ry; James Watt,
David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation
acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena;
I find that without the Reformation they would not have been. Or what
of Scotland? The Puritanism of Scotland became that of England, of New
England. A tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a
universal battle and struggle over all these realms; there came out,
after fifty years' struggling, what we all call the "_Glorious_
Revolution," a _Habeas Corpus_ Act, Free Parliaments, and much else!
Alas, is it not too true, that many men in the van do always like
Russian soldiers, march into the ditch of Schweidnitz, and fill it up
with their dead bodies, that the rear may pass over them dry-shod, and
gain the honor? How many earnest, rugged Cromwells, Knoxes, poor
Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very life, in rough miry
places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured,
_bemired_--before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over
them in official pumps and silk stockings, with universal
three-times-three!

It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three
hundred years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world;
intrinsically for having been, in such a way as it was then possible to
be, the bravest of all Scotchmen! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he
could have crouched into the corner, like so many others; Scotland had
not been delivered; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one
Scotchman to whom, of all others, his country and the world owe a debt.
He has to plead that Scotland would forgive him for having been worth to
it any million "unblamable" Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared
his breast to the battle; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn
in exile, in clouds and storms; was censured, shot at through his
windows; had a right sore fighting life: if this world were his place of
recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I cannot apologize for
Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hundred and fifty years
or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details
of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory,
we, for our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controversies
enveloping the man, into the man himself.

For one thing, I will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation
was not of his se