[The greatest of the Scotch religious reformers, born in 1505, died 1572, distinguished for a stern fanaticism as intolerant as that of the Roman Church, against which he battled. He had suffered bitterly from persecution during his earlier life, and for lengthened periods been an exile from Scotland, but remained always the head and front of the new propaganda till the establishment of the Reformed religion in 1560, which carried with it the interdiction of Roman Catholicism. On the arrival of the young queen Mary Stuart from France, in 1561, Knox soon became the sharpest critic of her life and policy. His unsparing antagonism and influence with the Protestant lords did much to make Mary’s position a very difficult one, and to precipitate the events which finally drove her from Scotland and made her an English prisoner. Knox was known to have been an ardent advocate of Mary’s death long prior to the queen’s execution at Fotheringay.] Our primary characteristic of a hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and a deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only _can_ he take his stand. In the galleys of the river Loire--whither Knox and the others, after their castle of St. Andrews was taken, had been sent as galley-slaves--some officer or priest one day presented them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. “Mother? Mother of God?” said Knox, when the turn came to him: “This is no Mother of God; this is a _pented bredd_--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshiped,” added Knox, and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there; but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would not.