CHAPTER VI. Dr. Malan, Dr. Merle D'Aubigné, and Dr. Gaussen. "Two voices are there; One is of the Sea, WHEN Wordsworth penned this twelfth of his Sonnets to Liberty, he thought the voice of Switzerland had perished. But how wonderfully God works! Which voice is now the mightiest, that of the Mountains, or the Sea, Switzerland or England? The voice of the Mountains surely! the voice of Switzerland is the noblest, in Geneva at least, and therefore the mightiest. Wherever you catch the tone of stern religious principle against oppression in any people, you feel that they are strong, their voice is mighty. The voice of a nation is the voice of its great men; and the voice of the great men of England just now is the hoarse, melancholy cry of expediency, in the sacrifice of principle; while that of the great men of Switzerland is the clear, ringing, thrilling shout of Spiritual Liberty! May it ring and never cease, as long as the eagle screams in the mountain pines, as long as the tempest roars, as long as the ava. lanche thunders. "Great men have been among us," England sings, "hands that penned, and tongues that uttered wisdom, better none." Great men are now among us, Switzerland may say, and free spirits, that by their deeds and thoughts are planting the germs of goodness and greatness in many hearts. There is a circle of such spirits, not alone in Geneva; but I shall be constrained to limit my personal notes of them to the memoirs of the three, with whom I have been most acquainted. Thinking of these men, and of others whom I have met in Switzerland, and of the simplicity and freedom still living among those proud mountains, I cannot help warning my readers against the sneers of some English men and books-Murray's Hand-Book, for example,— in regard to the moral and political condition of the country. In some parts it is bad enough, we all know; but I have thought that sometimes the English really seemed vexed and envious at the existence of so much freedom, happiness and greatness in a little, unaristocratical, republican Canton like Geneva. May I be forgiven if I judge them harshly; but such envious hatred is a hateful thing. I am sure the great body of Englishmen would not feel it; but Toryism and Puseyism together do make queer mixture of Despotism and Prejudice. Through such glasses the mind sees nothing good, or will acknowledge nothing; green-eyed Jealousy squints and looks askant, both at civil and religious Liberty; a titled nobility and a mitred priesthood do sometimes rail away against a Church without a Bishop and a State without a King, in a manner so unmerciful, that I am apt to think it is because they feel inwardly self-condemned in the presence of such great forms of Truth and Freedom. Those forms stand to them in the shape of accusers, and very glad they are to have some such shadow of excuse for their own bitterness, in the case of our own country, for example, as is afforded them in Mississippi repudiation, Irish riots, and negro slavery. But they have none of these things in Geneva. Dr. MALAN was honored by Divine Providence to be among the foremost instruments in the spiritual awakening with which it has pleased God to bless Geneva. He was a preacher of Socinianism in the National Church, in 1814, and was also one of the Regents of the College. He was much admired for his eloquence, and continued to preach and to teach, for some time, in utter ignorance of the truth as it is in Christ crucified. At length it pleased God to visit him, and give him light; as early as 1816 the darkness was removed from his mind, and Christ the Saviour was made known to him, in so blessed a manner, with so much assurance and joy, that he felt as if the delight which filled his own soul, by the view of the grace of God in Jesus, must certainly be experienced likewise by all who heard him. But he was greatly mistaken. His views were deemed new, strange, and erroneous; he was ordered not to repeat them; then the churches were interdicted him, and at length, on preaching in the Cathedral a discourse, in proof of the doctrine of Justification by Faith, he was finally deprived of the use of the pulpits. This was in 1817. The severity with which he was treated, being expelled from all employments in the College and the Church, together with the boldness and firmness of his bearing, the fervor of his feelings, and the power of his discourses, drew crowds after him; men were converted by the grace of God; and in 1818 an independent church was formed, and a chapel built in a lovely spot, a short walk outside the city, of which he continues the Pastor to this day. He has been often in England, and the friendship and prayers of warm-hearted English Christians have greatly sustained and animated him; they in their turn have also found in Geneva the conversation and holy example of the man, together with the exercises of divine worship in his chapel, as a fountain of home religious life in a foreign country. He and his family have become imbued with the language, the literature, and the friendships of England, without losing their Swiss republican simplicity and frankness. All his life he has been indefatigable and remarkably successful in the use of the press as well as the pulpit. His