the Evangel would be secure, it might be
brought about only after his own failure and ruin. Such were the
alternatives which Knox--a man of undoubted sensitiveness and
tenderness, and who describes himself as naturally 'fearful'[15]--had to
ponder during those days of seclusion at St Andrews. Of one thing he had
no doubt. The call, if once he accepted it, was irrevocable;[16] and he
must thenceforward go straight on, abandoning the many resources of
silence and of flight which might still be open to a private man.

But this was not all. It would be doing injustice to Knox, and to our
materials, to suppose that personal considerations were the only ones
which pressed upon him in this crisis. He never, in any circumstances,
could have been a man of 'a private spirit,' and his present call was
expressly to bear the public burden. But the burden so proposed was
overwhelming. Was it by his mouth that his countrymen were to be urged
to expose themselves, individually, to certain danger and possible ruin?
Was it upon his initiative that his country was to be divided,
distracted, and probably destroyed--deprived of its old faith, severed
from its old alliances, and hurled into revolt from its five hundred
years of Christian peace?[17] The risk to his country was extreme. And
if, by some marvellous conspiration of providences, Scotland passed
through all this without ruin, was Knox prepared to face the more
tremendous responsibilities of success? Did he hear in that hour the
voice by which leaders of Movements in later days have been chilled,
'Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst not rule?' For if we assume
that he felt entitled to back this weight of leadership upon God and
Evangel, the question still remained, Was even the Evangel strong enough
to bear this burden of a nation's future? That it was able to guide and
save the individual man, through all changes and chances of this life
and the life beyond, Knox may have been assured. But the questions which
rose behind were those of Church organisation and social reconstruction.
Was it possible, and was it lawful, to accept the existing Church
system, in whole or in part, and to build upon that? And if this was
impossible, if Christ's Church must go back to the Divine foundation in
His new-discovered Word, was that Word sufficient, not for foundation
merely, but for all superstructure--for doctrine, discipline, and
worship alike? Or would the Church be entitled to impose its