Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
of interest, perhaps of benefit, to the world. There
may be something more finely sensitive in the
modern humour, that tends more and more to
withdraw a man's personality from the lessons he
inculcates or the cause that he has espoused ; but
there is a loss herewith of wholesome responsibility ;
and when we find in the works of Knox, as in the
Epistles of Paul, the man himself standing nakedly
forward, courting and anticipating criticism, putting
his character, as it were, in pledge for the sincerity
of his doctrine, we had best waive the question of
delicacy, and make our acknowledgments for a
lesson of courage, not unnecessary in these days
of anonymous criticism, and much light, otherwise
unattainable, on the spirit in which great move-
ments were initiated and carried forward. Knox's
personal revelations are always interesting; and, in
the case of the ' First Blast,' as I have said, there
is no exception to the rule. He begins by stating
the solemn responsibility of all who are watchmen
over God's flock ; and all are watchmen (he goes on
to explain, with that fine breadth of spirit that char-
acterises him even when, as here, he shows himself
most narrow), all are watchmen 'whose eyes God
doth open, and whose conscience he pricketh to
admonish the ungodly.' And with the full con-
sciousness of this great duty before him, he sets
himself to answer the scruples of timorous or
worldly-minded people. How can a man repent,
he asks, unless the nature of his transgression is
made plain to him ? ' And therefore I say,' he
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