and soul. Odet was eighteen months older than Gaspard, François was two years and a half his junior. The latter is known in history as the lord of Andelot, one of the estates of the family; and of the three brothers he had the quickest and the most enterprising temperament, so that in all their movements it is D'Andelot who leads the way.

Gaspard and François, intending to be soldiers, followed the court, and here Gaspard became close friends with a youth of his own age, François de Guise, comte d'Aumale, eldest son of the Duc de Lorraine. They wore the same dress, carried the same favours, were of the same party or side in the jousts, tourneys, excursions, masquerades, and other court amusements, both enjoying and taking the lead in the follies of the time, and, Brantôme adds, perhaps maliciously, they never entered into a game but they lost it, both being awkward and unfortunate players.

The intervals of this gay life at Fontainebleau, of these merry sports in its delightful neighbourhood, the Colignies spent at the home at Châtillon, or at the episcopal mansion of their Cardinalbrother, who had now blossomed into the dilettante statesman, with a taste for letters and the arts, daily gaining credit as a wise prelate, a benevolent organiser, and an enlightened lord. The time was coming for him, as it is surely coming for all like him, when he would see that it was impossible to save his soul and preserve his worldly position.

This terrible truth seized early upon the heart and mind of Gaspard de Coligny, and was the cause of that inner anguish, the effects of which some think they see in his portraits. For he was just the character to value a powerful position; his intellectual force, his genius for ruling men, his military talent, the grandeur of his soul, the greatness of his heart, all combined to arouse in him ambition. He wished to rule France, and no doubt his subsequent enmity to his early friend, François of Guise, was intensified by the fact that the duke was his great and successful rival.

D'Andelot and the Cardinal, of natures more simple, felt less severely the trial of giving up all to follow Christ. They did not understand as their brother did, what it was to throw away a position in which he might not only win great renown, but what was a higher ambition, make of France a great nation. But as his life unfolded, Gaspard de Coligny heard the great question that swallows up all others: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

Long and painful were his hesitations, both to himself and to his friends. Long he strove to believe that by conciliatory conduct, by patience, by fidelity to the crown, even to the extent of sacrificing himself to the views of his opponent, all might be won. It took many years to convince him that there was no hope, that the seared consciences of men like the Guises and his own uncle and benefactor, Montmorency, could ever be brought to admit what was just and to do it. Then his penetrating eye saw the surging elements on the other side, the mass of the poorer noblesse and the cultured among the middle class,

tending not only to Calvinism in religion, but to Republicanism in politics, and he shuddered to see himself branded as a traitor to the king, perhaps a defeated traitor, his corpse swinging high on the gibbet at Monfaucon.

III.

Spain and Geneva were the centres of the two contending forces, and the spirit of each was well represented in their respective leaders: Philip 1. and John Calvin. All the powerful people in France came to be more or less servants of the former, none more so than the Constable Montmorency. The Colignies steadily refused, and in course of time openly admitted that Geneva was their centre, and a man sprung from the people their teacher. They were convinced that the cause Calvin represented was that of the Kingdom of Heaven; and being men who were always found where duty called or hard knocks were to be had without any reward, they preferred to follow humbly in the wake of noble souls who were chiefly, as regards worldly position, small tradesmen and artisans, to associating their destinies with the Alvas and Pizarros, with the human wolves and tigers who in Europe and in America gorged themselves with blood and gold.

Those who would have us believe that the two parties in this struggle were not very dissimilar, that it was six of one to half a dozen of the other, can only be superficially acquainted with the times. It is not the fierce deeds done in war, but the acts done in the name of Law and Justice that show the moral level of a party. If in the early history of the struggle in France individual acts of fanaticism have to be excused, it is not the Catholic leaders who can claim consideration on this score, for their religious faith was so singularly flexible that it was capable of taking the form most suited to their interests.

