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A point that demanded even more immediate attention was the almost total neglect of preaching by the parochial clergy and the consequent success of the Waldensian and other heretical preachers. There were isolated examples of missionary devotion among the clergy.
We come now to the creed and organization of the Waldensian Church. First, as regards the rule of faith, it expresses its belief in the supremacy of the Word of God in terms precisely identical with the Sixth Article of the Church of England.
All these were questions which we could not answer as we knew very little about her. They had told me that Paula lived in the Waldensian Valley a country where the inhabitants fed on black bread and lived in homes that were like stables. I had no idea just exactly where the mountains of Piedmont were.
A full year elapsed between the departure of the Waldensian brethren and the movement among the Florentines to obtain an Italian pastor. After much deliberation they resolved on this step, and in May 1850 a deputation set out for the Valleys, which, arriving at La Tour, prevailed on Professor Malan to accept of the charge at Florence.
It was, therefore, during this period that the Waldensian Church enjoyed the privilege of that episcopacy which she never rejected as a matter of principle, but became deprived of by circumstances which gave her no choice.
In addition to a zealous observance of the Lord's-day, the Waldensian Church pays a religious regard to Christmas-day, New-year's-day, Ascension-day, and Good Friday, which last it keeps with great solemnity as a fast-day common to the whole Church of Christ. "We kept Thy faith 'gainst kings of might, And potentates infernal; We kept Thy faith in Rome's despite, By help of grace supernal.
And Ruskin, who had been driven away from Protestantism by the poor Waldensian at Turin, and had wandered through many realms of doubt and voyaged through strange seas of thought, alone, found harbour at last with the disciple of a modern evangelist, the frequenter of the little meeting-house of outcast Italian Protestants.
And, indeed, they ranked with the early phases of many great nations the period of pristine simplicity "uncorrupted by the arts." From Bellinzona he went to Turin on his way to the Vaudois Valleys, where he meant to compare the Waldensian Protestants with the Swiss.
There came to my mind a verse from a Bible story that Paula had told us once. It was this: "The spirit of Elijah hath fallen on Elisha." A stream of neighbors came in from everywhere. It was in those last moments as these humble friends passed before that unconscious form that we came to comprehend how many lives had been touched by the simple country girl from the Waldensian mountains.
His second name came into the family with Rebecca Waldo, with whom at the end of the seventeenth century one Edward Emerson had intermarried, and whose family had fled from the Waldensian valleys and that slaughter of the saints which Milton called on Heaven to avenge.
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