Protestantism in Switzerland - James Aitken Wylie

Tockenburg, artless and simple as its shepherds, he
was not yet fit for his destined work, and had to be
sent to school. We refer to other schools than those
of Basle and Vienna, where he was initiated into
the language and philosophy of the ancients. First
stationed at Glarus, he there was brought into
contact with the horrors of the foreign service. He
had daily before his eyes the widows and orphans
of the men who had been drawn by French and
Italian gold across the Alps and slaughtered; and
there, too, he saw a not less affecting sight, the
maimed and emaciated forms of those who,
escaping the sword, had brought back to their
country worse evils than wounds, even the vices of
corrupt and luxurious nations. At Einsiedeln, to
which by-and-by he removed, he received his
second lesson. There he had occasion to mark the
ravages which pilgrimages and image-worship
inflict upon the conscience and the morals. He had
time to meditate on these two great evils. He
resolved to spare no effort to uproot them. But his
trust for success in this work was solely in the
Gospel. This alone could dispel the darkness in
which pilgrimages with all their attendant
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