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Short Studies on Great Subjects by James Anthony Froude is one of the many works Gage uses as references in Woman, Church, and State. The book appears to be a collection of Froude's published papers. I did not read all of them. Froude appears to be a committed Christian, albeit one who would be not be considered a fire-and-brimstone, hell-and-damnation Calvinist. Rather Froude tried to use the Gospel to bring truth and justice, as he saw them, into the world.

      In Froude's first essay, "The Science of History", Froude discusses Buckle's theory of history as a science. Froude's comments are insightful both as to understanding Buckle's theory and the limitations and pitfalls of Buckle's theory, so I have made extensive extracts from this essay.

1.       "Mr. Buckle's general theory was something of this kind: When human creatures began first to look about them in the world they lived in, there seemed to be no order in any thing. Days and nights were not the same length. The air was sometimes hot and sometimes cold. Some of the stars rose and set like the sun; some were almost motionless in the sky; some described circles around a central star above the north horizon. The planets went on principles of their own; and in the elements there seemed nothing but caprice. Sun and moon would at times go out in eclipse. Sometimes the earth itself would shake under men's feet; and they could only suppose that earth and air and sky and water were inhabited and managed by creatures as wayward as themselves.

         Time went on, and the disorder began to arrange itself. Certain influences seemed beneficent to men, others malignant and destructive: and the world was supposed to be animated by good spirits and evil spirits, who were continually fighting against each other, in outward nature and in human creatures themselves. Finally, as men observed more and imagined less, these interpretations gave way also. Phenomena the most opposite in effect were seen to be the result of the same natural law. The fire did not burn the house down if the owners of it were careful, but remained on the hearth and boiled the pot; nor did it seem more inclined to burn a bad man's house down than a good man's, provided the badness did not take the form of negligence. The phenomena of nature were found for the most part to proceed in an orderly, regular way, and their variations to be such as could be counted upon. From observing the order of things, the step was easy to cause and effect. An eclipse, instead of being a sign of the anger of Heaven, was found to be the necessary and innocent result of the relative position of sun, moon, and earth. The comets became bodies in space, unrelated to the beings who had imagined that all creation was watching them and their doings. By degrees caprice, volition, all symptoms of arbitrary action, disappeared out of the universe; and almost every phenomena in earth or heaven was found attributable to some law, either understood or perceived to exist. Thus nature was reclaimed from the imagination. The first fantastic conception of things gave way before the moral; the moral in turn gave way before the natural; and at last there was left but one small tract of jungle where the theory of law had failed to penetrate, -- the doings and characters of human creatures themselves.

         There, and only there, amidst the conflicts of reason and emotion, conscience and desire, spiritual forces were still conceived to exist. Cause and effect were not traceable when there was a free volition to disturb the connection. In all other things, from a given set of conditions the consequences necessarily followed. With man, the word "law" changed its meaning and instead of a fixed order, which he could not choose but follow, it became a moral precept, which he might disobey if he dared.

         This it was which Mr. Buckle disbelieved. The economy which prevailed throughout nature, he thought it very unlikely should admit of this exception. He considered that human beings acted necessarily from the impulse of out ward circumstances upon their mental and bodily condition at any given moment. Every man, he said, acted from a motive; and his conduct was determined by the motive which affected him most powerfully. Every man naturally desires what he supposes to be good for him; but, to do well, he must know well. He will eat poison, so long as he does not know that it is poison. Let him see that it will kill him, and he will not touch it. The question was not of moral right and wrong. Once let him be thoroughly made to feel that the thing is destructive, and he will leave it alone by the law of his nature. His virtues are the result of knowledge; his faults, the necessary consequences of the want of it. A boy desires to draw. He knows nothing about it: he draws men like trees or houses, with their centre of gravity anywhere. He makes mistakes, because he knows no better. We do not blame him. Till he is better taught, he cannot help it. But his instruction begins. He arrives at straight lines; then at solids; then at curves. He learns perspective, and light and shade. He observes more accurately the forms which he wishes to represent. He perceives effects, and he perceives the means by which they are produced. He has learned what to do; and, in part, he has learned how to do it. His after-progress will depend on the amount of force which his nature possesses; but all this is as natural as the growth of an acorn. You do not preach to the acorn that it is its duty to become a large tree; you do no preach to the art-pupil that it is his duty to become a Holbein. You plant your acorn in favorable soil, where it can have light and air, and be sheltered from the wind: you remove the superfluous branches, you train the strength into the leading shoots. The acorn will then become as fine a tree as it has vital force to become. The difference between men and other things is only in the largeness and variety of man's capacities; and in this special capacity, that he alone has the power of observing the circumstances favorable to his own growth, and can apply them for himself, yet, again, with this condition, -- that he is not, as is commonly supposed, free to choose whether he will make use of these appliances or not. When e known what is good for him by the circumstances which have made him what he is.