The Cardinal of Lorraine who wanted to introduce the Inquisition into France, and to get Coligny's brother, the Cardinal of Châtillon, appointed an inquisitor, could talk in quite a broad-church strain to the Calvinist Beza, and to the Lutheran Duke Christopher of Würtemberg. But when we learn that he held no less than twelve sees, the archbishoprics of Rheims, Lyons and Narbonne, the bishoprics of Metz, Toul, Verdun, Valence, Albi, Agen, Luçon and Nantes, we can understand how he and those who were in his position felt it necessary at any cost to suppress the Reformation; and to use every art to commit the doubtful members of his own class to the same course.

Under rulers of this sort the finances of the country had reached their last stage. The royal treasury was in debt to no less an amount than 45,500,000 livres, equal to 140 or 145 millions of francs, and at the value of money now-a-days probably equal to 450 millions.

The Guises could have given a pretty account of what had become of all this money. So too could Montmorency, Diana of Poitiers, the Marshal Saint-André and other noble persons who had fastened like horse-leeches on the corrupt house of Valois. While these people were loaded with wealth, the king and his mother were reduced

to mendicancy; they even got money out of the pope.

The Cardinal of Lorraine, who had had the finances under his control, was at his wits' end, and though the leader of the clerical party he attempted a wholesale confiscation of the property of the clergy, and was at one time driven to such desperation as to have a notice put up at Fontainebleau, "Every body who asks to be paid will be hanged."

When things were in this desperate strait, an honest and capable man was called in and appointed Chancellor. The Guises thought Michel l'Hospital was their own creature, but to their amazement he turned out quite a Cato in the austerity of his political virtue, and such a quality being just then priceless, they were obliged to submit, as best they could, to the appeal to the country he declared necessary. L'Hospital's position became still more assured when, by the death of Francis II., Catherine de Medici was able to throw off the yoke of the Guises, and to emerge from that servitude in which she had lived, first to her husband's mistress, Diana of Poitiers, and then to her son's wife, Mary Stuart. To do Catherine justice one ought to know all the sad details of her early history.

She wanted faithful servants, and found in L'Hospital a man of perfect integrity. He suited her purpose for the time, and she gave his proposals as sincere a support as was perhaps possible to one of her fearful, treacherous disposition. While the new Nehemiah worked at the great task of the political and religious reformation of France, she supported him by the Medicean art of corrupting men's moral nature.

L'Hospital proposed to convoke the StatesGeneral, which being done, the three orders consulted separately, and each by their respective orators expressed their wishes. The representative of the clergy declaimed against the detestable, damnable sects of the day, begging that their abettors might be treated as public enemies; and protested against every design tending to attack ecclesiastical property. The orators of the nobility and of the third estate attacked the clergy. The first wished that the debts of the State should be paid at the expense of the ecclesiastical order, and that the clergy should be deprived of all civil and feudal jurisdiction. The orators of the third

estate declared that the church could never return to its primitive sincerity until the priests from the highest to the lowest had amended their three principal vices-ignorance, avarice, and superfluous pomp.

This was no temporary burst of indignation. For seventy-seven years prior to the calling of this States-General, that is from 1484 to 1561, the third estate had again and again demanded a long list of reforms in the church.

The day upon which the States-General closed Jan. 31, 1561, L'Hospital signed an ordinance which decreed in the name of the king the greater part of the reforms desired by the nation. The edict was registered at Orleans, whence its name, and not as usual in the Parliament of Paris, because the chancellor knew that its provisions had many violent enemies among the Chats

443 Fourrés, as Rabelais called the gentlemen of the furred robes at the Palais de Justice.

Encouraged by the attitude of the StatesGeneral, the Bourbon princes, who at this time were regarded as the Protestant leaders, became menacing. The King of Navarre threatened to claim the regency, but was easily caught in the meshes of one of the queen-mother's Delilahs. The letters royal which announced the renewal of good relations between Catherine de Medici and Antoine de Bourbon contained the first reference to the Colloquy at Poissy.

