JOHN KNOX: SCOTLAND’S MIGHTIEST SON
Scotland began the active and aggressive Protestantism of Europe. The
people, taught by John Knox, led the nations in taking radical measures
to apply the principles of democracy, developed by George Buchanan, to
the government of the Christian Church. In a word, the Scottish people,
and not their kings or nobles, reformed religion and were leaders in
social reconstruction.
John Knox would not have been a Scotsman if he had not, when his mind
had been changed through the study of the Bible and the writings of
Augustine and Jerome, gone at once to the extreme of opposition. He
preached first to the soldiers in the garrisons of St. Andrews. Taken
prisoner by the French fleet, he spent nineteen months as a galley
slave, often in irons and treated cruelly. Meanwhile Providence shaped
events that were to influence America and her future.
It seems strange to us of to-day to think that any one in colonial
America should ever have had a fear of sharing a fate like that of John
Knox in the French galleys; yet from the time of the first colonies of
French Huguenots in Florida, down to the assertion, by Jacob Leisler,
of the people’s rights in New York, there were tens of thousands among
the several nationalities that made up the American people who felt
this danger, from the Bourbons of France or Spain, as a quite possible
reality. History makes strange somersaults. In seeking our American
freedom in the Revolution, we were militarily aided by the former
country and were in alliance with the latter.
Knox, the one man able to stand up against Queen Mary, was no amateur
statesman or ecclesiastic. Besides his education in the University
of Glasgow and the regular training in the priesthood, he had spent
five years as preacher, pastor, and pioneer of English Puritanism in
England,--at Berwick, at Newcastle, and in London,--where he married
Marjorie Bowes and by her had two sons. He was elected one of the six
chaplains of Edward VI and was consulted about the Anglican Articles
of Religion, and the Revision of the Liturgy. The king offered him the
bishopric of Rochester, but he declined for reasons of conscience, not
only because he was opposed to the secular business of such offices,
but chiefly because in his heart he believed, like the Independents, in
what our own Rufus Choate called “a church without a bishop and a state
without a king.”
When the English Queen called “Bloody Mary” came to the throne and
the Reformation seemed like a sinking ship, Knox was the last to leave
the deck, yielding only to the urgency of his friends. Except more
than half a year in Scotland, he spent five years on the Continent. In
Geneva, while sitting at the feet of John Calvin,--that great champion
of democracy and of republican government, and the real father of the
public school system,--he became pastor of a church of English exiles
there, and had a hand in making the Geneva version of the Bible.
He who, whether of the old faith or the new, or an adherent of any
church or religion, whether Jewish, Mahometan, Buddhist, or Christian,
looks only on that side which agrees or disagrees with his own opinions
and cannot see beyond, misses most of the lessons of history. Whether
we love or hate John Knox, we cannot shut our eyes to what he did, both
for popular education and to give Great Britain linguistic unity. He
made English the language of literary and scholarly Scotland. It was
his thorough knowledge of the English language and his choice and use
of it that regulated Scottish speech and paved the way for the oblivion
of the Gaelic. In both the written and the spoken form of the English
language, he followed the best standards.
When Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, she refused Knox passage
through her dominions. He had already published his “First Blast of
the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” which was
aimed at the misgovernment of two females, Bloody Mary of England and
Mary Queen of Scots. For this, Elizabeth never forgave him. Those who
insist, according to notions that have been set forth in literary form,
that Elizabeth was only a male creature, a mere man in disguise, may
perhaps find their contention weakened by the treatment of Knox by
Queen Bess.
Knox is even less likely to be forgiven in an era of suffragettes and
agitation of votes for women. Yet it must be remembered that while
Knox was too manly to retract, because he believed what he wrote
and retained his opinions on this subject to the last, yet he never
published his intended second or third “Blast,” nor ever wished, in
any way, to obstruct the path of Elizabeth. Yet at this time he was in
possible danger of the headsman’s axe.
In Scotland he married Margaret Stewart, of a noble family, and by her
had three daughters. In his native land he spent twelve years devoted
to the fierce struggle and triumph of the Reformation. On his deathbed
he could say before God and his holy angels that he had never made
merchandise of religion, never studied to please men, never indulged
his private passions, but faithfully used his talents to build up the
Church over which he was called to watch.
Dr. Philip Schaff, the greatest Church historian whom America has yet
produced and possibly its most cosmopolitan scholar, declares that Knox
“was the incarnation of all the noble and rugged energies of his nation
and age, and devoted them to the single aim of a thorough reformation
in doctrine, worship, and discipline, on the basis of the Word of God.
