,
and fully justifying the brief comment of Smeton, "Surely, whatever
opprobrious things profane men may utter, God hath in him given us an
example of the right way as well of dying as of living." It is true, as
his heartless traducer takes care to remind us, no dirge was chanted
over his remains, no mass of requiem was celebrated for his soul. He and
his countrymen had long ceased to believe in the worth of such priestly
ceremonies, or to imagine that their eternal state could be affected by
them, or by aught save Christ's finished work and their own faith and
repentance while God's day of grace was prolonged to them here. The
brief eulogy pronounced over his grave by the stern and reserved
regent[256] was a truer and more impressive testimony to his worth than
the most gorgeous celebration of Romish rites which he could but have
shared with a Borgia or a Betoun. The stern simplicity of his grave,
which, like his master Calvin's, was till lately preserved in the memory
of men without stone or bronze to mark it out, tells a tale very
different from that his traducer hints at; and if his bitter taunts
shall lead the reformer's countrymen now to erect a material monument to
him in some measure corresponding to the benefits he has been honoured
to confer on them, this attack on his fair fame will have been overruled
for good.

[Sidenote: The Scottish Nation his Monument.]

But his real monument will never be one graven by art or man's device.
It is one more noble, more lasting far. It is to be found in the life
God enabled him to live, and the work God honoured him to do. It is to
be seen in the plans he devised, in the institutions he founded, in the
people he moulded anew, when the old church had confessedly failed in
its mission. And while the Scottish nation continues to retain these
institutions, and to bear this impress, it will continue the grandest,
as it is the most telling, monument to the memory of its noble-hearted
and single-minded reformer.

FOOTNOTES:

[220] Dr Lorimer in British and Foreign Evangelical Review for 1872, p.
758.

[221] [The Good Regent was assassinated on the 23rd of January 1569-70.]

[222] [1570.]

[223] Bannatyne's Memoriales, Ban. Club, p. 118.

[224] See Laing's Knox, vi. 651.

[225] M'Crie's Knox, 1855, p. 459; Rogers' Three Scottish Reformers, p.
97.

[226] [Archbishop Hamilton was hanged at the market cross of Stirling on
the 7th of April 1571.]

[227] Bannatyne's Memo