Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/178

194 The noble reformer, however, was obliged to leave Einsiedeln. On New Year's day, 1519, he made his appearance as preacher in the Cathedral of Zürich. Here he explained the Gospels in their due course, comparing at the same time, their dictates with the abuses of the Catholic Church, and the deviation of its teaching from the precepts of the Scriptures. And week after week he became better understood.

It was in Zürich that the reformatory activity of Zwingli became perfected and bore fruit; but it was in his solitary cell at Einsiedeln, when he knelt and cried to God for “an understanding of the word,” that the first beams of the light of the new day arose for him. “God does not grow old!” was an expression which he often used.

The study of the Holy Scriptures in Greek produced the conversion of Zwingli. He did not in all respects take the same views as Luther. Both received from Heaven the truth which they published.

“I commenced,” wrote Zwingli, in the year 1516, “to preach the gospel at a time when the name of Luther was unknown in our country. I have not learned the Christian truth from Luther, but from the word of God. When Luther preaches Christ, he does the same that I do.—That is all!” Zwingli required, at the same time, the study of science, literature, and the classics. His heaven had room enough in it for Plato, Aristides, Camillus, and Scipio.

But Zwingli was not the only reformer in Switzerland. Luther stood alone in Germany, high above every other, and face to the colossus of the Romish church, whose great opponent he became. Luther, so