Nevertheless it was not Calvin alone, as some appear to believe, who effected this great revolution. Had he come into the midst of a people indolent and effeminate, such victories would not have been won. But the Genevese had been preparing for centuries, by means of the struggles which they had gone through, for the maintenance of their liberty. A life of toil, incessant industry, and rude combats had inured them to blows. Their souls had been elevated. They were naturally keen and decisive; but that iron, already brilliant, had acquired by tempering an inflexible hardness. The heroism of the Huguenots of Geneva became one of the elements which contributed to the triumph of the Reformation. The character of those strong men was as essential to the work as coal is for the conversion of iron into steel. It was not Calvin the individual, it was Geneva in its entirety, that vanquished Rome. The energy of the Bertheliers, the Lévriers, and of many others, was one of the ingredients of the moral energy of which Geneva became the hearth, and which had almost disappeared from history. The most earnest of the Genevese Huguenots joined the reformer; the masses supported him; and some Frenchmen who had passed through the sieve of persecution, worthy also to be called Huguenots, gave the hand to the sons of Geneva. And when, after achieving its triumph, the Reformation found itself attacked by a numerous and powerful army, assembled under the banners of kings, of Ignatius Loyola, and the pope, Geneva and the men of her school, who were found in all parts of Christendom, were able to resist the hostile force, and to say to it, ‘No further shalt thou go!’ [Sidenote: CALVIN RETAINED AT GENEVA.] There was, indeed, in the struggle for the renewal of Christendom, one will which conceived, one personality which acted, one voice which resounded with a force till then almost unknown, and in a thousand directions: it was, next to Luther’s, that of Calvin. But while a great general is indispensable in the day of battle, so also is an army trained by him for energetic conflict. The part which Geneva played in the sixteenth century is not explained by the character of one man alone, but by many concurrent circumstances both moral and political. That army, created by a vivifying breath from on high, was soon in action wherever a struggle became necessary. Those soldiers went forth into the world, braved danger, displayed their colors, and proclaimed salvation, until at length Rome gave them the martyr’s death, and God gave them the crown of immortality. CALVIN and the HUGUENOTS, that is the great motto of the sixteenth century.