         And what he would do, Mr. Buckle supposed that he always had done. His history has been a natural growth as much as the growth of the acorn. His improvement had followed the progress of his knowledge; and, by a comparison of his outward circumstances with the condition of his mind, his whole proceedings on this planet, his creeds and constitutions, his good deeds and his bad, his arts and his sciences, his empires and his revolutions would be found all to arrange themselves into clear relations of cause and effect.

         If, when Mr. Buckle pressed his conclusions, we objected the difficulty of finding what the truth about past times really was, he would admit it candidly as far as concerned individuals; but there was not the same difficulty, he said, with masses of men. We might disagree about the character of Julius or Tiberius Caesar, but we could know well enough the Romans of the Empire. We had their literature to tell us how they thought; we had their laws to tell us how they governed; we had the broad face of the world, the huge mountainous outline of their general doings upon it, to tell us how they acted. He believed it was all reducible to laws, and could be made as intelligible as the growth of the chalk cliffs or the coal treasures.

         And thus consistently Mr. Buckle cared little of individuals. He did not believe (as some one has said) that the history of mankind is the history of its great men. Great men with him were but larger atoms, obeying the same impulses with the rest, only perhaps a trifle more erratic. With them or without them, the course of things would have been much the same.

         As an illustration of the truth of his view, he would point to the new science of Political Economy. Here already was a large area of human activity in which natural laws were found to act unerringly. Men had gone on for centuries trying to regulate trade on moral principles. They would fix wages according to some imaginary rule of fairness; they would fix prices by what they considered things ought to cost; they encouraged one trade or discouraged another, for moral reasons. They might as well have tried to work a steam-engine on moral reasons. The great statesmen whose names were connected with these enterprises might have as well legislated that water should run up-hill. There were natural laws, fixed in the conditions of things; and to contend against them was the old battle of the Titans against the gods.

         As it was with political economy, so it was with all other forms of human activity; and, as the true laws of political economy explained the troubles which people fell into in old times because they were ignorant of them, so the true laws of human nature, as soon as we knew them, would explain their mistakes for the future. Geographical position, climate, air, soil, and the like, had their several influences. The northern nations are hardy and industrious, because they must till the earth if they would eat the fruits of it, and because the temperature is too low to make an idle life enjoyable. In the south, the soil is more productive while less food is wanted and fewer clothes; and, in the exquisite air, exertion is not needed to make the sense of existence delightful. Therefore, in the south we find men lazy and indolent.

         True, there are difficulties in these views; the home of the languid Italian was the home also of the sternest race of whom the story of mankind retains a record. And again, when we are told that the Spaniards are superstitious because Spain is a country of earthquakes, we remember Japan, the spot in all the world where earthquakes are most frequent, and where at the same time there is the most serene disbelieve in any supernatural agency whatsoever. Moreover, if men grow into what they are by natural laws, they cannot help being what they are; and, if they cannot help being what they are, a good deal will have to be altered in our general view of human obligations and responsibilities.

