush as of something apart thrusts aside the worldly
din of the street. As I begin the study of John Wesley this
impulse comes to me as a parable. Voices around seem to
mock of failure, of impertinence even. " How shall you, a
petty pilferer, with your paltry stories, mere contemptible
scraps, attempt to compass the life and work of John Wesley ? "
Truly, I cannot — I dare not, only that another voice, that of
a fair angel — Hope, whispers, " Try, by faith and prayer."

ANCESTRY — THE MOTHER

" Samuel, the sonne of John Anslye, and Judith his wife."
So runs the baptismal register of Haseley Church, near War-
wick, of 27th March, 1620. Before the infant's birth, the aged
grandmother, as a dying request, pleaded that if a man-child
were born, Samuel should be his name, because she "had asked
him of the Lord." At four the child is fatherless, and, as the
only son of his mother, is the precious object of tender care and
godly nurture and stewardship. The family is ancient, and
the boy has promise of worldly favour, for his father is first
cousin of the Earl of Anglesea, their fathers being brothers.
On the babe's natal day, the parents, under solemn vow, gave

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John Wesley

him to God " for the work of the ministry." The child of
many prayers, the boy grows up, possessed of a deep sense of
the " high calling " for which he is destined. Loving his Bible,
he reads twenty chapters a day, and, it is said, continued the
habit through his life.

A diligent student, he passes through his college course
at Oxford, is ordained in 1643-4, probably in the Presbyterian
form, and takes the living of Cliffe, Kent, where he buries his
first wife and first-born son. In 1648 he is called to preach
before the House of Commons. The sermon pleases the
Parliamentary party and vexes the Court faction.

Cromwell gives him the Lord's Day evening lectureship at
St. Paul's, and in 1658 Richard Cromwell assigns him the
vicarage of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. In 1662, through the
Act of Uniformity, Samuel Annesley enrolled himself one of
the 2,000, that noble band of Confessors, who, for conscience'
sake, " went out, not knowing whither." Under the Declar-
ation of Indulgence, he licensed a meeting house in St.
Helen's, Bishopsgate. Here he drew a large and influential
congregation, and for years held a high and honoured place
in the Nonconformist ministry. His personal presence was one
of command and dignity. Defoe, who married a daughter,
was a hearer, and refers to his " charming tongue," " his
taking aspect." Dr. Annesley's grace of character was equally
conspicuous in the godly ordering of his home. Besides his
purely personal devotions, he prayed twice daily with his
family. Dying, he could exclaim, " Blessed be God, I have
been faithful in the work of the ministry above fifty-five
years. I have no doubt or shadow of doubt " — " I will die
praising Thee ... 0 my dearest Jesus ! Come." His
second wife was the daughter of John White, " a grave
lawyer," from youth an earnest and militant Puritan, and
elected, in 1640, M.P. for Southwark. He was an active
member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and
chairman of its Committee, also author of " The Century of
Scandalous Malignant Priests," and a strong witness against
Laud at his fatal trial. He was no small figure in his day.
He died in 1644, and was buried in the Temple Church with
considerable ceremony. The daughter moves dimly before
us ; we know that she was beloved of her husband, that she
took " mighty care " in the religious impress and education of
her children, " two dozen or quarter of a hundred."
Susannah, the mother of the Wesleys, was the twenty-fourth

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child. Such were the forbears, such was the environment
of this eminent saint, who should ever be classed with her
great sons as a co-founder of Methodism.

ANCESTRY — THE FATHER

Bartholomew Westley was the son of Sir Herbert Westley,
of Westley, Devon, and Elizabeth de Wellesley, County
Meath, Ireland. In 1619 Bartholomew married the daughter
of Sir Henry Colley, of Kildare. He had studied medicine as
well as divinity at Oxford, and in 1640 we find him rector
of Charmouth and Catherston, Dorset. In his flight from the
battle of Worcester, Charles II. took boat from Charmouth,
and escaped, only by minutes, from being caught by the rector,
who loudly vowed that he " would surely have snapped him,"
but that prayers in church went too long. He also was
numbered with the Great Ejected in 1662, and for bread had
now to fall to his skill in medicine. Honoured and beloved by
his flock, he lingers to comfort, but the Five Mile Act casts him
adrift, a persecuted wanderer, preaching by stealth. With
crushed heart, and for a brief time only, he survived his son
John, the joy and pride of his grey hairs.

Born in 1636, this first John Westley, the grandfather of the
great John, grew up a gracious Puritan boy, and passed
through Oxford with the godly diligence which possessed the
Oxford Methodists seventy years later. He became distin-
guished in Oriental tongues and won the favour of the scholarly
Dr. Owen, the Vice-Chancellor. He left Oxford in 1657-8.
While there he was enrolled a member of the " gathered
(Independent) church," formed by Dr. Thomas Goodwin,
president of Magdalen College, and one of the " stalwart
five " Independents of the Westminster Assembly. Young
Westley quitted Oxford a convinced Independent, longing to
preach and convert souls.

Journeying among his own people of Dorset, he joins a
" gathered church " about Weymouth, turns evangelist
among the fisher-folk, himself forms an Independent Church
at Radipole, close by, is installed its minister, and wins all
round respect from " judicious Christians and able ministers."

Approved by Cromwell's "Triers," he becomes pastor, as the
people's choice, of the parish church of Winterborn- White-
church, also in Dorsetshire. He now marries Miss White,
who is a niece of the gay historian Fuller, and we learn
further as follows : " You know that Mr. White, sometime

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chairman of the Assembly of Divines, was our grandmother's
father," wrote John Wesley to Charles. These words divulge
a singular coincidence, for they refer to his ancestor on his
father's side, the Rev. John White, long known as the
" Patriarch of Dorchester," a famous expounder of the
Word.* So that the fathers of both grandmothers bore the
same Christian name and surname, were both prominent
members of the famed Westminster Assembly, and both of
some eminence at the same time. John Westley brought
his bride, the daughter of " Patriarch " White, to his home at
Winterborn.

Doubtless the young people had met and loved in earlier
years. Charmouth is but a fair summer's day walk from
Dorchester, and is also a convenient halting-place on the
way to and from Oxford at vacations. Both homes were
strongly Puritan. We catch the twinkle in Fuller's eye
when he describes this parson White, his own brother-in-law,
as " a grave man who would willingly contribute his shot of
facetiousness on any just occasion," and also as possessing such
magical power over his flock's purses as that " he could wind
up what height he pleased."

Twin-souled Puritan heroes are these grandsires. The
one is chagrined that he fails to capture a runaway King, the
other had defied a cruel, sacerdotal Archbishop ; for
" Patriarch " White had fulminated against Arminianism and
Laud's ceremonies, and suffered for it. In the wars, Prince
Rupert's men robbed his house and library. Fleeing to
London, he was appointed minister of the Savoy. He and his
wife's brother, Dr. Burgess, were the two assessors to assist
Dr. Twisse, the first chairman of the Westminster Assembly.
Sometime rector of Lambeth, he was offered the wardenship
of New College, Oxford, but refused it, and returned to his

* In the Episcopal Returns for 1665-6 now in Lambeth Palace,
recently transcribed and published by Professor Lyon Turner and for
the first time made available, I find an entry under Dorset thus :
" Mr. White late Curate of Beer Rs., is now Resident at Kelt, nere
Wimborne." Beer Regis is some dozen miles from Dorchester. One
wonders if the curate was the son of the " Patriarch." For the bordering
county of Devon there is another White entered thus: " Newlyn.
Mr. Wm. White lives peaceably." These " Returns " were made at
the behest of Archbishop Sheldon by the bishops assisted by clergy.
They were to tabulate precisely the whereabouts and doings of the
2,000 ejected ministers of 1662. Such dangerous malcontents must be
well watched.

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beloved flock at Dorchester, amongst whom he died in 1648,
aged seventy-four.

Young Westley was a character of much Christian charm —
a gentle spirit, looking much within at the wiles, ways and
moods of his heart, ever ardently longing for a fruitful ministry
for the Lord. But lurid clouds gather and burst upon the
peaceful home. At the Restoration, as a stalwart Inde-
pendent, he is early the butt of persecuting prelatists. In
1661 he suffered imprisonment without trial for refusing to
use the Book of Common Prayer in his church, and, of course,
was, with his father, among the 2,000 cast out in 1662. There
was a " weeping audience " gathered at his farewell sermon,
from the text : " And now, brethren, I commend you to the
word of His grace, etc." After this he lived six troublous
years under the anguish of silent Sabbaths, seizing every
opportunity to preach. As he lingers awhile in his old parish,
a son is born, baptised Samuel, who becomes the father of the
illustrious John. Where shall the ejected one turn with the
mother and babe? Where, but to his friends around Weymouth?
Christian shelter costs the Samaritan a £20 fine, with a crown
a week fine on the wanderer. He moves through Ilminster,
Bridgwater and Taunton, meeting with help and kindness
from the Dissenters, and preaches for the saintly Alleine.
He longs for missionary work in America, and is twice foiled
in the realisation of this desire. In 1663 a friend near
Weymouth offers him a house, rent free, and while here he
takes the pastorate of an Independent Church at Poole, near
our modern Bournemouth. Calamy states, " he was often
seasonably and wonderfully relieved." He sets up a school
to maintain his growing family. " In perils oft " from
preaching, in spite of extreme caution, he is cast into prison
four times, and escapes more only by long hiding. An outcast
and wanderer, broken in heart and health by suffering and
poverty, this pure and noble spirit succumbs to the struggle at
thirty-two , in 1 668. His bones lie in the churchyard of Preston
near by, but the spot we know not, for some indignity was
cast upon the body by the Vicar : it would seem that Christian
burial with the rites of the Church was refused.

It is well Methodism possesses this heritage — this part and
lot — in the great battle for liberty in the seventeenth century.
Perhaps Wesleyanism might show more pride in it. I have
heard Wesleyan Methodists on public platforms talk as if
they were vexed that John Wesley ever became a Wesleyan

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Methodist. Without the suffering of the first John Westley
and like stalwarts, no liberty of roving and prophesying or
founding of a Church by the second had blessed England.

This first John Westley was the first Methodist of the
Wesley family, and also the true father of Methodism by trans-
mitting to his grandson those basic elements of character
which made him the genius of a vast revival, and founder of
the greatest Protestant Church in Christendom. That these
qualities were of the blood and kinship between the two
Johns is outstandingly evident. We see them in the holy
longing ; the pure and lofty quality of the sacrifice and
devotion to high principle and sacred charge ; in the thirst
for souls and for missionary evangelism ; in the unflinching
stand for conscience and appeal to Scripture ; and in the
saintly spirit of endurance under obloquy and persecution.

In 1765, after Wesley had slowly discerned the natural
demands of his Societies and been compelled to cast away
much of the ecclesiastical encumbrance acquired in earlier
years, he deliberately inserted in his " Journal " the details of a
long interview which this grandfather John Westley had
with the Bishop of Bristol upon the validity of his call to the
ministry without episcopal ordination. The " unbending
Independent " defends his call by such scholarship, such
logic, and straight appeal to the Scripture, and with such
manly frankness and Christian bearing that the Bishop
becomes his friend. Wesley adds : "I may be excused, if it
appears more remarkable to me than it will do to an un-
concerned person." Perhaps we shall find there was meaning
in this insertion.

This first John also kept a Journal, but, entrusted to
Calamy by the widow, it was lost — the pity of it ! The
widow survived her husband thirty-two years, until her
grandson, John, was seven. From his recalling her to Charles,
we may suppose that he saw and remembered her. We now
clearly see the blood and ancestry of John Wesley. Noncon-
formist through and through, full and rich in the triple strain
of Puritan, Independent and Nonconformist — one great-
grandfather and both grandfathers being among the 2,000
ejected by the Act of Uniformity of 1662.

SAMUEL WESTLEY

The fatherless boy, Samuel Westley, became an apt pupil
at Dorchester Free School. At fifteen, at the charge of

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Dissenting trusts and friends, he is sent to London, and spends
four years of strenuous study in academy training for the
Nonconformist ministry, and earns a character for learning,
and strict life and honour. Irritable, we are told, in temper,
and " too keen and revengeful . . . with an entire lack
of everything like deep experimental religion." Probably
in this he was neither worse nor better than his comrade
students. He is regarded as smart and reliant, and is " a
dabbler in rhyme and factions."

Growing unsettled in his Puritanism he renounces Dissent
and attaches himself to the Established Church. Manfully,
he takes up his new destiny with both hands, prays for
guidance, and one August morn he departs by foot for Oxford,
and enters himself " a servitor of Exeter College." An event-
ful march ! As he steps within the ancient shrine he jingles
forty-five silver shillings — his sole worldly fortune. He
cares not, for a brave heart and strong beats under his vest.
He turns private tutor, makes busy with his pen, and his
shillings become half-guineas. He takes his B.A. in June,
1688, and is ordained. He accepts a London curacy for a
year ; for a further year he is chaplain on a man-of-war,
then takes another London curacy at £30 a year, while
his pen adds £30 more. Ambitious in verse, he had com-
posed an elaborate heroic poem on the Life of Christ of
11,000 lines.

We now discover that under this revolt from his past,
behind this reliant energy, with its savour of the sacred, there
was an impulse as human as potent. It was the bright face of
Susanna Annesley. It was but the ancient way of things
that, with such a unique assemblage of fair magnets as
gathered at Dr. Annesley's house, the young fellows
about and students from the academies should be attracted
thither.

Besides Defoe, Dunton, the noted bookseller, was smitten
by the magnetic array in chapel, and fell to Elizabeth.
" She charmed me mad," says he.

Sam Westley, then student at Veals, was a guest at the
wedding (in 1682) and we may be sure was a visiting friend
earlier. Susanna was now thirteen, young Westley being her
senior by full six years.

Some mystery surrounds this love affair — when it began,
how it ripened, and so on ; and an odd mixture of budding
love and dogma is associated with it. The world

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knows her as a remarkable woman ; she was not less
courageous as a girl. We gather that at thirteen she had
floundered in the swirling stream of theologic peril. Arianism
and Socinianism were then in full swing of controversy, and
she was only rescued from shipwreck of faith by Samuel
Westley ; probably so early there was betrothal by sign and
hope. We find that about this time Miss Susanna was
becoming a convinced Conformist.

There is every appearance of concerted understanding in
the change. We hear of no other defections among the
numerous company of older sisters and brothers. It is non-
sense to represent, as Clarke and others do, that a girl in the
first year of her teens, though clever, had " examined the
whole controversy." If so, she was a paragon indeed, as
the reader of the Stories will admit. She herself claims no
such thing.

At about her fortieth year, referring to a treatise written
for her children and consumed in the Epworth fire, she says,
" And because I was educated among the Dissenters, and
there was something remarkable in my leaving them at so early
an age, not being full thirteen, I had drawn up an account of
the whole transaction under which I had included the main
of the controversy between them and the Established Church,
as far as it had come to my knowledge." Even the state-
ment, such as it is, refers rather to the treatise than to her
girlish studies. But, as we shall see later, her budding notions
in politics had probably more to do with the matter than
religion.

Still, turn she did, and in face of her family, a maiden of
wonderful will, drawn by mingled motives, not the least being
a stronger power than that of the head.

If the lovers had taken a tonic from Milton's prose, and
could Samuel Westley have entered Oxford while still keeping
to the faith of his forbears, he might have chosen to do so.
The sacrifice demanded was cruel and inexorable. The
glamour and spell of Oxford were great upon him. His father
and grandfather had walked its portals and rambled by its
shades. We know that this ardent desire had been twice
foiled. A young man of abounding energy and ambitious
cast, he is confronted by the hardest test of his life at its
threshold. All this may be allowed. I am loth to record
that, as I read between the lines of the chequered years of his
life, and quite apart from the merits of Nonconformity or

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Conformity, his course at this juncture infected the fibre of
his character ever afterwards.

When about twenty Susanna Annesley becomes Mrs.
Samuel Westley. They boarded " without going into debt."

Early in 1697 he became rector of Epworth, where he
remained until death, in 1735. Seven children had already
been born, three being dead. Nineteen in all were born
within twenty-one years, seven daughters and three sons only
reaching maturity. The annual income of Epworth was
£200, four times that of their miserable pittance at South
Ormsby, with " one additional child per annum."

Samuel Wesley's stay at Epworth, touching forty years,
was much of a wandering in the wilderness ere he crossed his
Jordan. He came to it in debt — how could he well help ?
— and he departed in debt. Debt was ever the black shadow
at the door. It paralysed his strength, and sterilised his
work ; it was the kill-joy of his home. He proved also some-
what tactless and muddling among his parishioners ; a wild
scaring folk of the Fens. They maimed his cattle, destroyed
his flock, and drummed and booed at his door.

A spiteful neighbour had the rector seized for £30 of debts
and kept in durance vile for three months in Lincoln Castle.
His noble wife sends her jewellery, even strips her wedding
ring for relief. It is instantly returned. To borrowed capital,
to farm his glebe, bad luck and heavy interest are added —
there are also two desolating fires, with liabilities in
rebuilding and the incessant needs of a trooping family.

The cleric had developed a strain of churchy arrogance,
perhaps of the medieval priest, and distinctly also of the
opportunist time-server, suggesting the secret of his broken
life. Never of the soaring order, never longing for the heavenly
blue of pure holiness like his father and his two distinguished
sons, he yet was a sincere Christian, conscientious in duty, an
able scholar and author of a learned treatise on the Book of
Job. He died, aged seventy-two, expressing confident faith
in his God and conscious of the " inward witness."

In his later years a more gracious bearing brought peace
with his parishioners. He took solace from his troubles in
pipe and snuff box, in which he indulged more freely than his
spouse and daughters liked.

Mrs. Wesley had her times of pondering over the crooked
ways of her life. At Epworth her husband was a square peg
in a round hole. His professional life was not the success of

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its early promise. The marriage, as the elder children well
knew, was not ideal.

A city sphere had been far more suitable to his learning
and undoubted ability. The chance of this, with some stipend
savings, was well worth some delay of marriage ; the more so,
as, like his sires, he possessed a mind of large orbit, away from
the country parochial cast, and he liked to be a man of
affairs.

The story of his heroic and defiant sermon before King
James is all apocryphal. He was not of the stuff even of the
Seven Bishops. He would, he said, not support James,
neither would he oppose; but he did, after the Revolution,
write a pamphlet in its support. He also dedicated his
" Life of Christ " to the Queen ; it was his services in this line
which procured him the Crown living at Epworth. Hereby
hangs a tale of domestic squall, serious enough for a wreck.
The rector, discovering that his spouse kept sealed lips at the
" Amen " of his prayer for the King, Dutch William,
demanded an explanation ; the dreadful truth was revealed
that her own true Prince was the exile over the water. He
thereupon declared, " If we have two kings we must have
two beds," and vowed to live with her no more until recan-
tation. This was flatly refused, and for a year the King
separated those whom God had joined. His Majesty con-
veniently closing his earthly course, the struggle ended in a
draw. Mr. Birrell, commenting upon the matter, says
" If John Wesley was occasionally a little pig-headed, need
we wonder ? "

The Puritan-bred maid had blossomed into a high and dry,
king-by-divine-right partisan. She declares she " cannot
tell how to think that a king of England can ever be account-
able to his subjects for any maladministrations or abuse of
power : but as he derives his power from God, so to Him only
he must answer for his using it." The Revolution was,
she said, " driving a Prince from his hereditary throne."
At the Revolution she was nineteen, and these were her notions
of kingship, and of that violator of his solemn oaths and of
the Constitution, that cruel bigot James Stuart the Second.
Surely the less said the better of her having " examined the
whole controversy " of Dissent. But their common severance
from Dissent was mutual and complete ; he even dropped
the resonant and stalwart T from the ancestral name, and she
named a son Charles — Charles was the " Martyr " King.

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JOHN WESLEY — BIRTH, HOME, AND TRAINING

John Benjamin Wesley was born on June 17, 1703 ; the
name Benjamin (never used) was given him after his mother's
playmate brother. John's help-my-self childhood was a
fine drilling for his long life of roving campaigns and " simple
life," for " he could never bear to sleep on a soft bed." As
a lad he never saw his home but as half furnished and himself
as meanly and barely clad.

Susanna Annesley, as a bride, left a happy Christian home,
where she was " early initiated and instructed in the principles
of the Christian religion," with a good example in her parent.
To the last she held her father's memory and teaching in
intense reverence.

Mrs. Wesley brought to her home the consummate
management of her mother. Besides the dull dreariness
incident to motherhood like hers, and its after weakness ;
besides a mother's tears and anguish at the procession of
tiny burials, she reared, clothed and educated ten of her
children to maturity, and trained them in the fear of the
Lord.

The old-fashioned discipline of the rod was not spared to
secure rigour of order and method ; even the babes were
taught to " cry softly," yet the discipline was ordered and
administered with such blend of wisdom as to win, not alone
respect, but the love of her offspring. She wholly bore her
husband's burden now and again, when the rector was from
home for periods, on Convocation or money-finding business.
Always heavy upon her was the shame and blight of debt,
always its racking drag and care, always the dread spectre of a
breadless home for the children, and of a constable's knock
for her husband. A wife in ten thousand, she was ever the
bright angel of the home, shedding upon it an unquenchable
splendour of Christian hope and fortitude. In one notable
instance she fell back to the Puritan liberty of her old home.
During an absence of her lord at Convocation, she began in her
kitchen Sunday evening services for her children and ser-
vants ; the villagers, hearing, pressed in, and the congre-
gation grew to two hundred. She read them good sermons.
Her own heart had been deeply stirred by reading the story
of two Danish missionaries in the East Indies. Though these
meetings were not held at Church service time, the formalist
curate quickly complained to the rector, who, alarmed,

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remonstrated, but finally succumbed after a stubborn
correspondence. John was now eight, and must have
been impressed by these uncouth cock-fighting fellows sitting
at his mother's knee.

THE EPWORTH FIRE — " THE WONDERFUL PROVIDENCE "

What elderly body but remembers the picture of John
Wesley being handed out at the window from the midst of
hungry forks of flame on a February midnight in 1709 ?
Wesley, forty years after, describes it as " the wonderful
providence." He is a " brand plucked from the burning."
It was the finger of God to the mother. In her private
meditations, under " Son John" she writes, "I do intend to be
more particularly careful of the soul of this child, that Thou
hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that
I may do my best to endeavour to instil into his mind the
principles of Thy religion and virtue. Lord, give me grace to
do it sincerely and prudently, and bless my attempts with
good success." We know how in due season the mother's
prayer was answered. So early as the age of eight, the
lad's deportment was such that his father admitted him to
Communion. In 1712 the dreadful small-pox fell upon the
family, and we learn that " Jack bore it like a man — like
a Christian."

John Wesley all his days was extremely sensitive to
the marvellous, always credulous of the ghostly story,
and even about witchcraft, grandmother-curses, and old-
world superstitions, signs, and what not ; and there was
reason.

In 1716 the parsonage was alarmed by strange noises,
rappings, violent shiftings of furniture and pewter, bed-
lifting and a score more fearsome things. The rector scoffed ;
the ghost settled on his study, and he believed. " Old
Jeffrey " continued his antics eight or nine weeks. They have
never been explained. The learned world has suggested all
sorts of solutions. John Wesley believed they were the
buffets of Satan for his father's rash vow in leaving his mother
on the " Amen " affair.

CHARTERHOUSE AND OXFORD — THE PIOUS PORTER

In January, 1714, the boy John, at eleven, moves from
Epworth dykes and lanes into the broad road of life and

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enters Charterhouse School, London, on nomination by the
Duke of Buckingham. Here he stays until June, 1720,
and is noticed for his diligence and progress. At seventeen
he is elected to Christ Church, and with a Charterhouse
scholarship of £40 a year he steps into the gay life and mellow
charm of Oxford in June, 1720.

At twenty-one he is described as a " very sensible and
acute collegian, baffling every man by his subtleties of logic,
of the finest classical taste, and of liberal and manly senti-
ments, a gay, sprightly, virtuous youth." Though his income
approached £200 of our present money, already he had
acquired his father's knack of chronic debt, which, interpreted,
possibly meant ways of declension in spiritual-mindedness
since first leaving Epworth. His journal records that he still
" said his prayers " and " read his Bible," yet went on in some
or other known sin, " sinning against the little light I had,"
with short struggles, " transient fits " of repentance,
"especially before and after Communion." We may assume that
these were prickings of a tender conscience and not of actual
sin, yet the siren voices of Oxford life — never worse than at
this time — might have cast him perilously near the slope, but
that a pious college porter stops him. Says Wesley to him :
" You thank God when you have nothing to wear, nothing to
eat, and no bed to lie on ; what else do you thank Him for ? "
" I thank Him that He has given me my life and being, and a
heart to love Him, and a desire to serve Him," is the reply.
The poor porter's words stick. They flash a new light.
Serious thoughts take hold of Wesley. His mother's
consecration prayer is budding.

He writes home of wondering desires to take holy orders.
His father would have him wait ; his mother bids him
go on.

He reads the " Imitation of Christ," and is angry at its
strictness, but later it is to him " next to the Bible." He now
watches against all sins in word or deed, partakes of the
Lord's Supper every week, and changes his whole deport-
ment. " So that now," says he, " doing so much and living
so good a life, I doubted not but that I was a good
Christian " — Bunyan precisely. He falls to a study of
Jeremy Taylor's " Holy Living and Dying," and is so
impressed with the value of time, that he begins his
wonderful Diaries and Journals. Referring to this period,
he records :

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Meeting likewise with a religious friend1 I began to alter the whole
form of my conversation, and to set in earnest upon a new life, I set an
hour or two a day for religious retirement, communicated every week,
watched against all sin whether in word or deed. I began to aim at
and pray for inward holiness.

A decisive step ! A new ideal has now arisen within his
soul.

ORDINATION — ELECTED A FELLOW OF LINCOLN

He is ordained deacon in September, 1725, and to full
orders three years later. Through the efforts of friends he
is elected Fellow of Lincoln College, in March, 1726. With a
pathetic consciousness of something of life missed and lost to
himself, the father's heart at Epworth bubbles over with joy.
" Whatever I am," he cries, " my Jack is Fellow of Lincoln."

In one prophetic sentence of a letter written at this time,
we catch a breath of the greatness that is to be. " Leisure
and I," he announces, " have taken leave of one another, I
propose to be busy as long as I live."

In this curt, masterful phrase, we see imaged the future
man. The gracious Spirit has led him to William Law's
'; Serious Call " and '' Christian Perfection." " The light
flowed in so mightily upon my soul," says he, " that every-
thing appeared new." A new perspective dawns of " the
height and breadth and depth of the law of God." He hastes
" to keep the whole law," and is " persuaded " that he is " in
a state of salvation." By earnest study of the Bible he
discerns clearer and clearer light, and "the incessant need of
walking as Christ also walked."

In 1726 Charles Wesley came to Christ's from Westminster
School, where he and the eldest brother Samuel had both been
educated. We learn that he was " sprightly and rollicking,
with more genius than grace." He is bent on enjoying his new
world in the usual way of the sparks of this fashionable college.
John speaks to him about his soul, and for his pains gets the
warm retort, " What, would you have me be a saint all at
once ? "

In November, John is chosen Greek Lecturer and Moderator
of the Classes and wins esteem. In February, 1727, he pro-
ceeds to his M.A. His change from Christ Church to Lincoln

1 Miss Betty Kirkham, his first love. She was the daughter of the
Rev. L. Kirkham, rector of Stanton. She was a member, with the
Wesleys, of a correspondence and reading circle.

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College he regards as providential, for, without rudeness, he
could now better break from friends who were not of his spirit
in his search after the things of God. A real trouble was the
discovery that these friends were as ignorant of God as
himself, but, while he was aware of his own ignorance, they
knew not theirs.

FRUITFUL RULES OF LIFE

Wesley now made a rule of life, unvaried for sixty years,
not to welcome the friendships or return the visits of those
unhelpful to his soul's life. He longs for quiet, and is half
tempted to accept a school in Yorkshire because it lies in a
valley, and is hemmed in by hills. Another fruitful rule now
comes to birth. He wastes waking hours in bed, rising late, at
eight. A voice calls with the monition that time and life are
too sacred for such weakness. He experiments with an
alarum, and rises at seven, then six, then five, and still wakes ;
nature finally discloses her will and secret, and grants
unbroken sleep until four.

Sixty years later he could declare, " By the grace of God,
I have risen at four ever since," and " don't He awake for
fifteen minutes together in a month." John Wesley enacted
a " Daylight Bill " for John Wesley.

At the pleading of his father he becomes his curate, working
chiefly at Wroote, a small adjacent living added to Epworth.
He has a dull two years, preaches much,

" but" — to quote his own words — " saw no fruit to my labour ; indeed
it could not be that I should, for I neither laid the foundation of re-
pentance, nor of believing the Gospel, taking it for granted that all to
whom I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no
repentance."

He still moves in the twilight of formality. Happily, in
October, 1729, the authorities summon him to his Oxford
duties, and his only experience of English parochial work
closes. But not as lecturer was the real call, but that of God
and destiny, though as yet he knew it not.

BIRTH OF THE HOLY CLUB

At Oxford a gladdening sight meets his eyes ; the searching
Spirit had troubled the heart of his brother Charles, whose
winning presence had gathered around him a like-minded little
band, eager to seek and to pray for the Christ-like life. Owing

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to " somebody's prayers," says Charles, " most likely my
mother's, I woke out of my lethargy."

Welcome indeed was John. He had already met them on
a summer visit, and now, from his standing and " something
of authority in his countenance," is installed " chief manager "
of the band. Accordingly, " in November, 1729, four young
gentlemen of Oxford " met in his rooms " to spend some even-
ings together." Every brand of nickname was cast at them,
" Godly Club," " Holy Club," " Sacramentarians," " Bible
Moths," etc., but the quaint one of " Methodist " stuck fast.
This was given before Wesley's coming, so that to Charles
more than John belong the honours of being the founder of
the Holy Club and the first Methodist. The name was not
new, as forty years before it had been cast at Nonconformists.
The term grew to be more apt and happy than its inventors
meant. These men were in dead earnest ; their quest a
sacred one — " the pearl of great price " — and method was their
handmaid.

At first they met every Sunday, then for two evenings, and
at last every evening from six to nine. Their meetings were
held in each other's rooms and opened with prayer. They
studied the Greek Testament, read some helpful book,
reviewed their conduct and work of the day, and planned that
of the morrow.

THE " HERMIT " — FASTING AND ALMS — THE MAGNETIC YOUTH

Wesley says, " I lived like a hermit. I saw not how any
busy man could be saved." They fasted on Wednesdays
and Fridays, and received the Lord's Supper weekly. On
Sundays they examined themselves "as to love of God and
simplicity," and on Mondays on " love of man." They set
times for hourly and ejaculatory prayers, and also for medita-
tions, and agreed to repeat collects at nine, twelve, and three.
They scrupulously observed the rubrics, canons and discipline
of their Church, and, affirms Wesley, " They were in the
strongest sense High Churchmen."

In August, 1730, they began the prison visitation of the
death-condemned and of other prisoners and debtors ; preached
to them and wrote letters of consolation. They visited the
sick and the workhouses. For the poor and needy they
raised a fund to dispense medicine, books and money. Stint-
ing themselves to the barest necessaries of life, they gave all
the rest. Out of an income of sixty pounds Wesley gave

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thirty-two away, keeping only twenty-eight for himself ;
he, the third year, from an income of ninety pounds, gave
sixty-two, and the fourth year, from £120 gave away £92.

He tells us that one cold winter's day a " half-starved girl "
asked alms. His pocket is empty. His " pictures around
him stare at him as accusers," and he cries out, " Will my
Master say ' Well done ' ? " — " for their cost might have saved
this poor creature from the cold." " O justice ! O mercy !
are not these pictures the blood of the poor maid ! " Thus
bravely, much in the face of jeering outcry and also of false
and scandalous charges, the Oxford Methodists went on their
way of practical Christianity. They seized all chances of
saving students from evil habits. The Holy Club grew, but
slowly ; it was never more than twenty-seven strong. The
cross was too heavy. Wesley saw but one addition after a
year as " chief manager," and during his absence it dropped
to five. Some, unrooted, fell by the wayside. Their most
notable member came not for a few years, when Charles's
winsomeness drew a buoyant, magnetic youth, the son of a
Gloucestershire innkeeper — the mighty Whitefield.

It was not their High Churchism but their living religion
and moral earnestness which compelled attention. They were
the " Precisians " of their day, as Bacon called the Puritans
of his. Wesley writes to his sister Emily urging auricular
confession, and gets smartly snubbed.

After the birth of the Reformation, Protestantism was often
at grips for dear life, and when, throughout Europe, the terrible
Jesuits arose, sworn to reconquer a lost kingdom possessed
for a thousand years and more, by weapons of heaven or
hell, poor frail Charity lay wounded and bleeding. In the
further conflict between Protestant prelatism in England and
the Puritans of England and Scotland she was nigh slain
and forgotten. It was the high privilege of the Holy Club
to restore the gracious form of Charity to the English people
as the visible and constant handmaid of a living fellowship
with Jesus.

THE DEATH OF THE FATHER — THE BROTHERS SAIL FOR GEORGIA

Some of these advancing steps, so much aside from strict
Church usage, were not taken by these young High Church-
men without fear and trembling. The father of the Wesleys
was always, to his honour, by sage advice on the side of dis-
creet courage. They moved with a furtive eye always upon

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the hedge of Church order. The most daring thought not to
wander to the breezy hills in the distance, where were visions
of space and peace. But this they knew as sure ground —
" to visit the fatherless and the widow, and to keep themselves
unspotted from the world."

There is a shadow over Epworth ; the dying father pleads
for John to succeed him. The son's very soul revolts ; the
hedged- up, slow-paced life would crush him. Will he for the
sake of the dependent family — mother, sisters ? With
a groan he consents. But the Great Disposer overrules.
The living is given to another, and Epworth knows a Wesley
no more.

Now a certain Colonel Oglethorpe had come by a sore heart
from the cruel sufferings of a friend, one of many poor debtors
in the Fleet prison. He conceived the project of a home of
refuge and hope for them. A charter was procured from
George II. The Commons voted £10,000, and a large fertile
tract of land to the south of Carolina became the new colony
of Georgia. The colony opened its arms to all Protestants,
and before the Wesleys sailed many emigrants had arrived,
embracing even Scottish Highlanders, and Moravians from
Germany. Wesley knew some of the trustees, and was urged
to go out as a missioner for the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel, and after prayerful consultation agreed. His
mother, in the prompting of her true missionary heart, de-
clared " Had I twenty sons, I should rejoice if they were all
so employed."

In October, 1735, John and Charles Wesley took ship for
Georgia. With them were Benjamin Ingham and Charles
Delamotte, members of the Holy Club. And now a new force,
strangely destined and the most powerful of all, confronts
Wesley to shape his course of life.

THE MORAVIANS — THE POTTER'S WHEEL

Wesley avows that " they went not to gain the dung and
dross of riches and honour, but simply this — to save our
souls, and to live wholly to the glory of God."

Twenty-six Moravian exiles were on board, and Wesley at
once starts to learn German, so that he may talk with them.
The four Methodists determine that the Holy Club shall not
droop because it meets in a ship's cabin instead of a college
room.

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

They went to bed at nine or ten, rising at four. First came
private prayer ; then Scripture reading and study together
till breakfast at seven ; public prayer at eight ; separate study
till noon, Wesley going hard at German. At twelve they met
to pray and devise Christian plans of good for the passengers'
souls ; dinner at one ; Wesley conversed with the voyagers
till four — the hour of prayer. From five to six retirement ;
at six supper, after which Wesley took passengers into his
cabin ; at seven he attended the Moravian service ; then
another hour together, and the four turned into their
hammocks.

Methodism and good works indeed, yet all is songless and
joyless ; for though the deeds were right, the motive was
lacking. They had yet to learn " a more excellent way " —
" By grace are ye saved." Ah ! A shock is ahead — a Re-
vealer comes ; there swiftly rides upon the waves a Messenger
who brings a quaking as of the Day of Judgment ; the deeps
gather, a wild storm breaks upon the vessel, shivers the main
mast and swallows up her decks. There is a lull ; then
another storm, and yet another. While death seemed in the
clasp of the next billow, and while " a terrible screaming began
among the English," the Moravians — whose meekness had
already amazed Wesley — " being engaged in a service, calmly
sang on." " Even the women and children are not afraid
to die." A new spiritual horizon opens ; he perceives that
these poor strange exiles possess riches of the soul unknown
to him and that " they were delivered from the spirit of fear
as well as from that of pride, anger and revenge." He is
abased, for he is afraid to die and in shame makes contrast
of his own heart and asks of it, " How is it thou hast no
faith ? "

In February, 1736, the ship puts to land. Wesley meets
Mr. Spangenburg, a Moravian pastor, and seeks advice upon
his own work. The pastor lances instantly to the quick.
I quote Wesley's Journal :

"My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the
witness within yourself ? Does the spirit of God bear witness with your
spirit that you are a child of God ? " I was surprised and knew not what
to answer. The pastor observed and asked further, " Do you know
Jesus ? " I paused and said, " I know He is the Saviour of the world."
" True," replied he, " but do you know He has saved you ? " I an-
swered, "I hope He has died to save me." He only added, "Do you
know yourself ? " I said, " I do," but I fear they were vain words.

A startling examination for this " Fellow of Lincoln and

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Public Lecturer and Moderator, Oxford " and " Chief
Manager " of the Holy Club !

It is the finger of a skilled guide to a wandering pilgrim on
the highway. This interview is of primal importance in
tracing the unveiling of his soul, and the preparatory steps for
the great work for which God has destined him. Wesley's
heart clave to this man ; he came as a leader pointing the way
to his soul's rest. Wesley with Delamotte stayed in Savannah,
Charles with Ingham proceeding to Frederic a, a hundred miles
south.

Charles, through his High Church ways, his meddling with
quarrelsome, designing wromen, stumbles in a bog of slanderous
tongues, even to peril of character and life. There are
trumped up charges of sedition ; he falls seriously ill, and
when he recovers he quits for England the following July,
but intended to return. He had gone out as secretary to
Oglethorpe, who tires of the bother, and asks, " Why is there
no love, no meekness, no true religion among the people, but
instead mere formal prayers ? " Charles's going out was
an entire failure ; he did no good and got none. Wesley
lodged with the Moravians until his own house was ready, and
was vastly impressed by their humility and the primitive
simplicity of their Church procedure. Present at the election
of their bishops, he imagines it as " where form and state are
not, but Paul the tent-maker or Peter the fisherman presides."

The spirit of the Moravian singing is a revelation to the
High Churchman ; he catches its breath of sweet solace and
mystic power, and translates the hymns into noble English.
He had brought from England Watts's " Psalms and Hymns,"
and from these and his translations, with a few others, he
compiles the first Methodist hymn-book. This is published
at Charlestown. The heavenly mantle had not yet fallen
upon Charles so that to John is really due the high honour of
being the first bard of Methodism. Singing, with the Holy
Club, now becomes a daily exercise and power.

THE HIGH CHURCHMAN IN POWER

By Wesley's own confession the curtain now lifts to exhibit
an amazing drama of the despotic and officious priest, of the
strong upholder of purity and justice, of the earnest seeker
of God. We see him remorseless in his own soul's intro-
spection as a hard and hopeless Calvinist, but far less noble,
as the cultured Oxford lecturer of thirty-three, in worldly

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wisdom guileless as a child, and as the lover of elusive
indecision and weak will.

For the first time in his life Wesley is now installed over
a people with the full power of a clergyman. He quickly
shows how he means to use it. He institutes a High Church
system of most pronounced type. I quote Dr. Rigg here :

He had early and also forenoon service every day ; he divided the
morning service, taking the Litany as a separate service ; he inculcated
fasting and confession and weekly communion ; he refused the Lord's
Supper to all who had not been baptised by a minister episcopally
ordained ; he insisted on baptism by immersion ; he rebaptised the
children of Dissenters ; and he refused to bury all who had not received
episcopal baptism.

Further, both he and Charles practised trine baptism, and
mothers objected to three times dipping of their babies at
the whims of childless priests. A Roman Catholic applying
was welcome to every privilege of the Church, but a
God-fearing Highlander was rebuffed.

There is another side. Wesley's diligent and regular visit-
ation and earnest preaching, with its searching faithfulness,
fill the church. A ball is a failure because he preaches at the
same hour. Ornaments and rich dress are put on one side.
A school is set up, and Delamotte teaches reading and the
Catechism to the children with lasting good. Some better
clad boys look down on bare-footed ones; Wesley himself
takes charge and comes bare-footed ; the amazed urchins are
cured.

The bud of the Holy Club is now seen in bloom. It is all so
strange to these rough Protestant colonials. At length one
bluff pent-up soul delivers himself thus : "I like nothing
you do ; all your sermons are satires upon particular persons.
Besides we are Protestants, but as for you, we cannot tell
what religion you are of. We never heard of such a religion
before. We know not what to make of it. And then your
private behaviour — all the quarrels have been because of you,
and there is neither man nor woman in the town who minds
a word you say."

There is thunder about, but Wesley's untiring, unselfish
energy and pulpit capacity win him respect.

There are motley stragglers around — Italians, French,
Spaniards. Has he not charge also of their souls ? He
rubs up his French, and masters enough of Italian and Spanish
to minister to them all. At home now in German he attends

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the Moravian services, " not as a teacher but as a learner,"
and under their influence, and also possibly, under the
dawning spell of another and more tender feeling as, early
as the spring, he is (so he tells us) " inwardly melting." He
writes to friends who think him dour, " I entirely agree with
you that religion is love and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,
the cheerfulest thing in the world."

SOPHIA C. HOPKEY — A STRANGE STORY OF LOVE

Oglethorpe had introduced Wesley early after his arrival
to Miss Sophia C. Hopkey, niece of the chief magistrate. It
is said she was beautiful, accomplished and intelligent.

Wesley gives a long description of her virtues and charms.
It displays a high gift of insight in the dissection of character
and is a picture of the nigh-perfect woman in perfect
English. Perhaps the strangest thing in this tragedy of love
is that the journal from which I quote was transcribed in
cool judgment at Oxford after his return to England.

Miss Hopkey became a devoted member of his Church. To
please him she put away coloured attire and dressed in
white. She often comforted him in trial and sustained him
in hope, and nursed him day and night through a fever. With
fair regularity she came to his house for five o'clock morning
prayers, followed by religious readings, expoundings, con-
verse, French lessons, etc., and stayed to breakfast. He
coaches her during the day in his system of early prayer and
solemn round of ritual observances. The dazed girl is eighteen
and says she thinks " clergymen should never marry."

They walk and talk much together and, under his wardship,
boat and picnic a little. During a six days' voyage " slow
and dangerous," " but not tedious," and while camping on
shore, he asks, " Miss Sophy, how far are you engaged to
Mr. M. ? " She replies, " I have promised to marry him or not
marry at all." He responds, " I should think myself happy,
if I were to spend my life with you." She burst out into tears
and said, " I am in every way unhappy, I won't have Tommy ;
he is a bad man." After arriving home, Wesley was again
away for a short time, and on his return found Sophy absent.
He discovers her, and they return together by boat. He
begins to make discoveries and tells us, " I now began to be
much afraid. I was now in great straits. I still thought it
best to live single, but I felt the foundations of it shaken
more and more every day, insomuch that I again hinted at a

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desire of marriage, though I made no direct proposal." This
narrow escape, he records, sprang from a " sudden thought
which had not the consent of my own mind, yet I firmly
believe had she (Miss Sophy) closed with me at that time
my judgment had made but faint resistance."

He advises her on a trivial matter, and, says he, " on this
little circumstance depends perhaps all my happiness in time
and eternity." In his bewilderment he appeals to his Moravian
friend — should he break off the friendship ? " What would be
the consequence if you do not," he is asked. " I fear I
should marry her," replies the lover. " I don't see why you
should not," is the response. He goes " home amazed," and
tells Ingham and Delamotte; they " utterly disapprove," and
there is conference until midnight. He is advised to go out
of town for a few days, he himself cannot calmly judge, seeing
her as he does every day.

He goes four miles away, but first writes to Sophy thus :
" I can't take fire into my bosom and not be burnt ; I am
therefore retiring to desire the directions of God. Join with
me, my friend, in fervent prayer, that He may show me what
is best to be done." He is back in Savannah next morning,
stays an hour, and records, " My heart was with Miss
Sophy all the time ; I longed to see her, were it but for a
moment." But he had to depart without seeing her. " It
was," he confesses, " as the sentence of death." In a few
days he tells her he is resolved to mission the Indians before
he marries.

She declines further coining alone to the parsonage for
morning prayers and lessons. He talks of going to England ;
she bursts into tears, declaring, " You are the best friend I
ever had in the world." Later, they are alone in the garden.
After serious conversation, says the lover, " I took her by the
hand, and, perceiving she was not displeased, I was so utterly
disarmed that that hour I should have engaged myself for
life." In stone blindness he hesitates, thinking she is resolved
never to marry. The crisis deepens ; the Holy Club — Ingham,
Delamotte and himself — set apart a day for prayer and fasting
to decide the matter. " Accordingly," runs his journal, " I
mada three lots : ' Marry,' ' Think not of it for this year,'
' Think of it no more.'" The last is drawn. He records, " I
was enabled to say cheerfully, Thy will be done." He now
asks, may he still converse with her ? Another lot is cast — he
may, but only in the presence of Delamotte. This breaks

John Wesley

down ; there is still playing with flame and he is again, he
owns, " snatched as a brand from the burning of the fire." As
much as a modest girl may, she exhibits herself in a despairing
appeal.

The uncle and aunt have long ago made their wish clear,
and Sophy has private means which they will supplement.
The pace quickens, for another wooer has now stepped on the
scene. The uncle and aunt are impatient — Sophy gives
some sort of consent to the other lover, and Wesley is told to
publish the banns. It cannot be true ! The uncle blurts out
to him that she is engaged, but conditionally so ; " Mr.
Williamson shall marry her if you will not."

Wesley seeks her ; tells her, " I could not believe it unless
I should hear it from Miss Sophy herself." She replied
" Sir, I have given Mr. Williamson my consent, unless you
have anything to object." The narrative runs : " It started
into my mind, what if she means, unless you marry me ?
But I checked the thought, for Miss Sophy is so sincere ;
if she meant so, she would say so ; and replied, ' If you
have given your consent, the time is past, I have nothing to
object.'"

Proceeding, he describes the " passions and tumult of
thought — love shooting through all the recesses of my soul, and
sharpening every thought and passion." " I wonder to this
hour I did not say ' Miss Sophy, will you marry me ? ' As
soon as I could speak, I reminded her of her resolution to
marry only a religious man." He proceeds : " Little more
was said, tears in both supplying the place of words. More
than an hour was spent thus."

At this point the new lover appears. Wesley exhorts them
to serve God. Then, says the record,

I kissed them both, and took my leave of one I was to see no more.
I came home and went into my garden. I walked up and down.
seeking rest but finding none. God let loose my inordinate affection
upon me, and the poison drank up my spirit. I was stupid as if half
awake, and yet in the sharpest pain I have ever felt. To see her no
more, that was as the piercings of a sword ; it was not to be borne,
nor shaken off. I was weary of the world, of light, of life. Yet one
way remained — to seek God, a very present help in time of trouble.
And I did seek after God, but found Him not. I forsook Him before,
He now forsook me. Yet I struggled for life ; and though I had
neither words nor thoughts, I lifted up my eyes to the Prince that is
highly exalted, and supplied the place of them as I could ; and about
four o'clock He so far took the cup from me that I drank so deeply
from it no more.

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Even still he seeks interviews with her, and reproaches her
for taking the step " without first consulting " him, as she
promised. The journal proceeds : " She answered earnestly
and many times over, ' Why, what could I do ? I can't live
in that house. I can't bear these shocks. I have no particu-
lar inclination to Mr. Williamson, I only promised if no further
objection appeared.' " " But what can I do ? " — that is
she will even now be Mrs. Wesley if he will only ask her straight.
The girl was bewildered beyond endurance. Her aunt and
uncle were determined to have her married, and were not
kind. Wesley still seeks her, and she " falls into crying
continually," and " in such an agony she is fit for nothing."
Lover number two is impatient, and takes Sophy to Pussyburg
next morning and there marries her.

I repeat, was there ever such a blind, elusive lover as
Wesley ? The day of the marriage, he tells us, was " the day
which completed the year from my first speaking to her."
During the day he was in much pain, and seems to have
feared or hoped his days were numbered, and made his will.
Much might be said of Wesley's part in this drama of love, so
human in its mixtures.

Shall we say only that the end was well, for Sophy was too
untried for the sacrament of marriage with this elect man of
God.

It would only be natural if Mrs. Williamson resumed her
former attire, and added a don't-care ribbon. Here it ought,
in sane sense, to have ended. No, her clergyman has still the
trust of her soul. For some cause Wesley reprehends her
behaviour, at which she is angry, and her uncle, with
the bailiff and recorder, appears and demands explanations.
The High Churchman hints that he may repel her from
Communion if she continue to err.

In some six weeks, this he actually does. He is now
summoned before the Court and refuses to submit to it in a
matter of Church discipline. A warrant is issued for defama-
tion of character and refusal of Communion. Wesley sets
up claims which to the colonials would appear medieval.
The jurymen are now exhorted " to beware of spiritual
tyranny, and to oppose this new illegal authority which is
usurped over their consciences," and Wesley is charged with
having " broken the laws of the realm." While the dispute
was dragging on, the magistrates summarily cut it short by
appointing another clergyman over Wesley's head, and with

John Wesley

sorrow of heart he leaves Georgia, and so ends for ever his
glowing over-sea missionary dream.

My purpose is not to provide gossip, but to know of the man,
and this rigid digest of Wesley's doings in Georgia and its
affair of love affords essential fact enough for enquiry. First,
there is no question of sincerity in everything — and that is the
great thing — nor of petty pique against the lady ; Wesley
was cast in too large a mould for such puerility. That he
submitted his affair of the heart to the lot with a jury of
Moravian pietists or to the Holy Club some will condemn as
weak folly, some exalt as guileless simplicity. Perhaps it was
neither. " God commanded me to pull out my right eye ; but
being slack in execution my friends performed what I could
not " is his own comment.

He loved her, but the supreme thing with him was his holy
consecration to God's service. Would marriage impair it ?
Weary with the conflict within, he at last cast the decision
upon others. It was a jumble of his own ascetic temper with
Moravian pietism, and thereby he filled himself a deep cup of
sorrow. But why these words ? In sending these experi-
ences of the deeps upon His children, God does not mock or
waste His purposes. This passion and its mystery had a place
among the means for the making of Wesley. The whole
matter but proves how high and pure in motive he was, and
also how human ; and for this we are glad and like him the
more. The bitter smart of his unwisdom, its manly shame,
were still lingering forty-nine years afterwards.

DEFEAT AND ITS MISERY

Judged by his splendour of promise and capacity, the
Georgia mission was a failure ; of course it scattered some good
seed, as Whitefield testified. Wesley left the colony a defeated
man, and within an ace of a broken heart and life. His defeat
was not effected by the magistrates, but by himself ; that was
the misery of it. On the voyage home it was all as a dream to
him, yet a pitiless irrevocable reality. His defeat was double ;
he had sailed with radiant hopes in his secret heart of becom-
ing an English Augustine to the Indians. By some bungling
he never had the least chance, though he tried again and
again. Oglethorpe posted him in Savannah, and kept him
there.

In a useful life of Wesley now before me, by Canon Overton,
we are told that in Georgia Wesley exhibited both his strength

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and weakness. The " Church system " was the strength, the
love affair the weakness. The truth is, the " Church system "
was bottom and top of the whole failure of both the brothers.
Unwittingly they had gone out to preach less the Gospel of
Christ than sacerdotalism. They even appeared before the
simple Indians in full canonicals. Curious are the ways in
which extremes meet. The exiled Independents in Rotter-
dam standing for a glorious and eternal principle split in two
upon quarrels about ribbons and bonnets.

This man Wesley, grandly strong, eager for mighty works,
is blinded and broken by ecclesiasticism ; a holy Dissenter
is a heathen, a Roman Catholic of any hue a saint. He takes
his monkish medievalism among sturdy English Protestant
settlers and Highland sons of Knox. The reader may have
peered into a bent mirror and beheld the true image flattened
or elongated into a grotesque distortion. Not an inapt simile
of human distortion of the spacious sanity and gracious
teaching of the Master Jesus.

On the voyage home troublous misgivings crowd upon his
soul. He is beset by the spiritual goblins of poor Bunyan.
What if the Gospel be not true ? There is again storm and
peril ; in anguish he cries, " Oh ! who shall deliver me from the
fear of this death ?" He has, says he, "infallible proof of
unbelief, having no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart
from being troubled : ' Lord save, or I perish.' Save me
by such faith as implies peace in life and in death." He has,
he holds, " built it without a foundation." He will set closer
sentry over thought and speech, lest " all my sins set in array
before me." For years he has longed for solitude " in order
to be a Christian." On ship there is " solitude enough," but
not peace. He is sure of " a rational conviction of all the
truths of Christianity," yet conscious that his " whole heart is
altogether corrupt and abominable." All the stays of his
faith fail him, and at this darkest hour of his life his soul breaks
forth in this passion of agony. " I went to America to
convert the Indians, but ah ! who shall convert me ? I have
a fair summer religion. I can talk well, but let death look
me in the face and my spirit is troubled. Alienated as I am
from the life of God, I am a child of wrath, an heir of hell."1

Ah, not so, dejected soul, the messengers of heaven are
already on the wing, coming to the " brightness of thy rising."

1 " I am not sure of this," was his comment thirty years after.

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THE BLESSED DAWN

Even during the voyage, after deep meditation and prayer
he can say, " The faith that I want is a sure trust and confidence
in God, that through the merits of Christ my sins are all
forgiven, and I am reconciled to the favour of God." " Nothing
in myself I plead. I have no hope but that of being justified
freely through the redemption that is in Jesus." He left
English shores " to save his soul." How great the change ;
the Moravians have taught him well ! He is dimly seeing
that the sinner does not save himself by works, even when
" done in righteousness," " but according to His mercy He
saved us." He is turning from things visible to things
invisible. He had been concerned with salvation as a pre-
paration for death ; he now learns that it is so for life also,
and that fear of death is not an infallible test. Before leaving
the vessel he had hope " if I seek Christ I shall find Him, and
be found of Him by the righteousness which is of God by
faith." At times he is conscious of having the love of God
shed abroad in his heart and " that the Spirit itself beareth
witness with his spirit, that he is a child of God." The hard
crust of his High Churchism is breaking, he is emerging into a
new spiritual realm, his face is to the light.