In genius, learning, wealth of ideas, and extent of influence, he was
inferior to Luther and Calvin, but in boldness, strength, and purity of
character, fully their equal. He was the most heroic man of a heroic
race. His fear of God made him fearless of man. Endowed with a fearless
and original intellect, he was eminently a man of action, with the
pulpit for a throne and the word for his sword.”
Carlyle wrote a monograph on the portraits of John Knox. He severely
characterizes that patriarchal, long-bearded, but stolid picture of
Knox, which has been reproduced in many books from the Geneva edition
of Beza’s “Icones.” In truth, we have often wondered why most of
the pictures of the old divines, handed down to us from the days of
cheap and rude wood-cutting and black-letter books, were not used to
frighten naughty children or placed as scarecrows in cornfields. Some
readers will recall what Hawthorne has said about some of these worthy
predecessors of ours, who lived during what another son of New England
has called “the Glacial Age.”
Carlyle believed that the Somerville portrait, “with a sharp, stern
face, high forehead, pointed beard, and large white collar was the only
probable likeness of the great reformer,” who had “a beautiful and
simple, but complete incompatibility with whatever is false, in word or
conduct, inexorable contempt and detestation of what in modern speech
is called humbug.”... He was “a most clear-cut, hardy, distinct, and
effective man; fearing God and without any other fear.”
Knox was a statesman as well as a theologian, possessing rare political
sagacity and intuitive knowledge of men. Like St. Paul and Calvin, he
was small in person and feeble in body, but irresistible in moral force.
The two sons of Knox, of his first wife, were educated at Cambridge,
but died young, without issue. Of his three daughters, one, Mrs. Welch,
gained access to the king to ask the royal permission for the return
to Scotland of her sick husband, who had been exiled because of his
Presbyterian convictions. James at last yielded, on condition that she
should persuade him to submit to the bishop; but the lady, lifting up
her apron and holding it toward the king, replied, as her father would
have done, “Please Your Majesty, I’d rather kep [receive] his head
there.”
James VI paid the brave woman’s father a high tribute when he lifted up
his hands and thanked God that the three surviving bairns of Knox were
all lasses, “for if they had been three lads,” said he, “I could never
have bruiked [enjoyed] my three kingdoms in peace.”
It is Knox himself who relates the four or five interviews which he had
with the graceful and fascinating queen, whose charms and misfortunes
will ever excite sympathy and set men, who argue from opposite
premises, keeping up their endless controversies about her.
A greater contrast of characters can hardly be paralleled in history.
The one intensely Scotch,--the right man in the right place; the other
intensely French by education and taste,--the wrong woman in the
wrong place. The one in the vigor of manhood, the other in the bloom
of youth and beauty. The one terrible in his earnestness, the other
gay and frivolous. The one intensely convinced of God’s sovereignty,
and therefore of the people’s right and duty to disobey and depose
treacherous princes; she thinking him a rude fanatic and an impertinent
rebel. He confronting a queen, whom he considered a Jezebel, unmoved by
her beauty, her smiles, or her tears; she compelled to listen to one
whom she dared not try to destroy.
It seems a very shallow judgment upon Knox, to say that he was a
“woman-hater.” On the contrary, he was a lover of good women, was
twice married, and wrote letters of comfort to his mother-in-law. The
truth is that in matters of sin and punishment, right or wrong, truth
or falsehood, there was for him neither male nor female. Men must
judge John Knox as they must judge any and all who tower above their
fellows, remembering that for what he believed to be his supreme duty
to God and his Church, he made as full a sacrifice of his own personal
consideration as of others. Carlyle declares that no matter how we may
explain these interviews with Queen Mary, “not one reader in a thousand
could be made to sympathize with or do justice to or in behalf of
Knox.” Here, more than elsewhere, Knox proves himself--and here more
than anywhere bound to be so--the Hebrew prophet in complete perfection.
One feature in the history of the Scottish conscience profoundly
affected American life in its colonial and formative stages--the
emphasis laid in the Kirk of Scotland on the National Covenants. They
were politico-religious agreements for the maintenance and defence of
certain principles and privileges. The idea was copied from Jewish
precedent. They originated in that critical period when the sacred
rights and convictions of the people were in imminent danger and when
the religious and national sentiments were inseparably blended. They
were meant to defend the doctrine and polity of the Reformed Kirk
against all hostile attempts from within and from without, and the
sentiment of those who made them was to die rather than to surrender.
One can trace in these historical movements of the Church three
periods: (1) against the Papacy (1560–1590); (2) against English
prelacy (1590–1690); and (3) against patronage, until 1875.
