He thus speaks of the influence of Luther and the Reformation: “At his bidding truth leaped over the cloister walls and challenged every man to make her his guest; aroused every intelligence to acts of private judgment, changed a dependent, recipient people into a reflecting, inquiring people; lifted each human being out of the castes of the middle age, to endow him with individuality, and summoned man to stand forth as man. The world heaved with the fervent conflict of opinion. The people and their guides recognized the dignity of labor; the oppressed peasantry took up arms for liberty; men reverenced and exercised the freedom of the soul. The breath of the new spirit moved over the earth; it revived Poland, animated Germany, swayed the north; and the inquisition of Spain could not silence its whispers among the mountains of the Peninsula. It invaded France; and, though bonfires of heretics, by way of warning, were lighted at the gates of Paris, it infused itself into the French mind, and led to unwonted free discussions. Exile could not quench it. On the banks of the Lake of Geneva, Calvin stood forth the boldest reformer of his day; not personally engaged in political intrigues, yet, by promulgating great ideas, forming the seed-plot of revolution.… Calvinism was revolutionary; wherever it came it created division.… By the side of the eternal mountains and perennial snows and arrowy rivers of Switzerland, it established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.… It entered Holland, inspiring an industrious nation with heroic enthusiasm; enfranchising and uniting provinces; and making burghers, and weavers, and artisans, victors over the highest orders of Spanish chivalry, the power of the inquisition, and the pretended majesty of kings. It penetrated Scotland, and while its whirlwind bore along persuasion among glens and mountains, it shrunk from no danger, and hesitated at no ambition; it nerved its rugged but hearty envoy to resist the flatteries of the beautiful Queen Mary; it assumed the education of her only son; it divided the nobility; it penetrated the masses, overturned the ancient ecclesiastic establishment, planted free parochial schools, and gave a living energy to the principle of liberty in a people. It infused itself into England, and placed its plebeian sympathies in daring resistance to the courtly hierarchy; dissenting from dissent, longing to introduce the reign of righteousness, it invited every man to read the Bible, and made itself dear to the common mind, by teaching, as a divine revelation, the unity of the race and the natural equality of man.”[I]