         That, however, in these theories there is a great deal of truth, is quite certain, were there but a hope that those who maintain them would be contented with that admission. A man born in a Mahometan country grows up a Mahometan; in a Catholic country, a Catholic; in a Protestant country, a Protestant. His opinions are like his language: he learns to think as he learns to speak; and it is absurd to suppose him responsible for being what nature makes of him. We take pains to educate children. There is a good education and a bad education; there are rules well ascertained by which characters are influenced; and, clearly enough, it is no mere matter for a boy's free will whether he turns out well or ill. We try to train him into good habits; we keep him out of the way of temptations; we see that he is well taught; we mix kindness and strictness; we surround him with every good influence we can command. These are what are termed the advantages of a good education; and, if we fail to provide those under our care with it, and if they go wrong, the responsibility we feel is as much ours as theirs. This is at once an admission of the power over us of outward circumstances.

         In the same way, we allow for the strength of temptations, and the like.

         In general, it is perfectly obvious that men do necessarily absorb, out of the influences in which they grow up, something which gives a complexion to their whole after-character.

         When historians have to relate great social or speculative changes, the overthrow of a monarchy or the establishment of a creed, they do but half of their duty if they merely relate the events. In an account, for instance, of the rise of Mahometanism, it is not enough to describe the character of the Prophet, the ends which he set before him, the means which he made use of, and the effect which he produced; the historian must show what there was in the condition of the eastern races which enabled Mahomet to act upon them so powerfully; their existing beliefs, their existing moral and political condition.

         In our estimate of the past, and in our calculations of the future, in the judgments which we pass upon one another, we measure responsibility, not by the thing done, but by the opportunities which people have had of knowing better or worse. In the efforts which we make to keep our children from bad associations or friends, we admit that external circumstances have a powerful effect in making men what they are.

         But are circumstances everything? That is the whole question. A science of history, if it is more than a misleading name, implies that the relation between cause and affect holds in human things as completely as in all others; that the origin of human actions is not to be looked for in mysterious properties of the mind, but in influences which are palpable and ponderable.

         When natural causes are liable to be set aside and neutralized by what is called volition, the word Science is out of place. If it is free to man to choose what he will do or not do, there is no adequate science of him. If there is a science of him, there is no free choice, and the praise or blame with which we regard one another are impertinent and out of place.

         I am trespassing upon these ethical grounds because, unless I do, the subject cannot be made intelligible. Mankind are but an aggregate of individuals; History is but the record of individual action: and what is true of the part is true of the whole." pp. 9-16

2.       "Till a subject has advanced as far as this, to speak of a science of it is an abuse of language. It is not enough to say that there must be a science of human things because there is a science of all other things. This is like saying the planets must be inhabited because the only planet of which we have any experience is inhabited. It may or may not be true, but it is not a practical question; it does not affect the practical treatment of the matter in hand." p. 17

3.       "It is not enough to say, that, after the fact, you can understand partially how Mahometanism came to be. All historians worth the name have told us something about that. But when we talk of science, we mean something with more ambitious pretense, we mean something which can foresee as well as explain; and, thus looked at, to state the problem is to show its absurdity. As little could the wisest man have foreseen this mighty revolution, as thirty years ago such a thing as Mormonism could have been anticipated in America; as little as it could have foreseen that table-turning and spirit rapping would have been an outcome of the scientific culture of England in the nineteenth century." pp. 20-21

4.       "Nor is the case much better if we are less hard upon our philosophy; if we content ourselves with the past, and require only a scientific explanation of that.

         First, for the facts themselves. They come to us through the minds of those who recorded them, neither machines nor angles, but fallible creatures, with human passions and prejudices. Tacitus and Thucydides were perhaps the ablest men who ever gave themselves to writing history; the ablest, and also the most incapable of conscious falsehood. Yet even now, after all these centuries, the truth of what they relate is called in question. Good reasons can be given to show that neither of them can be confidently trusted. If we doubt with these, whom are we to believe?" p. 21

5.       "Even the laws of political economy itself cease to guide us when they touch moral government. So long as labor is a chattel to be bought and sold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the condition of supply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, an employer considers that he stands in human relations towards his workmen; if he believes, rightly or wrongly, that he is responsible for them; that in return for their labor he is bound to see that their children are decently taught, and they and their families decently fed and clothed and lodged; that he ought to care for them in sickness and in old age, -- then political economy will no longer direct him, and the relations between himself and his dependents will have to be arranged as quite other principles.

