light of that wonderful book'[31]
the 'History of the Reformation in Scotland,' and who outside that book
was the utterer of many an armed and winged word which pursues and
smites us to this day, must have been born with nothing less than
genius--genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written
as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's
cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness,
the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's
genius was predominantly practical; and the difference between the
transformation which befell him, and that which changed so many other
men in his time, was that in Knox's case it changed one who was born to
be a statesman. He probably never would have become one, but for the
light which for him as for the others made all things new. But in the
others it resulted in a self-consecration whose outlook was chiefly upon
the next world, and in the present was doubtfully bounded by possible
martyrdom and possible evasion or escape. In the case of Knox the
instinctive outlook was not for himself only, but for others and for his
country. And while he saw from the first, far more clearly than they,
the embattled strength of the forces with which they all had to
contend, the unbending will of this man rejected all idea of concession
or compromise, evasion or escape. And his native sagacity (made keener
as well as more comprehensive now that it looked down from that remote
and stormless anchorage), revealed to him that there was at least the
possibility of the mightiest earthly fabric breaking up before him in
unexpected collapse.

Our conclusion then must be that the call which Knox received was one
common to him with every man and woman of that time--to accept the
Evangel--and common to him with every preacher of that time--to preach
the Evangel; but that this man's large conception of what such a call
practically meant, not for himself alone, but for all around him and for
his country, made it from the first for him a public call, and compelled
him to hear in the invitation of the St Andrews congregation the divine
commission for his life-long work. From the first, and in conception as
well as execution, that work was great and revolutionary. And from the
first, and in its very plan, it involved serious errors. But Knox
himself, in this and every stage of his career, claimed to be judged by
no lower tribunal than tha