the Pyrenees on their pack mules. Under the influence of these writings the Reformation took shape, was something more than the devout imagination of a few pious thinkers, and became an endeavour to give expression to common religious certainties in change of creed, institutions, and worship. Thus Luther helped the Reformation in every land. The actual beginnings in England, France, the Netherlands, and elsewhere had come into existence years before Luther had become known; it is possible that the movements might have come to fruition apart from his efforts; but the influence of his writings was like that of the sun when it quickens and makes the seed sprout that has been "happed" in a tilled and sown field. § 7. _National Characteristics._ It was not that the Reformation in any of these countries was to become Lutheran in the end, or had a Lutheran stage of development. The number of genuine Lutherans outside Germany and Scandinavia was very small. Here and there a stray one was to be found, like Dr. Barnes in England or Louis Berquin in France. One of the deepest principles of the great Reformer's teaching itself checked the idea of a purely Lutheran Reformation which would embrace the whole Reformation Church. He taught that the practical exercise of faith ought to manifest itself within the great institutions of human life which have their origin in God--in marriage, the family, the calling, and the State, in the ordinary life we lead with its environment. Nations have their character and characteristics as well as individual men, and they mould in natural ways the expression in creed and institution of the religious certainties shared by all. The Reformation in England was based on the same spiritual facts and forces which were at work in France, Germany, and the Netherlands, but each land had its own ways of embodying them. It is interesting to note how national habits, memories, and even prejudices compelled the external embodiment to take very varying shapes, and force the historian to describe the Reformation in each country as something by itself.