which should never be forgotten in the ardor of these recreations:

"The man who kills to kill, who is not satisfied with reasonable sport, who slays unfairly or out of season, who adds one wanton pang, that man receives the contempt of all good sportsmen and deserves the felon's doom. Of such there are but few." p. 36.

Within this reservation, we regard the pursuits chronicled on these pages sanctioned by the original permission of the Creator of all things to man, to "have dominion over the fish of the sea," as well as over fowl and cattle and all animal life. We add this proof-text, remembering the criticisms which good, kind-hearted people sometimes venture, in our public prints, especially about vacation-time, upon the alleged unclerical and unchristian character of these and similar pastimes. We do not see it in that light.

ARTICLE V.

JOHN CALVIN.

FROM the time that Calvin made up his mind to return to Geneva, and this decision was acquiesced in by those whose permission he thought it necessary to obtain, in order that his conscience might be freed from all doubt, a deep conviction seems to have taken possession of his soul, that this was the field of labor appointed to him by God. As he never would have left it at first unless compelled, so he did not afterwards feel himself entitled to forsake it, either impelled by discouragements and difficulties there encountered, or won by hope of usefulness elsewhere. The magistrates of Geneva in their circular letter, entreating the intercession of the other churches of Switzerland in their behalf, had thus expressed themselves: "We are as it were the very gate of Italy and France, and a place from which either wonderful edification or ruin may proceed." This fact

was profoundly realized by Calvin. It was in full earnest that he entered upon his work, with a deep and stern sense of respon sibility, which carried him far above the reach of ordinary motives and impulses, and enabled him to face boldly and withouflinching, practical questions of the greatest and most awful moment, which there presented themselves before him for solution. A certain timidity which was native to him vanished in the presence of danger, and was otherwise more than counterbalanced by that decision which was one of the most prominent traits in his character.

It was at his very first interview with the magistrates and immediately on his arrival, that Calvin represented the necessity of setting about the work of ecclesiastical ordinances. They passed a resolution that they would apply themselves to it without delay, and appointed six commissioners to assist the ministers in drawing up a set of ecclesiastical ordinances, and rules of life which were afterwards to be submitted to the government of the city, and the general assembly for their approval. The record adds: "Resolved also to retain Calvin here always." His salary was soon after assigned him at five hundred florins, (about forty-five dollars,) twelve measures of corn, and two tuns of wine. They furnished him also with a house and garden. The relative value of money was of course much greater then than it now is. Nearly one half of this salary he afterwards voluntarily surrendered, while he several times refused presents that were offered him by the council in consideration of his extraordinary services, or of sicknesses; and when he was finally disabled from attending to the duties of his office he gave up his usual stipend altogether. Yet he was not able to avoid the imputation of amassing riches. "People circulate ridiculous stories (says he) respecting my treasures, my great power, and my wealthy sort of life. But if a man satisfies himself with such simple fare, and such common clothing, and does not require more moderation in the humblest than he himself exercises, how can it be said that he is a spendthrift, and fond of self-display? My death will prove what they would not believe in my life." And so it turned out, indeed. It is said that the cardinal Sadoletus was at one time much surprised, when, as he was travelling incognito through Geneva and feeling a desire to

see his former opponent, inquired the way to his residence, a small tenement was pointed out to him, and when, upon his knocking at the door, it was opened by Calvin himself, very simply clad.

A formula of ecclesiastical order and government was handed in to the council, by Calvin and his associates, within a fortnight from the time when the business was committed to them, and was soon after solemnly accepted in a general assembly of the people. To this assembly Calvin had afterwards to appeal, when that article, which he ever regarded as the very basis of stability for the whole, namely the right of excommunication attached to the consistory, was threatened with overthrow. The form of church government thus adopted was briefly this. Its executive functions were entrusted to a consistory composed of six ministers, and twelve lay members. Of the latter, two were chosen from the ordinary council, and the remainder from the council of two hundred. This consistory held its session on Thursday of every week, when those persons were summoned before it who had offended against the rules or doctrine of the church; not however without the consent of all its members, nor unless they had already received private admonition and rejected it. Those who refused to hear the church in this its organ, were handed over to the civil arm. The direct power of the consistory extended no farther than to excommunication. None were admitted to the Lord's Supper without a previous profession of faith. A system of visitation was established for the better instruction of the people, and in order that the true state of the church might be more perfectly known to those entrusted with its oversight and care. That this system might be more easily carried out, the city was divided into three parishes, one of which, that of St. Peter's, was the more especial charge of Calvin.