This custom of “covenanting” had a great influence upon those people
in Britain who so largely helped to make American freedom, the English
Puritans and the New Englanders. To-day the outstanding feature of
the independent congregations of several of the largest and most
influential bodies of Christians in America is the covenant, which is
taken on uniting with the church. The covenant, as the expression of
the individual to his Creator and Redeemer, takes the place of the
confirmation vows which are customary in the Lutheran and Anglican
churches. The “covenant” was the core of the Mayflower Compact and of
the Pilgrim Republic.
Dr. Schaff thus draws the religious map of Scotland: “The Puritans
overthrew both monarchy and prelacy, but only to be overthrown in
turn by the nemesis of history.... Romanism in the Highlands is only
an unsubdued remnant of the Middle Ages, largely reinforced by Irish
emigrants to the large cities. Episcopacy is an English exotic,
for Scotsmen educated in England and associated with the English
aristocracy. The body of the people are Presbyterians to the backbone.”
The weak point in the establishment, by Parliament in 1690, of
Presbyterianism in Scotland, was the degree of dependence upon the
State, which kept up a constant irritation, and which, from time to
time, led to the new secessions from the Established Kirk, down to
the great exodus of the Free Church in 1843. But these were not new
departures, but rather, like the sects in Russia, were simply returns
to the old landmarks.
We are often amused, when in Scotland, at the large number, some
twenty or so, of ways of being a Presbyterian. Yet, looking into these
variations of belief, we find that, whereas in other countries these
would simply be different schools or parties in the same denomination,
they gave rise in Scotland to separate ecclesiastical organizations.
Nearly all these differences turn on minor matters, such as psalmody,
patronage, and relations to civil government.
The tremendous earnestness, scrupulous conscientiousness, and
stubbornness, which clothe these minor questions with the dignity and
grandeur of fundamental principles, are highly amusing to an outsider.
Yet, in reality, they are but the shadows of a great virtue, for
religion in Scotland is something taken quite seriously. Looking more
profoundly under the surface of the wavelets of difference between the
sects, one finds that the deep-sea currents meet and flow into a unity
of resistless movement. Instead of antagonism, there is harmony; and
one must acknowledge that, in the main, Scotland is marked for a type
of manly, sturdy, God-fearing, solid, persevering type of Christianity.
While Scotsmen are musing on what is deepest in man, the fires of
devotion burn brightly and the soul utters itself in song, so that
Scotland is not least among the nations in its repertoire of either
poetry or music.
“Why are the Scotch so different from the English?” is a question often
asked. In my view the roots of the difference are best discerned in a
critical study of the Reformation. In Scotland this great movement of
the human mind was far more consistent and radical than in England,
and it therefore affected all classes more thoroughly. Even more than
a knowledge of racial elements does an examination of religion--the
deepest thing in man’s soul--explain the peculiarities of Scottish as
compared with English life, character, and temperament. England is
politically free, but is socially aristocratic. Scotland is democratic
in church and society.
These historical facts are worth remembering, especially when we
reflect that the Lowlanders were of Teutonic stock, like the English.
In England politics controlled religion. In Scotland religion
controlled politics. Hence common schools were more general. The
leading figure was neither a bishop nor a king, but a plain presbyter,
John Knox. In England, Cranmer, who may be called the father of the
English Book of Common Prayer, was timid, cautious, and conservative.
Knox, the father of the public schools of Scotland, was bold,
fearless, and uncompromising. It is true that in England royalty was
an almost resistless force, while in Scotland it was but the shadow of
feudalism. During these times that tried men’s souls, England had a
wise queen, both forceful and successful, while Scotland’s sovereign
was a woman as remarkable for her blunders as for her beauty and her
misfortunes.
Though the Scottish renascence of learning was not so noticeable as
in some other countries, yet Scotland, like the Netherlands, had its
Erasmus. George Buchanan, educated in Paris, was the tutor in Greek and
Latin to Mary Queen of Scots, and her son James. Yet, though learned,
Buchanan sympathized with the people. In his famous book, “De Jure
Regni apud Scotas,” he did but preach in advance the principles of
the American Declaration of Independence, that “governments exist for
the sake of the governed.” The paper on which this truth was printed
was burned in Oxford during the Restoration period under Charles II,
together with those works of John Milton on “Government” which fed the
faith of our fathers in the right of the people to govern themselves.
Yet no fire has ever yet been kindled which can destroy the truth on
which the Constitution of the United States rests. For the intellectual
bases of their freedom, Americans owe a debt to Scotland quite as great
as to Holland or England.