But those who are now honoring Calvin have honored Servetus also, and have set up an expiatory monument on the place where he was burned. It may be said truly that this act followed naturally from the extreme manner in which Calvin asserted the doctrine of Predestination. But here also he should be judged as we judge of St. Augustin, whose influence is largely responsible for these extreme views: and, what is more important, we must consider what gave so much importance to the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty at the time of the Reformation. The Reformers were engaged in a life-and-death struggle against such things as indulgence and the worship of relics and of saints. For resisting these Huss had been burned and Luther banned. Here, they said, are inventions of men, by which the Christian conscience has been perverted, but which are enforced as necessary truth. We demand, they said, that "the whole of this rubbish should be carted away," and that there should be a return to the teaching of the New Testament: neither the Pope nor any other human power can we obey: God, not man, must be supreme. This great conviction was the strength of their position. It is true that, when translated into predestination, the doctrine was urged to the point of extravagance, though hardly further than it had been urged by St. Augustin, and that the idea of Reprobation, at which Calvin himself stood aghast, and spoke of it as a Decretum horribile (meaning, however, an awful, not horrible, decree) is a monstrous one, although the reformed churches in Holland, Scotland, and America have only of late years struggled out of it. It is true also that the more modified form of Predestination -that of Election-was misunderstood, being taken as a blessing to the person elected instead of as a call, as LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2304 St. Paul expressed it, "to be conformed to the image of the Son"-that is, a call to pre-eminence in work and in suffering for the good of mankind. But the consciousness of God's Sovereignty has always been a fortifying power to those who have received it. Look at Coligny in France, or Maurice in the Netherlands, or the best of the Puritans in England, or Jonathan Edwards in America, and you will feel that Calvinism has been the parent of strong men. And Calvin himself was emphatically a strong man, strong through the wisdom and courage which result from faith and righteousness. Renan said of him that he was the most Christian man of his generation. Hooker, while opposing some of the deductions of the Puritans from his system, says: "For my part, I think him incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church hath enjoyed since she enjoyed him." He found Geneva a small, weak commonwealth, which had just freed itself from the power of a Prince Bishop and had embraced the Reformation, but turbulent, fickle, and corrupt. He left it, at his death, after little more than twenty years' work, a well-ordered city, with institutions which lasted almost down to the present time, and described by those who visited it as a City of God. The centre of all his authority was the enforcement of Christian morality, and his weapon of discipline was excommunication. He would rather die than admit evil livers to the Communion. This was resented at first, and Geneva, with its party of Libertines, was in the condition of Florence when Savonarola was opposed by the Arrabbiati. Calvin was exiled to Strasburg; but, after two years, he was entreated to return to Geneva, and he returned to reign. He settled the constitution, with its Greater and Lesser Council and its governing Cab *** inet, but at their side he placed the Consistory and the Company of Pastors, who had a right to be heard when any law was proposed. He divided the City into districts for the care of the poor, under voluntary Hospitallers, and made provision for the instruction of all the citizens in religious knowledge. And all this was done under the sanction of religion. No one could be a citizen without giving his assent to the doctrines of the Catechism which Calvin had prepared at the beginning of his work. This Catechism is, like that of the Church of England, a simple exposition of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue, and the Sacraments. There is no "Calvinism" in it, although when it was composed Calvin had already published his great theological work, the Institutes. To this demand for Christian conformity Rousseau submitted when he claimed his citizenship in 1754, and he defends it by saying that the confession of faith is the expression of the universal Gospel. The activity of Calvin in every part of his work was extraordinary. He was a most diligent pastor: he preached and lectured assiduously. The Commentaries on almost the whole of the Bible, which he at times labored at all through the night, are far in advance of those of his time; indeed, of almost all until the modern critical era: they are human, direct, practical. Compare, for instance, his treatment of the "Servant of the Lord" in the seond part of Isaiah with that given in the "Speaker's Commentary" as late as 1875, and you can hardly doubt that the superiority rests with Calvin. There can be no doubt that Calvin's character was austere and inflexible; but there seems to have been nothing morose about it. He inspired affection as well as respect, and at times he showed a touching humility, as when, in a time of controversy with Luther, he exchanged greetings with his great antagonist, and said that, even if Luther should call him