the influence of women than was good for the welfare of his country or
his own reputation. But the limits of this lecture will not permit me to
dwell on his acts as a monarch, or on his statesmanship, his services,
or his personal defects of character. I am obliged, from the magnitude
of my subject, and from the necessity of giving it unity and interest,
to confine myself to him as a leader of the Huguenots alone. It is not
Henry himself that I would consider, so much as the struggles of the
brave men associated with him, more or less intimately, in their attempt
to secure religious liberty in the sixteenth century.

The sixteenth century! What a great era that was In comparison with the
preceding centuries since Christianity was declared! From a religious
and heroic point of view it was immeasurably a greater period than the
nineteenth century, which has been marked chiefly for the triumphs of
science, material progress, and social and political reforms. But in
earnestness, in moral grandeur, and in discussions which pertain to the
health and life of nations, the sixteenth century was greater than our
own. Then began all sorts of inquiries about Nature and about mind,
about revelation and Providence, about liberty of worship and freedom of
thought; all of which were discussed with an enthusiasm and patience
and boldness and originality to which our own times furnish no parallel.
And united with this fresh and original agitation of great ideas was a
heroism in action which no age of the world has equalled. Men risked
their fortunes and their lives in defence of those principles which have
made the enjoyment of them in our times the greatest blessing we
possess. It was a new spirit that had arisen in our world to break the
fetters which centuries of fraud and superstition and injustice had
forged,--a spirit scornful of old authorities, yet not sceptical, with
disgust of the past and hope for the future, penetrating even the
hamlets of the poor, and kindling the enthusiasm of princes and nobles,