Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/179

Rh to speak, is the monarch of the spiritual revolution. But the light of the truth, and of the new life, did not proceed from Germany to Switzerland, and, from thence, to France, and from France to England and Holland. All these countries were visited at the same time by the warm, awakening, vernal wind of the same new, life-giving sun. One and the same teaching found its way, during the sixteenth century, into home and church of the most diverse peoples; the same spirit awakened every where the same faith. Throughout Switzerland, a reformer arose in almost every canton. Many leaders were seen, but not one general commander. It is like a confederacy of reformers arising in the republic of the Sworn-Confederacy, each one with his peculiar physiognomy and different influence. There are Wittenbach, Zwingli, Capito, Heller, Œcolampadius, Oswald, Myconius, Leo Juda, Farel, Calvin, in Geneva, Zürich, Berne, Neufchatel, Glarus, Basle, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, Appenzell, Gall, Graubünden.

In the German reformation there is one chief man, and one place of honor; in Switzerland the new life divides itself according to the thousand mountains. Every valley has its awakening, every Alpine height its clearing away of cloud.

The high valley of Einsiedeln had its, also. Its people might choose between light and darkness! I now return to my enlightened Benedictine monks. The valuable library of the monastery, which is strictly closed against strangers, was nevertheless