Artificium_. He found a consolation for his misfortunes in the work of
invention, and even saw the hand of Providence in the coincidence of the
overthrow of schools, through persecutions and wars, and those ideas of
a new method which had been vouchsafed to him, and which he was
elaborating. Everything might now be begun anew, and untrammelled by the
errors and prejudices of the past.

Some scruples as to a theologian and pastor being so entirely
preoccupied with educational questions he had, however, to overcome.
"Suffer, I pray, Christian friends, that I speak confidentially with you
for a moment. Those who know me intimately know that I am a man of
moderate ability and of almost no learning, but one who, bewailing the
evils of his time, is eager to remedy them, if this in any be granted me
to do, either by my own discoveries or by those of another--none of
which things can come save from a gracious God. If, then, anything be
here found well done, it is not mine, but his, who from the mouths of
babes and sucklings hath perfected praise, and who, that he may in
verity show himself faithful, true, and gracious, gives to those who
ask, opens to those who knock, and offers to those who seek. Christ my
Lord knows that my heart is so simple that it matters not to me whether
I teach or be taught, act the part of teacher of teachers or disciple of
disciples. What the Lord has given me I send forth for the common good."
His deepest conviction was that the sole hope of healing the dissensions
of both church and state lay in the proper education of youth.

When he had completed his _Great Didactic_, he did not publish it, for
he was still hoping to be restored to his native Moravia, where he
proposed to execute all his philanthropic schemes; indeed, the treatise
was first written in his native Slav or Czech tongue. In 1632 there was
convened a synod of the Moravian Brethren at Lissa, at which Comenius,
now forty years of age, was elected to succeed his father-in-law,
Cyrillus, as bishop of the scattered brethren--a position which enabled
him to be of great service, by means of correspondence, to the members
of the community, who were dispersed in various parts of Europe.
Throughout the whole of his long life he continued this fatherly charge,
and seemed never quite to abandon the hope of being restored, along with
his fellow-exiles, to his native land--a hope doomed to disappointment.
In his capacity of pastor-bishop he wrote s