FEARLESSNESS OF JOHN KNOX.
When Lord Darnley, in 1565, had married Mary Queen of Scots, he was prevailed on by his friends to go and hear Knox preach, in the hope that thereby he might conciliate the stem moralist and outspoken minister. But Knox seized the occasion to declaim even more vehemently against the government of wicked princes, who, for the sins of the people, are sent as tyrants and scourges to torment them. Darnley complained to the Council of the insult; and the bold preacher was forbidden the use of his pulpit for several days. Robertson thus remarks on his character:—"Rigid and uncomplying himself, he showed no regard to the infirmities of others. Regardless of the distinctions of rank and character, he uttered his admonitions with acrimony and vehemence, more apt to irritate than to reclaim. Those very qualities, however, which now render his character less amiable, fitted him to be the instrument of Providence for advancing the Reformation among a fierce people, and enabled him to face dangers, and to surmount opposition, from which a person of a more gentle spirit would have been apt to shrink back." The shortest and perhaps the best funeral oration extant, is that pronounced by the Earl of Morton over the grave of Knox: "Here lies he who never feared the face of man."
WESLEY AND BEAU NASH.
Wesley once preaching at Bath, Beau Nash entered the room, came close up to the preacher, and demanded by what authority he was acting? Wesley answered, "By the authority of Jesus Christ, conveyed to me by the present Archbishop of Canterbury, when he laid his hands upon me and said, 'Take thou authority to preach the gospel.'" Nash then affirmed that he was acting contrary to the law. "Besides," said he, "your preaching frightens people out of their wits." "Sir," replied Wesley, "did you ever hear me preach?" "No," said the master of the ceremonies. "How, then, can you judge of what you have never heard?" "By common report," said Nash. "Sir," retorted Wesley, "is not your name Nash? I dare not judge of you by common report; I think it not enough to judge by." Nash, right or wrong as to the extravagances of the Methodists, was certainly proclaiming his opinions in the wrong place; and when he desired to know what the people came there for, one of the company cried out: "Let an old woman answer him. You, Mr. Nash, take care of your body, we take care of our souls, and for the food of our souls we come here." Nash found himself so different a man in the meeting-house, to what he was in the pump-room or the assembly, that he thought it best to withdraw.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE.
In Silliman's Travels it is related that during the Peace of Amiens, in 1801-2, a committee of English gentlemen went over to Paris for the purpose of taking measures to supply the French with the Bible in their own language. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Hardcastle, subsequently gave the assurance that the fact which was published was literally true—that they searched Paris for several days before a single Bible could be found.
EDWARD JENNER, THE DISCOVERER OF VACCINATION.
It is to a "country doctor" that England and the world owe one of the greatest benefits that modern medical science has conferred on the race, in the practice of vaccination. The youngest son of a Gloucestershire clergyman, Edward Jenner was placed, about 1763, as apprentice to a surgeon at Sodbury; and it was there, it is stated, that first the possibility of arresting the then dreaded and dreadful ravages of small-pox entered his mind. He accidentally learned, from the conversation of a young serving woman—who boasted that she was safe from that disease because she had had "cow-pox"—that among servants in the country there prevailed a belief that the small-pox could not attack any one into whose system had been absorbed the virus from a diseased cow. From that time Jenner never lost sight of the idea. He spent some time in London finishing his studies, under the prelections of John Hunter; and then he settled, for life as it proved, at Berkeley, in Gloucestershire. Pursuing inquiries and experiments on the subject of vaccination, he established the efficacy of the rural system of inducing "cow-pox" as a preventive against small-pox; which had originated by inoculation, accidental or designed, with some of the matter afforded by a peculiar disease of the udder of a cow, and which could be communicated by inoculation from one human being to another with the same preventive efficacy. In 1796, a friend of Jenner's, to whom he had communicated the results of his inquiry—Mr. Cline, surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital—first employed vaccination in London; and the practice was speedily adopted in the army and navy, the Government bestowing on Jenner honours and rewards, and the University of Oxford conferring on him the diploma of Doctor of Medicine. Just, however, as Blackmore and Tanner had vehemently opposed inoculation, so did many members of the Faculty, foremost among them Moseley, Birch, and Woodville, oppose the new system of vaccination. The London mob were asked and induced to believe that if they submitted to vaccination they were in jeopardy of being converted into members of the canine species, and that the operation would infallibly be followed by the development of horns, and tail, and "thick natural fell" of hair. A child was said to have never ceased, since he received the matter into his system, to run about on all fours and imitate the lowing of a bull! In a caricature Jenner was mounted on a cow. Moseley indited verses, of which this is a sample:—