ith the
promises of the next, see much in him to admire, except as a great
intellectual dialectician and system-maker in an age with which it has
no sympathy? How can it appreciate his deep spiritual life, his profound
communion with God, his burning zeal for the defence of Christian
doctrine, his sublime self-sacrifice, his holy resignation, his entire
consecration to a great cause? Nobody can do justice to Calvin who does
not know the history of his times, the circumstances which surrounded
him, and the enemies he was required to fight. No one can comprehend his
character or mission who does not feel it to be supremely necessary to
have a definite, positive system of religious belief, based on the
authority of the Scriptures as a divine inspiration, both as an anchor
amid the storms and a star of promise and hope.

And, after all, what is the head and front of Calvin's offending?--that
he was cold, unsocial, and ungenial in character; and that, as a
theologian, he fearlessly and inexorably pushed out his deductions to
their remotest logical sequences. But he was no more austere than
Chrysostom, no more ascetic than Basil, not even sterner in character
than Michael Angelo, or more unsocial than Pascal or Cromwell or William
the Silent. We lose sight of his defects in the greatness of his
services and the exalted dignity of his character. If he was severe to
adversaries, he was kind to friends; and when his feeble body was worn
out by his protracted labors, at the age of fifty-three, and he felt
that the hand of death was upon him, he called together his friends and
fellow-laborers in reform,--the magistrates and ministers of
Geneva,--imparted his last lessons, and expressed his last wishes, with
the placidity of a Christian sage. Amid tears and sobs and stifled
groans he discoursed calmly on his approaching departure, gave his
affectionate benedictions, and commended them and his cause to Christ;
lingering longer than was expected, but dying in the highest triumphs of
Christian faith, May 27, 1564, in the arms of his faithful and admiring
Beza, as the rays of the setting-sun gilded with their glory his humble
chamber of toil and spiritual exaltation.

No man who knows anything will ever sneer at Calvin. He is not to be
measured by common standards. He was universally regarded as the
greatest light of the theological world. When we remember his
transcendent abilities, his matchless labors, his unrivalled influence,
hi