joy and took him into his own home. When the great Reformer returned
to Geneva in 1541 to take up the mighty task of his life he summoned
Castellio to help him, and made him Principal of the College of Geneva,
which Calvin planned to make one of the {90} foremost seats of Greek
learning and one of the most illuminating centres for the study of the
Scriptures. The young scholar's career seemed assured. He had the
friendship of Calvin, he was head of an important institution of
learning, the opportunity for creative literary work was opening before
him, and he was aspiring soon to fulfil the clearest call of his
life--to become a minister of the new gospel. His first contribution
to religious literature was his volume of "Sacred Dialogues," a series
of vivid scenes out of the Old and New Testaments, told in dialogue
fashion, both in Latin and French.[2] They were to serve a double
purpose: first, to teach French boys to read Latin, and secondly, to
form in them a love for the great characters of the Bible and an
appreciation of its lofty message of life. The stories were really
good stories, simple enough for children, and yet freighted with a
depth of meaning which made them suitable for mature minds. Their
success was extraordinary, and their fine quality was almost
universally recognized. They went through twenty-eight editions in
their author's lifetime, and they were translated into many
languages.[3] His bent toward a religion of a deeply ethical and
spiritual type already appears in this early work, and here he
announces a principle that was to rule his later life and was to cost
him much suffering: "The friend of Truth obeys not the multitude _but
the Truth_."

At the very time this book was appearing, an opportunity offered for
testing the mettle of his courage. One of those ever-recurrent plagues
that harassed former ages, before microbes were discovered, fell upon
Geneva. The minister, who had volunteered to give spiritual comfort to
those who were suffering with the plague in the hospital, was stricken
with the dread disease, and a new volunteer was asked for. The records
of the city show that Castellio, though not yet ordained, and under no
obligation to take such risk, offered himself for the {91} hazardous
service when the ministers of the city declined it. The ordination
through human hands was, however, never to come to him, and a harder
test of courage than the plague was before him. In the