tinually insists as common
to himself with all Christian men, and which _were_ common to him with
the mass of Christian men--and women--who were the strength of that time
and the hope of the age to follow. They were views which, when received
with full conviction by any individual, led outwardly to suffering on
the one hand, or, on the other, to shattering the whole compacted system
of opposing intolerance. But they were views which, when thus translated
into convictions, not only pressed outward with explosive force, but
also, and necessarily, spread inwards in reflux and expansion to refresh
and animate the man. They might have done so--in the case of some men of
that time they did--without overflowing into the private life and into
sympathetic converse and confidence with others. But Knox was so
constituted as to need this also and to supply it. And the fragments of
his correspondence which are all that remain to us, and which probably
were all that an extraordinarily busy public work permitted, are
conclusive on some things and instructive on others. They are conclusive
as to the existence, under that breastplate of hammered iron with which
Knox confronted all outward opposition, of a private and personal
life--a life inward, secret, and deep, and a life also rich, tender, and
eminently sympathetic. They are conclusive also, I think, of this inner
life being the source and spring of the life without, instead of being
merely derived from it. And they will thus be found instructive as to
the influence of that hidden life, in its strength and its limitations
alike, on the external career which we have now to trace.

[32] 'Works,' iii. 395.

[33] 'Works,' iii. 376.

[34] 'Works,' iii. 378.

[35] 'Works,' iii. 358.

[36] 'Works,' vi. 104.

[37] 'Works,' ii. 138.

[38] 'Calvini Epistolae,' Ep. 306.

[39] 'Works,' vi. p. lvii.

[40] 'Works,' iii. 337.

[41] 'Works,' iii. 352.

[42] 'Works,' iii. 379. Compare, or contrast, this scene of the three
poor women with another recorded by a still greater master of English.
The tinker had gone on business one day to Bedford:

'In one of the streets of that town, I came where there were
three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and
talking about the things of God.... But they were far above, out
of my reach; for their talk was about a new birth, the work of
God on their hearts, also how they were convinced of their
miserable stat