Knox is even less likely to be forgiven in an era of suffragettes and agitation of votes for women. Yet it must be remembered that while Knox was too manly to retract, because he believed what he wrote and retained his opinions on this subject to the last, yet he never published his intended second or third “Blast,” nor ever wished, in any way, to obstruct the path of Elizabeth. Yet at this time he was in possible danger of the headsman’s axe. In Scotland he married Margaret Stewart, of a noble family, and by her had three daughters. In his native land he spent twelve years devoted to the fierce struggle and triumph of the Reformation. On his deathbed he could say before God and his holy angels that he had never made merchandise of religion, never studied to please men, never indulged his private passions, but faithfully used his talents to build up the Church over which he was called to watch. Dr. Philip Schaff, the greatest Church historian whom America has yet produced and possibly its most cosmopolitan scholar, declares that Knox “was the incarnation of all the noble and rugged energies of his nation and age, and devoted them to the single aim of a thorough reformation in doctrine, worship, and discipline, on the basis of the Word of God. In genius, learning, wealth of ideas, and extent of influence, he was inferior to Luther and Calvin, but in boldness, strength, and purity of character, fully their equal. He was the most heroic man of a heroic race. His fear of God made him fearless of man. Endowed with a fearless and original intellect, he was eminently a man of action, with the pulpit for a throne and the word for his sword.” Carlyle wrote a monograph on the portraits of John Knox. He severely characterizes that patriarchal, long-bearded, but stolid picture of Knox, which has been reproduced in many books from the Geneva edition of Beza’s “Icones.” In truth, we have often wondered why most of the pictures of the old divines, handed down to us from the days of cheap and rude wood-cutting and black-letter books, were not used to frighten naughty children or placed as scarecrows in cornfields. Some readers will recall what Hawthorne has said about some of these worthy predecessors of ours, who lived during what another son of New England has called “the Glacial Age.” Carlyle believed that the Somerville portrait, “with a sharp, stern face, high forehead, pointed beard, and large white collar was the only probable likeness of the great reformer,” who had “a beautiful and simple, but complete incompatibility with whatever is false, in word or conduct, inexorable contempt and detestation of what in modern speech is called humbug.”... He was “a most clear-cut, hardy, distinct, and effective man; fearing God and without any other fear.”