He steps upon English soil at Deal on February ist, 1738,
after an absence of two years and four months — a wiser
man. Every week since he left England had been precious in
enlargement of spiritual experience. There had been also
mental enlargement, for, inheriting his grandfather Westley's
talent for languages, he had acquired German, Spanish and
Italian so that he tells us " passage was opened to the writings
of holy men " in those tongues. Through this Georgia Mission
the usefulness of his long life was enriched by a large insight
into practical methods of religious work, by a wider power in
general knowledge and illustrative colour.

THE HEAVENLY MESSENGER

Arriving in London, Wesley and his brother Charles meet
Peter Bohler, a Moravian leader, who is passing through
England on his way to Georgia. He is the heaven-sent
messenger. They talked much and travelled to Oxford
together. Until himself a leader, Wesley was the most docile
disciple. He is greatly puzzled at Bohler's exhortation,
" My brother, my brother, that philosophy of yours must

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

be purged away." Charles also is in distress of soul. Bohler,
writing to Count Zinzendorf of them, says, that " John knew
he did not properly believe on the Saviour. Our mode of
believing on the Saviour is so easy to Englishmen that they
cannot reconcile themselves to it ; if it were a little more artful
they would much sooner find their way into it."

At Oxford, Charles is seized with illness — is dying. John
who has gone to meet his mother, hastes back to find the
crisis passed. Bohler had kept at the bedside during the
peril, and after a prayer had told Charles he would not die.

The wrestle of Peniel is eternal, and Wesley and Bohler
are again quickly in the stress of it. Wesley records, " By
him (in the hands of the great God) I was on March 5th, 1738,
clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby
alone we are saved. Immediately it struck into my mind,
' Leave off preaching, how can you preach to others who
have not faith yourself ? ' "

" No," says Bohler, " preach faith till you have it and then,
because you have it, you mil preach faith." A dictum, sage
as startling, and forthwith on the morrow the disciple declared
the new doctrine to 4,000 people, " though," says he, " my
soul started back." With dramatic fitness the first ears to
hear were those of a wretch in the Castle condemned to the
gallows.

It was a double surrender by Wesley, for hitherto he had
been " a zealous asserter of the impossibility of death-bed
repentance." The prophet of God to the Englishman,
Bohler presses home his full message ; the High Churchman
is amazed " more and more by the account he gave of the
fruits of living faith, the holiness and happiness which he
affirmed to attend it." He flies to his Greek Testament
" resolving to abide by the law and testimony." He prays
with the condemned man again, first in the usual forms, then
" in such words as were given," at which the man, rising
eagerly, .declares, " I am now ready to die. I know Christ
has taken away my sins." He met his dread fate in peace.

A NEW POWER — WONDER UPON WONDER

Great openings now follow quickly. The Saturday after
the Castle scene, at a society meeting, his wondering heart
is so full, that it casts aside the collects and forms of prayer
hitherto exclusively used, and overflows in its own spon-
taneous music.

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John Wesley

He has discovered a new power, a heavenly magnetism of
indispensable and infinite evangelical potency. " Neither
do I propose," he avows, " to be confined to them any more."
A bold and pregnant decision. Before the end of April he
is convinced of the Scriptural soundness of Bohler's views of
the nature and fruits of living faith. But how instantaneous,
as Bohler affirms ? To his astonishment he finds that nearly
all conversions described in the Acts are instantaneous.
" Oh ! those times were special" — but Bohler brings several
living witnesses who confront him with testimonies of what
the Lord hath wrought upon them. Wesley is "thunder
struck." " After a time," says Bohler, " he stood up and
proposed the singing of a hymn ; during the singing of it he
often wiped his eyes." Rare to him are tears — precious are
they now, " as the dew of Hermon." " Here ended my dis-
puting," cries the weeper. " I could now only cry out,
' Lord help Thou my unbelief.' " Immediately he proclaims
the news to his friends, they mock : " Impossible ! Con-
version can only be gradual." Once Charles grows so angry
at John's persistence as to be driven " at last out of the room."
But John's soul is aglow with a new breath. There is a
Latimer-like echo and also a Cromwellian flavour in his re-
flection, " And indeed it did please God then to kindle a fire,
which I trust shall never be extinguished."

THE FIRST SOCIETY — CONVERSION OF CHARLES WESLEY

On May ist, the Moravians, the Wesleys and friends form a
Society for Christian Communion. Its sweet power descends
on Charles and in " a long and particular " talk with Bohler
he is led into the blessed way of true evangelical faith.

Bohler now takes ship, and Wesley exclaims, " Oh, what a
work hath God begun since his coming into England, such an
one as shall never come to an end till heaven and earth pass
away." A prophecy indeed of " forward reaching thoughts."

Strange and humbling are the ways of God. " A poor
ignorant brazier, knowing nothing but Christ," visits Charles,
who, feeling he is sent in Bohler's stead, removes to his house
in Little Britain. It is Whitsunday ; he is recovering from one
of his attacks of pleurisy ; John and friends had called upon
him in the morning and sung a hymn to the Holy Ghost.
Later in the same day John hears the joyful news of Charles
that the long-sought dove of peace had rested upon his breast.
What of himself ? Heaviness depressed his spirit. He is

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conscious that Charles has got a sweet and wondrous some-
thing he yet lacks. A gentle angel speeds to his comforting.
At five the following Wednesday morning, May 24th, 1738,
he opened his Greek Testament at the words : " There are
given unto us exceeding great and precious promises." Also
he tells us, " Just as I went out, I opened it again on these
words, ' Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God.' " He is
led in th- afternoon to St. Paul's ; the anthem is " Out of the
deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord ; Lord, hear my voice."

STORY OF HIS CONVERSION — AN " ANTEPAST OF HEAVEN "

I will quote his own account of that memorable event which
he counted as his conversion :

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate
Street, where one was reading Luther's preface to the Epistle to the
Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the
change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my
heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, even alone, for
salvation ; and assurance was given me that He had taken away my
sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

Immediately he prayed for his enemies, and publicly testi-
fied what he felt. On his return home, temptations beset
him, but by prayer they flee. Charles in his journal shows a
happy picture of this ever-memorable evening of Pentecostal
blessing. Says he, " Towards ten my brother was brought
in triumph by a troop of our friends, and declared ' I believe.'
We sang the hymn with great joy and parted with prayer."

" The hymn " was a musing of happy wonder from Charles's
heart the day before his own conversion. He had put it aside
lest in his presumption the new, precious possession should
depart. Was it not too sweet and heavenly for mortal heart ?
Now they proceed, " in spite of Satan," to sing together :

Oh, how shall I Thy goodness tell,
Father, which Thou to me hast showed,

That I, a child of wrath and hell,
I should be called a child of God ;

Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,
Blessed with this antepast of Heaven.1

" This antepast of Heaven " — oh, the radiant joy of that
evening's song ! There is joy m heaven, for now " it shall
come to pass that I will pour out my spirit . . . Your
sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall

' Hymn No. 30 in old Hymnbook, 358 in the new.

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dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions." What-
ever these Whitsun conversions were or were not, this is
certain, that without their fiery tongues of holy gift and power
no trumpet voice had been to cry aloud through the length
and breadth of England " Awake thou that sleepest ! " no
ever-flowing fount of glad and gracious song covering the
land with the joyous music of innumerable souls rescued and
redeemed. Past for ever now the dreary servitude of long,
long years to ritual and forms, the dull, joyless, ceaseless
round of salvation by fulfilling the law. Oh, how changed —
then, often the conquered ; now, ever the conqueror !

HOLY ENTHUSIASM

In the rapture of his holy emancipation Wesley in a flame
astounds a group of old, dear friends by the declaration that
five days ago he was not a Christian. " Have a care," they
retort, " how you despise the benefits received by the two
sacraments." He repeats his words. They are troubled
but withhold his grateful testimony he will not. Given change
of time and English conditions, it is all Dr. Luther's grim
treadmill of works over again, the same might of jubilation
and defiant proclamation on finding the liberty of grace.
Wesley's reflections of this period of travail — his bewilder-
ment of soul, his Christian manliness and touching pathos of
confession — can only be understood by an imaginative
sympathy.

In his Journal he avows, " Ail the time at Savannah I was
beating the air ... ignorant of a living faith which
' bringeth salvation.' " All along his years of groping there
were short anticipations " of the life of faith," but, being
" under the law," and " not under grace," he had not " the
witness of the Spirit " for he " sought it not by faith, but by
the works of the law." " Works of the law " — this was the
poison of twelve dreary years. He now clearly sees the way
of peace to be, in his own words : " (i) By absolutely renounc-
ing all dependence, in whole or in part, upon my own words or
righteousness ; on which I had really grounded my hope of
salvation, though I knew it not, from my youth up." What a
confession and of what illuminating import ! (2) " By continual
prayer for this very thing — justifying, saving faith, a full
reliance on the blood of Christ shed for me, a trust in Him as
my Christ, my sole justification, sanctification and redemp-
tion." The central truth that all, all is the " gift of God "

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

shines in upon his soul. Hear now his own words on his soul's
progress to true faith :

From the year 1725 to 1729 I preached much, but saw no fruit of
my labour. From 1729 to 1734, laying a deep foundation of repent-
ance, I saw a little fruit— only a little ; and no wonder, for I did not
preach faith in the blood of the covenant. From 1734 to 1738, speak-
ing more of faith in Christ, I saw more fruit. From 1738 to this time,
speaking continually of Jesus Christ, laying Him only for the founda-
tion of the whole building, making Him all in all, the first and the last ;
preaching only on this plan, " The Kingdom of God is at hand ; repent
ye and believe the gospel," the word of God ran as fire among the
stubble, and it was glorified more and more ; multitudes crying out
" What must we do to be saved ? " and after witnessing, " By grac«
are we saved through faith in Christ."

In his early days at Oxford the chief factor in Wesley's
grave change was the reading of William Law's books, " The
Serious Call to a Devout Life," and " Christian Perfection."
He and Charles often repaired to him for " ghostly counsel,"
and he became " a sort of oracle " and spiritual guide to them.
Immediately after his interview with Bohler, Wesley, in the
boldness of his new light, and believing his soul had been in
jeopardy, assailed Law by letter, stating that for twelve years
he had first tried to order his life by his (Law's) teaching and
might have " groaned till death," he declares, " had not a
holy man to whom God lately directed me," shown him the
true way. Law was a great man of his time ; hard words
were freely exchanged, with estrangement following.

A PILGRIMAGE TO THE MORAVIAN ZION

Under the supreme motive of his soul's welfare he now
determines to visit the Moravian settlement at Herrnhut, near
Dresden. Now and again chilling shadows flit across his
soul and friends perplex him. In a few months the doubts
pass away, never to return, but just now he fears his " weak
mind could not bear to be thus sawn asunder." In this quest
of " the utmost for the highest " his eager spirit will hie on
pilgrimage to this chosen people of God, and behold in their
own Jerusalem the " living witnesses of the full power of
faith," and he hopes, " so establishing my soul that I go on
from faith to faith and from strength to strength."

On his arrival the command is, " You must be simple, my
brother." He is subjected to singular discipline ; he even
digs the garden with the eager humility of a monk under
training ; yet he continually meets with what he seeks,

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" living proofs," who are " saved from inward as well as out-
ward sin, and from doubt and fear by the abiding witness of
the Holy Ghost given unto them." He longs to stay, but, says
he, " for my Master's calling me to labour in another part
of His vineyard." " Oh ! " he cries, " when shall this
Christianity cover the earth as the waters cover the sea ? "

Alas, even here his keen practical instinct detects seeds
which, later in England, to his sorrow, make tares among the
wheat. He reaches London on September i6th, having
been three months away. Next day, Sunday, he preaches
three times, declaring as never before the " glad tidings."
He meets Charles, and they take long and sweet counsel
together, " comparing experiences." John, refreshed in
soul, is laden with testimonies of the wonders of grace.
Charles tells a story hardly less exciting, of prejudiced friends,
maidservants, even of murderers at the gallows, converted
from darkness to light and joy in believing. Their dear friend
Jack Delamotte has been converted while singing, " Who for
me hast died " — the first sheaf gathered from Charles's song.

" AWE AND AMAZEMENT " — A TRUE PENTECOST

By the end of the month John has travelled hither and
thither, " declaring the mighty works of God " in London,
Oxford and Windsor, preaching repentance and remission
of sins. Like Charles he especially loves to offer " free
salvation " to the vilest outcast, to felons in Newgate gaol
and Oxford Castle, as if testing and tempting God's " depth
of mercy."

On returning from Herrnhut, Wesley had found their little
society in Fetter Lane grown from ten to thirty- two. Here
on New Year's day, 1739, the Wesleys, Whitefield, and others,
numbering some sixty souls, assembled. " They were all
with one accord in one place " to hold a Love Feast. Wesley
thus describes the solemn crises of this wonderful night:
" About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant
in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch
that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the
ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from the awe
and amazement at the presence of His majesty, we broke out
with one voice, ' We praise Thee, O God, we acknowledge Thee
to be the Lord.' >; Thus was the great commission given to
this company of believers; " the Holy Ghost was come upon
them." It was chapter two of the Acts of the great revival.

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Quickly it was " noised abroad, and the multitude came
together and were confounded." A new day dawns for
England and for the world, for with clarion voice the gospel
of love and free grace is to be sounded through the isles of
the sea.

ANGLICAN BIOGRAPHERS

Wesley could not now foresee the ultimate significance of
his conversion, and that the mission which it inspired was sure
to lead to a breach from the episcopal basis of his Church.
When by his own conversion he moved the Christian birthday
from Baptism to Conversion he crossed the stream vitally
dividing two great systems, the Sacramentarian and the
Protestant ; the change meant a new Christian horizon. By
it he returned essentially to the faith of his forbears.
Anglican writers make out, with fair show of quotation, that
Wesley was the most consistent and steadfast Churchman
from his Oxford days to the end of his life. It is a curious
and puzzling study, but the contention really amounts to
nothing. The Articles of the Church of England are Protes-
tant, but what a small part they seem to hold in the Church
system. Indeed they are openly flouted in actual practice ;
and it is this which tells, it is this which wields the stronger
influence in shaping her teaching and influence. Her rubrics
and system give shelter and prestige to a Keble who classed
all Protestants as heretics, and yet at her convenience she
will claim the honour and work of these heretics as her own.
We shall see the encased High Churchman Wesley emerge
and take on all the essentials of a brave Free Churchman, and
we shall see him do this from conviction and conscience,
which is a very different thing from being born into it. How
was it that Wesley was twelve long years in travail of the
" new birth ? " It was the blinding " Church system " —
plainly writ as any fact of his life. In his quest for peace, he
barely dreamed of looking beyond his Church environment.
Nothing so narrows the horizon as sacerdotalism. In God's
good grace John Wesley was saved by his mother's prayer
of dedication after his peril of the Epworth fire ; by this
grace he was led through the Moravians from the hard wilder-
ness of Church system to the fair Canaan of free grace.
There is no more astonishing feature of the lives of the brothers
than that, with such a mother and such an ancestry, they yet
grew into such devotees of sacerdotalism.

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It is also the way of some Anglican writers to belittle the
event which Wesley himself termed his conversion. True,
in after years he qualified the terms by the saying that " he
possessed the faith of a servant but not of a son." It was a
day of deep mark upon the sands of his life. It is foolish to
deprecate it. Of course, Wesley never had, like hosts of his
converts, a dark moral gulf to leap. Whatever it was, it
was not less than a divine revelation, a spiritual, mystical
affiliation to God — a new birth of conscious pardon, relief,
assurance and power — the " witness within."

Canon Overton says, "If John Wesley was not a true
Christian in Georgia, God help millions of those who profess
and call themselves Christians " — a deft way of putting the
High Church position, but why not date from his ordination
and Holy Club days ? Wesley spoke for himself. Is not the
matter one for definition ? We are here concerned less with
individuals than with the character and fruits of a system.
It is needless to say that there is no warrant in the New
Testament for assuming that the formal acts of episcopal
Churches relating to baptism and confirmation necessarily
imply conversion — this must be of the Spirit. It is instructive
to reflect on Paul's experience at Ephesus. He met with
"certain disciples" baptised "unto John's baptism" who
had " not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost."
They were on the wrong side of their Pentecost. Is it not
true to-day, that there are " millions " who " profess "
discipleship who are yet as these Ephesians ? There is a
believing which is not the equivalent of receiving. Where
are the " millions " or indeed thousands, with equal resolute
renunciation, intensity of single purpose, of earnest longing,
praying and seeking as possessed Wesley ? Yet here lies
the crux of the matter — the earnest mind to know God, who
judgeth not in millions though baptised, but will search and
judge one by one. There it must rest. After his " new
birth " Wesley's belief, teaching, and preaching changed in
their whole current and emphasis from the sacramental to the
sacrificial. To Wesley the event was more than conversion,
it was emancipation from a long thraldom ; even more, it
was the divine sanction to the vision of his life.

Only when a soul has done with its own fighting and won
peace for itself can it " dream dreams " of salvation triumphs
for others. Probably Wesley's vision assumed definite form
at Herrnhut, when he beheld the brethren in such sweet unity,

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such abandon of heavenly demeanour, and exclaimed,
" When shall this Christianity cover the earth as the waters
cover the sea ! "

I have tried to exhibit step by step the progress and con-
summation of Wesley's spiritual course ; for just as Wesley
stood at the centre of the great revival, so these stood at the
centre of himself, the fount of his power. Upon Wesley's
personal experience — the witness within, sure as Paul's and
vivid as Luther's — was founded the soul of Wesley- an-ism,
and upon this Methodism.

THE NEW HISTORY OF METHODISM — WESLEY'S TEACHING

" A New History of Methodism " which does for Methodism,
though far less completely, what Dr. Masson does for Milton,
opens with an introductory chapter on the " Foundations of
Methodism." Though the ordinary reader may feel much of
it somewhat far away, and also that most other " isms " may
claim the same foundation, yet he will find the chapter most
interesting and informing. But space is my tyrant, and holds
me around Wesley's own teaching.

On the basis of repentance, proved by ceasing from sin,
there follows justification by faith, experienced not merely
as an intellectual process, but also as a moral persuasion and
a spiritual venture. " God in justifying us does something
for us " " in forgiving our sins " ; this is succeeded by sancti-
fication of the life, when, " in begetting us again, He does the
work in us " " in renewing our fallen nature," which is the
" new birth." " By justification, instead of enemies we
become children ; by sanctification, instead of sinners we
become saints ; the first restores us to the favour, the other
to the image of God." " By salvation," says Wesley, " I
mean not merely deliverance from hell and going to heaven,
but present deliverance from sin, the recovery of the divine
nature." Further, religion must issue in " fruit." "Funda-
mentals " are " the faith that works by love which by means of
the love of God and our neighbour produces both inward and
outward holiness." But from this common evangelical base
there emerged traits more distinctive of Methodism, viz.,
the doctrine of conversion as a fact, with the assurance of it,
known and felt and read of men, evidenced not alone by
correct moral walk, but also by deeds of love and active effort
in saving others — the fruitage of holiness. The idea or fact of
individual experience was, of course, the great mark of the

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Reformation, emphasized by Puritan Calvinism, and enlarged
and refined by the early Independents and Baptists. But
this Methodist doctrine of assurance was away from that
of Calvinistic predestination. Loosed from credal chains,
it soared into a sunny spaciousness of illimitable hope and
blessing. Wesley humanised English Puritan Protestantism
by grafting upon it a vivified Arminianism, by which the
pivot was changed from divine arbitrary decrees, to man's will,
from the intellect to the conscience and the heart, from dogma
to life, and through these comes, and is heard, the gracious call
of " Whosoever will." This was the soul of Wesley's evangel.

A GREAT DISCOVERY—A JOYOUS PROCLAMATION

Wesley's gospel reasserted, in the natural sense, that
" God is love," and the proclamation of this gracious truth
was the forerunner of the fuller vision of the Fatherhood
of God, with its vast remodelling of the structure of Protestant
belief. This proclamation and offer of free salvation for every
one and as a conscious possession, wondrous and conquering,
blessed and joyous, clad Wesley and his preachers with con-
fident strength and puissant might to march through the land
in unflinching battle against the whole kingdom of Satan.

In the power of this kingly gospel he awakened, not alone the
dead to life, but also dormant Dissent and Established Church
formalism; and the religious life of the whole nation was
quickened. It was the force behind many movements of
immeasureable blessing. The swell of the evangelical tide
reached far into the nineteenth century, slowly undermined
the granite walls of Calvinism, and inspired a galaxy of
eloquent preachers, apart from Methodism, whose names are
still held saintly and are unexcelled. In structure Methodism
is grandly Protestant.

I ought to mention the doctrine of Christian Perfection as
one dear to Methodism. By this Wesley did not mean a
perfection from ignorance, error, temptation, etc., but he did
mean something very real — such a degree of holiness as to be
free from the yoke of outward sin, of evil temper, and even evil
desire. It encountered ridicule. The doctrine was taken
over from Quakerism, and had been a bone of contention for
nearly a hundred years.

Nothing in his message aroused such enraged bitterness
and odium against George Fox as this, and he preached it with
all the more insistence,

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All the world knows of John Wesley's work. It stands forth
a visible, tangible, grandly living force. But not in equal
degree does it know of the man — the clay and its shaping by
the Divine potter — and for this reason I have assigned so much
of my precious space to the personal side. A battle may
change a dynasty in a day, but a nation not in a century.
Our commander's commission is to conquer nations, and this,
in the main, Wesley achieved by a fifty years' war of intrepid
campaigns and masterful strategy.

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN WESLEY'S DAY

And what kingdoms to conquer ! Large tiacts of the
country were wastes, forests, moors, fens, and swamps.
Cultivation and roads, as we think of them, barely existed.
A succession of rapacious Enclosing Acts were smuggled
through Parliament, robbing the people of their rights of
usage and pasture on open commons and wastes, and entailing
a practical serfdom on village life. As to its humanity, I
wonder if the reader has ever turned the leaves of Hogarth's
" Complete Works " with a hundred plates. There, in one
evening, he will read a history of England more illuminating
than bulky volumes of letterpress.

The sordid horrors, the squalid gin-sodden creatures in
human form, the brutish animalism, the dark pit of pagan
iniquity ! Reaction had reached its baleful climax. Every
sixth house in London was a grog-shop. Swinging sign-
boards promised to make " drunk for a penny, dead drunk
for twopence, with clean straw for nothing." Nearly every-
thing was taxed, and everything smuggled. One in five of the
common people ended life in the workhouse. The squires
were mostly coarse and ignorant, and willing agents for
administering vicious laws. Amusements were cruel and
degrading. Much of prison life was too horrible to describe.
To walk the city at night was a terror and peril of horrible
outrage which the common sight of felons dangling from the
gallows by the half dozen was powerless to stop. The
invention of street lamps succeeded where the gallows failed.
If I were asked to choose one word to express the antichrist
spirit of the time I think it would be cruelty.

Unbelief and materialism were aggressive and satirical.
The Established Church lay in salaried and torpid death
— head, heart and hand. Says Southey, " The people were as
ignorant of real Christianity as in the days of Romish

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idolatry. The greater part of the nation was totally unedu-
cated, being for the most part in a state of heathen, or worse
than heathen ignorance." We are further told " that some of
the most distinguished coxcombs, debauchees and gamesters at
the watering places and all places of public resort are young
men of the sacerdotal order."

Gladstone has declared that " the preaching of the Gospel had
disappeared, not by denial, but by lapse, from the majority of
Anglican pulpits." The selfish pluralist, the worldly absentee
and the bucolic, fox-hunting parson were a commonplace.
A Duchess was indignant when told she must be saved as the
common people were. But a change is ordained and the man
and the hour have met.

THE MIGHTY WHITEFIELD — WEEPING COLLIERS

In resuming our narrative we must look backward a moment.
Just now a star was rising before whose brilliance even that
of Wesley paled. Whitefield, at Wesley's request, had sailed
to Georgia, embarking only the day before his own
arrival home. Previous to this voyage Whitefield's preaching
had drawn crowded congregations. He had now returned to
collect money for an orphanage, but quickly found the churches
shut to his earnest voice. But his heart throbbed with the
passion of his message, and remembering his Master's example,
so natural and unconventional, by lake and lane and mountain
side, he, on February lyth, 1739, preached in the open air to
the colliers at Kingswood, and two hundred hearers grew to
twenty thousand. Tears washed white gutters down their black
faces and from a wild race, the terror of Bristol, they were
subdued into good Christians. He writes to Wesley to come over
to Bristol and help him, taking charge while he goes further
afield. But Wesley's energies are also aglow and have found
outlet in London, and, though in a quieter way, a holy en-
thusiasm is begotten. He replies describing a week's work.
After a crowded preaching at St. Katharine's "the fields after
service are white with people praising God." Each day is
full of business with house, parlour and society meetings.
How shall he leave these many bands of eager, seeking souls ?
In emergency and doubt the Wesleys had adopted the Mor-
avian custom of opening their Bibles, and taking the first text
which met the eye as divine direction. The omens were not
at first favourable, but later it was decided by lot that Wesley
should join Whitefield.

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A REVOLUTION — WESLEY BEGINS FIELD PREACHING

On Sunday, April ist, he stands by Whitefield at a preaching.
A sight, never beheld before, meets his eyes and tumultuous
emotions fill his soul. In wistful musing the same evening
he expounds the Sermon on the Mount at the Society meeting.
At four the following afternoon he " submitted to be more
vile," and from a little eminence preached to three thousand
people ; his text is felicitous : " The spirit of the Lord is upon
me because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the
poor."

To Wesley this event was more than liberation from eccle-
siastical bonds, it was the investiture of a new power ; even
more, it was the date of a revolution in his career, pregnant
with new openings and ideals, the beginning of a movement
of vast forces and glorious achievement. Already a wider
vision dawns than that of Church system, for of the text of
this first field sermon he asks, "Is it possible that any one
should be ignorant that it is fulfilled in every true minister of
Christ ? " How gloriously proved during the next half century !

It is easy for us to underrate the high courage displayed in
this first outdoor preaching. He tells us : " I could scarce
reconcile myself at first to this strange way — having been all
my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating
to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving
of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church."

In Bristol, Bath and district he preaches, it would seem,
every day, and on Sunday three times. His morning congre-
gation at seven o'clock often numbers five or six thousand.
Society meetings, love feasts, etc., fill the evenings.

He established several societies, and the foundation stone
was laid of the first Methodist preaching place. As under the
preaching of Fox, so now strange scenes confront Wesley of
men and women seized by convulsions or crying aloud in tears
as in agonies of death, or falling down shouting as if possessed
by an evil spirit. While he was preaching at Bath, then in
its zenith, that pompous king of fashions, Beau Nash,
interrupts with vowed intent of ridicule, but retires discomfited.

But there is confusion in London, and leaving Bristol on
June nth, he exclaims, " Oh, how God has renewed my
strength." His conversion at Aldersgate Street gave power ;
only second in importance for his message was this conversion
as to method of work. He modestly stops at the " wings

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and eagles " (Isaiah xl. 31), but the grandeur of the whole
promise is with him. There looms before him a veritable new
creation of power, and his heart leaps for joy.

FIRST TROUBLE — AN ILLUSTRIOUS TRIO

On the day of his arrival in London he nrst seeks his mother
and quiets her heart as to erroneous reports of his doctrine,
then confers with the society at Fetter Lane and restores peace,
and the day after, he stands with Whitefield before some
fourteen thousand people on Blackheath, preaching in his
friend's stead. On the morning of the Sunday following
he preaches at Moorfields to seven thousand and in the
evening to fifteen thousand people on Kennington Common.
Charles, driven from his curacy, overcomes his scruples and
also joins in open-air services.

There now occurs a conjunction, such as Britain never before
beheld in her history. Indeed can the reader recall the like
since the day of Paul and Apollos ? We see the prince of
preachers, the wondrous orator in sacred things ; the strong,
searching, scholarly evangelist ; the sweet singer of Israel —
an illustrious trio possessed and inspired by the two most
tremendous facts of human destiny, sin and redemption,
and sworn together in the power of Jehovah to blaze them
forth to all people the land through. Wesley, in this year of
1739, journeys often to Bristol, Oxford and around, and the
great revival has begun.

The movement soon made necessary a large central meet-
ing place with a roof. Near Finsbury Square was a disused
Government foundry, forty yards in frontage by thirty-two
deep, a wilderness of a place. This was taken on a long lease,
shaped into habitableness, galleried, benched with one
thousand five hundred seats, adapted behind with schoolroom,
band room, class rooms, book room, preacher's house, etc.
No seats were allotted, all were free and open, and men and
women sat apart. This became Wesley's home, and the
head quarters of Methodism until 1778, when City Road
Chapel was built.

Wesley is soon faced with troubles, distressing and perplex-
ing. His old friends at Fetter Lane are again at bitter feud.
A Moravian minister, Mr. Molther, had come amongst them ;
who objected to the " sighing and the groaning, their whining
and howling," and also taught that Bohler's teaching was
wrong ; that saving faith must always carry clear and full

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assurance, and the way to find it was by " stillness " ; and
that means of grace, reading the Scriptures, good works,
even prayer, were all alike needless. Wesley, with the skill
of an expert, exposed the fallacy of the extravagance, and
peace again ruled ; but later the " vain jangling " burst
out stronger than ever, and even the ordinances were
questioned. Wesley now strikes " at the root of the grand
delusion " in a sermon from the text " Stand ye in the way,
ask for the old paths."

SEPARATION FROM THE MORAVIANS

He is accused " that he will have the glory of doing all
things." The majority resolve that he shall no more preach
among them, but he boldly appears the next Sunday, reads a
summary of the dispute, declares the new teaching to be flatly
opposed to Scripture, and bids all who so think to follow him,
and instantly withdraws with nineteen followers. Thus it
was that in 1741 the first Methodist society became Moravian
in type. Wesley never was a Moravian. In two years
London Methodists numbered near two thousand, the
Moravians about seventy only.

This teaching of Molther's I surmise was a blend of English
Quakerism and German pietism, a plant of perilous fruit.
Fox had carried his evangel among high circles in Germany
and convened a " general assembly " there so late as 1684.
Wesley's Georgia comrades, Ingham and Delamotte, remained
at Fetter Lane, with other old High Church friends who
thought Wesley at his conversion either a hypocrite or mad.

The rupture was painful, yet was taken with clear sanity
and manly courage. Thus ended the direct Moravian influence
on Wesley, but its spirit and impress never left him, nor the
community he founded. Moravianism is the distinctive
thing in Methodism which she must hold fast if she would have
a mission of her very own. He often spoke kindly of the
Moravian Church and said it contained the best Christians in
the world. His translations of their hymns are among the
noblest in our hymnology. Their burden is deep, intense,
personal devotion to the crucified Saviour. In taking fare-
well of the Moravians, I will remind the reader of the strange
ways of history, her sure grace of reward. Anne of Bohemia,
wife of our King Richard II., becomes an ardent disciple of
Wyclif. Jerome of Prague and other of her countrymen come
to her Court, and take back the new doctrines. Huss learns

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them and becomes their earnest preacher and martyr. The
Moravian descendants of Huss are the appointed instruments
in the conversion of both the Wesleys.

SEPARATION FROM WHITEFIELD

Another separation was impending, even more painful than
that from the Moravians. Whitefield, the spiritual child of
the Wesleys, was to them as Jonathan was to David. He had
probably always been Calvinistic. The Wesleys were always
Arminian, for this was necessary to the sacramental position.
It was the secret of Laud's ferocity. The souls of the dogmas
were far older than their modern names. The two were
ancient foes, and ran alongside through the generations as
foils to each other, as poison or antidote according to the
point of view. Both had ground and proof in Scripture,
and both could trace abundant analogy in the philosophy of
history and human life. The thing was too ancient, deep and
great to be long put off by fair words, and Wesley seems to
have fired the first heavy shot, by a sermon in the summer of
1739. I give a sample of his artillery, " Here I fix my foot —
you represent God as worse than the devil." This sermon
was preached during the Moravian trouble, indeed the two were
mixed. Calvinism was spreading and converts reproached
Wesley for not preaching election ; the sermon was his reply.
He probably saw signs of the awful presumption of antino-
mianism. The dispute continued for nearly two years by
means of verses, pamphlets, letters and rival sermons. Pro-
fessions of truce between the chiefs fell to pieces, chiefly
through embittered followers who minced not their words.

Cennick, afterwards the hymn writer, who had acquired
much sway among the Kingswood colliers, took the Calvin-
istic side and stirred up strife. He and others alleged that
both the Wesleys preached popery ; their sermons were
ridiculed and themselves railed at. The societies here were
being rent asunder, and rupture was inevitable. Wesley
gathered his own remnants of the scattered flocks, and by his
patient firmness and Christian tact, allied to his superior
gift of organisation, began to find himself the head of a
coherent and manageable body of adherents.

Thus was born Wesleyan Methodism. So late as August,
1743, he summoned Charles for conference, and for peace was
willing to make concession. But neither the Moravians nor
Whitefield would take part. He could not force, but he

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could and did say, "You may read Whitefield against
Wesley, but never Wesley against Whitefield." Such a
spirit must conquer, and the personal breach was soon
entirely healed.

All great movements are mixed in motive and aim ; perhaps
never was one kept more single and pure than this of Wesleyan
Methodism. Wesley was never given to boggle at shades of
doctrine ; correct belief was good, but godly conduct better.
He did not admit that he separated from his late friends on
Predestination, or indeed on doctrinal points at all, but from
infractions of society rule and discipline, which could easily
lead to practical anarchy.

Perhaps at no time in his long career did he prove his wisdom,
strength and decision more than now at its threshold. Even
Charles had wobbled during the Moravian crisis.

WHITEFIELD — PRINCE OF PREACHERS — SERAPHIC ORATOR

It should be remembered that, in these earlier years of the
Methodist drama, Whitefield and not Wesley played the prin-
cipal part. Possibly, also, more than Wesley he was the
instrument in revitalising the Nonconforming churches. No
man ever preached to greater multitudes, often of 20,000 to
30,000. The collier and noble alike were held spell-bound.
The organ music of his voice could be heard, on a still evening,
for a mile. Men of every sort and condition, the highly-
gifted themselves acclaimed him the seraphic orator, the
king of preachers. Wesley declared him " perhaps unequalled
since the days of the Apostles." Garrick avowed he could
make an audience weep by his manner of pronouncing the
word " Mesopotamia." His magnetic power, his exalted
eloquence, his splendour of outward gifts were but the reflec-
tion of the inward intensity and solemnity of his message.
His power never waned, it was as great at fifty as at thirty,
and was perhaps greatest in America, where he died, in 1770,
aged 56. His dying request that Wesley should preach his
funeral sermon was reverently obeyed in Tottenham Court
Road Chapel.

It is the nature of great spiritual movements to grow and
expand to their destiny unconsciously. It is singular that in
the great organisation covered by his name hardly any detail
owes its birth to Wesley himself. He tells us there was " no
previous design or plan at all ; but that everything arose just
as occasion offered."

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THE GREAT QUEST — THE RISE OF METHODISM

In his early days of soul unrest at Oxford, Wesley, like
George Fox, went a long journey in the mist in quest of " a
serious man " to show him the way of peace. More fortunate
than George, he found his prophet. " Sir," he was told,
" you are to serve God and go to heaven. Remember you
cannot serve Him alone, you must, therefore find companions
or make them ; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion."
His budding ascetic notions fled, for the words had flashed a
new and revolutionary ideal — a text of life — and Methodism
is the ever-living sermon.

" Religious societies " in the Church of England were a
feature in his father's time, but fell into disuse. The Holy
Club was probably a survival. Wesley records that " the
first rise of Methodism was in November, 1729, when four of us
met at Oxford ; the second at Savannah, when twenty or thirty
persons met in my house ; the last in London." This society in
London, at Bohler's suggestion, would therefore be in happy
harmony with Wesley's mind. It first met at the house of
Wesley's friend, James Hutton, near Temple Bar, on May
ist, 1738, but was soon transferred to Fetter Lane. The
original number was ten. The reader already knows the
cause of the two separations.

Before the breach at Fetter Lane a small company of
awakened souls at the Foundry clung to Wesley, and desired
his personal prayers and guidance. Taking their names and
abodes for private visitation he quickly finds the work im-
possible. What shall he do ? He bids them " come together,"
" every Thursday in the evening," when he " will gladly
spend some time " with them, and " advise them how to flee
from the wrath to come." The watchwords were " Strengthen
you one another;" "Talk together;" "Pray together;"
" Endure to the end and be saved." To these brethren,
with fifty women, and twenty-five men from Fetter Lane who
had now joined Wesley at the Foundry, it would seem, belongs
the honour of being the first true Methodist Society — Church,
I will name it. As societies were formed they were graded
into " bands " or " select bands " of not less than five or more
than ten, who were the more advanced disciples, for closer
privacy of fellowship, the more freely " to confess your
faults one to another." Married men met together, and
single men met together ; there was the same rule for the

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women. At Bristol, where several societies existed, a large
debt remained on the " preaching house." At a meeting in
February, 1742, a Captain Foy stood up, and suggested that
every member should pay a penny a week until the debt was
paid, but objected one, " Many can't afford." Foy replied,
" Then put eleven of the poorest with me." He will call
on each weekly. If all pay, well — if not, he will make good.
In the like way he demanded " Each of you call upon eleven
of your neighbours weekly." The idea took on, the collector
was named a "leader," his flock "a class." From this fiscal
device there quickly evolved a spiritual service of blessed and
unlimited potency. The leaders detected " disorderly
walkers" and informed Wesley, who at once cried, "This is
the very thing we have wanted so long." He called together
the leaders and desired them to " watch behaviour."

Some gave up evil ways, others were expelled. But dis-
cipline is the lesser part of Christian brotherhood, and the
leaders were enjoined also to " advise, reprove, comfort, and
exhort as occasion may require." The new method was in-
troduced in London and other places with vast benefit.

TWIN CORNER STONES — CLASS MEETINGS — LAY PASTORATE

The pastoral care of the societies had rested solely upon
the two Wesleys ; the task was impossible. It had also been
found inexpedient for leaders to make weekly money calls,
and a growing longing was natural for closer sympathy, and
spiritual fellowship.

It was, therefore, arranged that the class unit should meet
together under its leader for an hour or two every week. Thus
were shaped, thus well and duly laid, the twin corner stones of
Methodism — the class meeting and the lay pastorate ; the
flock and its under shepherd, himself near and always on watch.

Wesley declared : "It can scarcely be conceived what
advantages have been reaped from this little prudential
regulation ; many now happily experienced that Christian
fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before."
Already at the Foundry the Society steward of finance had
emerged.

The visitation of the classes by Wesley or his preachers,
and the use of a quarterly ticket of membership followed as
aids to status, discipline and coherence. The love-feasts,
taken over from the Moravians, were at first restricted to
the " bands," but later were open to all the society. The

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watch-nights were begun by the colliers to save themselves
from the ale-house on Saturday nights. Wesley saw for himself,
and wisely took them over. They were first held monthly,
then quarterly, and later on the last night only of the year.

The steps to circuits or groups of societies and their linking
up into "united societies" inevitably followed.

" IT IS THE LORD." — THE INSTITUTION OF PREACHERS

The preachers arose like everything else naturally and
necessarily. Cennick, in the summer of 1739, with Wesley's
approval, was regularly preaching to the Kingswood colliers,
but when Wesley heard that Thomas Maxwell, a remarkable
convert, whom he had left at the Foundry as expounder, had
blossomed into the preacher, he hurried to London in tragic
alarm to stop him.

Godly women stopped Wesley. Lady Huntingdon and
Mrs. Canning cried, " At your peril, Mr. Wesley." His
mother said with earnest gaze, " John, take care ; he is as
truly called to preach as you are. Examine what have been
the fruits." The son obeyed and avowed, " It is the Lord ;
let Him do what seemeth Him good."

The first Conference was held at the Foundry from June
25-30, 1744, and was composed of six clergymen and four
lay-preachers. In five years the Methodist economy was
developed, and remains substantially unchanged to this day.
The whole creation took the form of a Presbyterian body ;
its breath of life a Methodist soul, bright, eager, mobile. Thus
is the whole Church of Methodism built, broad-based and
balanced upon spiritual sanctions and social instincts, gripping
the whole entity of life, ever distilling a saving salt, to preserve
it alike from sacerdotal formalism or doctrinal complacency
and sloth. A " body fitly framed together," " building itself
up in love," it shall flourish when kings and kingdoms perish.
Wesley might not have accepted these democratic develop-
ments of Church policy had he not been well read in early
Church history, and therein found analogies. He had also,
when at Herrnhut, seen a similar system in actual operation,
and was profoundly impressed by the preaching of Christian
David, an unordained carpenter. At this time he seems
strangely unacquainted with the principles of his grandfather,
John Westley, otherwise Methodism at its formative stage
might have received a graft still more democratic, and been
saved in later generations from troublous feuds.

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

" I LOOK UPON ALL THE WORLD AS MY PARISH "

Up to the spring of 1742, the work of the Wesleys was mainly
confined to London and Bristol, but these great centres of
Methodism did not owe their beginnings to them. Oxford
and other intervening towns were touched, and also parts of
Wales. This was the birth year of missionary Wesleyan
Methodism. This year it plumed its wings for a first bold
flight.

John Nelson, a convert of Wesley's at Moorfields, returned
to Birstal, his Yorkshire home, and began to preach in his
house. Soon the audience became a crowd, with the door-step
as pulpit. The vilest profligates and drunkards were broken
in repentance, and the face of the whole town was changed.

Nelson besought Wesley's help ; responding, he took the
journey, heard from the heroic stonemason the wonderful
story of his fifteen months' work. After preaching at Birstal,
Wesley pushes on to Newcastle ; colliers are there, and he
hopes to get at them. During a short walk he is shocked at
its terrible wickedness ; the town is indeed " ripe," says he,
" for Him who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."

At seven next morning — a May Sunday, 1742 — with John
Taylor, his travelling companion, he takes stand in " the most
contemptible part of the town." They begin to sing ; three or
four figures pop out and stare, and before the service is over
they have swelled to teens of hundreds. ' ' He was wounded for
our transgressions " is the burden of his message. Seeing their
gaping amazement, the preacher announces his name, and
that he will again preach in the afternoon. At the time an
uncountable multitude had assembled ; strong as is his voice,
he cannot reach one half, as he sends forth the gracious words
of his text, " I will heal their backslidings, I will love them
freely." " After preaching," says he, " the poor people were
ready to tread me under foot out of pure love and kindness."
They beseech him to stay a few days — one day ? — he cannot,
and is off at three on Monday morning.

Riding into Knaresborough, a young man tells him there is
a flame in the town through words spoken by him when
passing through to Newcastle. A woman states that five or
six at her house are under conviction. Wesley halts an hour
for prayer with them. He stays at Birstal a few days, arriving
at his native Epworth on Saturday night.

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SHUT FROM HIS FATHER'S CHURCH — HIS MOTHER'S DEATH

Next morning he offers to assist at prayers or preaching,
but the drunken curate will have none of his help. At another
visit this man refused the Communion to Wesley, declaring
" he is not fit." Not to be foiled, Taylor, in the churchyard,
now gives out that Wesley will preach there at six. At that
hour, standing upon his father's tombstone, he preaches the
gospel of the free grace he loves. He cannot resist the appeal
to proclaim it in the villages around. Old memories are
awakened and, entreated again, he stays seven days more, and
each evening preaches from his father's grave. The popular
imagination is fired, and it is a week of sacred wonders. On
Saturday night, many of the audience drop down as dead.
At times Wesley's voice is drowned by the cries of those
seeking peace.

On the last Sunday a vast multitude gathers, and he
continues among them for three hours, " and yet we scarce
knew how to part." A mighty awakening had shaken the old
home, of which, long years later, the preacher had grateful
proof.

Pushing on now to Sheffield, thence to Bristol, he arrives
in London to find his mother dying. In three days, on
August 23rd, she " fell asleep."

Her five daughters were by her bedside, but Charles was on a
preaching tour. " Children," said the old saint, " as soon as
I am released, sing a psalm of praise." Her last years were
spent in her son's apartments at the Foundry. Only as a
Methodist, she avowed, had she received the full assurance of
peace — the confession is indeed remarkable. The same
grace came once when the cup of Sacrament was being given
with the words, " The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which
was given for thee " — " when the words," she tells us, " struck
my heart, and I knew God for Christ's sake had forgiven me
all my sins."

An innumerable company gathered at her burial in Bunhill
Fields. Great was the mourning. Wesley addressed the
concourse from the words, " I saw a great white throne, and
Him that sat upon it ; from whose face the earth and the
heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God ; and
the books were opened, and the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books, according to their

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works." The preacher records, " It was one of the most
solemn assemblies I ever saw, or expect to see, on this side
eternity."

A VENTURE ON GOD — THE FIRST MISSIONARY CHAPEL

During the next three months Wesley travelled between
London and Bristol five times. In November he starts for
Newcastle, where he is held for six weeks constantly preaching
in town and district. He is determined to house and settle
his converts, and lay a sure foundation of a stronghold for
God in the North.

Bravely overcoming obstacles, the first stone of a preaching
house is laid, December 20th, to cost £700 ; £i 6s. only is in
hand. Scoffers say that he will never see the roof timbers. " I
was of another mind," says he, " nothing doubting but as it
was begun for God's sake, He would provide what was needful
for the finishing it." " Great is thy faith ! " thinks a Quaker,
for the Spirit moves him to send a hundred pounds, and in
three months Wesley preaches in the roofed shell. It is
named the " Orphan House," to keep fresh a fragrant memory
of Herrnhut.

So eager were the colliers to hear Wesley, that after evening
service they would sleep upon the benches until the morning
sermon.

By the end of this first year of large missionary enterprise,
societies were established in the counties of Northumberland,
Somerset, Wiltshire, Gloucester, Leicester, Warwick, Notting-
ham, and in Southern Yorkshire. By 1744 Wesley commanded
a faithful band of forty earnest lay preachers. Sometimes
the wind of mystery, which "bloweth where it listeth,"
would carry the evangel, and an informal society would
strangely arise ; at Leeds one slyly declared, " We took in
Mr. Wesley, and not he us."

After this sample page of organising itinerancy, I must take
stock.

DESPAIR OF BIOGRAPHERS — TRAVELLER, PREACHER — LONGINGS

The object of my story is, by panoramic fact, to sketch the
man and his Divine moulding, rather than his vast labours
in building the fabric of the Methodist Church.

Wesley's itinerancy is the despair of biographers. For fifty
years he flits and flies with bewildering swiftness, seemingly
a maze without a plan — no, indeed, every stage is mapped,

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every round arranged, and more carefully so than we can
now know. After the age of thirty-six he travelled 250,000
miles and preached 40,000 sermons, often to 20,000 listeners at
once, The mere physical achievement is so stupendous that it
cannot be realised, and let us never forget that Wesley's
preaching was not as ours of to-day ; often it was suffused with
a very agony of warning, sympathy, pleading, it was a burden
of the heart, a solemn trust, an impelling impulse, incessant
as the morn, unceasing with the night ; with Whitefield
he could exclaim, " O that I could fly from pole to pole to
preach the everlasting Gospel." Yet is he human ; here is a
snap-shot. It is March, 1759, he is at the Foundry, resting,
musing ; " How pleasing," he records, " would it be to flesh
and blood to remain at this quiet place, where we have at
length weathered the storm ; nay, I am not to consult my
own ease, but the advancing of the Kingdom of God." The
soliloquy suggests that storm is still afield. There are other
wistful longings for the quieter life. Under date August,
1775, while a guest in Lancashire, he reflects thus : " How
willingly could I spend the residue of a busy life in this
delightful retirement — but up and be doing. Labour on till
' death sings a requiem to the parting soul.' ': Once idly
waiting he notes that he has " lost ten minutes for ever."

THE MARVELLOUS RECORDS — WESLEY'S JOURNALS AND DIARIES

Wesley's Diaries and Journals are surely the most marvellous
records of a life in all literature. Vast in bulk, the bare fact
of their production by so busy a scribe is only less astonishing
than the story they tell. In them, at pleasure, he could view
a long gallery of portraits of himself, and embracing every
period of his life. They offer abundant material for half-a-
dozen lives. Where to begin ? where to end ? is the puzzle
of biographers.

Has the reader seen any volumes of the new Standard
Edition of Wesley's Journals, now being edited by the Rev.
Nehemiah Curnock ? This edition vastly increases the wonder
of their bulk. Wesley wrote his Diaries by cryptic methods
of shorthand, puzzling abbreviation and a cipher, this last
baffling as a Babylonian tablet. Its key was only recently
solved by a dream of the editor's — quite a romance of literature.
Wesley began his Diaries at twenty-two, and they grew to
a record almost of every hour.

Padding gives place to shorthand ; open hap- hazard as one

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may, yet the page tells of restless step and strenuous work.
Through snow and storm, winter and summer, on days wet
or dry, cold or hot, by bad roads, good roads, or no roads at
all, onward he must march, for there are waiting multitudes
ahead expectant and eager to see his face and hear his message
to-day, and the same to-morrow further ahead still. He is
ever ready at early morn, at noon or night, and only by the
act of God will he disappoint. At a push he will travel from
fifty to eighty miles in a day, and preach twice and thrice and
still be fresh. This and more for over fifty years.

Think also of the heart care — the spiritual burden of his
people, never lifted, of the hundred mundane perplexities
ever growing, never ending ; of Connexional affairs, of the
persecution of brutal mobs, even to occasional peril of life, of
the shy looks from Dissenters, of open hostility from his
brother clergy, and the scowls of bishops.

So early as 1738 nearly every pulpit in the Church he so
loved was closed to him. Numberless are the adventure s of
his journeyings by horse and boat, by sea and land, of
accidents and incidents, amusing, alarming, exciting and
inspiring as romance. He always looked an enemy full in
the face. His unflinching courage, with unfailing tact, saved
him in many a mob peril.

In his veteran years his visits were like gala days. Troops
of friends would meet him, and for miles escort him in
triumphal procession.

For over thirty years he travelled his round by horse, giving
the rein to his steed, which he says never stumbled, and doing
his reading on saddle, yet he never lost his early zest for
walking. About 1777, his friends provided a coach ; this
was fitted for books and in this novel study his practice was
to spend ten hours a- day in reading, writing and meditation.
Strange as it sounds, most of his waking life was lived in
solitude. His long and lonely rides were as " living water "
to restore his soul, an ever- fresh spring of renewing grace
and power.

He was a good sailor, crossed the Atlantic twice, the Irish
Channel forty- two times, often to the Isle of Man, and paid
three visits to the Continent. On travel, he was a wise and
happy comrade and a delightful guest. Wesley was a great
pioneer of popular literature, and by his preachers an inestim-
able boon of cheap, good books and penny tracts was spread
throughout the land. Himself a considerable author,

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John Wesley

his first series of fifty-three sermons, along with his " Notes

on the New Testament" form the doctrinal standard of

Methodism.

He was a warm friend of John Howard and of prison reform.

HIS LAST LETTER — A NOBLE OUTBURST

A hater of slavery, his last letter was a noble and trenchant
outburst of encouragement to Wilberforce. An educationalist,
— Kingswood School for his preachers' children was ever dear
to his heart. Philanthropy was of the blood of Methodism —
I think it is true to say that it gave to the nation a new vision
of this primal Christian privilege.

It is said that Wesley himself dispensed in charity during
his life £30,000. At eighty- two he trudged London streets
for five days, often ankle deep in snow, collecting £200 where-
with to clothe the poor. What a vivid glimpse of the man !
He established dispensaries and banks for the poor.

In mature age the wonder and mystery of childhood were
revealed to him and his heart filled with reverence for little
ones — what, in God's grace and ordering in due time, just
one might do ? He loved to take them upon his knees and
stroke away their little troubles, and teach them to love one
another. He carried a stock of bright new coins for gifts to
them.

Wesley was short of stature, barely five feet six inches.
Not an ounce of needless flesh encumbered his wiry frame,
which balanced only eight stone ten pounds. He possessed
an impressive face, aquiline nose and piercing eyes. In youth
his hair was black, in age snowy white. He allowed no velvet
or silken thing upon him, and preached in gown and cassock
even in the open air. He was scrupulously neat in person ;
the same in habit and method of work, he had no slovenly
bothers, nor lost books or scraps. Says he, " I have no time
to be in a hurry." " I do one thing at a time and do it with
all my might," f or " I have no time to do things over again."
Always cheerful and affable, he could not recall ever being
' ' low in spirits for a quarter of an hour in his life." He forgets
Georgia.

His sermons and applications were too earnest to be slovenly.
He early began a practised study in simple words and style —
direct, pithy, hitting the mark — that the common folk might
take in hand and store his message. Sometimes the Spirit
descended, and the preaching would go on for two and three

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hours. In old age it seldom exceeded a half-an-hour. He
was instinctively the gentleman in everything and to every
one. Blessed is the Church with the heritage of such an
examplar.

THE BUILDING OF METHODISM — THE WORKMAN

There were always a few clergymen, earnest and saintly, who
stood a friendly stay to Methodism. But next to the Wesleys
came the unordained preachers as the makers of Methodism.
His famous twelve rules for them bristle with sanctified
wisdom ; each was supplied with a library, value at least five
pounds, which he was bound to use for several hours each
day. The preacher's appointment was due far more to his
own soul's experience of religion and Bible truth, with a
knack of speech, than to his learning. His conversation would
probably read like a paragraph in the Acts. He goes forth
to preach a Faith strong as to remove mountains, a Hope
glowing as the ceaseless dawn and a Love great as God. See
him enter the village astride his trusty nag (mercy to his
beast is a Methodist doctrine, sealed by Conference), his
saddle is bulky, not with his scanty wardrobe, but with books,
for he is bookman and newsman to his circuit world. The
folk know who he is from his dress — a mixture of the Puritan
and parson. He wears a darkish blue long cloak, frock-
shaped, with high stiff collar — an obvious shield from storm
and a sly one from missiles. He displays a snow white linen
neck-stock of orthodox amplitude, and family usage may or
may not prescribe knee breeches and a three cornered hat.
While his face is always bare, his hair may rest upon his
shoulders, and if aged, a large wig aids dignity.

