Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/15

 that there is any difference between lies and truth—the slavish form of belief called Calvinism, in one or other of its many forms, has borne ever an inflexible front to illusion and mendacity, and has preferred rather to be ground to powder like flint than to bend before violence or melt under enervating temptation.

It is enough to mention the name of William the Silent, of Luther—for on the points of which I am speaking Luther was one with Calvin—of your own Knox and Andrew Melville and the Regent Murray, of Coligny, of our English Cromwell, of Milton, of John Bunyan. These were men possessed of all the qualities which give nobility and grandeur to human nature—men whose life was as upright as their intellect was commanding and their public aims untainted with selfishness; unalterably just where duty required them to be stern, but with the tenderness of a woman in their hearts; frank, true, cheerful, humorous, as unlike sour fanatics as it is possible to imagine anyone, and able in some way to sound the keynote to which every brave and faithful heart in Europe instinctively vibrated.

This is the problem. Grapes do not grow on bramble-bushes. Illustrious natures do not form themselves upon narrow and cruel theories. Spiritual life is full of apparent paradoxes. When St. Patrick preached the Gospel on Tarah hill to Leoghaire, the Irish king, the Druids and the wise men of Ireland shook their heads. 'Why,' asked the king, 'does what the cleric preaches seem so dangerous to you?'