r
Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man? God made
the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a
Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the
fatal work and fruit of such!----

But to return: This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really
call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business; but
it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far
rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price;--as life is. The people
began to _live_: they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and
costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch Industry; James
Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the
Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons
and phenomena; I find that without the Reformation they would not have
been. Or what of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of
England, of New England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh
spread into a universal battle and struggle over all these
realms;--there came out, after fifty years' struggling, what we call
the '_Glorious_ Revolution,' a _Habeas-Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments,
and much else!--Alas, is it not too true what we said, That many men
in the van do always, like Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of
Schweidnitz, and fill it up with their dead bodies, that the rear may
pass over them dry-shod and gain the honour? How many earnest rugged
Cromwells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenants, wrestling, battling for
very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and
fall, greatly censured, _bemired_,--before a beautiful Revolution of
Eighty-eight can step-over them in official pumps and silk-stockings,
with universal three-times-three!

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after
three-hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the
world; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then
possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor
Half-and-half, he could have crouched into the corner, like so many
others; Scotland had not been delivered; and Knox had been without
blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and
the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him
for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable' Scotchmen that
need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle; had to row in
French galleys,