BOOK I.-SWITZERLAND

CHAPTER I.-ZURICH AND ZWINGLI-LAND.

T

HE

Churches! Where shall we begin there

are so many of them, where, but at Zurich, the mother of them all? Zurich was the birthplace of all the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches.

The city of Zurich is finely located at the western end of the picturesque lake of Zurich, at whose eastern end the snow-capped Alps can be clearly seen. The city is divided by the swift river Limmat, which, carrying off the water of lake Zurich, flows westward through the city. To the south of the city, is a range of hills, the highest of which, the Utliberg, rises 1,500 feet above the city, commanding a fine view. To the north of the city the hills ascend more gradually. It has at present a population of about 175,000, and is the largest city of Switzerland. It is also the greatest industrial centre of that land. Zurich owes its present prosperity to the reformation; for the Italian silkweavers, who were driven out of Chiavenna on the

northwestern coast of lake Maggiore, Italy, in 1555, because they were Protestants, found an asylum in Zurich and now Zurich is famous for its silk and cotton factories.

But Zurich is especially interesting to the Christian because of her splendid religious history in the reformation and since. Looking eastward from Zurich, over the lake, one can see just north of the eastern end of the lake, the tall peak of Mount Sentis, the highest of the northern group of the Alps, about 8,000 feet high. On its southern slope, in an upper valley about 4,000 feet above sea-level, there is a village called Wildhaus, where to-day can be found a small one-story Swiss chalet. In that house, was born on New Year's day, 1484, a babe who was destined to revolutionize his native land, and be the founder of the Reformed Churches throughout the world, Ulric Zwingli.* Not far from the chalet is the little country church in which he was baptized, with its bare benches and its only furniture, a pulpit and a font. But on the little gallery opposite the pulpit are the words of a German hymn—

*This house is still kept in a good state of preservation by a Swiss society, formed for the purpose.

"Hold fast on God's Word!

It is your happiness on earth:
And as sure as there is a God

Your happiness also in heaven."

His father, who was the magistrate of the village, trained his early boyhood and his mother taught him Bible stories. "I have often thought," said one of his friends later, "that on those Alpine heights so near to heaven, he must have imbibed something heavenly and divine." His father seeing that he was too bright a boy to become merely a shepherd boy, like his fellows, sent him away to school. At the early age of eight he went down to the valley south of his birthplace, where his uncle was priest at the little village of Wesen, located at the western end of that small but exceedingly grand lake of Wallenstadt.* In two years, he had learned all that was to be taught in that school, so at the age of ten he was sent far away among strangers to Basle, in the northwestern corner of Switzerland. There he studied for three years and

*This lake is located just east of lake Zurich, where the seven mountains, the Churfursten, rise 6,000 feet right up from the northern side of the lake.