A year or two after, a liturgy was published by Calvin, to which was added "the manner of administering the sacraments, celebrating marriage, and visiting the sick." One of the most interesting innovations however, in the form of worship now adopted, was the introduction of singing, which had been already specified by Calvin, in his communication to the synod at Zurich, as one of the conditions on which he would be willing

to return. Those beautiful chorals which were the genuine offspring of the Reformation, among the first fruits of that regeneration of which music, as well as all things else was destined to partake, were thus received at Geneva, united with the simple and affecting versions of the Psalms, themselves equally popular, made by the poet Clement Marot. So important was this part of public service deemed by Calvin that when in 1559 he arranged the order of daily exercises for the newly established college, he set apart an hour every day for the practice of singing alone.

After the foundation of the new ecclesiastical constitution had been laid, the council committed to Calvin another task, which, whether their act were well judged or not, shows their confidence in his ability and integrity. It also shows how close they felt the union between church and state must necessarily be in their case, in order to the external safety of either. This task was the revision of the civil code, and was carried out by him with the assistance of three coadjutors. It seems to have occupied him nearly a year aside from his other occupations, and the laws as thus remodelled remained in force till 1568 when they underwent a new revision, in which however his influence was still felt.

It seems strange at first that a mind so clear and acute, so early able to discern and to present in a lucid and harmonious system the great doctrines of Christianity, should never have perfectly arrived at the true distinction between the spirit of the Old and New Testament. He appears to us in Geneva nearly as much in the light of a lawgiver, as of an evangelist, and seems willing to try over, once more, that experiment which God himself had once condemned as unsuccessful, as to its apparent aim, successful only in relation to his own greater end, and that once fully revealed, to be done away with forever. The fact must indeed be partly accounted for by Calvin's natural disposition, which inclined him to look upon nearly all practical questions in their sterner aspect, and by which he was hindered in some degree from comprehending the Gospel of love and peace in its full tenderness, its entire suitableness to the disturbed and disharmonized nature of man. But it is necessary also to consider the position in which he found himself placed at Geneva,

the actual difficulty of the questions which he was there obliged to answer and the lack of suitable precedents which might have aided him in answering them more perfectly. Above all should we remember the character and circumstances of the age, an age just emerging from a darkness only less dense than that of heathenism, under the auspices, not of prophets and apostles, but of men who could boast no light more directly bestowed from heaven, than that which is vouchsafed to all. Great is the proof of the sufficiency and completeness of revelation, found in the fact that now, for the first time in the history of the church, a great reformation, almost world-wide in its extent and consequences, took its origin, not from any new communication of divine knowledge, but from the clearer and more widely diffused apprehension of the word already revealed. But it was in the nature of such a renovation that those men who were its instruments, themselves receiving the truth only gradually, and after an ordinary manner, should betray this fact by many errors. The world was awaking out of a long sleep, and, to change somewhat the application of an image that has been beautifully used by another; "the phantoms that had predominated during the hours of darkness were still busy. Though they no longer presented themselves as distinct forms they remained, many of them, as formative notions" in the souls of men. long habits of the world could not all at once be broken, and not even the clearest sighted, the most exalted of those extraordinary men who arose for its deliverance was able to free himself wholly from the disturbing and injurious influence of the period just closing.

The

It is at such eras of reformation, of deliverance that we first learn the horror of what has gone before, the measure of that evil which still exists to be overcome and subdued by the new power of life and salvation that now confronts it. The demon struggles fearfully for possession when he perceives the presence of the deliverer; the hosts of evil boldly take up their abode in the very bodies of those whom the Lord has come to redeem; they even rush to meet him, shouting "let us alone: what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth." So at this time, when a free redemption was to be declared anew to the world, the power of darkness showed itself active as ever, in the en