re
confine ourselves to the most important of the factors he created, the
ministry.

The ministerial ideal embodied in these ecclesiastical ordinances may be
said to have had certain indirect but international results; it
compelled Calvin to develop his system of education; it supplied the
reformed church, especially in France, with the men which it needed to
fight its battles and to form the iron in its blood; it presented the
reformed church everywhere with an intellectual and educational ideal,
which must be realized if its work was to be done; and it created the
modern preacher, defining the sphere of his activity and setting up for
his imitation a noble and lofty example.

Calvin soon found that the reformed faith could live in a democratic
city only by an enlightened pulpit speaking to enlightened citizens, and
that an educated ministry was helpless without an educated people. His
method for creating both entitles him to rank among the foremost makers
of modern education. As a humanist he believed in the classical
languages and literatures--there is a tradition which says that he read
through Cicero once a year--and so "he built his system on the solid
rock of Graeco-Roman antiquity." Yet he did not neglect religion; he so
trained the boys of Geneva through his catechism that each was said to
be able to give a reason for his faith "like a doctor of the Sorbonne."
He believed in the unity of knowledge and the community of learning,
placing the magistrate and the minister, the citizen and the pastor, in
the hands of the same teacher, and binding the school and the university
together. The boy learned in the one and the man studied in the other,
but the school was the way to the university, the university was the
goal of the school.

In nothing does the pedagogic genius of Calvin more appear than in his
fine jealousy as to the character and competence whether of masters or
professors, and in his unwearied quest after qualified men. His letters
teem with references to the men in various lands and many universities
whom he was seeking to bring to Geneva. The first rector, Antoine
Saunier, was a notable man; and he never rested till he had secured his
dear old teacher, Mathurin Cordier. Castellio was a schoolmaster;
Theodore Beza was head of college and academy, or school and university,
together; and Calvin himself was a professor of theology. The success of
the college was great; the success of the academy was grea