         So long as he considers only his own material profit so long supply and demand will settle every difficulty; but the introduction of a new factor spoils the equation.

         And it is precisely in this debatable ground of low motives and noble emotions; in the struggle, ever failing yet ever renewed, to carry truth and justice into the administration of human society; in the establishment of states and in the overthrow of tyrannies; in the rise and fall of creeds; in the world of ideas; in the character and deeds of the great actors in the drama of life, where good and evil fight out their everlasting battle, now ranged in opposite camps, now and more often in the heart, both of them, of each living man, -- that the true human interest of history resides. The progress of industries, the growth of material and mechanical civilization, are interesting; but they are not the most interesting. They have their reward in the increase of material comforts; but, unless we are mistaken about our nature, they do not highly concern us after all." pp. 25-26

6.       "Whether there is a change in the organization itself we cannot tell; but this is certain, -- that, as the planet varies with the atmosphere which surrounds it, so each new generation varies from the last, because it inhales as its atmosphere the accumulated experience and knowledge of the whole past of the world." p. 27

7.       "What, then, is the use of History, and what are its lessons? If it can tell us little of the past, and nothing of the future, why waste our time over so barren a study?

         First, it is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or vanity, the price has to be paid at last; not always by the chief offenders, but paid by some one. Justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes at last to them, in French revolutions and other terrible ways." pp. 27-28

From "The Times of Erasmus and Luther"

1.       "Every single department of intellectual or practical life was penetrated with the beliefs, or was interwoven with the interests, of the clergy; and thus it was that, when differences of religious opinion arose, they split society to its foundations. The lines of cleavage penetrated everywhere, and there were no subjects whatever in which those who disagreed in theology possessed any common concern. When men quarreled, they quarreled altogether. The disturbers of settled beliefs were regarded as public enemies who had placed themselves beyond the pale of humanity, and were considered fit only to be destroyed like wild beasts, or trampled out like the seed of a contagion." pp. 37-38

2.       "The Reformation broke the theological shackles in which men's minds were fettered. It set them thinking, and so gave birth to science." p. 40

3.       "One caution, however, I must in fairness give you before we proceed further. It lies upon the face of the story that the Reformers imperfectly understood toleration; but you must keep before you the spirit and temper of the men with whom they had to deal. For themselves, when the movement began, they aimed at nothing but liberty to think and speak their own way. They never dreamed of interfering with others, although they were quite aware that others, when they could, were likely to interfere with them. Lord Macaulay might have remembered that Cranmer was working all his life with the prospect of being burnt alive as his reward; and, as we all know, he actually was burnt alive.

         When the Protestant teaching began first to spread in the Netherlands, before one single Catholic had been ill-treated there, before a symptom of a mutinous disposition had shown itself among the people, and edict was issued by the authorities for the suppression of the new opinions.

         The terms of this edict I will briefly describe to you.

         The inhabitants of the United Provinces were informed that they were to hold and believe the doctrines of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. "Men and women," says the edict, "who disobey this command shall be punished as disturbers of the public order. Women who have fallen into heresy shall be buried alive. Men, if they recant, shall lose their heads. If they continue obstinate, they shall be burnt at the state."

         "If man or woman be suspected of heresy, no one shall shelter or protect him or her; and no stranger shall be admitted to lodge in any inn or dwelling-house unless he bring with him a testimonial of orthodoxy from the priest of his parish."

         "The Inquisition shall inquire into the private opinions of every person, of whatever degree; and all officers of all kinds shall assist the Inquisition at their peril. Those who know where heretics are concealed shall denounce them, or they shall suffer as heretic themselves. Heretics" (observe the malignity of this paragraph), -- "heretics who will give up other heretics to justice, shall themselves be pardoned if they promise to conform for the future."

