A young Frenchman had been wounded at the siege of San Quentin and was miserable and restless on his hospital bed, when a slip of paper which lay on the coverlet caught his eye. He read it, and it was used of God to open his blind eyes, and he was soundly converted.
The monument to that man may be seen today before the Church of the Consistory in Paris. There his likeness is seen standing with a Bible in its hand. He was Admiral Coligny, the leader of the reformation in France.
But the Scripture portion had not yet finished its work. Admiral Coligny gave it to his hospital nurse, a "sister of mercy." She read it and penitently placed it in the hands of the Lady Abbess. She too was converted by it.
She fled from France to the Palatinate. There she met a young Hollander and became his wife. The influence she had upon that man reached out to the reformation of the entire continent of Europe, for he was William of Orange.
How often have such silent messages been torn up in anger, trampled underfoot, or cast into the fire! Yet it was that little tract WHICH TURNED THE TIDE IN THE HISTORY OF EUROPE.