The Life and Times of John Huss; Or, the Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century
By . 2 vols. Second Edition. Boston : Gould & Lincoln.
THE style of Mr. Gillett is clear, manly, and discriminating. If, in respect of show, sparkle, nervous energy, verbal felicity, and picturesqueness, it is not equal to that of our chief American historians, yet it is not deficient in ease, grace, or vigor. He is almost always careful, always unambitious, always in good taste. To complain that the style is not equal to Mr, Motley’s, simply on the ground that the book is large and the subject historical, is grossly unfair. Mr. Gillett has not been eager for a place as a writer; his story has more merit in the thing told than in the telling. Even with his want of German he has been thorough in the investigation of authorities ; and if he writes without enthusiasm, his judgment carries the greater weight. As a scholar and an historian, as a man of candor and resources, his name is an ornament to the Presbyterian ministry, of which he is a member.
And yet the life of Huss is not adapted to produce popular effect, to show to striking advantage the charm of elaborate style, or to lift the hero himself into that upper light where his commonest deeds are dazzling and fascinating. He had not the acumen, the weight, the learning, the logical irresistibleness of Calvin; nor had he the great human sympathies, the touch of earthiness, yet not grossness, which made Luther so dear to his countrymen, and which have imprinted a cordial geniality on the whole Lutheran Church. John Huss, though a man of learning, the Rector of a great and powerful University, though a true friend, though a man of wide sympathies, though an eloquent preacher, and a most formidable enemy to the corruptions of the Romish Church, was yet a colorless character in comparison with some men who have become the objects of hero-worship. There are few of those grand bursts which will always justify Luther’s reputation, nothing of that rich poetical vein of Luther’s, finding its twofold course in music and in poetry : Huss was comparatively dry, and unenriched by those overflowings of a deep inner nature. He is, therefore, rather the exponent of an age than a brilliant mark, —rather a type than a great, restless, creative power. His life was almost too saintly to be interesting in the popular sense ; and although he does emerge above his age, yet it is not as the advocate of an idea, as Luther was, nor of a great system, as Calvin was, nor as a man fearless of kings and queens, as Knox was ; his life, rather, was a continued protest against sin in the high places of the Church. Though in him there appear glimpses of a clearer doctrine than that of his age, yet they do not come to a full expression ; it is the pride of pontiffs, the debaucheries of priests, the grasp after place and power and wealth by those who claim to follow the meek and holy One, which provoke his fiercest invective.
Mr. Gillett has, therefore, done a good service in subordinating the story of John Huss to the history of his age. His work is strictly entitled, “ The Bohemian Reformation of the Fifteenth Century.” That period has heretofore been almost a blank in our ecclesiastical records. The blank is now filled. It was a period of great beginnings. Germany was silent then ; but Wycliffe in England, and Huss, with his predecessors, Waldhauser, Milicz, and peter of Dresden, in Bohemia, were even then causing the Papal power, rent as it was with its internal dissensions, to tremble as before approaching death.
The story of that impotent rage which sought to purchase life and safety for the Romish Church by the murder of Huss and of Jerome of Prague is instructive, if it is not pleasing. The truth was too true to be spoken. Never has the Church of Rome, in its inquisitorial madness, been so blinded with fury and passion as then. Weakened by internal feuds, with two Popes struggling and hurling anathemas at each other, and with a priesthood at its lowest point, not of ignorance, but of carnality, it seemed in peril of utter extinction. Its own boldest and ablest men were among its most outspoken accusers ; and no words stronger or more cutting were spoken by Huss than by Gerson and Clémangis. But Huss committed the common mistake of reformers. He put himself outside of the body to be reformed. He allowed his spirit to fret against the evils of his times so madly that he would fain have put himself outside of the circumstances of his age. This wiser men than he, men no less ardent, but more calculating, never would do. In the city of Constance itself, during the sittings of the great Council which condemned Huss to death, sermons were preached more bitterly reproachful of the pride of the Pontiffs and the corruption of the Church than the words of any of the men who put themselves beyond its pale, and addressed it as “your Church,” instead of speaking of it as “ ours.” And while the dignitaries of that corrupt body dared not lay a finger upon their more pure, prophetic, and sharply accusing brethren, they made men like Huss and Jerome of Prague the doubly burdened and tortured victims of their rage.
Much of the interest of these volumes is owing to the prominence given to Wycliffe, and his contemporaneous work in England. It is strange, indeed, that in those early days, before Europe was crossed with its net-works, not of railways, but of post-roads even, the land which inclosed the fountains that fed the Elbe, eight hundred miles above Hamburg, was closely bound to that distant island, four hundred miles beyond Hamburg, on the western side of the German Ocean. But a royal marriage in England had united that kingdom to Bohemia, and Wycliffe’s name was a household word in the lecture-rooms of Prague, and Wycliffe’s books were well worn in its libraries. The great work or preparation, the preliminary stirring-up of men’s minds, by both of these great reformers, is hardly realized by us. But words had been spoken which could not die in a hundred years, and the public temper had been thrown into a glow which could not cool in a century. The “ Morning Star of the Reformation ” found its twin lighting up the dark ravines of Bohemia, and when they twain arose the day had begun to break. The Reformation did not begin with Luther. The elements had been made plastic to his touch ; all was ready for his skilful hand to mould them into the symmetry of the Great Reformation. The armies of the Lord had enlisted man by man before he came; it was for his clarion blast to marshal them in companies and battalions, and lead them to the battle.
We must again thank Mr. Gillett for his timely, serviceable book. It is never unprofitable to look back and see who have kept the sacred fire of Christianity burning when it seemed in danger of extinguishment. And in that fifteenth century its flames certainly burned low. Whenever the Church is on the side of aristocratic power, whenever it is a conservative and not a radical and progressive force in an evil age, when the forces of Satan are in power, the men are truly worthy of immortality who go out to meet death in behalf of Christ and the religion of meekness and purity and universal love. Such was John Huss. He ought never to have suffered himself to be driven from the Church, and when he did so, he committed the unceasing mistake of reformers, among whom Wesley and Zinzendorf stand as the two marked exceptions; but for rectitude, zeal, and a thorough consecration to the great interests of Christ, he merits an even more sumptuous memorial than this excellent book.