admirable distinctness, and the far sight which descries with equal accuracy what is distant, and with these he combined the philosophic spirit which marked very correctly the connection between the two. He was a true patriot, and ever willing to sacrifice himself in the welfare of his country. And all these qualities in him were raised to the white heat of enthusiasm, and fused into the unity of holiness by his devotion to the God and Father of his Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. He spoke, and wrote, and acted as ever in His sight. This was the secret of his courage, the root of his inflexibility, and the source of his power. As a Reformer he had in him the boldness of Luther, combined with some of the qualities of Calvin, and though as a whole he was inferior to both, yet more than either he reminds us of a Hebrew prophet. When we see him before Queen Mary, we think at once of Elijah before Ahab, and more appropriately perhaps than any other man in modern history he might have taken for the motto of his life the oft-repeated asseveration of the Tishbite, "As the Lord God of Israel liveth, _before whom I stand_." {210} And yet, though sternly uttering in the highest places what he believed to be the word of God, there were not wanting in his character other traits of gentleness and geniality. As Carlyle has truly said, "Tumult was not his element, it was the tragic feature of his life that he was forced to dwell in that." He too, like the granite mountains of his native land, had in him fountains of tenderness, and valleys laughing with cheerfulness. He was not the heartless Stoic that many have ignorantly painted him, for have we not seen him weeping with those who were "sobbing unto God"? And though it may seem strange to those who have not made themselves acquainted with his history, there was in him a vein of humour, yea even, as Carlyle says, of "drollery," that makes him excellent company. This humour of his, as the writer just named has admirably diagnosed it, was "not mockery, scorn, bitterness, alone, though there is enough of that too, but a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts up over the earnest visage; not a loud laugh; you would say a laugh in the _eyes_ most of all."