been, without any such
shattering and falling asunder as had taken place in regions more
advanced. That this arose from no want of zeal was proved as soon as the
preacher appeared: for his arrival was no sooner known than the house in
which he had alighted from his journey was filled by a stream of
inquirers, whom he "began to exhort secretly." One night he was called
to supper with the Laird of Dun, the well-known John Erskine, who was
one of the most earnest of the Reforming party, and in the grave company
he found there--among whom were one or two ministers and the young but
already promising and eminent William Maitland of Lethington--the
question was fully discussed, Was it lawful to conform while holding a
faith not only different but hostile? was it permissible to bow down in
the house of Rimmon? To this Knox answered No, with all the
uncompromising and stern sincerity of his soul. "Nowise was it lawful."
The question was very fully defended from the other point of view.
"Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the
example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the
advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at
once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been
wrong, and not of God--a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly
bringing no blessing with it. His bold and assured argument cut the
ground from under the feet of the hesitating Reformers, to whom no doubt
it was very difficult thus to break away from all the traditions of
their lives.

This scene throws a strange and in some respects new light upon the more
human side of the great movement. It is easier perhaps to us who are
acquainted with all that followed to understand the fiery zeal which
flamed against every accessory of what they conceived to be
idolatry--the saintly image, which was nothing but a painted board, and
the "round clipped god" upon the altar which was blasphemously asserted
to be the very Lord Himself--than to remember that these men had also
many links of use and wont, of attachment and habit, to the churches in
which they had been christened, and the position, with all its needs and
simple duties, to which they had been born. To see them standing there
for a moment reluctant, with the tremendous breach that must be made in
life gaping before them, and the sense of universal disruption and
tearing asunder which must follow, is to me more touching tha