288 THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. or to call anjrtliing by its milder name, or in sliort for one moment to forget that the Eternal God and His "Word are great, and that all else is little, or is nothing; nay if it set itself against the Most High and His Word, is the one frightful thing that this world exhibits. He is never in the least ill-tempered with Her Majesty ; but she cannot move him from that fixed centre of all his thoughts and actions : Do the will of God, and tremble at nothing ; do against the will of God, and know that, in the Immensity and the Eternity around you, there is nothing but matter of terror. Nothing can move Knox here or else- where from that standing-ground ; no consideration of Queen's sceptres and armies and authorities of men is of any eflScacy or dignity whatever in comparison ; and becomes not beautiful but horrible, when it sets itself against the Most High. One Mass in Scotland, he more than once intimates, is more terrible to him than all the military power of France, or, as he expresses it, the landing of ten thousand armed men in any part of this realm, would be. The Mass is a daring and unspeakably frightful