Standing on the village green, or marching up the high
street of the market town, in lusty tones he sends forth
gladsome music in some such words as —

O for a thousand tongues to sing

My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,

The triumphs of His grace.

For preaching texts he loves such music as " Ho ! every
one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath
no money, come ye," " Come unto Me all ye that labour."
Yet to-morrow he must strike another note, " What shall

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it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own
soul."

His is a great God, and he counts on great things. He
expects wonders of grace and sees them. May be his face is
scarred by marks of former years, or last month's brutal mob
or wounds at Fontenoy, for, maybe, he was once impressed a
soldier. Yet as he preaches his face shines with the beauty
of earnestness, and a yearning of holy intercession. And his
sermon ! listen how, in homely phrase, he pleads with the
folk to come to Jesus, how he warns to flee from the devil,
from the wrath of God and hell, yet he ever rings forth the
creative power of God to give the poor lost sinner a new heart
for his old one, and save him through the Cross and blood of
Christ. Out and out he insists on a " new birth ; " he knows
nothing of homilies about self emendation or of human pro-
cesses of conversion. He glories in the Almighty power of
his God, in His sovereign, covenant grace to save to the
uttermost, and these he declares are waiting to descend on
the instant, then and there upon the spot, to show forth
triumphs over Satan and all the powers of hell. He welcomes
the terrors of the awakened conscience, he loves the broken
spirit and the contrite heart ; he wrestles in prayer and will
not leave until he hears the joyous sounds of conscious pardon,
the hallelujahs of souls redeemed from hell to an immortal
crown.

He preaches alike in field or barn, and likes to peep at
class-meeting in kitchen or loft — a sacred hour of helpful
fellowship on the stony pilgrimage of life. Sometimes the song
at the penitents' meeting (owning no earthly technics) flows
into a strange commingling of chords — there are sobs of prayer,
tears of hope, glad notes of liberty — broken music from the
heart's own harp, yet sweet to the angels, for they have joy
over some sinner that repenteth.

His visit is, at times, an event, for he carries, not only the
small news of the' counties, but the big news of the nations ;
of earthquakes and plagues, of kings and wars, victories and
defeats.

But he has moving tales of his own, how he carried a spade
for weeks to cut his way through snow ; tales of storm and
flood, of swimming rivers, of being lost by night, of perils of
mist or moor, waste or bog ; of highwaymen, of howling
mobs seeking his blood and getting some, or of their sending
vicious bullocks, fiddlers, criers, the village bully or crazy

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Peggy on to his preaching place, or of flooding it by a let-off
mill dam. He declares he has oft been guided and guarded
by heavenly voices, and that sometimes his dreams come
true. No wonder a halo of romance envelopes his figure.
He rejoices to be counted worthy to suffer a daily baptism of
privation. His pilgrimage is often cheered by the songs of Zion,
and he loves that couplet of prayer.

And oh, my life of mercies crown
With a triumphant end.

How did he live ? Ah ! he would himself stumble at answer.
At first he must scratch as he may, with scantiest pittance from
the societies. He could receive gifts of clothes and journeying
hospitality. Sometimes the sale of his whole kit, with hat,
wig and purse, failed to meet his meagre funeral charges.
Later £12 a year was allowed, then £16, with small additions
for home and turnpikes. The elder children were schooled
and kept at Kings wood, which, though founded by Whitefield,
had passed with its burden to Wesley. The circuits were
often hundreds of miles of a round ; the evangelist might
travel twenty, thirty, or even forty miles a day, preaching
twice or more. Such men, I repeat, under their leader, were
the pioneers and makers of Methodism — honoured be their
memories. Wesley was proud of them.

Later the circuits were split and the superintendent
emerged. The preachers' plans were issued weekly, afterwards
quarterly, then half-yearly. The first was made by Wesley
for the London circuit in 1754. The chapel services were of
attractive simplicity. Wesley directed they should be con-
cluded in about an hour. They were often interrupted by
ejaculatory testimonies. A secret of Methodism has been its
human aptitude, its patient sympathy with individuality
even to oddity. Dialogue hymns were favourites ; the hymns
were read out two lines at a time, so that those might sing
who could not read. The sexes sat apart. The village
society rarely stuck fast, if the preacher by stress of storm or
illness failed to appear ; ploughman A or cobbler B took the
pulpit — the appointed worship must go on. In adopting
a distinctive simplicity of dress, the Methodists were not
alone. The pre- Reformation orders, the Lollards, the Puritans,
the Quakers, the Moravians, did the same. It reappears in
our own day. The motive was never superficial, but deep —
that of renunciation, of separation from worldliness.

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Methodism was the all conquering evangelism of Quakerism
over again, a hundred years later ; but with a difference.
Wyclif and Wesley are often compared, but not Fox with
Wesley.

QUAKERISM AND METHODISM — SUNDRY REFLECTIONS

Fox saw with the eyes of the Spirit — eternally true because
cleansed of the darkening cataract of ecclesiasticism and dogma.

The wonder and nobility of Quakerism is that, while founded
by an unlearned shepherd, it presents an aspect for every
" ism " of Christianity. It had least touch with a State
Church or with Sacramentarianism, and for this reason
Wesley, possibly, was shy or ignorant of its teaching. This
does not excuse so slight an allusion to the Friends in the
" New History."

Fox's great doctrine of the " inner light," and of its free
and impartial bestowal, really embraced the distinguishing
elements of Methodism — salvation for all and the doctrine of
Christian perfection, but Wesley was far too wise to allow
any one doctrine the all-predominant position which Fox
gave to that of the " inner light."

In respect of Fox and Wesley and their propaganda,
may I here, with diffidence, offer sundry reflections. I give
them in scrap form as they arose during my comparative
readings, and for the reader to take or leave. The conversion
of Fox was apart from the human instrument, in Wesley's
case this human instrument was direct and clear. This
fact colours their whole teaching. Fox went to the Continent
to teach ; Wesley to learn. Fox was the prophet. Wesley
was the missionary. The emphasis of Fox was on vision,
that of Wesley on argument. I have named Fox the Savon-
arola of the seventeenth century ; he had also a strong savour
of St. Francis. Wesley was too doctrinal and dogmatic in
temper and experience to compare with the great revivalist
of the thirteenth century — the pure mystic beauty of that
adorable and angelic spirit, St. Francis of Assisi. Fox was
unlettered, a pure, wandering child of the Spirit, in the main
his message coming and departing as the mystery of the wind,
he knowing not whither it went. Wesley was ever the student,
accomplished in letters and logic, gaining a wide experience
of men and things by the watchful organisation of his societies ;
all this experience being garnered in the prompt, commanding
and consummate leader, anxious to see and secure the fruit

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of labours in visible form. Fox's teaching was too mystic and
vague for average humanity to hold on to after his death.
Wesley insisted upon definite verities and so preached them
that the common people could understand and grip them.

Fox lived upon the high peak of spiritual vision, he was a
poor philosopher, and remembered not what an earthly creature
was the ordinary man ; Wesley never forgot but rather over-
emphasized this primal fact. Though there are doctrinal
affinities between Quakerism and Methodism, in general habit
they are at antithesis ; in one it is stillness, in the other action.
This was sure to reflect itself in their operative forms : the spirit
of the one was uncongenial to organised system, to regularised
method ; these breathe in the very name of the other. Fox
was more a magnetic force than Wesley, and his own life more
a marvel of success even than was Wesley's. And surely each,
in himself, restored the order of Apostle — the one by his
teaching after the similitude of John ; the other by his life his
letters, his founding of Christian communities, after that of
Paul. In my study of Fox I was beset with grief and ques-
tioning as to the decadence of Quakerism with its high ideals,
contrasting this decline with the robust and vast force for good
of Methodism. I mean as a present day numerical and voting
power ; I know its spirit lives. No doubt the difference I
named as to connexional organisation was a fundamental
cause. I suggest also, a lax doctrinal statement in preaching,
an insufficient regard to the Holy Scriptures as the " law and
the testimony " and also as the interpretative standard
even for the " inner light." I have, however, formed an
opinion that perhaps chief of all, has been the practical ignor-
ing of worship-song, with its universal appeal and illimitable
ministeries of grace. Imagine Methodism without hymns and
hallelujahs! Through song we worship with the faithful in
every age and clime. We hear across the centuries the
Magnificat and Canticles from the catacombs and churches
of the East ; the wailing litanies of monks tramping Gothic
cloisters. We catch the triumphant chorales of Luther and
the Fatherland ; the pensive hymns of the Pilgrims of Liberty
on the bleak shores of New England ; the psalm of the
Covenanter ; and " the sound of many waters " in the mystery
upon the soul when the Cathedral multitudes chant the
Te Deum.

And what a mystic power lies in the old songs of Zion to
call back " the sound of the voice that is still " and

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John Wesley

to lift the spirit into a sweet grace of peace — aye of longing
for the heavenly rest and communion. In this connection
one may remark on the singular fact that when Quakers leave
their own community they usually join the Established Church,
the very antipodes of Quakerism and the special antipathy of
George Fox. How is this ? Is it reaction against unmusical
dullness. The motive cannot be entirely that of social standing.
It should never be forgotten that in all George totalled
twelve years in dungeon, and that hundreds, probably
thousands, of his followers were martyred by process of law.
Wesley was never in prison and his people seldom. The law, in
his day, had turned somersault — the persecutors were the law-
breakers. Without the liberties, won through suffering, of
the Independents, the Puritans and Quakers, where had
been the open highway for Wesley's evangel ?

HIS FIRST LOVE AND HIS LAST — A MEDDLING BROTHER

Wesley is ploughing along, a kingdom for his field ; oft he
sows in tears but reaps in joy. Thus he labours and prays ;
wastes turn into pastures ; when the strangest and sharpest
trial of his life strikes his path with life-long shadow.

The Wesley family had an unhappy knack of falling in
love with the wrong person. Of six grown sisters, one only,
Mary, a cripple, was happy in marriage. Samuel, the eldest,
and Charles were fortunate. John's first love was Betty
Kirkham, sister of an Oxford Methodist comrade and daughter
of a clergyman. There was much tender correspondence for
over three years, but it drifted into a stilted style, and Betty
married another in 1731. Dr. Rigg and Lecky are both of
opinion that the second was not Sophia Hopkey, but a Mrs.
Pendarves, a widow of twenty-three and niece of Lord Lans-
downe. She married Dr. Delany, Dean of Down. Her life
and letters are well known. In years of early manhood
Wesley, it would seem, was ready enough to fall in love, but
unready at bringing it to an issue. In April, 1749, Charles
was married by John to Miss Gwynne, a lady of good Welsh
family. Just now, Wesley's heart was warm with the hope of
a similar joy to himself. At Newcastle he had been nursed
through an illness by Grace Murray, a widow of thirty-two and
foremost there in zeal for all Christian work. The death of
her child had bowed her heart in sorrow, and she found solace
in her conversion under Wesley. In August , 1748, he proposed
marriage to her. " This is too great a blessing for me, I can't

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tell how to believe it," was the reply. After this she became
his travelling companion for some five months. " She was
unspeakably useful both to him and the societies."

There is a tangle of a prior claim to her hand by one Bennett,
a preacher to whom she had shown some of Wesley's letters.
Learning of this Wesley had written her that she ought to
marry Bennett. She replied that " to talk so " would "kill her."
" I love you a thousand times better than I ever loved John
Bennett in my life. But I am afraid if I don't marry him,
he'll run mad." They ratify their betrothal in the presence
of a preacher admitted into their confidence, who is despatched
to satisfy Bennett and the societies, and also Charles who, in
hot haste starts north to stop the thing. He expostulates
with the lover — it will scatter the societies — she is of too low
origin. The lover refuses to give her up ; he takes her for her
Christian worth, not for her birth. Charles flies to the lady,
kisses her, frightens her by saying, " Grace Murray, you have
broken my heart." They journey together to Newcastle,
where Bennett arrives ; she falls at Bennett's feet, begs his for-
giveness and they are immediately married. This occurred
the first week in October, 1749. It was a case of the Christian
of aristocratic descent at test, of a proud and meddlesome
brother ; a case in the lover of over-scruple, sensitive
honour and fatal indecision, and of a woman bewildered,
possibly with two strings to her bow.

Wesley faced his lost love in three days, but saw her no more
for forty years. Even then the meeting was affecting. In
ten years Mrs. Bennett was again a widow.

" MARRY IN HASTE \ REPENT AT LEISURE "

Charles had to own that his brother was blameless in honour,
yet but for Whitefield the affair would have estranged the
brothers. To Wesley, this cruellest blow of his long life must
have filled his soul with a helpless and hopeless maze as to these
things of the heart. It is humanly certain that these dashed
cups and buried hopes were answerable for the disaster of
his marriage to Mrs. Vazeille in February, 1751, the widow of
a London merchant, with four children, and a fortune of
£10,000, which Wesley promptly settled upon her and her
children. He had met her as a friend of Charles.

I find no hint that Wesley had determined to marry until
January, 1751. On this date he " received a full answer "
from an adviser to whom he had referred the question, so

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John Wesley

that widow Vazeille had been in his thoughts. On February
2nd, he records that he had " a clear conviction " that he
" could be more useful in a married state." He immediately
tells his brother that " he is resolved to marry." " I was
thunder-struck," says Charles, and " never had the least
suspicion of the lady." He refused, at the marriage, to attend
John to chapel, " and," he relates, " retired to mourn with
my faithful Sally."

Great is the mystery of the little. How often our mistakes
of life come to us, thrust upon us, it would seem, in unwatchful
hours, by untoward, even malignant coincidence. Possibly
but for a slippery accident, this marriage itself might have
slipped. It is Sunday, February loth; Wesley has a full
day's work and on the morrow goes north. He first preaches
at five, and is hastening from the Foundry to Snowfields to
preach and bid good-bye. " When on the middle of London
Bridge," he relates, " both my feet slipped on the ice, and I
fell with great force, the bone of my ankle lighting on the top
of a stone." He makes shift to preach, and is carried back to
the Foundry. He proceeds, " My sprain growing worse, I was
removed to Threadneedle Street (Mrs. Vazeille' s), where I
spent the remainder of the week, partly in prayer, reading
and conversation, and in writing a ' Hebrew Grammar '
and ' Lessons for Children.' " On Sunday, unable to stand,
he preached kneeling.

Mark, there is no intention of immediate marriage, for
" Monday the i8th," we are told, " was the second day I had
appointed for my journey," but instead, not being " able to
set my foot on the ground," he gets married either this day or
the next.1

1 From a current number (1911) of Notes and Queries I extract
copies of two announcements of Wesley's wedding in contemporary
newspapers of the day. They are interesting. Alas for the vanity of
human congratulations ! One is from The Penny London Post of
February 2oth to 22nd, 1750-51. It runs thus:

" A few days since the Rev. Mr. John Wesley was married to Mrs.
Vazel, of Threadneedle Street, an agreeable Widow Lady, with a large
Fortune."

The other is from Read's Weekly Journal, of the next day's date,
and runs:

" On Monday last the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, Methodist Preacher,
was married by his Brother, the Rev. Mr. Charles Wesley, to Mrs. Vazel,
in Threadneedle Street, a Widow Gentlewoman of Great Beauty,
Merit and every Endowment necessary to render the Marriage State
happy, with a jointure of £300 per Annum."

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A strange and baffling story of this man of God. Where
lies the secret ? Why ask ? Because these four tragic years
of his middle life must colour the remaining forty. Beside
a conjecture adjures me to be brave to express an opinion.

To this end I submit a few more particulars as to the nature
of Wesley's love for Grace Murray. He was not emotional
in the usual sense of that word, but he was so in the sense that
" still waters run deep."

Within a week of Grace's wedding, on October yth, 1749,
he unburdens his heart to a Newcastle friend. The lament is
touching. I can only offer snippets ; he writes, " Since I was
six (the Epworth fire) I never met with such a severe trial."
" For some ten years God has been preparing a fellow-labourer
for me by a wonderful train of providences." (It is some ten
years since the Georgia passion.) They were " torn asunder,"
" the storm " passed and, he writes, " I fondly told myself
would return no more, but the waves rose again." " I fasted
and prayed and strove all I could ; but the sons of Zeruiah
were too hard for me." " Then was the word fulfilled,
' I take from thee the desire of thine eyes at a stroke.' " " She
(Grace) is sacrificed." The trial is " for the punishment
of his sins."

The reader should turn to 2 Sam. iii. 38-9 for the pathetic
significance of this confession.

He further lets forth the sluices of his sorrow in verse, really
an elegy of thirty-one six -line stanzas.

In the few verses before me there is not a line of lovers'
doggerel. Throughout there is manly, though tender, descrip-
tion and poetic dignity, with the true ring of ardent passion.
He tells us, " I fell, while love's envenomed dart thrilled
through my nerves and tore my heart." He is " borne on
wings of sacred hope," when

My soul a kindred spirit found,
By heaven entrusted to my care,
The daughter of my faith and prayer.

Her graces are

In early dawn of life, serene,

Mild, sweet, and tender was her mood,

Her pleasing form spoke all within,
Soft and compassionately good.

He proceeds,

I saw her run with winged speed,
In works of faith and labouring love,

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John Wesley

I saw her glorious toil succeed,

And showers of blessing from above

Crowning her warm effectual prayer,
And glorified my God in her.

When Wesley wrote this tribute of fervent passion, he was
turned forty-six.

In fifteen months' time he is married, and in two years and
nine months further he is given up for death by rapid consump-
tion, and " to prevent vile panegyric " writes his own epitaph.
But God's purpose and Hotwells waters, with preaching-rest
for most of a year, restore him to strong life. These events, all
within four years, cannot be disconnected ; they are too deep
and close. None knew better than Wesley that, though
he might " resolve to marry," he could not " resolve " to love.
That was with God. He had drunk too deeply of the real
cup to be deceived by its counterfeit. In Georgia, though
love was waiting, it was conceivable for him in the high
interest of sacred duty, as he then saw it, to decline marriage.
But because of a change now in that opinion, to marry without
love, or the mere veneer of it, was dismal lapse and error.
It was a " mariage de convenance " of a superior order, if
that may be.

The blunder was similar to, but worse than Milton's, and
the penalty heavier. It was a tragedy of the heart, and nearly
of life. One wonders if, to relieve himself, he secretly repeated
the weak expedient in this marriage transaction of lot -casting
by proxy as in Sophy Hopkey's case. There is a
suspicious look ; we learn he was only " clearly convinced"
" after having received a full answer from Mr. P." I have
already mentioned this. Mr. P. was Vincent Perronet, vicar
of Shoreham, and teens of years older than Wesley. He was
a kind of court of appeal for the Wesleys ; Charles called
him " Archbishop of Methodism."

I will put the case thus. I believe that I have known true
Christian men, similar in age and baffled love to Wesley — their
angel of Hope gone, the last string of her harp snapped — lapse
into a despondent " love and marriage " philosophy of "all
a lottery " and " resolve to marry." The plunge is taken, the
discovery made by terrible certainties, by loveless humdrum,
that their philosophy was godless, like that of worldling
thousands — that they had done dishonour to the most sacred
things of life — their human heart and the holy mystery of
marriage. I have known such repent with bitter tears, and

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be saved in crises by wonder of timely mercy, to realise
forgiveness and be disciplined back to still stronger and more
enriched service for God by a more complete renunciation
and consecration of life.

Wesley's wife was a woman of vitriolic temper and intoler-
ably jealous, the tale of his woes at her hands reads like the
acts of a maniac. For thirty long years she darkened his
life. Small wonder, if he was not blameless in unveiling her
doings in stark black and white to the eyes of other women.
Thus were all hopes of a sweet Eden of his own for ever
blighted. Surely none could more need the greetings of wifely
love, the glowing welcome of children, and the solace of a
dear home. For these Wesley had a longing and appreciative
heart : to deny this, is failure to know the man.

FINAL BREACH WITH CALVINISM

The reader will recall the split with Whitefield. A large
number of early Methodists, including old friends of the
Wesleys, gradually became a separate Church.

For thirty years there had been controversial rumblings,
but no violent explosions. Wesley had anxious suspicions
of a growing Antinomianism among his societies, and in 1770,
Conference, to prevent this, adopted sundry minutes for the
direction of the preachers. Lady Huntingdon, a strong
Calvinist, who had founded a college for the training of
ministers, took umbrage at the minutes and dismissed her
classical tutor for defending them. The saintly Fletcher
resigned the presidency of the college. For nine years the
contest raged. Wesley thought it much a war of words, and
personally stood much aloof. This but vexed his opponents
the more. No quarter of hard words was given by either side.
It is amazing to us to learn that Wesley was " a designing
wolf," " a lying apostle of the Foundry," " an old fox," " Pope
John," " little John," " holy and sly, could pilfer and lie,"
" a dealer in stolen wares," " a gray-headed enemy of all
righteousness," the " most ravenous hater of the Gospel,"
"a venal profligate," "an apostate miscreant ": these and
many similar descriptions actually occur in the writings of Sir
Rowland Hill, the Rev. Rowland Hill, Toplady and other clerical
friends of Wesley's. He was now an old man ; he must have
felt the wrangles as small as painful. With the disputants
there was no middle place for heterodoxy. All were orthodox

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John Wesley

or heretic, black or white. Imperfect as we of this day still
may be, we have learned a more Christly way.

CHURCH V. METHODISTS — AFFECTION AND CONVICTION — A DUEL

I know of no more conspicious instance in history of
disastrous and blind ineptitude than the attitude of the
Church of England to early Methodism. Her own child, the
pride of all her offspring, this daughter was for fifty years
affectionately pleading to be sheltered in the parental fold, yet
the door was shut and with added cuffs. It is not true to
assign it wholly to eighteenth century deadness. The
Established Church has, in every century, cast out its prophets.
Wesley forbade services at his chapels at the same hours as at
the parish church, and enjoined his people to go there for
the Lord's Supper, though often the minister was their
persecutor, and sometimes would refuse them the sacred
rite. Methodism was not a Church, its ministers were
mere assistants, Conference was never Convocation. Yet
no assemblage could be more truly a Synod, with fullest
plenary power, than a Methodist Conference. Congre-
gationalism may call a Conference, but not a Synod. English
Methodism has until recent years belittled itself, and lost vastly
from this want of dignity attaching to Scriptural and historic
nomenclature. Bacon somewhere notes how words from old
association acquire such power as to become our tyrants and
not our servants.

Wesley forbade the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper except
at the hands of a clergyman, and on this head there arose, in
1755, a serious defection. In 1760, three preachers at Norwich
began to administer it, to Charles's horror, who exclaimed
" We are come to the Rubicon." John took it quietly. The
natural drift was for full Church liberty, and the High Church
conservatism of the Wesleys continually angered devoted
followers to a danger of open rupture.

It grievously hindered the fullest development of the
evangel. But more upon Charles than John lies the blame.
By his hymns Charles was the angel of blessing to Methodism,
but in its efforts after an expanding autonomous life he was the
priest first, the friend second. But for him, it is not unlikely
that John would have played the man with his convictions
many years earlier, and thus saved the sad secessions of later
generations, only now in process of repair. Wesley loved his
brother, he owed him much, but Charles was not John in

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intellectual strength and statesmanship, for the guidance of
Methodism. Had Wesley lived a hundred years earlier he
would have made a superior Laud — or a century later
an equal Manning. It is pathetic to watch Wesley cling to
the shadows of his Church system, as, from sheer pressure,
alike of necessity and conviction, the substance, bit by bit,
drops from him. The duel is also a curious study. He
knew the strife was hopeless, yet held on. Within seven
years of his evangelical conversion, his " prejudices " received
a fatal shock. In his Journal for September, 1749, he quotes
a letter from J. Martin Bolzius, and adds : " What a truly
Christian piety and simplicity breathe in these lines ! And
yet this very man, when I was at Savannah, did I refuse to
admit to the Lord's Table, because he was not baptised ;
that is, not baptised by a minister who had been episcopally
ordained. Can anyone carry High Church zeal higher than
this ? And how well have I been beaten with mine own
staff ! " " In July, 1740," he writes, " I read Lord King's
account of the Primitive Church ; in spite of the vehement
prejudice of my education " he is (what a confession !)
" convinced that bishops and presbyters are (essentially)
of one order, and that originally every Christian congregation
was independent of all others." " The names of bishop
and presbyter, or elder, were promiscuously used in the
first ages." Strange indeed — the precise beliefs for which
his grandfather, John Westley, was done to death. He
makes the declaration at thirty-seven, and fifteen years later,
in 1756, he further declares, " I still believe the episcopal
form of Church government to be Scriptural and apostolical —
I mean, well agreeing with the practice and writings of the
Apostles, but that it is prescribed in Scripture, I do not believe.
This opinion which I once jealously espoused, I have been
heartily ashamed of ever since I read Bishop Stillingfleet's
' Irenicon.' ' From these dicta he never departed, but the
influence of Charles and his own caution are revealed by the
fact that they took no overt form until 1784.

Much as Wesley loved the Established Church, he had now
learned to love Methodism more.

IRREVOCABLE STEP — METHODISM A CHURCH — CHARLES'S DEATH

In this year he took an irrevocable step — an extreme step.
He ordained his own preachers " to act as elders," by baptising
and administering the Lord's Supper. At first for America,

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John Wesley

where the question had caused serious defection, then for
Scotland, then inevitably the like for England. As much as
was possible to mortal brain the vast and solemn issues involved
were realised to the full.

No step could be more deliberate, he declares ; " being now
clear in my own mind, I took a step which I had long weighed."
By this act he renounced the essence of the episcopal order,
and its Church system, and defied the whole hierarchy,
Roman and Anglican. The one thing vital to the priest was
flouted and cast out. It was a kingly deed of wide, far-
reaching sway and of virile fruitfulness and blessing. This
attitude to his own Church was not simply Puritan Noncon-
formity; it was Separatist Dissent in all sure and practical
issues. Wesley well knew its vast import and was content.

Charles clearly discerned this, and was terribly shocked.
It was the plain, strictly stated truth, when he declared that
Methodism was now merely " a new sect of Presbyterians,"
by which he meant to include Independents and Baptists.
He had, he mourned, " lived too long " " to see this evil day."
The only operative change was that Methodism now assigned
to herself by formal act those prerogatives of a Church, which,
of course, had always been hers in unclaimed fact.

Wesley is indulgent and brotherly in reply to Charles, but
maintains his position in no doubtful phrase. " I firmly
believe," says he, " that I am a Scriptural episcopos as much
as any in England or Europe, for the uninterrupted succession
I know to be a fable which no man ever did or can prove."
Of the three ordained for America, Dr. Coke, a clergyman,
was appointed " superintendent," with power to ordain
others. This office of bishop, as was inevitable, quickly took
the name. Thus began the great Methodist Episcopal Church
of America. I venture to suggest that by this act Wesley
planned deeply and with forward foresight. Methodism in
America had progressed by leaps and bounds, and the
societies were now at the point of mutiny over their
deprivation of the Sacraments.

The War of Independence was passed. There had been no
bishop of the English Church in America, and the formalist
clergy now fled to England. Wesley says, " They (our American
brethren) are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures
and the primitive Church. And we judge it best that they
should stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has so strangely
made them free." A reflection illuminating as candid.

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

The commission to Dr. Coke not only prevented disruption,
but also a possible danger of sacerdotal infection by some
ambitious preacher seeking ordination and consecration at
the hands of an English bishop. But for Wesley's courage
now, any presumption was possible in the confusion after his
death. Perhaps the same may be also supposed of English
Methodism.

Charles died in March, 1788. Because the ground was un-
consecrated, he refused to be buried by his mother's side '
Partly through ill-health, and partly from the unchurchly trend
of the societies, he had for some thirty years withdrawn from
much active itinerancy. Wesley himself was several times
nigh to death by illness. Once, at least, he was reported dead.
In 1784, he rallied slowly from "a most impetuous flux,"
after eighteen days of suspense for his life. There had
been recent squabbles with chapel trustees. Power of
appointment of preachers was claimed by some, and to save
Methodism from wreck after its founder's death, it was
imperative that a " Deed of Declaration " be executed by
Wesley. This Deed — the Magna Charta of Methodism —
provided that everything now vested in Wesley should, after
his death, pass to one hundred preachers, who were now
named, as forming the Methodist Conference. They were to
meet once a year, to fill up their own vacancies, and transact
the business of the Connexion. The act of the majority was
to bind all.

WESLEY'S DEATH

At Wesley's death, there were at home 108 societies, with
some 72,000 members ; the same number of societies in
America, with 50,000 members. At the present time the
whole Methodist family throughout the world — adherents,
worshippers, Sunday scholars, etc. — will probably approach
thirty million souls.

In Wesley's closing years both the Church and the world
had come to know that a great and good man was in their
midst. Pulpits long shut were now open to him. Those
in worldly places were eager to render him honour, and to the
unfailing love of the poor for him was added an ever-
deepening reverence. The reproach of the Cross had passed,

1 Charles was buried in Marylebone Church graveyard, London. It
was rather hard for him that many years afterwards the discovery was
made that the ground had never been consecrated.

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John Wesley

and everywhere abounding welcome met him. His constant
prayer was, " Lord, let me not live to be useless." He
preached his last sermon in City Road Chapel on February 22nd,
1791, and his last sermon of all the next day at Leatherhead,
from the words, " Seek ye the Lord, while He may be found ;
call ye upon Him while He is near." The text reflects the
spirit of his whole life.

Seventy long years before he had preached his first sermon
at South Lye Church, near Oxford, from the companion text :
" Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness."

For the service of his last sermon in City Road he had chosen
Watts's hymn,

I'll praise my Maker while I've breath,
And when my voice is lost in death,

and a week later, when dying, he astonished the watching
friends by singing the verses with vigour. His last gasps
were : " I'll praise, I'll praise, farewell."
i&He " fell asleep " on March 2nd, 1791, in his eighty-eighth
year : " until the day break and the shadows flee away."

A heavenly smile lingered on his face ; and a crowd of 10,000
passed by his bier for a last look. He was buried at five in
the morning in the ground behind the City Road Chapel.
It is evermore hallowed ground. Simplicity ruled in death
as in life. He ordered " that there may be no hearse, no
escutcheon, no pomp, except the tears of those that love me
and are following me to Abraham's bosom." " The tears of
those that love me " — and when at the graveside the minister
said, instead of " brother," " Our dear father here departed,"
there were loud sobs mingled with silent tears.

With the passing of the generations of men, the name of
John Wesley shall be ever more honoured, for is it not written
that " they that turn many to righteousness (shall shine) as
the stars for ever and ever " ?

363

"And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having
the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth,
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people."

XV
WILLIAM CAREY

INSCRIPTION. — Lowly Cobbler, unique in renown as Founder of
Modern Missions ; forty-two years India's great missionary and
Christian translator. B. 1761. D. 1834.

SCENE.— On the balcony of his house, translating. A Chinese version
of the Bible leans by the table, and recalls his great compeer,
Dr. Morrison. Background of temple, palm, river, elephant, etc.
Indian shimmer of light and atmosphere. A cherub labours,
bringing a globe, the Cross upon its equator — The World for Christ

William Carey, the founder of modern Protestant missions,
was born on August 7th, 1761, at the village of Paulerspury,
Northamptonshire, in the region of Bunyan and Cromwell.
His grandfather and father, in succession, had held the posts
of parish clerk and schoolmaster. The best element in his
scanty education was the induced thirst for more. He loved
books of voyages and travel, of history and nature. Very
early the lad's mind opened to the wonders of plant and
flower, ditch and hedge-row, meadow, quarry and river scar,
as well as to the world of winged insect life. He knew the
banks where the first daisies and primroses smiled, where the
best crab- apples ripened, and the favourite spots for wasps'
nests. Removing to the schoolhouse at six, he was given a
room, all his very own, which grew into library, conservatory
and natural history museum, " with insects stuck in every
nook and corner." Here he watched and studied his own
local captures and findings, and, to aid in this, he acquired
the elements of drawing. Perhaps for the same reason, at
twelve he had mastered a Latin vocabulary with its prefixed
grammar.

A leader in village play and sport, he was noted for pluck
and perseverance, and from his rambles and discoveries was

364

WILLIAM CAREY.

William Carey

nicknamed Columbus. Once, climbing a tree, he fell bruised
and stunned ; on recovering the first thing he did was to try
again and succeed. Already discerning friends predicted
distinction.

But William is the eldest of five and must turn to work.
Toil in the sun brings out a scorbutic tendency, with pain, and
at fourteen he is apprenticed to a shoemaker at Hackleton,
and the sunny days of pure, merry boyhood pass for ever.
On his master's bookshelf he turns up a commentary on the
New Testament, margined with strange signs — he will solve
the riddle. The oracle of his native village is one Jones,
who through tipsy habits is reduced from quill to shuttle,
and to him, on holiday visit, young Carey marches with his
problem. The signs are Greek words. Oh ! he must learn
their secret, and forthwith with Jones's help falls to the study
of that classic tongue. William's master dying, he is trans-
ferred to a Mr. Old. Here there calls for occasional rest and
pastoral chat, the Rev. Thomas Scott, the commentator. He
finds an eager listener in the youth busy at the last, for deep
stirrings of soul are troubling him, and the modest, intelligent
and " appropriate questions " of " the sensible looking lad"
impress the minister.

Carey's prowess in village sport had drawn him among the
baser fellows, and for a time he lapsed to their habits of
profanity and lying, and ridiculed religious people. But
William is the chosen care of a pious grandmother, and her
prayers go not unheard. As the son of the parish clerk, he
had been trained in strict Church ideas, was confirmed, and
says " he had always looked upon Dissenters with contempt."

But there hammered at the same stool the son of a Dissenter,
whose arguments and life, after much sturdy debate, wrought
a revolution in Carey's mind. Though not without struggle,
for, he avows " I had a share of pride for a thousand times
my knowledge," and " made up in positive assertion what
was wanting in my arguments." The " stings of conscience "
force a contest with bad habits and he burns his pack of cards.
He now falls to earnest study of Scripture, attends church
three times on Sunday, and a Dissenters' prayer meeting in
the evening. He passes through a valley of soul travail
similar to that of Bunyan, though shorter and less terrible.
Like Wesley, also, he strives to keep the whole law, " not
doubting " he tells us, " but this would produce ease of mind
and make me acceptable to God." To his opening eyes he

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became the greatest of sinners and " sought the Lord with
shame and fear." Again like the Wesleys, he, at this juncture,
met some who " had drunk deeply into the opinions of Law
and other mysteries," and more than ever " felt ruined and
helpless."

He is now emptied of self, but he has yet to " be filled with
all the fulness of God."

The gracious destiny proceeds. In February, 1779, he
tells us, " I attended worship ; Mr. Charter, Congregationalist,
preached." He insisted much on following Christ entirely,
and enforced his exhortation with that passage : " Let
us therefore go out unto Him without the camp bearing
His reproach." When alone, Carey now tried to pray ;
the gracious Spirit heard, and he was led " to depend
wholly upon the crucified Saviour for pardon and salvation."
He further tells us that it was borne upon him that,
"the lifeless carnal ministry" of the Established Church
" was the camp " and that " I ought to bear the reproach
of Christ among the Dissenters." His family wondered
at the change. His sister says, of this time, " Often
have I seen him sigh as if his heart was overwhelmed, yet
he could not speak to us." He, however, asked leave to pray
in the family, and always mentioned these words, " that all
our righteousness was as filthy rags."

Perplexities come and go, and he seeks the ministries of
earnest preachers and experienced Christians. In 1781, he
with his fellow- apprentice and some older Christians in
Hackleton, form themselves into a Congregational Church.
He meets with Hall's " Help to Zion's Travellers," and the
rough places become plain. He does " not remember ever
to have read a book with such raptures," and makes a diligent
synopsis of it on the margin. Its author was the father of
the great preacher, Robert Hall. The book spoke to Carey,
as did Luther's words to Bunyan and Wesley, the word in
season to the soul — with sweet and enlightening power.

MARRIAGE — THE COBBLER'S COLLEGE — BUSINESS MISFORTUNES

In June, 1781, before his twenty-first birthday, Carey
married Dorothy Plackett, his employer's sister-in-law. It
was a grave mistake. She was a woman with no nerve for
adventure or hardship, of little education, and without any
latent power of aspiration to rise to be the suitable wife of
his later years. In an ordinary man, such a burden would

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have destroyed the vision and the energy required for a great
ideal. But the dread thing was that she developed a mental
malady and was under restraint in India for years. Among
the richer fruits of Carey's Christian character were the
respectful tenderness with which he treated her to the end,
and his manliness in bearing his cross.

Soon after his marriage, his master died, and Carey took
over the business, and the cobbler's shed grew also into a
college. While in Hackleton at so early an age as nineteen
he was once persuaded to enter a village pulpit, " the ignorant
people," he records, " applauding to my great injury." In
June, 1782, at Olney, he attended the meetings of the Baptist
Association, and, through the introduction of the Olney
Independent minister, Carey was invited to preach at Earl's
Barton, a village some six miles from Hackleton. He con-
tinued this for three years and a half, once a month also
preaching at his native village.

During these early years of his Christian course " he main-
tained a free enquiry and diligent search of the inspired Word
to find out the truth," and by slow and prayerful earnestness
built for himself on Scriptural foundations a system of
theology. By borrowing books and starving to buy them,
he acquired Hebrew and Greek, the original languages of the
Bible, and also Latin. In his studies these tongues were
brought into exhaustive collation. Every morning, the
chapter which he read in English he read also in these three
languages.

He had as yet thought nothing of the subject of Baptism,
but, moving among Baptist friends, he became convinced
that the rite should not precede, but follow, a personal
profession of faith in the Saviour, and was baptised in October,
1783, in the river Nen, close to Dr. Doddridge's chapel.
The text for the morning happened to be " Many first shall
be last, and the last first." Soon after he took over the
shoe business a coincidence of misfortunes befell him — bad
trade, the return of a contractor's order taken by his master,
the death of his first-born, and in himself a weakening,
dragging fever combined with ague. Even daily bread for
the home was scant, and the family was only saved from
extremity by the timely aid of a brother and friends.

What sturdy, yet pathetic courage is revealed when Carey
sets up his own home-made signboard " as a dealer in second-
hand shoes." He had no money for new sizes. Obliged to

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sell off his stock at a loss, he moved to the adjacent village of
Piddington. To regularise his ministry he joins the Olney
Church and is " now appointed to the ministry " by solemn
ordination, on August i6th, 1787. He takes the double
pastorate of Barton and Moulton, but soon confines himself
to the latter. This church had lapsed into woful slackness
of doctrine and discipline. A short year of Carey's ministry
brings the members to penitence, and they sign the covenant
of renewal of evangelic faith.

To supplement his scanty living from preaching, Carey had
always hitherto to fall to his cobbling. Moulton had attracted
him by the hope of exchanging his last for the sceptre of the
village school. It was soon evident that this master of
Hebrew and Greek possessed little knack of authority on rude
rustics. With a twinkle he tells us, " when I kept school, the
boys kept me ; " and to mend — or worsen — the case the old
master returned.

He had tramped sixteen miles every Sunday to fulfil his
duties at Barton, and the folks could only raise groats barely
enough to pay for the clothes he wore out in their service.
His yearly income was now about £10 from his church, £5
from a London fund, with seven shillings and sixpence a
week from the school — some thirty-six pounds in all for
family keep and decent pastoral outfit. Perforce he must
still lean upon his trusty friends — his awl and lapstone —
and every fortnight he trudges some eight or ten miles to
Northampton to deposit his wallet full of shoes with a
Government contractor, returning with a fresh load of
leather.

Despise not this cobbler's cot ; it is the birthplace of a great
ideal, as a little back parlour is of its embodiment. Under the
shoemaker's earnest appeal, a revival arises among his flock ;
there is not " room sufficient to contain " the awakened
villagers. The meeting-house is enlarged ; the cost is £100 ;
their own united efforts realise but £2 and some few shillings,
and they appeal to all into whose hearts God should put it to
give " to the honour of the great Redeemer and the salvation
of perishing souls." Such was the man, such the faith, such
the nascent consecration of indomitable will, of heart, soul
and gift, which were soon by word and deed to proclaim to
Christendom, soon to make new and potent the old command
— the world for Christ.

At Moulton, Carey made the friendship of Andrew Fuller,

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then pastor of the church at Kettering, and also that of Mr.
Hall, the writer of " Help to Zion's Travellers."

THE ANGEL AND THE VISION — A MISSIONARY MAP

The cobbler's love of stories of other lands brought to his
hand " Captain Cook's Voyages around the World," a book
then holding the world with enthralling interest. Carey had
taught geography to his school from a leathern globe of his
own construction. And now an angel "sent from God"
visits this lowly village ; he had passed by the " mighty "
to exalt him " of low degree." The message of the heavenly
visitant was only to repeat the Master's command, " Go ye
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

The vision left the cobbler's soul in a tumult of wondering
and pondering. " Did Christ really mean what He said ? "
Its first visible effect was curious indeed to the casual caller.
He would behold the workshop walls adorned by sheets of
paper piecing together, puzzle-like, into a big home-made map
of the whole known world, with some parts but recently dis-
covered. Around and around its isles of the seas and the
vast continents are annotations — sundry and many — of the
conditions, numbers, governments, characteristics, religions
and languages of the peoples. There are also jottings of
Carey's reflections and conclusions. The figures declare that
730 millions of immortal souls dwell upon the planet ; that,
after taking away the so-called Christian nations and
also 130 millions living in the half-light of Mahommedanism,
there still remain 400 millions of souls in the black night of
Paganism.

How, why this appalling state ? is the question that knocks
at the heart of the shoemaker, incessant as the thumps of his
hammer. Was it by Sovereign Decree ? Impious thought !
No ! Was it by God's will that the nations should sit in
darkness until the fulness of a " set time " ? Was the awful
guilt not rather with men — with the Church ? These problems,
so dread and perplexing, beset and absorbed his being, and he
resolves never to leave them until the Spirit grants him
light.

Begirt by soles and uppers, by resin and swine bristles,
his squat bench of tiny squares crowded by the nameless odds
and ends of an ancient craft, into which he now and again
thrusts a horny thumb, he plies his awl and pitchband, and
fails not to cast furtive glances at the map. Sometimes when

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his hands are still and his eyes rest for a moment upon it, his
face takes on a far-away look, for the soul is sailing to the
far isles of the Southern Seas, where " only man is vile," or
" Afric's golden sand," or now to the mystic East, the land
of "ancient river" and " palmy plain," of white temples and
many tongues.

The map becomes more than map to its maker — it is a
preacher of searching power, a very voice from heaven.
But why to himself, a penniless cobbler, obscure to the
world, with a dragging wife and harassed to find bread for a
young and growing family ? What mortal was less suited
for missionary dreams ?

The vastness of his ideal possessed Carey as with a divine
oppression. He could never pray without the heart seeking
relief from its burden ; it invaded his sermons and conver-
sations. He met with little sympathy. It is said that at
a meeting of ministers at Northampton, when Carey suggested,
as topic for discussion, the duty of Christians to attempt
the spread of the Gospel among the heathen nations, it was
scouted by an aged minister, and the proposer addressed thus :
" Young man, sit down ! When God pleases to convert the
heathen He will do it without your aider mine" ; he is dubbed
a " miserable enthusiastic," is told " the tune is not come,"
that his proposal " is an interference with divine sovereignty,"
that " the means are awanting," ; that he must " Christianise
England " first, etc. One can hardly marvel at this attitude
from a hyper-Calvinist community like the Particular Baptists.
The wonder rather is, they ever adopted Carey's missionary
plans. What eloquent testimony to the cobbler's burning
tongue. Carey believed in the " freeness of the Gospel," as
did Fuller. From his breadth and temper I should think it
was more by accident of circumstances than conviction that
Carey was not within the General Baptists. To Carey,
doubt of missionary duty was unbelief. To him, the Master's
command was clear as day, and settled everything. As to
difficulties — the mariner's compass he set against distance ;
he is warned that the heathen are barbarous, some are even
cannibal ! Yes — so all the more does the command apply ;
adventurers take the hazards for skins and ivories, surely then
may Christians, for immortal souls. The means ? Only the
first expense of outfits and voyaging ; the missionary " would
at least obtain such food as the natives." The grand principles
were:

William Carey

(1) " He must be one of the companions and equals of the
people to whom he is sent."

(2) " He must, at the first moment possible, become
indigenous, self-supporting, self-propagating alike by his
labours and converts."

Missionaries must be men full of pity, prudence, courage and
forbearance — willing to leave all the comforts of life behind
them and to encounter all the hardships of a torrid or frigid
climate," " travelling night and day," " instant in prayer for
the effusion of the Holy Spirit." Money could not hire, nor
college make, such men ; they were " the gift of God." Un-
daunted, Carey put these convictions into a pamphlet and
submitted it to his ministerial friends. They advised him to
revise it, hoping he might drop the whole thing as Utopian.
He was not of such pliant stuff. Fuller, and two or three others,
now conscious of a dawning fascination and sympathy, held
their breath at the bold and boundless audacity of the dream.
To Christians in the mass, however, poor Carey was a wild
visionary ; they were quite ready to pray for the conversion
of the heathen, but to do anything — ah ! that might be even
profane. In 1789 Carey accepted a call as pastor to the little
church at Leicester. He must still don his " leather apron, his
books beside him and his beautiful flowers in the window."

Again he opens a school and does better. His literary
tastes gain him the friendship of Dr. Arnold and others, with
access to helpful books. Like Wesley, he had, while young,
learned the value of time, and in its use had put himself under
rule and method. Mondays he devotes to the study of
languages ; Tuesdays to science and history ; Wednesdays
are kept for his lectures, as Thursdays are for visitations ;
Fridays and Saturdays he reserves for the preparation of his
three sermons for the Sunday. The school hours are from
nine to four and five ; so work is at high pressure the long day
through. In October, 1791, at the Ministers' Association,
under the power of two sermons, a solemn, softening spirit is
manifest, " scarcely an idle word was spoken." After dinner
Carey cast his heart's burden upon the assembly with such
insistence that it was agreed that " something should be
done " ; the " something " was still nebulous, only that Carey
was requested to publish his pamphlet, which was still in
manuscript. Thomas Potts, of Birmingham, gave him £10
to do this. It was the first, and is still accounted the greatest,
missionary treatise in the English language. Its title begins,

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" An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means
for the Conversion of the Heathens."

In May, 1792, the Association met at Nottingham ; Carey
was the appointed preacher. The sermon really created the
first Missionary Society. His text was Isaiah Iv. 2, 3,
beginning, " Enlarge the place of thy tent." The two great
principles expounded were (i) " Expect great things from
God " ; (2) " Attempt great things for God." The pent-up
forces of his soul, gathering for years, rushed in irresistible
flood. " If all the people had lifted up their voices and wept,"
said Dr. Ryland, " I should not have wondered." Profound
as was the effect, they were about to depart as usual, when the
preacher, in a very agony of despair, seized Fuller's hand,
wrung it in distress and pleaded for definite action.

The assembly was arrested and resolved " that a plan be
prepared against the next meeting at Kettering for the
establishment of a Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel
amongst the heathen."

FIRST MISSIONARY SOCIETY — THE BACK PARLOUR COLLECTION

The Association duly met on October 2nd. After the
public service of the day, " twelve men retired to consult
further on the matter." They " retired " to Widow Beeby
Wallis's back-parlour, and their resolution runs, " We do
solemnly agree to act in society together." A committee of
five were selected, viz., Andrew Fuller (secretary), John
Ryland, John Sutcliffe, Reynold Hogg and William Carey ;
lastly a collection was there and then taken amounting to
£13 2s. 6d. Poor Carey had neither silver nor gold to give,
but immediately offered himself — his life — the Christ-like
gift. Thus humbly, as is the wont of heaven, was born the
greatest spiritual movement of the modern age.

The cobbler had triumphed ; but difficulties still remain to
be surmounted before, as actual missionary on ship, he casts
wistful farewell to the shores of England, never to see them
more. His first thoughts were upon Tahiti, or West Africa,
but at this juncture there came on the scene a Mr. Thomas,
a medical evangelist, home from Bengal. Hearing him,
Fuller states, " We saw there was a gold mine in India, deep
as the centre of the earth. Who will venture to explore it ? "
" I will venture to go down," exclaimed Carey, " but remember
that you [the company] must hold the ropes." But Mrs.
Carey now openly declares the whole missionary business to

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be a fool's errand. She will not go; there are all sorts of
dangers and certain ruin to her family. Carey avows he
" could not now draw back without guilt on his soul." So
he will go out, taking Felix, his eldest boy with him ; the
others to go only when a home is established.

And now as to funds — where and how are they to be
obtained ? The Society early got to work, and as quickly
discovered its task. The London ministers and others were
shy and sceptical. Could any good come out of Kettering ?
But the venerable John Newton, the hymnist, Carey says,
" advised him with the fidelity and tenderness of a father."
Wits and satirists coined jokes and the world laughed and
scoffed. But Carey steps forth strong as a prophet of God ;
he has dwelt too long upon the lone mountain of prayer to be
affected by godless gibes.

With Fuller, he marches on a preaching tour. Samuel
Pearce, one of the twelve, is also preaching with great success,
with big heart and searching power, and sends £70 from
Birmingham ; Thomas goes westward.

The twentieth of March, 1793, is a high day for Carey.
The prayer and vision of years are realised. In his little
chapel, himself and Thomas are set apart as missionaries of
the " Everlasting Gospel." There is a forenoon of prayer,
with afternoon sermons. Amid deep solemnity and awe-felt
emotion the commission is given in the old words, — " Peace
be unto you ; as my Father hath sent me, so send I you."

Passage is taken in the Earl of Oxford Indiaman. While
waiting two months in the Solent for convoy, it is discovered
that the missionaries are " unlicensed persons," and they are
boated bag and baggage ashore, and £150 is returned. The
East India Company had no love for missionaries, and acted
under the legal rights of their charter. The Society had tried
and failed to get licences, and were advised to take the risks.
Thomas was of strangely mixed character; he now proved
to be heavily in debt, and this was known to some on board,
the Captain having received a letter of warning. The ruin of
the enterprise now seemed inevitable. No, God has a better
way. Carey is in an agony of distress as he watches the vessel
depart, but has " no doubt they are directed by an infinitely
wise God." There is a Danish ship calling at Dover, bound
for Serampore, and passage is secured. The extra charge is
got, and now Mrs. Carey, with a new baby, her sister, and all
the family, also embark ; and on June i3th, 1793, the ship

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heaves anchor, and they lose sight of the glistening cliffs of
their native land. After five months, a " faint verge of green "
changes into groves of cocoa-nut trees, and the vessel touches
port at Calcutta on November nth. During the voyage
Carey, with help from Thomas, works hard at Bengali.

Carey now stands amidst 200,000 natives. Strange musings
search his heart, as he hears their jangle and babble of tongues ;
for is he not the elect of heaven — sent to translate into these
sounds and their signs the conquering evangel of the Cross
and of the one true God, and the wondrous music that " God
is Love " for these myriad millions, with their many religions
and cruel deities. He tells us, "I feel something of what
Paul felt when he beheld Athens, and ' his spirit was stirred
within him.' ' He prays, " Oh, may my heart be prepared
for our work, and the Kingdom of Christ be set up among the
poor Hindoos."

A PAGE OF MISSIONARY HISTORY

It is not within my scope to sketch a history of Protestant
missions, much less to tell of such heroic martyrs as Xavier
of the Romish Church, or to portray the turbid streams of
Jesuit propaganda in lands across the great seas. As Carey,
however, is named the founder of modern Protestant missions
some qualifying statement is called for.

It would seem that the first missionaries of British blood
were the Pilgrim Fathers, for they had a second avowed
purpose in crossing the Atlantic, namely, to take the gospel
to the Indians. More definitely still, as to one man, the
honour perhaps belongs to John Eliot, the Puritan New
England minister. Cromwell himself, when in power, planned
a Protestant evangel, and when a petition was presented to
the Long Parliament, backed by seventy English and Scottish
ministers, an ordinance resulted, creating the " Corporation
for the Promoting and Propagating of Jesus Christ in New
England." It was this society that supported Eliot.

The Restoration, with its dismal set-back of every noble
ideal, strangled this missionary effort, though later it was
re-organised under the name of the " New England Company."
In 1698 was formed the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, and in 1701 the Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in Foreign Parts. " Foreign parts " meant only
British possessions, colonies or dependencies, yet there was
the missionary motive in both societies, for they were to care

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for the natives as well as white settlers. The chief field of
work of the S.P.G. for the next three-quarters of a century was
in America, lasting until the War of Independence. Wesley
and Whitefield, as we know, went out under the S.P.G. But
the Moravians, by their wonderful career of missionary zeal,
were largely the pattern and inspiration of modern missions.
George Fox and his followers were earlier in the field, and
while they may be accorded the honour of being genuine
missionaries, they were chiefly concerned with their own
special evangel. Carey's imagination had been fired by the
noble work amongst the Red Indians in 1744-1747, of David
Brainerd, a gentle, fragile and heroic spirit, a Puritan
David indeed, who, though New England bred, was supported
from Scotland. He died, worn out, at the age of twenty-nine.

About 1742, a quickening of the missionary spirit arose
through unions of ministers pledging themselves to prayer
" concerts," that " God's Kingdom may come." These first
spread over the West of Scotland, and widely invaded the
United Kingdom. A memorial to join the praying union was
sent to North America which prompted Jonathan Edwards
to write his famous " Humble Attempt for the Revival of
Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom upon
Earth." This was re-published at Olney, and greatly helped
Carey's endeavour, and in 1784, a Baptist " Concert " for
prayer was started.

In naming Carey the " Founder of Modern Missions," we
must understand it is with these reasonable limitations, along
with others, special to India, which I will refer to later.

If to any one man, after the Master, belongs the inception of
the missionary ideal, it is not to Paul but Peter, for, after his
vision upon the house-top, he is a new Peter, and forthwith
proceeds to preach the first missionary sermon to the Gentile
pagans at the house of the centurion Cornelius, declaring that
" God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that
feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted of Him."

