New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1872-11-25
anancicrs by tho fate of GouId's moro gor-
geous confederate.
JOHN KNOX.

JOHN hNOA.
Our Presbyterian brethren, both here and
abroad, are celebrating the ter-centennial
anniversary of the death of John Knox.
Knox WAS one Of those men the day of
whose death il is moro fitting TO cOmmemo-
rate than that of their birth. The world re-
ioiccs, properly, year after year to remember
that at such a time some genial humorist came
into it TO rouse 1t to wholesome laughter or
tears, or a great poet TO kindlc il TO knowl-
edge of diviner life by bis Interpretation OF
the mystical meanings in Nature and In ART;
meanings which to ordinary men arc common
place or altogether unread. But the poet, the
artist, the humoIist, can hardly be said to be
dead. Their work rcnews itself for us like
the warm sunlight or healthy wind from day
to day: they have become forever part OF
the outer Nature which opened her secrets to
them: the human nature which they read as
with the eye of seer. We think of them
as living; it is their birthday alone which has
meaning for us.
But there are men, and the Scottish pioneer
of religious freedom was one OF them, WHO
serve q part in their day and generation,
which is in reality that of pioneer Their
errand in the world is hard and i'll compen-
stated; blood brain, and soul are needed Tor
its accomplishment, and given willingly; they
do not shrink from accepting it or finch from
it when begun; but they arc not sorry when
the davis work is finished and, laying down
the weapons with which they have cleared
away the worlds ignorance or error, they go
home to their rest. That is the day on which
it is fitting We should choose to rejoice with
them. They were men for a certain time and
] need, Humanity wanted them once, as pa
| tient needs the surgeons slillful knife at some
| imminent point of peril but it is not likely
that such moment will ever return, OF
that, their task being done, it will require
repetition by other and weaker hands.
No man, perhaps, has ever been more over
rated or maligned in history than John Knox
To his followers he appears later Paul, in
spired, prophetic, hearing daily the voice from
the clouds, and sent not so much to open the
Kingdom of Heaven to the Gentiles as to
exterminate them utterly, as foes to that
Kingdom. The sword of the spirit was IN his
hands a real Sheffield blade, and it was real
blood that wet it. His disciples, nowadays,
reverence perhaps o little unduly, not the
man himself, but his fierce intolerance, his
righteous wrath the sword and the blood.
To the laxer religionists, on tho contrary,
and to most weaker and moro sympathetic
natures, the grandeur of Knox's character is
bIotted over by this very cOarseness and
bigotry. They find him guilty still of battered
carvings and broken windoy :, end set down
only the priceless loss to Art, counting as
nothing the zeal and feryOr which neIved his
arm. That red mark of his rough grip upon
Mary's soft white arm is remembered against
John Knox century after century, while his
unhinching loyalty to his God, the agony OF
spirit and bodily pains through which he
served Him, are forgotten.
Looked upon at this distance from an out
side unpreiudced view, the refOImer appears
to us a man upon whom the necessity for his
especial work was pressed home hourly and
with vehemeDce on every side, social, dOmes-
tic, and religious. Nowhere could the contrast
between priestly pOmp and temporal luxury,
and the narrow, meager life OF the ignorant
Door be greater than he saw daily in the con-
diton Of the Catholic sOYereigns and court
and his own Scottish Covenanters. He was
driven by an outer necessity, az we might
say, to overthrow and humble the one and
widen and upl.ft the other. He was not an
inspired prophet or saint, but he was man
whose sincerity and integrity to whatever
PURPOSE he deemed at the time just was
unbending as iron: when the blow for freedom
or Justice was to be struck, he struck it. 1t
did not matter whether painted saint on glass
window or the head of fair woman and
Queen stood in tho way. On the other hand,
he was not the vindictive, viTulent maniac
that his enemies assert; but man with
body and temperament like that of the major
ity of Americans; small, lean man, bilious
nervous, too jealous and intent on the right,
az he knew it, to be either Just or liberal; q
man too physically thin-blOoded to be I'M
pressed by church ceremonial or the authority
of tradition any more than by glass window
or q beautiful royal woman. Besides all this,
without being revengeful, he had just that
| persistency in his few hates and fewer loves
which made the remembrance of his two years
as \ galley-slave add strength TO the blows
which he afterward struck at the power which
bound him there.
AS for the work which John Knox has done,
its effect has been as purifying and elevating
on the political and social life of Scotland
and of this country as i'll its purely religious
bearings. The stern integrity TO duty, the
necessity of incessant combat with error, gave
to Scotch peasant and New-England puritan
alike higher position among men than either
their mental power or culture would have
commanded for them, and made them efficient
workers, to O certain extent, for God.
Even in the minds of his followers, however
there must arise doubt whether the class Of
workers for God which Knox represented have