t failed and were submerged are in striking parallelism with
currents of thought to-day, and our generation can perhaps appreciate
at their real worth these solitary souls who were destined to see their
cause defeated, to hear their names defamed, and to live in jeopardy
among the very people whom they most longed to help.

Sebastian Castellio is one of these submerged venturers. While he
lived he was so absolutely absorbed in the battle for truth that he
took no pains at all to acquaint posterity with the details of his
life, or to make his name quick and powerful in the ears of men. When
he died {89} and laid down the weapons of his spiritual warfare his
pious opponents thanked God for the relief and did what they could to
consign him to oblivion. But after the long and silent flow of years
the world has come up to his position and can appreciate a spirit who
was too far in advance of the line of march to be comprehended in his
lifetime. He was born in the little French village of St. Martin du
Fresne--not many miles west of Lake Geneva in the year 1515. The home
was pinched with poverty, but somebody in the home or in the village
discovered that little Bastian was endowed with unusual gifts and must
be given the chance to realize the life which his youth forecast; and
that ancient family sacrifice, which has glorified so many homes of
poverty, was made here in St. Martin, and the boy, possessed with his
eager passion for knowledge, was started on his course in the College
de la Trinite in Lyons. He soon found himself bursting into a new
world, the world of classic antiquity, which the Humanists were
restoring to the youth of that period, and he experienced that
emancipating leap of soul and thrill of joy which such a world of
beauty can produce upon a lofty spirit that sees and appreciates it.
Some time during the Lyons period he came also under a still greater
and more emancipating influence, the divine and simple Christ of the
Gospels, whom the most serious of the Humanists had rediscovered, and
to whom Castellio now dedicated the central loyalty of his soul.

At twenty-five years of age, now a splendid classical scholar, radiant
with faith and hope and the vision of a new age for humanity which the
recovered gospel was to bring in, Castellio went to Strasbourg to share
the task of the Reformers and to put his life into the new movement.
Calvin, then living in Strasbourg, received the brilliant recruit with