The priest, too, is a kind of prophet. In him, also, there is required to be a light of inspiration. He presides over the worship of the people, and is the uniter of them with the unseen Holy. He is their spiritual captain, as the prophet is their spiritual king with many captains.
Luther and Knox were by express vocation priests, yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in their historical character as reformers. The battling reformer is from time to time a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting; the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions, and need to be shaken off and left behind us—a business often of enormous difficulty.
We are to consider Luther as an idol-breaker, a bringer back of men to reality, for that is the function of great men and teachers. Thus it was that Luther said to the Pope, "This thing of yours that you call a pardon of sins, is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It, and so much like it, is nothing else. God alone can pardon sins. God's Church is not a semblance, Heaven and Hell are not semblances. Standing on this, I, a poor German monk, am stronger than you all."
The most interesting phase which the Reformation anywhere assumes is that of Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterianism and National Church among the Scotch, and has produced in the world very notable fruit. Knox was the chief priest and founder of that faith which became the faith of Scotland, of New England, of Oliver Cromwell; and that which Knox did for his nation we may really call a resurrection as from death. The people began to live. Scotch literature and thought, Scotch industry, 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.
Knox could not live but by fact. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic. We find in Knox a good, honest, intellectual talent, no transcendent one; he was a narrow, inconsiderable man as compared with Luther; but in heartfelt, instinctive adherence to truth, in real sincerity, he has no superior. His heart is of the true prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Earl of Morton, at his grave, "who never feared the face of man."
V.—The Hero as Man of Letters
The hero as man of letters is a new and singular phenomenon. Living in his squalid garret and rusty coat; ruling from his grave after death whole nations and generations; he must be regarded as our most important modern person. Such as he may be, he is the soul of all. Intrinsically it is the same function which the old generations named a prophet, priest, or divinity for doing.
The three great prophets of the eighteenth century, that singular age of scepticism, were Johnson, Rousseau, and Burns; they were not, indeed, heroic bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it, struggling under mountains of impediment.
As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a prophet. The highest gospel he preached was a kind of moral prudence, coupled with this other great gospel, "Clear your mind of cant!" These two things, joined together, were, perhaps, the greatest gospel that was possible at that time.