JOHN WYCLIFFE, HONORED AS A TRUTH TELLER.

"Because I live, ye shall live also." John 14: 19.

14:19.

John Wycliffe illustrates, in his life and influence, the power of a man who tells the truth. He did not know all the truth. He stood in the midst of shadow and superstition. His feet were taken out of the quicksands of doubt and conjecture, and planted on the rock Christ Jesus. There he stood. He told what he knew. So far as he knew the way, he walked in it, and bade all follow him as he followed Christ. He did not organize a society, or found a sect, or become the head of an order; and in this respect ranks neither with Loyola nor with Luther. He did better, and acted more wisely, than either of them. He kept with God, stood for God, and held on, undaunted, to the end. He never weakened nor let go.

His utter fearlessness challenges admiration. He feared not to walk where truth led the way. Purgatory and other errors of Rome were demolished as he came to them and investigated them in the light of Scripture; he trampled on them in the fear and in the name of God. He had the courage of his convictions. He was the one man who dared stand up and be counted. Opposition did not daunt him; peril did not stay his hand nor shut his mouth.

If it is contended that Luther weakened in his old age, that there were errors he did not grapple with and truths he did not tell, for expediency's sake or any other sake, this could not be said of Wycliffe, the "morning star of the Reformation." From first to last, he lived for Christ. Christ is pledged to keep his fame and name alive. The life of God was in him; and to him Christ spake, in private and in public-when, in his study and on his knees, he grappled with error, and when in public he went forth, a flaming torch, to illumine the world-saying, "Because I live, ye shall live also." Is it not a good time to turn our eyes to this star that shone for God, and that now shines for all?

The day-dawn has come. The prophecies of God's word are being fulfilled. The forces of error are dying out. They no longer fill the land. The ark of the Lord is being lifted. God commands that the lovers of the Bible, of education, of liberty, sanctify themselves. The Lord is about to do wonders among his people. The church of Jesus Christ resembles Israel on the banks of the Jordan. On this day, so praised; this day, when the pulpit is so well manned; this day, when Bibles are being scattered and sown on the broad field of a world's activity, as seed is thrown by the liberal sower; this day, when the press is free, and all padlocks are removed from lip and closet, and the tongue can declare the truth, the whole truth, not only beneath the broad ægis of the great republic, but in Great Britain, and wherever the flag representing the Lion of the tribe of Judah waves, in France, where the Huguenots were slain, in Italy, where, as in Rome itself, the gospel may be preached,-Jehovah speaks to his children; in Austria, in Germany, where Luther awoke, in Spain, where Torquemada reveled in cruelty, in Mexico, where death has reigned--this day of days, the Lord bids us: "Take up the ark of the covenant, and pass over before the people, and I will begin to magnify thee; and when ye are come to the brink of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.” "Be not dismayed. Come hither, and hear the words of the Lord your God. Hereby ye shall know that the living God is among you, and that he will, without fail, drive out from before you the Romanists and the Mormons and the atheists and the infidels, because the ark of the covenant is in the advance."

Let us take up the stones from the bed of the stream on which we have walked into the Canaan of opportunity, and build an altar unto our God, which shall be a memorial unto our children forever. How can we do this better, than by considering twelve facts in the life of John Wycliffe?

1. It is not when he was born, nor where; for the date of his birth and the place of his birth knoweth no man; but it is what he did, as a child and as a man, that makes his life glorious.

Wycliffe was a character, more than a personality. It is as such that he deserves to be studied. One would like to have known his parents. There was a strain of wonderful blood which ran through his veins did it come from father or mother? No one knows but

God. Biographers think he was born in 1324, because they think he was sixty years of age when he died. He acted and looked like

a man of eighty, rather than sixty, when he died. He was born long before 1324-perhaps nearer 1300 than any other date. For all that history shows to the contrary, he might be declared to have been another Melchisedec, "without father and mother."

We know the path he trod from home to the monastery that is now a ruin. We can see the brook by which he played, the mountains he gazed upon, the meadows he loved. But all are silent respecting him. Like Enoch he walked with God, and, in due time, when his work was done, God took him to himself.

He became a new creature in Christ Jesus, the Lord. The saving power of Christianity is seen in his life. He was the first Englishman whose views of truth compelled an utter and an absolute renunciation of the spiritual, as well as the temporal, power of the pontiffs. The Bible led him out of Rome. The convicting power of the Holy Ghost convinced him of sin, of righteousness and of judgment to come; and revealed to him a Saviour in Jesus Christ -in whom he believed, and by whose blood his sins were washed away—and he was brought into the fellowship of the life of God. Then the promise became his : "Because I live, ye shall live also." How that promise is being kept! The student of the Reformation may strike in where he chooses, he finds John Wycliffe, and must learn the story of his life before he masters the subject; for to Wycliffe's mind nearly every principle of our general Protestantism must be traced. The Bible became his rule of faith and practice. As far as he went, this led him and blessed him. He did not go all the way. There were many more truths to break out of God's word, said the Puritan Robinson, who lifted up an ensign centuries after. So it shall be in the ages yet to come. We recount Wycliffe's life and deeds because of the work he achieved in this direction.

3. He not only knew the truth and learned it, but he told it. He diffused his doctrine among his countrymen with an industry which is almost incredible, and with a success that his enemies describe as a leading cause of the revolution which signalized the rule of Henry VIII. Hence his admirers delight to describe him as he stood in the Thermopyla of the struggle, "the truth-teller, fearing God above all, and fearing nothing else."