The honour of Modern Founder had nearly fallen to the
Countess of Huntingdon and Dr. Haweis. He, like Carey,
had been deeply stirred by reading " Cook's Voyages," and
he so impressed the Countess, that, with her help, as early as
1787, men were set apart as missionaries to the South Seas,
though at the last they failed heart, being unable to procure
episcopal ordination. But the missionary spirit was now
abroad in Britain.

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THE MISSIONARY TRUMPET — THE LONG NIGHT PASSES

Whitefield's triumphs and Wesley's societies, the " mighty
works " of Methodism at home and in America, seen or read
of by all men, had now aroused the Christian conscience to
larger vision and a grander call of duty. Simultaneously in
different counties the leaven was working, and the ideal of
" the world for Christ " took the place of that of " England
for Christ." The spirit of Watts's great hymn of missionary
vision and prophecy, " Jesus shall reign where'er the sun,"
was maturing to action.

With the hour had arisen the man — a lowly shoemaker —
upon whose head must be placed the laurel as Founder of
English Protestant Missions. That is, in our modem conception
of large, organised, bold effort of world- wide scope — of missions
alike to the Asiatic and the negro, the heathen and the
cannibal, conceived with large heart and eye in the whole
spirit of the Great Commission ; not fitful, individual, or
partial effort, nor that merely of the colonial chaplain-
missionary, but pure and single endeavour to evangelise the
heathen. Carey's " Enquiry " gathered and utilised the
facts and experience of his forerunners, and is pregnant with
practical insight and long-studied, cautious, business-like
method ; and this human prudence is set aflame by a Divine
and resistless enthusiasm.

He had been daily praying for the heathen and the slaves
since 1779. There must be a home Society, the sponsor and
friend of the missionaries, who nevertheless must strive to
keep themselves, when once settled and equipped. The
churches at home must uphold the society and its missionaries
by regular prayer and gifts on a weekly system. Alike for
his statesmanship and his faith, and the moral grandeur of
his ideal, Carey stands apart.

After his sailing Carey's heroic faith could but inspire other
Christian communities. His first letter home was immediately
shown to Dr. Bogue and others. Bogue wrote a stirring
appeal for more agencies and missionaries, which appeared in
The Evangelical Magazine. The Associations of the Independ-
dent Churches began to give earnest heed to the missionary
problem. But the grandeur of the idea so haunted the
imagination of good men and enlarged their hearts and minds
that a new conception dawned, too glorious, alas, to survive for
long, and only now coming back, after slumbering for a century

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or more. This was an undenominational missionary society.
Was not the glorious Gospel of the blessed God too great to be
belittled before the heathen by sectarian trifles ? On
November 4, 1794, eight ministers of various denominations
met at Baker's Coffee House, Change Alley, Cornhill. The
meeting was memorable for from it sprang "The Missionary
Society."

At later inauguration gatherings the popular enthusiasm
was so intense and the solemnity so deep, that it was feared
the proceedings might be arrested by uncontrollable
emotion. Dr. Bogue described the assemblies of the past
few days as attending " the funeral of bigotry " — " May she
be buried so deep," he ardently added, " that not a particle
of her dust may be ever thrown up on the face of the earth."
We are told the people could hardly refrain from a responsive
shout, and that " such a scene was perhaps never before beheld
in our world." Vicars of the Established Church preached in
Nonconformist chapels without particular surprise, or interdict
from Bishops. Later " London " was added to the name of
the Society, for there arose a Glasgow Missionary Society,
an Edinburgh one, and so on. It seemed more probable
that the cities would give titles rather than the denominations,
but these early began to assert themselves.

Robert Haldane, in Scotland, caught the flame, sold all
that he possessed, and gave £35,000 to equip a Presbyterian
Mission, with its centre at Benares, and planned on similar
lines to that of Carey in his own region, but the Government
threatened him with the Company's intolerant Charter, and
stopped the project. Before the end of the century the
Church Missionary Society had begun its great career, though
up to 1815 it could only send Germans to its field. A long
black night was passing — the day was breaking. The sacred
fire spread to the Netherlands and over the wide waters to
New England, where Adoniram Judson is even now " in
training to receive from Carey the apostleship of Burma."1
Wesley's followers were early moving, for had not he declared,
" The world is my parish." The consecrated zeal of Dr. Coke,
his hearing the cry of " the East a-calling " the touching
pathos of his death, and its solemn impulse to the growth of
the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, are conspicuous
in missionary annals. In this way the London Missionary
Society gradually came to be more and more identified with the
1 Dr. George Smith.

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Congregationalist community. But the Society may claim
to have translated its basic principle into actions, for, apart
from its own work, it even gave grants to other Societies, and
generously helped the Moravians out of monetary straits.
At the formation of the Church Missionary Society it aided by
valuable advice and by obtaining Lutheran missionaries. It
has always held on its course in a broad spirit of active
sympathy with all mission work, has ever been the consistent
advocate of friendly co-operation in the foreign field, and has
discountenanced needless overlapping of agencies.

CONQUEST — A BASE COMPANY — THE INDIA WHICH CAREY MET

There is perhaps no more wonderful story in military history
than that of the conquest of India by England. The awful
horror of the Black Hole (1756) had its quick revenge in the
battle of Plassey, which, under the genius of Clive and
Hastings, turned the directors of a merchant Company into
sovereign rulers. Before Carey's arrival these great soldier-
statesmen of India had marked the course of a vast change
from her age-long paths. For the reader, a summary page
here, as to the India which met Carey, will be well. He
will find a historic digest in the vivid pages of Macaulay's
essays on Clive and Hastings. From being the subject-
holders of a few acres or miles of a trading compound, the East
India Company now governed nearly the whole of the vast
and proud province of Bengal. The English had put down
their French and Dutch rivals and as virtual rulers had also
supplanted the ancient Emperor and Nabobs.

The malversation of Clive and the impeachment of Hastings,
the return to England of many of the Company's officials —
frequently low-born, rapacious adventurers, with fortunes to
equip a peerage, who lived in England in a vulgar and semi-
barbaric display — had opened the eyes of the British people
to the needs of control and reform in the Company's Charter.
Its officials, while in India, were permitted to augment a
paltry salary by enriching themselves by private trading,
which made temptation easy to every oppression and abomi-
nation ; they often lived in open adultery with native women
and had offspring. The directors at home hated the name of
missionary, and his reports were odious to them; mere
traders themselves and corrupt, gold was their one end.
At their elections in London, the glittering prizes caused
bribery on such an immense scale as to be a public scandal.

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Carey entered India at the beginning of this transition, but
it was twenty years later — and then only by a notable and
national agitation through the length and breadth of Christian
Britain — that in 1812, Parliament excluded the " pious
clauses " from the Charter, and missionaries and the Gospel
had access to British India. Time can never wholly clear
off the stain.

On landing in Bengal, Carey perceived there was a possible
field of labour comprising a hundred million souls who speak
of three hundred million gods, yet, says he, " no god but a
log of wood, or a monkey ; no Saviour but the Ganges ; no
worship but that paid to abominable idols."

The condition of women was too shocking, miserable and
awful for words. No school or education existed for them.
They were, while mere children, often betrothed or legally
bound and sold in marriage, though remaining at home until
puberty. In case the boy-husband died, the girl-wife was
doomed to life-long widowhood, being commonly the prey of
the high caste seducer, and this with the connivance of the
parents. The Suttee, or the burning of the living widow on
the pyre with her dead husband, was common, and among
some of the lower castes who buried their dead, even burial
alive of the widow with her dead husband, was occasional.
These, with other customs, the more terrible as practised by a
civilised people, met the gaze of Carey and his comrades.

A PAGE OF INDIAN MISSIONARY HISTORY

A glance should be given at missionary efforts in India
before Carey's time. Xavier's attempts had come to naught,
nay, dismally worse ; for, untaught in the living Word, his
successors had themselves fallen to heathenism. In 1705
Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Henry Plutschau, were sent
to India by Frederick IV. of Denmark. They disembarked at
Tranquebar, South India, and, Bible in hand, the two preached
the Gospel and slowly made converts, chiefly of low caste.
By 1715 they had printed the Gospel in the Tamil tongue.
Ziegenbalg, who died young, was a man of winning character
and zeal, and Plutschau's broken health forced his return home.
Others took up the work, and in 1726, by aid from the
Christian Knowledge Society of England, the field was
extended to Madras and other places.

The noble Christian Frederick Schwartz now loomed
upon the scene ; at his death, in 1798, his name eclipsed all

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others. A wail of sorrow arose from multitudes who had
loved him. A man of holy devotion, of wisdom, and of
attractive character, he dwelt in an old room, barely large
enough for his bed and table ; cooked his own rice and
vegetables, and lived and moved in native ways. He and the
Moravians were Carey's patterns.

In Bengal, Kiernander, a Swede, at the invitation of Clive,
had, in 1758, removed from Cuddalore to Calcutta. He
started a native school and built a church, and gathered some
converts. He laboured twenty- eight years in Calcutta, yet
never fully mastered the languages. Six years after his
death Carey could find no trace of his work among the natives.
He probably dropped more into chaplain work, and was much
among the Portuguese, mere nominal Christians of a low
Romanist type. The Governor- General described the English
chaplains as " with some exceptions, not respectable char-
acters." The Moravians had sent two brethren to Serampore
and Calcutta in 1777, but soon withdrew them.

Mr. Charles Grant, a distinguished official and director of
the Company, and a fine example of Christian character,
gathered around him a band of devoted Christians, determined
that the Gospel should be preached to the natives of Bengal.
It was they who had first appointed Thomas, Carey's present
comrade. Thomas itinerated for three years, but proved an
unsure and trying mixture of the earnest preacher with the
propounder of mystical and extravagant doctrine ; he was
generous, but blundering, and unreliable in money matters.
So earnest was Mr. Grant that he came to England to impress
Government and Church with his " grand scheme " of
a Bengal Mission. Archbishops and statesmen listened, and
promised, but did nothing. The godless clamour of the
India House prevailed, and Grant failed in his object. Yet
honour to his name ! From this rough summary it will be
seen that, though Carey was not the first European, nor even
the first English, missionary to India, yet how little had been
done for its evangelisation. In North India there had never
been even the nucleus of a native Church, perhaps not one
genuine convert. It was said of this period, " that if our
Empire were overthrown, the only monuments that would
remain of us would be broken bottles and corks."

In truth, Carey had no predecessor yielding any perceptible
relief to the cry of " the East a-calling." With his advent a
new era was to dawn.

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" FOOLS FOR CHRIST " — " NO CERTAIN DWELLING PLACE "

As Paul and Silas entered Philippi, the messengers of the
Gospel to Europe, too obscure to be noticed, so entered Carey
into India ; otherwise he would have been promptly stopped.
He was over thirty- two when he stepped from the ship on to
the quay at Calcutta. His position was one of peculiar and
anxious responsibility. He knew that the eyes of Christian
England were set upon him in hope and fear, and that his
failure would be construed into disaster for a cause the highest
and the greatest. Ignominy to himself was of little moment. A
single man, however capable, might well have quailed at the
task, but Carey, in addition, was weighted by a heavy and
sad burden, enough alone to dash to pieces the enthusiasm and
strength of an ordinary man. I think the pure grandeur of
his character never shone more than during the first seven
years of his Indian life and labours. He at once sought to
put into practice the two leading principles of his " Enquiry "
as those of true missionary Christianity — principles, the wisdom
of which was the more confirmed by every year of his forty
years' experience. These principles were that the missionary
must so order himself among those whom he seeks to convert,
as that they shall be drawn to him as a friend and equal ; and
also must endeavour to be self-supporting after the first
cost of the voyage and settlement. He immediately engaged,
as pundit and interpreter, Ram Basu, a disciple of Thomas in
former days. Carey's plan was that he and his family
should live by farming, and Thomas by his profession. But
no cheap land was available, and living was too expensive
in Calcutta. Thomas just at this point made some luckless
barter transaction, and the whole company was brought to
serious straits. In five months they moved thirty miles up
the Hoogli — to Bandel, an old Portuguese settlement, where
they met Kiernander, then aged eighty-five, and were much
encouraged by him.

Looking round, they fixed on Nuddea, the former capital of
Hindoo kings, and a famous centre of Brahmanical learning.

The missionaries purchased a boat and sailed and preached
regularly among the markets and hamlets on the river banks.
But again there was no suitable land for an Englishman to
farm, and funds were exhausted. They now " sought the
Lord by prayer for direction," and hearing of waste land
near Calcutta, returned thither. Again disappointed, Carey

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

gratefully accepted the kind offer from a native banker of his
garden house until some better way opened. The house
proved small and mean, and ill- ventilated for his four children.
Yet he never forgot the kindness, and after many years
requited the deed.

Englishmen who otherwise might have been friendly,
knowing Thomas and his failings, were shy of Carey, also
a penniless stranger in a strange land. His distraction was
now extreme, and the bitterest of sorrows was the upbraiding
of his maddening wife for his folly in bringing upon them
all such hopeless misery. An expert in botany, he applied
for an appointment in the Company's garden, but was
too late by a few days.

Ram Basu's uncle was Zemindar at Dehatta, forty miles
south-east of Calcutta, on the borders of the Soondarbans,
and the vast tract of tiger- haunted swamp and jungle on the
Gangetic delta. There cheap land is to be had. Sixteen
pounds are borrowed and the company make the journey by
boat. On the fourth day, when only one meal remains, an
English house is spied. It is Mr. Short's, manager of the
Company's salt-works. He insists upon giving shelter and
hospitality to all. Land is soon obtained, and Carey sturdily
sets to work to erect huts. The land proved rich indeed, but
was semi-fluid, being interlaced by sluggish streams, and
the atmosphere was sometimes like a vapour-bath. Malaria
must soon have come, with fatal effect on the children.

HIS DARKEST HOUR — THE DAWN

Perhaps just now Carey touched the bottom of his tribula-
tions. They had been neither few nor slight since that sweet
English June morning in 1781 when he wed Dorothy Plackett,
at Piddington Church. Yet in this, perhaps his darkest hour,
he never wavers in faith and purpose. He records of this
time, " The consciousness of having given up all for God is a
support and rich reward." " All my hope is in, and all my
comfort arises from, God." " I can hope in His promises,
and am encouraged and strengthened." Sweet angels of
refreshing minister to him, and he can cry, " O how glorious
are the ways of God ! " " When I first left England my hope
of conversion of the heathen was very strong, but through so
many obstacles it would entirely die away unless upheld by
God." There is " no earthly comfort except food and raiment,"
" but the word of God is sure." " God's cause will triumph,"

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though the superstition around him were " a million times
worse," and himself " deserted of all."

He reads Brainerd and is " much humbled." He loves
the woods, but cannot, like him, retire there, for fear of
tigers, as twenty natives of the salt-works have been carried
off this season. But his heart is gladdened in that now he
" can so far converse in Bengali as to be understood in most
things belonging to eating and drinking, buying and selling."
And oh, the great joy, when on Sunday, May 26th, as he tells
us, " I began my work of publishing the Word of the Lord to
the heathen ; with the help of Moonshi I conversed with two
Brahmans in the presence of about two hundred people, about
the things of God." Thus entered dauntless Carey into the
glorious work of his life. But to return to mundane urgencies.
The gloom is broken, writes Carey, " by a remarkable opening
in divine Providence for our comfortable support." In the
first week of 1794, in the crossing of the Hoogli at Calcutta,
a sad drowning fatality came to a family of its chief merchants
— the Udnys. A letter of sympathy from Thomas restored
an old friendship, and resulted in both Thomas and Carey
being appointed assistants in charge of indigo factories near
Malda. Each was to receive a yearly salary of £250 and
commission.

Carey's money troubles are now ended for ever — a blessed
relief. He and Thomas receive the licence of the Company
as indigo planters, but Mr. Udny is quite aware that above
all things Carey is a missionary. He is himself friendly to
the cause, and Carey at once preaches in the hall of the Resi-
dency. The missionary's own station is at Mudnabati, a poor
village of some two or three dozen mud-walled cottages, and
sixteen miles from that of Thomas. Here, the ninety natives
under his charge, says he, " will furnish a congregation imme-
diately, and will open a very wide door of activity. God
grant that it may not only be large but effectual." Carey's
general knowledge, with his special knowledge of botany, made
him an apt pupil in indigo culture ; but his factory, some
thirty miles north of Malda, in the district of Dinapore, was
badly placed for success and also for health. The lower parts
were sometimes flooded into a swamp.

A few weeks after Carey's settlement the rainy season brings
an awful time of fever. He himself is near death, when,
says he, " providentially Mr. Udny came to visit us, not know-
ing that I was ill, and brought a bottle of bark with him,'

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but the second youngest child Peter, a boy of five, died, sorely
wept, and sadder still poor Mrs. Carey's madness became
chronic. Mr. Udny takes Carey in his pinnace a voyage up
north, and he is restored.

INDIGO MERCHANTS — BOATING MISSIONARY — BIBLE TRANSLATOR

Never slackening in the one great call of bis life, in about a
year Carey records of his Sunday services, " I therefore now
rejoice in seeing regular congregations of from two to six
hundred people of all descriptions — Mussulmans, Brahmans
and other classes of Hindoos." " With the natives I have
very large concerns ; almost all the farmers, for nearly twenty
miles round, cultivate indigo for us, and the labouring people
working here to the number of about five hundred, so that I
have considerable opportunity of publishing the gospel to
them." " They hear with attention in general, and some come
to me for instruction in the things of God." " I have a district
of about twenty miles square and in this space about two
hundred villages." It is conveniently intersected by various
rivers, and he continues, " My manner of travelling is with
two small boats ; one serves me to live in and the other for
cooking my food. I carry all my furniture with me from place
to place — viz., a chair, a table, a bed, and a lamp. I walk
from village to village, but repair to my boat for lodging and
eating." For nine months each year he thus proclaims the
evangel of the Cross. His factory duties require only three
months' close work, and that during the rainy season. A
church is formed, but composed only of Europeans and
Eurasians. No native convert here confessed Jesus until
1808, years after Carey had gone to Serampore. Of this
period of faithful toil his journal runs : " My soul is often much
dejected to see no fruit."

He indeed cast the bread upon the waters, but others were
to find it " after many days " — the usual lot of pioneers.

He was careful to avoid the least suspicion of pressure or
bribery among the natives in attendance at the mission ser-
vices, and probably in a rare degree saw into the native mind,
veiled by incorrigible dissimulation. He gives us this picture
" All their thoughts are so very light, that they only consider
God a sort of plaything ; while cheating, and juggling, and
lying are esteemed no sins in them." " It is easy to confound
their arguments, but their hearts still remain the same."
Even conscience, it would seem, had to be created in them.

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Carey's first convert was probably Ignatius Fernandez, of
Portuguese descent and a prosperous trader. He himself
turned earnest missionary, built a church, and preached the
gospel for long years, and so fulfilled Carey's ideal.

Though so full with mission work, Carey's heart was bur-
dened, nay, thrilled with a great hope, ever upon him in earnest
prayer and endeavour — that he might present to the natives
a precious boon, the printed Word of God in their own tongue
as yet unseen in all the long marching centuries of their
history. To this end he bent his great linguistic gifts. He had
an odd and ready test for his relays of translations, for as each
portion was completed he read it out to hundreds of natives.
He tells us : " They have no word for love, for repent, and
a thousand other things." He now discovers that without
the mother Aryan language, Sanskrit, he cannot thoroughly
master its offshoot Bengali nor yet enrich or simplify the district
vernaculars. Sanskrit therefore must be conquered, and it
is assailed with giant and successful prowess. He thinks it is
" with only the help to be procured here, perhap? the hardest
language in the world." He now translated the Sanskrit
grammar and dictionary into English and then compiled a
dictionary of Sanskrit, including Bengali and English.

WITH HEART AGLOW HE BUYS HIS FIRST PRINTING PRESS

By 1798 Carey had finished his first translation, excepting
the historical books from Joshua to Job ; many revisions
must yet follow, but how shall it be printed ? The Bible
Society, that best friend of the pioneer missionary, was not
yet born.

His hope for money, press and types lay in England, and he
had written to Fuller to this effect. At this juncture a wooden
printing press in Calcutta was advertised for sale, price £40.
With heart aglow, he promptly ordered it, and on its arrival
" retired and thanked God." Mr. Udny insisted on present-
ing it. When it was set up and its working explained to the
natives, the boyish and unbounded delight of the scholar-
missionary so impressed them that they went away declaring
that it must be the God of the English.

Carey saw and conceived the missionary problem on broad
and bold lines — lines which at this day we are ever more dis-
covering as the best ways for the conversion of the heathen.
He must have schools and colleges for the young, and these, he
and Thomas, with Udny's friendly help, set up as a strong

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feature of the mission. The medical section completed the
scheme, and Carey testifies that " Brother Thomas has been
the instrument of saving numbers of lives. His house is
constantly surrounded with the afflicted."

I should state that quite early Carey had imported from
home farming implements, seeds, etc. He now casts eyes
towards the mysterious north, and longs for a missionary tour ;
and he and Thomas penetrate among the Bhooteas. They are
received by the Soobah as Christian Lamas. We are told,
" His genuine politeness exceeded everything that can be
imagined, and his generosity was astonishing." They are
often in sight of white, snowy ranges, wondrous and
beautiful, and some day he hopes to ascend their stupendous
heights— "so high," says he, "as to be seen at a distance
of 200 or 250 miles."

In such untiring zeal in North Bengal passed Carey's six
years — years of immense and necessary preparation for the
great work to which, in the divine purpose, he was ordained,
and upon which, by an unexpected way, he was now to
enter.

NEW MISSIONARIES — A MOMENTOUS CHANGE

In the days of the slow and stately " Indiamen," laden
with the rich freights of the East, watchful of French priva-
teers prowling for booty, news from afar was laggard. After
Carey and Thomas left England, as the weary months went
by, it seemed to the praying friends at home as if they had
dropped into hopeless night. At last, after fourteen months,
the journals of the voyage and letters of the first six weeks'
experience in India arrived. They were written before the
brighter hopes of Bandel were gloomed. The committee
immediately met and sang " with sacred joy " " O'er the
gloomy hills of darkness ; " " they returned solemn thanks to
the everlasting God," and replied in appreciative and
encouraging confidence.

The reader has learned of the missionary enthusiasm
provoked by Carey's efforts and example. The Society had
sent John Fountain to join Carey in Dinapoor, but he was not
a wise helper. Later, four men who had offered themselves
as assistants to Carey were fully equipped. They sailed in
an American vessel, for, though Charles Grant, a powerful
director, helped them, they could not obtain the Company's
passport. Grant advised them to land, not at Calcutta, " but

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William Carey

at Serampore, and there, under the protection of the Danish
flag, arrange to join Mr. Carey."

The party stepped ashore on October 13, 1799. It consisted
of Joshua Marshman, Daniel Brunsdon, William Grant and
their wives, William Ward, and Miss Tidd, who was to marry
Mr. Fountain. Grant died in three weeks, and Brundson
was cut off within a year.

Serampore lies on the Hoogli, some sixteen miles above
Calcutta, on the opposite side. It was the Danish trading
settlement and became what it promised, a peaceful haven.
With difficulty Ward, with a Danish passport, was permitted
to visit Carey ; the situation is stated to him ; there is only
" Hobson's choice." The new missionaries, as such, cannot
freely and openly preach the gospel under the British flag,
but are welcomed under the Danish, and the Governor at
Serampore is determined to protect them.

It is a hard case for Carey. Udny had retired from the
indigo business, and Carey had sunk all his money in a factory
of his own, twelve miles off. There was also the sacrifice of
his pioneer mission, the offspring of prayer and struggle, the
church and school and promising converts. But is it the hand
of God ? Yes ! for now his Bible can be printed, and in
January of 1800, he is with the friends in residence at Seram-
pore. Fountain seems to have been told off to shepherd the
old mission, and while on a visit there died in the following
August. Later, Thomas joined the Serampore brethren, and
after brief and good service he returned to Dinapoor, where
he also died. In prayerful faith and courage a large house
was purchased, which they thus describe : " It stands by the
river side, upon a pretty large piece of ground, and walled
round with a garden at the bottom. The price alarmed us,
but we had no alternative, and we hope this will form a
comfortable missionary settlement. From hence may the
Gospel issue and pervade all India."

The prayer was destined in the course of long years to be
largely realised. The house-church, with its garden land of
two acres, was the beginning of a busy hive of missionary
enterprise, and a radiating centre of Gospel truth for southern
Asia, which grew into fame throughout Christendom. The
property was finally extended to five acres, and upon it were
reared palatial colleges and schools, terracing the river front
while the original two acres became Carey's famous Botanical
Garden.

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A PAGE OF BIOGRAPHY — MARSHMAN AND WARD

Some brief biographical words on the two able and notable
colleagues of Carey are due, for the story of their loving
brotherhood and labours stands apart in its beauty, not alone
in missionary annals, but in all literature. Ward, born at
Derby in 1769, was the son of a carpenter and builder, who
died while he was a child. The widow, a woman of energy
and piety, guided well the heart of her boy, and saw to his
education. Apprenticed to a printer, he, by sheer ability, rose
to be editor of The Derby Mercury, and made it a journal of
popular power. The early promise of the French Revo-
lution filled many eager, liberty-loving hearts in England with
a great hope of freedom from the heel of tyranny and of a
beneficient march of progress and betterment for humanity.
Young Ward was amongst these and joined the Derby branch
of a political society in London, which Pitt tried to suppress.
Ward wrote an address against Pitt's attempt, and was
prosecuted in a State trial. Lord Eldon was counsel for the
Government, and Mr. Erskine for Ward. The jury acquitted
him. He underwent this experience twice over. Removing
to Stafford, he there established a new journal, and afterwards
became managing editor of The Hull Advertiser. Hearing
Clarkson during his tour to rouse the nation against the slave
trade, he lent his strength to the cause. Six years of editorial
life gave him wisdom beyond his years. In 1796, he renounced
politics and journalism, was baptised, and gave his talents to
village preaching. Says he of this change, " Conscience
commands me to go " — " to enter a new line of life." His
renunciation rings the true note, he lives on £30 a year, and
while he must " warn men night and day," he trembles, " lest I
should prove a castaway." His pronounced fitness for the
vocation of preaching was quickly evident, and he came under
the tuition of Dr. Fawcett, tutor of John Foster, the essayist.
The Baptist Missionary Committee, being in quest of the
best recruits for Carey's assistance, visit Fawcett and talk
about the missionary's translation of the Bengali Bible, its
printing, etc. Ward now remembers meeting Carey at
Derby on the eve of his sailing, and how strangely Carey, with
earnest look, bade him know that, if life and strength were
spared him in India, he should some day need a printer. As
he mused over this memory, the fire burned, and Ward offered
himself and was gladly accepted.

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William Carey

Marshman was born in April, 1768, at Westbury Leigh,
Wiltshire. His father was a weaver, and a deacon at the
Baptist Church there. The family traced descent from a
Parliamentary officer. He learned to read from the village
pedagogue, and before the age of twelve had read a hundred
books. Among them he had digested his father's shelf-full of
Puritan divines. Better still, he possessed an astonishing
memory. He would walk miles for a book, and became
somewhat the village paragon. At fifteen he was put with a
bookseller in Holborn, but, having so much errand-boy work,
he was not happy, and his father called him home. He now
resumed work at the loom, and for many years fell to his
habit of consuming every book he could lay hands on.

He had been trained to believe that true, vital conversion
must always be preceded by some fearful exercises of mind,
and knowing nothing of these experiences, he would not
own himself as under grace. Yet he was indeed called and of
the elect of God. Graciously moved to a purposeful study of
the Bible, the fuller light and confidence dawned upon him ;
he also gave months of study to Luther on the Galatians, and
with matured mind again pondered the divines. When,
however, he sought admission into his father's church, the
predestinated villagers, fearing the book-reading recluse
was trusting too much to head-knowledge, put him back on
probation.

In 1791, he married Hannah Shepherd and the union was
one of unalloyed happiness and of vast Christian service for
forty-six years. In 1794 he was installed master of the
seminary at Bristol, supported by the Baptist denomination.
Here he remained for five years, studied hard at the classics,
and added Hebrew and Syriac. As he read the " Periodical
Accounts " of Carey's work, his heart was turned to the
missionary field, and he and his wife, renouncing their fair
prospects in England, offered themselves as Carey's
colleagues.

In a few months after settlement at Serampore Carey wrote to
Fuller: " Brother Ward is the very man we wanted ; he enters
into the work with his whole soul." " Brother Marshman is a
prodigy of diligence and prudence, as is also the wife of the
latter ; learning the language is mere play to him." He " is
a true missionary." " Brother Ward is a great prize ; he
does not learn the languages so quickly, but he is so holy, so
spiritual a man, and so useful among the children."

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THE HISTORIC BROTHERHOOD OF SERAMPORE

Carey had supplied the creative heart and brain, the pioneer-
ing, unhalting faith and hope ; had held on, with grim courage,
through privation and disappointment ; he was still to
remain leader and become the Wyclif of India, but henceforth
the Serampore settlement, with its wide stretching sway and
imperishable renown, was to be a Brotherhood.

While at his own factory at Kidderpore, Carey, knowing of
reinforcements on the way, had begun to prepare for the
realisation of his early plan of a settlement on Moravian lines.
A better opportunity was now provided. The group resolved
to constitute themselves a single family. They solemnly made
a voluntary argeement. There was to be a common till,
table and stock. All earnings were to be pooled in one purse.
" No one should trade on his own private account." A small
sum was to be allowed as pocket-money. All surplus must be
spent on mission purposes. All were to be equal. Ward tells
us, " All preach and pray in turn ; one superintends the affairs
of the family for a month in turn." " Saturday evening is
devoted to adjusting differences and pledging ourselves to
love one another." Carey is the first treasurer, with care
of the medicine chest. In a few months we learn from Ward
that " our labours for every day are now regularly arranged.
About six we rise, Brother Carey to his garden, and Brother
Marshman to his school, and I to the printing office." At
eight o'clock there is breakfast, then singing and prayer.
" Afterwards Brother Carey goes to the translation, or reading
proofs, Brother Marshman to school, and the rest to the
printing office." At twelve, luncheon and rest till dinner at
three. " After dinner we deliver our thoughts on a text or
question — this we find very profitable ; on Thursday evening
we have our experience meeting. On Saturday evening we
meet to compose differences and transact business, after
prayer. There is a special gathering two hours before break-
fast on the first Monday of the month and each one prays for
the conversion of the Bengal heathen. At night," the record
continues, '; we unite our prayers for the universal spread of
the gospel."

The printing press was quickly and joyfully set up, its hum
and click to Carey's ears the sweetest music. On March 18,
the first page of his New Testament was impressed by himself,
a treasure to his eyes and heart alike, more precious than

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rubies. Excepting two books, his translation of the whole
Bible was ready for type, of course far from its subsequent
perfection. In May, two boarding schools were opened, under
the charge of Mr. and Mrs. Marshman, which soon yielded
£360 a year, an income that in the course of time rose to £1,000.
A month later a vernacular school for native youths met an
urgent need. In its first year the Brotherhood was more
than self-supporting. In the second, Carey's stipend from
Fort William College, along with an increase from schools
and the press, left a surplus for mission extension. In six
years they had repaid the home Society all the advances for
the first purchase, and also paid for two additional houses and
ground required for the growing settlement. In 1805, after
such a period of testing as was sufficient to break in pieces
similar notable socialistic ventures of history, the Brotherhood's
form of agreement was confirmed and expanded.

AN APOSTOLIC IDEAL

The spiritual side is emphasized in searching and fervent
phrases. They must cherish an " awful sense of the value
of souls : " every soul of the myriads around is " immortal."
They must enter into native modes of thinking, feeling and
prejudice ; they must avoid wounding and acrimonious
discussion, and strive to earn the goodwill and confidence of
the people. Christ must ever be the staple of their preaching ;
there is no hope of success but in the proclamation of His love
and the ministry of love. There must be patient tenderness
with converts. They must seek for and nurture native
evangelists, as it is " only by means of native preachers " that
India can come to the knowledge of salvation. As churches
are formed, pastors and deacons should be chosen " from
among their countrymen."

They must labour with all their might at translations, and
their circulation and the planting of free schools. To fit them-
selves for these " unutterably important labours " they thus
proceed, " Finally let us give ourselves up unreservedly to this
glorious cause. Let us never think that our time, our gifts,
our strength, our families, or even the clothes we wear, are our
own. Let us sanctify them all to God and His cause. Oh,
that He might sanctify us for His work ! Let us for ever shut
out the idea of laying up a cowrie for ourselves or our children."
With such words, and more in the like strain of fervent conse-
cration, they pledged anew their solemn covenant, entirely

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

voluntary, uninfluenced by glamour of monastic vow, unforced
by Pope, council or penance. It worked in unbroken, loving
amity, both with themselves and the home society for
seventeen years, a glowing success, while the old leaders at
home lived " to hold the ropes." In 1817 and also in 1820,
godly duty to aged and destitute relatives, the need of pro-
vision for widowhood or orphanage in their own families, led
them to agree that each of them should deduct a tenth from
the product of his own labour.

I can recall nothing to equal this Serampore Brotherhood,
in the history of settlements and missions. Far away in
intellectual power, and not less also in Pentecostal gift, it
surpasses anything in Moravian annals. Its perils were greater
because it allowed no head with super-ordination as bishop,
even of the Moravian type. It was superior also in adminis-
trative wisdom, and in the utilisation of individual aptitude for
special lines of work, and was every whit equal in Christ -like
suppression of self and whole-hearted consecration through a
common brotherhood. It shut away secularisation of the
spirit, gave stimulus to ideas and bold activities, and checked
individual failings and faults. But the amity broke when
seven other missionaries came on the scene, mostly married.
The juniors revolted against the authority of the seniors and
against the rigid economy. They were drafted to separate
stations, with Serampore as their headquarters.

FIRST NATIVE CONVERTS

I have already stated that for seven long years in Dinapoor
Carey had daily preached the Gospel in Bengali without one
sure convert. He had now added the written to the spoken
word, and issued the first edition of his New Testament. The
network of hindrances to Gospel truths was, apart from the
Company's enmity, appalling and terrible. A powerful force
of terrorism against conversion was exerted by caste, marriage
and a hundred other customs.

Let those, who at the present day mourn the slow advance
of the Christian evangel in the East, dwell upon the conditions
in Carey's time. This view in perspective is the only just and
true one. The measure is not that of merely known converts.
During the nineteenth century a new world was created for the
Hindoo, with an ever-widening horizon of blessings. The
whole atmosphere has been oxygenated by Christianity.
God being the Father of us all and no respecter of persons, or

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of race any more than of persons, the evangel of His Son
involves a brotherhood which Western Christianity for itself
is even now but slowly acknowledging. What wonder, then,
if the fortress of caste and superstition in the East holds
stubbornly on, fortified, as it is, by ages of sanctions and
servitude. The victory of the Gospel in the Far East has come,
and will come, as much by mine as through breach. Carey
was the first master miner in India for the destruction of its
anti-Christian citadels. He was the engineer expert and of
indomitable resource.

There were many sore disappointments and broken hopes as
to first converts. The first sure native convert was Krishna
Pal, a remarkable character, with an Eastern semblance to
George Fox. Weighed down by a deep sense of sin, he
sought relief among various sects and reformers of Hindooism,
but found it not. One day he heard the message that " Jesus
came into the world to save sinners." Just then he dis-
located his arm, which Thomas, first tying him to a tree, put
right. This led to further opening of the truth to him.
Carey then called and conversed with him ; the Scriptures were
read and expounded ; and he, with a friend whose heart was
opened by hearing the preachers in Serampore market-place,
sat down and ate at the missionaries' table in token of brother-
hood and renouncing of caste. A wild uproar arose when the
natives heard of this, and the converts were beset by a mob.
But the converts not only held on, but their families also soon
came forward in intelligent reception of Jesus as their Saviour.
Krishna, along with Carey's son, was now baptised ; Carey,
in his records of the inspiring scene, says, " Yesterday (Decem-
ber 29) was a day of great joy. I had the happiness to dese-
crate the Gunga, by baptising the first Hindoo." By the river-
side they sang " Jesus, and shall it ever be." Later the whole
group of families also underwent the rite. Krishna built
a church, and became an earnest evangelist. He wrote a
beautiful confession of faith, and was the first Hindoo
Christian hymnist. One song of tender trust and joy begins

Oh, thou my soul, forget no more
The Friend who all thy misery bore.

Other converts soon followed, some of high caste. At the
close of 1802 it was Carey's sacred joy to receive the first
Brahman of all India — Krishna Prosad — in Christian
baptism. Two other Brahmans confessed Christ in 1804.

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By the end of this year there were forty-eight baptised con
verts, and in the rite, with a true insight, Carey followed the
apostolic practice — he kept and consecrated the native name.

The wearying hope for converts now changed to that of
anxiety for their steadfastness. Carey was now not only
founding the Church of Northern India, he was also creating
an ideal of social and family life. Infant betrothal and the
marriage trouble must soon be fought, for converted Christian
girls were legally carried off to connections they abhorred.

In 1813 a small body of Kayusts living near Serampore
embraced Christianity as the result of diligent study of the
Christian Bible. They were of aristocratic connections.
Some of them, with other native preachers, evangelised the
villages around. It was a grief to the Brotherhood that their
literary engagements prevented their itinerating as they wished.

The mission journal recounts the first marriage of a Brahman
with a Sudra, as the first "glorious triumph over caste"; it
proceeds, "Allowing Hindoo chronology to be true there has
not been such a sight in Bengal these millions of years."

Gokool, of the first group of converts, dies a happy death,
and though in great pain, declares : " I am in my Lord's
hand, I want no other physician." An astonished multitude
watch the missionaries, with Mussulman and Hindoo converts,
carry the body and, with simple and reverent rites, commit
it to burial, singing a hymn of Krishna's the while.

TRIPLE METHOD OF EVANGELISATION — FREE DAY SCHOOLS

Preaching, teaching, translating, were all along the triple
lines of the plan of work. Carey's primary school in Mudna-
bati was the first in all India deserving the name. His work
for the education of the Indian people was in the front rank of
the achievements of his life. He gave India a sacred and
untainted literature in both the classical and the vernacular
language. In this labour, and also in the Free School project
on coming to Serampore, he met congenial comrades. An
astonishing feature of the brotherhood is their original, large,
bold ideas for popular education. Marshman's son, in his
"Story of Carey, Marshman and Ward'" offers a detailed

1 A useful book, as also is " The life of William Carey," by Dr. Culross.
But if the reader wishes to learn of this great Englishman far beyond
what is given in these poor pages of mine, let him procure " The life
of William Carey," by Dr. George Smith, in " Everyman's Library,"
a lovable biography and a remarkable shilling's worth. I gratefully
acknowledge its helpfulness.

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William Carey

statement of their scheme for the common native day schools.
Their proposals for these were circulated widely even in England
and gave stimulus to the question at home. Marshman tells
us they " exhibited a well digested system of education for the
masses in the vernacular tongue, which no subsequent efforts
have rendered obsolete. The plan was never carried out to its
legitimate extent." Besides Marshman's boarding schools, a
vernacular school was opened, and so early as October, 1800, it
numbered fifty children. Natives were trained as monitors and
teachers. To every new station, one of these Bengali free
schools was attached and they were all " conducted on the
Lancastrian plan " as in England. The rudiments of history,
geography, astronomy, reading and writing in Bengali along
with the first lessons of Christianity were taught. " Forty-five
schools were established within a circle of twenty-five miles
around Serampore, in which two thousand children received
the elements of knowledge in their own tongue." Open and
honest methods quieted fears of undermining caste — these
fears being always respected. The free schools soon numbered
a hundred ; they were welcomed by the natives and were
aids in spreading the Gospel. The success of the schools was
contagious and induced a Mr. Creighton of Malda to open
several. A scheme of his for extending such Christian nur-
series throughout India " only became a practical idea when
Carey had, in addition to his Bible, translated and published
a variety of introductory and explanatory tracts and cate-
chisms in the Bengali and Hindostani tongues. These were
supplied gratis from the Mission House at Serampore."
The plan of Raikes's Sunday schools in England was also
imported by the brethren. But Carey, while in England, had
known want of sympathy and even of bread, and his heart now
was moved in a more tender groove than that of mere educa-
tion. It would seem that he anticipated at Calcutta the
ragged school and mission hall movement for the cities of
England, for he set himself in Calcutta to care for the slum
dwellers and the destitute. His persistence resulted in the
establishment of the " Benevolent Institution for the Instruc-
tion-of Indigent Children." Three hundred boys and a hun-
dred girls of every race were soon under his care, and that of
one of his deacons, " a most valuable and active man," and
of " a very pious woman," Carey himself keeping a loving
superintendence.
Through this institution a civilian official declared " that

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more than a thousand youths had been rescued from vice and
ignorance, and advanced in usefulness to society and in a
degree of opulence and respectability." In 1810 there was
a rush of 105 converts, and the parent station at Serampore
had so spread into numerous off-shoots that some new
arrangements were deemed expedient.

THE SANSKRIT SCHOLAR — PROFESSOR

When Carey was forced to quit British India and settle in
Serampore, so that his comrades could be simple missionaries
and openly so, he was then the only Englishman who knew the
native tongue so as to teach it, and, with one possible exception,
the one scholar who could converse in Sanskirt as fluently as
a Brahman. The Marquis of Wellesley, brother of the great
Duke, arrived at Calcutta as Governor-General in 1798. He
was a man of great capacity, of courage for anew thing, and of
sincerity in religion. He was shocked at the low morals and
greedy ignorance of the Company's servants. Sunday was
everywhere the day of horse-racing and gambling. Boys of
sixteen were thrust raw from English schools into posts of
emolument as magistrates, judges, collectors, etc. He deter-
mined upon drastic reform. Among other projects he created
Fort William College, and the five great vernacular tongues
were named in the curriculum. Officers must pass a three
years' course of specialised training in India, and attain some
decent standard of fitness. A noble building was erected on
a suited site along the river front. Carey was appointed
teacher of Bengali and Sanskrit, at a salary of £700 a year :
for refusing to subscribe to the thirty-nine articles he was
disallowed the title of professor with a much larger salary. He
thus became a missionary in a far larger field, for he well
knew that, through him, law and justice would be dispensed
with a fairer chance of sympathy and equity, and in the
speech of the people, and also that the English tongue would
secure better opportunity of spreading among the nations
— ends which he had always felt to be distinctly missionary.
Further, the post gave him status and protection from jealous
and godless officials of the Company, and opened the door,
if only ajar, to missionary propaganda in Calcutta.

Of course, the post carried with it no stipulations against
his missionary designs. Lord Wellesley simply satisfied him-
self as to Carey's capacity and loyalty. The Company
snarled, and subsequently, in their hatred of Christian

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missions, engineered outbreaks of hostility, and ejected
new missionaries so harshly that English residents loudly
protested. They snatched at any opportunity of harassing
the Serampore Mission. By lying representations both in
India and at home they raised panics against their press
propaganda which they sought to stop. They arrested mis-
sionaries, denying to them any of the liberty which even
Roman Catholics enjoyed. Sometimes these persecutions
produced for the Mission embarrassing anxieties and daring
decisions. In these straits the brethren could only fall on
their knees in an agony of supplication to their Almighty
Protector, and the strong heart of Carey would melt in tears.
But as the high and spotless character of the Brotherhood,
the pure and open missionary nature of its work and, indeed,
its political service, began to be discerned, the gates to British
India, though not legally open, were not kept defiantly locked.
The Gospel sped its beneficent way ; every tract from the
Serampore press, cast among the river craft, bore its provi-
dence of light and blessing, often away up country by winding
network of river and stream.

CITY MISSIONS — A NEW CHAPEL — UNDENOMINATIONAL

Immediately after his college appointment, Carey started
two weekly meetings, in separate houses, for prayer and con-
verse. In 1803 he wrote to Fuller, " We have opened a
place of worship in Calcutta, where we have preaching twice
on the Lord's day in English, on Wednesday evening in Ben-
gali, and on Thursday in English." This was in the hall of
an undertaker, and the passage was through piles of coffins.
Afterwards some English Christians offered to pay the cost of
an unsectarian chapel, but, the site costing £1,000, a mat
chapel only could be put up. Crowds poured into the gates,
and there was a great hubbub when a converted Brahman
exhorted his countrymen to become Christians. Later,
Marshman bravely begged £1,100 and a substantial building
was erected, which Carey opened on January ist, 1809. It
was a spacious and lofty edifice, with galleries on three sides
and a noble portico at the front entrance. This was the first
Dissenters' church in Calcutta. Carey took all the week-day
work, and shared his turn with the brethren on Sunday.
It afterwards took the name of Carey's Baptist Chapel, and
here for a generation the once village cobbler, with patient
tenderness, preached in several tongues to dark and white,

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to " maimed and halt, the blind, and many lepers,"
" the unsearchable riches of Christ." His heart was ever
on his " Father's business " during every hour of leisure
from college duty, where — the contrast — he drilled English
lordlings from Eton and Oxford in Sanskrit, Bengali and
Marathi. It should be remembered that for thirty years,
from the summer of 1811, the Professor's duties lay as much
in Calcutta as in Serampore.

Sometimes he and his converts would march or stand in the
streets " like ballad singers ; " says Carey : " the multitudes
hang upon our lips, standing in the thick wedged crowd for
hours together in the heat of a Bengal summer, listening to
the Word of Life." They visit the gaol and the hospital,
and his own church becomes very much both hospital and
dispensary.

Of the results of all these agencies, this zeal and unceasing
prayer, Carey writes, " the number of enquiries fills me with
joy." " Not having time to visit the people, I appropriate
every Thursday evening to receiving the visits of enquirers ;
seldom fewer than twenty come and the simple confessions of
their sinful state . . . the expressions of trust in Christ
. . . the story of their spiritual conflicts often attended
with tears which choke their utterance, present a scene."

THE NAPOLEON OF THE MISSION FIELD

Carey was not merely the Bible translator for India, he was
more ; he planned vast campaigns of missionary advance,
and in strategic grasp and skill he was a veritable
Napoleon on the field of missions.

On Christmas Day, 1805, he writes, " It has long been a
favourite object with me to fix European brethren in different
parts of the country, at about 200 miles apart, so that each
shall be able to visit a circle of a hundred miles' radius, and
within each of the circuits to place native brethren at proper
distances." From this amazing project of faith and courage
sprang, " The United Missions of India," five in number,
based upon the same self-denial system as the original.

Serampore and Calcutta, with five dependent stations,
formed one. The other four were the Burma, the Orissa, the
Bhootan and the Hindostan missions. They touched Delhi
and Bombay on the one hand, stretching on the other beyond
India to Java, Amboyna and Penang, embracing Ceylon,
and even the Mauritius.

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William Carey

The staff of English missionaries had now increased to thirty
strong. In this dream of evangelisation, as also in his trans-
lations, Carey would always modestly own himself only a
preparer of the way, and the brethren were always ready to
yield a station to a stronger agency of the Gospel. Carey had
designs on the fringe of China, and tells us that " about twenty
chapters of Matthew are translated in that language (Chinese),
and three of our family have made considerable progress in
it." " Thus," says Dr. Smith, " through himself, his sons
and his colleges, the gospel was published, by voice or press
from the Eastern strands of the Pacific to the Arabian Sea."
That may sound extravagant, but it is the bare truth ; this
record is but a feeble echo of the full story, as I perforce skip
a world of details of long years of united, strenuous toil and
prayer by the whole Brotherhood.

WIVES, CHILDREN AND FRIENDS

Before I proceed to particularise more than hitherto Carey's
giant work as Professor of Sanskrit and translator of the
Bible, let me stay for some brief words as to his family and his
friends. He was the tender guardian, and often the nurse,
of his wife, during the twelve years of restraint due to her
mental malady. Marshman says that he pursued his increas-
ing labours " with an insane wife frequently wrought up to a
state of deplorable excitement, confined in an adjoining room" —
that is mildly put. She died of dysentery in December, 1807.

In the following May he married the Lady Rumohr, a Danish
lady of historic family, of his own age and long a neighbour.
The marriage was ideal. There are before me delightful love
letters during short separations. She died after a union
of thirteen years. Carey afterwards married Mrs. Hughes,
who survived him by a year.

His colleagues, who worked with him a quarter of a century
held him in the highest honour and love. His saintly and
gentle spirit, his unaffected humility, throughout his inter-
course with chaplains and bishops of the Church of England
and also with his brother professors at College, as well as with
the missionaries of other Churches, won him affectionate
respect. He shed around him a perfume of quiet shyness.

Henry Martyn and he met often in gracious and hallowed
converse. Martyn's pathetic story of love and sacrifice is
well known. It was the sacred magnetism of Carey's heroism,
along with Brainerd's which drew his own heroic and lofty

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soul to the Indian field. In the summer of 1809 Carey was
so ill of fever that " for a week," says he, " scarcely any hopes
were entertained of my life." By 1812 the name of Carey was
fragrant in every evangelical home in Britain and his portrait
was painted and engraved. Of his four sons, William early
entered the field at his father's old district at Dinapore. The
father mourned somewhat the tardy conversion of Jabez and
Jonathan, and also that Felix, during a mission exploration,
slid for a time, off direct mission work. Felix was learned
in the Burmese and Chinese tongues, and, after making a
grammar, translated into these languages portions of the New
Testament. He died young. One son laboured as a
missionary for forty years ; another for twenty years ; and
a third embraced the law. There are now two great-
grandsons in the field, and another has a distinguished
record in the Indian Civil Service.

INCREASED HONOURS — A DRAMATIC HOUR

Carey's title of teacher at College soon rose to that of full
professor, with a salary of £1,800. For seven years, beginning
with his removal to Dinapore, Carey had allotted a third
of his long, busy days to learning Sanskrit. He had
discovered that it was the master-key to numerous Indian
tongues. He tells us that " even the language of Ceylon has
so much affinity with that of Bengal that out of twelve words,
with the little Sanskrit that I know, I can understand five or
six."

He often astonished and confuted the Brahmans in dis-
cussion by quoting from their own writings. With the thirst
and instinct of a true scholar he searched the Mahabharata
Epic for the chance hope of tracing some allusion or fact
by which he might equate Hindoo chronology with sure
history.

In September, 1804, at the end of the first three years'
course, the Governor-General summoned a brilliant assembly
to hear the disputations and declamations of the finishing
students, with speeches from their professors. His
brother, afterwards the great Duke of Wellington, " the
great civil and military officers, learned Brahmans, opulent
rajahs and baboos from all parts of India, together with
members of the Supreme Court and the Council, were present.
The meeting was held in Government House, then just com-
pleted at a cost of £140,000, where on its marble floors, through

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the century since, Viceroys have received the homage of
dusky kings, and durbars and pageants innumerable have
deployed in barbaric splendour. Carey had already in the
proceedings delivered a speech in the Bengali section, but the
last item is a display by the students in Arabic, to be concluded
by Carey as moderator in a speech in Sanskrit.

Now he had long nursed in his heart an ardent desire for a
great opportunity to avow and proclaim himself as first and
foremost true to his great commission, as missionary of the
Gospel of Christ. That moment had now arrived. Buchanan,
a friendly chaplain and professor, encourages him, even draft-
ing the words of the declaration, though expecting reproof.
One may imagine the siltnt rehearsal of the drama now
proceeding in Carey's heart. Before the glittering array of
Mohammedan and Hindoo nobles, as well as English officials
of every degree, he speaks forth the avowal. It was an act
of sacred courage. Two days after at another assemblage
for diploma presentation, Wellesley himself delivered an
oration, and specially complimented the Sanskrit classes.

As I read Carey's speech, it flows on in suited, lofty diction
and stately periods, yet without a line of verbosity. It tells
of his own life among the Indian people ; it enumerates the
present benefits of the college, and prophesies for it an illus-
trious future. Buchanan had added to a translated draft
some lines of flattery, not likely to affect the great Viceroy,
who replied, " I am much pleased with Carey's truly original
and excellent speech, I would not wish to have a word altered.
I esteem such a testimony, from such a man, a greater honour
than the applause of Courts and Parliaments."

What musings that night for the Hackleton shoemaker !
For thirty years Carey was the most notable figure in the
College and the magnet of attraction to the learned natives,
pundits and moonshees. His college room was a hive of un-
ceasing literary work. One hundred grammars, dictionaries,
reading books, etc., in the original languages were issued by
the College staff, and Carey's share was the largest.

Among his boldest and most laborious contributions to
oriental languages was his project for the Bibliotheca Asiatica.
After its conception he laid the scheme before the College
Council. For an indemnity of one hundred copies, to ease
expense, the Serampore press would print Sanskrit books
at a fixed price. The College and the Asiatic Society agreed
to subscribe equal shares. In addition to the original there

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was to be an English edition. In this way the Indian classics
were unveiled not alone to the Indian world but also to
England. But Carey's magnum opus was what, in 1811
he describes as " An Universal Dictionary of the Oriental
Languages derived from the Sanskrit, of which that language
was to be the groundwork." He had for years been collecting
materials for this stupendous work, and all to assist, he tells
us, " Biblical students to correct the translations of the Bible
in the Oriental tongues after we are dead." Truly, like
Milton, he might avow that he lived and worked " as ever
in my great Taskmaker's eye."

Through the College, Carey, for thirty years, moulded the
ablest men of the civil service. Many who sat at his
feet, afterwards achieved high fame, John Lawrence among
them.

THE WYCLIF OF THE ORIENT

The reader must distinguish between Carey as Sanskrit
Professor at Fort William College and as Bible and tract
translator at Serampore. Like Wyclif, for his day, Carey
regarded his task of translating the Holy Scriptures into the
common tongue of the people, as the foremost work, as the
sacred pledge of his life. Into this he lovingly poured to the full
his great energies and talents. It was his precious " alabaster
box " for his dear Master. It is said that the reason why the
saintly devotion of missionaries of the Romish Church leaves
no trace in after years, is not alone the mixture of effete
superstition, but rather that they do not cast the Word of Life
among the people. The Protestant missions, when crushed
down by persecution and martyrdom in Madagascar,
flamed anew on the return of liberty, for the Word reappeared
from hidden places. Carey simply believed what Jehovah
said, that His word would not return unto Him void.

