Within little more than a month after her death peace was signed; the French forces departed, and the English army, not much more loved in its help than the others in their hostility, was escorted back to the Border and safely got rid of. On the 19th of July, all being thus happily settled, St. Giles's was once more filled with a crowd of eager worshippers, "the haill nobilitie and the greatest part of the Congregation,"--a number which must have tried the capacity of the great church, large as it is. Knox does not give his sermon on the occasion, but we have a very noble and devout prayer, or rather thanksgiving, which was used at this service, and in which, though there is one reference to "proud tyrants overthrown," the spirit of devout thankfulness is predominant. He tells us, however, that the subject of his discourses, delivered daily, were the prophecies of Haggai, which he found to be "proper for the time." Some of his hearers, he informs us, spoke jestingly of having now to "bear the barrow to build the house of God." "God be merciful to the speaker," cries the stern prophet, "for we fear he shall have experience that the building of his ain house, the house of God being despised, shall not be so prosperous or of such firmity as we desire it were"--so dangerous was it to jest in the presence of one so tremendously in earnest. The speaker referred to, of this, as of most of the other caustic sayings of the time, is said to have been Lethington. The first thing done by the Parliament was the distribution of the handful of ministers then existing among the districts which most needed them; the second, the verification and establishment of the Confession of Faith. No more curious scene could have been than this momentous ceremony. The Parliament consisted of all the nobility of Scotland, including among them the bishops and peers of the Church, and the delegates from the boroughs. The Confession was read article by article, and a vote taken upon each. Three only of the lords voted against it. The bishops said nothing. What their feelings must have been, as they sat in their places looking on, while the long array of the Congregation voted, it is vain to attempt to imagine. There was nothing the Reformers would have liked better than that discussion to which Knox had vainly bidden his opponents, throwing down his glove as to mortal combat. "Some of our ministers were present," he says, "standing upon their feet ready to have answered in case any would have defended the Papistrie and impugned our affirmations." But no one of all the ecclesiastics present said a word. The Earl Marischal, when he rose in his turn to vote, commented upon this remarkable abstinence with the straightforwardness of a practical man. "It is long since I have had some favour to the truth," he said, "and since I have had a suspicion of the Papistical religion; but I praise my God this day has fully resolved me in the one and the other.