that
region there was but little danger to be apprehended. The multitude of
Reformers made the edicts impossible, so long as no foreign troops were
there to enforce them. The congregation was encamped and arranged in an
orderly manner. The women, of whom there were many, were placed next the
pulpit, which, upon this occasion, was formed of a couple of spears
thrust into the earth, sustaining a cross-piece, against which the
preacher might lean his back. The services commenced with the singing of
a psalm by the whole vast assemblage. Clement Marot's verses, recently
translated by Dathenus, were then new and popular. The strains of the
monarch minstrel, chanted thus in their homely but nervous mother tongue
by a multitude who had but recently learned that all the poetry and
rapture of devotion were not irrevocably coffined with a buried language,
or immured in the precincts of a church, had never produced a more
elevating effect. No anthem from the world-renowned organ in that ancient
city ever awakened more lofty emotions than did those ten thousand human
voices ringing from the grassy meadows in that fervid midsummer noon.
When all was silent again, the preacher rose; a little, meagre man, who
looked as if he might rather melt away beneath the blazing sunshine of
July, than hold the multitude enchained four uninterrupted hours long, by
the magic of his tongue. His text was the 8th, 9th, and 10th verses of
the second chapter of Ephesians; and as the slender monk spoke to his
simple audience of God's grace, and of faith in Jesus, who had descended
from above to save the lowliest and the most abandoned, if they would put
their trust in Him, his hearers were alternately exalted with fervor or
melted into tears. He prayed for all conditions of men--for themselves,
their friends, their enemies, for the government which had persecuted
them, for the King whose face was turned upon them in anger. At times,
according to one who was present, not a dry eye was to be seen in the
crowd. When the minister had finished, he left his congregation abruptly,
for he had to travel all night in order to reach Alkmaar, where he was to
preach upon the following day.

By the middle of July the custom was established outside all the
principal cities. Camp-meetings were held in some places; as, for
instance, in the neighborhood of Antwerp, where the congregations
numbered often fifteen thousand and on some occasions were estimated at
between twen