However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only
_can_ he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither
Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had
been sent as Galley-slaves--some officer or priest, one day, presented
them an image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous
heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox,
when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God: this is "a _pented
bredd_"--a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it! She is fitter
for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox; and flung
the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there: but come
of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing
other than the real truth; it was a _pented bredd_: worship it he would
not.
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be of courage;
the Cause they had was the true one, and must and would prosper; the
whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making; it is
alone strong. How many _pented bredds_, pretending to be real, are
fitter to swim than to be worshipped! This Knox cannot live but by
facts: he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He
is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic; it
is the grand gift he has.
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