         Under this edict, in the Netherlands alone, more than fifty thousand human beings, first and last, were deliberately murdered. And, gentlemen, I must say that proceedings of this kind explain and go far to excuse the subsequent intolerance of Protestants." pp. 45-46

4.       "The privileges of the clergy were extraordinary. They were not amenable to the common laws of the land. While they governed the laity, the laity had no power over them. From the throne downwards, every secular office was dependent on the Church. No king was a lawful sovereign till the Church placed the crown on his head and what the Church bestowed, the Church claimed the right to take away. The disposition of property was in their hands. No will could be proved except before the bishop or his officer; and no will was held valid if the testator died out of communion. There were magistrates and courts of law for the offenses of the laity. If a priest committed a crime, he was a sacred person. The civil power could not touch him; he was reserved for his ordinary. Bishops' commissaries sat in town and city, taking cognizance of the moral conduct of every man and woman. Offenses against life and property were tried in England, as now, by the common law; but the Church courts dealt with sins -- sins of word or act. If a man was a profligate or a drunkard; if he lied or swore; if he did not come to communion; or held unlawful opinions; if he was idle or unthrifty; if he was unkind to his wife or his servants; if a child was disobedient to his father, or a father cruel to his child; if a tradesman sold adulterated wares, or used false measures or dishonest weights, -- the eye of the parish priest was everywhere, and the Church court stood always open to examine and to punish.

         Imagine what a tremendous power this must have been. Yet it existed generally in Catholic Europe down to the eve of the Reformation. It could never have established itself at all unless at one time it had worked beneficially, as the abuse of it was one of the most fatal causes of the Church's fall.

         I know nothing in English history much more striking than the answer given by Archbishop Warham to the complaints of the English House of Commons after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey. The House of Commons explained that the clergy made laws in Convocation, which the laity were excommunicated if they disobeyed. Yet the laws made by the clergy, the Commons said, were often at variance with the laws of the realm.

         What did Warham reply? He said he was sorry for the alleged discrepancy; but, inasmuch as the laws made by the clergy were always in conformity with the will of God, the laws of the realm had only to be altered, and then the difficulty would vanish.

         What must have been the position of the clergy in the fullness of their power, when they could speak thus on the eve of their prostration? You have only to look from a distance at any old-fashioned cathedral city, and you will see in a moment the mediaeval relations between Church and State. The cathedral is the city. " pp. 48-49

5.       ""Beware!" he [Erasmus] says to an impetuous friend. -- "beware how you offend the monks. You have to do with an enemy that cannot be slain; an order never dies, and they will not rest till they have destroyed you." p. 75

6.       "As at Augsburg, one only question was raised. Luther had broken the laws of the Church. He had taught doctrines which the Pope had declared to be false. Would or would he not retract?

         As at Augsburg, he replied briefly that he would retract when his doctrines were not declared to be false merely but were proved to be false. Then but not till then. This was his answer, and his last word.

         There, as you understand, the heart of the matter indeed rested. In those words lay the whole meaning of the Reformation. Were men to go on forever saying that this or that was true, because the Pope affirmed it? Or were the Pope's decrees thenceforward to be tried like the words of other men, by ordinary laws of evidence." p. 92

7.       "I wish to confine myself, and I wish you to confine your attention, to the two kinds of men who appear as leaders in times of change, -- of whom Erasmus and Luther are respective types.

         On one side there are the large-minded latitudinarian philosophers -- men who have no confidence in the people -- who have no passionate convictions; moderate men, tolerant men, who trust to education, to general progress in knowledge and civilization, to forbearance, to endurance, to time, -- men who believe that all wholesome reforms proceed downwards from the educated to the multitudes who regard with contempt, qualified by terror, appeals to the popular conscience or to popular intelligence.

