s high-blooded
intolerance, the restless force about him which never pauses to take
breath, is the chief impression produced upon the reader by his own
unfolding of himself in his wonderful history. Though he is too great
and important to be called a busybody, we still feel sympathetically
something of the suppressed irritation and sense of hindrance and
interruption with which the lords must have regarded this companion with
his "devout imaginations," whom they dared not neglect, and who was sure
to get the better in every argument, generally by reason, but at all
events by the innate force of his persistence and daring. But when they
came to Stirling, after "that dusk and dolorous night wherein all ye my
lords with shame and fear left the town", the eager nervous form, the
dark keen face of the preacher, rose before the melancholy bands like
those of the hero-leader, the standard-bearer of God. It was Wednesday
the 7th of November 1559 when the dispirited Congregation met for the
preaching and to consider afterwards "what was the next remedy in so
desperate a case." Knox took for his text certain verses of the
eightieth Psalm. "How long wilt thou be angry against the prayers of thy
people? Thou hast fed us with the bread of tears; and hast given us
tears to drink in great measure. O God of hosts, turn us again, make thy
face to shine; and we shall be saved." He began by asking, Why were the
people of God thus oppressed?

"Our faces are this day confounded, our enemies triumph, our hearts
have quaked for fear, and yet they remain oppressed with sorrow and
shame. But what shall we think to be the very cause that God hath
thus dejected us? If I shall say our sins and former unthankfulness
to God, I speak the truth. But yet I spake more generallie than
necessity required: for when the sins of men are rebuked in general,
seldom it is that man descendeth within himself, accusing and
damning in himself that which most displeaseth God."

To this particular self-examination he then leads his hearers in order
that they may not take refuge in generalities, but that each man may
examine himself. "I will divide our whole company," he says, "into two
sorts of men. The one, those who have been attached to the cause from
the beginning; the other, recent converts."

"Let us begin at ourselves who longest has continued in this battle.
When we were a few in number, in comparison with our enemies