JOHN GALVIN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16451, 13 June 1921, Page 7

JOHN GALVIN.

BURIAL PLACE REVEALED. A WELL-KEPT SECRET.

Bj£ Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. “ Tho Times ” Service. (.Received June 13, 10.-15 a.m.) LONDON, June 12. Eugene Speyr, the last descendant of a Swiss family, has revealed to tho Council of the Protestant Church at Genova, the exact spot where John Galvin was buried in tlio Plain-Palais Cemetery. The information was handed down from father to son for generations. The church is undertaking excavations in the hope of recovering Calvin’s Bible and ring.

John Calvin (1509-1564), Swiss Divine and Reformer, was born at Noyon, in Picardy, on July 10, 1509. His father destined him for an ecclesiastical career, which he studied for, though he never became a priest, for he early began to dissent from the Roman worship, and he removed from Paris _to Orleans to study law. Between 1532 and 1533 came the great change m his life, which he described as a micrtJen conversion duo to Divine agency. From 1534 his influence became supremo among those who had accepted the Reform doctrines in France, and Renan pronounced him to have been “tho most Christian man of his time.” However, his life was in danger, and he fled to Switzerland. Ho was buried without pomp on the day following his death “ in tho common cemetery called Plain-Palais, in a spot which had never been identified.”

Though Calvin built his theology on tho foundations laid by earlied reformers, and especially hv Luther and Bach, his peculiar gifts of learning, of logic and of style made* him pre-emi-nently tho theologian of the now religion, Tho dominant thought is tho infinite and transoendant sovereignty of God, to know Whom is the supreme end of human endeavour.