e Ages in some important points, such
as those which pertained to divine justice,--the wrath rather than the
love of God. He lived too near the Middle Ages to be emancipated from
the ideas which enslaved such a man as Thomas Aquinas. He had very
little patience with frivolous amusements or degrading pursuits. He
attached great dignity to the ministerial office, and set a severe
example of decorum and propriety in all his public ministrations. He was
a type of the early evangelical divines, and was the father of the old
Puritan strictness and narrowness and fidelity to trusts. His very
faults grew out of virtues pushed to extremes. In our times such a man
would not be selected as a travelling companion, or a man at whose house
we would wish to keep the Christmas holidays. His unattractive austerity
perhaps has been made too much of by his enemies, and grew out of his
unimpulsive temperament,--call it cold if we must,--and also out of his
stern theology, which marked the ascetics of the Middle Ages. Few would
now approve of his severity of discipline any more than they would feel
inclined to accept some of his theological deductions.

I question whether Calvin lived in the hearts of his countrymen, or they
would have erected some monument to his memory. In our times a statue
has been erected to Rousseau in Geneva; but Calvin was buried without
ceremony and with exceeding simplicity. He was a warrior who cared
nothing for glory or honor, absorbed in devotion to his Invisible King,
not indifferent to the exercise of power, but only as he felt he was the
delegated messenger of Divine Omnipotence scattering to the winds the
dust of all mortal grandeur. With all his faults, which were on the
surface, he was the accepted idol and oracle of a great party, and
stamped his genius on his own and succeeding ages. Whatever the
Presbyterians have done for civilization, he comes in for a share of the
honor. Whatever foundations the Puritans laid for national greatness in
this country, it must be confessed that they caught inspiration from his
decrees. Such a great master of exegetical learning and theological
inquiry and legislative wisdom will be forever held in reverence by
lofty characters, although he may be no favorite with the mass of
mankind. If many great men and good men have failed to comprehend either
his character or his system, how can a pleasure-loving and material
generation, seeking to combine the glories of this world w