AND TUTOR TO FREDERICK THE NOBLE. 



199 



as from God the Eepublican Government which at last severed 

 every tie of Neuchatel with the House of Prussia. 



The secret of this unity must be looked for in Godet's 

 humility, though his was a firm and proud nature, we might 

 even say exacting and imperious. 



He was endowed witli a lofty and piercing intelligence. 

 Impatience at the dullness or weakness of others should have 

 been one of its exterior manifestations. Those of my hearers 

 who remember Gladstone will best see my meaning. The 

 resemblance between Gladstone and Godet was not limited to 

 the physical likeness in features, bearing and oratorical 

 expression, which struck repeatedly those who knew both. 

 They were alike in character, in self-confidence. They were 

 tractable — and intractable — to the same degree, I may also say 

 on the same points. 



From the time he started upon his career, the young Church- 

 man — I mean Godet — fixed his eye upon the enemy which in 

 him most required curbing : pride. For pride he strenuously 

 fought to substitute righteousness — not the saintliness of the 

 priest or monk or ascetic, but the righteousness of a plain, 

 straight man, who was destined to go through life as a teacher, 

 husband, father, citizen, with the additional responsibility of 

 being a clergyman. He " took himself down " daily, from the 

 moment he had outgrown the crude ambitions and rude self- 

 assertions of boyhood. For those motive powers of untaught 

 youth the young minister substituted sincerity in self-examina- 

 tion and humility, but without any degradation of self before 

 the tribunal of God, since men are made after His iniao-e and 

 sliould swell with helpful exaltation in the fight waged against 

 blind pride. 



From the age of eighteen, he was intended for the Ministry. 

 His mind, then already, showed the degree of maturity expected 

 only from men ten years older — a not unusual occurrence among 

 such strongly intellectualised circles as those wdiich the 

 persistent emigration of gifted Protestants from France had 

 established, by a kind of selection, in the French-speaking 

 Cantons of Geneva, Vaud and Neuchatel. Early he took up an 

 important share in tuitional work at the school for girls which 

 his widowed mother kept to support her family and to repay 

 her late husband's debts, debts, by the way, that w^ere quite 

 honourably contracted. 



Called to Paris in 1830 by his brother for a short holiday 

 after the Jo^mUes de Juillct, which violently closed the reign of 

 Charles X., he saw Paris "in a still rather disturbed condition. 