In 1904, at the Centenary of the British and Foreign Bible
Society, Mr. G. A. Grierson, C.I.E., Ph.D., D.Litt., declared
authoritatively, as head of the Linguistic Survey of India,
that " the great-hearted band of Serampore missionaries
issued translations of the Bible or of the New Testament in
more than forty different languages. Before them, the num-
ber of Protestant versions of the Bible in speeches of India
could be counted on the fingers of one hand." I may add,
that even these few were but parts, and from Dutch or Danish
versions. It should be said that of these forty versions, seven

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only included the whole Bible, twenty-one contained the New
Testament, the rest being partial translations.

The titles of these two score versions would form a tall
pillar of queerly pronounced words. I cannot stay to specify
Carey's personal share ; perhaps he himself hardly knew.
Great was the help of Marshman with his Greek, and of Ward
in proof correction. It must suffice to say that the basic
Sanskrit, the Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and chief versions were
Carey's own, that he inspired and directed, revised and
edited the rest. The native pundits did much of the rough
blocking out of some of the dialect versions. The wonderful
version of Chinese was Marshman's own, and we learn from
his son's memoir that for it Ward invented movable metallic
types in place of fixed blocks, and created an era in Chinese
printing. From 1806, Marshman spent fifteen years of
spare time on the arduous study of Chinese.

With what grandeur of faith and courage Carey planned
his translation project may be perceived from the following
entry of December, 1803. He writes, " We have in our power,
if our means would do for it, in the space of about fifteen
years, to have the Word of God translated and printed in all
the languages of the East. We have types of all the different
characters cast here. On this great work we have fixed our
eyes. . . whether God will enable us to accomplish it,
or any considerable part, is uncertain." They had trained
natives to cut matrices and their type casting foundry supplied
typo far and near. The native rice paper was loved of white
ants, and after long experiment they succeeded in making a
reliable paper, and erected a paper mill. Later, this was
improved, and for power, instead of the old treadmill, they
imported the first steam engine ever seen in India — a mighty
wonder — the " machine of fire," said the natives.

Every translation had its little story, sometimes its romance
of difficulties encountered and conquered, but the majestic
ideal moved bravely onwards towards fulfilment. To aid
in the expense of printing these earlier editions, Fuller went on
preaching tours, collecting £1,300. £700 came from America,
and Calcutta subscribed £1,600. Carey's brain teemed with
conceptions, born from the heart of the Christian scholar.

A SCORE OF GRAMMARS AND TWO DICTIONARIES

In December, 1801, he writes,

I have of late been much impressed with the vast importance of
laying a foundation for Biblical criticism in the East by preparing

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grammars of the different languages into which we have translated, or
may translate the Bible. Without some such step, they who follow us
will have to wade through the same labour that I have in order to
stand merely upon the same ground I now stand upon. If, however,
elementary books are provided, the labour will be greatly contracted,
and a person will be able in a short time to acquire that which has cost
me years of toil.

One reads with drawn-out amazement how his dreams
materialise. He has already eleven of these grammars done and
two more were ready the next year. Even during the same
year we find him writing : " I am now printing a dictionary
of the Bengali which will be pretty large, for I have got to
page 256 quarto and I am not near through the first letter ;
that letter, however, begins more words than any two others."
When this is finished he informs us that another design is
to be carried out. " To secure the gradual perfection of the
translations, I have also in mind and indeed have been long
collecting materials for ' An Universal Dictionary of the
Oriental Languages derived from the Sanskrit.' with the
Hebrew and Greek terms." He then describes his intended
procedure — a prodigious business — a collection " of the
synonyms in the different languages derived from the
Sanskrit, answering thereto, etc."

He doubts if he may live to accomplish this along " with the
translations in hand." If so, '; I can then say, " he records,
" Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." After
twenty-three years of sacred toil he lived to complete the
great task. Well may he write to Fuller in May, 1815, " My
labour is greater than at any former period. We have now
translations of the Bible going on in twenty-seven languages,
all of which are in the press, except two or three. The labour
of correcting and revising all of them lies on me."

A MEMORABLE DAY

Tender memories linger around his first Bengali version of
the New Testament from the Greek. As already noted the
translator was his own pressman, and on March i8th, says
Ward, " took his first impression of the first page of Matthew."
It was February 1801, before the last page, with the final
revision, was put into Carey's hands. When bound, it was by
him reverently placed upon the Communion Table — an offering
to God, and the Mission families made a renewed and grateful
covenant of solemn thanksgiving. Carey preached from the
text, " Let the Word of God dwell in you richly with all
wisdom."

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William Carey

It was this translation that brought to Carey the Fort
William appointment, which so charged his life with princely
service. The second edition, in 1806, was a vast improvement
on the first. The last edition of the Bengali complete Bible
was the result of fifteen years determined yet sweet toil.
Marshman helped with the Greek, and Carey finally trans-
cribed, with his own pen, the whole five octavo volumes.
During the forty years of his missionary life. Carey prepared
and watched through the press five editions of the Old and
eight of the New Testament in his own beloved Bengali, the
last in 1832. The tired saint could now well say, " My work
is done : I have nothing more to do but to wait the will of the
Lord."

After the Bible Society's birth in 1809 it came to be an im-
mense boon even to the Serampore hive of translators. The
great home Society found the Serampore press the cheapest
and best means of publication for India.

As I turn over page after page of descriptive detail on the
consummation of these magnificent ideals, and dwell upon
the sacred ardour of unflinching toil and sacrifice, how poor
and bald seem my scanty pages !

On March nth, 1812, an awful disaster by fire befell the
mission premises. An unusual stock of types, tools, papers,
with precious manuscripts, perished. When Carey walked
over the ruins, tears stood in his eyes. " The Lord has laid
me low that I may look more simply to Him," was his com-
ment ; the labour of years was gone in a night ; the saddest
loss was of his own manuscripts. One morning, among the
ruins, Ward, to his inexpressible delight, discovered the type
punches and matrices. But the messenger of smiting was
followed by a swift angel of hope and blessing. The news
flew throughout India, Europe and America, and proclaimed
their sacred and wonderful work as nothing else could have
done.

It gave wing to a knowledge of their enterprise and enlarged
the field of sympathy. It also awoke and stirred languid
friends, and in fifty days the money loss of £10,000 was sub-
scribed, and word was sent round " to stop contributions."
But gold could not bring back Carey's manuscripts.

CAREY, THE FRIEND OF HUMANITY

Strongly linked to his direct proclaiming of the Gospel was
Carey's eagerness, always seconded by his colleagues, in seeking

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to put down the hellish customs of cruelty and death — the
offspring of a debased heathenism. When he arrived in India
the salt of Islam had lost its savour, and Hindooism had fallen
to its worst. European civilisation was also showing to India
its own worst side. The East India Company had dethroned
the Christian God and lifted Mammon in His place. The
conscience of England was but slowly aroused to empower
Viceroys to put down the worst of the cruel crimes. For
years, Carey and the brethren were almost alone in persistent
exposure and condemnation. While posted at Dinapoor on a
journey one day he received his first shock from the Suttee
custom. Before him was the pyre ; he heard the shrieks of
the victim, as the lever sticks were pressed to bind the widow
fast — he saw the horrid smoke arise. The awful memory never
faded from his eyes and ears, and even his gentle soul flamed
with indignation and he vowed never to stop crying aloud
till the deaf ears of Christian conquerors were unstopped, and
the accursed horrors were thrust back to the hell which bred
them. Had Wellesley remained in India a short time longer,
widow burning, through Carey's influence with him, would
probably have been suppressed. Its devilish smoke fouled
the sky until 1829. These female murders took several
forms. There was infanticide — by hanging infants on trees
in baskets, but more often by exposure in sacred waters to be
drowned, or eaten by sharks ; also voluntary drowning ; and
widow burning or burying alive. In 1804 Carey deputed and
paid ten trustworthy natives to collect statistics from village
to village, and proved that in the small area around Calcutta
more than 300 cases of Suttee, or widow-burning, occurred in
six months of 1803. Carey also requested his College pundits
to collect all the texts in the Shaster bearing upon the subject.
He probed to the bottom and proved that infanticide was not
sanctioned by Hindoo law ; he prepared and sent three
memorials to the Government, drew the English chaplain to
his aid, and this abomination was put down, as also was the
custom of pilgrim-widows voluntarily walking into sacred
waters to drown, where the Ganges and Sagar meet, so as to
secure holiness and heaven. Wellesley did stop widow-burning
in cases under sixteen, and also in cases of expected mother-
hood. "During the next quarter of a century," Marshman
avers, " 70,000 more widows ascended the pyre, and became
the victims of a bloody superstition." An awful account for
a Christian nation to have to her guilt, either indirectlv or

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directly. The order for suppression happened to reach Carey,
as Government translator, on a Sunday morning. Twenty-
five years before he had submitted the first appeal respecting
it. This Sabbath morning, the journal records, " Instead of
going into his pulpit, he sent for his pundits, and completed
the translations before night." Every day's delay meant the
sacrifice of two lives.

During pilgrimages incredible numbers died from plague,
hunger and sacrifice. The district of Serampore was the centre
of Jagannath worship. At the yearly festival numbers of
drugged and voluntary devotees were crushed under the wheels
of the idol car. There was also the swinging festival, when the
victim was hoisted by the heels over a slow fire. There were the
Ghat murders, or the conveying of the sick and dying to the
Ganges ; under this custom alone Ward estimated that, to his
knowledge, there were some five hundred hastened deaths per
year. Wretched lepers were sometimes rolled into a pit with
fire at the bottom. Against all this devilish brood did Carey
wage, year in, year out, relentless war, and ere his voice was
hushed in death, he saw their end. It should be remembered
that, though these immolations were nominally voluntary, they
were, in the main, forced by pressure, open or covert.

But another dire sin against humanity remained, probably
new history to the reader. The slave banishers in England
were so engrossed with the negro that they knew not of nine
millions of slaves in India. The full actual truth only came to
be known towards the close of Carey's life. From 1779 Carey
prayed daily for the slave. In 1843 slavery in India was
finally abolished.

THE QUADRUPLE FOUNDATION — SERAMPORE UNIVERSITY

As previously stated, Carey's missionary ideal had a triple
foundation, " preaching in the tongue of the peoples," transla-
ting into the languages and vernaculars of Southern and
Eastern Asia, and teaching the youth, boys and girls, in
vernacular schools. But he soon discovered the need of a
fourth — a College.

By 1818, he and his brethren had, in working order, 126
native schools, embracing 10,000 pupils. The pressure for
higher grade teaching grew every year. Educated natives,
Eurasians and sons of missionaries were insistent for training
as translators, preachers, pastors, and teachers, and also for
commercial pursuits. A fair dream of years now actualises

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into reality. In July, 1818, the Brotherhood issued a pros-
pectus of plans for a " College for the instruction of Asiatic
Christians and other youths in Eastern Literature and European
Science." It included a large range of Eastern languages,
the English language and literature, Science and Theology, etc.
Such high sacred daring for God deserves space for quotation.
Marshman's son says :

" They had for several years been making preparation for the
establishment of an institution with the view of more effectually
training native preachers and schoolmasters, and giving a more complete
education to native students, more especially to those of Christian
parentage. ... In pursuance of these views it was proposed to
give the students a thorough knowledge of Sanskrit, the sacred language
of Hindooism, and of Arabic, the canonical language of Mahomedanism.
. . . After this course of study, a select number were to apply to
the study of English. . . . The College was likewise to include a
normal school, to educate teachers in the science of instruction and
qualify them for organising and managing schools. But it was to be
considered pre-eminently a divinity school, where Christian youths, of
personal piety and aptitude for the work of an evangelist, should pursue
a course of instruction in Christian theology. ... If ever the
Gospel stands in India, it must be by native opposed to native,
demonstrating its excellence above all other systems."

The College was open to native youths without distinction
of caste or creed. They believed hi vernacularism as the
chief instrument of Gospe] success, hence the strong Oriental
cast of the institution.

With splendid courage and vision a building of the Grecian
order, of impressive beauty and proportions, was erected at
the cost of £15,000. It was opened in 1821 with thirty-seven
students. They had declined the order of Dannebrog from
the King of Denmark and he sent gold medals to each of the
brethren in token of approbation, and in 1827 granted to the
college a Royal charter. The college bestowed an incal-
culable benison on all India — directly so in its own work, but
even more so by becoming the inspirer and exemplar of many
similar institutions. For six and twenty years it continued its
beneficent work.

During a visit by Ward to England he attached John Mack,
then twenty- three, possessed of an intellect of the first
order, and also of similar exalted consecration of heart as the
Brotherhood. Mack joined them in 1821, and until his death
by cholera in 1846 he maintained the scholarly dignity of
the college. He was the last of the giants. The college
was continued under Carey's principles until 1833, when it

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became merely a training institution for the Baptist Mission.

I have now to chronicle a probable destiny for it glowing
with romance. The charter received from Frederick VI.
embraced all the rights and powers of Western Universities.
When Serampore was transferred to England, in 1845, the
treaty provided that the charter should continue as if given
by the English Crown. To ensure neutrality no divinity
faculties are allowed in State universities in India ;
consequently the charter of Serampore is the only avenue for
divinity degrees. The college never assumed its rights of
university rank for want of funds for scholarships. Since
Carey projected his large scheme of Indian culture, two potent
factors have developed. First there is a wonderful increase
of Christian natives who reach a fair standard of education.
I observe that in the term ending July 1910, at the univer-
sity of Carey's own city, Calcutta, 142 passed the B.A. degree,
of whom four were native women. Second, under Lord Morley
of Blackburn, as Secretary for India, three hundred millions
of Indian subjects have been granted an instalment of a virtual
constitution. But greater still in tremendous promise
is the Royal (Imperial) declaration by George V. on his visit
in December, 1911.

Under this healthy outlet of liberty, leavened by Protestant
Christianity, let us hope for a great, orderly, yet quickened
march for the uplifting of the myriad millions of the obscure
poor, who were always upon Carey's heart. God yet lives
" His wonders to perform."

For some years, a movement has been maturing for making
Serampore College an interdenominational Protestant univer-
sity and using its charter for granting the B.D. degree on the
London standard. A large endowment is required. The
scheme has the hearty support of the Baptist Society as owners
and of the various evangelical communities. The Missionary
Congress held in Edinburgh, in 1910, with its strong impulse
to unity, should help to the realisation of the crown of honour
to Carey and the Brotherhood.

EASTERN LITERATURE — FIRST NEWSPAPER OF THE EAST

When Carey first stepped upon Indian soil, Bengali possessed
no printed and but little written literature. During his own
single life there, of two score years, he not only endowed the
tongue with an accessible literature, but created for it a
standard roughly similar to that given to English in Wyclif's

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age. He introduced to India a Renaissance of wide and pure
literature.

In 1818 the enterprise of the Brotherhood gave India the
first newspaper periodical ever printed in an Oriental tongue.
It was proposed by Marshman and Ward and appeared weekly.
Carey was willing the novel venture should be made, if without
party politics. The Darpan or Mirror of News conveyed
healthy reading to the people, and greatly helped moral and
political education among the natives. But The Friend of
India, a journal in English, issued soon afterwards, was for
fifty-seven years a weekly vehicle of immeasurable service,
awakening the conscience and heart of England to Indian
affairs. It was also read by the educated native, to his great
profit. Carey early divined that a knowledge of English
by the natives would be a powerful aid in the assaults upon
defiling mythologies and heathenish superstition.

CAREY, SCIENTIST AND BOTANIST — WORLD- RENOWNED GARDEN

The reader will remember the lad of Northamptonshire
lanes, catching his butterflies, collecting plants and flowers,
for his tiny museum, and later the serious cobbler's cottage
garden, always the trimmest and bonniest of the village.

That boyish hobby grew into a life-long study, and blossomed
into a wonderful Oriental garden, yielding knowledge of herb,
flower and tree for the good of millions, and renown to its
collector. Quickly on arrival in India, Carey's delighted eyes
opened to a world of novelties in natural history. For his
casual notes, he kept, he tells us, "separate books for every
distinct class, as birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, etc." These
were but by-ways from his chief and loved pursuit of botany.
He also kept a journal for notes of " articles of curiosity and
science."

I have mentioned his importation from home of farm
implements ; he also procured many samples of field, garden
and fruit seeds for experiment. With careful minuteness he
instructed how they should be packed and when, so that they
might arrive in the right month. He took a peculiar interest
in trees and their industrial use, and as a mark of honour the
Company's botanists gave Carey's name to certain trees. In
his garden at Serampore these grew into noble avenues,
known as Carey's Walk. Beneath their umbrageous shade,
long after the great missionary's death, numerous notable
visitors were welcomed from distant provinces of India,

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William Carey

from England and America, coming as to a consecrated shrine.
Carey trained native gardeners so well that they knew and
told the Latin names of their charges. The garden was walled
around, and to him was as an Eden of tropical beauty ;
every plant was a companion, with a biography, and to
disturb one was to touch the apple of his eye. The garden
was also his Mount Zion, his Holy Place of meditation, worship
and inspiration, and sometimes his Gethsemane. " I arose,"
he tells us, " about sunrise, and according to my usual practice
walked into my garden for meditation and prayer till the ser-
vants came to family worship." During his last days his
consolation was to be wheeled around it. The enclosure was
five acres in extent and planned on the Linnsean system.
The garden was his one indulgence, and during his life he spent
upon it £7,500 ; he regarded it, as it truly was, in its broad
operative influence, as a powerful missionary adjunct. He
himself had a veritable genius for classification, and every bed
had its own stamp of scientific arrangement in orders and
families. " The garden formed," says his son, " the best and
rarest collection of plants in the East."

He frequently lectured on botany, and retained the affec-
tionate friendship of a succession of the eminent botanists
who were the Company's head gardeners. His edition of
Roxburgh's " Flora Indica " is a standard work, his own intro-
duction of twelve large pages being not the least valuable
element. Carey inscribed boldly on the title page as the text
of its contents, " All Thy works praise Thee, O Lord." This
touch, so Ruskin-like in its wide conception of worship, but
reflects the man. His garden and its science, as also his pure
gifts to literature, were all regarded as contributory to his one
calling of missionary of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

CAREY THE AGRICULTURAL REFORMER

Carey played an eminent part in agricultural reform for
India. He introduced better seeds for wheat, barley, veget-
ables, hemp and jute plants, sugar cane, etc. He was full of
ideas for improved methods of enriching indigenous growths,
and for their usable manufacture. He strove hard to in-
augurate an Agricultural and Horticultural Society in India,
and in 1820 had the joy of the consummation of this project.
He was ever, while he lived, the learned guide and leader in
its career of vast and beneficent service to all India. Gold
medals of merit were instituted, and so early as 1828, 109

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natives were competing. The society expanded its great
shows, and even European fruits, cheese, etc., were produced
equal to those at home. It encouraged improvements in
growing coffee, cotton and what not, in cropping land, in
live stock, in grains and in the whole world of husbandry, and
also in paper making. Our missionary scientist corresponded
with famous botanists the whole world over. In 1823 he was
elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, a member of the
Geological Society and a corresponding member of the Horti-
cultural Society of London. Carey knew the hardships of the
common people as no European had ever done and also the
means of their economic salvation. He was the first reformer
to seek, by the introduction of Savings Banks, to mitigate
the evils caused by the usurer. The agricultural usage of
" advances " at never less than 32 per cent, interest and
ranging up to 70 per cent, crushed the people into hopeless,
helpless poverty. The full tale of this economic and scientific
side of his life would easily exhaust all my space. Honours
were bestowed upon him by numerous learned and scientific
societies. I have not yet said that so early as 1807 he
received the diploma of D.D., which Marshman also received
some years later.

I must here record a touching incident : Carey had pleaded
for seeds or rootlets to be sent him of the humble wildlings
of England he had loved so well — daffodils, snowdrops,
cowslips and daisies. A friend sent a packet of seeds sprinkled
with native earth. That he might lose nothing he tells us,
" I shook the bag over a patch of earth in a shady place ;
on visiting which in a few days afterwards, I found springing
up, to my inexpressible delight, a Bellis perennis of our English
pasture. I know not that I ever enjoyed since leaving Europe
a simple pleasure as exquisite as the sight that this English
daisy afforded me, not having seen one for upwards of thirty
years, and never expecting to see one again." The mis-
sionary poet Montgomery was inspired by this story to write
a beautiful poem.

In 1823 an awful flood brought devastation to Carey's
garden, and damage to his mission premises ; yet even worse
v, as the havoc of the terrible cyclone of 1831.

THE BATTLE OF THE CHARTER

I find no specific evidence, but there is little doubt that the
fellow apprentice who was the instrument of Carey's religious

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William Carey

awakening was the child of a home touched by the fire of the
Whitefield revival amongst the dissenting Churches. Carey,
it would seem, caught the Methodist spirit, for at Moulton
he quickly breathed into a dead Church a new spirit of
life. But he was never of the Wesleyan wing of Methodism,
for he, with his comrade and others, formed an Independent
Church. The ferment due to the American War of Indepen-
dence and the French Revolution made a deep and tragic im-
press upon the age of Carey's missionary dreams. The former,
in the Divine purpose, was potently moulding the course and
destiny of missionary enterprise. Whitefield's evangelistic
triumphs in America can hardly be wholly disconnected
from the political struggle and victory. The children of the
Pilgrim Fathers, with a missionary strain in their blood, were
to be strangely renewed by a prophet from the Church which
had persecuted and exiled their fathers, and their new gotten
liberty was to awake them to a new vision of Christian
responsibility to the great heathen world.

After the loss of the West, England's destiny was union with
her kith and kin there, to save the greater East. But the one
dominant motive of the East India Company being greed,
its policy of government had tended to a deeper degradation
of heathenism itself and also to a terrible extent of the bulk of
English officials, traders and the garrison. This so reacted
in its baleful influence upon England that in 1813, when the
Charter was partially reformed, Pitt declared, " that our
Senators are no longer the representatives of British virtue but
of the views of the East " — a terrible indictment !

Carey was the chief instrument by which this peril was
averted, largely directly and consciously, but also indirectly.
First the intolerant powers of the Charter must be attacked
and broken down. But only after thirty years of agitation
did British statesmen with clear vision perceive that India
was not under Britain's stewardship merely as a vassal to yield
wealth, but as her crown of responsibility to Christianise, and
this by the combined forces of truth and the knowledge of it,
economic and scientific, moral and educational, as well as
spiritual.

The light was bitter — even malignant — and long; but
through the Churches the conscience of Christian England
was aroused by a mighty outburst of indignant eloquence the
land through. Petitions streamed into both Lords and
Commons in such a flood as was never before known. For

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three hours Wilberforce addressed the Commons " with the
glowing language of the heart ; " the battle was won, and the
" Christianity resolution " was embodied in the renewed
Charter.

HIS IMPRESS UPON THE ANGLO-SAXON WORLD

When Carey sailed, an English missionary was a monster
to be cast out the moment he touched Indian soil. At his
death the missionary with his train of blessed ministries
marched in freedom and strength. The present generation
hardly knows of this ; the story of the life of Carey may
well check its pride.

The missionary impulse of Carey's fifty years, from his conver-
sion to his death in 1834, was unique in range and strength.
His masterly " Enquiry " by its sheer power of crushing
logic — exalting to the Christian, we will say — pursued its
potent course in America as well as in Britain. The " Period-
ical Accounts" and " Monthly Circular Letters" from India
lent the magnetism of personality to the great missionary
upheaval of the earlier period of the last century. Local
societies, churches and their gatherings were full of Carey's
doings. The Religious Tract Society (1799) an(^ tne Bible
Society (1804) were, in their creation, not uninfluenced by
his work and needs.

His high character, his incessant, scholarly devotion to his
call, his unaffected gentleness and humility, his spirit of wide
Christian friendliness, made him a missionary prince of his
day. He was treated as a personal friend by several Viceroys
and their wives. Lady Bentinck was a frequent visitor
during his last illness. Bishop Heber wrote him brotherly
letters, and Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, sought his
dying benediction, as did also his great apostolic successor,
Alexander Duff. The venerable Newton, our sweet hymnist,
always thought a letter from Carey a favour, and said of him,
" I look to such a man with reverence. He is more to me than
Bishop or Archbishop ; he is an Apostle."

TRIBULATIONS

In 1833 the terrible financial revolution, laying low many
great business houses in Europe, also had a devastating effect
upon the banks and great trading firms of India. All the
Serampore Brotherhood's Indian funds were lost. Friends at
home and in America promptly rose to meet the immediate

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peril. The greatest sorrow of Carey's life was in its later years.
After the death of Fuller, Ryland, Sutcliffe and others who
formed the first committee, a dispute arose, lasting sixteen
years. It is now forgotten history, and was long since settled
in the full recognition of the lofty nobility and pure sacrifice
of the Serampore Brotherhood.

Ostensibly the bone of contention was the trust of the
Serampore property. The brethren made over the property to
the Society, but to ensure unbroken progress and peace they
retained the trust for their own lives. A younger generation
had come into committee power who knew not the spirit of
the men and their beginnings. Wild and wicked pamphlets
were cast abroad in England charging them with extravagance
in living. More shameful falsehoods tongue could not utter.
Not one of the Brotherhood indulged himself with a single
personal servant ; " a thing done by nearly every Portuguese
clerk in the country." There was some misunderstanding, fed
by official jealousy, owing to this cruel misrepresentation. It
found little sympathy outside a loud but small and not over
scrupulous section within the Baptist body. The libellers
always tried to separate Carey from his colleagues, but he
indignantly refused the least recognition of this course. The
trouble half broke the hearts of the brethren. It was never in
their thought to divert the property from the Society, though
they had created every stone of it by their own toil.

In some thirty-four-and-a-half years of Carey's life at Seram-
pore, he earned and was paid £45,000 for his professional ser-
vices at Fort William College. In the seven previous years,
as indigo planter, he received £1,625 — a total of £46,625,
inclusive of the £7,500 spent on his garden. All he was ever
personally paid by the Society at home, which he created, was a
total sum of £600. Marshman's schools realised nearly £40,000
for the missions. The domestic outlay of the whole Brother-
hood was for long years about £100 a year ; all the rest went
to the mission. Carey had long before given himself. At his
death, so poor was he, that his books were sold to realise
£187 IDS. for one of his sons. His character never shone with
a finer radiance than in his closing years of trouble and weak-
ness.

LAST DAYS

Writing in July, 1833, he feared the immediate stroke of
death but " revived in an almost miraculous manner." A

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chair was fixed on a platform that he might be wheeled
through his beloved gardens. When dying he could not arti-
culate, yet indicated how earnestly he joined the prayers for
himself. " In a serene and happy state," " in full possession
of his faculties," in the early morning of Monday, June gth,
1834, he entered into the joy of his Lord. " I have no fears ;
I have no doubts ; I have not a wish left unsatisfied," were
among his last words.

Next morning he was buried. Notwithstanding the short
notice, the way of the funeral was lined by the poor he had
loved so well, Mussulmans and Hindoos alike. The Danish
flag was at half-mast as only on a Governor's death. The
members of the Danish Council walked to the grave. Lord
Bentinck, the Governor-General, and Lady Bentinck sent a
representative. The joyous Resurrection hymn was sung,
" Why do we mourn departed friends." Amid much weeping
Brother Marshman and others addressed the people.

Carey directed in his will that his funeral should be as plain
as possible ; that he must be buried beside his second wife ;
and that the following inscription and nothing more should
be cut upon his grave- stone :

WILLIAM CAREY

Born August ijth, 1761
Died

" A wretched, poor, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall."

The native press echoed with sincere plaudits and grief,
and from the pulpits in every Christian land there went forth
sorrowing praise, with thanksgiving, and with prayers for a
like consecration in others. In many of these encomiums his
name was linked with Wyclif, Luther, Wesley and other
great ones.

CHARACTERISTICS THEN AND NOW

A deep piety and guileless integrity were at the base of his
character. He would never bestow confidence without surety
of moral worth. A high sense of the sacred stewardship of
life and the value of time charged every hour of his fleeting
day. His child-like humility was as conspicuous in life as at
his death. He bade his nephew, in any memorial words
of him, to speak of him only as a plodder. Said he, " I can
plod, I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe

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William Carey

everything." May it not be said that, under God, Carey was
the instrument through whom the Gospel was proclaimed
to the widest myriads of immortal souls ?

Carey was not an original prophet such as Wyclif, Luther,
Milton and Fox, yet he stands rightfully, worthily among our
procession of kings whose crown is the one that fadeth not
away.

To the sore grief of the mission, Ward had been cut off by
cholera in 1823. Dr. Marshman survived Carey by three-
and-a-half years. Mrs. Marshman lived till 1847 to the
age of eighty. Sir Henry Havelock married their daughter.

When Carey died, besides its own great central work, the
Serampore Mission had under its shelter twenty-six churches,
stationed over an area of 800 miles, with forty preaching
brethren.

The back parlour collection at Kettering of £13 2s. 6d. had
swelled into £400,000 a year and is now represented by
£5,000,000. Krishna Pal has multiplied to 3,000,000 Indian
Christians. Since Carey's first edition of his Bengali Bible
was printed, 250,000,000 copies of the Holy Scriptures have
been sent forth, about half of these in over 430 non-English
tongues. Every day more than a million boys and girls of
the dark races of the earth are being schooled in Christian
principles.

417

17

" Glorify ye . . . the name of the Lord, the God of Israel,
in the isles of the sea. From the uttermost part of the earth have
we heard songs, glory to the righteous.''

XVI

JOHN WILLIAMS

INSCRIPTION.— The Apostle of the South Seas. In labours
abundant 22 years. Fell on Erromanga's beach, clubbed by
cannibal natives, November, 1839.

SCENE. — Preaching in the open ; native idols and weapons of blood,
etc. , symbols of Gospel triumph, are cast at his feet. A beautiful
South Sea landscape of mountain peak and palm — missionary
ship lying at anchor. A sad cherub holds the crown of martyrdom.

The closingjdecachs of the eighteenth century throbbed with
fever of expectation. Master forces had clashed and were
clashing. New destinies and kingdoms were in travail of
birth. To add to these stirrings, the discoveries of Captain
Cook had imparted a breath of the high romance of
Elizabethan days.

When I was engaged upon the task of selecting the figures
for our scheme of sixteen great ones, it seemed fitting that it
should be ended by a trio of missionaries. And this, not alone
as the natural culmination of the Stories and their motive for
the present time, but more perhaps as symbols of a glorious
prophecy. The three selected are William Carey, John
Williams and David Livingstone. They are representative
men, and stand as typical both in the field and in the character
of their labours.

Through them we visit Asia, Africa, and the savage isles
which stud the southern tract of the great Pacific Ocean.
They are representative also in their death — the peaceful end
of the worn-out scholar ; the blood of the martyr yet in his
prime ; the intrepid missionary explorer of illustrious fame
breathing his last, lone and broken, upon his knees. We
learned in the previous Story how Carey's own mind first

418

JOHN WILLIAMS.

John Williams

turned towards the Southern Seas and how a higher wisdom
led him among mighty millions where his great linguistic
gifts could find scope upon a far wider field of service.

We saw also how, through Cook's voyages, these fair and
fascinating isles of the Pacific, with their cannibal tribes, had
struck other ardent souls in England as a field upon which to
show forth the all-conquering glories of the Cross. As we
read the tale of suffering and sacrifice of the humbler path-
finders of history, whether in the victories of war or peace
the reflection is again and again forced upon us, of the
hardship and the mystery that their names and deeds, as
the generations go by, should so pass from current memory
and be forgotten ; while those of leaders who could not
have been lifted into fame but for these helpers and fore-
runners emerge into greater distinction.

This trait of humanity in its historic records is conspicuous
in the story of the South Sea Islands missions. Twenty years
before Williams sailed, brave men sent by the London Mission-
ary Society, had pioneered and suffered ; and at least three had
sealed their faith by a cruel martyrdom of blood, and others
by stress of noble service. The busy multitude of to-day,
even the Christian section, know not their names ; that
of John Williams alone lives to them. Perhaps as we unfold
his story we may understand somewhat how this comes
about. Before proceeding with this, however, bare justice
to these earlier pioneers, as well as the necessity for a
background to the sketch of Williams himself, requires that I
pass under rapid review the tale of the London Missionary
Society in the South Seas before the advent there of John
Williams. Though the whole Story, as here set down, is but
as the rude outline to the finished picture, yet I think the
reader will ask himself whether, in its wonder and romance of
Gospel triumphs, it is surpassed in the world of missionary
annals, since those wondrous days depicted in the early
chapters of the Acts of the Apostles.

Although the London Missionary Society cannot claim the
honour of sending forth the first English missionary, it does
hold the signal distinction — in its faith and daring — of
equipping the first missionary ship ; for the Duff was inten-
tionally purchased to be wholly consecrated a Gospel
messenger. Said Dr. Haweis, " Such a vessel is about to be
seen on the bosom of the deep as perhaps it has never borne
since the days of its creation." £4,800 was paid for her, a

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

tight ship of 300 tons — only 300 tons ! Well, the Mayflower
was only 180 tons.

At the first sailing of the Duff she seems to have been the
nation's heroine. Friends outraced each other in bringing
her stores of supplies and furnishings, clothing, books, presses
and type, tools, etc. The Apothecary's Company sent
medicines, the Royal Humane Society a complete equipment
of their apparatus. The Government relaxed the law, and
allowed craftsmen to leave the country, and gave immunity
to all on board from impressment, and ship-builders refused
payment for her overhauling and repairs.

On July 27th, 1796, thirty missionaries were dedicated at
Zion Chapel ; a vast throng gathered at the solemn proceed-
ings. Five ministers, representing five denominations,
addressed the missionaries. They were going among un-
civilised peoples, and twenty-five were builders, blacksmiths,
tailors, etc. Only five were ordained ministers. There were
also one surgeon and one gunner. A selected crew of twenty
manned the ship.

Mission prospects had suffered deep injury from the
wickedness and cruelty of trading ships' crews. This was
indeed the cause of Williams's death. And was there ever
such a captain as Captain James Wilson ? Bred to the sea,
he had for years led a wild, roving life; then, turning soldier,
he fought in the American War of Independence. Enlist-
ing for India he was taken prisoner by the French, and handed
to a cruel Nabob thirsting for English blood ; he escaped certain
death by climbing a wall forty feet high, snd in ignorance,
swam the Coleroon, a river swarming with alligators. Because
of this feat, the capturing natives dared not kill him — he was
" God's Man." But he was driven 500 miles in chairs, and
then starved in a '; Black Hole " in heavy irons for twenty-
two months, and was often obliged to drag about a dead
victim chained to him. Set free by British success, he turned
sailor merchant, and finally settled on a competence.

All this time he is a professed atheist, and on the homeward-
bound vessel from India discusses religion wiih Carey's friend,
Thomas, who, however, makes little impression on the wild
captain. As he listens to a sermon in the Portsea Chapel, a
mighty hammer of grace strikes his heart. What can he
now do for his Saviour ? Well, has he not made friends of
the oceans ? He offers himself, and is gladly accepted as
captain of the Duff.

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John Williams

" THREE WHITE DOVES " — " THEM THAT SIT IN DARKNESS "

On August ioth, 1796, flying the London Missionary Society
flag of " Three White Doves with Olive Branches on a Purple
Field," the Duff gallantly sailed from Blackwall, and after a
prosperous voyage of 208 days put safely into port at Matavia
Bay, Tahiti, on March 5th, 1797.

From the deck there soon arose the song of hope and
prayer.

O'er the gloomy hills of darkness.

A sermon was preached from the text, " God is love." The
natives, swarming round, watched in amazement. As the
fifty English souls gazed ashore they could truly say, " only
man is vile." It is said that Tahiti, through its form, its
volcanic mountain peaks, its graceful palms, its vales, glades
and waterfalls, is the fairest spot on earth, while its glory of
colour, its opulence of tropical fruits, are but the character-
istics of hundreds of sister islands. The natives were physic-
ally well set up, but proved to be steeped in hideous lust and
a very helldom of blood-seeking cruelty and warfare. They
were the devotees of a sanguinary idolatry, and human
sacrifices were regular and frequent, the blood of not less than
seven victims being required for one particular rite. The old
King Pomare, it is said, counted the neglect of human sacri-
fices as the one great sin. A new temple must have its foun-
dations upon the bodies of men and women sacrificed for the
purpose, and often the same was held necessary for a new
house.

Neither man nor woman evinced much sense of shame, or of
the sanctity of marriage, which was frequently broken for
other unions ; polygamy was common. Curiously akin to
Indian horrors was the frequent practice of infanticide and
the slaying and burial of a wife with her dead husband.
Cannibalism was customary at several of the groups of these
islands.

Their gods were horrible images, carved in hard wood,
but their spirit caught at the wonder and mystery of created
life, and worshipped and prayed through birds, fish, reptiles,
ants and lizards. In some islands mutilation of the fingers
and hands was common to win answers to prayer. The
natives had beliefs as to a future state, but no conception of
moral fitness or judgment on entering it. Painful tattooing

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

was practised in many islands. In carving decorations for
their clubs and war weapons they showed remarkable ingenuity
of design in simple lines, with skill in flint -cutting, attaining
even to a certain beauty of symmetry and unity. Though
every item of this description does not apply to every island,
neither can I tell a tithe of the full reality. It was merciful
that this reality was but dimly discerned by the seventeen
missionaries left behind, when, amidst many tears and
prayers, the Duff heaved anchor for farewell, yet with promise
to return before voyaging home. She now steered 1,200 miles
to the west, for Tonga of the Friendly Islands, a name
bestowed by Cook because of passing hospitality given to him
by the natives. It was a direful misnomer, for savagery,
cunning and deceit were their chief marks, and, unknown to
Cook, they had plotted his massacre. Here, in April, 1797,
the Duff left nine unmarried missionaries. She returned east-
ward and to the north of Tahiti and the Society Group, where
lies the Marquesas Group ; here at Santa Christina one
missionary was left. The Duff now turned her bows for the
promised call at Tahiti, and reached London in July, 1798.

" In no island of importance has Christianity been intro-
duced without war, but in every instance the heathen has been
the aggressor." So said Williams ; it may be well for the
reader to remember the statement.

The old king of Tahiti, Pomare, with his wife, welcomed the
missionaries, and assigned to them a large bamboo house
built for a Captain Blythe four years before. The artisans
quickly put it into ship-shape order and comfort.

But now let us watch the fortune of the weaker band at
Tonga. After the departure of the Duff trials and perils soon
thickened upon them. They were robbed and ill-treated
and heard their own murder planned. One of their number
joined the natives and fell into immorality. Old convicts
from New South Wales, hating truth and light, incensed the
savages against the mission. Owing to tribal wars, the
protection of a friendly chieftain grew uncertain.

THE FIRST MARTYRS — RETREAT

In an imminent peril, five fled towards the shore, hiding
in caves ; they were pursued and stripped of their clothing,
but left alive. The rest at the mission house came out and
peacefully met a crowd of shouting savages, and were im-
mediately massacred. The five survivors lived in daily

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John Williams

dread of sharing the fate of their brethren, but in January,
1800, a passing ship afforded deliverance. The solitary man
left at Santa Christina, though less harshly treated, became
conscious that for any real success he must have helpful
companions, and after manful trial returned to England to
report.

The directors at home had already anticipated the need of
fresh recruits, and in December, 1798, had despatched the
Duff with thirty more missionaries. She made a good voyage
as far as Rio Janeiro, where she was captured by the French
frigate, Buonaparte, and became, with everything on board,
a prize of war. The missionaries, after much hardship, were
let go, and, eventually arriving at Lisbon, shipped for London
to tell their calamitous story of voyagings to and fro and
perilous adventures.

And thus it was that five weary years went by before the
first band of missionaries had their sorrows, anxieties and
sufferings relieved by the arrival of fresh brethren. The
Tahitian mission was the strongest, and was intended to be the
headquarters of the Society Group, lending succour, when
possible, to all the missionaries. Here, the artisans, as they
plied their crafts, absorbed the wondering attention of the
islanders. Two resident Swedish sailors became interpreters,
and the Gospel was immediately preached. By trying to
conceal their abominable practices, the natives disclosed their
respect, but two of the mission band went on an inspecting
tour, living with native friends, and assured themselves
of the dreadful truth. Faithfully were the chiefs, the priests,
and the people told of their wicked sins. At this some
resentment was manifested, but the first formidable trouble
grew from a trading ship, bartering muskets for native produce.
Such a supply of arms would immediately be used for a raid of
bloodshed and devastation on some adjacent tribe. To
dissuade the captain the missionaries offered to obtain him
provisions. All appeared going well, when several sailors
deserted the ship, and incensed the people against the mission-
aries, who were now rudely attacked. The incident was not
so serious as it looked, but in fright for their lives eleven of the
missionaries sailed for New South Wales, and of the few
remaining one was Mrs. Eyre. Worse still, after the experience
of a year of native horrors and bloodshed, one of the brethren
cut himself off, married a native woman and was found
murdered in his house. Another lapsed in faith and morals

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and quitted the island, and Mr. Hams retired through im-
paired health. In this darkest hour the tiny band of stal-
warts was cheered by the return of Mr. and Mrs. Henry,
who were of the eleven who ran away. Their hearts were
now steadfast, to stand in faith and duty, abiding the will of
God. It was now the end of the year 1800.

Another year of toil and anxious seed sowing passed without
the sign of the tiniest shoot of growth. But a joyous sight
is to meet their eyes — they behold a ship sailing into harbour,
and nine new missionaries step on shore. Five of them are
of those who started in the luckless Duff, and two others are
Mr. and Mrs. Shelley, survivors of the terrible martyrdom
at Tonga. Five years of dogged drudgery had now drilled the
earlier men into something like mastery of the Tahitian
tongue ; native idioms could be linked to the searching watch-
words of Gospel truth and grace, mighty to cleave even the
savage heart of stone with the sword of the Spirit. Mr.
Henry Nott and Mr. Jefferson could now preach to large
congregations and, though a spirit of quiet hope comforted
the heroic band, yet no visible sign of success thrilled their
hearts. One's mind goes back to Carey's dejection at the end
of seven fruitless years at Dinapoor, but how different the
conditions !

Five more dismal years pass, years of severe privations —
no cheering ship heaves in sight, hoisting the " White Doves
on a Purple Field." The clothes of the missionaries hang in
rags ; they go barefooted ; western food stuffs are exhausted ;
their axes and tools are stolen, the natives being dexterous
and incorrigible thieves. Perhaps hardest of all to bear is
the sickening longing for a message of hope, sympathy and
love from the dear old home, separated from them, as it is felt,
by a merciless waste of waters. I should state that, in the year
1802, there culminated a series of bloody struggles for the
possession of the island god Oro.

ADVANCE — RETREAT — DEFEAT AFTER HEROIC CAMPAIGN

Several times during this crisis there was danger to the
mission house, and some shipwrecked Swedish sailors joined
with the missionaries in barricading it. War raged in the
islands, ferocious raids by night and open battle by day,
until it seemed likely that the islanders would so slay each
other that none might be left for the missionaries to save.

In 1803 old King Pomare died ; he had all along stood by

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John Williams

the missionaries. His son was grossly vicious and a dubious
stay, but he continued his father's policy of protection. The
missionaries had by this time trained the wild native speech to
the bridle of written signs, and the young Pomare and others
were vastly astonished to see written messages. The king now
becomes an ardent scholar and is proud of his progress. A
copious dictionary of many thousands of words is compiled
and a school is begun and the children are taught to read and
write. Thus went along the work in heroic and patient
plodding. Yet in August the missionaries had to confess
in letters home, " No success has attended our labours so as
to terminate in the conversion of any." But there were
no faint hearts ; nay, instead, with a true instinct, the
noble band project and execute a tour of preaching in the
neighbouring islands.

Near the end of 1807 a sore trial came in the death of
Mr. Jefferson. He was among the first band, and through the
ten long years of dread and disappointment had stuck faith-
fully to his post. He now passed without visible earthly
reward to his heavenly crown. Even the natives pointed to
a new comet as his spirit on wing to heaven.

During 1808 the general gloom, even still deepening, was
pierced by two little precious shafts of light and hope. A
few natives evinced a groping desire after the true God, and
two young men died with words of trust in the white man's
Saviour upon their lips. But again the old war broke
out with portentous fury, and Pomare informed the mission-
aries that he could not assure them of safe protection. Nine
of them now left, eventually landing in Sydney ; four
single men alone remained, and these also had quickly to
retreat, for Pomare was defeated, and his enemies set fire to
the mission house, turned printing type into bullets, and
ploughshares into war weapons. An English ship in the
harbour narrowly escaped capture.

In October, 1809, the missionaries felt it to be the wisest
course to leave the island for a period, Mr. Nott and Mr.
Hayward staying at Eimeo (now Morea) to watch develop-
ments. After twelve years of heroic effort and suffering the
apparent result was blank defeat — idolatry triumphant, even
now dancing in horrible orgies of lust and blood on the
consecrated spot of the mission house.

The directors at home, abashed and cast down, discussed
the abandonment of the mission. A few faithful ones prayed

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

the more ; hope arose ; remarkable gifts were cast into the
treasury ; Tahiti shall be won for the Cross is the decision.

At the very time, July, 1812, when in England prayer was
ascending to God for the personal conversion of King Pomare,
he took boat to Morea and pleaded for Christian baptism,
giving his pledge to forsake idolatry and all its ways and to
follow Jesus. More than a year before, Pomare had sent
letters inviting the missionaries to come back to Tahiti, and
eight of the Sydney brethren returned to Morea and fell to
their old labours.

The joy at Pomare's profession of faith was gloomed by the
death of Mrs. Henry, who for fifteen years had devoted her
life to the mission. A few months later Mrs. Davies and Mrs.
Haywood died, leaving the smitten husbands bereft of half
their strength. Pomare, who had been exiled from Tahiti,
was now requested (1812) by a powerful section of the people
to return, and did so, though the rebels still held the larger
area of the island.

HARBINGER OF VICTORY — A DREAM ? — A BONFIRE OF GODS

In the following year Mr. Scott and Mr. Hayward ventured
back to the old scenes. The morning after their arrival Mr.
Scott, about dawn, hears a native voice, yet strangely un-
native in tone — it is the voice of prayer to the Christian God !
Is it a dream ? Nay, it is blessedly true — a harbinger of long-
deferred victory. The scene was by the spot of the old mis-
sion house, so desecrated. The great Spirit was moving.
Years before, the praying native had heard the Christian
story, and its haunting power was deepened by some casual
words of Pomare's. He secretly sought out a missionary's
servant, and the two pursued together the way of salvation
in their own simple mutual helpfulness, without missionary
instruction, led only by " the inward light " given without
respect of race, by the Father of Light. Progress now moves
rapidly along ; at Morea a chapel is built, and the converts of
the first native church break the bread and drink the cup of
communion. Neighbouring chiefs and Tamatoa of Raiatea
are awakening to the truth ; some native priests profess
conversion, and the old horrors droop.

In 1815, a scene which made joy in heaven was beheld
in Morea. Patu, one of the head priests, called the people
from far and near to witness the public degradation and con-
temptuous destruction of their ancient idols. A pile of fire-

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John Williams

stuffs is set ablaze ; the priest commands attendants to bring
out the gods and cast them upon the ground. Then taking
up each in rotation, he strips it of its ritual trappings, and,
rehearsing its fabled history, casts it into the flames. As the
hungry fire devours the deities, he bids the people note how the
helpless blocks are consumed like chips and chaff. In horror
the natives watch, expectant of some awful retribution, but
none comes ; and the terror and power of these gods of gory
rites and debasing homage are broken for ever.

But the ancient heathenish powers of evil were not finally
cast down throughout the island until many natives had
attested their Christian steadfastness by the blood of martyr-
dom. Tahiti was still under heathen dominance, and human
sacrifices still went on. To be a Christian there, was the best
reason to be chosen as a victim. Yet this terrible test was
bravely borne by many. One young man, when surrounded
by the priest's servitors, and well knowing their dread inten-
tion, told them that, though they could kill his body, they
could not kill his soul, that Jesus Christ would take it to
Himself ; and then calmly went to his death. The increasing
rage of the heathen party, incensed by the priests who saw their
authority endangered, made it evident that an awful crisis
was impending.

The Christians quietly went on their way, doing nothing to
provoke. Their enemies were not only larger in number, but
plotted in darkness and in stealth. One night their wholesale
massacre was planned, but, warned, they escaped to Morea.
By fair promises, Pomare and his followers were induce d to
return. All was a snare ; the idolaters stealthily prepared
to annihilate them, root and branch.

A SUBLIME SPECTACLE — TAHITIAN IRONSIDES — THEIR TRIUMPH

One Sabbath the Christians were at service, when an omin-
ous musket shot was heard, and the worshippers saw a vast
army advancing under the flag of the god Oro.

Rushing to their weapons of defence, a sublime spectacle
followed ; they quietly regathered to finish their service ; as
their savage enemy advanced they sang a hymn, read the
Scriptures, cried in prayer to the God of Gideon and of David,
and then went forth to battle. At first their outer ranks
reeled before the impetuous onslaught, but finally the idolaters
were beaten back and routed. Pomare stopped his men
from plunder and pursuit, but ordered that all the heathen

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

temples should be destroyed. Mercy was shown to the de-
feated and their slain were decently buried, while the mighty
Oro was degraded into a food-basket rack for the king's
kitchen, and was finally chopped up for firewood. Quickly
the victors set sail for Morea with the glorious news, shouting
" Vanquished ; vanquished ; by prayer alone ! "

In the fall of the same year, Tamatoa's favour to the
Christians at Raiatea hastened the crisis there. He had
ordered the destruction of temples and idols. The enraged
priests drew to them two- thirds of the natives, and urged them
to rebellion. The Christian Ironsides, hearing this, spent the
night in prayer, and with the morning light fell on their enemy
and crushed them utterly. The prisoners cried " Spare us
by your new God." A chief from another isle, the active
leader in the rebellion, when led captive to Tamatoa cried,
" Am I dead ? " " No," the king replied, " No, my brother,
cease to tremble, you are saved by Jesus." The prisoners
were given a banquet as symbolic of the ways of the Christians'
God.

Thus the victory was made not merely a passing one of arms,
but a lasting conquest of the Cross, sealed by a bewildering
mercy and overwhelming kindness. The old dark nightmare
was now to pass and give place to the blessing of peace and
Christian civilisation in these fair isles of the sea. It is worth
noting that not until idolatry was abolished did the natives
show any marked desire for human conditions of life, for
decent clothing and houses, for gardens and for learning
useful crafts from the artisans. With the light of Christianity
within them, a change followed as by a miracle ; neat cottages
arose, with gardens and orchards around, and they were now
eager to be taught industrial arts. The old things were
passing away, and all things were becoming new. The reader
must remember that what he has read is but a poor shorn
record of the first twenty years of pioneering toils, sufferings,
and martyrdom by missionaries of the London Missionary
Society before John Williams stepped on the scene.

THE " ST. PAUL " OF THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS

While Carey was plodding his way at Mudnabati, and in
the same year that the London Missionary Society came to
birth, a boy was born (June 27th, 1796) at Tottenham, then a
quiet village six miles north of London. The lad's name was
John Williams. From infancy his mother dedicated him

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John Williams

to the Lord. At fourteen his parents removed to London,
and apprenticed him to an ironmonger in City Road. His
master soon declared him to be the cleverest apprentice ever
in his business, and his mechanical skill was found of most
value in the workshop upon implement construction, etc.
Here he appears to have acquired a general knowledge of
blacksmith and whitesmith craft. With bitter tears his mother
learned of his evil ways through bad associations, but, being
a woman of rich faith, she kept on praying for her boy. One
Sunday evening, when he was about eighteen, his master's
wife while passing to service, noticed John waiting by a
low tavern. She pleaded with him to go with her to the
tabernacle — would he not for his mother's sake ? — and she
would write and tell her. He yielded. The text of the
sermon was, " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul, or what shall he give in exchange
for his soul ? " Ah ! the words startle — they strike home ;
for did not his mother mark that very text in his little Bible
when she kissed him good-bye, to go 'prentice ?

The sermon was a message of arrest, a summons to penitence
aitd renunciation. " From that hour," he tells us, " my
blinded eyes were open ; I forsook all my worldly companions,
and became a teacher in the Sabbath school." Under the
stimulating ministry of Matthew Wilks he grew in grace, and
when at a missionary meeting he heard the chequered story of
Gospel progress in the South Sea Islands and the call for
consecrated helpers, the heart of the youth responded, and he
offered himself.

Mary Chauner, also a member of the church at the Taber-
nacle, had often prayed in secret " that she might be sent to
the heathen to tell them of the love of Christ." These two
kindred spirits were married in October, iSib, and immediately
sailed for the South Seas Mission.

For an intelligent grasp of this story, a map showing well
the majestic Pacific ocean would be useful. Rising from its
bosom are hundreds of islands, yet its vast surface of twenty-
seven millions of square miles, is as a lonely sea. There are
the Society or the Tahitian Islands, the Hervey Group,
the Navigator or Samoan Islands, the Tonga Group, the
Friendly, the Fiji and the Loyalty Islands, the Gilbert Islands,
the New Hebrides, the Marquesas group, and away far north
the Sandwich Islands. Some of these groups are separated
by thousands of miles, and one group may embrace as many

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as sixteen islands. In geological structure some of them
are volcanic, with mountains two to fifteen thousand feet
above the sea level. Others are of crystal rock with hilly
table land, and others of coralline formation, lying low
with wonderful harbour reefs. They range from a few miles
to several hundreds of miles in circumference. In Eastern
Polynesia, the people are tall, strong, copper-coloured and
have straight hair. In the Western Polynesia they have black
skins and woolly hair. They possess, especially in the Eastern
Islands, good natural parts, and quick intelligence in learning
to read and write, and in acquiring the industrial crafts. They
have also high gifts of poetical imagery and eloquence. As
to population, Williams estimated that the Hervey Group of
seven islands contained some 14,000 to 16,000 people. In
their Christianised state, and when their confidence had been
won, the natives were found generous and devoted. Robert
Louis Stevenson, who lived among the Samoans, said " the
majority of the Polynesians are easy folk to get in touch with,
frank, fond of notice, greedy of the least affection, like amiable
fawning dogs."

Williams arrived in Tahiti in 1817 and quickly proved his
mettle. Beholding with his own eyes one island in the stage
of emergence from darkness to light, aware of other islands
in unknown numbers still steeped in abysmal horror of
cruelties and degradation, his soul groaned in pity to reach
out and save, and he exclaimed, " For my part I cannot
content myself within the narrow limits of a single reef."
Mr. Ellis, whose name is also famous in Polynesian missions,
had sailed with Williams, taking an English printing press,
which was set up at Morea.

