AND TUTOR TO FREDERICK THE NOBLE. 



211 



more than the quick fire of a revival. To reap a sudden 

 reward is not good for the heart. Instead of quickening it and 

 winning it slowly to God, it lulls it to sleep after a short 

 excitement." 



One of the most solemn moments in the childliood of Godot's 

 pupil was at the death, in June, 1840, of his grandfatlier, the 

 King Frederick William the Third, so well served by Bliicher. 



It should be said in praise of the Prussian Court that 

 nothing pompous came then to offend the eye of the child or 

 disturb his naivete. 



He walked out of tlie palace of the dead ruler, holding his 

 tutor by the hand, and so they strolled about in the Tiergarten. 

 It was a fine evening. One may imagine with what golden 

 opportunities so much simpKcity furnished the cliild for the 

 outpouring of his feelings into the sympathetic ear of the 

 young minister. 



" What was faith ? " the young tutor asked himself, after 

 such talks with a guileless little boy. The answer came that 

 " faith, to have power to save, must be an exchange of life 

 between us and Christ. We make Him a gift of our sins. He 

 renounces the exercise of His justice. By the first act in this 

 exchange we make over 1 o him what is ours : sin. By the 

 second act, we make ours that which belongs to Him : justice. 

 This mysterious exchange, by which God foregoes His justice 

 for the cleansing of a sinner, is the secret of the salvation 

 that takes place in the depths of the soul working out its 

 repentance. From this perpetually renewed and ever-recurrent 

 exchange of grace and sin, issues, as from a bubbling spring, 

 the stream of a Christian life." 



We gain here our next profound insight into Godot's con- 

 ception of salvation. As a philoso])her and divine he had to 

 conceive salvation intellectually. His mind conceived it, we 

 see, almost as a legal transaction. That Godet had the same 

 sense of law as a true Calvinist — which sense should not be 

 confused with the blind dictates so often mistaken for the law 

 given from above — will appear from his whole life as we mark 

 its onward steps, and when we look backward upon his career 

 as it comes nearer to completion. That he was a " moralist," 

 who found the seal of divinity impressed in man upon the 

 conscience striving to grasp the divine righteousness of the 

 Man Jesus, has already been illustrated. 



Now we see all the common honesty of his soul, if I may use 

 such a term. To be saved, man has to keep the bargain. He 

 should strive to give to the justice of God no object. This is 



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