Of all human errors, the most popular are the most dangerous, for they are the most contagious, and those from which the noblest natures find it most difficult to keep themselves free. It is impossible to observe without alarm the aberrations of reason and moral rectitude into which men who were in other respects enlightened and virtuous have been dragged by the leading ideas of their generation. And this alarm is very greatly increased when we discover what iniquity, what suffering, what public and private calamity have been the result of deviations from right which were tolerated by the noblest spirits of the age. On the question of religious liberty, St. Louis is a striking example of the degree to which an upright judgment and scrupulous conscience may be led astray if it falls under the dominion of a popular feeling or idea. In all times of great intellectual fermentation he stands as a solemn warning to those men who prize independence of thought as well as of action, and to whom nothing is so dear as justice and truth. [Footnote 53: Not marked in text; probably related to the quotation 'I expect a greater recompense ...': Faure, vol. ii. p. 300; Joinville, chap, cxxxviii.] ----------------------------------------------------------- {145} John Calvin. Born At Noyon, _July_ 10, 1509. Died At Geneva, _May_ 27, 1564. Chapter I. Final Judgment On Great Men And Great Events Must Be Reserved For Future Generations. Characteristics Of The Religious Reform Of The Sixteenth Century. Great events and great men impose a difficult and painful task upon those who wish to understand them thoroughly, and to appreciate their worth. They form the stage upon which all the difficult and striking complications of good and evil, truth and error, virtue and vice, noble and base passions, valuable results and fatal consequences are displayed. They represent the noble impulses and also the disastrous failures, the grandeur, but at the same time the imperfection of human nature and human destiny; and we cannot, therefore, contemplate them without sadness and perplexity. {146}