John Knox

Excerpt

CHAPTER I.

EARLY LIFE AND CALL TO THE MINISTRY, 1505-1547.

On the sixteenth day of January, 1546, George Wishart delivered a remarkable sermon in the church of Haddington. Two things had combined to produce special depression in his heart. Shortly before he entered the pulpit a boy had put into his hands a letter informing him that his friends in Kyle would not be able to keep an appointment which they had made to meet him in Edinburgh. This news so saddened him that he expressed himself as "weary of the world," because he perceived that "men began to be weary of God." Nor was his despondency removed when he rose to preach, for instead of the crowds that used to assemble to hear him in that church, there were not more than a hundred persons present. It was thus made apparent to him that the efforts of his enemies for his overthrow were now to be successful, and so instead of treating the second table of the law as he had been expected to do, he poured forth a torrent of warning and denunciation, not unlike some of the fervid utterances of the old Hebrew prophets. The effect produced was all the more solemn, because he evidently felt that he was bearing his last public testimony against the evils of his times.

When he had concluded he bade his friends farewell, and to John Knox, who throughout his sojourn in Lothian had attended him, armed with a two-handed sword, as a protection against the assassination with which he had twice been threatened, and who had pressed to be allowed to accompany him to Ormiston, where he was to spend the night, he said, "Nay, return to your bairns" (pupils), "and God bless you! One is sufficient for one sacrifice."

The good man's presentiment was all too surely realized. Before midnight the house in which he slept was surrounded by a band of which the Earl of Bothwell was the head, and he was given up by his host to that nobleman, only however on the receipt of a pledge, over which "hands" were "struck," to the effect that his personal safety should be secured, and he should not be delivered into his enemies' power. But promises in these days were not of much account, and Bothwell was easily prevailed upon to give him up to Cardinal Beaton, who took him first to Edinburgh Castle, and afterwards to St. Andrews. There, in defiance of the protest of the Regent, he was hurriedly subjected to the form of a trial by the cardinal, and being, of course, found guilty, he was executed at the stake on the first of March.

Thus it is, as the body-guard of Wishart, that we get our first glimpse of John Knox in history; and very characteristic of the man this first appearance was. He comes upon the scene as unheralded as Elijah, and, like him too, he is seen from the first to be set for the defence of the truth. He was a sword-bearer all through; only when he laid aside the two-handed brand which he carried before Wishart, he took in its stead "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

Before proceeding to tell the stirring story of his life, however, it may be well to take a brief survey of the condition of Scotland at the moment when he stepped into the arena of its national strife....