a sailor who never saw his superior, and who left no peer behind. Audacious in his plans to the verge of recklessness, he provided for their execution, in study of seas to be gone over, in the gathering of all needful supplies, in care of men, with a forecasting prudence which brought wildest dreams into the realms of solid reality. Before the bar of modern international law much of his conduct cannot stand. But the sixteenth century recognized no very close relations between nations, nor scanned the rights of an alien race with the eyes of a delicate conscience. Certainly he was a great deal more than a bold and skilful freebooter. Just as clearly he was a sober Englishman, fighting after his own fashion the battles of his native land, when her rulers had not vision to see her danger nor courage to face it. But take what view you may of his striking career, now that his name and fame are so nearly forgotten, it will do us no hurt to have recalled a few of the incidents of the life of Francis Drake, heroic Devon mariner, whose name stands second to none in that brief list of seakings in which are included Van Tromp the Dutchman, Horatio Nelson, and our own Farragut, and a few beside.

JOHN CALVIN.

PRINTED IN THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER, JULY, 1860.

1. Leaders of the Reformation. (Art. John Calvin.) By John Tulloch, D.D. Boston: Gould and Lincoln. 1860.

2. The Life and Times of John Calvin. By Paul Henry, D.D. Translated from the German by Henry Stebbings, D.D., F.R.S. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers. 1854. 3. The Life of John Calvin. By Thomas H. Dyer. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1850.

4. History of the Life, Works, and Doctrines of John Calvin. By J. M. V. Audin. Translated from the French by Rev. John McGill. Baltimore: John Murphy.

5. Westminster Review. (Art. Calvin at Geneva.) No. 137, July, 1858.

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MPLE materials for a true understanding and just appreciation of the labors and merits of Calvin are now before the American reader. Henry's Life is a rich placer rather than available metal. It contains ore which will amply reward the careful miner. He has given us two huge, ill arranged, and not very readable volumes, full of the results of patient research, and bearing everywhere the marks of two very different sentiments, a genuine love of truth and a thoroughness of idolatry for his hero not common even in biographers. The result is that you have for the most part the real facts, from which you may form your own judgment; and you have also extravagant theories and

special pleadings, from whose influence you must sedulously guard yourself. Dyer's work, on the contrary, is clear, methodical, quite interesting, and, though neither so full nor profound as the former, apparently free from the influence of prejudice. Audin gives us the Romish view. His book is abusive without being vigorous; bitter and not witty; full of the parade of original research, yet carrying no conviction. Its chief value consists in furnishing an antidote to Henry's undue adulation. Tulloch's article is a popular sketch, on the whole marked by a candid and liberal spirit, but from its brevity necessarily omitting the consideration of some points of largest interest and importance. The article in the Westminster Review, entitled "Calvin at Geneva," is a very ingenious attempt to prove that Calvin's destruction of liberty at Geneva was the salvation of liberty in Western Europe. Overstating the value of the Reformer's really great influence, and apparently overlooking other forces which existed independently of him, and would have worked out their results had he never lived, the author draws from the acknowledged premise that theological dissent providentially widened into political rebellion the enormous and questionable inference that Calvin was the great bulwark of freedom, against which the waves of tyranny beat in vain. For those who wish to study Calvin's own words, we have the excellent edition of his great work, published by the Presbyterian Board of Education, and translations of all or most of his Commentaries. So that, without reference to the more minute works in French and Latin, the English reader possesses the means of forming an intelligent judgment concerning the character and work of the great Reformer.

The time of Calvin's appearance was auspicious. The Reformation had passed through its first stage. A great spiritual movement had been successfully inaugurated. What the age now wanted most was a man who could give a spiritual direction to the discordant energies and aspirations of the times. Emphatically that man was John Calvin. Differ as we may in our estimate of his character and works, no one can doubt his ability to give wide and permanent sway to his own. ideas of truth. A man bold in the fields of theological inquiry rather than in the actual conflict of man with man; by nature a recluse; his proper weapon the pen, and not the sword or the eloquent tongue; lacking the fiery courage which impelled Luther to go forward when the bravest might well draw back; lacking too the kindling warmth and genial sympathies of the Saxon, -he yet had qualities which especially fitted him to meet and satisfy the great religious demand of the age. Not indeed a great original discoverer in the realms of truth, he was gifted with a mind vigorous, precise, and logical, and he shrank from no deduction of his reason, however terrible; with a persistent will which nothing could daunt or turn; and, above all, with that power of classification which out of the fragmentary thoughts of more creative minds builds up a system logically coherent. He put in clear light, and bound together with strong bands of argument, and marshalled in battle array, the ideas which men were blindly cherishing, and which were shaking to their foundations the strong walls of Church and State; and so his private life penetrates into and becomes a part of the public life.

Of the early days of John Calvin we know but little. That he was born at Noyon, Picardy, July 10, 1509;

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that his father, Gerhard Calvin, was a man of severe character and more than ordinary probity and intelligence; that his mother was profoundly religious after the fashion of her Church, and sought zealously to impress her Catholic piety upon her son, praying with him, often beneath the open sky;- these few scanty hints comprise all we know of the parentage and childhood of this remarkable man. He owed his education to the bounty of the noble De Mommor family of Picardy. By their kindness he was saved from the hardships incident to a poor student's experience. Under their roof he was domesticated. With their sons he went to Paris to pursue his studies. From their patronage he received early preferment. At first he was destined for the Church, and indeed was appointed chaplain of the cathedral of Noyon at the early age of twelve years, and a little later began to preach, fact which he records with boyish exultation. But the portentous aspect of theological affairs and the parental ambition awakened by his extraordinary mental vigor conspired to work an entire change in his father's purpose, and in obedience to the paternal command he abruptly quitted the study of theology, and entered a school of law at Orleans. Here he made such progress in his new vocation that, when the question of the legality of the marriage of Henry VIII. was submitted to the learned bodies of Europe, Calvin, then only twenty-one, was personally consulted, and gave a written opinion favorable to the monarch's wishes. His later career as legislator at Geneva proves that this legal training was not lost upon him. Nay, the marks of that training may be found written deep in a character whose prevailing tendency and weakness was a disposition to limit the range of thought, and to confine