The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎624v] (139/239)

108
SCOTLAND AND JOHN KNOX.
After all has been said that truth compels us to admit, it remains
quite impossible to doubt that Knox was a great man. Only those
who know the appalling state into which the ancient Church had
fallen in Scotland can realise what Knox achieved, or understand
how great a thing it was to create an ideal, which (after all qualifi
cations have been made) was a power for purity and for righteous
ness such as Scotland had not known for many a day. How
difficult it was to insist upon that ideal can be fully appreciated
only by those who are acquainted with the character of the men
with whom Knox had to work. This is not the place in wffiich to
compare the value of the new doctrines which Knox preached to
that of the old ones which he so fiercely denounced. That he
must always be held in reverence by all who claim the name of
Protestant, is too obvious to require any elaboration. We wish
here to insist rather upon the example he gave of honest and true
devotion to a cause ; if he sinned, there was, at least, no thought of
his own aggrandisement. In the wild and wicked scramble for
Church lands in which his noble followers engaged, no acre of
Scottish soil fell to him; the loot of Cathedral and Abbey posses
sions and revenues never soiled his hands. He asked for no place
in the government of the nation; on his death his two sons w T ent
to serve the Church of England in modest fashion, for he had
made no effort to obtain for them place or power at home. Above
all, he was a man. “ The voyce of one man,” wrote Randolph,
‘ ‘ is able in one hour to putt more lyf in us than fyve hundredth
trumpettes continually blustering.” It was well for Scotland that
that voice had not been silenced by Mary Tudor. It would be
well to-day if men were willing to listen to that voice as it really
sounded, and to learn from it what Knox has told us about himself.
The time may be distant when popular opinion in Scotland will
share a virtue ascribed to Knox by one who knew him—that of
not disdaining to hear better reasons nor being loth to be taught in
anything he misseth. Not till it arrives can we achieve a true
sense of proportion and a fair appreciation of the complex char
acter of John Knox. But, at so long a distance from the day
when with dead hand but glad heart ” he laid himself down, we
may gladly acknowledge that it is with true instinct that Scotland
has looked to him as the representative of the ideals of her later
centuries, and in some sense as the creator of modern Scotland.
We are brought back to the words in which his grateful
countiymen wrote of Judas Maccabeus : “ He w T as ever the chief
defendei of the citizens both in body and mind, and he continued
his love to his countrymen all his life.”
Robert S. Rait.