He was not always wise; neither was he always discriminating in his utterances. Who is? who especially when surrounded by the difficulties with which he had to contend? and we may well forgive him his occasional indiscretions, when we think of the work which, in spite of these, he was honoured to accomplish. By that work he has earned the gratitude of posterity, and deserved a place among the men who are most worthy to be remembered in these times. By that work the entire face and future of Scotland were changed. She has made great progress in many directions since his day, and outgrown many of the limitations within which he would have restricted her; but the success of his work made it possible for her to become what she is to-day. The liberty, the literature, the philosophy, as well as the religion of Scotland, could not have developed into what they became without the Reformation; and without Knox, humanly speaking, the Reformation would not {208} have been at all, or at least would not have been what it actually became. He had not the lyric thrill of genius that vibrates in the songs of Robert Burns; but in his own way and to his own tune he sang, "A man's a man for a' that," two hundred years before the Ayrshire bard was born. He laid the foundation of that national popular education which has made Scotland at home so intelligent, and carried Scotsmen with honour abroad into all the countries under heaven; and though he would have protested very vehemently against the scepticism of Hume and others, yet the men who have made the Scottish school of philosophy illustrious, received, consciously or unconsciously, much of their impulse from his work. Add to this, that wherever Presbyterianism has found a foothold, its votaries name Knox side by side with Calvin, as one of its foremost leaders and organizers. But when we consider the shortness of the time within which Knox did his work for Scotland, the greatness of the man becomes still more conspicuous. He was forty-two years of age when he was called to preach in the Castle of St. Andrews, and he died at sixty-seven. Within these twenty-five years therefore his reformation work was done; and yet of these nearly two were spent as a galley-slave in French captivity, five were passed in England, three on the continent, and for the last year and a half of his life he was disabled by paralysis, so that his active labours in his native land were virtually condensed within little more than fourteen years. During these, also, he had to contend, save in the brief season {209} of Murray's regency, with the greatest difficulties, but through them all he held on, and over them all he secured an ultimate triumph. His energy was consuming, his zeal untiring, and his vigilance unslumbering. With the eye of a statesman he looked into the future, while at the same time he keenly scrutinized the movements of the present. He had the near sight which sees what is closest to it with