considering the marked individuality of the writer, is curious exceedingly. We must hope that on other occasions, notwithstanding his mature years, there were letters calculated to give more satisfaction to a young woman than these expositions and addresses. For the next two years Knox, now it is evident universally known wherever the Reformation had penetrated, filled the place of minister to a congregation of exiles assembled at Geneva, most of them refugees from England, who had fled, as he himself had done, at the accession of Mary. But his heart was in his own land, where in the meantime the progress of the new Reformed faith was arrested, and silence and discouragement had fallen over the country. The leaders were dispersed or destroyed, the preachers silenced, and there was no one to gather together the many groups of believers all over the country in whose hearts the seed had sprung up strongly, but who as yet had made no public profession. In 1555 Knox suddenly reappeared in Scotland, brought thither at once by urgent letters and by the eagerness of his own heart. When he arrived in Edinburgh he found that many who "had a zeal to godliness" still attended mass, probably finding it more difficult to break the continual habit of their lives than the bonds of doctrine--and that the outer structure of the Church remained much as it had been, without any such shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company he found there--among whom were one or two ministers and the young but already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington--the question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful." The question was very fully defended from the other point of view. "Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been wrong, and not of God--a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly bringing no blessing with it. His bold and assured argument cut the ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of their lives.