But Melville, now coming forward, and pushing the others aside, said:

"This work and judgment of God, although it be secret, yet ought to be done with greater gravity."

Then, putting his sword to Beaton's throat, he said:

"Repent thee of thy wicked life, but especially of the shedding of the blood of that instrument of God, Mr. George Wishart, which, albeit the flames of fire consumed before men, yet cries it with a vengeance upon thee, and we from God are sent to revenge it. I protest that neither hatred of thy person, nor love of thy riches, nor fear of any trouble thou couldst have done me in particular, moved or move me to strike thee, but only because thou hast been and remainest an obstinate enemy to Christ Jesus and his Holy Evangel." He then thrust him through, the wretched man exclaiming, "I am a priest--I am a priest! Fie, fie!-all is gone!"

They then carried his body to the same window whence he had gazed upon the burning Wishart, and hung it out before the gaze of the crowd below.

Thus was the earth rid of one of the multitude of treacherous, malicious, grossly licentious and

mercilessly cruel ecclesiastics with which Romanism has cursed it.

Soon after, a party of gentlemen who favoured the Reformation took possession of the castle and resisted a siege conducted by the regent, and compelled the besiegers to make terms with them. About the beginning of April JOHN KNOX entered the castle.

JOHN KNOX.

Carlyle, in his own way, speaks much truth respecting great men, in his discourse of their 66 manner of appearance in our world's business— how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they did. For, as I take it, universal history-the history of what man has accomplished in this world-is, at the bottom, the history of great men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and, in a wide sense, creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or attain." Machiavelli has said that the world is made up of three orders of men-those who perceive with their own powers, those who perceive when matters are explained to them, and those who do not perceive at all. The first of

these are the truly great men. They are, as it were, the concentration of the times in which they live. Certain great principles are at work in the general mind, waiting to be embodied in a creed, or in a maxim, or in a trumpet-call to action. That something is at work, that something needs to be done, all know, but just what, none can say. But here or there is a man endowed with certain gifts and with certain susceptibilities, on whom, as on a delicately-strung harp, these principles play and strike out the tune of the hour; and, when once the key-note is given, the multitudes recognize it as just what they have been waiting for, and at once join in responsive chorus. Thus great men are the heart and become the mouth of the age. And the natural and intense admiration of men for genius and bravery greatly increase at once the power and responsibility of these great leaders of their kind. The Creator endows these men with their gifts, and, when he will, he leaves them largely to the counsel of their own will to determine the side they will take in the great war between right and wrong; and here we have Beatons, Loyolas and Alvas, and there a Cromwell, a William the Silent, a Washington. And, when he will, he at once creates, endows

and appoints these leaders to office among men ; and then we have here a Moses or a David, and there a Luther and a Knox. Knox was at once a child and father of the Reformation in Scotland. Richly endowed with mental power and with keen insight both of men and of the nature of the service to which God was then calling him and his country, he was a true son of Issachar, with understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. His also was that bravery that could dare whatever duty bade.

It was, we suppose, a happy circumstance for mankind, though the source of many temporary woes to Scotland, that the throne took the lead in the opposition to the Reformation. Had it been otherwise, had the crisis found the crown solicited by inducements to rid itself of subjection to Rome and to take the whole of reform into its own hands, the result might have been a reproduction in Scotland of another Church of England-a strange conglomerate of popery and protestations, error and truth, with a "Calvinistic creed, a Romish liturgy and an Arminian clergy;" and Scottish Church history might have told the tale of other Henries and Elizabeths.

But God had ordained otherwise; and as the

Reformation found its chief enemies on and near the throne, its clear-headed, resolute-hearted Christian leaders were compelled to subject the prerogatives of royalty to a searching investigation, a rigid, manly scrutiny. If the monarch was absolute by divine right, it would be very difficult to find any other place for Christ within the realm than such as might be assigned him by the will of the reigning king-that king not unfrequently a chief favourite of Satan. But if the kingly prerogative was indeed hedged about by natural and easily defined limitations, it behooved those who contested this point with royalty to find out and exhibit those limitations, that all parties, seeing the truth, might fight in its light, and having learned, might with good conscience and hearty will assert and maintain their respective rights and discharge their several duties.

These limits of jurisdiction soon showed themselves to the eagle eye of Knox. If there ever was a true man among men Knox was he. Hume, of course, abuses him. Hallam speaks of his "sanguinary spirit." Nor can any one claim for him a courtly delicacy and refinement of manners without making him an exception to the whole character of the age in which he lived. Modes of con