The next remarkable event in Farel’s history is one you would least expect to hear of. At the age of sixty-nine he married one of his country—women, who had fled from France and taken refuge at Neuchâtel. Her name was Mary Torel.
She and her widowed mother had been living at Neuchâtel for some years, and old Madame Torel had kept house for Farel. Mary was a staid and pious young woman, and she seems to have made a good wife to her elderly husband.
Five or six years after their marriage they had a little son, who was called John. No doubt he was called after Calvin.
Calvin, however, was by no means pleased when he heard of Farel’s marriage. He said he was dumb with astonishment. He was not as dumb as he might have been, for he made several severe remarks on the subject, and considered that Farel needed much pity for his youthful folly.
But Farel’s marriage was to be no obstacle to his taking the Lord’s message whithersoever he was sent.
It was in the autumn of 1558 that we hear of his wedding; in 1560 or ‘61, we find him setting off on a perilous journey.
For nearly forty years he had been laboring day and night amongst the mountains and the valleys of Switzerland; he had seen the whole of French Switzerland, with the exception of some few villages, turned from idols to the living God.
But in all his work and all his sufferings, he had never forgotten his old home on the French Alps. Since the time when he had preached there as a young man, after the happy days at Meaux, many who had heard him had been diligent in making known the Gospel of God. And the Bibles he had sent amongst the French villages, by means of colporteurs, had not been read in vain.
In the year 1560 some of the people of Gap arrived at Neuchâtel, and entreated him to come amongst them once more.
The old man set off, with a Bible and a staff, and was soon preaching by the hillsides, in the mills and fields, and in the streets and markets.
Having preached for a while in the market place of Gap, he was entreated to preach in a large chapel. Very soon, however, an edict was passed by the French Government, forbidding all such preaching except in private houses. But as the chapel was the only place capable of containing the crowds who came to hear, Farel preached there still.
An order was sent to the king’s proctor at Gap to seize the heretic preacher. But the proctor had himself believed the blessed tidings of the love of God, and he would not lay hands upon Farel. Another proctor was sent, and with a company of officers and many armed sergeants he proceeded to the “Chapel of the Holy Dove.” The sergeants knocked loudly at the door, which was shut and locked. As no one opened it, they forced it in, and found the chapel crowded from end to end. But every eye remained fixed upon the preacher. No one moved, and Farel preached on. The sergeants made their way through the crowd, rushed upon the pulpit, and seized the preacher “with the crime in his hand.”
“The crime” was the Bible.
He was carried off, and locked up in a dark dungeon. By what means the gospellers succeeded in rescuing him from his prison, I cannot tell you; but by some means or another he was carried off by them in the course of the night. They took him through the dark streets to the ramparts, and like one of old “he was let down the wall in a basket.”
Other gospellers were waiting to receive him, and they conducted him safely back to Neuchâtel.
But the next year we find him again amongst the hills of Dauphiné. Another edict had been passed, allowing the gospellers to meet in the open air, provided the king’s officers were allowed to be present.
Just as in the old times the village people had flocked to the holy cross on the hill at Tallard, so now they came from far and near to hear of Him who hung upon the Cross of Calvary to put away their sins.
And amongst them came none other than the old Bishop of Gap. We are told by a priest who wrote the story of those days how this old man rose up when the sermon was over, and cast upon the ground the miter he had worn, and the crosier he had carried, for five and thirty years. He trod them under his feet, and said he would follow the Lord Jesus with William Farel.
Very soon was he put to the test. Terrible massacres of the gospellers had begun in the neighborhood of Gap. The little flock of believers met together, and decided to leave their homes and fly to a place of safety.
They set out, four hundred in number. At the head of the band marched the two old men, William Farel, and Gabriel de Clermont, once Bishop of Gap.
But the seed which had been sown sprang up when the gospellers were gone; and from that day to this, the light has never been extinguished in Farel’s beloved Dauphiné.
When he returned to Neuchâtel, Christopher Fabri, who had for some time been his fellow-laborer there, went to Dauphiné with Peter Viret. There they preached and taught, and went on as far as Lyons. They thought it a good opportunity, for the plague was raging there, and many of the sick and dying were ready to hear the blessed news of the Savior of sinners.
“Neither life, nor wife, nor children,” wrote Christopher Fabri, “are so dear to me as my Lord Jesus and His Church.”
Meanwhile Farel’s labors had never ceased; but those of John Calvin were drawing to a close.
In the spring of 1564 a letter was brought to Farel from his beloved friend John Calvin.
“Farewell,” wrote Calvin, “farewell, my best and truest brother! Since it is the Lord’s will you should live when I am gone, never forget our friendship, which, so far as it has been useful to the Church of God, will bear fruit in eternity. Do not, I entreat, weary yourself by coming to see me. I breathe with difficulty, and I expect every moment to depart hence. I am well satisfied that I live and die in Christ. To you and the brethren, once more farewell!”
Farel set off at once for Geneva: he found Calvin still alive. Once more they spoke together of the Lord whom they loved; and a few days later Calvin was absent from the body and present with the Lord.
Farel’s task, too, was nearly done. He was now seventy-five years old. His ceaseless labors might have worn out many a stronger man. But till his Master called him hence he would work on.
When Calvin was gone, Farel set out on his last journey to Metz. It was still at the peril of his life that he went there “to sow his tares,” as said the bishop; but he was fearless as ever.
