Through Rappersweil, where he preached his first sermon; through Wildhaus, where he read his first mass, he passed on towards the close of the year, to his new home. Glarus, the chief town of the canton, was inhabited by an active, intelligent population, full of energy and independence. The new teacher, who does not intend to act the part of an unprincipled hireling, must count on finding watchful enemies as well as friends. There is only one means, by which to maintain an erect position, under such circumstances, in a firm adherence to duty and principle, and that is an unfailing support,--trust in a higher power, which never deserts an honest endeavor. With this resolve, under this shield, Zwingli began the practice of his calling, not at all anxious about the judgments of men, nor troubled at the remarks of the multitude. In him ruled the ardent spirit of vigorous youth, averse to every thing that smacked of devotional hypocrisy, full of life and mirth, sometimes verging even on wantonness, and yet so earnest, where the affairs of science, so profound, where those of faith, and so conscientious, where those of the congregation entrusted to his care, were concerned, or those of his country, in whose welfare and honor his heart was bound up. If on this account he was called a friend of sport; if Glareanus wrote to him gaily in monk's Latin: "I am coming to you shortly, and then we will be of good cheer and play on the jews' harp;" and if Dingnauer, who promised him, that neither envy, nor jealousy, nor the moroseness of old age, nor gold, nor iron should cripple his friendship, believed that he must add the warning: "Watch over your heart, conceal your glowing wishes, lest joy be turned into bitter vexation;" we yet read, on the other hand, what he himself wrote to Vadianus at Vienna: "I am now resolved to devote myself to the Greek language and to be drawn away from it no more. This is not done out of vanity, for how little does pretension become me! but from the necessity of a thorough understanding of the Holy Scriptures." We find also that he wrote off the original Greek text of the Epistles of Paul in the form of a small book, in order to have it continually with him, and added in the margin the observations of the most approved commentators. In the year 1522, we hear him thus speak of the manner, in which he tried at that time to penetrate into the spirit of these records: "In my youth I made as much advance in human learning as any one of my age, and when, six or seven years ago, I devoted my whole strength to the study of the Holy Scriptures, the philosophy and theology of the controversialists threw continual difficulties in my way. At last I came to this conclusion. I thought: Thou must lay aside all these and get the meaning of God fresh from his own, simple word. Then I began to implore God for his light, and the Scripture became much clearer to me, although I read it merely, as I would have read