ing satisfied, neither yet rejoice.
My God, remove my unthankfulness!'[56]

Men of this expansive and confiding temperament are attractive, and will
occasionally get into trouble, even in later life. We find Mrs Bowes ere
long complaining that she 'had not been equally made privy to Knox's
coming into the country with others,' and needing to be assured that
'none is this day within the realm of England, with whom I would more
gladly speak (only she whom God hath offered unto me, and commanded me
to love as my own flesh, excepted) than with you.'[57] Mrs Locke, later
on, points out that she has not had a letter for a whole year. And this
elicits not only the assurance that it is not the absence of one year or
two 'that can quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in Christ
Jesus, which half a year did engender, and almost two years did nourish
and confirm,' but also the following striking general statement, which,
like many things from Knox, impresses us by a certain straightforward
and noble egotism:

'Of nature I am churlish, and in conditions[58] different from
many: yet one thing I ashame not to affirm, that familiarity
once thoroughly contracted was never yet broken on my default.
The cause may be that I have rather need of all, than that any
have need of me.'[59]

It may be true that Knox never broke a friendship with either sex. But
his friendships with men were masculine and very reserved in tone; and
we may be quite sure that the memorable concluding sentence of the above
paragraph would never have been written except to a woman. Most people
will be delighted to see already fallen under the 'regimen of women' the
very man who was to set the trumpet to his lips against it. But those
who study Knox's life are indebted to his familiar correspondence, and
especially to the earlier part of it, for far more than the
gratification of this not unkindly malice. For these letters, I think,
prove to all--what the finer ear might have gathered with certainty from
many things even in his public writings--that the main source of that
outward and active career was an inner life.

We must part for ever with the idea of Knox as a human cannon-ball,
endowed simply with force of will, and tearing and shattering as it
goes. The views which at a definite period gave this tremendous impulse
to a nature previously passive, are not obscure, and are perfectly
traceable. They are views upon which Knox con