Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the separation. But the old man, who had seen the beginning of the great reformer's ministry at Geneva, saw with distress the end of it, and nobly wished to die in his stead. And when the dying Calvin pointed with failing hand to "the archives of the correspondence that, during a quarter of a century, he had kept up with the most illustrious personages of Europe," did he not think of William Farel as his "sound-hearted brother and matchless friend," who had morally forced him to labour in Geneva? To "the good man Master William” he wrote the last letter of this collection and, perhaps, of his life, giving him one more adieu before he went to God.

The man, who thus was loved, was surely worthy of those epithets of endearment which Calvin lavished upon no other friend. The great theologian and the great missionary of the sixteenth century were thus heart and hand together, and after death their names should not be separated. If, in our day, the advocate of the richest and grandest theology is called a "Calvinist," there is an equal propriety in calling the ardent missionary of our day, a Farellian. When the Calvinistic churches are Farellike in their labours, bright will be the dawn of the hastening millennium.

To understand the Reformation in France and Switzerland, one needs to know William Farel: and to know him there must be some attention paid to his times and

contemporaries. His biography is a history. In this work he does not stand forth alone, for along with him are presented some of his partners in labours, in perils and in sufferings. If, in this volume, the reader shall find any refreshment for his faith, or stimulus to his zeal, or renewed reason for confidence in the final victory of the gospel over all perverseness of religion, the author's present effort will not be in vain. · W. M. B.

TRENTON, N. J.

[ocr errors]
« AnteriorContinuar »