Chapter 4
But to return to little William in his dark days of ignorance. I am glad to tell you that all his time was not spent in learning the legends of the saints. He was a bold, daring boy—sometimes rash and headstrong; perhaps often so. He got better training for his body than for his mind and soul, for he learnt early to climb the mountains and swim in the rivers. He was strong and hardy. God had given him great bodily activity, which was one day to be very needful to him. He and his brothers could get up to places on the rocks where you would be most likely dashed to pieces. William loved danger, and was afraid of neither men nor beasts, nor wild precipices, nor mountain torrents. His father said he was just the boy to make a first-rate soldier, and for this he meant to educate him. But as William grew up he had plans of his own, which may, perhaps, surprise you: he wished to give up his whole time to study, and to become a learned man, who could write books and have a great name.
I should tell you that just at that time learning had begun to be “the fashion,” as people say; not only amongst the sons of gentlemen, but in every class, there was a great desire to learn. The people of France and of other countries were beginning to feel how ignorant they were, and to long for knowledge on many subjects. There were, perhaps, three reasons for this. In the first place a great number of learned men had arrived in Italy from Constantinople. It was a little more than thirty years before William Farel was born, that Constantinople was first taken by the Turks, who were, as you know, Mahommedans. The Greeks, who had lived in Constantinople before, were Christians by name, though as dark in their thoughts of Christ as those in France. When the Turks arrived, the Greek scholars, who were, as regards worldly knowledge, far less ignorant than the French and Italians, fled for safety to Italy, bringing with them the books from the great library at Constantinople. These were, alas! chiefly heathen books, written by the old Greek philosophers and poets. They could not, therefore, be of any real profit for the souls of men—quite the contrary; but God makes all things serve His wise and blessed purposes. In order to read these books numbers of people began to learn Greek. We are told that the Greek schools which were opened at Paris were thronged with scholars. Old men, young men, and boys, might be seen as early as three and four in the winter mornings, hurrying through the streets, in one hand an iron candlestick, in the other a huge note-book. God was thus preparing the means by which the New Testament should be read in the original Greek, and translated into the various languages of Europe.
The second reason which may account for the great desire for learning that was then so remarkable, was this. Shortly before the time of which I am telling you, the Arabians, or Moors, who had been for centuries the masters of a great part of Spain, were driven out by the so-called Christians. These Moors, like the Turks, were Mahommedans. They were a people who possessed a greater knowledge of many sciences than their Christian neighbors. They seem to have learnt a great deal from the Jews, and they encouraged the Jews to live amongst them. The Jews had many old books, called the Cabala, containing a certain amount of curious knowledge. They had also, as you know, the Old Testament in Hebrew. This had been carefully copied by them over and over again, and whilst the Bible was kept from Christians, the Jews had at least that part of it, and were well acquainted with it: that is to say, they had that acquaintance with it which the natural understanding can have. They did not truly understand it, for they were not taught by the Spirit of God.
When the Christians took possession of the Moorish provinces of Spain, they began a terrible persecution of the Jews. Numbers were tortured, burnt alive, and killed in other manners. In the year 1492, 800,000 Jews were banished from Spain. They were thus scattered over Europe, carrying with them their Cabalistic books and their Old Testaments. Their great persecutors were the Dominican monks. 1,000,000 volumes were burnt at Grenada of Moorish and Jewish books. 80,000 of the Jewish manuscripts were also burnt in Spain by Cardinal Ximenes. This perhaps aroused the curiosity of many persons to know what the Jewish books contained. “The Jews alone,” wrote Reuchlin, a learned man in Germany who had studied their books, “the Jews alone have known the name of God.” Reuchlin’s book on this subject was written in 1494.
The priests in vain warned the people that anyone who learnt Hebrew was turned into a Jew on the spot, and that Greek was a newly-invented language of which all good Christian people ought to beware. Numbers now learnt Hebrew as well as Greek. If you can at any time get a most interesting little sixpenny book, called “Thomas Platter,” you will there find how this young man, who lived at the same time as William Farel, and who had been a goat-herd on the Alps, copied out the whole of a Hebrew grammar, and gave his last penny to buy a Hebrew Bible. Thus God was preparing the way for the spread of the Old Testament as well as the New, and also for its translation into many languages. But as books had for many hundred years been copied in writing, whenever wanted, they could never have been spread far and wide, had not God also in His providence prepared the means by which that should be done.
And this brings us to the third reason why learning was now “the fashion,” as Thomas Platter tells us. About the middle of the 15th century printing had been invented. Before the year 1500, 4,000,000 folios had been printed. In the following 36 years 17,000,000 more. In vain did Satan stir up the enemies of God to oppose the first gleams of light which thus dawned upon men. The persecutions in Spain from 1480 to 1498 were unceasing. The Jews suffered terribly, but amongst them others who had begun to read the Bible. In the year 1481, 2000 men and women were burnt by the Spanish Dominicans on one scaffold in the town of Seville.
But the mere spread of Bibles, and the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, would not alone have been enough for the saving of souls, and for the bringing to light the gospel of God. The Jews who read the Old Testament so diligently remained dark and blind as before. The Bible alone, without the teaching of God the Holy Spirit, is as a sealed book. It is only in living temples, in believing men, that the Holy Spirit dwells, and were there no believing people, the world would be in utter darkness, though filled with Bibles. God was, therefore, not only preparing the means for the spread of Bibles, but he was preparing men who should understand them, and, being filled with the Holy Spirit, should preach the glad tidings they learnt from the blessed word of God. But as yet the light had not burst forth. The printers were hard at work by day and by night. They slept sometimes only three hours in the twenty-four. But, alas! they were employed so diligently in printing either Latin psalters and Bibles, which few could read, or heathen philosophy and poetry, or Popish missals, such as the one I described to you. And William Farel and the other chosen vessels whom God was preparing for Himself, were still blind and benighted.
God alone could say, “Let there be light”; and when the time came the light broke forth.
That time was not yet come. The unbelieving Turks, and the unbelieving Jews, had been doing God’s work without intending it. God was training some who should do it out of love to Him, in the power of the Holy Spirit.