Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/229

 THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 219 months into perhaps the noblest flame of sacred human zeal, and brave determination to believe only what it found completely beKevable, and to defy the whole world and the devil at its back, in unsubduable defence of the same. Here is a gentleman seemingly of a quite eupeptic, not to say stolid and thoughtless frame of mind ; much at his ease in Zion, and content to take things as they come, if only they wdl let him digest his victuals, and sleep in a whole skin. Knox, . you can well perceive, in all liis writings and in all his way of life, was emphatically of Scottish build ; eminently a national specimen ; in fact what we might denominate the most Scottish of Scots, and to this day typical of all the qualities which belong nationally to the very choicest Scotsmen we have known, or had clear record of: utmost sharpness of discernment and discrimination, courage enough, and, what is still better, no particular consciousness of courage, but a readiness in all simplicity to do and dare whatsoever is commanded by the inward voice of native manhood ; on the whole a beautiful and simple but complete incompatibility with whatever is false in word or conduct; inexorable contempt and detestation