Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-09-24

for monument is being raised. There is
an Oil portrait hanging in the public IL
brary, said to have been painted from life,
and l send you copy; and little pen-and-
ink sketch on the fly leaf of a book in the
same library made by an artist of his day.
The only act of remembrance, the only ap-
parent honor that the people of Geneva
have bestowed upon him, is to give his
name to a narrow little street. Rue de
Calvin is Of their humblest streets
however, and would not have borne his
name but for the fact that he lived there
Where Calvin Preached.
Any cabman will take you to the church
where he used to preach. and 1t is an i'm
posing ediflce. A bright young woman.
daughter of the vsrger, will tell you all
about 1t, and will show you a chair in
which he sat in the pulpit before and after
his sermons. The interior Of the church
Is as cold and forbidding as his theology,
and the seats are as hard and straight as
his life. On the other side of the street
is a little church in which John Knox, the
great Scotch reformer, preached for sew
eral years, and that fact is recorded upon
a marble tablet imbedded in the walls. The
municipal officials have marked all histori-
cal houses in a similar manner There Is
another tablet a few doors distant which
tells you that List, the great pianist,
lived there.
Calvin resided only few steps from his
church The tablet says that his home was
torn down In 1905, and the present building
was erected the following year upon the
same site, with the same ma terials. 1t is
now occupied by the bureau de salubrite,"
the inspector of milk meats, fish and veg
etables Francis Grufrat, dealer in com
bustibles en- gros ct detail" lives next
door, which is quite appropriate. for Cal
vim himself was a wholesale dealer in COM
bustibeS OF the very fiercest quality.
Although he was a very unlOvely charac-
ter, there are little touches of pathos here
and there in his life and the amount of
work that he accomplished shows almost
Incredible versatility and industry. It has
been declared that his record Of intellectual
activity is unsurpassed by that of any his
torlcal parsonage, and he has undoubtedly
exercised greater influence upon the
morals and intellectual progress OF his age
without referring to his theological views)
than any other man who ever lived. George
Bancroft eulogizes Calvin the father of
popular education and the inventor of free
schools, and says that his influence directly
created the North American colonies.
1.-The Pilgrims of Plymouth he says.
were Calvnists. The best influences in
South Carolina came from the Calvinists of
France. William Penn was the disciple of
the Huguenots. The ships that first brought
colonists to Manhattan were filled with CAL
vnistS.'
Burning Of Servetus.
And yet there are some events in his life
that make you shudder. 1 believe he Is the
only man who ever sent an intimate friend
to the stake because they differed on points
of theology. Concerning this friend he
wrote:
He CServetus) offers to come hither If 1t
be agreeable to me. But 1 am unwilling to
pledge my word for his safety, for, If he
does come and my authority be Of any
avail, l shall never suffer him to depart
alive"
Servetus came; he was Immediately ar
rested by order of Calvin, charged with re-
tecting the divinity of the Trinity, and with
declaring that all creatures are of the
substance of God, and that God is in all
things" Such heresy was too dangerous to
be tolerated, and on the 9th of October,
1853, Servetus was burned at the stake in
the Place de Champel, in the center of
Geneva.
We wonder If his ghost did not haunt
Calvin the rest of his life. We wonder II
remorse was not the chief cause Of Calvin's
broken health, but he never admitted his
error. He lived eleven years longer. a frail
invalid, but with nerve enough to domineer
over an entire province, and sufficient
strength to work eighteen and twenty hours
peacefully and cheerfully, like saint, with
q prayer on his lips, surrounded by his
friends and disciples; and he dictated a let
ter an hour before he breathed his last.
Calvin's Career.
Calvin was Frenchman, you know.
born in the town of Noyon. educated at the
came q wandering follower Of Martin Luz
Their, until Dr. Warel, leader of the Swiss
reformation, induced him to settle in Ge-
neva in 1886, where he soon became pastor
OF the largest church, and acquired an in
1uence that extended throughout all Eu-
rope and Is felt even to the present day. He
not only reorganized the church, but the