For the first sheets issued, King Pomare was so coached as
to become both compositor and printer. The talking papers
created indescribable wonder and enthusiasm. Amusing
were the shifts to secure and preserve a precious leaf of a
gospel chapter. The cats disappeared as by epidemic ; the
mystery being explained when their skins reappeared as
bindings. Fleets of boats with thousands of natives from
other isles came to behold the miracle of the " Printing of
the Word."

THE KING'S PRAYER — A WONDERFUL L.M.S. COLLECTION

But perplexity now follows in the wake of success. The
cry arose for teachers ; it was painful to see groups of natives

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John Williams

in meetings of their own, anxiously talking and groping for
the light. To listen to their praying was infinitely pathetic
— the simple elemental cry of the human heart, never return-
ing void from the all- pity ing Father. At service King Pomare
would lead his people in prayer, and " stretch out his hands
unto God and say, ' Lord save me ! Lord save me ! '" and
from thousands, night and day, this simple appeal ascended
to heaven.

Pomare warmly seized on the suggestion that free-will
offerings might be sent to the London Missionary Society in
London. He summoned a mighty assembly of the islanders ;
six times over he repeated that " all gifts were to be
voluntary." Right nobly came the response ; there soon
appeared processions of natives, some driving pigs, others
with burdens of oil, arrowroot and cotton. The year's
offerings were sold in London for £1,700, the Government
remitting the duty of £400.

Pomare' s imagination now took a turn resembling that of
Western kings many centuries before ; he must build a
cathedral — a royal temple. It was an immense basilica,
712 feet long, with twenty- nine doors and accommodating
7,000 auditors. It was crowded on the opening day, and the
missionaries preached from three separate pulpits at the
same time. Pomare and many others were baptised, and
there also uprose the more precious " temple of the living
God." The building was a mistake, being too big and costly
to keep in comfortable repair. It served, however, a second
notable purpose. Another vast assemblage was convened,
and a vote was taken on a new code of laws. The missionaries
at Pomare's earnest request had given aid in tabling a list of
common offences, with punishments ; also regulations for
trading, keeping the Sabbath, and so on. In later years a
similar code was introduced to other islands, and Williams,
in Raiatea established trial by jury, and this popular security
became general throughout Polynesia.

REMOVAL TO RAIATEA — STORIES STRANGER THAN FICTION

Tamatoa, King of Raiatea, now asked for missionaries, and
John Williams and Mr. Threlkeld arrived there for a memorable
work. And what a right royal reception they had ! The
feast of welcome comprised five hogs for Mr. Williams, five
for Mrs. Williams, and five for baby Williams. As he beheld,
in ardent vision, his future achievement, Williams wrote to

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his parents, " I am engaged in the best of services for the best
of masters and on the best of terms." He declared, " My
anxiety is that my tongue may be ever engaged in proclaiming
this salvation, and that my words and actions may be always
pointing to the Cross." This longing to preach seemed to
impart almost magical gifts in acquiring the language, and
his joy was unbounded when he was able to respond to the
call of a puzzled native, and explained a passage as he spelled
out his printed scrap of sacred Scripture. His winning and
eager presence so told on the natives that a new and larger
church was soon required. The admiring and astonished
islanders now beheld their missionary and friend with his
own hands, with deft skill at forge and hammer, fashion his
iron bolts, brackets and grips, and engineer the rising structure.

In May, 1820, the Raiatean wonder was opened with an
audience of 2,400. Great was that day, but the church
" not made with hands " but of " living stones " was the
missionaries' first concern, and at the occasion seventy natives
came forward for baptism. Part of the erection was designed
for a court-house, and the king's brother administered a
code of justice similar to that in Tahiti.

The dreadful sin of infanticide was common ; and with
instinctive wisdom, Williams organised a festival of young
children. A procession of three hundred marched in gleeful
step waving emblems of the new Faith. One device declared,
with tragic pathos, " Had it not been for the Gospel we should
have been destroyed as soon as we were born." The whole
was intended as a dramatic demonstration, and its effect may
be imagined from one instance. An old chief, who had been
the father of nineteen children, exclaimed " I must speak.
Oh ! that I had only known that these blessings were in store
for us, then I should have saved my children, and they would
have been among this happy group, repeating these precious
truths." Williams often gazes across the wide waters with
wistful heart and eyes. Stronger and stronger grows the
adventurous longing to carry the light and love of the Cross
to other dark isles, far, far away in the mysterious beyond.
This passionate desire now receives an added warmth from
a singular incident.

Ruruta, an island 350 miles south of Raiatea, was depopu-
lated by pestilence ; two chiefs and some followers, convinced
that they were to be " devoured by the gods," built two large
canoes in which to embark for some happier isle — at least,

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John Williams

until their gods were appeased. Committing themselves to
the waves, they arrived at Tubuai, and, having recruited,
launched again. Through a violent storm most of the crew
perished, and the rest were tossed for three weeks, finally
drifting on to Maurua, forty miles from Raiatea. They were
utterly dumbfounded at the new world they beheld, and
being told that Maurua was once like Ruruta, and learning of
the new teachers at Raiatea, the chief Anura soon arrived there,
and in a little over three months he and others were taught
to read and write. The chief must away, to take the good
news to his countrymen ; two native deacons volunteer to go
with him, and an English vessel now in port will give them
free voyage to Ruruta. In one marvellous month the native
teachers return with the astonishing news of the downfall
of idolatry, and as a proof point to a display of Rurutian
idols, helplessly dangling from the yard-arm of their boat.

A great thanksgiving service was arranged and a large
gathering filled the church, king Tamatoa making an eloquent
speech. The conversion of Ruruta was real, for some time
afterwards an American whaler was wrecked upon the rocks,
and " the natives," said Captain Chase, " gave us all
assistance." " The things from the ship were placed into their
hands and carried up to the native mission house, a distance
of half-a-mile, and not a single article was taken, though they
had it in their power to plunder everything."

The event confirmed Williams in his policy, probably
learned from Carey, " to evangelise through native agency,"
doubly applicable among savage peoples as exciting less
alarm. In this conviction he resolved first to plant the
Gospel flag among the Hervey Group, lying 500 to 600 miles to
the west.

HIS FIRST MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE — THE HERVEY GROUP

Health also rendered a change needful, and in 1821 Mr. and
Mrs. Williams visited Sydney, and on their way left Papeiha
with a comrade at Aitutaki. The natives crowded around the
ship — some being tattooed or painted from head to foot —
and shouted and danced with wild gestures. The teachers, on
landing, were seized and formally led to the maraior altar and
delivered to their gods. The record of peril and persecution
for fifteen months, succeeded by triumph, as narrated by the
faithful Papeiha in \\ illiams's " Enterprises," is truly inspiring
reading. At the end of 1822, when Williams hired a small

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vessel and visited Aitutaki, he found the marais were
destroyed, and that a long processsion of idols had been cast
down at the teachers' feet and a church built. A fleet of
canoes invested his ship with every demonstration of welcome,
crying, " It is now well with Aitutaki. The good Word has
taken root." The missionaries' suspicion being evident,
the natives held up their spelling books. The teachers now
came on board and confirmed the good news. " J oy beamed in
every countenance, and gratitude glowed in every heart,"
says Williams. Next morning, visiting the new chapel, he
" gazed upon the building with wonder and delight." It
was nearly 200 feet long by thirty wide, plastered and built
on the model of Raiatea.

A novel bellman paraded around, with an axe for bell and
a stone for clapper, and Williams opened the new chapel with
an immense audience of nearly 2,000, " all," says Williams,
" behaving with the greatest decorum, and attending with
listening eyes and open mouths to the wonderful story that
' God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten
Son ' " — this passage being his text. Neat cottages were
springing up, sometimes an old idol serving as a prop. A
marvellous triumph and contrast to their condition some
months before, when " they were constantly killing each
other " and feasting, for they were cannibals.

On leaving, Williams took away bundles of idols, and left
other native teachers. He deemed it wise to take Papeiha
for other ventures. The grandfather of the young king,
wishing to see Raiatea, was also taken on board " along with
some strayed islanders from Rarotonga." The vessel now
cruised around for this fabled island of Rarotonga, but,
baffled in the search, stumbled on Mangaia. Natives
waved the white flag, a signal even then universal in the
Pacific Islands as a token of friendly approach. The signal
was answered. After much parley they canoed alongside the
ship, but retired in half- fright. The heroic Papeiha offered
to swim the surf beyond the reef.

On his reaching the reef by boat, the natives stood armed,
with sling and stone and spear poised for defence. He shouted
to them that he would not venture further unless thev tied in
a bundle their spears and slings ; this done, he plunged into
the billows with his spelling book and Bible fixed upon his
head. He now told them of the good he wished to do them,
and that two teachers with their wives were willing to come

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John Williams

amongst them. Papeiha was assured they would be received
with kindness. He returned with the teachers, and they,
with Papeiha, stepped ashore. They found the spears
unloosed, and a general seizure of property ensued. A saw
was broken and made into ear ornaments ; a box of bonnet*
for the chief's wives was hauled through the water. The
women were dragged into a wood, their clothes and bonnets
were torn from them, and they barely escaped nameless
extremity. The ship's gun terrified the natives; the boat
put to the shore and brought off all the missionaries, Papeiha
being nearly strangled to death. The repulse was allowed to
be temporary only, for in a few months two unmarried teachers
landed on the island swimming the surf as Papeiha had done,
their Bibles packed on their heads.

Full of romantic interest and of holy daring are the pages
of Williams's " Enterprises," describing how the Gospel flag
was planted upon these shores by native teachers, and the
wondrous triumphs of peace. Charmingly interesting is it
to peruse the story of the simple-hearted astonishment and
the ways and tricks of the natives ; now they smell at the
white skin of the missionaries ; now they turn up their
trousers and sleeves ; the goats were " birds with great teeth
on their heads." For us of this twentieth century it is a
refreshing story of missionary romance.

COLUMBUS IN MINIATURE — AN ANXIOUS HOUR — THE REWARD

Williams continues cruising about, and is the first to discover
some smaller islands, but Rarotonga still eludes discovery, and
this is upon his heart — the main object of his search. Baffled
by oppressing winds, the captain, " early in the morning,"
warns the ardent missionary thus : " We must, sir, give up
the search, or be starved." Williams promises to " give up "
at eight o'clock. There is now a Columbus- like drama in
miniature. It is but thirty minutes from the fateful hour, and
now for the fifth time the native " look-out " mounts the
top-mast ; the ascending sun has chased off the mists ; there
is a mighty native hurrah — Land ! Land ! There ! Yonder
are the dim towering heights of the mountains. Hearts and
voices break forth in thanksgiving and praise to Him who had
graciously " led us by the right way." Williams always
declares that the sensations of this moment were perhaps the
most exhilarating of his life. As they approached, the island
unveiled its loveliness.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Papeiha, with a comrade, canoed to the beach. An immense
assembly gathered under a grove of trees, and the great and
peaceful mission for their good was explained. They were
told of the Rarotongans and of the Aitutaki chief now on the
ship, and the king determined to come on board to conduct
them to the shore. Makea, the king, was of noble presence and
beautifully tattooed. He was cordially welcomed, rubbed
noses and wept to meet (as it turned out) his own cousin.
As he promised protection for the teachers, they, with their
wives, went ashore. They returned the next morning in a
dreadfully tattered plight. They had been subjected to
shocking insult ; another powerful chief had come on the
scene determined to take one of the women as his twentieth
wife. The women were saved by Makea' s cousin, who even
fought to deliver them.

\Villiams, sorely discouraged, could now only decide to
abandon for the present this crown of his hope. But noble
Papeiha, " instead of useless regrets," offered to remain alone,
provided a certain companion was sent from Raiatea and,
" carrying nothing but the clothes he wore, his native Testa-
ment, and a bundle of elementary books," he was bade " an
affectionate farewell, and with two men and the four women
natives of Rarotonga, entered the canoe for the shore." Says
Williams, " We left him in prayer that his flock might become
the germ of a Christian Church for Rarotonga." The prayer
was heard, for in four months, when Tiberio, Papeiha's colleague
from Raiatea, arrived, " the little band had received many
additions," and in about a year " the whole population had
renounced idolatry, and were engaged in erecting a place of
worship 600 feet long."

Some time afterwards, Williams's colleague, Mr. Bourne,
visited Rarotonga and the Hervey Group of islands, and was
delighted to see the evident progress and the numberless
blessings. He opened several churches, and " baptised a great
number of the natives." Weapons of war had disappeared,
decent and plastered houses were seen everywhere, and long
piers had been erected. Some females were even learning
millinery ; the people were eager for knowledge, and family
prayers were general. He reports, " I never in any country
saw such attention paid to the Sabbath." Astonishing
indeed, in view of the long years of weary waiting in Tahiti ;
yet here in the Hervey Group the natives were not so quick
at learning to spell and read.

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John Williams

In 1827 Williams, responding to an invitation, arrived at
Rarotonga to spend a few months there. With him were
Mrs. Williams and Mr. and Mrs. Pitman, two new missionaries.
From rough seas and bad harbourage they experienced
considerable peril in landing. On the following Sunday
Williams preached to 4,000 natives in the open.

They now resolved to build, with Williams' superintendence,
a new church, 150 feet by 60 feet, to be plastered, and having
six folding doors and windows like Venetian blinds, and to hold
3,000 worshippers. It was constructed without a bit of iron
in it.

" THE TALKING CHIP " — THE STATESMAN — PROBLEMS

The erection was marked by amusing incidents. One
morning Williams had forgotten his square, and, seizing a chip,
wrote upon it in charcoal the name of the article and called an
old warrior to take it to Mrs. Williams. " Take that ! " he
cried, " she will call me a fool." Assured she would not, he
went his errand, and, receiving the square, the brave old
warrior again seized the chip, and holding it and the square
aloft, ran round among the people, proclaiming the wonder
far and near of a " talking chip." The simple code of laws of
the Society Islands was introduced to Rarotonga, and Williams
secured the addition of trial by jury. But all was not straight
sailing, for here as in other islands certain ancient customs, in
their reform, involved difficulty and delicacy.

A chief, with many wives, would apply for baptism with the
sincere wish to be a Christian. It was not in human nature
to change, in such a case, from savage to Christian in a few
weeks. The missionary must judge from a broad, human
view, ruled largely by intention. Polygamy was a problem.
But, with discretion, it must be put down. Williams was
firm upon insistence of this primal base of Christianity, and
indeed of all healthy and progressive civilisation. The chief,
or any man, must choose and be remarried to one wife, but
he must also solemnly promise to keep his other wives and their
children from want. Even this meant much involuntary
hardship.

The few months' excursion to Rarotonga drew to a year or
more, and no ship made call by which to return. While at
Raiatea, Williams had once broached to Mrs. Williams his
dream to extend the knowledge of the Cross to the Navigator
Islands, and the New Hebrides. But these were 2,000 miles

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away, unknown and cannibal, and there were her little ones.
What if she were to become a widow — nearly 20,000 miles away
from home ! She could not bear the thought even. She must
hear of it no more. Here, at Rarotonga, she is taken with
illness and is nigh unto death ; passionate prayers ascend,
and she recovers. While in convalescence, she tells her
husband that she has been pondering of its message to her,
and that he has now her " full concurrence," with prayers
" to crown your attempt with success and bring you back in
safety."

THE STORY OF THE WONDERFUL SHIP

But the ocean ships are not at his command and the home
Society cannot afford him a special ship, however much
they may approve of his adventurous genius. A conception,
brilliant as bold, now strikes Williams, the craftsman. Ah !
how he now perceives the ways of Providence in his apprentice-
ship. Why not build a ship ? Forthwith the missionary
Noah sets up his shipwright's yard, his smithy forge and his
lathe. Scores upon scores of dark-skinned limbs and fingers
wrought curiously as never before or after. In fifteen busy
weeks, the marvelling natives beheld the Messenger of Peace,
of eighty tons burden, proudly launched. Was there ever
such a ship and with such shifts of craft and dreams of
invention in her making ?

Years afterwards English audiences never tired of hearing
the shipbuilder tell this story — " tell it over again," was the cry.
What roars of fun issued from those smithy bellows, fashioned
of goat skins, as he dilated upon their fate, when one morning
bare boards only remained, the skin wind-bags, every crumb,
having been eaten up by the rats. Little matter, for instead of
blowing the fire ablaze outside, they sucked it up the spout
inside. Then followed the invention (for the wind must be
raised !) of a wonderful pump bellows — a wooden box worked
by ten swarthy fellows on a sort of piston and cylinder action,
and capitally effective. A perforated stone made the fire
bottom, and a block of ringing stone served for anvil. At the
first feat of iron welding, says Williams, " old and young, men
and women, chieftain and peasant, hastened to behold the
wonder." As he had no saw, crooked trees must be found and
split in two halves to suit the ship's curves. Cocoa husks
served for oakum ; a machine was invented to spin a stringy
bark into ropes ; and surely never such sails flapped to ocean

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John Williams

breeze : formed of native quilted sleeping mats stitched to-
gether they resembled a puzzle ; and then the rudder and its
swinging motion were a triumph of art and science, and
requisitioned " a piece of pickaxe, a cooper's adze, and a large
hoe." Stone supplied anchors, but the crowning mystery to
the chiefs were the ship's pumps. The ship measured sixty
feet by eighteen, well and tightly built, her rightful name the
Messenger of Peace — Robinson Crusoe rather, had she been a
trader. A trial trip of 170 miles was first made to Aitutaki ;
she returned in ten days with a cargo of pigs and cats ; woe now
to the bellows' devourers. Rats were, Williams says, as an
Egyptian plague in Rarotonga ; they would scamper over
a row of legs when kneeling in prayer, and over the pillows in
sleep, and also made suppers of shoes, unless lifted on to
shelves.

BUTEVE, THE GOSPEL BEGGAR

Ere we leave Rarotonga I must in briefest words tell the
story of Buteve, the spiritual beggar. One evening Williams
was taking a walk, when a strange creature arose by the way-
side, accosting him thus : " Welcome, man of God, who
brought light into this dark island." For feet and hands the
uncanny figure possessed only stumps, the rest having been
eaten off by disease. Yet by grasping a wooden hoe with his
arms and pushing it with his body, he managed to make
holes for taro plants, and kept his plot in beautiful order,
and also maintained his wife and four children.

Asked what he knew of the way of salvation, he replied,
" I know about Jesus Christ who came into the world to save
sinners." Does he pray ? " O yes, I frequently pray as I
weed in my ground and plant my food, but always three times
a day, besides with my family every morning and evening."
How does he pray ? "I say, O Lord, I am a great sinner ;
may Jesus take my sins away by His good blood ; give me
the righteousness of Jesus to adorn me, and give me the
good Spirit of Jesus to instruct me, and make my heart good
to make me a man of Jesus, and take me to heaven when I
die." Astonished, Williams asks how he came by this excel-
lent knowledge, seeing he cannot go to the chapel nor to the
settlement — he has never seen him there once. Then poor
Buteve tells his pathetic story of begging crusts of the gospel.
" Why," he said, " as the people return from the services, I
take my seat by the wayside, and beg a bit of the Word of them

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

as they pass by ; one gives me one piece and one another, and
I collect them in my heart, and, by thinking over what I thus
obtain, and praying God to make me know, I understand a
little about His Word." Ah ! beggar Buteve of Rarotonga,
would that some of us in favoured Britain kept more to thy
simplicity of heart ! The missionary and the cripple, after
this, often met, and spent happy hours of converse together,
and Buteve needed to beg no more by the wayside.

Williams now left Rarotonga, having served it well during
a full year of its most critical period. For a whole month
previous to his sailing the natives gathered around his house
in the evening to sing plaintive farewell songs. The ending of
Sunday with sacred song was the usual native way. They
were good singers and could manage a harmony in two or
three parts of the popular tunes common in English worship.
Their practice was to follow the preacher home, and while
sitting under a banana tree to spend the hour in devout
questioning about the sermons. Indeed, they began Sunday
in the right way to end it well. At sunrise they assembled for
a prayer-meeting conducted by themselves, after this they
met in classes, and appointed, for accurate report, a definite
part of the sermon to each class. The morning public service
was at nine, and afterwards all the native classes united and
gathered up the divisions, heads, application and gospel
crumbs of the whole sermon.

The new vessel made a good trip of the 800 miles to Tahiti.
A year now passed in thoroughly fitting the ship, and in her
first long voyage she conveyed Messrs. Prichard and Simpson
to the Marquesas Islands to re-establish the mission there.
Thence she steers to her native isle, and round the Hervey
group, to find there have been illness and other severe trials
for the missionaries and their wives. But Gospel work goes
bravely on.

SAILS TO EVANGELISE THE SAMOAN ISLANDS

In May, 1830, the Messenger of Peace, after tender farewells,
unfurls her flag of the "Three White Doves on a Purple
Ground," clears the harbour of Tahiti, bound for a new mis-
sionary venture, and steers for the Navigator or Samoan
Islands. A stock of ironmongery is on board, generously given
by the Revs. J. Angel James and T. East, of Birmingham. Mr.
Barff, " my beloved fellow labourer," accompanies Williams,
and also seven native teachers. They first make friendly

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John Williams

touches among the Hervey group, then steer straight for
Cook's Savage Island — so savage, indeed, that it was deemed
not wise to leave even native teachers. The next best is done,
by taking a few natives on board to be Christianised,
and afterwards sent back as first missionaries.

The Messenger now makes for Tongatabu, a passage of
350 miles. Here an interesting fortnight is spent with Messrs.
Turner and Cross and their wives, missionaries of the Wesleyan
Society, which had now taken over this Mission from the
London Missionary Society ; they were doing excellent work,
and had translated the Scriptures into the Tonga language.
In conference, it is agreed to leave the neighbouring Fiji
and Vavau Islands to them. Williams now sails direct for
Samoa. He well knew that since the massacre of a boat's
crew in 1788, under the French navigator, La Perouse, these
islands had been shunned in fear and horror, but this only
made their evangelisation the more urgent.

In twenty-eight years after Williams's visit they were
importing goods from England, Australia and America to the
value of £35,000 a year.

The passage is hindered by furious storms, torn sails and an
epidemic of influenza. On August yth, 1830, the cloud-capped
mountains of the beautiful island of Savaii are descried. The
natives come on deck, offering produce and females for barter,
and are vastly astonished when told that the latter cannot be
received, as this is a " praying ship."

The reception is unexpectedly friendly, partly owing to the
presence on board of the Samoan chief, Fanea, and his wife,
whom they had shipped at Tongatabu. Williams believed
this to be a gracious providence. The natives were told of
the wonders and changes in other islands. " Look," exclaimed
Fanea, " at their clothes and at us ; they have even clothing
on their feet while ours are like dogs." This reasoning was
effectual. " Look at their axes, their scissors, and other
property, how rich they are." A native hitches off a mission-
ary's shoe and is sure he has no toes. Fanea bids him feel,
this he promptly does, and delighted, proclaims his discovery
to the others, at which all shoes must come off for general
inspection and assurance. This freedom of welcome is largely
owing to the assassination only a few days before of a tyranni-
cal and cruel head-chief. Williams tries hard to prevail upon
his successor, Malietoa, not to avenge his kinsman's death by
war, but is told that the prestige of his family would depart

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if such a course were followed. Williams does extract a
promise that after he has conquered this time he will cease
war. The chief expresses his earnest desire for teachers.
Great ceremonies of welcome and formal introduction are
accorded to the missionaries, whose presents of red and white
English calico and skirts, hatchets, blue beads, knives, scissors,
looking-glasses, hammers, chisels, etc., etc., create wonder
upon wonder. Next morning, Williams is requested to appear
before Malietoa, and learns that the chief has purchased a
young wife with a portion of the presents, and that he must be
a wedding guest. There is a royal display of savage pomp,
dancing and feasting.

Having received promises for the protection of the eight
native teachers, Williams bids farewell. As he sails away his
heart is full of joyful praise and thanksgiving to God for
another " great and effectual door " to Gospel light. " Try
and trust," he records, is ever his motto, and " it never fails
when for God." The Messenger, with a good wind, made the
passage of eight hundred miles to Rarotonga in seven days.
Here Williams spends, he tells us, " two or three such happy
days that the toils and dangers of our voyage were forgotten."
He found growing settlements of garden cottages, with
Venetian windows and good school houses and chapels.

Again sailing, Williams calls at Mangaia, and also at Ruruta,
where the chief Anura had himself become a pastor, the native
teacher and his wife not having yet returned from a visit to
Raiatea. " They had kept up their missionary prayer meet-
ings " and during the previous year had given 750 bamboos
of cocoa-nut oil to the London Missionary Society. Williams
preached several times, and baptised many. The Messenger,
on leaving Ruruta, reached Tahiti, a distance of 350 miles, in
forty-eight hours.

HOW CONVERTED CANNIBALS DIED — A POLYNESIAN BUNYAN

Soon after the missionary's return, the death occurs of the
old chief Vara. He had been one of the cruellest human-
sacrificing heathens of the old dark days. His dying hours are
triumphantly Christian. Says he, " The blood of Jesus is
my foundation," " Jesus is the best King ; He gives me a
pillow without thorns." Williams asks if he is afraid to die,
and with energy he exclaims, " No ! No ! the canoe is in the
sea, the sails are spread, she is ready for the gale ; I have a
good pilot to guide me and a good haven to receive me."

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John Williams

Williams misses the welcome of blind old Me, who, like
Vara, is an aged warrior. He seeks him, and recognising the
voice, the old man cries, " Is it you ? Do I really hear your
voice again before I die ? I shall die happy now." His friends
visit him little ; " Yet," says he, " I am not lonely for I have
frequent visits from God : God and I were talking when you
came in, I was praying to be with Christ, which is far better."
Williams tells him that he fears death is near, and asks him,
in the sight of God, for the foundation of his hope. " Oh," he
replies, " I have been in great trouble this morning but I
am happy now. I saw an immense mountain with precipitous
sides, up which I endeavoured to climb, but when I attained
considerable height I lost my hold and fell to the bottom
exhausted. ... I went to a distance and sat down and
wept, and while weeping, I saw a drop of blood fall upon the
mountain and it was dissolved. That mountain was my sins,
and the drop which fell upon it was one drop of the precious
blood of Jesus, by which the mountain of my guilt must be
melted away." Soon after speaking this Bunyan-like parable,
old Me died in Williams's presence, exclaiming, with his last
breath, " O death, where is thy sting ? " Williams left the
dead bed, " praying," says he, " as I went, that my end might
be like his." Reader, these stories, with that of But eve, and
the one following of King Tamatoa's death are not fables,
but unvarnished facts, and, summarily told, bear refreshing
witness to our day of the ancient, yet ever new, all -glorious
power of the Cross of Love. I well know their recital
needs precious space ; it cannot be better used.

The year 1831 was an anxious year in Raiatea. The chief
of a neighbouring island being dead, Tapoa, his successor, the
grandson of a great king and himself a young warrior, aided
by older warriors and exiles of kindred spirits, determined to
dispossess the aged Tamatoa and become head of the Society
Islands. Tapoa was the sworn enemy of Christianity. This
threatened trouble hastened Tamatoa's death. This cele-
brated chief and famous friend of Williams was of majestic
presence, standing six feet eleven inches. In his heathen state
he was actually worshipped as a god, and his word made the
tribes tremble. Williams had known him closely for fifteen
years, and during the chief's last days his visits to him were
frequent. Just before his death, his son, who was to succeed
him, his daughters and also the lower chiefs were assembled
in his chamber, and received his solemn exhortation to be

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firm in their attachment to, and defence of the Gospel, to
maintain the laws, and to protect and be kind to the
missionaries. " Extending his withered hand to me,"
writes Williams, he exclaimed, " ' My dear friend, how
long have we laboured together in the good cause ; nothing
has ever separated us : now death is doing what nothing
else has done : but who shall separate us from the love of
Christ ? ""

" Thus," concludes Williams, " died Tamatoa, once the terror
of his subjects, the murderer of his people, a despotic tyrant
and a most bigoted idolater." The missionary was now
" racked with anxiety " as to his duty. He earnestly desired
to stay in Raiatea until all trouble was ended, but this became
impossible. A few months' hard work and conference with
his brethren, Pitman and Buzacott, upon translating and
printing the Rarotongan New Testament, was imperatively
required previous to a projected and arranged visit to
England. Mrs. Williams's condition also called urgently for
a change, and in September, 1831, he sailed with her for
Rarotonga.

THE NICK OF TIME — AWFUL STORM — SECOND VISIT TO SAMOA

He arrived, after a tour of the neighbouring islands, in the
nick of time for signal service. Just then great concern sprang
up in the heart of the missionaries due to a threatened relapse
among the chiefs and their immediate followers. It was
pitiful, for wonderful progress was evident, in direct and daily
operation for the welfare of the people, in providing new
houses, clothing, gardens, orchards, roads, etc. But here, as
everywhere, from the days of Eden, it was found irksome to be
good. Williams stepped on the scene, and by a providential
inspiration of eloquence and earnest courage quelled the
disaffection, and kindled into renewed strength the better
spirit, and the chiefs expressed penitence and sorrow.

A devastating hurricane, with tidal waves, strikes the island.
A thousand houses are laid low, and chapel, school and crops
are wrecked ; the poor people flee to the hills and the moun-
tains for dear life. Mrs. Williams is at death's door from a

' Williams named a son, born in Raiatea, after this chief. This son
Tamatoa died only a few years since, in London, very aged. I had some
correspondence with him relative to his father's memorial window,
and he kindly lent the sketches of native idols and weapons of blood
which appear there.

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John Williams

premature birth, making the seventh babe buried in the
islands. On her recovery, the people bring shoals of presents,
make feasts, and show many tokens of touching sympathy.
The Messenger in harbour is saved as by a miracle. Williams
is thankful to be among them, he rolls up his sleeves to help
the islanders to rebuild their houses and brings out a cask of
precious ironmongery, hatchets and tools. But for his
fortunate presence this awful visitation would certainly have
aided the disaffection amongst those still in some dimness of
superstition. I must push along the main highway of my
narrative, else I might stroll down many other by-ways, both
pleasant and rough, of pioneering by Williams.

In October, 1832, the Messenger of Peace, now lengthened
and refitted, sailed for a second visit to the Samoan islands.
A native preacher conducted the service on board. Williams
quotes portions of his prayer, which he had written down imme-
diately. They are full of simple, artless eloquence, seizing
on some appropriate figure of the hour, such as " God is our
compass on this vessel, the course is sure ; be to us, O Lord,
the compass of our salvation." " God is King of heaven,
and land and sea." " God is on the ship."

Makea, the king, wished to see the wider world, and with the
idea that he might be useful, he was taken on board. After
a fine run of nearly 800 miles in five days, land was sighted.
It was found to be Manua, some 250 miles from the nearest
post of the missionaries.

1HE WONDERFUL STORY OF MANUA AND TUTUILA

A boat is lowered, and the occupants hear with wondering
astonishment from the approaching canoes, shouts of " We
are Christians ; " " We are sons of the Word ; " " We are
waiting for a religion-ship to bring us some people whom they
call missionaries to tell us about Jesus Christ. Is yours the
ship ? " With pitiful regret they learn that a missionary
cannot be left just now, but one is promised. But how has the
Gospel travelled to them ? A story, surely shining brightly
on the long roll of Gospel romance, is now unfolded. There
comes on board a native of the island of Ravaivai, which lies
about 350 miles south of Tahiti, from which his people had
received the Tahitian Scriptures and the truth. One day,
he and other natives were returning from the neighbouring
isle of Tubuai and, losing their way, " were driven about the
sea for nearly three months." Twenty died, and the rest were

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

cast half dead, on Manua, 2,000 miles from home. Here they
built a chapel, appointed a teacher, and kept up their regular
Christian services, and spread the Gospel around. Through
all the perils of the voyage they had preserved their precious
portions of Scripture. A fine young fellow now steps on
board and asks passage to Tutuila ; he says he has got the
good news and wishes to carry it to his own people.

On this second Samoan cruise, Williams desired to touch at
every one of the group, small and large, and now calls at
Olosenga and Ofu, two small islands. An old chief canoes
alongside. Has he heard of the new religion at Savaii and
Upolu ? No ! It is explained, and then he eagerly begs for
a missionary, and couples with the request another for muskets
and powder. He promises kind treatment, and " will give
them plenty to eat." " Early next morning," records
Williams, " we made Tutuila, and were soon surrounded by a
vast number of canoes," some with thirsty men, and wild looking.
They climbed around the ship, clamouring for muskets.
The missionary learns that they are at war, and turns
away. Gliding along the coast, he is delighted by its varied
loveliness. Entering the spacious and lovely bay of Leone,
where is the young man's home, they are boarded by a person
who introduces himself as " a son of the Word." Heartily
welcomed, he brings the news " that in his district over fifty
persons have embraced Christianity and erected a chapel."

Williams now lowers a boat to go on shore, but when about
twenty yards from the beach espies a suspicious crowd and
stops his rowers for prayer, " the usual practice when exposed
to danger." The chief now makes the others sit down, and
himself wades nearly up to the neck and shouts, " We are
not savage now, we are Christians ! A man named Williams
came to Savaii about twenty moons ago and placed some
workers in religion there." Some of the chief's people had visited
Savaii and returning had instructed others. Pointing to a
seated group under the trees, he exclaimed, " There they are ! "
Looking, the missionary saw about fifty natives, each
with a piece of white cloth tied to his arm — his Christian badge.
On learning that Williams — records the "Enterprises" —
" stood in front of them, the multitude sprang from their seats,
rushed into the sea, and seized the boat, and carried both it and
us to the shore." Amoamo, the chief, now took Williams's hand,
and led him to the Christians. The missionary asks where,
how have they got the new religion ? One replies, " that he

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John Williams

had been down to the ' workers of religion ' and brought
back some," and points to their little chapel peeping among
banana foliage. " Who takes the services ? " "I do," says
he. " Who has taught you ? " " See," replies he, " that
is my canal where I go down to the teacher, get some religion,
which I bring carefully home and give to my people, and when
that is gone I take my canoe again, and fetch some more."
This faithful apostle then begs for a missionary, that he may
not need to endanger his life by voyages of so many miles to
other islands " to fetch some more."

Passing strange ! — for it was in this actual bay where now
the Messenger of Peace rests so securely, that the horrible
massacre occurred in 1788 of the boat's crew under La
Perouse, and probably never since had a ship put into this
harbour. For over forty years, as before stated, until
Williams's venture, the whole Samoan islands were shunned.

The chief promised to become Christian when a missionary
was sent to his people. Returning to the ship after this
delightful episode, Williams finds awaiting him a deputation
from a valley over the hills, by whom Makea and the
teachers had been greatly entertained. The chief at once
seizes him, and, rubbing noses, declares, " that he and
nearly all his people are Christians, and that they have erected
a spacious place of worship." He himself had travelled to hear
some teachers, and had taught his tribe what he had learned.
Williams appearing doubtful, the chief adopted an artless, but
convincing procedure. " Placing," the record runs, " his
hands before him, in the form of a book, he recited a chapter
out of our Tahitian primer, partly in the Samoan dialect ; he
then said ' Let us pray,' and, kneeling down upon our little
quarter deck, he repeated the Lord's Prayer in broken
Tahitian." The next day the Messerger put into harbour at
Upolu, an island some 200 miles in circumference.

WAITING FOR THE RELIGION SHIP — A SAMOAN PENTECOST

Here the natives also declared " that they were ' sons of
the Word,' " and that they were " waiting for the religion- ship
of Mr. Williams to bring them missionaries." The Messenger
now steered across the straits, ten to fifteen miles, to Manoa,
a tiny garden isle, and residence of the head chief. " My
colossal friend, Matetau, the second chief," says Williams,
" came to meet us." After rubbing noses, he asked " Where's
my missionary ? " He had been promised one a year ago, and

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

now Teava and his wife being introduced, " he seized them with
delight, saluted their noses with a long and hearty rub, and
exclaimed, ' Good, very good ; I am happy now,' " and
joyfully departed, shouting the good news from his canoe,
as he neared the shore. Williams disembarked, and was
received with " extravagant joy," and, says he, " I learned
that Malietoa, with his brother, the principal chief, and nearly
all the inhabitants of their settlement had embraced Christ-
ianity ; and that their chapel would accommodate six or
seven hundred people, and was always full ; and that in
the two large islands of Upolu and Savaii the gospel had been
introduced into more than thirty villages ; and that the great
body of the people were only waiting my arrival to renounce
their heathen system." " This," continues Williams, " was
most delightful information, and drew forth tears of gratitude
to God for having in so short a time granted us such rich
reward."

The old King is away, but returns in the morning, Sunday,
when the missionary preaches in the chapel to an audience of
seven hundred, all seated on a floor of plaited cocoa-nut leaves
— a wild, grotesque looking people, one year emerged from
savagery. " W7ith outstretched necks and open mouths,
they listened," says he, " with profound attention and great
propriety." The teachers sing a hymn in Tahitian ; one reads
a chapter in the same tongue, and translates it, " and engages
in prayer with great fluency." Makea, the King of Raro-
tonga, a splendid fellow, is introduced to King Malietoa, who
extends a cordial welcome. Makea creates an impression by
his red surtout and European costume, but even more by his
earnest eloquence, telling them of the mighty works done in
Rarotonga. In the afternoon Williams again preaches with
great liberty to a thousand people. He writes " I found it a
delightful employment to tell the wonderful story of redeeming
love to a multitude on whom the light of the Gospel was just
beginning to dawn, that they may know, ' that love which
passeth knowledge.' ' It was a solemn time and turned into
a kind of Convention meeting. A native teacher spoke n-ith
overflowing emotion and thanksgiving after which old king
Malietoa arose. " Let all Savaii and Upolu," he declared,
" embrace this great religion ; and as to myself, my whole
soul shall be given to the Word of Jehovah, and my utmost
endeavours be employed that it may speedily encircle the
land."

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John Williams

It is announced that Williams will answer any enquiries
privately or publicly, and a meeting of the people is summoned
for the following day. He baptises two children of teachers
born upon the island. Thus closes a memorable day. In the
evening quiet, he composes " two or three hymns in the
Samoan language, wondering why the natives are not taught
to sing." He discovers that the women persist in adding
their dancing tunes, that they are intractable, and will not
take to women's crafts. They will wear nothing but. a mat
around their loins, and even attempt to persuade the teacher's
wives to dress like themselves. In the morning sundry
presents arive, and at ten they are called to the great meeting.
There is an impressive time of speeches from Williams and
king Malietoa. King Makea's address on the blessings of
Christianity in Rarotonga produced a most powerful impres-
sion. He said, "We enjoy happiness to which our ancestors
were strangers, our ferocious wars have ceased, our houses
are abodes of comfort. Above all we know the true God, and
the way of salvation by His Son Jesus Christ." He earnestly
besought his brother chiefs to hold firmly to the Word of
Jehovah, "for this alone," he added," can make you a peaceable
and happy people. I should have died a savage had it not been
for the Gospel."

The missionary's tour round and among this populous and
extensive group of eighty islands is one of absorbing interest.
He seems conscious that to win the Samoan islands as a
trophy of the Cross would be hardly second to any achieve-
ment possible to him. His magnetic personality, along with
his missionary status, gives him a unique power. Malietoa
urges him to fetch his wife and family. Says he, " Come
and live and die with us, and tell us about Jehovah, and teach
us how to love Jesus Christ." The missionary replies that he
is going back to his own country and will tell the Christians
there of his wish for a white missionary. " Well," replies the
chief, " Go ; go ! with speed, but many of us will be dead
before you return." These words sent a pathetic thrill of
emotion through Williams's heart. The chief is told that
English missionaries have wives, children and property,
and is asked if he will protect them. He is hurt, and recites
his deeds in this respect " these twenty moons back," and
protests, " If you bring property enough to reach from the
top of yonder high mountain to the beach of the sea, and leave
it exposed from one year's end to another, not a particle of

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it shall be touched." He promises to abandon war, revenge,
adultery, obscene dances, etc.

The teachers tell Williams the story of Malietoa's embracing
Christianity. While himself at war he sent one of his sons
to help in building the chapel. Just before the opening day,
he called his adult children together, and informed them that
he was going to fulfil his promise and become a worshipper of
Jehovah. They declared if this were good for him, then for
them also. " No," said he, " if our gods are enraged they
will destroy me ; I will try the experiment." They ask for
how long — a month, six weeks, or what ? Reluctantly they
consent, but in three weeks, seeing no harm has come to their
father, the agreement breaks down, and they also come to
Christian worship, and a day is appointed for a public renuncia-
tion by them of heathenism. The relatives and most of the
people follow. Williams felt happy that Malietoa had not
suffered pain or died during the momentous experiment.

THE GREAT WAR GOD PAPO SAVED — TWENTY WONDROUS MONTHS

The Samoan islands were essentially different from other
groups in religion. They had no idol images, altars or sanguin-
ary rites, and of course were not cannibals. As they had no
idols to destroy, an expedient must be adopted by which, in
a dramatic form, to break from their former system. " Every
chief of note had his etu ; this was some species of fish, bird
or reptile in which the spirit of the god is supposed to reside."
To show forth effectually their renunciation of idolatry and
to degrade their gods at the public ceremonial the young men
cooked and ate the etu of their respective families. They
also called to the ceremony their followers, who exhibited
many signs of inward trembling. Idolatry was now broken
for ever.

A public assembly is summoned to consider the fate of the
ancient war-god Papo. He is not an image, but a piece of
rotten matting, about three yards long, and always heads the
attack from the bow of the leading canoe, when going forth to
war. One valiant convert proposes his execution by fire,
but that is too horrible ; a more merciful doom is preferred.
Yet what ? Surely from the bottom of the sea he will never
rise again — he shall be drowned. A new canoe is launched ;
chiefs of note are selected, and with tragic ceremony a stone
is tied to poor Papo, and the dread voyage is commenced.
The teachers hearing hasten to overtake and persuade them

John Williams

to consult Williams, and Papo is saved. He is still as alive as
ever, throned in the London Missionary Society's museum in
London. But the mere report of Papo's humiliation, especially
of the shameful stone, was hardly less serious to him than death
itself. Malietoa proves his sincerity by a test, hard to us —
forgiveness of his enemies and abstaining from revenge.

The good work goes on apace. Williams is too wise to expect
and insist upon too much. He advises the teachers not to
oppose old amusements and sports which are not immoral or
obscene, such as their sham fights, fencing matches, spear-
darting, pigeon-catching, and others. He journeys round
the villages and settlements and is astonished at the progress
of Christian ways and civilisation. He beholds good roads,
well-kept, spacious buildings for public business, and a chapel
for worship. Presents galore drop at his feet ; one day
seventy females approach him in single file, preceded by four
men ; each of the seventy lays down before him her present of
bread, fruit, etc. He learns they come from a distance, and
that one of them while away from her people, had heard the
truth, and had gone back to her village, gathered around her
the women, instructed them, had then returned for more bits
of Gospel, and had doled it out as she herself got it, and that
this ceremony expressed their gratitude. Thus every day for
Williams is crowded with delightful interest.

There is one cloud — a serious and growing sign of rupture
between Taleilan and Malietoa. It must be healed ere he
leaves, and with much sagacious wisdom the missionary
secures a true peace. He finds trouble from bands of escaped
sailors and convicts, and a distressing danger from ardent
spirits bartered by traders. There are balancing influences
of good. Captains of ships, instructed by Christian merchants,
leave substantial tokens of sympathy. In twenty months
the wondrous change has been wrought.

With glowing heart, with praise and thanksgiving to
Almighty God to whom be all the glory, the Messenger of Peace
bids farewell to lovely Savaii and Upolu with their multitudes
of grateful hearts. One midnight, during the voyage, the
mate in alarm rouses Williams — the ship is filling with water.
All hands to the pumps for several days in incessant work
only just save the vessel. When they reach land, the leak is
with difficulty found — an augur hole had been left unplugged,
but had got temporarily rammed with mud and stones. After
spending a pleasing fortnight with the Wesleyan missionaries

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

at Tongatabu Williams touched Rarotonga in January, 1833,
after fifteen weeks' absence. The missionary's full heart
now unveils to his eyes a chain of guiding providences, " the
finger of God " to him ; especially the way of Mrs. Williams's
consent to the enterprise, and also the meeting at Tongatabu
with Tanea, who proved of such incalculable service. He
contrasts the rapidity of the evangelisation in Samoa with
the long years of dreary waiting and suffering in Tahiti and
the Society Islands, and also with the Church Missionary
Society's work in New Zealand, and is humbled. He is, of
course, aware of the dimness with which the natives perceive
the full-orbed truth ; it cannot be otherwise. Yet he never
lowers the flag of objective attainment ; the natives are told
it is not the easy way of baptism which saves ; it is Jesus.
He never ceases to enforce on the wondering islanders that
the fount and secret of the Christian religion is in the heart
transforming the life. A new creation has dawned between
his first visit to Rarotonga in 1823 and this year of 1834.
What indeed hath God wrought ? Heathenism and its defiling
idolatries, its ghastly trail of human sacrifices, its savage,
blood-thirsty wars, its foul immoralities, its awful, cruel
infanticide, have passed away, and the people now dwell in
peace, learning useful arts. They assemble in thousands
for holy worship of the Christian God ; family prayer is regular
in almost every house. Instead of capture and murder of
wrecked crews there are help and shelter. Williams recounts
these miracles of grace only to cast them at the Saviour's
feet, " for," says he, "I speak not boastfully ; His arm hath
gotten Him the victory and He shall bear the glory."

But the missionary is now struck in a tender place. The
old malignant heathenish dragon lifts its hellish head, and after
fifteen years his beloved Raiatea is again plunged in bloodshed
of war. The cloud which was gathering when he had last
sailed, had burst. King Tamatoa's death and his own absence
had the more laid open the island to the ambitious chief and
his abettors. There is one marked gain upon the old ways,
and that not a slight one — the clemency of the victors.

Perhaps even worse than the war was a pestilence of drunk-
enness which infested the island. The missionaries' work,
affording as it did security and profitable trade to vessels,
was ill requited by the barter of ardent spirits. Christian-
isation was sadly put back, and churches and schools almost
emptied. But there ever remained the faithful few and the

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John Williams

Word ; laws were enacted, temperance societies were formed,
and in time the courts of God were refilled with praising
people.

ENGLAND — PUBLISHES NEW TESTAMENT AND " ENTERPRISES "

In June 1834, Mr. and Mrs. Williams and that veteran of
the old guard, Henry Nott, arrived in England. They now
publish the New Testament in Rarotongan and other dialects
of the South Seas. Williams prepares and issues his book
" A Narrative of Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea
Islands." Its success was an amazing triumph. The volume
appeared with a dedication to William IV. One copy was
inscribed in tender words, " To my dearest Mary," his faithful
comrade.

As I peruse its pages and look upon its old woodcuts a far-off
world is called back to me. Forms and faces in winged
movement, sixty years forgotten, seem to reappear around
me. With a child's eager eyes I scan the new number of
The Juvenile Missionary Magazine — about the size of a lady's
hand ; again I gaze at its primrose cover, with its picture of
the missionary standing under a palm, in swallow-tailed coat,
preaching to the group of dark natives. I think I could
draw the very type of the text at the bottom of the cover :
" Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world."

The book, together with the author's preaching and plat-
form tour, lifted missionary fervour to a height perhaps never
since exceeded, if equalled. To live and move in its Pentecost
of holy enthusiasm was a joyous insphation of consecration.
Long years afterwards old men told of it. To my own remem-
brance its influence was still in powerful flow in the late forties.
What palmy days of big collections come to mind on
bright Missionary Sermon Sundays and glorious Missionary
Meeting Mondays, with the Missionary Breakfast between.
Williams's personality and magnetism extracted munificent
donations from noblemen and merchants, and notable indeed
was one from the Common Council of the City of London for
moral reasons and for new fields of " commercial enterprise."
Dr. Campbell said to Williams, " Your four years' residence
in England has not only not been lost to the cause of missions,
but has been the most productive in your whole life." The
zeal of the day carried upon its crest the purchase of the
Camden, and as on April nth, 1838, she weighed anchor for the

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

South Seas with Mr. and Mrs. Williams on board, now parting
from their little boy, many thousands waved loving adieus
from London Bridge and the banks of the Thames.

RETURN TO SAMOA — MARTYRDOM IN THE NEW HEBRIDES

Mr. and I'.Irs. Williams made their new home at Upolu, and
to the amazement of the Samoans they settled with a tribe
just crushed by war. The Camden left 5,000 New Testaments
at Rarotonga. The missionary heart cannot rest ; it still
hears the cry, " Come over and help us," from over the wide
waters — that dark cluster of islands in the west, whither the
Messenger of Peace has never 3^et turned her bows. He must
answer the cry. For the last time he bids farewell to wife
and children. His last sermon to his flock is from the text,
" Sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more."
The Camden conveys him, and the New Hebrides are sighted
in November, 1839. Captain Cook only escaped from Erro-
manga by using his guns, and it is this island that the
Camden now approaches. At this time the missionary
writes, " I am all anxiety," yet he must " attempt to impart
the Gospel to these benighted people and leave the event with
God. The week is to be the most important of my life."
Presents are offered and the natives seem friendly. Mr.
Harris, a young missionary recruit, ventures ashore and walks
inland ; soon a horrid yell is heard. Harris is seen running,
is caught in a stream and clubbed to instant death.

Transfixed by the horror, Williams halts a moment — the
halt is his own doom ; by swifter step than his own he is
overtaken in the sea, and in a moment the water is red with
his blood. The bodies are dragged ashore for cannibal feasts.
The awful grief of England was not greater than that of the
bereft islanders. The cry went up. " Alas, Williams : alas,
our father ! " Under a " humble stone " at Apia, collected
later by Captain Crocker of H.M.S. Favourite lie two skulls and
a few bones ; they were buried there in the presence of a
vast multitude of natives. There may be doubts about the
bones, but none have doubted that Williams has a monument
more enduring than stone in fair islands smiling in Christian
peace, and also in the hearts of three generations of countless
thousands of the young, ever eager with little gifts to meet
the cost of successive John Williams missionary ships, still to
sail forth to carry that gospel for which the great missionary
gave his life. It is pleasing to know that the grandson of the

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John Williams

chief who killed John Williams is a deacon of the Christian
church at Erromanga. In a few months after the murders
native Christians invaded the island, determined on
revenge b)' gospel victory. Their escape, after a year's terrible
suffering, is a thrilling story. In 1849 f°ur Erromangans were
persuaded to visit Samoa, and through them, but years later,
and only through much shadow of suffering and death, the
Gospel flag was firmly planted in the martyr island.

It is not within my scope to pursue further the story of the
South Sea Missions, though it abounds in interest. Williams's
policy of training and settling native teachers for evangelis-
ation has been followed and enlarged by his successors. Since
his time many of these have sealed their faith and doctrine by
their blood. At the present time, to give a sample of their
Christian prosperity, the Hervey Group with Samoa have a
population of 45,000. At least 40,000 of J;hese are under
Christian teaching, and they contribute aboiM £5,000 a year
to the London Missionary Society. Therirare some 12,000
Church members ; fifteen white missionaries superintend the
work, with 450 native helpers.

455

" Other sheep I have which are not of this fold :
Them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice."

" That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . .
And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?

XVII
DAVID LIVINGSTONE

INSCRIPTION.— Cotton factory lad. The illustrious Missionary,
Friend of the slave, and Explorer of Africa. Buried in West-
minster Abbey, 1874.

SCENE.— Setting1 of Central Africa — mountain range — native huts —
ostrich plain, etc. The lonely hero is presented as in momentary
reverie of hearth and home. His work and thoughts are symbolised
by his Testament pressed to his breast — the broken slave-fetters
at his feet — the sextant hanging by the cabin, where also is nailed
a native idol. A package labelled Robert Moffat lies on the ground.
Dress — red sleeved waistcoat, grey tweed trousers, naval cap with
faded gold band. Rising sun rolls away dark clouds. A sad-faced
cherub brings flag upon which is outline of the Dark Continent
with radiant Cross in centre.

THE BOY — THE MAN — THE MISSIONARY, 1813-40

Not long ago, and some thirty-six years after Livingstone's
death, I was standing in the nave of Westminster Abbey,
when I noticed a group of college boys as if searching
for a particular tomb. Presently one exclaimed, " Here
it is," and all gathered round. It was the grave of David
Livingstone.

David was born at Blantyre, near Glasgow, on March iQth,
1813. He was the second son and child of a family of three sons
and two daughters. " My own inclination would lead me to
say as little as possible about myself " — so this most renowned
of modern travellers begins his famous book of missionary life
and journeys. Only six pages are allowed to family history.
" Our great grandfather," he writes, " fell at the battle of
Culloden, fighting for the old line of kings, and our grandfather
was a small farmer at Ulva, where my father was born." One

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DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

David Livingstone

ancient sire, calling his family by his death-bed, told them he
had never had a dishonest forefather, and for family motto
bade them take " Be honest." David tells us, with a sound
Puritan ring, this is the " only point of the family traditions
I feel proud of." A large family compelled the small farmer
to look further afield, and towards the end of the eighteenth
century the grandfather removed to Blantyre to become
cashier in a cotton mill, where he earned high esteem from his
employers. Some of the sons were also clerks at the mill,
but the French wars, quickening adventurous blood, got hold
of all the sons except Neil. This son, after an apprenticeship
as a tailor with David Hunter, married his master's daughter,
Agnes, in 1810, and settled down as a tea packman and small
grocer. He seceded from the Established Church of Scotland
and joined an Independent Church, and, says David, " for
the last twenty years of his life held the office of deacon
at the Church at Hamilton."

Neil Livingstone sought to bring up his children in a decent
and godly way, not the more under strict precept than example,
for his famous son says of him, " He deserves my lasting
gratitude for presenting me from infancy with a continuously
pious example, such as that, the ideal of which is beautifully
and truthfully pourtrayed in Burns's ' Cottar's Saturday
Night.' " David Hunter was a reading man with a good
library, and his apprentice Neil had imbibed similar tastes.
David the younger was also fond of books ; says he, "I read
everything I could lay my hands on, except novels. Scientific
works and books of travel were my especial delight." His
father, like others of his time, believing (continues David)
" the former were inimical to religion, would have preferred
to see me poring over ' The Cloud of Witnesses,' Boston's
' Fourfold State,' and Wilberforce's ' Practical Christianity.' '
Open rebellion against reading this last so alarmed the father
that its precepts were administered by the rod. Yet, says
the great son, " by his winning ways he made the heart strings
of his children twine around him. He died in February, 1856,
in peaceful hope of mercy, through the death of our Lord and
Saviour. I was then on my way below Zumbo, anticipating no
greater pleasure than sitting by his cottage fire and telling my
travels. I revere his memory."