It promised a meeting of a certain number of the most worthy and virtuous persons in the kingdom to take their advice as to what ought to be done in the matter of religion.

While Navarre had been recalcitrant, Catherine had sought to arouse the Constable Montmorency against the Protestants, by telling him that they were proposing to enquire into the gifts and largesses obtained from the late kings, and that they even spoke of compelling restitution. The provincial estates of the Île-de-France, who wanted to make the King of Navarre lieutenant-general of France, and the real head of the government, demanded an inquest into the public thefts, and in this demand they were encouraged by Coligny.

The intimation was enough for Montmorency and his congeners, who henceforth ranged himself on the side of the Catholics. He was seen going to mass at the same chapel as the duke of Guise, and on Easter-day they took the communion together. The pair now joined themselves to Saint-Andre and the Triumvirate, as they were called, determined on a plan for exterminating the Protestants. The chief action was to centre in France, where every sectarian was to perish, but its head and natural director was to be Philip of Spain, under whom a grand alliance of Catholic Europe was to be formed. The German Catholics were to prevent the German Lutherans from going to help the French Huguenots; the Swiss Catholics were to rise against the Swiss Protestants; and the Duke of Savoy was to fall on the centre of heresy, the accursed city of Geneva, and destroy all its people without distinction of age or sex. For funds they looked to the Pope, to the revenues of the Church, and confiscation of the property of the heretics.

While this dark project was fermenting in the minds of the three conspirators, la pauvre commune, as the catholic mob of Paris was tenderly called by the Parliament, became perceptibly agitated. Led by the black-robed bands of the University, they attacked an hotel where the Protestants were in the habit of meeting, broke the windows, forced the door, and killed the porter. A general massacre would have ensued had not la pauvre commune caught sight of more drawn swords than they bargained for. L'Hospital tried to stop these outrages by threatening to hang everybody who used the injurious words, Papists or Huguenots, or who attacked houses under pretext of breaking up illicit assemblies. The same edict also renewed the order to set all persons free arrested on account of religion, while those who had fled the kingdom were invited to return.

The Parliament of Paris refused to allow this edict to be published in the capital. The Chan

cellor replied by a request to all the bishops and bailies to render a full account of the property of the church in each diocese.

The clergy looked for help to the house of Guise. The Duke, with his splendid eyes, his clear complexion and vulgar tiger-like face; the Cardinal, his mobile face meaning everything or nothing, were regarded as the Maccabees of the Church. The cardinal of Lorraine had learnt the art of managing women as a courtier of Diana of Poitiers; he now showed what he could do even with an enemy, succeeding to such a degree with the queen-mother, that L'Hospital had to consent to a united sitting of the Council and the Parliament, with a view to determining the nature of the legislation with regard to the Reformed. After a debate of three weeks the friends of justice were defeated by a majority of three, and it was resolved that whosoever took part in heretical conventicles should incur pain of death, simple heresy to be punished with banishment. While Guise declared that he would sustain this edict with his sword, and Coligny that it could never be executed, the Chancellor set himself to soften all its provisions, and to render it difficult to work by introducing as many legal checks as he could devise.

R. HEATH.

THE PULPIT IN THE FAMILY.

*MAN'S MISERY AND GOD'S MERCY.

"God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all."-Rom. xi. 32.

II.

establish by reasoning that our first love is due to God, is not an easy task, not because the justice of the proposition is not abundantly clear, but on the contrary, because being so clear, and seeing it as by instinct, I am embarrassed in demonstrating it. Let us try, however, to show that God is supremely worthy of our love, whether we regard Him in His own nature, or in His relations

to us.

What can be for us more worthy of love, viewed in Himself, than a Being who is perfect? In whom are found, in the highest degree, all the qualities most worthy of admiration, and most worthy of affection. In whom everything is so excellent that all nations have agreed to apply and to reserve for those things which they wish to praise beyond all expression, the epithet divine. And now, is it not evident that such a Being ought to find in our mind, if our mind is in right order, all the veneration, all the devotion, all the love of which we are capable?

