exploit these holy mysteries for
the sake of gain or futile glory or tyrannous imposition. I do not see
why they should reject vigils and fasts in moderation; but these are
matters for encouragement rather than positive command. About
festivals they seem to follow the usage current in the days of Jerome:
better, I think, than the modern calendar, full of saints-days which
end in riot and carouse, and on which the honest journeyman is
forbidden to work for his children's bread.' As Slechta read these
words, he must surely have felt as did Balak, the son of Zippor, when
he listened to the seer from Mesopotamia taking up his parable upon
Israel in the plains of Moab. The man whose eyes were open, had
blessed the Brethren instead of cursing them; and literary Europe
might well follow his lead.

The history of the Bohemian Brethren is of exceptional interest,
affording an example of a community professing a plain, simple faith
and ruling their lives by modest conceptions of ordinary goodness,
who, guided by leaders almost unknown to the world, through the
trials of good and evil repute, through tribulation and prosperity,
kept serenely upon the path they had marked out for themselves, living
and growing into one of the most flourishing and devoted missionary
bodies of the present day. As is natural under such conditions, their
origin is not free from obscurity. Men connected them with the
Waldensians of Southern France, or traced them, as we have seen, to a
leader from Picardy. Through the fifteenth century they grew steadily
in strength and unity, sheltered by the toleration which Rome
unwillingly granted to the Utraquists as a result of the Compacts of
Basle; and as compared with other dissentient bodies their name was
singularly free from gross imputations. Throughout that age such
imputations were freely made and believed against heretics. This was
not unreasonable. In the low state of public and private morals faith
was regarded as an indispensable bulwark to conduct, the faith which
taught indeed that a man should love God and his neighbour, but
stablished him into practising what he professed, by lurid pictures of
the fate awaiting him if he did not. Without this bulwark it was not
thought possible that a man could lead a godly, righteous and sober
life; and so he was considered capable of every form of vice, if he
ventured to doubt the truth of those opinions on which the Church had
set its seal, in realms into whi