There is also a gentle and watchful mother in the
home. David affords us a glimpse of her as " the anxious
housewife striving to make both ends meet." Doubly he

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

sought to lighten her burden, for he linked the willing heart to
the ready hand in helping to clean and do up the house, and
already he believes " Once done, well done," for, records the
mother, David did " even under the doormats."

David was not more the mere bookworm than the lad
William Carey, and had similar tastes. " Limited as my
time was," he tells us, " I managed to scour the country-side,
collecting simples " from Culpeper ; and his mind opens to the
quest and wonder of the shell and fossil of the brae-side. How
did they get there ? The quarrymen smile at his queries as
half-witted. He likes to fish, bathe and swim in the Clyde
and cuts his name as the highest climber on the grey walls of
Bothwell Castle. We may be sure that every article and
ounce of tea bought at his father's shop carried within it an
unseen label " Be honest." Anyway Deacon Neil was too
punctilious of truth and good weight and quality for fortune
making, and his kind heart was ill requited by bad debts. A
young family also makes increasing demands, and so little
David must bring his sling to the struggle, and at ten he enters
the factory as a " piecer."

Alas ! his sweet freedom is stopped for ever, ere its full
beauty is felt. And now begins a life of toil, lasting just fifty
years, hardly broken by a single day, until, as a lone traveller,
he dies upon his knees at Ilala, in the heart of Africa. He was
supposed to be a rather delicate boy, but the stiff pith of his
constitution was proved by his sturdy emergence through
long years of British slavery. The early factory system of
long hours for children lasted for twenty years after David's
time. Thousands of Lancashire little Davids filled their short
coffins before cruel cupidity was put into the hand-cuffs of
the law.

David's working hours are from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. But even
so young he is awakening to the meaning of life, and to a sense
of his poor, little, empty mind ; and part of his first wages
goes in buying a copy of "Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin; "
he thus begins by flying his kite rather high. He falls to
evening school from eight to ten, with home study on to
twelve ; and often even at this hour the ardent student will
only shut his books on motherly compulsion. His thirst for
knowledge invents the artifice of perching his Latin grammar
or other book upon his spinning wheel that he may catch his
peeps in the to and fro movement of the carriage. " To
this," he writes, " I owe the power of completely abstracting

458

David Livingstone

my mind so as to read and write amidst dancing and songs of
savages."

When sixteen he knew his Horace and Virgil better than at
forty. Later he wins the high regard of his employers as a
faithful servant, and the affectionate goodwill of his comrades
by his kindness. At nineteen he is promoted to " spinner,"
analogous to journeyman. From his higher wages, and by
frugal living, he saves enough in the summer " to support
myself," says he, " while attending the medical and Greek
classes in the winter and the Divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw
in summer." " Looking back," he avows, " were I to begin
life over again, I should like to pass through the same hardy
training."

He is reticent about his conversion, but tells us that his

dislike to religious reading continued for years, but having lighted on
those admirable works of Dr. Thomas Dick, "The Philosophy of
Religion," and " The Philosophy of a Future State," it was gratifying
to find he had enforced my own convictions that religion and science were
friendly to each other. Great pains had been taken by my parents to
instil the doctrines of Christianity into my mind, and I had no difficulty
in understanding the theory of free salvation by the Atonement of our
Saviour, but it was only about this time that I began to feel the necessity
of a personal application of the doctrine to my own case. The change
was like what it may be supposed would take place, were it possible to
cure a case of colour blindness. The fulness with which the pardon of all
our guilt is offered in God's Book drew forth feelings of affectionate love
to Him who bought us with His blood, which in some small measure has
influenced my life ever since. But I shall not again refer to the inner
spiritual life which I believe then began, nor do I intend to specify
with any prominence the evangelistic labours to which the love of Christ
has impelled me. In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I
soon resolved to devote my life to the alleviation of human misery.
I felt that to be a pioneer of Christianity in China might lead to the
material benefit of some portions of that immense empire, and therefore
set myself to obtain a medical education, in order to qualify for the
enterprise.

The conversion seems to coincide with the formation
by his father of a Missionary Society in the village. Living-
stone possessed a mind both original and daring, and must
surely have made a name in the world of science or theology
had he not entered the mission field. He anticipated by
forty or fifty years the harmony of science with religion, and
also the changed emphasis from dogma to life in Christian
teaching.

There was at least one book in his grandfather Hunter's
library which was a favourite with both father and son —

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

" Travels among the Hottentots," by the Rev. J. Campbell.
David now learns of the world of missions, of the Moravians
and Henry Martyn, and we may be sure of Carey and
Williams, and we find his mind settling to the consecration
of his life to the mission field. The heroic heart is already
fashioning. He records, " I never received a farthing from
anyone," and he is now actually dreaming " to accomplish
my project of going to China as a medical missionary by my
own efforts," when he is advised to offer himself to the London
Missionary Society. This he now does, for, says he, " to send
neither Episcopacy, nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency,
but the Gospel of Christ to the heathen exactly agrees with my
ideas." On September ist, 1838, he arrived in London for
examination by the Mission Board. He was sent for a three
months' probation to Mr. Cecil, at Ongar, Essex. Here his
fellow students knew him as " a pale, thin, modest, retiring
young man with a peculiar Scotch accent." One Sunday,
having with great pains prepared a sermon, he gave out his
text, and then — then — horror ! — " he was left in Egyptian
darkness ; " a blurted sentence of " forgotten " fell upon
the folk, and the preacher had fled. He had little gift of
prayer, and critics were sure of his failure. But he could
chop firewood and grind corn, and do up the garden.
These prophets — some of them — would live to know that
he died on his knees, filling even the insensitive blacks
with reverence.

Tutor Cecil sent a report which nearly put the quietus on
David's missionary dreams, but after a further probation of
two months he was accepted. His short stay at Ongar was
made pleasant by walking excursions with a fellow student
through Essex lanes, which he utilised for lessons in Greek.
The students form a Temperance Pledge Society, and David
is a foremost member. He now goes to London and prose-
cutes his medical studies in the hospitals until November, 1840,
when, on the eve of his ordination, he runs to Glasgow to take
his diploma. He tells us, " It was with unfeigned delight
that I became a member of a profession which, with un-
wearied energy, pursues from age to age its endeavours to
lessen human woe." He gets a harder dose of examination
for doubting and questioning the professors as to the powers
of the stethoscope.

Spending the evening at home, where the talk lasts until
midnight, David proposes to sit up all night, but the mother

460

David Livingstone

makes him go to bed, for he has to be off at early dawn for
London. At five, the family take breakfast ; " mother made
the coffee," says his sister, " David read the I2ist and i35th
Psalms and then prayed. My father and he walked to Glasgow
to catch the Liverpool steamer." On the Broomielaw the two
parted, never to meet again.

Up to the day of his ordination David was bent upon China
as his field of work. At this time Robert Moffat1 was on his
first visit home, arousing Britain to an interest in the Dark
Continent. One evening he called in at Mrs. Sewell's, Alders-
gate Street, where Livingstone and other missionary students
were boarding. The young medical is attracted, attends
Moffat's public meetings, and wonders. At last he asks if
there is a sphere in Africa for him as a medical missionary.
" Yes," answers Moffat, " if you won't go to an old station
but push on to the vast unoccupied district to the north,
where, on a clear morning, I have seen the smoke of a thousand
villages, and no missionary has ever been." Those words
settled David Livingstone's destiny.

So now stands the matured Scotchman of twenty-seven,
strong in pure, upright, serious manhood, resolute, daring ;
for a full score years schooled in endurance and resource, even
shaping the hindrance and hardship of lowly birth and toil
into the ladder — the drill master — for special high achieve-
ments to the honour and glory of God, as His will may ordain.
Watching by his spinning machine, the obscure David,
through the wondrous grace of prayer, in dimness proposes
that the way of his life shall be among the myriad millions
of an ancient civilisation ; in omniscience, the great Ruler
disposes, and elects the youth to greatness by another way,
unknown as yet, into which He will surely lead him.

On Livingstone's grave we read " Missionary, Traveller,
Philanthropist." From the first of these, the last inevitably
follows, yet it is the second that sheds such distinguished and
world-wide lustre upon his name. But he stands in our
Stories as the missionary. This he was foremost and in his
heart to the last. This triple division is of one life, and while

1 Moffat, when as a youth on a trifling errand in Warrington, was
arrested by the announcement of a missionary meeting. After much
hesitation he went, and in one hour the destiny of his life was changed.
His first offer of service was refused by the London Missionary Society.
It is also interesting to remember that on September 3oth, 1816, in Surrey
Chapel, John Williams and Robert Moffat stood together to be set apart.
It was at first intended that Moffat should go to Polynesia.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

my purpose may enjoin an emphasis on the missionary, the
life is indivisible. Like Carey, he was diverted from his own
will as to field ; and as Williams was the missionary-discoverer
— the pathfinder of civilisation and commerce — among tiny
islands, so was Livingstone upon a vast continent.

He was ordained as a missionary on November 2oth, 1840,
and on December 8th sailed for Algoa Bay. During a weary
voyage of five months he made a close friend of the captain,
who gave him valuable lessons in the use of the quadrant, and
in lunar observation. Arriving at Cape Town, he was the
guest of Dr. Philip, the agent of the London Missionary Society,
and in his church he made a lively sensation among the " unco
strict " in orthodoxy, by daring to preach conduct instead
of dogma " as the governing principle of our life."

Years before the name of Moffat was heard, another name
emerged to distinction in South African missions — that of
Vanderkemp, also under the London Missionary Society. At
this point a page must be spared to show where Livingstone
links up in the missionary chain of Africa.

The Cape of Good Hope was discovered in 1486 by the
Portuguese, and in 1652 some Dutch settlers, under the wing
of their East India Company, formed a Colony there. The
settlers were welcomed at first by the natives, whose feelings
however changed when later the invaders appropriated the
best lands and the owners were ruthlessly driven into the
interior. This was not the worst, for the Dutch reduced large
numbers of natives to slavery, and also introduced Malays and
negroes as slaves. In 1795, Cape Colony passed from Dutch to
British rule ; it was restored in 1802 ; in 1806 the British
again gained possession, and since then it has remained British.
The early Dutch colonists were, in their way, a God-fearing and
religious people. But in Africa they deemed themselves, in
a very Hebrew fashion, the " peculiar people " — the " elect
of God "—and the natives " Philistines." At their hands, for
a hundred and fifty years, the poor aborigines suffered every
injustice, indignity and cruelty, being hunted with firearms
like wild beasts. It is little wonder if naturally friendly
and fine races and tribes degenerated, and were maddened
into cunning and ferocious enemies, their hands against
every man with a skin unlike their own.

In 1737 there landed at Cape Town one George Schmidt,
moved by the Spirit of God upon him " to preach good tidings,"
1 to proclaim liberty " to the poor Hottentots. He was one

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David Livingstone

of our old pioneering friends, the Moravian Brethren. Bravely
he prayed and worked for six years, and gathered forty-seven
Hottentots into Church communion; but unceasing and
bitter persecution forced him away and his little flock were
scattered. He returned to Europe and, through Dutch
opposition, for nearly fifty years his place was unfilled. In
1792, the Moravians re-appeared, and have since continued
their devoted labours and flourished in station after station.

VANDERKEMP — THE AFRICAN XAVIER

The London Missionary Society in 1798 sent Dr. Vander-
kemp as their first missionary to South Africa. He had
studied at both Leyden and Edinburgh Universities, taken
a medical degree, settled in Middelburg in Holland, and
gained a large practice. For sixteen years he served as an
officer in the Dutch army. He was a figure in literary and
scientific pursuits, and a great scholar, with a knowledge of
Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian and Syriac ;
but as yet he had no religious belief.

As he was boating one day on the Meuse, all in the boat
were flung into the water, and his wife and child were drowned
before his eyes. In his blind agony of bewildered despair
he was cast upon God and there followed an absolute surrender
to His will and consecration to His service.

This cultivated scholar and gentleman will now face the
most warlike, seek the most helpless, or for Christ's sake
wash the feet of the most degraded. He first forced his way
into Kaffirland and after eighteen months of weary hardship
settled among the Hottentots, and became their fearless
friend and the mouthpiece of their great wrongs. He estab-
lished an Institution — Betheldorp — where native tribes could
find a friend, advice, shelter and training. For all this the
Boers hated him, and plotted against his life. In 1803, the
Dutch Governor assigned a barren waste for his Institution,
which he must accept, and the Boers exulted in the hope of his
starvation, so that they might be done with him, bag and
baggage. For years the station remained a mere patch of
wretched huts, and here we are told " among the lean, ragged,
or naked " refugees he lived and was loved. He would dress
"in a threadbare black coat, waistcoat and breeches, without
shirt, neck cloth or stockings, leathern sandals bound upon
his feet the same as are worn by the Hottentots." " I should
not fear," says he, " to offer my life for the least child among

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

them." To passing travellers " instead of the usual
salutations he uttered a short prayer " for their protection.

In 1805 he and some other missionaries were summoned
to the Cape to answer charges by the Boers, and were kept
without trial and in suspense for nine months until the
English fleet anchored in Table Bay. Harried and worried by
persecution, and while a special commission in 1811-12 was
preparing to consider his case, Dr. Vanderkemp was seized
with illness and died. Questioned during his dying moments
of his hope, " All is well," he promptly answered. " Is it light
or dark ? " another asks. " Light," was the emphatic reply.
And so passed this intrepid spirit to be with them " which
came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb."

I cannot stay to recount, however barely, the full story of
South African missionary pioneering. It is a record of patient
suffering, noble devotion, peril and death. The year 1817
was a critical time, and with the time came the man — Robert
Moff at. But I must first refer to two other missionaries of the
London Missionary Society who had gone out with Vander-
kemp. Messrs. Kicherer and Kramer had penetrated to the
north among the Bushmen, turned thither by a " call of
Providence." Florus Fischer, a Christian colonist living among
the bushmen, attracted their wonder by his simple religious
observances. They asked for teachers, and so touched was
Fischer that he took a party of bushmen to Cape Town,
arriving when the two were starting with Vanderkemp for
Kaffirland.

The artless pleading of the Bushmen inquirers, " who would
see Jesus," induced the two to turn with them and settle
500 miles to the north-east near the Zak River. The people
were in the lowest scale of the human family, neither tillers
nor shepherds ; without herds or corn ; doggish, wandering
earthmen. Their dwellings, little better than a beast's lair
or an ostrich's nest, were made of wattled clay, and half
buried in the ground. Their joys were purely animal.
Helpless little ones were buried alive with their dead mothers
or flung to wild beasts.

Gospel work amongst such people could for years only be
one of set-back and despair— so broken and fruitless indeed
was it that in 1806 the station was abandoned. In 1814 it
was resumed, and to the later workers came the reaping.
Moff at tells us, " the mission did good service ; it became the

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David Livingstone

finger post " to the great tribes in the north ; " for it was by
the means of that mission that the tribes and their conditions
became known to the Christian world."

Straggling Hottentots and others of the more intelligent
tribes had strayed to the settlement, and as early as 1804 the
missionaries moved north, just over the Orange River among
the Griquas. Here was founded Griqua Town, to become a
sort of cosmopolitan centre. In 1809, there was a worshipping
church of 800 members. The white man, British and Boer,
pushed ever further straight north, over and beyond the
great Orange River to a land almost unknown, and too often
with a trail of blood.

One thing was known of the land — that a mighty conquering
marauder dwelt there, the chief Africaner, the dread of de-
pendent tribes, the terror of colonists, Boer and British alike ;
and that his wide kingdom was the refuge of dispossessed tribes
eager for revenge on the white man.

In January, 1806, Abraham and Christian Albrecht were
sent north by the London Missionary Society, and finally
settled after awful privations in the Southern Sahara of Africa,
the Great Namaqualand, at Warm Baths, over the Orange
River, some one hundred miles west of Africaner. For a few
years all went well ; the great warrior sent his children to the
missionaries to be educated, but disputes arose through traders,
and the missionaries after terrible suspense barely escaped
with life. Later the Rev. J. Campbell was sent to Africaner
by the London Missionary Society to negotiate, and he
consented to receive a missionary. A Mr. Ebner was now
settled at the kraal, and the news spread that the wild chief
had been baptised.

MOFFAT AND THE HOTTENTOT NAPOLEON

It was to this place that Moff at was at this juncture directed.
On his way the Boers ridiculed his object, and assured him
that the chief would make a drum of his skin and a drinking
cup of his skull.

Arriving, Moffat found Ebner in bad odour, and he himself
was soon left in sole charge. Moffat lived for six months in
a hut, built in half an hour, of poles bent half circle over and
covered with native mats ; snakes and rain made easy
entrance, and the heat was intolerable.

Africaner's career was one of romance. As Ehud was to the
Israelites so he was to the Bushmen. A member of a wealthy

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

and governing family, driven off by settlers, he found himself,
with others, an exile, and was put to common servitude under
a Dutch farmer. Having borne heaped-up wrongs patiently,
and hearing of further oppression and massacre, he one day
refused his duties. Summoned by the farmer he was struck
down. Titus, Africaner's brother, with a concealed gun
shot the farmer dead on the spot. The dogs of war were now
let loose. Africaner, bred to military service, rallied around
him the Bushmen and led them over the Orange River. He
now developed into a genius of tribal war, and later into a
sort of Hottentot Napoleon, becoming the terror of South
Africa. This was he, who, under Moffat, was subdued by
the gentle sway of the gospel of peace. Soon he began to
evince deep interest in the Bible and in Christian ways of life.
He would himself take charge of the school, and at night he
loved to sit up late and talk with Moffat of the things of God,
often with weeping remorse for his murderous former life.
During an illness this man of blood nursed Moffat with the
tenderness of a woman. A steadfast friend of missions, in
true missionary zeal he bade Moffat take the gospel to the
dark North. He died in 1823 in Christian humility and peace,
a shining trophy of the Cross.

At the end of 1819 Robert Moffat married Mary Smith, for
fifty years and till death his noble companion. Early in 1820
they started for Bechuanaland, far to the east of Africaner's
kraal. On the march, especially at Griqua Town, Moffat
rendered timely service to mission stations. In May, 1821, the
Moffats arrived at their northern outpost with their infant,
who was to become Mrs. David Livingstone. The Bechuanas
were not like the South Sea islanders, cannibals ; they were
perhaps worse, being swayed by no sense of God. For long years
the London Missionary Society had been repeatedly baffled in
attempts to settle missionaries with them, but at last Robert
Hamilton, by years of toil and sagacious courage, had slowly
won a foothold when the Moffats arrived.

The faith, the courage and resource of the new couple were
quickly put to a hard test. The natives robbed them of the
necessaries of life, and baulked them in efforts for their own
better housing and the more profitable use of their land. They
upset worship by bawling and singing, and declared outright
that the missionaries were criminals who had fled from their
own country, and feared to return, else they would not be
such fools as to stay with them. They ridiculed the idea of

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David Livingstone

resurrection, but believed in rain- makers. One time they
appeared before the missionaries with raised spears and
commanded them to depart. Moffat and his wife, she holding
her baby, confronted them, saying, " If you are resolved to
rid yourselves of us, you must resort to stronger methods,
for our hearts are with you." The answer, spoken with quiet,
undaunted resolution, reached and overawed even savage
hearts, and the chief declared, " These men must have ten
lives when they are so fearless of death ; there must be some-
thing in immortality." The mission continued, and in due
time prospered. The tribe was the Batlapins, and had now to
face its own turn of peril, for a horde of Mantatees was
advancing, having by bare weight of numbers crushed many
tribes. Moffat reconnoitred and found the danger imminent.
The king, on Moffat's suggestion, made a treaty of alliance
with the Griquas, and went forth to attack, routing the in-
vaders. Moffat — but only by a strong hand — utilised the
victory for a lesson in Christian mercy to the wounded instead
of bloody vengeance.

At this time, 1823, Moffat moved the mission eight miles
distant on the Kuruman river, where the water supply and
the land outlook were better. Here it was that the famous
Kuruman village arose, which for nearly fifty years was a
bright spot to readers of missionary records, covering the
name of Moffat with a very halo of loving interest.

Earlier days were clouded by perils of journeyings, wars
and murders. Sometimes they must fly for a time for safety
of life to Griqua Town. In Moffat ran a strain of the explorers'
blood, and once, while he was on one of his great missionary
explorations, his wife, alone with her children, suffered a time
of awful suspense. She was roused at dead of night by the
king, her house filled with his men, who bade her fly, for
their enemies were upon them. She calmly wrote a letter
and awaited events and the peril passed her. In her husband's
absences, reports of his murder would at times chill her heart.
Nor were they exempt from miraculous escapes from lions,
other beasts and serpents.

In 1827, Moffat, conscious that he could not yet grip the
native tongue as he must, determined to go and live with the
Barolong tribe. This he did, bearing cheerfully the prolonged
disuse of home comforts. By this means he so mastered the
language as to accomplish his great work of translation of the
Bible. He learned also more of the real life of the people.

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By 1829 a vast and gracious change was visible ; a church
was built and the people thronged to worship ; candidates for
baptism were sifted, and the church prospered. In 1838,
the translation of the New Testament being completed, Mr.
and Mrs. Moffat journeyed to Cape Town to see it through the
press. But, difficulty arising, they embarked for England
where it was printed. Their visit home, with its joyous wel-
come and issues, is a notable page in missionary history.

The reader will pardon this digression ; for, I repeat,
Livingstone's life relates itself truly, only when viewed in
missionary perspective. To get his New Testament printed
Moffat had been forced unintentionally to come to England.
While here he pops in at Aldersgate Street ; the chat follow-
ing changes the destiny of at least one listener. If Livingstone
had followed his bent and gone to China doubtless he would
have achieved distinction ; but would he have been buried
in Westminster Abbey ? It is not likely. Or even if
his lot had been cast for Africa south of the Orange
River, through missionary pioneering being less forward in
the north, it is hardly probable he would have settled the
problems of central African watersheds and river sources.
Measured from the Cape, Livingstone started his career with
an impulse of a thousand miles up country.

DRAWS UP HIS WAGGON AT KURUMAN — FORWARD TO THE NORTH

After a month's stay at Cape Town Livingstone sailed for
Algoa Bay, and drew up his oxen at Moff at's station, Kuruman,
on May 3ist, 1841. Of this first taste of African life he writes,
" I like this travelling very much indeed ; there is so much
freedom. We pitch our tent, make our fire wherever we
choose ; walk, ride, or shoot. There is a great drawback, we
can't study or read as we please." He also records that " the
statements of the missionaries as to their success are far within
the mark. Everything I witnessed surpassed my hopes.
I like the country well; it is very like Scotland." A Scot's
compliment to modest Africa! The Christian Hottentots
remind him of " the old Covenanters praising God among
their native wilds." At Kuruman he found that free move-
ment was allowed him, and in the autumn with another mis-
sionary and several natives he struck north to prospect for a
new station. Making a circuit amongst the Bakwena and
other tribes, he gained knowledge of methods and confidence
in himself, and also the conviction that he must haste to

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work, for hunters were spreading prejudice against mission-
aries for putting down marauding, theft and bloodshed. His
ready success in healing sick natives partly counteracted the
slanders. He is back at Kuruman for Christmas, but has left
a promise with the Bakwena to return.

But the language, the language, is his daily block ; he must
have a clear way. Again off north, he adopts Moffat's plan
and secludes himself for six months among the Bakwena,
acquiring an intimate knowledge of their habits, laws and
tongue, which proved an incalculable advantage ever after-
wards. At Ongar he considered himself a poor stick at
languages, but now learning first by ear, the natural way, he
gets on very well. He translates hymns into " Sechuana
rhymes," and pokes fun at himself for turning poet. The
rhymes are printed even by French missionaries and sung by
the natives. He is soon a power among the Bakwena. The
sick and curious crowd his waggon, but not a thing is
stolen — the highest testimony of regard. The call for rain
becoming urgent, and the rain doctor's efforts failing,
Livingstone cheerfully undertakes the task, and even the
rain-maker laughs heartily when the missionary sets the
natives to dig a canal for irrigation. But the new magic
takes on mightily, and amid all the fun the missionary keeps
a wide eye for a permanent settlement.

" It is the first time Bechuanas have been got to work with-
out wages " is the engineer's comment. Already our canny
Scot is noting African character and discerning methods of
action. The earlier missionaries had gone on wrong lines, he
tells us ; the natives will tyrannise over dependence or weak-
ness. " I am trying a different plan. I make my presence
a favour, and when they show any impudence I threaten to
leave them, and if they don't amend I go. By a bold free
course, I have not the least difficulty in managing the most
fierce. A kick would, I am persuaded, quell the courage
of the bravest." So he " can with great ease visit any of
them."

The fascination of exploring is already gripping him, and
he strikes further north to the Bamangwato, and makes friends
with their chief Sekhomi, who owns to a proud and angry heart,
and begs the doctor to give him a new one. The missionary
lifts the Testament to explain, when the chief puts it aside,
saying, " Nay, I wished it changed by medicine — to drink and
have it changed at once." (Ah ! Sekhomi, there are many

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among the white skins who would love thy easy way).
Already Livingstone had halted among the Bakaa who had just
murdered a trader. In all his halts he never forgets as he
tells us, his great commission to preach " of the precious blood
that cleanses from all sin. I bless God that He has conferred
upon me the privilege and honour of being the first messenger
of mercy that ever trod these regions." His doctoring fame
spreads far and wide, " Patients walk 130 miles for my
advice," says he. " In a difficult case of midwifery, a few
seconds of English art affords relief " ; and his renown becomes
embarrassing. The Bechuanas are a great nation of many
tribes named after certain animals, proving, Livingstone
says, " that in former times they were addicted to animal
worship, like the ancient Egyptians." The reader will recall
a similar custom in some of the South Sea islands.

In 1842 he penetrates to the kingdom of Sechele, a famous
head chief of the Bechuanas, hostile at first, but afterwards
a most interesting convert and fast friend of Livingstone's.
He puts questions, " if all who died unforgiven are lost for
ever," why this and that ? The doctor is puzzled ; the
theology of his day had no answer. On his return to Kuruman,
Mr. Moffat, at last, has good news, The directors sanction a
forward move. His journal records the " feelings of inex-
pressible delight with which I hail the decision of the directors
that we go forward into the dark interior. May the Lord
enable me to consecrate my whole life to the glorious work."
The strong man had prevailed with the London Missionary
Society over timid counsels. Still their agent at the Cape
adjured the bold David not to build his house " on the crater
of a volcano," and tried to scare him by giant-like terrors of
" cruel despot " chiefs, " ready to pounce on any white man
to spill his blood." He had retorted, " If we wait until we
run no risk, the gospel will never be introduced into the
interior." " There has always been some bugbear " raised
against advancing north, and this he will now break down.
The agent, Dr. Philip, thinks him ambitious ; he replies,
" I am ambitious to preach beyond other men's lines. . . I
am only determined to go on and do all I can, while able, for
the poor degraded people of the North."

The early skirmishes of a few hundred miles must now issue
in some definite forward settlement — some serious missionary
purposes accomplished. He possesses the true grit of the
doctor. The novelty of native diseases tempts him to other

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problems than river sources. The fascination grows, he
realises the danger, and " resolves to attend to none but severe
cases in future." Spiritual good is first ; "I cannot," says
he, " expect God to advance this by my instrumentality, if
much of my time is spent in mere temporal amelioration."
It is a hard denial.

AMONG THE LIONS — A MARVELLOUS ESCAPE

In early August, 1843, Livingstone with another mis-
sionary left Kuruman for Mabotsa among the Bakatla, some
200 miles to the north-east. In a previous journey he had noted
this spot. Here he reared his home, and for three years
settled to hard missionary plough work. Here occurred his
lion encounter, by which his bones had nearly received a dis-
posal very different from that of thirty years later. " The
story," he informs us, " I meant to have kept to have told my
children in my dotage." The lions around grew uncommonly
bold, leaping into the cattle-pens at night and even " attack-
ing the herds by open day. It is," says he, " well known that,
if one of a troop of lions is killed, the remainder leave that part
of the country." Livingstone urges the villagers to go and
attack the enemy, and goes with them. He thus narrates
the adventure : " We found the animals on a small hill covered
with trees. The men formed round it in a circle and gradually
closed up as they advanced." A shot was fired at one sitting
upon a rock, and the beast, breaking away, broke the circle
and escaped. " When the circle was reformed we saw two
other lions in it but dared not fire lest we should shoot some of
the people. The beasts burst through the line." The people
should have speared, but lacked courage. The hunt was
given up. Describing the return, he proceeds :

In going round the end of the hill, I saw a lion sitting on a piece of
rock, about thirty yards off, with a little bush in front of him. I took
good aim at him through the bush, and I fired both barrels into it.
The men called out, " He is shot ! He is shot I Let us go to him."
I saw the lion's tail erected in anger, and, turning to the people, said,
" Stop until I load again." When in the act of ramming down the
bullets I heard a shout, and, looking half round, I saw the lion in the
act of springing upon me. He caught me by the shoulder, and we both
came down together. Growling horribly he shook me as a terrier does
a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to
be felt by a mouse after the first grip of a cat. It caused a sort of
dreaminess in which there was no sense of pain, nor feeling of terror,
though I was quite conscious of all that was happening. I was like
what patients partially under choloroform describe ; they see the opera-
tion.but do not feel the knife. This placidity is probably produced in

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all animals killed by the carnivora, and, if so, is a merciful provision
by the Creator for lessening the pain of death. As he had one paw
on my head, I turned round to relieve myself of the weight, and saw
his eyes directed at Mebalwe, who was aiming at him at a distance of
ten to fifteen yards. His gun, which was a flint one, missed fire in
both barrels. The animal immediately left me to attack him, and bit
his thigh. Another man, whose life I had saved after he had been
tossed by a buffalo, attempted to spear the lion, upon which he turned
from Mebalwe, and seized this fresh foe by the shoulder. At that moment
the bullets the beast had received took effect, and he fell down dead.
The whole was the work of a few moments, and must have been his
paroxysm of dying rage. Besides crunching the bone into splinters,
eleven of his teeth had penetrated the upper part of my arm. While
I have escaped with only the inconvenience of a false joint in my limb,
the wound of the man bit in the shoulder actually burst forth afresh
in the same month of the following year.

Of this mere " inconvenience," Sir Bartle Frere says, " For
thirty years afterwards all his labours and adventures, entailing
such exertions and fatigue, were undertaken with a limb so
maimed that it was painful for him to raise a fowling piece or,
in fact, to place the left arm in any position above the level
of the shoulder."

Towards the end of 1844, visiting Kuruman, " after nearly
four years of African life as a bachelor," he tells us, " I screwed
up courage to put a question beneath one of the fruit trees,
the result of which was that I was united in marriage to Mary,
Mr. Moffat's eldest daughter. She was always the best spoke
in the wheel, and endured more than some who have written
large books of travel." To the great sorrow of the people,
after a year of married life at Mabotsa, where, besides building
house, school and church, he had planted a fine garden,
Livingstone, owing to difference with the other missionary,
removed forty miles still further north to Chonuane, a settle-
ment of the Bakwena, where lived their great chief, Sechele,
already Livingstone's friend.

The five years up to this point he terms " preparatory work
and labours, associated with other missionaries." He is now
sole master of himself and his plans. He gives us a picturesque
enumeration of duties : " Building, gardening, cobbling,
doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering,
waggon mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics
according to means, besides a chair of divinity to a class of
three, filled up my time. . . . My wife made candles,
soap and clothes. Thus we had nearly attained the indis-
pensable accomplishments of a missionary life in Central
Africa— the husband a Jack - of - all - trades without doors,

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David Livingstone

and the wife a maid of all work within." All went well for a
time.

DROUGHT AND FAMINE — EXODUS — KOLOBENG

Sechele was the first convert, and, learning to read the Bible
quickly, he proposed to convert his people in the lump by
calling his head man with whips of rhinoceros hide, declaring
" We shall soon make them all believe together." The chief
came to know a more excellent way. He was sorely grieved
at the slow progress among his people, and he himself began
family worship, conducting it with simple and beautiful
dignity. After some three years of struggle with himself he
put away all his wives but one, giving them new clothing and
separate huts. This affront to relatives, coinciding with a
terrible drought lasting four years and attributed to the new
religion, prevented much success. So desperate was the
drought that Livingstone persuaded the tribe to migrate to
Kolobeng, on the banks of the stream of that name, forty
miles to the north. Here the missionary builds his third
house. The scourge persisted here also, and the people got
to believe that Livingstone had bewitched their chief and
besought him to allow Sechele, who had been their rain-doctor,
" to make a few showers." " Only let him," they pleaded,
" make rain this once, and we shall all come to school, and
sing and pray as long as you please."

During this hard test, we are told, " they all continued to
treat us with respectful kindness." But this dispiriting
time did not stop the Gospel message. Livingstone, like
Carey and Williams, had discovered the supreme importance
of native teachers. These he had trained and planted among
adjacent tribes. Those to the east gave him anxiety, and
his attitude brought him into clash with the Boers of the
Cashan Mountains district, which had important, perhaps
vital, bearings upon his future.

These Boers were a baser sort, wrathful with the British,
and especially with missionaries through their opposing
oppression of the native races. They had discreetly left the
tribes having firearms to the British, and had come north where
they could with impunity impress droves of natives at any
time, even women with infants, to do their field weeding and
farm work ; it was practical slavery, compulsion without
payment.

They insisted that Livingstone should not teach the blacks;

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he might as well " teach baboons." He offered to put some
of the " baboons " in competition with themselves in reading
the Bible. Relations grew more and more strained, and at
last the Boers summoned Sechele to own himself under
vassalage to them, and to stop English traders from passing
beyond or selling firearms. The chief refusing, prompt raid
and massacre were only prevented by Livingstone visiting the
Commandant. He was now troubled and anxious — was his
presence a danger ? Could he find a kindlier place for the
tribe ? He determined upon a change, but where ? The
Boers barred the east ; to the west and to the north lay the
pitiless Kalahari desert. To go back was unthinkable ; his
honour and life were pledged for the north, and forward he
will march.

Fairy-like rumours have come to him of a big water and
beautiful country and a mighty king beyond the trackless
waste, far away in the fabled north. To leave these old
friends was a wrench indeed, for though actual conversion
was slow, Sechele and his family had been baptised, and the
tribe had learned something of the spirit of Christianity. To
their astonishment a price had been paid them for mission
garden land. No authority, but only persuasion, was prac-
tised by the missionary. The mind and conscience were
instructed, and a sense of right and wrong made more clear
and strong ; justice, mercy, and peace were preached, and
five instances were known in which war was prevented. Just
now two Englishmen opportunely arrived on a hunting tour,
Messrs. Murray and Oswell, and the latter will take all cost
of guides.

DISCOVERS LAKE NGAMI — HIS FIRST VISION

On June ist, a caravan started of eighty oxen, twenty horses
and twenty men. To avoid the desert they made a wide
detour eastward, yet the journey was over much trackless
waste, and proved toilsome, with perilous stress for water, the
oxen being four days without, though pits were dug deep and
wide. At one stage hats and huzzas went up ; away yonder
was the shining expanse of lake — it was but a mocking
mirage ; the reality, Lake Ngami, was yet 300 miles ahead. On
July 21 they struck the Zouga, and their direst troubles were
passed. Livingstone in his journal thus describes the scene :

Ascending the beautifully wooded river, mainly by canoe, its
broadening space dotted by verdant isles, astonishment and delight

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David Livingstone

seized them on beholding another and larger stream — the Tamunakle —
flowing into it. I enquired whence it came. " Oh I from a
country full of rivers — so many no one can tell their number — and
of large trees | " This was a confirmation of what I had heard from
the Backwains, that the country beyond was not " the sandy plateau "
of the philosophers. The notion that there might be a highway
capable of being traversed by boats, to an unexplored and populous
region, grew from that time stronger and stronger in my mind, so
that when we actually came to the lake, the actual discovery seemed of
little importance.

On August ist, the glittering surface of Lake Ngami burst
upon them, never before beheld by European eyes. Elephant,
in prodigious numbers were seen, and the reedy banks seemed
infested with crocodiles. They saw a new species of antelopes
and a world of wonders of animals, reptile, fish, insect and plant
life, and trees of seventy-six feet girth. In eight instances
Livingstone saw precious tusks left to rot where elephants had
died. Through the jealousy of a chief they were unable to
get canoes and guides to proceed. He vainly attempted to
construct a raft, working in the water, not knowing the spot
abounded with alligators ; and was ever after, he avows,
" thankful I escaped their jaws." However, a great thing
is done, a lake discovered of one hundred miles circumference.
Oswell volunteers to return to the Cape, and bring up a boat
and other things for next year. The party, on returning to
Kolobeng, found matters grown worse and worse. There
was half a famine, the people were disheartened, and Mrs.
Livingstone's school of one hundred children had gone
spark out.

In April, 1850, this time taking his wife and three children,
the missionary starts north again. Taking a still more easterly
route, they are turned aside by the dreaded tsetse fly, whose
bite is fatal to oxen. Hearing of an English party in distress,
Livingstone hastens sixty miles out of his way and saves it ;
but two of his children and all his servants are prostrated by
fever. Much of the journey is accomplished, yet with
sorrow back he must go, and on the way meets Oswell, but
too late.

At Kolobeng Mrs. Livingstone bears a daughter, who dies
in six weeks from epidemic, and for mother-nursing they
track south to Kuruman. Here Livingstone learns that the
Royal Geographical Society has voted him twenty-five guineas
for the discovery of Lake Ngami. He writes home, "It is
from the Queen, long live Victoria ! " What a change ! the

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obscure missionary is now the object of eager interest to the
great and learned of the nations.

News of the white men and their wonders had reached the
ears of Sebituane, the great chief beyond the Ngami, and he
had sent envoys, with presents for chiefs along the route,
with a cordial invitation to Livingstone to come to him.
Sechele kept back the news — the pity of it ! — for had the
envoys been detained, much suffering on the third journey
could have been avoided.

In April, 1851, Livingstone and all his family, again with
Oswell, start north, the first purpose being to find a healthy
spot for a missionary station. All goes well until, trying a new
route for part of the way, there is a time of terrible peril. He
records their fears of " the children perishing before our eyes "
from thirst, " but not a syllable of upbraiding was uttered by
the mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within.
But to our inexpressible relief " the wonderful bushman guide
Shobo discovers the precious fluid. Oswell and Livingstone,
pushing on, are met by Sebituane, with his principal men.
The chief was about forty-five, tall, wiry, of olive complexion,
frank, cool and collected, and the great warrior of Central
Africa. He gave them food and soft sleeping skins, and took
them to his home, and while on the way, told them of his
eventful life. He ruled, with the affectionate homage of his
people, over a vast tract of country. Any part of his king-
dom was offered to the missionaries for a settlement, and a
strong brotherly regard was growing when the king died
from inflammation of the lungs. " Decidedly the best speci-
man of a native chief I ever met ; I was never so grieved with
the loss of a black man," declares Livingstone. He has
troublous thoughts on theology and records, " The dark
question of what was to come of such as he, must be left
where we find it. The Judge of all the earth will do right."

SIGHTS THE ZAMBESI — A MOMENTOUS RESOLUTION

" Oswell and myself proceeded," he now tell us, " one
hundred and thirty miles to the north-east. In the end of
June, 1851, we were rewarded by the discovery of the Zambesi,
in the centre of the continent. This was a most important
point, for that river was not previously known to exist there
at all. We saw it at the end of the dry season, and yet there
was a breadth of from five hundred to six hundred yards of
deep flowing water." These vast waters gather somewhere,

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David Livingstone

and flow somewhere — what of them ? whence ? whither ?
The triple mystery must be solved and, God willing, by himself.

He discerns the finger of God in it all, directing anew the
current of his life. High dreams now come to him, requiring,
for their pursuit and achievement, high sacrifices, with the
entire devotion, untrammelled and prolonged, of every
power of soul, mind and body. He takes a painful and
momentous decision, for he is possessed by a call as from
heaven. His dear ones shall go to England and leave him
free. Boers and drought close Kolobeng, and the region here
is untried and unhealthy.

Taking his family to Cape Town and on board for England,
he writes frankly to his directors of his purpose, and of his
" conviction that the step will lead to the glory of Christ " ;
he commends his children to their care, pathetically adding,
" Even now my bowels yearn over them. They will forget
me." After getting lessons from the Cape Astronomer Royal,
says he, "of great assistance in enabling me to lay down geo-
graphical positions," he again starts for the north on June 8th,
1852, " to explore," he explains, " the country in search of a
healthy district that might prove a centre of civilisation, and
open up the interior by a path to either the east or west coast."
One among those high, achieved ambitions of men, upon
which the laurels of history for ever rest.

His journals of this journey up country abound in inter-
esting, valuable and comprehensive notes of a keenly observant
mind of the whole kingdom of nature — of plant and animal,
geology and geography, tribe and tongue. He is, fortunately
perhaps, detained at Kuruman by a broken down waggon,
for the long pending storm breaks over poor Sechele's head.
He had, in Livingstone's absence, conveyed his children to the
care of Mr. Moffat. His wife now brings a letter : " Friend of
my heart's love," it began, " and of all the confidence of my
heart. I am Sechele. I am undone by the Boers, who attacked
me, though I have no guilt with them." He then tells how they
killed sixty of his people, took all their cattle and goods,
brought four waggons and robbed and stripped Livingstone's
house of all furniture, crockery, medicine, smithy bellows and
tools, coffee, sugar, etc., burnt and sacked the town, burnt the
cornfields, took three corn mills, worst of all took over two
hundred children for slaves. The loss in goods was £300.
The explorer's comment is "We can travel the lighter; one
waggon will do."

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Livingstone writes to his wife. " They often expressed a
wish to get hold of me. Kind Providence prevented me from
falling into the very thick of it. God will preserve me still. He
has a work for me to do." Sechele got as far as the Cape,
vainly bent on a voyage to England to lay his case before the
Queen. Kind officers helped him back. Drawing together
the scattered remnants of his own and other tribes, he became
more powerful than ever, and turned missionary-teacher to his
people. Livingstone perceives "the unseen hand in it all."

On November 2oth he starts north, and to avoid the Boers,
who were now at war with the Barolongs, takes a more west-
erly and new route across the desert. They wade through
swamps and floods, sharp reeds cutting their " hands all raw
and bloody." After the swamps come adventures with
beasts and lions, and tact only prevents the attendants from
deserting. Everyone but himself is down with fever, and he
longs, he records, " to devote a portion of my life to the
discovery of a remedy for that terrible disease." In another
mood despondent questions beset him, "Am I on my way to
die ? Have I seen the last of my wife and children, leaving
this fair world and knowing so little of it ; " later he writes, " I
am spared in health while all the company is attacked with
fever. If God has accepted my service, my life is charmed
till my work is done. When that is finished some simple
thing will give me the quietus." How true to life. " But,"
he adds, " death is a glorious event to one going to Jesus."
Of all his journeys this proves the most tedious. Wells are
dug, but only by waiting a day or two can the cattle quench
their thirst.

At last, at the end of May, the Chobe River is sighted, and
he is welcomed by shouts from his favourite Makololo. " He
has dropped from the clouds," they cry ; quickly his waggon
is in pieces, packed on lashed canoes, and the stream is soon
crossed, the natives, in glad merriment, diving among the
oxen, " more like alligators than men."

LINYANTI AND THE MAKOLOLO

Sekeletu, who now rules in place of his father, Sebituane,
hears the news, and sends the court herald with supplies. He
advances leaping and shouting, " Don't I see the white man ? "
The traveller is received by the king with royal state. After
a brief rest he, with the chief, explores the country around
Linyanti. Since his last visit half-caste Portuguese had

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David Livingstone

penetrated from the west, and the horrid spectre of the slave
traffic was appearing in neighbouring tribes, boys being
exchanged for fire-arms. Sixty miles north he saw a stockade
full of slaves. Even the Makololo were getting guns, and
begged Livingstone to give them " gun medicine " to shoot
with.

Among the seven thousand souls at Linyanti he was constant
in missionary work. The chief offered him his utmost wish.
" I explained," says he, " that my object was to elevate him
and his people to be Christians." There were " regular
services and large and attentive audiences." Sekeletu feared
that learning to read the Book might change his heart, and
make him, like Sechele, give up his wives. " No, no, he
wanted to have always five at least."

The people all kneel at prayer, and "listen, but never
suppose the truth must be embodied in actual life." But,
reflects the missionary, " we can afford to work in faith
. . . future missionaries will be rewarded by conversion
for every sermon. We are their pioneers."

A book, or a machine, or money, is an unfathomable mystery
to the native mind. In trade, barter only is understood ;
they would take a bright button with a centre rather than
a sovereign. Livingstone gives interesting descriptions of their
rude and ready, but excellent, courts of justice, and also of their
customs, etc. He found that kindly leading and persuasion
were best. He impressed them often as to the duty of
peace and respect for human life. In his excursions around
with his escort of Makololo, " I was," says he, " in closer
contact with the heathen than I had ever been before, and
though all were as kind to me as possible, yet to endure the
dancing, roaring and singing, the jestings, grumblings and
murderings, of these children of nature was the severest
penance I had to undergo in all my missionary duties."

ON TO THE WEST — A SOLEMN PREPARATION

Fever seems always about and, being himself attacked and
seldom free from it, Livingstone becomes convinced that there
is no healthy settlement around Linyanti, where also the
dreaded tsetse fly kills off all domestic animals. Again his
heart fills, in ever more urgency, with his project of an outlet to
the west coast. The time has come for the plunge ; his own
waggon, books and properties he will leave at Linyanti. He
well knows that he courts certain hardship, possible disaster

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or even death ; yet in Carey's spirit he writes to the London
Missionary Society, " Cannot the love of Christ carry the
missionaries where the slave trade carries the traders ? " and
to Moffat, " I shall open up a path to the interior or perish.
I never had the shadow of a doubt as to the propriety of my
course." To his father he describes his course, and closes
thus, " May Christ accept my children for His service and
sanctify them for it. My blessing on my wife. May God
comfort her ! If my watch conies back after I am cut off,
it belongs to Agnes. If my sextant, it is Robert's. Be a
father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow for Jesus'
sake. The Boers by taking possession of my goods have
saved me the trouble of making a will."

Every sentence of those pathetic words unveils the agony of
wrestling prayer in the night and solemn consecration on the
morn — of the resolute purpose of a strong man, of the brave
soldier of the Cross who calmly goes forth, to come not back
but as victor. On November nth, 1853, he disappeared to
reappear at Loanda on the Atlantic coast, on May 3ist, 1854.

The ordinary reader cannot have an intelligent and
pleasurable grasp of Livingstone's travels and discoveries
without his map of Africa as companion to our narrative.
Every schoolboy is familiar with its pear-like shape, and with
its upper thick end lumped out on its west side. Its length
from north to south is about 2,500 miles, and its area,
11,500,000, square miles, about three times that of Europe.
Allowing for width and height of land, there is a great simi-
larity of climate, rains, vegetation and animal life north and
south of the equator, the zones repeating themselves in
inverted order. Even the great Sahara Desert of the north,
large as Europe, has its smaller sister in the south — the
Kalahari desert, which gave Livingstone some of his earlier
troubles. The Equator cuts the continent right across east
to west roughly into halves, the tapering southern portion
forming a vast peninsula of the whole.

Three quarters of Africa lie between the tropics, and here
the countless fountains and streams, the chain of vast lakes —
the largest, Victoria Nyanza, being nearly as large as Scotland —
create many great rivers which in their turn swell into three
mighty waters, the Nile, the Congo and the Zambesi, finding
their ocean outlets north, west and east. It is with the
equatorial part of the southern half that Livingstone's travels
are mainly concerned.

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David Livingstone

Since about 1800 A.D. a score of great travellers have gradu-
ally unveiled the age-long secrets of equatorial Africa. What
successive generations of the ancients longed for and strove
to know, yet with unavailing striving, is now discovered to us.
Among this priesthood of nature's revealers, perhaps the most
illustrious is our Blantyre factory " piecer " youth. Up to
Livingstone's time this vast central region was to the world
a fabulous imagination. His own words are best here. Says
he,

Before the discovery of Lake Ngami, and the well- watered country
in which the Makololo dwell, the idea prevailed that a large part of the
interior of Central Africa consisted of sandy deserts into which rivers
ran and were lost. During my journeys in 1852-6 from sea to sea, across
the south inter-tropical part of the continent, it was found to be a well-
watered country, with a large tract of fertile soil covered with forest,
and beautiful grassy valleys occupied by a considerable population ;
and one of the most wonderful waterfalls in the world was brought to
light. The peculiar form of the continent was ascertained to be an
elevated plateau, somewhat depressed in the centre, and with fissures
in the sides by which the rivers escaped to the sea ... a great
fact in physical geography.

He then gives credit to other travellers, especially Burton,
Speke and Grant, who discovered Lakes Tanganyika and
Victoria Nyanza, and the main sources of the Nile, and
proceeds as follows : " The fabulous torrid zone, of parched
and burning sand, was now proved to be a well-watered region,
resembling North America in its fresh water lakes, and India
in its hot, humid lowlands, jungles, ghauts and cool highland
plains." In such measured phrase he sums up his own
wondrous quest and discoveries on the planet Earth.

At this point I must again counsel the reader to trace the
narrative with his map, and all the more so as it must take on
a quick movement of hop, skip and jump. I can only try my
best to sketch a fairly clear map-picture of Livingstone's
route and achievements. I have detailed the several journeys
hitherto, forwards and backwards and sidewards between
Kuruman and Kolobeng, and thence onward to Lake Ngami
and the Zambesi ; for each and all were preparatory in know-
ledge, endurance and confidence, for his next and world-famed
exploits.

From this day of departure as path-finder to the Western
Sea he becomes, perhaps unconsciously, but yet quite defi-
nitely, less purely the missionary and more the traveller and
explorer. He always preserved the caution of the Scot, and
took no needless risks. The straight crow-fly to the coast

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

was less than half the distance of the actual route chosen, but
in this he could voyage much by water and learn vastly more
of everything. He however, sent, but fruitlessly, expeditions
direct west to see if a way could be found free from the tsetse
fly. Also previous to the final plunge, he had, along with
Sekeletu and a royal fleet of twenty-three canoes and one
hundred and sixty sable rowers, in a tour of nine weeks,
penetrated far up the western Zambesi.

THE GREAT QUEST — A HIGHWAY TO THE WESTERN SEA

This trip had aroused a measure of their master's enthusiasm
among the Makololo for the greater enterprise. But they put
a question : If he met with death, would not the white people
blame them ? No ; he assures them ; he will leave a book
with Sekeletu, explaining. The questions start reflections,
which he jots down thus :

When the prospect of passing away from this fair and beautiful
world came before me in a plain matter-of-fact form, it did seem a
serious thing to leave wife and children, and enter on an untried state
of existence. But I had always believed that, if we serve God at all,
it ought to be done in a manly way, and I was determined to succeed or
perish in the attempt to open up this part of Africa.

His waggon and goods are left behind in safe hands. He
cuts down the outfit to the barest essentials, both to reduce
freight and to avoid creating cupidity among the tribes. I
quote from his journal in full.

I had three muskets for my people, and a rifle, a double-barrelled
smooth-bore for myself. Our chief hopes for food were in our guns ;
in case of failure I carried about 20 Ib. of beads, worth forty shillings.
To avoid heavy loads I only took a few biscuits and a few pounds of tea
and sugar, and about twenty of coffee ; one small tin canister about
fifteen inches square was filled with spare shirts, trowsers and shoes,
to be used when we reached civilized life ; another of the same size
was stored with medicines ; a third with books, and a fourth
contained a magic lantern, which we found of much service. The
sextant and other instruments were carried apart. A bag contained
the clothes we expected to wear out on our journey, which, with a small
gipsy tent, just sufficient to sleep in, a sheepskin mantle as a blanket,
and a horse-rug as a bed, completed my equipment. I had always found
that the art of successful travel consisted in taking as few " impedi-
menta " as possible.

As before stated, on November nth, 1853, Livingstone
marches out of Linyanti to reappear at Loanda on May 3ist,
1854. Before sighting the Chobe, five tributaries were crossed.
The main stream was found three hundred yards wide, a deep
river, swarming with hippopotami. Sekeletu now returns but

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David Livingstone

lends his large canoe. Ascending the Chobe by canoe is
slow and tortuous, but pleasant. The Zambesi is struck near
its extreme southern dip. At Sesheke he preaches many
times to five or six hundred people. The voyaging is now
directed by that mighty water to the unknown North-West,
the Land of the Setting Sun ! Among the natives he found
the Zambesi took on several dialect names — here it was
Leeambye — all meaning the same, the great drain or king-
river. Livingstone possessed the true instinct of keen and
accurate observation, with the gift of quick insight and
hypothesis, and an eye also for loveliness and grandeur. His
journals are crowded with evidence of these qualities. There
are descriptions of the breeding, of the habits and temper
of wild game, antelopes, zebras, hippopotami and alligators, of
birds, ants, spiders, notes upon fish and produce, upon villages
and tribes, their life and customs and what not. Their fulness
for a passing traveller is marvellous. We share the eager
interest of the banks of the noble river, glorious in tropical
opulence of colour and mighty growth, of lovely river islands
five miles long, of the confluence of many tributary rivers and
the unveiling panoramic wonders of the kingly water, a mile
wide, sometimes affording a reach of a hundred miles without
break and with but slow movement to row against. The
journey is enlivened by the frolic and fun, the trials and
moods and ways of the Makololo escort, some of whom walk
along the banks, driving the cattle with them, and wading
and swimming the numerous branches.

Livingstone is weakened by recurrent fever, yet never
wavers. Passing through the Barotse valley, he finds unrest,
and preaches peace and goodwill.

