your bosom, and into the
bosom of others in whom I think the fear of God remains. Gif I had
the abilitie of bodie, I suld not have put you to the pain to the
whilk I now requyre you, that is, ance to visit me that we may
confer together on heavenly things; for into earth there is no
stability except the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under the
cross; to whose myghtie protection I heartilie commit you. Of
Edinburgh the VII. of September 1572.

JHONE KNOX.

"Haist lest ye come too lait."

He lived to induct this successor, and to hear the terrible news of that
massacre in France, which horrified all Christendom, but was of signal
good to Scotland by procuring the almost instantaneous collapse of the
party which fought for the Queen, and held the restoration of Roman
Catholic worship to be still possible. That hope died out with the first
sound of the terrible news which proved so abundantly Knox's old
assertion that in the hands of the Papists there was no safety for his
life, or the life of any who believed with him. Almost, however, before
this grain of good in the midst of so much evil became apparent the
prophet had taken his departure from this world. After the simple
ceremonial at which he had officiated, of his successor's installation,
John Knox returned home in the light of the brief November day, as
Melville had seen him, supported by the arm of his faithful servant. The
crowd which had filled St. Giles's hurrying out before him lined the
street, and watched the old man as he crept along down the hill to his
house, with many a shaken head and many a murmured blessing. In this
last scene all were unanimous; there was no one to cast a gibe or an
unkindly look upon that slow aged progress from the scene of his
greatest labours to the death-bed which awaited him. When the spectators
saw him disappear within his own door, they all knew that it was for the
last time. He lay for about a fortnight dying, seeing everybody, leaving
a charge with one, a prophecy with another, with a certain dignified
consciousness that his death should not be merely as other men's, and
that to show the reverential company of friends who went and came how to
die was the one part of his mission which had yet to be accomplished. He
ended his career on the 24th November 1572, having thus held a sort of
court of death in his chamber and said everything he had to say--dying a
teacher and prophe