most gladly await upon your Grace's pleasure, time, and place. But to wait upon your chamber door, or elsewhere, and then to have no further liberty than to whisper my mind in your Grace's ear, or to tell you what others think and speak of you, neither will my conscience nor the vocation whereto God hath called me to suffer it. For albeit at your Grace's commandment. I am here now, I cannot tell what other men shall judge of me, when they learn that at this time of day I am absent from my book, and waiting upon the Court." "You will not always be at your book!" she flung back, as she peremptorily turned away. But the great battle between them was on the occasion of his preaching against the Queen's marriage, prophesying woe to the country if it installed a Papist as its ruling head. She sent for him in the most vehement fume, declaring that never prince was treated as she was. "I have borne with you," she cried, "in all your rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my uncles; yea I have sought your favours by all possible means. I offered unto you presence and audience whensoever it pleased you to admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God, I shall be once revenged!" and then suddenly she burst into hysterical tears, and sobbed and sobbed, and sobbed, so that her private page could scarcely be quick enough with handkerchiefs for her eyes. Knox replied when his voice could be heard that he was sent to preach the Evangel of Jesus Christ, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth,-to all of which the Queen could only wildly cry: "But what have ye to do with my marriage? What have ye to do with my marriage? Or what are ye within this commonwealth?" and sob and cry again. Knox called this frenzied weeping of the Queen “inordinate passion," but it was more than this. It was frail, finite mortality stirred to its depths by sharp contact with Principle and Law. It was human sense rocking backwards and forwards, terrified at the realization of its own powerlessness in the presence of the truth voiced with inexorable, pitiless force. It was a fitful, feeble, little gleam of good, struggling helplessly with desperate destiny dragging her to an unknown doom. This man who would not leave her alone, whom she could not leave alone, had knowledge that would save her, but she dared not trust. that salvation, for as yet she knew not clearly from what it was she needed to be saved. He at once attracted and repelled her. There was nothing in this masterful preacher's religion to appeal to her heart or her fancy, but there was a terrible power in it; there was a force that shattered her most delicate dreams of pleasure and fortune: it would spy out and circumvent her most secretly planned actions. She wished to be just, but she wanted most to be happy and above all to be loved. This religion lacerated her pride, and tormented her soul-so, she wept on and on. Poor, proud, distracted Mary, Queen of Scots. She felt as one poetess has expressed it, that "Sometimes horror chills our blood To be so near such mystic things; All this while John Knox stood still, perfectly motionless and still without any alteration of countenance. Finally he said: "Madam, I speak in God's presence. I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures . . . see *Elizabeth Barrett Browning. ing, however, that I have offered you no just occasion to be offended, but have spoken the truth as my vocation craves of me, I must sustain your Majesty's tears, albeit unwillingly, rather than dare hurt my conscience, or betray my commonwealth through my silence." Nevertheless the Queen never forgave him; for when she contrived to have him brought to trial for High Treason and arrived in great pomp to judge the case, with the Master of Maxwell on one arm of her chair and Secretary Lethington on the other, she gave a preliminary sally of laughter and cried, "Yon man gared me greet (made me weep), and grat never tear himself: I will see if I can gar him greet." They succeeded in their trial about as well as if Saul had accused Samuel of high treason. Neither the Queen nor Lethington were any match for John Knox; his rhetoric and his learning, his powers of argument and his knowledge of the Bible from cover to cover, made him impervious to every sling and arrow of his enemies. By votes of the greater part of the nobility he was acquitted, and returned in peace to his house. There was neither dancing nor fiddling at the Court that night. Bitter disappointment reigned in the Queen's heart, wounded pride, and baffled revenge. "Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works," and human nature beat in vain against a granite-loyalty that served Principle rather than Princes. "What have ye to do with my marriage?" No wonder Mary asked that question, stirred and shaken to the depths of her being; for had she but known it, her own son that was to be born of this very marriage was the future King of England and Scotland, James I, under whose patronage the great "authorised version" of the Bible was made. This great English Bible, published in 1611, remains to this day the sacred scriptures of the English-speaking peoples all over the world. For beauty of language and diction it has never been excelled. When Mrs. Eddy was asked if the Lesson Sermons could not be made up from the Bible and Science and Health, and printed in convenient form for the use of the readers before the congregation, she would not allow it to be done. The verses chosen for each lesson must be read from the King James Bible. The first religious tenet of the Christian Science Church is: "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." (Science and Health, p. 497.) and in this tenet speaks the true daughter of the Scottish Reformation. John Knox established Protestantism in Scotland on this very same rock, for chapter 19 of his Confession affirms: "As we believe and confess the Scriptures of God sufficient to instruct and make the man of God perfect, so do we affirm and avow the authority of the same to be of God, and neither to depend on men nor angels." While in a previous page he emphatically says, "and such Kirks, we the inhabitants of the realm of Scotland, professors of Christ Jesus, confess us to have in our cities, towns, and places reformed; for the doctrine taught in our Kirks is contained in the written Word of God, to wit in the books of the Old and New Testaments." Of these Testaments Mrs. Eddy writes: "The Scriptures are very sacred. Our aim must be to have them understood spiritually, for only by this understanding can truth be gained. . . . It is this ... spiritual perception of Scripture, which lifts humanity out of disease and death and inspires faith." (Science and Health, p. 547.) Indeed, as one studies the personality of these two great religious reformers, separated as they are by nearly three centuries, a remarkable intellectual and spiritual kinship between them is readily discerned. Although Mrs. Eddy was as loving and tender as John Knox was stern and severe, yet there is in the conception of Church Government as they both gave it, a similarity that is quite remarkable. Both have the same poise and sanity of mind when applying their powers to regulating human affairs.. Both show the same wise discrimination and lofty morale in dealing with social life and its necessities. There is with both the same respect for law and government, for the office of Magistrates, Judges, Princes, and all administrators, together with an equal insistence on liberty of conscience. Neither would counsel disobedience to any lawfully constituted governor, but should such a one fail to fulfil the duties and responsibilities of his or her high office, then they would demand instant displacement, and the appointment of a more worthy representative. The following passage "of General Councils, of their Power, Authority, and causes of their convention" is characteristic of Knox's attitude of mind towards organization. "As we do not rashly condemn that which godly men assembled together in General Council lawfully gathered have approved unto us; so without just examination dare we not receive whatsoever is obtrused unto men, under the name of General Councils. For plain it is, that as they were men, so have some of them manifestly erred, and that in matters of great weight and importance. So far, then, as the Council proveth the determination and |