         Opposite to these are the men of faith, -- and by faith I do not mean belief in dogmas, but belief in goodness, belief in justice, in righteousness; above all, belief in truth. Men of faith consider conscience of more importance than knowledge, -- or rather as a first condition, -- without which all the knowledge in the world is no use to a man, if he wished to be indeed a man in any high and noble sense of the word. They are not contented with looking for what may be useful or pleasant to themselves; they look by quite other methods for what is honorable, for what is good for what is just. They believe that if they can find out that, then at all hazards, and in spite of all present consequences to themselves, that is to be preferred. If, individually, and to themselves, no visible good ever came from it, in this world or in any other, still they would say, "Let us do that and nothing else. Life will be of no value to us if we are to use it only for our own gratification." pp. 96-97

8.       "Do not let me lead you to undervalue him. Without Erasmus, Luther would have been impossible; and Erasmus really succeeded -- so much of him as deserved to succeed -- in Luther's victory.

         . . . He believed himself, that his work was spoilt by the Reformation; but, in fact, under no conditions could any more have come of it.

         . . . When there is no spiritual life at all, when men live only for themselves and for sensual pleasure; when religion is superstition, and conscience a name, and God an idol half-feared and half-despised -- then, for the restoration of the higher nature in man, qualities are needed different in kind from any which Erasmus possessed." p. 112 - 113

9.       "And now to go back to Luther. I cannot tell you all that Luther did; it would be to tell you all the story of the German Reformation. I want you rather to consider the kind of man that Luther was, and to see in his character how he came to achieve what he did.

         You remember that the Elector of Saxony, after the Diet of Worms, sent him to the Castle of Wartzburg, to prevent him being murdered or kidnapped. He remained there many months; and during that time the old ecclesiastical institutions of Germany were burning like a North American forest. The monasteries were broken up, the estates were appropriated by the nobles; the monks were sent wandering into the world. The bishops looked helplessly on while their ancient spiritual dominion was torn to pieces and trodden under foot. The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and several more of the princes, declared for the Reformation. The Protestants had a majority in the Diet, and controlled the force of the empire. Charles the Fifth, busy with his French wars, and in want of money, dared not press questions to a crisis which he had not power to cope with; and he was obliged for a time to recognize what he could not prevent. You would have thought Luther would have been well pleased to see the seed which he had sown bear fruit so rapidly; yet it was exactly while all this was going on that he experienced those temptations of the devil of which he has left so wonderful an account." p. 113

10.       "Sacerdotalism, properly so called, was utterly abolished. The corruptions of the Church had all grown out of one root, the notion that the Christian priesthood possesses mystical power, conferred through episcopal ordination.

          Religion, as Luther conceived it, did not consist in certain things done to and for a man by a so-called priest. It was the devotion of each individual soul to the service of God. Masses were nothing, and absolution was nothing; and a clergyman differed only from a layman in being set apart for the especial duties of teaching and preaching.

          I am not concerned to defend Luther's views in this matter. It is a matter of fact only, that in getting rid of episcopal ordination, he dried up the fountain from which the mechanical and idolatrous conceptions of religion had sprung; and, in consequence, the religious life of Germany has expanded with the progress of knowledge, while the priesthoods everywhere cling to the formulas of the past, in which they live, and move, and have their being.

          Enough of this.

          The peculiar doctrine which has passed into Europe under Luther's name, is known as Justification by Faith. Bandied about as a watchword of party, it has by this time hardened into a formula, and has become barren as the soil of a trodden footpath. As originally proclaimed by Luther, it contained the deepest of moral truths. It expressed what was, and is, and must be, in one language or another, to the end of time, the conviction of every generous-minded man.

          The service of God, as Luther learnt it from the monks, was a thing of desert and reward. So many good works done, so much to the right page in the great book; when the stock proved insufficient, there was the reserve fund of the merits of the saints, which the Church dispensed for the money to those who needed.

          'Merit!' Luther thought. 'What merit can there be in such a poor caitiff as man? The better a man is, the more clearly he sees how little he is good for, the greater mockery it seems to attribute to him the notion of having deserved reward.'

