Waldenses
57
bring men into closer connection with their Creator and to give them
a clearer knowledge of His will. It is the medium of communication
between God and man.
While the Waldenses regarded the fear of the Lord as the beginning
of wisdom, they were not blind to the importance of a contact with the
world, a knowledge of men and of active life, in expanding the mind
[70]
and quickening the perceptions. From their schools in the mountains
some of the youth were sent to institutions of learning in the cities of
France or Italy, where was a more extended field for study, thought,
and observation than in their native Alps. The youth thus sent forth
were exposed to temptation, they witnessed vice, they encountered
Satan’s wily agents, who urged upon them the most subtle heresies and
the most dangerous deceptions. But their education from childhood
had been of a character to prepare them for all this.
In the schools whither they went, they were not to make confidants
of any. Their garments were so prepared as to conceal their greatest
treasure—the precious manuscripts of the Scriptures. These, the fruit
of months and years of toil, they carried with them, and whenever they
could do so without exciting suspicion, they cautiously placed some
portion in the way of those whose hearts seemed open to receive the
truth. From their mother’s knee the Waldensian youth had been trained
with this purpose in view; they understood their work and faithfully
performed it. Converts to the true faith were won in these institutions
of learning, and frequently its principles were found to be permeating
the entire school; yet the papal leaders could not, by the closest inquiry,
trace the so-called corrupting heresy to its source.
The spirit of Christ is a missionary spirit. The very first impulse
of the renewed heart is to bring others also to the Saviour. Such
was the spirit of the Vaudois Christians. They felt that God required
more of them than merely to preserve the truth in its purity in their
own churches; that a solemn responsibility rested upon them to let
their light shine forth to those who were in darkness; by the mighty
power of God’s word they sought to break the bondage which Rome
had imposed. The Vaudois ministers were trained as missionaries,
everyone who expected to enter the ministry being required first to
gain an experience as an evangelist. Each was to serve three years in
[71]
some mission field before taking charge of a church at home. This
service, requiring at the outset self-denial and sacrifice, was a fitting