But how much more do these sentiments seem due towards Him, when we consider not only what He is in Himself, but in His relations to us; as One without whom we should have nothing, we should hope nothing, and to say all in one word, without whom we should be nothing! But more than this, He is not only supremely

but solely worthy of your love. All that is loveable comes from God, or in truth is God. Health, truth, virtue, conscience, happiness, all those things honoured among the best men are but emanations of Deity. Health is the will of God, truth is His thought, happiness His state, virtue His law, conscience His representative. If you ascend to the origin of things, you will see that all these different ways which religion and sound philosophy have shown to man, converge more and more as they approach their source, and meet at last in God, the common centre whence they radiate over the universe. Since God is then your beginning, your centre, your end, your all, give Him your love, your heart, your entire self; and it will afterwards be time to see how your affections can be extended to other objects, without taking away anything, and subordinating all to His first and supreme love.

Yes, reason gives full assent to the declaration of Scripture, that man, to be in right order, ought to love God above all. It gives assent likewise to that other declaration, that man, in his natural state, loves some thing more than God.

For, examine in good faith, you who have not undergone that change called conversion, and who are still in your natural state, examine whether the sentiment you entertain toward God can be called a dominant affection. Love does not hide itself in the heart; it shows itself by certain visible signs; out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, the eyes look, the hand writes, the man acts. Well, are there found in your life the signs of a dominant love for God? You can judge of this yourselves. What are your chief thoughts, feelings, tastes, employments, desires, pleasures? They may be in themselves lawful and right, yet all of the earth, earthly. The welfare and health of those you love, the cares of your occupation and calling, the prosperity of your country, the news of the day, the little events of social or domestic life, and other matters the most frivolous and unimportant, these will occupy and fill and animate your discourse, but the name of God is never mentioned, or mentioned only in some cold or irreverent way. If it comes into the thought of any one to speak of it with more warmth, a pretended shame of piety restrains; it would seem strange, one would call it "preaching," it is not the time, it is not the place, as if true love were not of all times and places, as if true love could observe so adroitly all the proprieties, and adapt itself so decidedly to all the appearances of coolness; as if true love were what one could take up and lay down at will, could show or conceal, according to the day of the week, or the hour of the day, or the tone of a house! In such love there is nothing of life, of power, of true feeling. Judged by the outward signs, the love you bear to God is only at best a cold esteem, such sentiment as a father, or mother, or brother, or spouse, or friend, would be not merely not content with, but would regard as insulting or contemptuous. So much is it true that in the eyes of reason itself, the natural man loves not God above all, that he is alienated from God, and a sinner.

Having seen that you do not love God with supreme love, examine farther, and you will find

each of you some other object that you love with a dominant love, and such as you ought to give to God only. This object is not the same for all; all are sinners, but not in the same way.

The object of highest love with many, in fact with most men in their natural state, is the world. I mean by the world those outward and visible things which contribute to our personal wellbeing, and our credit with society, rank, fortune, fame, knowledge, talent. It is in one or other of these things that you will find, most of you, the chief object of your love, not of a cold esteem, such as you accord to God, but of warm and impassioned sentiment. Some for riches, some for position, some for science, and other worldly object will sacrifice time, rest, and health; these objects fill the heart, occupy the thoughts; you talk of them, write of them, live for them. Many are those who thus prefer the world to God.

But all have not this worldliness of thoughts. Some have spirits more tender, and sentiments more exalted. Their hearts are not fixed upon outward things. They give it to the affections of kinship or friendship. For wife or children, for a relation or a friend, they give all their thoughts and plans, all they make and all they are. For them they seem to exist as much as, and more than for themselves, and without them they would not care to live. Their purpose is as much above those of whom we have already spoken as a human soul is above outward visible objects. I admit that in this preference there is even something generous and praiseworthy. But because they have chosen the object of their chief love in a higher order of created things, it is not the less true that they prefer the creature to the Creator. It is a beautiful idol, but still an idol; they bestow on man that first love, that adoration due to God; and so they too are sinners. They prefer to Him these living objects of their affections.