writings in the shape of tracts and books have been numerous and useful, especially in revealing the Saviour to men in the errors of Romanism. Some of his tracts are like the Dairyman's Daughter of Leigh Richmond, for simple truth and beauty. They present the living realities of the gospel in a manner most impressive and affecting to the mind, in narratives, in dialogues, in familiar parables and illustrations. He loves to dwell upon the bright persuasive side of Truth Divine, and leads his flock in green pastures beside still waters; though some of his peculiar speculative views and shades of belief may sometimes not be received even by the very hearts he is so successful in winning and comforting. His extensive missionary tours have been attended with a great blessing. Indeed, of all men I ever met with, he seems most peculiarly fitted for familiar conversational effort to win men to Christ. With a deep fountain of love in his heart, an active mind, full of vivacity and impulse, an extraordinary fertility of illustration, a strength of faith which makes upon the minds of others the most successful impression of argument and conviction, and with great sweetness and happiness in his own Christian experience, he goes about among the mountains, pouring forth the stores of thought and feeling for the guidance and the good of others, comforting the tempted soul, and pointing the distressed one to the Saviour. In his encounters with the Romanists, nothing can withstand his patience, his gentleness, his playfulness, his fulness of Christ. The Romanists well know him, and the clergy fear him, on account of the manner in which he wins his way among them, fearlessly opposing them, appealing to the Bible, and winning them by argument and love. When I was among the Waldensian Christians of Piedmont, I asked them if it would not be exceedingly pleasant and profitable for Dr. Malan to make one of his Missionary visits among them? Ah, said they, the Romanists know him too well to suffer that. Probably they would not let him pass the frontier; certainly they would not suffer him to preach or to teach in the name of Jesus; and if he attempted to do it, the least they would do would be to put him under the care of gens d'armes, and send him back to the Canton of Geneva. Dr. Malan traces his own ancestry to the Waldenses, says he is one of them, and pleasantly remarks, "We are not of the Reformed Christians; we have always been evangelical; a true Church of Christ before the Reformation." He frequently expressed a desire to visit the Waldenses, but told me an anecdote of his personal experience of the tender mercies of Sardinia, which I have seen in Dr. Heugh's excellent book on religion in Geneva. If I remember correctly, he was on a visit at Chamouny, and had given a Bible to some of the peasantry; certainly he had talked with them of the Saviour and Divine Truth; he would not be anywhere without doing this. He was, however, accused of distributing tracts pernicious to the Roman Catholic faith, and under this charge was arrested, put in the custody of two gens d'armes, and sent to prison. It was a bold step; but, not being able to prove their accusation, they were compelled to let him go; not, however, till they had unwittingly afforded him an opportunity, of which he gladly availed himself, to preach the gospel to the soldiers who attended and guarded him. Probably they never before listened to such truth; and Dr. Heugh remarks that "there is good reason for believing that one of these soldiers, employed to incarcerate the ambassador of Christ, was himself brought to the Saviour, and introduced into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” Very many have been the incidents of this nature in the experience of Dr. Malan, and sometimes among the Romanists he has had very narrow escapes. The dealings of God with him have been abundant in mercy, though at first he had to pass through a great fight of affliction, and his own peculiarities in the Christian faith, or rather in the manner of presenting it, may be traced probably to the discipline of the divine Spirit with his own heart, and the manner in which the Saviour was first revealed to him. He has said most beautifully that his conversion to the Lord Jesus might be compared to what a child experiences when his mother awakes him with a kiss. A babe awakened by a mother's kiss! What a sweet process of conversion! Now if all the subsequent teachings and dealings of the Spirit of God with his soul have been like this, who can wonder at the earnestness and strength, with which he presses the duty of the assurance of faith and love upon other Christians, or at the large measure of the Spirit of Adoption, with which his own soul seems to have been gifted. His conversational powers are very great, in his own way, and he leads the mind of the circle around him with such perfect simplicity and ease, like that of childhood, to the sacred themes which his heart loves, that every man is pleased, no one can possibly be offended. What in him is a habit of life, proceeds with so much freedom and artlessness, that a personal address from him on the subject of religion, in circumstances where from any other man it might be intclerably awkward and |