Then he awoke to a passionate horror and hatred of his old routine of "mumbled masses," of "rites of human invention," whereof he had never known the poetry and the mystic charm.

Had he known them, he could not have so denied and detested them.

On the other hand, when once he had embraced the new ideas, Knox's faith in them, or in his own form of them, was firm as the round world, made so fast that it cannot be moved.

He had now a pou sto, whence he could, and did, move the world of human affairs.

A faith not to be shaken, and enormous energy were the essential attributes of the Reformer.