his whole earlier period unworthy of record--or
even of recal. For we find no evidence of his having been more
confidential on this subject with any of his contemporaries than he has
been with us. This certainly suggests that the change may have been very
recent--determined, perhaps, wholly through the personal influence of
Wishart, whom Knox so affectionately commemorates. Or, if it was not
recent, it is extremely unlikely that it can have been detailed, vivid,
and striking, as well as prolonged. Knox was not the man to suppress a
narrative, however painful to himself, which he could have held to be in
a marked degree to the glory of God or for the good of men. But whatever
the reason was, the time past of his life sufficed this man for silence
and self-accusation. We may be sure that it would have done so (and
perhaps done so equally), no matter whether those twenty years had been
spent in the complacent routine of a rustic in holy orders; in the
dogmatism, defensive or aggressive, of scholastic youth; in fruitless
efforts to understand the new views of which he was one day to be the
chief representative; or in half-hearted hesitation whether, after
having so far understood them, he could part with all things for their
sake. Which of these positions he held, or how far he may have passed
from one to another, we may never be able to ascertain. But there is one
too clear indication that Knox disliked, not only to record, but even to
recal, his life in the Catholic communion. His greatest defect in after
years, as a man and a writer, is his inability to sympathise with those
still found entangled in that old life. He absolutely refuses to put
himself in their place, or to imagine how a position which was for so
many years his own could be honestly chosen, or even honestly retained
for a day, by another. This would have been a misfortune, and a moral
defect, even in a man not naturally of a sympathetic temper. But Knox,
as we shall see, was a man of quick and tender nature, and had rather a
passion for sympathising with those who were not on the other side of
the gulf he thus fixed. And this one-sided incapacity for sympathy must
certainly be connected with his one-sided reticence as to the earlier
half of his own autobiography.

Incapacity to sympathise with persons entangled in a system is one
thing, and disapproval of that system, or even violent rejection of it,
is another. Knox, as is well known, broke absolutely wit