And his preaching at Metz was with a power and freshness that cheered and stirred up the persecuted flock.
After one of these sermons he sank down exhausted. It was as much as his friends could do to carry him back to Neuchâtel.
There he lay for some time, too weak to move. But his room was thronged with those who loved him for his work’s sake, and who came once more to look on his beloved face and to hear his last words.
On September 13th, 1565, he passed away into the presence of his Lord. It was fifteen months after the death of Calvin, and he was about seventy-six years old.
He was buried in the churchyard of Neuchâtel; but his grave is now unknown, except to Him who will ere long call him forth to meet Him in the air.
Those who visited him in this last illness had had a foretaste of Heaven, which they could never forget. Christ had been magnified in his body, both by life and by death.
“Those who saw him,” we are told, “went away glorifying God.”
He had given directions that his body should be laid in the churchyard, “until that God shall call it forth from the corruption here below, and bring it alive into the glory of Heaven.” There was great mourning for “Father Farel.”
His beloved Christopher Fabri remained at Neuchâtel to care for the flock that had been so dear to him. Little John Farel died two years after his father.
Thus do we end our story of one who sought no higher honor here below than to be a workman “approved of God,” who desired no other joy than that the Lord Jesus Christ should be glorified.
“It is not,” he said, “the wealth, and the honor, and the pleasure of this world that are set before us, but to serve the Lord, and that alone.”
And according to his faith, so was it to William Farel. He had the love of those to whom Christ was dear, but besides that, his reward here below was reproach and shame, insult and hatred, suffering and toil.
And whilst the names of Luther and Calvin are everywhere spoken, and their history everywhere told, there are comparatively few who have heard of the fifty years’ labor of William Farel. Few men, perhaps, have been, in proportion to their work, so speedily forgotten. Whilst Luther’s books are everywhere to be had, the few writings of William Farel are almost unknown.
There may be, perhaps, one reason for this which we little like to own. But is it not true that the message with which Farel was, sent, is one from which the heart of man will shrink, not only in popish countries but in Protestant countries also?
“Let none be astonished if I cannot endure that any should mix up Jesus Christ and His gospel with ceremonies not commanded by God—that any should preach that those things should be believed and done which are not in the gospel nor of the gospel—if I will not endure that any should seek for salvation or grace in things here below, and not in Jesus Christ alone. Who can justly condemn me in this, that I say there is no other gospel, no other glad tidings of salvation, but in Jesus only?
“Therefore, when those great fathers of old times spake otherwise, and if even the angels of Heaven came to speak of another gospel, can I not always say with Paul, 'Let them be accursed!’
“Jesus Christ and His gospel! Are these human things, with which men’s inventions may be mixed up? May men add to them what seems in their eyes fair and good?
“I am well assured that the liberty such men take, to make and keep human observances in the Church of God, is not a liberty which comes from Jesus Christ, but a liberty forged upon the anvil of hell.
“It is a liberty which sets us free from the obedience and service of Jesus Christ, to make us slaves of Satan and of iniquity. Shall we not rather be the bondsmen of God, and set free from everything which Jesus Christ has not commanded, and which His Word does not contain, that He and His blessed gospel may reign in our hearts alone? May the Lord, by His grace, give to us all an honest heart and a true sense of what is due to Him, and an intelligence as clear, and a gift of the Spirit as excellent, as He gave to His holy apostle Paul; that we may thus be hindered from mixing up, or holding, or keeping in the Church of Jesus Christ anything that He has not commanded... admitting by holy discipline that which ought to be admitted, rejecting that which ought to be rejected; so that nothing be said or done that is not simply and purely according to the Word of God, by which alone all should be ordered and governed!
“And may that Word alone be the authority for the Church, neither added to nor diminished, nothing changed, nothing altered, from that which we find therein!”
May you and I, having believed in Jesus, having known Him as the One who has saved us fully, perfectly, and eternally, from sin and condemnation, having known Him as the One ascended into the glory and dwelling in His Church by the Spirit, thus obey Him in simplicity and truth.
If the story of this servant of the Lord should be the means in these last days of leading but one soul to know and follow the Great Shepherd of the sheep, it will be but carrying on the work in which William Farel found his joy; and he being dead, may thus even yet speak for his Master.
“Not,” as he said, “that I might have disciples who follow my teaching, and of whom I am the leader (I leave this to Francis and to Dominick), but that some might with me be disciples of Jesus and of Him crucified... that some might bear the cross after Him, that some might own Him as their Lord.
“There is not a man upon the earth,” he adds, “nor is there an angel in Heaven, who can truthfully say that I have drawn disciples to myself and not to Jesus.”
And thus did God set upon His servant the signal mark of honor, that there has never been a Farelite.
He sought not to gather men to any person or thing here below, but to Christ in heaven.
“If we know Him,” he wrote,” we must know Him where He is, in Heaven, at the Father’s right hand.”
And to Him alone would he direct all eyes and all hearts. “Faith,” he said, “turns to none but God alone. Faith stands on no ground but God only. Faith can receive nothing but that which is from God. All is nothing to faith, excepting God only. Nothing is sweet to faith but God and His voice.”
And now we take leave of him to whom that voice was so sweet and so well known, and who soon, at the sound of that voice, shall rise from the churchyard of Neuchâtel to be forever with the Lord.
May you meet him in that glory, having known, as he knew, by God’s grace and goodness, “the power and value of the death of Christ.”