jot would he recede from a position once taken for the cause of that one white changeless essential—Truth. Every sermon he preached as minister of the Bethlehem Church, every address he uttered as rector of the University of Prague had the essence of the shining spiritual, moral and intellectual progress for which he lived and for which he was burned at the stake on the 6th of July, 1415, at Constance. While numberless volumes by Hus were destroyed in the course of a systematic search undertaken with the purpose of exterminating them, his wonderful Letters, written from Constance, his “Postilla Nedělní” (Sunday Postilla), “Dcerka” (The Daughter) showing the right path to salvation, “Zrcadlo Člověka” (Mirror of Man), “Svatokupectví” (Simony) have been preserved as a heritage to the world. As the leader of the Bohemian Reformation which took place over a hundred years before the far easier one of Luther’s time, as a patriot and writer upholding his nation’s rights and ideals, he stands preeminent.
The simplification of the Czech written language is also to the credit of this ceaselessly active man who devised the present system of accents for vowels and consonants to take the place of endless and confusing combinations of letters. The nation owes him a further debt for the introduction into the church service of many beautiful hymns of his own composition and others which he translated.
A successor of Jan Hus in the fight for a pure and