a devil, he would never cease from owning him as a true servant of God. He was fond of society, so far as his work allowed time for it: he had been known in his early days for his wit and vivacity, and in later years he would play quoits and bowls: nor did he join in the wholesale condemnation of the theatre by some of his brother ministers. His immense influence also was used on the whole in the cause of moderation, as may be seen in his dealings with England if we contrast them with the demands of the Puritans in the next generation. Though a Presbyterian, he refused to condemn the Episcopal system in England-each church, he held, must settle its own government. His advice was given in favor of the alterations made by the second Prayer Book of Edward VI.; but, when the exiles at Frankfort during the reign of Queen Mary consulted him as to attempts to go further, he recommended them to desist: the things they wished to expunge, he said, might be foolish, but they could be accepted-they were "tolerabiles ineptic." He would not even condemn the use of wafer-bread in the Sacrament where the people were attached to it. He constantly refers to the works of the Fathers, and even of the Schoolmen he speaks in gentler terms than those used by Bacon-they were trying, he said, to reason out their faith. His letters to sovereigns and other leading persons were received with great respect, especially those to our Edward VI. and Elizabeth; even so moderate a man as Archbishop Parker entreated him to write frequently to the Queen. In other Protestant countries Calvin a power of the first magnitude, was and Geneva became under him the The Nation. vel of a little Republic living and making itself felt during the troubles of four agitated centuries: nor would it be possible to find a community of a similar size during all those centuries which has added so much to human progress. We may well join our English voices to those of the whole Protestant world in celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great teacher and statesman of Gen PRINCE BULOW AND THE GERMAN EMPEROR. Time brings its revenges, and perhaps brings them to the assistance of the heads of political autocracies sooner than to that of other people. It is impossible not to compare the visit of Prince Bülow to Kiel last week with his visit to Potsdam last November. Both visits were to see the Emperor on the most urgent affairs of State. At Potsdam the Chancellor was armed with the indignation of the whole people aroused by the Emperor's embarrassing "interview" in the Daily Telegraph, and he went there with no less a purpose than to deliver a plain lecture to his master, and to require as a condition of his own continuance in public service that the Emperor should not be so indiscreet in future. At Kiel last week Prince Bülow went rather as a suppliant, not, indeed, to beg to be kept in office (for it is possible that he is not disinclined to retire, and he actually travelled to Kiel to offer his resignation), but to explan his defeat at the hands of the Conservative and Centre combination, and to solicit instructions for the future. Within eight months the situation has thus been inverted; the Emperor, so far from accepting conditions for enjoying Prince Bülow's continued services, agrees with him that his res ignation is necessary, and indeed inevitable. Prince Bülow is to remain Chancellor only until certain reforms have been introduced into the Imperial finances. His resignation is none the less "irrevocable"; it is only antedated. The Neue Freie Presse sagaciously remarks that the Royal disfavor is soon reflected in the affairs of the Reichstag. It is quite true. Ever since Prince Bülow "stood up" to the Emperor last November the talisman which turned so many of his political undertakings into successes seems to have left his keeping. The Bloc crumbled away under his hand, and the unexpected combination of Conservatives and the Clerical Centre came into being to resist the Government proposals for financial reform. Our sympathies in the financial question are largely with Prince Bülow. Germany cannot spend money on a great Navy and run up a vast and continually increasing National Debt without having recourse to an Inheritance-tax. The Junkers have a native horror of such a tax-to their minds it is like laying hands on the Ark of the Covenant and they and their allies have flouted Prince Bülow ever since the proposal was made, although in its latest form it is the most gently applied tax conceivable. Will Prince Bülow, in his temporary tenure of the Chancellorship, be able to draw some sort of order out of the chaos, and carry a scheme of Imperial taxation which is free from such preposterous burdens on commerce and industry as are recommended by the triumphant majority in the Reichstag? We think it is probable that he will do so. We must not forget that a defeat of the Government in the Reichstag is quite unlike a Ministerial defeat in the British House of Commons. The Chancellor, after a consultation with the Emperor, comes back with powers of compromise, and the dispute is generally settled. His return with a new mandate from the Emperor is like the return of a new party to power in Britain. He is not dependent on a party which lives by votes alone; if he cannot get help from one quarter of the Reichstag, he will joyfully accept it from another. But the prospect-as we see it-that Prince Bülow will probably succeed in his temporary mission makes the ending of his power the more notable. It will be said that there is a sign of democratic development in the