THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND.
CHAPTER I.
PREPARATION OF REFORM.
(From the 2nd Century to the Year 1522.)
History is of various kinds. It may be literary, philosophical, political, or religious; the last entering most deeply into the inmost facts of our being. The political historian will sometimes disclose the hidden mysteries of the cabinets of princes, will fathom their counsels, unveil their intrigues, and snatch their secrets from a Cæsar, a Charles V., a Napoleon, while human nature in its loftiest aspects remains inaccessible to them. The inward power of conscience, which not seldom impels a man to act in a way opposed to the rules of policy and to the requirements of self-interest, the great spiritual evolutions of humanity, the sacrifices of missionaries and of martyrs, are for them covered with a veil. It is the Gospel alone which gives us the key of these mysteries, so that there remain in history, even for the most able investigators, enigmas which appear insoluble. How is it that schemes conceived with indisputable cleverness fail? How is it that enterprises which seem insane succeed? They cannot tell. No matter, they keep on their way, they pass into other regions and leave behind them territories which have not been explored.
This is to be regretted, for the historian ought to embrace in his survey the whole field of human affairs. He must, of course, take into consideration the earthly powers which bear sway in the world, ambition, despotism, liberty; but he ought to mark also the heavenly powers which religion reveals. The living God must not be excluded from the world which He created. Man must not stop in his contemplations at elementary molecules, nor even at political influences, but must raise himself to this first principle, as Clement of Alexandria named it,—this existence, the idea of which is immediate, original, springs from no other, but is necessarily presupposed in all thought.
God, who renews the greenness of our pastures, who makes the corn come forth out of the bosom of the earth, and covers the trees with blossoms and with fruit, does not abandon the souls of men. The God of the whole visible creation is much more the light and the strength of souls, for one of these is more precious in his sight than all the universe. The Creator, who every spring brings forth out of the winter’s ice and cold a nature full of life, smiling with light and adorned with flowers, can assuredly produce, when it pleases Him, a spiritual springtide in the heart of a torpid and frozen humanity. The Divine Spirit is the sap which infuses into barren souls the vivifying juices of heaven. The world has not seldom been like a desert in which all life seemed to be extinct; and yet, in those periods apparently so arid, subterranean currents were yielding sustenance here and there to solitary plants; and at the hour fixed by Divine providence the living water has gushed forth abundantly to reanimate perishing humanity. Such was the case in the two greatest ages of history, that of the Gospel and that of the Reformation.
THE SPIRITUAL SPRINGTIDE.
Such epochs, the most important in human history, are for that reason the worthiest to be studied. The new life which sprang up in the 16th century was everywhere the same, but nevertheless it bore a certain special character in each of the countries in which it appeared; in Germany, in Switzerland, in England, in Scotland, in France, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Spain, and in other lands. At Wittenberg it was to man that Christian thought especially attached itself, to man fallen, but regenerated and justified by faith. At Geneva it was to God, to His sovereignty and His grace. In Scotland it was to Christ—Christ as expiatory victim, but above all Christ as king, who governs and keeps his people independently of human power.
Scotland is peopled by a vigorous race, vigorous in their virtues and vigorous, we may add, in their faults. Vigor is also one of the distinguishing features of Scottish Christianity, and it is this quality perhaps which led Scotland to attach itself particularly to Christ as to the king of the Church, the idea of power being always involved in the idea of king.
This country is now to be the subject of our narrative. It deserves to be so; for although of small extent and situated on the confines of the West, it has by nature and by faith a motive force which makes itself felt to the ends of the earth.