LEAVES THE ZAMBESI — PRIVATION AND PERIL

The Zambesi at its junction with the Leeba abruptly turns
its stately and beneficent course eastward, and at the New
Year he leaves it and continues north-west on the Leeba. By
January, 1854, ne is out of Sekeletu's vast kingdom, and enters
that of Shinti, another great head-chief of the powerful
Balonda tribe, and of real negro type. They listen to his stories
of cotton mills as fairy dreams ; how can iron spin, weave
and print so beautifully ? He tells them of the one God, and
that all men are brothers. He exposes his white breast,
compares it with his bronzed face, and proves the power of
the sun.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Quite different from the tribes of Southern Africa, the people
have idols, and are religiously superstitious. There are
dangers many, but tact, sincerity and courage bring him
through them all. The country is generally a succession of
forests and open plains, with herds of shaggy buffaloes and
stately elands. Sometimes the track is by age-long, oo/.ing
river banks, tracts of vegetable sponges, the haunts of silmy
beasts, or by dense forest through which the axe only can
make way, and rank and dank bog, reeking with fever-smells
— the deposits of countless ages.

As they advanced they met Katema, another great chief. He
received them hospitably, and, learning the object of the expedi-
tion, sent guides to show a route escaping the plains and flood.
But more serious troubles now emerged. Large game ceased,
and the shortage of food was so great that moles and mice were
welcome fare. Every chief demanded passage toll; and by
exorbitant charges for food the villagers also did the same.
Yet ever onward marched the company, again and again through
forest, swamp or flood. In crossing the Loka, Livingstone's
ox wriggled from under him and he struck out for the further
side. In horror his fellows catch him up ; one seizes him
by the arms, another by the body, " Great was their pleasure,"
says he, " when they found that I could swim like themselves,
and I felt most grateful to these poor heathen for the prompti-
tude with which they dashed to my rescue."

On March 4th they touched the country of the Chiboques,
who were in constant trade with slave dealers. Here the
party met with its gravest peril. They were quickly sur-
rounded by warriors bent on plunder. Livingstone displayed
his double-barrelled gun upon his knees and his brave Makololo
their javelins. The palaver passed, by exchange of an ox
for other food, which proved a woeful fraud ; but the Doctor
was " truly thankful to be allowed to pass without shedding
human blood." During this trouble the fever was so severe
upon him that at times he was in partial coma, and unable to
move from giddiness. " Reduced almost to a skeleton," he
records, " I could scarcely stand to get the lunar observations
in which I could repose confidence." Misfortunes come in
troops ; the guides now lead them wrongly, join their enemies
and steal guns and beads ; and, worst of all, the Batoka section
of his party attempt mutiny. Livingstone, knowing that
hesitation was perilous to life, darts at them with his pistol,
and with so savage a visage that the mutiny is instantly quelled.

484

David Livingstone

All are now exhausted, while the tribes dog their heels, oppose
every ford, and harass every path. They are compelled to stock-
ade their camp by night, and march in compact body by day.

" For my part," says Livingstone, " I was too ill to care
much whether we were attacked or not." So near his goal
he is cast in blank despair when some of his trusty fellows
propose to return home. He tells them that if they do, he
will " go on alone," and, says he, " returning to my little tent,
I lifted my heart to Him who hears the sighing of the soul,
and presently the head man came in, and said, ' Do not be
disheartened, we will never leave you. Lead and we will
follow.' '

On March 3oth, from the ridge overlooking the magnif-cent
valley of the Qwango they espied the Portuguese settlement.
He compares the view to the Vale of the Clyde. At the ferry,
for the last time, they were stopped by a tribal chief ; Living-
stone refused to give up his blanket, the last article, except his
watch and instruments, even the little tent was in tatters. A
half-caste Portuguese militia sergeant coming up, stood with
them and got them over the ferry, feasting them right royally,
and provisioned them on to Cassange. AJ1 tribe worries were
now ended. Here, three hundred miles only from Loanda,
they met with every kindness and succour.

As they approach signs of civilized life the hearts of the
natives begin to quake ; the master consoles them. At the
first sheen of the sea, they are bewildered : " We marched
along with our father," they said, " believing what the ancients
had told us was true, that the world had no end ; but all
at once the world said to us, ' I am finished, there is no more
of me.' ' Stone houses of more than one storey struck them
with awe, they were " mountains with caves."

They entered Loanda (Angola) on May 31 st. During the
travels the Doctor had had twenty-seven attacks of fever, leaving
him with chronic dysentery, and, instead of gladness, his soul,
at this hour of victory, was strangely overcome by depression
and melancholy. The English Commissioner, Mr. Gabriel,
proved indeed the good Samaritan, and gave up his own bed.
It was sweet paradise to Livingstone. " Never," we read,
" shall I forget the luxurious pleasure I enjoyed in feeling
myself again on a good English bed after six months sleeping
on the ground." The surgeon of an English ship attended
him, and the traveller's splendid constitution slowly rallied.

His men, visiting a British ship, exclaimed, " It is not a

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

canoe at all, it is a town." Livingstone is urged [for his
health's sake to embark for home in the Mail Packet Steamer,
the Forerunner, by which he dispatched his home letters,
also his journals, maps and observations to the Royal Geo-
graphical Society. How he longed to accede, but his faithful
Makololo must be deposited home again. The Forerunner
went down off Maderia, and every soul with her but one. So,
thankful for the providence over his life, he grudges not the
formidable task of long weeks of delay at Pungo Adongo
to reproduce his lost manuscripts.

ACROSS AFRICA— ATLANTIC TO INDIAN OCEAN — VICTORIA FALLS

It was July before Livingstone had rewritten but a portion
of his lost papers, and was ready to leave Angola. On
September 2oth, 1854, weighted with presents and wares and
good wishes, they start back making a detour by the southern
coast to the mouth of the Benzo, which they ascend, thus
avoiding hostile chiefs. They have now two donkeys, the
only domestic beasts immune from the poisonous tsetse fly.

Livingstone is impressed by the beauty and richness of much
of the country and shocked and depressed by the ghastly
trail of the slave traffic. It infects everyone, even natives,
who touch it with dishonesty, and dehumanizes them to
brutish ferocity. He thinks of his Kolobeng home, " where,"
he muses, " slavery is unknown and we never locked our doors,
night and day."

He now suffers prostration from rheumatic fever, and is
delayed. In June, 1855, near Lake Dilolo they pass the
Lotembwa, a river a mile wide. He is struck by its flow
northwards, and his mind opens to large vistas of watershed
problems, and their solution. He dimly discerns traces of
remote periods of geological formation and lacustrine
conditions over vast spaces of the continent.
He records : —

It was only now that I apprehended the true form of the river
systems and continent . . . that the rivers of this part of Africa
took their rise in the same elevated region, and that all united in two
great drains, the one flowing to the north by the Congo, and the other
to the south by the Zambesi. I was now standing on the central
ridge which divided these two systems, and I was surprised to find how
slight its elevation was ; instead of the lofty snow-clad mountains,
we found perfectly flat plains, not more than 4,000 feet above the level
of the sea, and 1,000 feet lower than the western ridge we had already
passed.

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David Livingstone

They are now quickly among friends and skimming the
kindly bosom of their old friend, the Zambesi. A triumph of
welcome awaits them among the Makololo. Livingstone
arrives at Linyanti on September nth, 1855 — a vear au< but
nine days since leaving Loanda.

In December, 1854, the degree of LL.D. had been conferred
upon him by the Glasgow University.

On November 3rd, 1855, after eight weeks of letter and
dispatch writing, of preaching, doctoring and repairing, he
starts again on fresh adventure and great enterprise. He
must complete his ambition, and cross the dark continent from
sea to sea, from West to East.

Sekelefu is a stedfast and real friend, his help springing
from personal devotion to the missionary. He provides
stores of provisions, and also ten slaughter cattle and three of
his safest riding oxen. He furnishes also an escort of 114 men,
and himself accompanies the expedition as far as the Zambesi.
As they proceed along its banks, five vast columns of vapour
issuing out of forest-clad hills arrest the distant vision. What
is the awesome sight ? They mark the great Falls ; one of the
world's wonders. His men guide a light canoe to a mid-stream
island, says the traveller, " on the very edge of the lip over
which the vast body of water went ; it seemed to lose itself
in a transverse fissure only eighty feet wide. Creeping with
awe to the edge of the island, I peered down into a large
rent ; and saw that a stream 1,000 yards broad leaped down
320 feet and then became suddenly compressed into a space
of 15 to 20 yards."

He gazes at the sublime spectacle in wondering delight and
names the waters the Victoria Falls. The railway now
spans the Falls, and seven miles west is Livingstone, the
capital town of North Western Rhodesia. He concluded that
in the age before the water broke its way, it formed one
immense fresh water lake.

Leaving the river to the north-east, the explorer is gladdened
in heart to find himself on an elevated region free from miasma,
stretching east to Tette, suited for missions and inhabited by
an interesting people.

A PERIL — A PRAYER — DELIVERANCE — HOME AND HONOURS

They again strike the river as it broadens into the plains.
At the junction of the Loangwa with the Zambesi they en-
counter hostile tribes and the most serious peril of all

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Livingstone's travels. The savages assemble in force to stop
his crossing. On January 14, 1856, his journal runs : "Thank
God for His great mercies thus far ; how soon I may be called
before Him, my righteous judge, I know not. On Thy word
alone I lean. The cause is Thine. Thy will be done." Shall
these healthy regions not be known in Christendom ? Shall
all His plans be knocked on the head by savages to-morrow ?
" But Jesus came and said," his journal proceeds, " all
power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth. Go
ye therefore and teach all nations . . . and lo, I am
with you alway, even unto the end of the world. It is the
word of a gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honour,
and there is an end on't." He settles to trust this Guide, and
not to cross by night as he had intended, but to pursue his
observations as usual, and is calmed in spirit. Next morning
he stood, the last man, amusing the savages by his watch
and burning glass while his followers pushed off in canoes,
and then he himself stepped in.

Once on the south side they make peaceful progress, and he
enjoys the teeming life of the tropical forests. On March 3
he is at Tette and learns of three years of war between
the tribes and the Portuguese, and of his own marvellous
escapes. He arrives at Quillimane on May 20, and is the
first to discover it is not on the Zambesi delta as had hitherto
been supposed. Providing for his men and assuring them
" that nothing but death will prevent my return," he embarks
for home on July i2th, taking with him Sekwebu, one of his
devoted blacks. On board the wonder is too much, he goes
mad and, leaping overboard, is drowned.

Landing at Dover on December 12, " I was once more,"
exclaims Livingstone, " in dear old England." There was no
more thankful man, and none so famous in the British isles.
He hastens to Southampton, where his wife is waiting.
Honours are now showered upon him. The Royal Geo-
graphical Society present their gold medal. The London
Missionary Society grandly welcomes him, and the Mansion
House summons its gathering.

From all the laudation he breaks away to visit his mother
and family at Hamilton. His father had died during the
voyage home, longing to see the face of his David. " But
the Lord's will be done," is the father's dying prayer. As
the son beholds the empty chair, he weeps. " We bless
Thee, 0 Lord, for our parents. We give thee thanks for the

488

David Livingstone

dead who has died in the Lord," is David's prayer that night
at family worship.

Returning to London at the end of January, he is urged to
write his travels. He sets himself to the task, but declares,
" I would have sooner crossed Africa again." His desire
for the quiet fireside of family life is broken upon by the
pardonable determination to make a lion of him. He is
presented with the freedom of the City of London in a gold
box. Edinburgh, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, will see
and hear him. Oxford and Cambridge charm him. In
Oxford he delivered in the Senate House an impressive
address, pleading for volunteers to mission Africa, which bore
fruit in the Universities' Mission. " If I go," said he solemnly,
" back to Africa to try to open a path for commerce and
Christianity ; do you carry out the work that I have begun.
I leave it with you."

Lord Palmerson offered him the post of Consul for the East
Coast of Africa, which after much deliberation he accepted,
severing his connection with the London Missionary Society.
The parting was friendly. The Government were eager to
equip a costly expedition, but Livingstone cut it down to
mere necessary proportions.

AGAIN SAILS FOR AFRICA

His wife goes with him. " Glad indeed," he writes, " am
I that I am to be accompanied by my guardian angel. She
is always the best spoke in the wheel." His lofty and spotless
character compels the respect of all, and his modest and kindly
bearing wins him kindness and affection from the highest to
the lowest in the land. On March loth, 1859, he sails in
H.M. steamer Pearl. Their youngest child Oswell only is
taken. To his eldest son he writes from the Mersey :
My dear Tom,

We are off again, and trust that He who rules the waves will watch
over us and remain with you, to bless us and make us a blessing to our
fellow-men. The Lord be with you, and be very gracious to you.
Avoid and hate sin, and cleave to Jesus as your Saviour from guilt.

His book made Livingstone comparatively rich. At a
farewell dinner he was told " that while he found Africa the
dark continent, his eighteen months' stay in Britain had made
it the most interesting part of the globe." Livingstone's
life is now at the parting of the ways.

The reader will be arrested by the contrast between his

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

embarkationTnow as H.M. consul in H.M. ship, heaped with
honours, the Queen's gold band circling his cap, and Britain's
power^behmd him, and his first sailing as the grocer's son, the
obscure missionary. And it seemed so sure that what he had
done would pale into dimness beside that which he was about
to achieve. Was he not now equipped at the cost of the
greatest naval and colonial nation of the globe and going
forth under her prestige and flag ? His only friends and
helpers in the past great deeds were poor, ignorant, heathen
blacks, the source of whose faithful service was personal
devotion. He was their " Father ; " they faced danger and
privation for love's sake. He had no money to give them.
His £100 a year from the London Missionary Society was
always mortgaged ahead in necessities of the travels. Here
was and is the unfading beauty, the romance of his earlier
great exploits, when he was still the simple missionary.

Well might public expectation now be eager and large.
On the whole it was realized. Yet the first bright romance
was never more. Now, when the powers of the world had
granted honours and assumed authority, shadow and sorrow
and tragedy, the mystery of baulking evil, struck athwart
Livingstone's path, and never left it until, sick at heart,
broken and lonely, he died ; died, in his own heart a defeated
man, with the crowning aim of his life within sight, robbed
of it by dark and untoward forces before which he stood help-
less. A sturdy pride of independence ran in young David's
blood. I recall that for his college and medical training, he
tells us, " I never received a farthing from anyone," and his
early resolve was, he says, " to accomplish the project of going
to China as a medical missionary by my own efforts, when I
was advised to join the London Missionary Society."

We may be sure that only the prospect of an enlarged sphere
of service, in the object so near his heart, induced him to
become the paid officer of the Government. In Livingstone
there was always a strong, natural, human ambition to do
what nobody else had none ; yet he never was, even in this
later period, the explorer simply ; he was missionary also
to the end.

He possessed supreme qualities for his work — a stalwart
constitution, a professional training, the scientific temper
and method, the large intellectual scope and grasp, the gift
of roaming insight, with patience in painstaking observations
and details. Superimposed upon all was the man of God,

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David Livingstone

consecrating all to the glory of God, to become the master
pathfinder, the roadmaker, for the evangelist " to preach
unto them that dwell on the earth " the " everlasting Gospel "
and to open his beloved Central Africa to Christian civiliza-
tion and commerce. Prayer was ever his staff and shield — the
enabling and protecting grace of his wonderful life.

ZAMBESI DELTA — WONDERS ON THE SHIRE— LAKE SHIRWA

The expedition was equipped with a steam launch, the
Ma Robert, made in sections. Livingstone had in his staff
Dr. Kirk as botanist, his brother Charles as mining geologist,
and Mr. R. Thornton as surveyor. To each he presented
written instructions that the expedition must be conducted
and controlled by strict moral principles and example, and
with Christian methods and teaching.

At the Cape, Dr. and Mrs. Moffat met them, and took the
child and Mrs. Livingstone, who was seriously ill. When the
east coast was reached, the first business was to survey the
delta of the Zambesi. Of its four main sea outlets the Kongone
was chosen, and up this they voyaged through twenty miles
of mangrove jungle, towering palms, strange trees, birds and
game into the wide Zambesi. Forty miles from the Bar,
the Pearl was stopped by falls. All her cargo was put upon a
grassy island and the Ma Robert was bolted together and
then took it on to Shupanga and Senna. They put in at
Tette on September 8th, 1858, and the faithful Makololo
give their " Father" joyous welcome ; some hasten to embrace
him, but others cry, " No, you will spoil his new clothes."
Thirty of them are dead of smallpox.

The Ma Robert proves a fraud, and is rechristened the
Asthmatic. The doctor gives home orders for a more powerful
steamer to explore the Zambesi beyond the Kebrabasa rapids.
Meantime, by much stoking and snorting, the Ma Robert
is forced up the Shire River, the largest northern tributary of
the Zambesi between the coast and Tette. The Portuguese
declared it unnavigable through the dense growth of duckweed
After a winding course of 200 miles, never before explored
and crowded with interest, they are arrested by magnificent
cataracts which in gratitude Livingstone names " The Mur-
chison." Sometimes he steps ashore to explain his object
to chiefs and tribes. Usually they are quite alive to trade,
and he makes friends. He never forgets to scatter Christian
seed of the One Great Father of all, white or black.

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Returning in March, they soon again make north, for the
doctor hears of a big water in the unknown beyond.

On April 8th Lake Shirwa is discovered, abounding in
leeches, fish, crocodiles and hippopotami. It is 1,800 feet
above the sea, over sixty miles long, and twenty wide. The
country around is rich, and bounded by mountains 8,000 feet
high. More wonderful still, he learns of a fable-like story of
a far bigger water onwards in the mysterious north. To this
north he will go, but must first prepare. They are back at
Tette on June 23rd.

In August the Asthmatic, repaired and provisioned, starts
for this third ascent of the Shire. Leaving the vessel at the
falls, four whites, thirty-two Makololo and four guides march
north in eager quest of the great water. They find the Shire
above the cataracts a broad deep river, and the Manvana
people industrious and able to work in iron and clay, basket
making and field produce. They grow three varieties of
excellent cotton and not a village is without its spinning and
weaving. They were told that the river stretched on for
" two months," coming out between two perpendicular rocks.

A GREAT DISCOVERY — LAKE NYASSA — THE ZAMBESI AGAIN

At noon on September i6th, 1859, Lake Nyassa looms into
view. As Livingstone gazes upon its fertile banks and in-
hales its bracing breeze, his heart fills with a great hope of
beneficent commerce, and his soul with a vision of men im-
pelled by love only, coming to teach " by precept and example
the great truths of our holy religion." He sees here the key
to Central Africa, but his heart is again anguished to meet
even here the devastating curse of the hellish slave traffic.
Returning they decry vast herds of elephants, sometimes
forming a line two miles long.

Back on October 6th, the doctor feels it is now time to take
home his trusty Makololo. His brother and Dr. Kirk march
with him west on May i5th, 1860. Livingstone loves these
long tramps with his old comrade Makololo. They meet
sad news at Sesheke. Sekeletu was smitten with leprosy
and was isolated, and a long drought had scattered the people.
The doctor treated the chief and left him much better.
Marching on to Linyanti he is received with shoutings of joy.
The town crier goes forth before dawn proclaiming the good
news. Since 1853 his waggon had been there and not a thing
was touched. He replenishes his stock of medicines, and the

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people heap provisions upon him. Returning to Sesheke
he stays till September, preaching regularly in his old way
the gospel story he loved, and walking among the people,
their healer and friend. He was back at Tette on November
2ist, after six months' absence. In December the Ma Robert
stuck on a bank and was left. I have adverted to Livingstone's
stirring missionary appeal at Oxford. In 1860, the first
members of the Universities' Mission sailed for East Africa.
He now writes, " I am greatly delighted at the prospect of
a Church of England Mission in Central Africa." It does
not fall within my scope to tell of the death of Bishop
Mackenzie and others, or of the untimely disaster which befel
the Mission. It was a deep and lasting grief to Livingstone.
He did not live to see its later success.

If the reader will now turn to his map, without which my
narrative will be but poor and hazy, he will trace on the coast
between the delta of the Zambesi and Zanzibar the mouth of
the River Rovuma. Livingstone must know if this fine
stream drained from Lake Nyassa ; if so, then it might offer
a highway to the interior preferable to the Zambesi.

The captain of the Pioneer which had brought the Univer-
sities' Mission, takes Livingstone up the Rovuma for some
hundreds of miles. The dry season stops the ship, and, return-
ing to the Zambesi, Livingstone determines again to ascend
the Shir6 to explore thoroughly Lake Nyassa and search
for touch with the Rovuma at its source. He starts with
Dr. Kirk, his brother, one white sailor and four Makololo, and
takes the gig of the Pioneer. Away, far up, the Shire gets
broad, deep and slow, it is really a southern extension of the
Lake into which they sail on September 2nd. From Cape
McClear they certify its length to be over 200 miles. A
continuous chain of villages spans its shores. Elephants are
numerous and hippopotami swarm and flounder at their ease,
like animated pontoons.

After a close survey they returned without exploring
to the east for the Rovuma, reaching the sea again in
January, 1862.

The ship Gorgon is off the Bar, and the welcome news is
signalled that Mrs. Livingstone is aboard. She and others
are transferred to the Pioneer, which is detained by stress
of weather in an unhealthy place and when, on April nth,
the Pioneer steams up to Shupanga, she carries lurking
fever.

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

DEATH OF MRS. LIVINGSTONE

There is one happy week of reunion, and sweet talk of more.
In their union of true love " there had always been," he
writes, " what would be thought by some more than a de-
corous amount of merriment and play. . . I said to her
a few days before her fatal illness, ' We old bodies ought to
be more sober and not play so much,' ' Oh, no,' she said,
' you must always be as playful as you have been . . I have
always believed it to be the true way to let the head grow
wise, but keep the heart young and playful.' ' On the 2ist
she was stricken with fever, on the 25th was delirious and on
the 27th (Sunday) she passed away ; and he who had faced
so many deaths and braved so many dangers is now utterly
broken down and weeping like a child, cries, " Oh my Mary !
my Mary ! how often we have longed for a quiet home since
you and I were cast adrift at Kolobeng. She rests by the
large baobab tree at Shupanga, sixty feet in circumference."
On May nth his journal entry runs " My dear Mary has been
this evening a fortnight in heaven ; for the first time in my
life I feel willing to die. D.L." A strong man's sorrow.

He must work or he will sink. He hears the old call and
dare not but obey. He is at Kongone, for the Lady Nyassa
has come with the Gordon. This steamer at a cost of £6,000
had been built to his order in England for general work
on the lake — chiefly for mission work, but, for commercial
purposes also, and with a view to policing the Lake to check
the slave trade. But the December rains must now come
on before she can ascend the Shire, and so he again sails to the
Rovuma, carefully explores it for 160 miles and assures himself
that it can furnish no waterway to the lake. At Shupanga
again by December igth, he writes Sir R. Murchison, " It
may seem weak to feel a chord vibrating to the dust of her
who rests on the banks of the Zambesi and to think that the
path by that is consecrated by her remains." He is secretly
glad that the only path is by the great baobab tree. In J anuary
the Pioneer is towing the Lady Nyassa up the Shire. War and
slave horrors more ghastly than ever beset the way. His
brother and Dr. Kirk break down and return. The Doctor
himself is struck down by an attack of dysentery. Just now
news is to hand of his recall by the Government. The intrigues
and lies of the Portuguese power have succeeded ; Livingstone
is too troublesome. He has discovered the awful fact that
19,000 slaves pass through Zanzibar yearly.

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David Livingstone

His deepest grief of all, apart from his wife's death, is to
learn that the Universities' Mission will be removed to
Zanzibar. With sore heart he pleaded for this only hope for
the wretched people; it availed not and he "felt more
inclined to sit down and cry."

The main purpose of his ship cannot now be fulfilled, and
nothing remains but to sell her. It is impossible to get to the
sea before December, and in the meantime he plunges into an
exploration N.N.W. to learn if any great river flows into
Nyassa from Central Africa at its northern end, and also to
know of the slave traffic sources.

He is back at the ships on November 6th, after an arduous
and wonderful march of 755 miles in fifty- five travelling days
He thinks he penetrated to within ten days' march of Lake
Bangweolo, and bitter was the compulsion to turn back to the
ship. He traversed the great slave route over fine hill country
with bracing air and cool running streams. The river flood
tarries, and it is February I3th before he arrives at the coast.
The Portuguese, want to buy the Lady Nyassa, but she shall
not be fouled by their hated traffic. He will take her into
the nearest market, Bombay. Refusing a berth on the Ariel
he determines on a characteristic feat, he will himself turn
captain and pilot, and with three English sailors, seven natives
and two boys, he crosses the 2,500 miles of the Indian ocean,
and runs into Bombay harbour on April i3th, 1864. He is
in London on July 2ist.

Again on this second visit he is f£ted by the great, and
warmly received by the Government. On August i8th he
visits his dear ones. He learns that his eldest son Robert
lies as a Federal soldier in Gettysberg cemetery. While a
grateful guest of Mr. Webb, the great hunter, at Newstead
Abbey, he writes another book " The Zambesi and its Tribu-
taries," in which he gibbets the Portuguese. Palmerston
asks what he can do for him. The reply is " Free access
to the highlands beyond the Zambesi and the River Shire",
secured by treaty with Portugal." The minister meant a
pension.

The discoveries of Speke, Grant and Baker, in Central
Africa, and the more southern discoveries of Livingstone,
had excited the intelligent world to a pitch of enthusiastic
wonder, and it was athirst for more. Doubts slowly arose
whether, after all, when Speke beheld the historic sight of
the Nile flowing from the majestic Nyanza, there were not head

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

sources still further south in the vast tropical regions still
unknown, especially between Tanganyika and Nyassa. This
remaining mystery must be unravelled. Who but Livingstone
can do it ? He yearned for home and rest, but, after arranging
for the care of his family, responded to the call.

The Royal Geographical Society is anxious that he should
next go out purely as explorer, and finally settle the water-
shed problem. He declares, " I could only feel it my duty
by going out as a Missionary." That was the bottom thing.
He also stands up stoutly for Missions before a Committee of
the Commons.

In June his mother dies, and he hurries home to her burial
for, " in 1858 she had said she would like one of her laddies
to lay her head in the grave."

He visits his son Oswell's school in Paris, and tells the lads
to "fear God and work hard." Leaving his daughter Agnes
at her school in Paris, he takes ship at Marseilles on August
igth, 1865, arriving at Bombay on September nth. Here he
is the guest of Sir Bartle Frere. He lectures and arouses a
lively missionary interest. He startles the clergy by wearing
at Communion " a blue surtout with government buttons,
shepherd tartan trousers and a gold band round his cap."
He sells the Lady Nyassa below half cost, for £2,500, and
loses it all by the failure of an Indian Bank. The Christian
hero consoles himself thus. " The whole of the money she
cost was dedicated to the great cause for which she was built."
He was still Consul but without a salary, and was too proud
to remonstrate at the shabbiness. In England £2,000 had
been subscribed for him, and with this far too inadequate
sum the heroic traveller faces the vast unknown.

He sailed for Zanzibar in January, 1866 ; and arriving
enlisted his escort, gathered his train, and at the end of
March he, with his company, were taken well up the Rovuma
by H.M.S. Penguin. Livingstone was never more to set eyes
on the open sea, nor upon the face of white man, save Stanley.

THE LONG-LOST TRAVELLER — A CHAIN OF DISCOVERIES

More than ever now will the reader need closely to scan his
map, for the track becomes a tortuous maze of zigzags and
doublings, yet ever onward under a divine behest to wrench
the secrets from the kingly heart of the great Dark Continent.

The reader has followed Livingstone while he twice traversed
the vast length of the Zambesi. He had already settled, with

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David Livingstone

fair completeness, its sources in the far away west, and also
those of the Shire, and of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa with their
tributaries, which swell its eastern course. His main objective
now, as we know, is to determine the ultimate watersheds
and sources of the mighty Congo and the mysterious Nile.

His escort is made up of thirteen Sepoys, nine Nassick boys
and ten Johanna men with four others, two being Susi, a
woodcutter of the Pioneer, and Chuma, a rescued slave, both
trusty in love to the end. He starts up the left bank in gay
spirits ; says he, " The mere animal pleasure of travelling in
a wild, unexplored country is very great. The sweat of one's
brow is no longer a curse when one works for God ; it proves
a tonic." He always keeps Sunday, and holds a service, and
preaches the one God of love and peace.

Brimful of interest he watches how his train of camels,
tame buffaloes and mules and donkeys, brought from India
at heavy expense, will stand the African climate and resist
the tsetse fly. The track is a mere footpath, with miles of
jungle and axe work for camel passage. The sepoys turn out
to be sulky, lazy and brutal to the animals, and later are
sent back. His journal teems with interesting notes of the
country and its geology, of village life, religion, industries,
customs, etc.

In July they stood upon the watershed of the Rovuma, itself
flowing eastward but smaller streams towards Nyassa — a fine
colonising district 3,440 feet above the sea. As he descends
westwards, Lake Nyassa is touched but, " as all the Arabs
fly me " and own all the boats, he cannot cross. It is now
but a crow's fly of barely 200 miles to the point where he could
strike the Loangwa, but his actual route is probably nearly
600 miles, partly doubtless of purpose, but here for want of
boats he is compelled to a long detour round the southern end
of Lake Nyassa. In September the Johanna men desert, scared
by Arab lies of dangers ahead. At Zanzibar they invented a
circumstantial story of Livingstone's death which was for-
warded to England and made a great scare, a searching
expedition being sent out under E. D. Young.

On Young's arrival at Lake Nyassa the truth was ascertained
from the Makololo. Meantime Livingstone is slowly forging
ahead and makes an important rectification. The great
Chambezi river had hitherto been reported to be a branch of
the Zambesi ; he now proves that it flows into Lake Bangweolo
and of course thence into the Congo. He spends eighteen months

497

32

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

in tedious to and fro and round-about marches in finally and
certainly disposing of this serious error. This discovery
defined the boundary of the great southern plateau drained
by the Zambesi, and indeed located the region of the central
watershed of the whole continent.

By April, 1867, he reaches Lake Liemba which he traces and
proves to be the southern limb of Lake Tanganyika. The
country is lovely, but his journal records a sad tale of worries
and troubles, of rains and inundated country, of waist-deep
wading and tramping through black mud and bubbling ooze,
and shortage of lood. He himself lives on maize and goats'
milk : then his goats are stolen and his one luxury is gone.
Says he, " Took up my belt three holes to relieve hunger."
In crossing a mile-wide marsh his lively friend Chitanpe, the
poodle dog is drowned. It is a touching grief.

In January his medicine chest had been stolen and he records
the prophetic confession : " I felt as if I had received my
death sentence." Fever dogs him, rheumatic fever seizes him
his medicines are all gone. "The Lord healeth His people"
he murmurs. He hears of a lake to the west which may solve
his problems of watersheds, but in August his march thither
is delayed three months through helpless sickness, and it is
November 8th when his party stands by Lake Moero. Between
bouts of illness some months are spent in its exploration.

It is found to be sixty miles long and forty miles wide,
and of great natural grandeur. Noting the Luapula entering
its southern end, he must know whence it comes by tracing its
course to the south. But all his men save five refuse to turn
back south. He himself, without letters and supplies for two
years is longing to march north for Ujiji, yet resolutely trudges,
sore and ill, southwards. In June, 1868, he strikes a solitary
grave on a patch of forest clearing and muses thus, " I have
nothing to do but to wait till He who is over all decides where
I am to lay me down and die. Poor Mary lies at Shupanga
brae and ' beeks (faces) foment the sun.' " On July i8th his
courage and toil win a great reward in the sight of Bangweolo
" a splendid piece of water." On August 2gth we read, "Thanks
for what I have discovered, there is much to do and, if life and
protection be granted, I shall make a complete thing of it."
Thus the heroic soul lifts up his heart of hope. He now tramps
due north by Lake Moero and Casembe. January, 1869, finds
him being carried on a litter very ill. He has been wet " times
without number and yesterday's wetting was once too often."

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David Livingstone

Pneumonia follows and he sees himself dead, his children rise
up before him, his head sings with the comforting lines,

I shall look into your faces,
And listen to what you say.

He reaches Ujiji about the middle of March and by July he
is recovered and the old thirst returns. What is the vast water
flowing north -west from Lake Moero ? Is it the Nile ? Yes !
surely. Yet to make certain, he will strike its course in the
north-west.

Writing to Dr. Kirk for future supplies after long waiting he
breaks the bitterness of disappointment by heading westwards
to the unknown, unexplored Manyuema country, and only
reaches Bambarre the capital on October 25th, 1870, and is
again delayed for months with ulcered feet, and waiting for
men. He is, as a first object, eager to track down the Lualaba
far enough to settle whether it is the western arm of the Nile
or the eastern head source of the Congo. His journal runs,
" I have to go down the Lualaba or Webb's Lake River, then
up the Western Lomane or Young's Lake River to Katanga
head-water and then retire — I pray that it may be to my native
home." The reader should dwell upon these words ; they
show how well he grasped the problems still unsolved, and
how complete was his scope and plan for their solution.

Pray get a map like the one before me, which traces his
different travels in blue, green and red and find Nyangwe, a
populous capital.

He got no further down the Lualaba than Nyangwe, which he
reached on March 2Qth, 1871, though he made short excursions
to the north, but the map shows how the river runs north-west.
He found it " a mighty river truly," one to three miles wide,
very deep and doubling in a most confusing way, and with many
large islands. Further down its course it is said to overflow
annually like the Nile. He tracks its southern flow up to Lake
Moero, discovering Lake Kamalondo, through which it passes
and thus identifies it with the Chambezi, and settles the great
central watershed lacustrine system of drainage, as a vast chain
of lake overflows from Bangweolo, Moero, and Kamalondo,
which forms the great head water of the Congo. Livingstone
died ; his great soul haunted by ancient romance, and believed
he had discovered the remote sources of the sacred Nile. To
him it was equal to finding the north-west passage.

Several days south-west he discovered Lake Chebungo,
which he named Lake Lincoln, and its effluent " Young's

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

Lualaba." Webb and Young were traveller-friends.
Lualaba was a common river name. These titles distinguished
them. A bare hundred miles down the river is the confluence
of the Lomane, or Young's lake river, flowing from Chibungo
or Lincoln to the south. Further southward is the Katanga
region ; one of multitudinous fountains and streams embracing
the last 100 of the 700 miles of a watershed, east to west,
600 of which he had well explored ; but this last 100 was a
sort of key to the whole. Several times the fair promise of
victory was in sight when some evil thing stood in the way,
and, baffled and defeated, he must retreat, leaving incomplete
the full grandeur of his life-work.

Bitter it is, that I must haste motor speed through his
travels just here. What a world we may read into the follow-
ing passage from the journal of the Puritan hero, written
about this time :

I have endeavoured to follow with unswerving fidelity the line of
duty, . . . swerving neither to the right nor left, though my route
has been tortuous enough. All the hardship, hunger and toil were
met with the full conviction that I was right in persevering to make
a complete work of the exploration of the sources of the Nile. I had a
strong presentiment during the first three years that I should not live
through the enterprise ; but it weakened as I came near the end of
my journey, and an eager desire to discover any evidence of the great
Moses having visited these parts bound me — spell- bound me, I may say.

There is much interesting description of country, and the
folk around Nyangwe are very human. He tells us " with
the market women it seems to be a pleasure of life to haggle
and joke and laugh and cheat," and the people are the finest
he has met, next to the Makololo. But the sickening horror
of slave hunting is everywhere, and his heart is heavy within
him. Slave gangs sink from sheer broken heartedness ; says
he, " even children who show wonderful endurance in keeping
up with the chained slave gangs, would sometimes hear the
sound of dancing and the merry tinkle of drums in passing
near a village which proved too much for them ; they cried
and sobbed ; the broken heart came and they rapidly sank."
The deserted villages and blood track sickens him and he
cries out, " It is an accursed system."

Only by wretched worry has he got his men — half caste
Moslem slaves sent him from Zanzibar — so far, and they now
break out in mutiny. Ill fortune besets him all round and no
escort can he get for love or gold. On July 5th, 1871, his journal
runs : "I offered £400 for ten men to enable me to go up

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David Livingstone

the Lomane to Katanga," promising also to return by Tangan-
yika to Ujiji, " and I added I would give all the goods that I
had at Ujiji besides." On July nth begin several entries
of despair : " I am distressed and perplexed what to do so as
not to be foiled, but all seems against me." On the i6th,
" I see nothing but to go back to Ujiji for other men." Next
day, " It is a sore affliction, at least forty-five days in a straight
march, equal to 300 miles, or by turnings and windings
600 miles " — and this after feeding and clothing his men for
twenty-six months. It is heart-breaking. He has a plague
of raw ulcers upon his feet, and since the pneumonia attack
he blows and pants with little exertion. Ophthalmia is now
added to his burden of woes of body and mind. On July
2gth, he starts on his dreary return, the most miserable of his
many journeys. The country is all in the unrest of war ;
twice he dropped into an ambush and escaped as by a miracle.
" The strain rendered me," he owns " perfectly indifferent
whether I was killed or not." He feels that he may die on his
feet. On October 23rd, he arrives at Ujiji " reduced to a
skeleton, a mere ruckle of bones," and to crown all, Shereef ,
a rascally agent, he records, " had sold off all my goods ; he
had not left a single yard of calico out of 3,000, nor a string
of beads out of 700 Ib." valued at £500. The bitter cup of
sorrows is nearing the brim. Beggary in Ujiji he had never
reckoned with. He feels like a man who " fell among thieves,"
but, says he, "I could not hope for priest, Levite or Good
Samaritan to come by on either side."

Ah ! the good angel is nigh — beautiful are his feet as he
bringeth the joyous wine of a white man's face, with the
sweet music of an English tongue.

THE LOST FOUND — STANLEY

His journal runs, " One morning (October 28th) Susi came
running at top speed and gasped out, ' An Englishman, I
see him,' and off he darted to meet him. The American flag
at the head of the caravan told the nationality of the stranger ;
bales of goods, baths of tin, huge kettles, cooking pots, tents,
etc., made me think this must be a luxurious traveller and
not one at his wits' end like me." It was H. M. Stanley sent
at an expense of over £4,000 by Mr. Bennett, jun., of The New
York Herald to find Livingstone or bring home his bones.
The lost traveller stands outside his house and lifts his cap
with its dingy gold band ; Susi brings the stranger to his master

Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

in triumph, and the two salute and grasp hands ; the doctor
leads his visitor to his house and insists upon placing him
in his own goat skin seat on the eaves-sheltered verandah.

A thousand chattering native Arabs fill the square while
the two white men survey each other. The wan and wrinkled
face and wearied figure revealed a volume to Stanley. " Oh,
reader," he exclaims, " had you been at my side in Ujiji on
this day, how eloquently could be told the nature of this man's
work." The doctor, with letter bag on his knees, reads one or
two from his children, and then asks how the world is getting on.

A flood of wonderful news is poured forth — the Suez Canal
opened and regular trade between East and West — the Pacific
Railroad and the Atlantic Cable completed — France humbled
to the dust by Germany — " The Man of Destiny " and " the
Queen of Fashion" fugitives — the Spanish revolution, and
a long catalogue of smaller items. " The recital made my
whole frame thrill," says Livingstone. The Government
had granted him £1,000 for supplies. In one hour the weary
heart-sick traveller is a new man. " Eating nothing, he now,"
says Stanley, " ate like a vigorous hungry man, and, as he
vied with me in demolishing pancakes, he kept repeating
' You have brought me new life.' " The strong had found
the weak in the nick of time, and the buoyant gaiety of victory
for the visitor was infectious. Stanley honoured the occasion
with silver and a Persian carpet. All the afternoon fresh
dishes were brought in and mingled with " talking and
talking," were duly consumed. The day was "big with happi-
ness," says Stanley, " and our hearts full of gratitude to the
Great Giver of good and Dispenser of all happiness." When
they bade " good night,'* the visitor was half in fear that when
to-morrow's sun should rise above Ujiji the joyous day should
prove but a dream.

The days came and went peacefully and happily under the
palms of Ujiji. Stanley records that among his experiences
of battlefields, of revolutions, rebellions and the last hours of
murderers, etc., nothing had ever moved him as did the simple
story told by Livingstone of his " woes and sufferings, his
privations and disappointments." The searcher had striven
to arrive earlier, the doctor later, and had either done so,
Stanley's success must have been extremely doubtful.
Livingstone is overwhelmed by the kindness of Mr. Bennett, so
bravely carried out. Soon the strong, impulsive, command-
ing personality of the younger man comes under the quiet

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David Livingstone

Spell of the older. "A character," he tells us, "that I
venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm, that evoked
nothing but the sincerest admiration." We learn that
though his hair is brownish yet " his whiskers and
moustache are very grey " ; his hazel eyes " are remarkably
bright, he has a sight keen as a hawk's." There is
havoc among his teeth. " When walking he takes a firm
but heavy tread" like a "fatigued man." He is accustomed
to wear a naval cap by which he is identified throughout
Africa. His dress exhibited traces of patching and repairing
but was scrupulously clean. He wore "a red-sleeved waist-
coat and a pair of grey tweed trowsers." It is from this des-
cription, as Stanley first saw him, that our stained glass
portrait -window is designed. He further tells us, " There is
a good-natured abandon about him. When he began to laugh
there was a contagion about it that compelled one to imitate
him. If he told a story his face lit up with the sly fun it con-
tained." With renewed life there comes to the veteran ex-
plorer the call to high duty, the eager thirst to be up and
finish his task.

THE PICNIC — FUTURE PLANS

In their chats he had recounted his baffled expedition on
the Lualaba, how he traced down the river to seven degrees
northwards, yet was defeated by mutinous cowards. Oh
the bitterness of it all ! " One month further," he declares,
" and I could have said that my work is done." He had held
this of far more importance than surveying the northern end
of Lake Tanganyika, which remained still unexplored.
" Why not now," exclaims Stanley, and the " Picnic," as the
doctor called it, is arranged at once, comprising twenty men,
" plenty of guns, cloths and beads." They start on November
i6th, 1871. Stanley gives a graphic account, teeming with
informing interest. Rowing to the extreme north end, they
discovered that the Lusizi flowed into the lake and not from
it ; so did all other rivers they saw. This was a puzzler for the
doctor, and he still believed there must be a northern outlet,
though they had carefully surveyed the whole circle of the
lake north of Ujiji, to which they returned on December i3th.
Of one important result he was assured that white men could
live in this region and establish missions.

The intimacy of Stanley with the great Puritan traveller
was salutary and ennobling, and as he became virtual successor

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its value was great indeed. He tells us, " You may take any
point in Livingstone's character and analyse it carefully. I
will challenge any man to find fault with it. His religion is
constant, earnest, sincere practice ; in a quiet practical way
it is always at work. In him religion exhibits its loveliest
features ; it governs his conduct not only towards his servants
but towards the natives, the bigoted Mahommedans and all
who come in contact with him. It made him a Christian
gentleman, the most companionable of men, and indulgent of
masters." Yes, Stanley learned that even with blacks a soft
answer turneth away wrath, and that gentleness may be
strength. Every spare quiet hour, apart from happy chat,
meals and tea sipping, is devoted by the doctor to despatch
and letter writing. There are serious discussions as to future
plans. Stanley urges the return home. " Your family,"
he pleaded, " are longing to see you. I promise to carry you
every foot to the coast. You shall have the finest donkey to
ride. Go home and rest, and get well and then come back
and finish." But the bronzed veteran shows a face of flint.
His daughter Agnes writes, " Finish your work to your satis-
faction rather than return to gratify me. Make a complete
work of the sources of the Nile before you return." She is
his " darling Nannie," " a chip of the old block." He com-
promises and agrees to go with Stanley to Unyanyembe, where
he has left stores and letters. There he will stay until Stanley
sends a reliable band of men from Zanzibar, by which he will
finish his task.

The plan is to canoe to the south end of Tanganyika, thence
march eastward through new country to Imrera on the great
coast route to Ujiji. With Union Jack and Stars and Stripes
flying at bow and stern, the canoeing was merry and prosper-
ous. On January 7th, 1872, they left the Lake, and the journey
became trying, but was mingled with a rough, wild interest in
the virgin jungle saturated and moss-ridden by timeless decay,
and of solemn, impressive stillness. Here, are hidden forests
dark and foetid, there, a park-like space with big game. They
pass vales and heights, through mist and sheen ; ford streams
covered with age-long water-growth so dense that it formed vege-
table bridges. The Doctor insists upon marching all the way.
On January i7th they reach Imrera, the Doctor's feet being cut,
bleeding and blistered. On February i8th, " with flying flags
and guns firing ' ' they enter Unyanyembe. Livingstone is greatly
vexed to find that here also his stores are plundered, but

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David Livingstone

Stanley makes up everything. At this date his journal runs :
" Service this morning, and thanked God for safety thus far."

THE PARTING — THE BIRTHDAY PRAYER

As the hour of farewell approaches there are many wistful
words and neither can eat. Stanley thus describes the parting
" Farewell ! we wrung each other's hands, and I had to tear
myself away before I was unmanned. Before I could quite
turn away I betrayed myself." On the road Stanley looks
round at the deserted figure, who with gray clothes and bended
head and slow step was returning to his lonesome task. Says
he, "I took one more look at him. He was standing near the
gate of Kwihaha, I waved a handkerchief to him, and he
responded by lifting his cap." It was the great explorer's last
look at the face of a white man — the last link with dear home
and tongue, with their friendship and love, vanishes for ever.
I venture the suggestion that this journey, so roundabout and
delaying with Stanley was a mistake. Had the doctor stored
his strength by resting at Ujiji until Stanley sent on his
promised escort it would seem he might have lived to clear
up his watershed problems.

On March igth his journal entry is, " My Birthday, My
Jesus, my King, my Life, my All ; I again dedicate my whole
self to Thee. Accept me. And grant, O Gracious Father,
that ere this year is gone, I may finish my task. In Jesus'
name I ask it. Amen. So let it be."

On July 7th we read : " Waiting wearily here (Unyanyembe),
and hoping that the good and loving Father of all may favour
me and help me to finish my work quickly and well." Five
months pass ere Stanley's enlisted escort appeared. Yet the
months were not idle ; reading, correspondence, natural history,
study, scientific and astronomical observations, with religious
and missionary work, well filled the time. His stay at this
central town of the slave trader's route exhibits to him the
unceasing enormity and unimaginable horrors of the traffic.
On July 1 2th his journal states :

It was necessary to keep far within the truth in order not to be thought
guilty of exaggeration. The sights I have seen, though common
incidents in the traffic, are so nauseous that I strive to drive them from
my memory. They come back unbidden, and make me start up at
dead of night, horrified by their vividness.

LAST JOURNEY — DEATH — LOVE'S ALABASTER BOX

On August 25th, 1872, Livingstone departs on his last
journey, master of fifty-six men sent by Stanley. Says he, " A

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

dutiful son could not have done more. I bless him." They
" behaved as well as the Makololo." They were engaged for
two years to afford ample time.

The march was stopped by the leader's death on May ist,
1873, in Chitambo's village of Ilala by the south-western
shore of Lake Bangueolo. The reader who has traced on his
map this sparse narrative of the Doctor's former baffled
attempt down the Lualaba, away in the far north-west, will
wonder at this big deflection southwards. He seems to have
been haunted by a notion that the story told by the priests of
Minerva to Herodotus of two conical hills in Central Africa, and
of unfathomable fountains and rivers flowing therefrom, was
worth tracking out, in so far as this vast unknown region was
concerned. He will make for the hills due west from Bang-
weolo, and then sharp north to the reported ancient copper
mines and underground excavations in the Katanga country,
then try to strike an unexplored, probable lake, where he hopes
for a final solution of his doubts. " Then I hope," he fondly
records, " devoutly to thank the Lord of all and turn my face
along Lake Komolondo and over Lualaba, Tanganyika,
Ujiji, home." His plan was thus to encircle all his previous
explorations in this district, proceeding west of Lake Moero
and north of Lake Lincoln, then striking to Lualaba, crossing
the Manyueman land to the northern end of Tanganyika. A
fine strategical and heroic plan.

It now becomes a pathetic task to follow him. Tribal
wars seem everywhere. The people will not or cannot sell food.
By August the expedition had lost all the ten cows. His
old enemy, an exhausting form of dysentery, attacks him and
sticks to him. His men fall ill. On Christmas Day his journal
reads: "I thank the good Lord for the good gift of His son,
Christ Jesus our Lord." On January 8th, 1873, they are at
Lake Bangweolo, plunging through sponges and morasses,
fording frequent rivers thick with aquatic plants. The
primary sources are countless springs on hill- sides quickly
shaping into streams. In sixty miles he waded thirty-two
of these streams waist deep, running through mile- wide sponges.

As a rule, he tramped, sometimes rode a donkey, but now
from weakness he must be carried by his men, and when
crossing rivers had to be held aloft. In February the last calf
is killed, and starvation lifts up its grisly head. With much
mist and heavy rain, the plight becomes miserable. On
March 19, his birthday, we read, "Thanks to the Almighty

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David Livingstone

Preserver of men for sparing me thus far on the journey of life.
Can I hope for ultimate success? So many obstacles have
arisen. Let not Satan prevail over me, O, my good Lord Jesus."
On the 25th, " Nothing earthly will make me give up my work
in despair. I encourage myself in the Lord my God and go
forward." Forward commands the great heart — aye, but with
ever- increasing obstacles ; yet they cross the Chambize. On
April 10 his journal entry is alarming, " I am pale and blood-
less and weak from bleeding profusely ; ever since March 31,
an artery gives off a copious stream and takes away my
strength." On the i8th, " I can hardly hold my pencil, and
my stick is a burden." On the 2ist he tried to ride his
donkey, but fell off utterly exhausted and faint.

The last entry is on April 27th, thus : " Knocked up quite,
and remain — recover — sent to buy milch goats. We are on the
banks of the Molilamo." He was ferried across ; pain of
movement now overbore him, and he twice wished to stay
where he was. They, however, reached Ilala. His men made
a bed of sticks and grass in the hut and banked it round.
Drizzling rain was falling and a fire was kept up outside.
Next morning the friendly chief called, but the dying traveller
bade him call to-morrow. A boy slept inside. At eleven
o'clock the boy calls Susi. The Doctor had heard a noise,
and asks if his men are making it — a pause — and then, " Is
this the Luapula ? " " No, Ilala, Chitambo's village." " How
many days to the Luapula ? " "I think three, Bwana (Master)."
He now dozes off. An hour later the boy calls, " The Bwana
wants you, Susi," Susi appears. He is told to boil water, get
the medicine chest and hold the candle. He noticed his
master seemed nearly blind, and with difficulty selected the
calomel. He is instructed to put a cup with water and another
empty by the bed. " All right, you can go out now," in a
feeble voice, are the last words heard by human ears. About
four a.m. the boy cries, " Come to Bwana, I am afraid. I don't
know if he is alive." Susi, Chuma, and four others rush into
the tent. The Doctor is kneeling by the bed, his face buried in
his hands on the pillow — dead. It was May ist, 1873.

The petition of this last lonely kneeling of a heroic soul
we can never know, for it was heard only by heavenly listeners,
but we may well believe its last breath would be " Thy will
be done."

During thirty years, for his dear Lord's sake, he had cut
himself from civilization, friends and dearest ones, had

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Fighters and Martyrs for Freedom of Faith

suffered privation, loss of fortune, robbery and fraud, peril of
life, bitter disappointment, burden of bodily pain and travail
of spirit, with the death of his beloved wife ; yet never
faltering in faith in his father's God.

" Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints."
Why does this heavenly music just here float up to mind from
far off days ? As a boy I remember the words as a favourite
text at funeral sermons and on memorial cards. The death of
the great missionary traveller is one more shining jewel in the
Redeemer's crown ; and, if love is the light and splendour of
those jewels, what shall we say of that wonderful story of
steadfast love of his bodyguard of faithful blacks, as to their
master's body and burying ? They know the body is their
sacred charge. It shall go to the land of the great White
Queen — his home beyond the seas. Ah ! but his heart is
theirs ; it beat its last for Africa and under Africa's sun it must
rest. They bury it with the internals under a tree on which
Jacob Wainwright, one of the Nassick boys and the scholar of
the party, whom Livingstone had saved from slavery, carved
name and date. Chitambo, the chief, engaged to keep the spot
respected. They embalm the body in their native method by
salting, drying and packing in bark. Jacob makes a precise
inventory of two tin cases and every item of property. Sus
and Chuma take command ; they call together the men ;
for nine months they have borne severe stress and trial, yet
not a man of the fifty-six falters for an instant in this last act
of devotion. " You must be our chiefs," they say, " we will
do whatever you order." For over a thousand miles they
march through forest and swamp in faithful and solemn
reverence, over rivers and hills, through tribes, superstitious,
crafty and often hostile. Attacked in one village, they fought
and stormed their passage, and finally deposited their charge
in safety at Zanzibar, and not an article was missing.

The remains arrived at Southampton on April i6th, 1874, and
were examined by Sir William Fergusson, and identified by the
lion-crunched arm and false joint. On April igth they received
entombment in the most honoured spot in Westminster
Abbey — the centre of its great nave. The coffin bore a wreath
from Queen Victoria.

Dean Stanley reads the funeral service. Softly rises the old
hymn of Doddridge's, often sung in the Puritan home at
Blantyre, and ever the dead hero's inspiration in danger and
loneliness :

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David Livingstone

O God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed,

Who through this weary pilgrimage
Hast all our fathers led.

Through each perplexing path of life

Our wandering footsteps guide ;
Give us each day, our daily bread,

And raiment fit provide.

O spread Thy covering wings around,

Till all our wanderings cease,
And at our Father's loved abode

Our souls arrive in peace.

Among the distinguished throng there is Stanley, but none are
more conspicuous than the ebony face of Jacob Wainwright,
and the white head of Dr. Moff at. The heart of a great nation
swells in reverent grief, conscious that among all the many
worthy and noble whose bones rest in the hoary fane, there
is no name more worthy and noble than that of David
Livingstone, the factory lad.

Go, little booke, God send thee good passage,
And specially let this be thy prayere
Unto them all that thee will read or hear,
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call
Thee to correct in any part, or all.

CHAUCER.

HEADLEY BROTHERS, PRINTERS, BISHOPSGATE, K.C. ; AND ASHFORD, KENT.

UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL UBRARYFAC LITY

A 000053912 2