fact that Prince Bülow is the first German Chancellor who has expressly retired in the face of an adverse Parliamentary vote. We read the signs differently. We fancy that the Emperor is willing to have Prince Bülow's career brought to an end in spite of the handle that is being given to the democratic politicians of whom he disapproves. The handle can easily be taken away later. The Emperor, we may say without offence, is at once human enough and Imperial enough to remember Prince Bülow's words of last November:-"The knowledge that the publication of his conversations has not produced the effect which the Emperor intended in England, and has provoked deep excitement and painful regret in our own country, will-and this is a firm conviction which I have gained during these days of stress-induce the Emperor in future to observe that reserve, even in private conversations, which is equally indispensable in the interest of a uniform policy and for the authority of the Crown. Were that not so, neither I nor any successor of mine could assume the responsi bility." In Germany Radicals and Socialists spoke of November 10th, when that announcement was made, as a sort of "Day of the Bastille,"-the beginning of a new Constitutional epoch. We could not feel so sanguine. "Depend upon it," we wrote, "the personat régime has not said its last word." The personal régime at this very moment is uppermost. And it has a great opportunity. The Conservatives and Clericals will not be at all anxious to "rub in" the lesson that Prince Bülow has been forced to retire by a Parliamentary vote, and therefore this powerful majority may be expected to smooth matters over with him, as we have already guessed, and having done that to let him go. The Emperor will then have got the new taxes he requires, and, with a Conservative temper entirely favorable to the personal régime ruling the Reichstag, he will be free to look about for a new Chancellor after his own heart. Thus the Emperor will score all along the line, and the inverted situation of to-day will be confirmed. We are not so foolish as to suppose that the democratic advance will be checked permanently, but for the moment we cannot help perceiving a very distinct swing back in the other direction. The political autocracy, or autocratic bureaucracy, remains, and a change will have to be a very much slower growth than German enthusiasts supposed last November. We regret the fall of Prince Bülow, because he is so far from being a Junker, or a statesman rigidly Prussian in thought, that he is the kind of man who might possibly guide successfully the beginnings of a Constitutional development. A very different man would be required later, we know, but Prince Bülow might have spent many useful years in more or less undesignedly preparing the way for that genuine Parliamentary government which is the only conceivable goal for a Teutonic people. There was a very acute analysis of his character in the Neue Freie Presse of Tuesday which will be recognized as true by all who have followed his career as Chancellor. Prince Bülow, it says, is "interesting." That word expresses all his limitations. There is nothing monumental about him such as must be symbolThe Spectator. A LITERARY LIGHT. Annesley Bupp was born one of the Bupps of Hampshire-the Fighting Bupps, as they were called. A sudden death in the family left him destitute at the early age of thirty, and he decided to take seriously to journalism for a living. That was eight years ago. He is now a member of the Authors' Club; a popular after-dinner speaker in reply to the toast of Literature; and one of the best-paid writers in Fleet Street. Who's Who tells the world that he has a flat at Knightsbridge and a cottage on the river. If you ask him to what he owes his success he will assure you, with the conscious modesty of all great men, that he has been lucky; pressed further, that Hard Work and Method have been his watchwords. But to the young aspirant he adds that of course if you have it in you it is bound to come out. ized in statuary. He will never be represented with the club of Hercules. He is an extraordinarily skilful diplomatist, and a Parliamentarian without match in Germany. He is "German" and "European" rather than "Prussian," and yet he has done hardly anything for the powerless middle classes against the nobility. Were he a man of torrential democratic feeling or any vindictiveness, he might even now ride the whirlwind of the German middle classes. But we all know that Prince Bülow will not do that. When he disappears he will simply leave behind him the memory of a man who followed Bismarck in ideas, while changing the Bismarckian touch beyond recognition by his own unalterable habit of urbanity, amiability, and soothing humor. When Annesley started journalism he realized at once that it was necessary for him to specialize in some subject. Of such subjects two occurred to him-"George Herbert" and "Trams." For a time he hesitated, and it was only the sudden publication of a brief but authoritative life of the poet which led him finally to the study of one of the least explored of our transit systems. Meanwhile he had to support himself. For this purpose he bought a roll-top desk, a type-writer, and an almanac; he placed the almanac on top of the desk, seated himself at the type-writer, and began. It was the month of February; the almanac told him that it wanted a week to Shrove Tuesday. In four days he had written as many articles, entitled respectively Shrovetide Customs, The Pancake, Lenten Observances, and Tuesdays Known to Fame. The |