ents 'that himself might
have the benefit of the castle, and their children the benefit of his
doctrine [teaching].' It is plain that by this time what Knox taught was
the doctrine of Wishart. Indeed he had not been long in St Andrews when,
urged by the congregation there, he consented to become its preacher.
And his very first sermon in this capacity rang out the full note of the
coming reform or rather revolution in the religion of Scotland.

Now, this is a startlingly sudden transition. The change from the
position of a nameless notary under Papal authority, who is in addition
a minister of the altar of the Catholic Church, to that of a preacher in
the whole armour of the Puritan Reformation, is great. Was the
transition a public and official one only? Was it a change merely
ecclesiastical or political? Or was it preceded by a more private change
and a personal crisis? And was that private and personal crisis merely
intellectual? Was it, that is, the adoption of a new dogma only, or
perhaps the acceptance of a new system? Or if there was something
besides these, was it nothing more than the resolve of a very powerful
will--such a will as we must all ascribe to Knox? Was this all? Or was
there here rather, perhaps, the sort of change which determines the will
instead of being determined by it--a personal change, in the sense of
being emotional and inward as well as deep and permanent--a new _set_ of
the whole man, and so the beginning of an inner as well as of an outer
and public life?

The question is of the highest interest, but as we have said, there is
no direct answer. It would be easy for each reader to supply the void by
reasoning out, according to his own prepossessions, what must have been,
or what ought to have been, the experience of such a man at such a time.
It would be easy--but unprofitable. Far better would it be could we
adduce from his own utterances evidence--indirect evidence even--that
the crisis which he declines to record really took place; and that the
great outward career was founded on a new personal life within. Now
there is such an utterance, which has been hitherto by no means
sufficiently recognised. It is 'a meditation or prayer, thrown forth of
my sorrowful heart and pronounced by my half-dead tongue,' on 12th
March, 1566, at a moment when Knox's cause was in extremity of danger.
Mary had joined the Catholic League and driven the Protestant Lords into
England, and their attempted count