But again, there are men who do not yield their chief love to the world, nor to the affections, but to what they regard as their duty; regulating their life by their conscience, not considering it as the representative of God, and trying to excel, not in order to please God, but to be satisfied with themselves. These men are better and more worthy of esteem than the others, and I rejoice for poor human nature that there are still some capable of sentiments so noble. But when we have made for them every allowance which equity and even esteem can require, we must pronounce them sinners. They make themselves the centre of love. They make a god of their conscience, and in so doing they demoralize conscience itself. Conscience is related to God as the light of the moon is to that of the sun. It has no authority but what is derived from God, and when any one gives to conscience the supreme regard, he is giving what is due to God only, whose will is declared in His written word. Hence it is that even the best among natural men, who profess to follow the inward light of conscience, and by it regulate their duty, may be virtuous, but are not saints, may be free from vice, but not from sin.

Take away the crowds of those who love the world, in its many forms, from the lowest to the

445

highest; and the lesser number of those who place their affections on the creature more than the Creator; and the still rarer numbers of whom we have last spoken, and who are left to give the first love to God? Not one, there is none righteous, in this sense of loving God with the whole heart and mind and strength. We all have abandoned the Creator for the creature, we are all aliens and wanderers, we are all sinners.

If this discourse has in any degree arrested your attention, do not put the matter aside as if this doctrine of the sinfulness of man were still to be regarded as an exaggerated statement. The more you consider it, and the more you search the word of God, the more will its truth appear, and so far from doubting that you are by nature sinners, you will have difficulty in believing that there was any period of your life at which you were ignorant of it.

Neither be afraid of the severity with which the word of God condemns you. It declares you sinners only in order to make you saints; and the condemnation which it pronounces on you is but the measure of that deliverance which it reserves for you, a deliverance of which one has said all in saying one word, even thy name, O Jesus, that is, O Saviour!

Yes, O Lord God, who castest down only in order that Thou mayst lift up, who disturbest only to bring peace, who overturnest only in order to establish! we accept the sentence of our condemnation, and we accept it with penitence, with sorrow, but with gratitude and with hope as an earnest of our deliverance. Hide not from us anything of our sin cast upon our souls thy light clearly and fully, so that we may see ourselves as we are; and at that sight, grant that there may rise a cry of surprise and of anguish, which will rend the atmosphere of indifference by which we are surrounded, which will reach even to Thee, and to Thy Fatherly mercy! So that henceforth renouncing all self-esteem, we may recognise no claim upon thy mercy, save our misery; and that humbled, and nothing but humbled, believing and only believing, we may cast ourselves on thy love, and rise from the depth of our misery by that of Thy mercy! Amen.

CHRIST THE GREATEST AND BEST.-One evening Charles Lamb had met some friends to talk together on literary topics, and in the course of conversation it occurred to them to speak of the probable effects on themselves if they could speak mouth to mouth with the great and wonderful dead. "Then followed," says one who was present, "something of this sort, Think,' said one, if Dante were to enter the room, what should we do? How should we meet the man who had trod the fiery pavement of the Inferno, whose eyes had pierced the twilight, and breathed the still, clear air of the mount of the Purgatorio, whose mind had contemplated the mysteries of glory in the highest heaven?' 'Or suppose,' said another, Shakspeare were to come?' 'Ah!' said Lamb, his whole face brightening, 'how I should fling my arms up! how we should welcome him, that king of thoughtful men!' 'And suppose,' said another, Christ were to enter?' The whole face and attitude of Lamb were in an instant changed. Of course,' he said, in a tone of deep solemnity, we should fall on our knees.'"

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