That small town was, however, to give to the world a higher lesson still. It was to do for religion what it had first done for politics, and to render to faith the service which it had rendered to freedom. These two achievements are closely related to each other; and it is one of the characteristics of this history, that while it attributes transcendent importance to Christian truth and life, it recognizes at the same time all that is great and salutary in freedom. If the author, as some have thought, had erred in assigning too high a place to the heroic struggles to which Geneva owed her independence, he would assuredly regret that he had not more skilfully handled the pen of the historian for the purpose of immortalizing the great men and the heroic actions of which the smallest and humblest of states afforded the spectacle. But he would count himself fortunate if he should, nevertheless, have contributed to bring into clear light the great maxim, that political freedom and Christian truth must advance hand in hand for the salvation of nations and the salvation of souls. Of course, a blind demagogy, the formidable rock of our age, is at once contrary to freedom and hostile to religion. Geneva was fitted by various concurring conditions to play a part from which the small extent of her territory seemed inevitably to shut her out. Situated as this town was between Italy, France, and Germany, its position formed the central point of the three great nations who were distinguished in the first half of the sixteenth century for their new or newly awakened love of letters, philosophy, and the arts. On several occasions Frenchmen, Italians, and Germans came in large numbers to settle at Geneva. By the reception of these three diverse elements into her bosom she seemed to be called to blend them with each other and to harmonize their opposing qualities. If any spark from the evangelical fire which was then kindled should chance to escape from either of those countries and to fall on the materials thus prepared at the foot of the Alps, it might kindle a great fire, and might make Geneva a hearth from which light, radiating far and wide, should contribute to scatter the humiliating darkness which Rome and those princes whose power was at her service then made to weigh heavily on the nations. [Sidenote: JOHN CALVIN.] This is what actually came to pass. To convert the spark into a pure, vivid, dazzling light, there was need of an intellect of vast depth, a will of vast energy, and a faith of vast power. God sent the man that was needed.