222 PROF. F. F. ROGET^ ON FREDERIC GODET^ SWISS DIVINE, 



indigenous ; it was that of a lover of nature, of an admirer of 

 the Alps at whose feet he dwelt. He was one of those simple 

 souls who cannot understand that, in the face of so much 

 beauty, man should import evil and unhappiness into the world. 

 This was to him an absurd infatuation. His grand brain failed 

 to comprehend so much smallness of mind. He was blessed 

 with that rare power over self, and that insight into causes and 

 occasions of giving offence, which distinguishes the best men 

 in every generation, whatever their creed, their country, or their 

 callins;. 



The young men who passed through his hands felt that 

 he had won over them the rights of a spiritual parent ; in the 

 words of Calvin, that " he who administers the doctrine as the 

 seed of eternal life, fills a father's office and deserves the name 

 of a father." 



It is impossible to drag into this definition of spiritual parent- 

 a^^e the cold objectivity of the indifferent psychologist. Thus, in 

 Godet, does one meet the warm-hearted, kindly disposition of a 

 Bible lover. 



He did not hold that science as an end terminated within 

 itself. He conceived it in close association with all life, with 

 his own life and the life of the Church. To his mind there 

 was but one legitimate theology, that which, by producing an 

 increment in Christian knowledge, brings about an increase in 

 the Christian life of mankind. 



What lends charm to his commentaries and clothes them 

 with persuasive fervour, is, not that they are a collection ot 

 scholarly papers, but that they record the testimony borne to 

 the Gospel by a personality imbued with the Spirit of God. 



His personal teaching was so influential that when the so- 

 called Broad Church ideas put in an appearance at Neuchatel, 

 in 1869, not one member of the national clergy countenanced 

 them. The learned lectures delivered then by the objector to 

 the Broad Church contentions were published in a volume 

 which was translated into several languages. 



However, one result of a statement made on one side and badly 

 confuted on the other, was to show the right-minded folk in both 

 cani[)S that there was a flaw in the " multitudinous " conception 

 of the National Church. 



This flaw was namely that, to be " multitudinous " on terms 

 of fairness, a National Church must cease accepting payment for 

 its ministers out of the public rates. 



To be " fair," a Church must assume a voluntary adherence, 

 and this assumption is ill-founded when the expenses of the 



