of the church, and they could not escape the conviction that the record of the founding of that church was given in the writings of the New Testament and that these writings were worthy of peculiar veneration.  Perhaps this is the main reason why the learning of antiquity was chiefly preserved in monasteries and churches.  There were ecclesiastics in all these ages who were acquainted with the Scriptures in Latin, and this acquaintance tended to preserve the knowledge of Jesus the Christ as portrayed in the original gospel records.  The history of that epoch proves that there were men who loved the Lord more than priestly forms and ceremonial observances.  John Wyclif, Jerome of Prague, John Huss, and others experienced that deeper longing for personal relationship with Christ, and they proclaimed the gospel of Christ in a manner that could not be understood by the hierarchy of their times.

[Sidenote:  Classical learning]

Jesus was indeed the Christ of God.  The light which shone forth from his presence could not be totally obscured, and the moral power and influence of his life and teaching could not be destroyed.  The revival of classical learning restored the Greek Testament to western Europe and attracted the attention of students and learned men in all the monasteries and universities.  While the hierarchy insisted on the exclusive right to interpret the Scriptures, the simple reading of these wonderful records could not but create new conceptions of truth which no clerical prohibition could banish.  Life was springing up in the midst of death.

[Sidenote:  Love for truth]

The Reformation was the sincere effort of honest men to restore the truth of primitive Christianity, that the world might again experience the triumph of evangelical faith.  To the everlasting credit of the Continental reformers be it said that their motives were not selfish.  They sought not for themselves freedom of thought and speech nor church power.  Their immediate object was the restoration of the gospel; all other results were but secondary.  Nothing is more certain than that at the first Luther had no idea of assailing the organization of the papal church.  Most of the reformers at the first still believed most earnestly in the imperial government of the universal church; and they relinquished this long-cherished ideal only when driven by force of circumstances which were at first unseen and unsuspected.  Luther did not at first question the doctrine of the supremacy of the pope; but when he found that the reigning pope could not be reconciled with the principles of truth which he taught, Luther proposed to appeal the matters in question to a general council, notwithstanding the melancholy example, a century earlier, of the Council of Constance and the fate of John Huss and Jerome of Prague.

[Sidenote:  Indulgences]