Three Pictures on My Study-Wall
Three pictures look down upon me this morning from my study-wall. One of them is of the man whose name makes the “high-water mark” to which pulpit power has attained in this XlXth century. Looking at that lofty mountain of a brow, we do not wonder that great senators and statesmen crowded in to hear him preach, and that Canning, after hearing one of his magnificent discourses, exclaimed, “The tartan beats us all.” Chalmers’s eyes in this portrait look slumberous — like dull furnaces that wait to be kindled. His broad, benign face has a fine leisurely look; the mouth is as obstinate as Washington’s. Chalmers’s great pulpit feat was his “Astronomical Discourses;” his great
1>7* feat in philanthropy was in bringing the Gospel to the outcast poor by means of kirk-visitation and ragged-schools: his feat of ecclesiastical generalship was in launching and conducting to victorious success the Free Church of Scotland. When an enthusiastic Scotchman had finished a glowing eulogy of the pulpit-masters of his Church, some one said, “What about Chalmers?” “Ah,” replied the Scotchman, “Chalmers is the mon that tak’s the breath oot 0’ ye.” On the opposite wall hangs the other illustrious Caledonian of this century. Look at that shaggy pow — that wrinkled forehead scarred with mental toil — those grizzly whiskers hanging over the rumpled shirt-collar — that stone-mason’s jacket wrapping as true a gentleman as God ever made — look at the gnarled and knotty head, so top-heavy with brains that it hangs over toward the right shoulder, and you will see how Hugh Miller looked when he wrote the “Old Red Sandstone.” Those who have known Miller only as the profound geologist, will see him in a new and equally striking character if they will get the lately published volume of splendid and elaborate “Essays, Historical and Critical,”
which he wrote while editor of The Edinburgh Witness. Every line cost him hard labor; for he wrote very much as he hammered granite in the quarries of Cromarty. To Hugh Miller belongs the credit of handling the most vigorous and graceful pen ever wielded by a practical mechanic. These brilliant essays are selected out of one thousand which he contributed to The Witness; and each one is as finished as one of Palmer’s marbles! As I look at that toppling tun of brain, overhung with the shaggy forest of hair, I can understand the source of these crystal streams of thought; they are the mountain streams like those which flow down Ben Lomond. I would not exchange those two portraits of Scotland’s kings for any single picture in the Academy of Design; for they are a gift from the Dr. John Brown who gave the world “Rab and his Friends.”
Between Chalmers and Miller hangs a greater than either — the man in fact, who helped to make them both. The picture represents a thin, emaciated countenance, of which nothing scarcely remains but eyes, brow, and long beard; the quaint form is propped up with pillows; the bloodless hand is laid on an open Bible. A group of bearded men in ruffs and robes are gathered around his dying bed. They are the Syndics of Geneva assembled to hear the last words of John Calvin. The patriarch in the foreground is Far el, now eighty years old — who has journeyed from Neufchatel to get one more grasp of the hand that wrote those fifty volumes of theology that will outlast the stars. Calvin looks as old as he ;,for into the fifty -five years of his life was compressed the work of a score of giants, and a host of diseases within and foes without have worn him to a skeleton. Little children, as they look at that ghastly face, would at first be repelled with fear. But they would not have drawn back from the original. Calvin, with all his stern theology, and his vehement hatred for tyranny and imposture and superstition, had a warm, fervid heart beating under the unsubduable granite of his will. He was a lovable man. His wife found a warm southerly exposure on one side of his Alpine mind, where her affection grew like the soft blue flowers that grow in the green clefts of the base of Mont Blanc. He returned Luther’s affection cordially.
Melancthon often said to him that he” wished he could only lay his weary head upon that faithful heart and die there. When Idelette de Bures, his wife, was laid in her grave, his grief was overwhelming, and he confesses that it required the strongest effort to keep him from sinking. The common people of Geneva so loved him that, on his return from unjust banishment, they welcomed him back with shouts of acclamation; and to-day, if the precise place in which his ashes sleep were known, the best living men of Geneva would build a monument above his dust such as Oxford built for her sainted martyrs, and Edinburgh for Walter Scott.
Everything that can be known about Calvin the world is anxious to hear. Presbyterians cherish his very shoe-lachet. He not only organized their church-system, but became the great organizing spirit of the Reformed churches throughout Europe. For the majestic doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty, Calvin did what Lord Bacon did for the philosophy of Induction. For republican freedom he did a work that made Geneva not only the freest but the most virtuous city on the Continent. It was not only Edwards who built on foundations which Calvin had laid; but in building up free commonwealths, John Hampden, William the Silent, and George Washington reared on those same foundations too. It is not too much to say that John Calvin underlies not only all the sound Biblical theology, but all the republican liberty upon the globe. Even the most sagacious Romanists confess that his immortal Institutes constitute “the Koran, or rather the Talmud of the Protestant heresy.”
We therefore thank Dr. Merle D’Aubigne that he has found time in his sweet villa on the banks of Lake Leman to give the wt)rld his two late superb volumes on “The History of the Reformation in the times of Calvin.” We thank, too, those loyal Scottish- Americans’ the Carter Brothers, that they have given us the volumes in such an attractive dress, and under an arrangement which will insure to its eloquent author a share in the pecuniary profits of hia toil. These books read like a romance. No man but a Christian and a Frenchman could have written them. The whole spirit of the Reformation-period is photographed on these sparkling pages; we catch a most beautiful portrait of that sweet angel of the churches, Mary of Alencon; while through the whole work we follow the Genevan hero as we follow William of Nassau through Motley’s charming history of the Dutch Republic.
On the record of Calvin’s conversion D’Aubigne’s volumes throw new light. That conversion was sudden and decisive. At the beginning of the year 1527, the youthful Calvin was so obstinately enslaved to Popery that it seemed impossible that his feet should ever be plucked out of the mire. Before the year closed, he was emancipated into the liberty of the sons of God. His cousin, Robert Olivetan, began the work. The fires of Romish persecution warmed the seeds of truth in his heart. But God’s Spirit wrought the transformation. “When I was the obstinate slave of Popish superstition,” says Calvin himself, “and it seemed impossible to drag me out of the deep mire, God by a sudden conversion subdued me, and made my heart obedient to his Word.” When a city is taken, a sudden assault may place the conquering flag on the ramparts, yet for many months that conqueror may have been battering at the walls. The truth by which Calvin’s strongly- fortified heart was stormed and carried by the Spirit was the simple, irresistible truth that Jesus Christ died to save sinners.
In these days of tremendous battles for God’s Right against the Devil’s Wrong, every pastor and every patriot may catch new inspiration from the heroic story of John Calvin’s stern victorious fight for truth and liberty. D’Aubigne’s book has nerved me anew to pray and hope for our country’s deliverance; and as I look up at the central figure on my study walls, I am thankful to believe with D’Aubigne that “the greatest of modern republics may boast as its father the valiant Reformer on the shores of Lake Leman.”