But where was the man who could give to the world, and especially wherever the French language was spoken, that strong and salutary impulse? It was not Lefèvre, Roussel, Farel, or Berquin.... Who was it then? It is time that we should learn to know him. CHAPTER VII. CALVIN’S EARLY STUDIES AND EARLY STRUGGLES. (1523-1527.) The tendencies of an epoch are generally personified in some man whom it produces, but who soon overrules these tendencies and leads them to the goal which they could not otherwise have reached. To the category of these eminent personages, of these great men, at once the children and the masters of their age, the reformers have belonged. But whilst the heroes of the world make the forces of their epoch the pedestal of their own greatness, the men of God think only how they may be made to subserve the greatness of their Master. The Reformation existed in France, but the reformer was still unknown. Farel would have been a powerful evangelist; but his country had rejected him, and, being besides a man of battle, he was neither the doctor nor the guide which the work of the sixteenth century required. A greater than Farel was about to appear, and we shall proceed to watch his first steps in the path along which he was afterwards to be the guide of many nations. In the classes of the college of La Marche in Paris there were, in the year 1526, a professor of about fifty, and a scholar of seventeen: they were often seen together. The scholar, instead of playing with his class-fellows, attached himself to his master during the hours of recreation, and listened eagerly to his conversation. They were united as a distinguished teacher and a pupil destined to become a great man sometimes are. Their names were Mathurin Cordier and John Calvin.[551] Mathurin was one of those men of ancient mould, who always prefer the public good to their own interests and glory; and accordingly, neglecting the brilliant career which lay before him, he devoted his whole life to the education of children. Prior to Calvin’s arrival at Paris, he had the head class in the college and taught it with credit; but he was not satisfied; he would often pause in the middle of his lessons, finding that his pupils possessed a mere superficial knowledge of what they should have known thoroughly. Teaching, instead of yielding him the pleasure for which he thirsted, caused him only sorrow and disgust. ‘Alas!’ he said, ‘the other masters teach the children from ambition and vain-glory, and that is why they are not well grounded in their studies.’ He complained to the director of the college. ‘The scholars who join the first class,’ he said, ‘bring up nothing solid: they are puffed out only to make a show, so that I have to begin teaching them all over again.’[552] Cordier therefore desired to resign the first class and descend to the fourth, in order to lay the foundations well.