anything more to do with these legends. They are puerile superstitions, and are no better than brimstone fit to kindle the fire of idolatry. They cause us to idolize the saints, and to treat our Lord with neglect. They are too paltry fables to keep us from the sublime word of God."

'How came you to know this so suddenly?”

"By one of those beams of light, which come from heaven through the Holy Scriptures all at once, I was struck with the impiety of addressing prayers to the saints. Go, dear William, to the Bible."

Lefevre had taken a long and sure step. The Reformation began in France at the moment when he laid aside the wondrous tales of the monks, and put his hand on the word of God, fully resolved to interpret all other things by it. Not the Breviary, but the Bible should henceforth be his authority. He studied the epistles of Paul, and light beamed on his mind; life was breathed into his heart. By the press, and from the pulpit, he began to teach men, and "open unto them the Scriptures.' That favourite idea, "God will renew the world," so often expressed to Farel, appears in his Commentary on Paul's Epistles. "God, in his great mercy, will soon revive the expiring spark in the hearts of men, so that faith and love, and a purer worship will return."

Strange doctrines were then first heard publicly in Parisstrange, because they had been lost for centuries, and yet stranger, inasmuch as they were boldly declared in the very bosom of the Sorbonne. The roof of the university had reason

*The first edition, if I mistake not, is that of 1512. The learned Simon says that 'James Lefevre deserves to be ranked among the most skilful commentators of the age.' We should give him higher praise than this."-D'Aubigne.

to cry out in astonishment, as it reëchoed the words of Lefevre. "It is God alone," he declared, "who, by his grace, through faith, justifies unto everlasting life. There is a righteousness of works, there is a righteousness of grace; the one cometh from man, the other from God; one is earthly, and passeth away, the other is heavenly, and eternal; one is the shadow and the sign, the other the light and the truth: one makes sin known to us, that we may escape death, the other reveals grace, that we may obtain life."

"What, then!" asked his hearers, as they listened to this teaching, so opposed to that of four centuries. Has any one

man ever been justified without works?"

"One! they are innumerable," replied the zealous preacher, whose young disciples were aroused and eager for the truth. "How many people of disorderly lives, who have ardently prayed for the grace of baptism, possessing faith in Christ alone, and who, if they died the moment after, have entered into the life of the blessed, and that without works!"

"If, therefore, we are not justified by works," said his listeners, "it is vain that we perform them."

"Certainly not! They are not in vain. If I hold a mirror to the sun, its image is reflected; the more I polish and clear it, the brighter is the reflection; but, if we allow it to become tarnished, the splendour of the sun is dimmed. It is the same with justification* in those who lead an impure life."

Thus taught the Paris doctor,--not altogether free from error, but so near the greatest truth which man can know, that the light was brilliant. And, while all wondered, many believed. From this time, there were two parties in the university, two

*Had he said sanctification in those who fall into inconsistencies, he would have been more nearly correct.

people in the city, and there began to be two great divisions in Christendom,—those who put works above faith, and those who put faith before works,-one people exalting the Church of Rome as the infallible teacher, and the sole dispenser of eternal life on earth; the other trusting to the word of God as the only unerring guide, and adoring Christ as the only Saviour of men.

Farel listened, as for life, to this teaching of justification by faith, and he saw, at once, in which great division to take his place. The doctrine that Jesus was the only Saviour, and one such Saviour was enough, had a weighty charm for his heart, and a glorious power over his soul. "Every objection fell, every struggle ceased. No sooner had Lefevre put forward this doctrine, than Farel embraced it with all the ardour of his nature. He had undergone labour and conflicts enough to be aware that he could not save himself." He forgot his admired saints; he lost all sympathy with the monks of the forest; he gave up all human merit; he believed in Jesus. To himself he seemed strange; it was the old Saul of Tarsus trying to make out who was the new Paul; the old Simon astonished at the new Peter. In later years he wrote,-"Lefevre extricated me from the false opinion of human merits, and taught me that everything came from grace, which I believed as soon as it was spoken." Thus, with trembling step, he took his place in the ranks of the men of faith.

The men of works were not slow to fall into line, and prepare for the contest. There were professors in the colleges and doctors of the Sorbonne ready to display their generalship; there were students ready to volunteer in defending human merit. Many, whose works were bad and disgraceful, urged, all the more zealously, their dependence in good works. They knew little of the great question, for they had passed through

no struggles of soul for life, and, instead of caring for the Bible, they had been “engaged in learning their parts in comedies, in masquerading, and in mountebank farces," so much so that parliament had summoned their teachers and forbidden "those indulgent masters to permit such dramas to be represented in their houses." In these plays the great were ridiculed, the princes caricatured, and the king attacked. The government felt obliged to interfere.

But the hand of parliament could only provoke the disorderly students. The voice of the preacher gave them a new and powerful diversion. From comedies their thoughts were turned to debates about faith and works. "Great was the uproar on the benches of the University," and every student must take sides with Lefevre or with the Sorbonne. With the latter gathered not only the young men of careless minds and evil deeds, but also many whose lives were the least at fault. The more upright class took credit to themselves for their moralities, and not willing to let the doctrine of faith condemn their "good works," they urged that James, their apostle, was opposed to Paul, the apostle of Lefevre. The gospel doctor was quicker than Luther to see how these two apostles perfectly agreed together, one looking at faith as the starting point, and the other at works as the evidence of salvation.

"Doth not St. James in his first chapter declare that every good and perfect gift cometh down from above?" asked Lefevre with the gentle persuasion of a Paul, eager to carry his hearers with him by arguments. "Now who will deny that justification is the good and perfect gift? . . . . If we see a man moving, the respiration that we perceive is to us a sign of life. Thus works are necessary, but only as signs of a living faith, which is followed by justification. Do eye-salves or lo

tions give light to the eye? No! it is the influence of the sun. Well these lotions and these eye-salves are our works. The ray that the sun darts from above is justification itself.”

Faith is the link that binds us to Christ, and yet it is more than a link, it is a life. Lefevre did not dwell on this living link alone; he went farther and exhibited Jesus in whom he believed. Like Luther he could almost paint the true cross in his eloquence, and still he felt that no tongue could do justice to the vicarious death of Christ. It was unspeakable. "Ineffable exchange," he declared, "the innocent One is condemned and the criminal acquitted: the Blessing is cursed, and he who was cursed is blessed; the Life dies, and the dead live: the Glory is covered with shame, and he who was deep in shame is covered with glory."

Then rising still higher toward that sovereign love which sent such a divine Redeemer to sinful men, and dwelling on the privilege of being loved before they loved God, and being chosen before they chose Jesus, he exhorted his hearers to live as if their lives were hid with Christ. "Oh! if men could but understand this privilege, how chastely, purely and holily would they live, and they would look upon all the glory of this world as disgrace, in comparison with that inner glory which is hidden from the eyes of the flesh."

Was this too lofty a strain of eloquence for some of his hearers on whose corrupt minds a gross darkness lay? He would give them a word in season, for the arrow of truth must prepare them for the balm of Gilead. He must not prophesy smooth things. Even the clergy of his day must be rebuked for their revels, and the sins of the times he touched with unsparing fidelity. With an indignation against sin, tempered by love for the sinner, he exclaimed, "How scandalous it is to