Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06: Renaissance and ReformationLord, John
History
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06: Renaissance and Reformation
Lord, John
History
I question whether Calvin lived in the hearts of his countrymen, or they
would have erected some monument to his memory. In our times a statue
has been erected to Rousseau in Geneva; but Calvin was buried without
ceremony and with exceeding simplicity. He was a warrior who cared
nothing for glory or honor, absorbed in devotion to his Invisible King,
not indifferent to the exercise of power, but only as he felt he was the
delegated messenger of Divine Omnipotence scattering to the winds the
dust of all mortal grandeur. With all his faults, which were on the
surface, he was the accepted idol and oracle of a great party, and
stamped his genius on his own and succeeding ages. Whatever the
Presbyterians have done for civilization, he comes in for a share of the
honor. Whatever foundations the Puritans laid for national greatness in
this country, it must be confessed that they caught inspiration from his
decrees. Such a great master of exegetical learning and theological
inquiry and legislative wisdom will be forever held in reverence by
lofty characters, although he may be no favorite with the mass of
mankind. If many great men and good men have failed to comprehend either
his character or his system, how can a pleasure-loving and material
generation, seeking to combine the glories of this world with the
promises of the next, see much in him to admire, except as a great
intellectual dialectician and system-maker in an age with which it has
no sympathy? How can it appreciate his deep spiritual life, his profound
communion with God, his burning zeal for the defence of Christian
doctrine, his sublime self-sacrifice, his holy resignation, his entire
consecration to a great cause? Nobody can do justice to Calvin who does
not know the history of his times, the circumstances which surrounded
him, and the enemies he was required to fight. No one can comprehend his
character or mission who does not feel it to be supremely necessary to
have a definite, positive system of religious belief, based on the
authority of the Scriptures as a divine inspiration, both as an anchor
amid the storms and a star of promise and hope.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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