The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎618r] (126/239)

SCOTLAND AND JOHN KNOX.
When the Reverend Micah Balwhidder, minister and annalist of
the parish of Dalmailing, paid his memorable visit to Edinburgh
to preach before the Lord High Commissioner and the General
Assembly, he found the hospitalities of the capital so “ wearisome
kind ” that he “ could scarcely find time to see the Castle and
the palace of Holyrood House, and that more sanctified place where
the Maccabeus of the Kirk of Scotland, John Knox, was w T ont to
live.” In the selection of sentiments which he placed in the
mouths of his greatest characters—Mr. Balwhidder, for example,
or Mrs. Pringle—Galt’s judgment was unerring. The words dis
cover to us at once the whole attitude of the people of Scotland
towards John Knox. He is not popularly compared to Judas
Maccabeus to-day : but this is because only one fact about the
Jewish hero is realised in Scotland, namely, that his exploits are
not to be read in Church, or elsewhere. More really than Wallace
or Bruce, Knox is the popular hero; for the large majority of the
Scottish people he represents Scottish nationality and the religion
of Scotland; to his life and work are traced all that has, for the
last three centuries, been characteristic of Scottish struggle and
of Scottish victory and prosperity. This unquestioning faith in
the wisdom and goodness of John Knox does not depend upon any
widespread knowledge of the man and his times. The people of
Scotland used to be credited with a patriotism based upon a know
ledge of their past. It is a reputation that has long survived the
facts on which it depended. In simpler days, Scots boys and
girls were taught, if not the history, at all events the traditions of
their country; they could have told tales of the Black Douglas, of
the King who fell at Flodden, or of her who died at Fotheringay,
and they knew of the sorrows and sufferings of the Killing Times.
It was all, as Stevenson has said, a ” view of history "wholly artless,
a design in snow and ink—upon the one side, tender innocents with
psalms upon their lips ; upon the other, persecutors, booted, bloody-
minded, flushed with wine; ” yet it had, nevertheless, a more or
less close relation to the facts of Anglo-English warfare or of
Caroline persecution, and, in those days, it would have been
possible to find unlettered men who could distinguish between the
work of John Knox and that of Andrew Melville, and who knew
the momentous difference between the National Covenant and the
Solemn League. To-day this kind of knowledge is the possession
of the few who care about Scottish story ; some of the popular works