          'Miserable creatures that we are!' he said; 'we earn our bread in sin. Till we are seven years old, we do nothing but eat and drink and sleep and play; from seven to twenty-one we study four hours a day, the rest of it we run about and amuse ourselves; then we work till fifty, and then we grow again to be children. We sleep half our lives; we give God a tenth of our time; and yet we think that with our good works we can merit heaven. What have I been doing to-day? I have talked for two hours; I have been at meals three hours; I have been idle four hours! Ah, enter not into judgment with they servant, O Lord!'

          A perpetual struggle. Forever to be falling, yet to rise again and stumble forward with eyes turned to Heaven -- this was the best which would ever come of man. It was accepted in its imperfection by the infinite grace of God, who pities mortal weakness, and accepts the intention for the deed; who, when there is a sincere desire to serve Him, overlooks the short-comings of infirmity.

          Do you say such teaching leads to disregard of duty? All doctrines, when petrified into formulas, lead to that. But, as Luther said, 'Where real faith is, a good life follows, as light follows the sun; faint and clouded, yet ever struggling to break through the mist which envelopes it, and welcoming the roughest discipline which tends to clear and raise it.

          'The barley,' he days, in a homely but effective image, 'the barley which we brew, the flax of which we weave our garments, must be bruised and torn ere they come to the use for which they are grown. So must Christians suffer. The natural creature must be combed and threshed. The old Adam must die, for the higher life to begin. If man is to rise to nobleness, he must first be slain.'

          In modern language, the poet Goethe tells us the same truth. 'The natural man,' he says, 'is like the ore out of the iron mine. It is smelted in the furnace; it is forged into bars upon the anvil. A new nature is at last forced upon it, and it is made steel.'

          It was this doctrine -- it was this truth rather (the word doctrine reminds one of quack medicines) -- which, quickening in Luther's mind, gave Europe its new life. It was the flame which, beginning with a small spark, kindled the hearth-fires in every German household.

          Luther's own life was a model of quiet simplicity. He remained poor. He might have had money if he had wished; but he chose rather, amidst his enormous labor, to work at a turning-lathe for his livelihood.

          He was sociable, cheerful, fond of innocent amusements, and delighted to encourage them. His table-talk, collected by his friends, makes one of the most brilliant books in the world. He had no monkish theories about the necessity of abstinence; but he was temperate from habit and principle. A salt herring and a hunch of bread was his ordinary meal; and he was once four days without food of any sort, having emptied his larder among the poor.

          All kinds of people thrust themselves on Luther for help. Flights of nuns from the dissolved convents came to him to provide for them -- naked, shivering creatures, with scarce a rag to cover them. Eight florins were wanted once to provide clothes for some of them. 'Eight florins!' he said; 'and where am I to get eight florins?' Great people had made him presents of plate; it all went to market, to be turned into clothes and food for the wretched.

          Melancthon says that, unless provoked, he was usually very gentle and tolerant. He recognized, and was almost alone in recognizing, the necessity of granting liberty of conscience. No one hated Popery more than he did, yet he said, --

          'The Papists must bear with us, and we with them. If they will not follow us, we have no right to force them. Wherever they can, they will hang, burn, behead, and strangle us. I shall be persecuted as long as I live, and most likely killed. But it must come to this at last -- every man must be allowed to believe according to his conscience, and answer for his belief to his Maker.'

          Erasmus said of Luther that there were two natures in him: sometimes he wrote like an apostle, sometimes like a raving ribald.

          Doubtless, Luther could be impolite on occasions. When he was angry, invectives rushed from him like a boulder rocks down a mountain torrent in flood. We need not admire all that; in quiet times it is hard to understand it." p. 115 - 118

11.       "If the spirit of Erasmus had prevailed, it would have been with modern Europe as with the Roman Empire in its decay. The educated would have been mere skeptics; the multitude would have been sunk in superstition. In both alike all would have perished which deserves the name of manliness.

          And this leads me to the last observation that I have to make to you. In the sciences, the philosopher leads; the rest of us take on trust what he tells us. The spiritual progress of mankind has followed the opposite course. Each forward step has been made first among the people, and the last converts have been among the learned.

