Calvin's career as a writer began at an early day and continued until his death. His pen was a ready one and was seldom idle. In the midst of the most engrossing cares and occupations--the cares and occupations of a preacher, a pastor, a teacher of theology, a statesman, and a reformer to whom the Protestants of many lands looked for inspiration and for counsel--he found time, though he died at the early age of fifty-four, to produce works that to-day fill more than threescore volumes, and all of which bear the unmistakable impress of a great mind. In addition to his 'Institutes,' theological and ethical tracts, and treatises, sermons, and epistles without number, he wrote commentaries upon almost all the books of the Bible; which for lucidity, for wide and accurate learning, and for sound and ripe judgment, have never been surpassed. Among the most characteristic and important of his briefer works are his vigorous and effective 'Reply to Cardinal Sadolet,' who had endeavored after Calvin's exile from Geneva in 1539 to win back the Genevese to the Roman Church; his tract on 'The Necessity of Reforming the Church; presented to the Imperial Diet at Spires, A.D. 1544, in the cause of all who wish with Christ to reign'--an admirable statement of the conditions which had made a reformation of the Church imperatively necessary, and had led to the great religious and ecclesiastical revolution; another tract on 'The True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church,'--marked by a beautiful Christian spirit and permeated with sound practical sense; still another containing 'Articles Agreed Upon by the Faculty of Sacred Theology at Paris, with the Antidote', and finally an 'Admonition Showing the Advantages which Christendom might Derive from an Inventory of Relics.' Though Calvin was from boyhood up of a most serious turn of mind, and though his writings, in marked contrast to the writings of Luther, exhibit few if any traces of genial spontaneous humor, the last two works show that he knew how to employ satire on occasion in a very telling way for the overthrow of error and for the discomfiture of his opponents. In addition to the services which Calvin rendered by his writings to the cause of Christianity and of sacred learning, must be recognized the lasting obligation under which as an author he put his mother tongue. Whether he wrote in Latin or in French, his style was always chaste, elegant, clear, and vigorous. His Latin compares favorably with the best models of antiquity; his French is a new creation. The latter language indeed owes almost as much to Calvin as the German language owes to Luther. He was unquestionably its greatest master in the sixteenth century, and he did more than any one else to fix its permanent character--to give it that exactness, that lucidity, that purity and harmony of which it justly boasts.