IN THE TIME OF CALVIN. BOOK X. THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND. CHAPTER I. PREPARATION OF REFORM. (FROM THE 2ND CENTURY TO THE YEAR 1522.) History is of various kinds. It may be literary, philosophical, political, or religious; the last entering most deeply into the inmost facts of our being. The political historian will sometimes disclose the hidden mysteries of the cabinets of princes, will fathom their counsels, unveil their intrigues, and snatch their secrets from a Cæsar, a Charles V., a Napoleon, while human nature in its loftiest aspects remains inaccessible to them. The inward power of conscience, which not seldom impels a man to act in a way opposed to the rules of policy and to the requirements of self-interest, the great spiritual evolutions of humanity, the sacrifices of missionaries and of martyrs, are for them covered with a veil. It is the Gospel alone which gives us the key of these mysteries, so that there remain in history, even for the most able investigators, enigmas which appear insoluble. How is it that schemes conceived with indisputable cleverness fail? How is it that enterprises which seem insane succeed? They cannot tell. No matter, they keep on their way, they pass into other regions and leave behind them territories which have not been explored. This is to be regretted, for the historian ought to embrace in his survey the whole field of human affairs. He must, of course, take into consideration the earthly powers which bear sway in the world, ambition, despotism, liberty; but he ought to mark also the heavenly powers which religion reveals. The living God must not be excluded from the world which He created. Man must not stop in his contemplations at elementary molecules, nor even at political influences, but must raise himself to this first principle, as Clement of Alexandria named it,--this existence, the idea of which is immediate, original, springs from no other, but is necessarily presupposed in all thought.