          The explanation is not far to look for. In the sciences there is no temptation of self-interest to mislead. In matters which affect life and conduct, the interests and prejudices of the cultivated classes are enlisted on the side of the existing order of things, and their better-trained faculties and larger acquirements serve only to find them arguments for believing what they wish to believe.

          Simpler men have less to lose; they come more in contact with the realities of life, and they learn wisdom in the experience of suffering.

          Thus it was that when the learned and the wise turned away from Christianity, the fishermen of the Galilean lake listened, and a new life began for mankind. A miner's son [Luther] converted Germany to the Reformation. The London artisans and the peasants of Buckinghamshire went to the stake for doctrines which were accepted afterwards as a second revolution." p. 126

From "The Influence of the Reformation on the Scottish Character"

1.       "From the See of St. Peter to the far monasteries in the Hebrides or the Isle of Arran, the laity were shocked and scandalized at the outrageous doings of high cardinals, prelates, priests, and monks. It was clear enough that these great personages themselves did not believe what they taught; so why should the people believe it? And serious men, to whom the fear of God was a living reality, began to look into the matter for themselves. The first steps everywhere were taken with extreme reluctance; and had the popes and cardinals been wise, they would have taken the lead in the inquiry, cleared their teachings of its lumber, and taken out a new lease of life both for it, and for themselves. An infallible pope and an infallible council might have done something in this way, if good sense had been among the attributes of their omniscience. What they did do was something very different. It was as if, when the new astronomy began to be taught, the professors of that science in all the universities of Europe had met together and decided that Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles were eternal verities; that the theory of the rotation of the earth was and must be a damnable heresy; and had invited the civil authorities to help them in putting down by force all doctrines but their own." p. 133

2.       "Toleration is a good thing in its place; but you cannot tolerate what will not tolerate you, and is trying to cut your throat." p. 148

3.       "It is well that we should look this matter in the face; and as particular stories leave more impression than general statements, I will mention one, perfectly well authenticated, which I take from the official report of the proceedings: -- Towards the end of 1593 there was trouble in the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother lead a plot to murder him, and was said to have sought the help of a "notorious witch" called Alison Balfour. When Alison Balfour's life was looked into, no evidence could be found connecting her either with the particular offense or with witchcraft in general; but it was enough in these matters to be accused. She swore she was innocent; but her guilt was only held to be aggravated by perjury. She was tortured again and again. Her legs were put in the caschilaws, -- an iron frame which was gradually heated till it burned into the flesh, -- but no confession could be wrung from her. The caschilaws failed utterly, and something else had to be tried. She had a husband, a son, and a daughter, a child seven years old. As her own sufferings did not work upon her, she might be touched, perhaps, by the sufferings of those who were dear to her. They were brought into court, and placed at her side; and the husband first was placed in the "lang irons" -- some accursed instrument; I know not what. Still the devil did not yield. She bore this; and her son was next operated on. The boy's legs were set in "the boot," -- the iron boot you may have heard of. The wedges were driven in, which, when forced home, crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven mallet strokes were delivered upon the wedges. Yet this, too, failed. There was no confession yet. So, last of all, the little daughter was taken. There was a machine called the piniwinkies -- a kind of thumbscrew, which brought blood from under the finger-nails, with a pain successfully terrible. These things were applied to the poor child's hands, and the mother's constancy broke down, and she said she would admit to any thing they wished. She confessed to witchcraft, -- so tired, she would have confessed to the seven deadly sins, -- and then she was burned, recalling her confession, and with her last breath protesting her innocence." pp. 152-153 see Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church, and State, Wagner edition, pp. 150-151

From "Criticism and the Gospel History"

1.       "Such a body the Roman Catholic Church conceives itself to be; but in breaking away from its communion, Protestant Christians have declared their conviction that neither the Church of Rome, nor they themselves, nor any other body of men on earth, are exempt from a liability to error." p. 204

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