Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/592

578 religious feeling. It was a time when religious discussion was making rapid progress amongst the people from the more general access to the Bible, and many were dissatisfied with the different churches, which seemed too much engaged in attempts at worldly aggrandisement, and at achieving a dominance over each other. George was one of these. In seeking for clear views of religious faith, such as could set his mind at rest, he went to various clergymen of the established church first, but he found no light. One of them bade him take tobacco and sing psalms; and another, Cradock of Coventry, was beginning to speak comfortably to George as they walked in his garden, when the embryo reformer unluckily happened to set his foot on a flower-border, which threw the clergyman into such a rage that the discourse was abruptly brought to an end.

Finding no relief or illumination from professors, as he called them, he very wisely took his Bible, and used to retire into a hollow tree in the fields, where he read and prayed earnestly to God to enlighten his understanding to comprehend the sacred volume, and the genuine will of the Lord. The result was that he came to a clear and steadfast conviction that Christianity was strictly a spiritual thing, having nothing specifically to do with states and governments, with worldly pomp and power, and strivings after mortal honours and high places; that Christ simply and strictly defined it when he said, "My kingdom is not of this world." He saw that it was the grand principle by which the sole of man is intended to be regenerated—born again, in fact, and made fitting to enter into the kingdom of disembodied souls, in the presence of God and his angels. He found himself, in a word, called back from the conflicting views and empty ceremonies of the time to Christianity as it existed amongst the apostles—a perfectly spiritual, and holy, and disinterested thing, embodying the wisdom and the truth of God, and inhabiting, not formal creeds and outward ceremonies, but the heart of man, and thence influencing all his thoughts and actions for good. George perceived that all fixed creeds, all rites and ceremonies, all investments in state power, were but as cobwebs and old rags with which the self-interests and self-love of men had enveloped, encumbered, and degraded it; and he felt himself called to go forth and proclaim this, which he emphatically styled " the truth."

He perceived that he needed no call or authorisation of man for this purpose; that he had the assurance that Christ, according to his promise, had sent the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, into his church to all time, to lead his disciples into all truth. He found the most distinct assurances that the gifts of the Divine Spirit, with all the spiritual powers which Christ had promised to his church, had been conferred on it in the apostles' time, and by them were pronounced as not given to them alone, but to all men in all ages who were willing to receive them. It was therefore evident to him that no authority was required from man for the assumption of the ministry of the Gospel; that none could be given by him for that office; that it was the prerogative of God alone, as was the whole work of regeneration in the human spirit. "Wherever two or three are met together in my name, there will I be in the midst of them." These words of Christ were sufficient for Fox; they were the charter of Christian freedom and independence for ever, which no human power, however high, had any business to interfere with. "Whatever men might say to the contrary, the Holy Spirit, and it alone, was the great teacher and guide in the work of genuine religious life. That was "the light which enlighteneth every man which cometh into the world."

This became the grand foundation of Fox's religious system. True Christianity he believed to consist in living close to this Spirit incessantly and perpetually; in opening and keeping open an intimate walk and communion with this divine guide, and monitor, and moulder of the inward disposition and affections. In comparison with this, all outward rites and ceremonies were as dross and dust; and in forming his own system, which he fully believed he was led into by the Spirit, he abandoned all forms but that of simply sitting down in silence, and waiting for the promised influence of the eternal word. As no other power could sanction a man to stand up and preach, there was an end, if Fox's doctrine became prevalent, of what he called "man-made ministers." As the Divine Spirit had been promised to be in the midst of every congregation of even two or three individuals, and that it should lead them into all truth, in Fox's view there could be no other teacher except such as it should directly influence and inspire.

Now it was evident that here was an axe laid to the root of everything like church dominance, ecclesiastical dictation, and state interference. It was a reversion to the first of the essential spirituality of Christianity, independent of all outward rites, creeds, and formulas whatever. It revealed a religion which is alive and operative at every hour and in every corner of the universe; in the desert, on the hill-top, in the school, the closet, or the workshop, as fully and as absolutely existent as in any church, chapel, or cathedral whatever. The time was, in Fox's opinion, come "when men," in the words of the Saviour, "should no longer worship on the mountain or in Jerusalem," but that "all men should know God, from the greatest unto the least; "for he" is a spirit, and can be worshipped alone in spirit and in truth."

In Fox's doctrine lay, in fact, the most gigantic revolution in the world of mind which had ever been conceived, and which, spreading beyond the pale of his own society, is yet going on, leavening all forms of Christianity, and more and more imbuing the minds of sincere preachers, religious philosophers, and of the inquiring multitude.

Bancroft, the American historian, says:—"The rise of the people called quakers is one of the most remarkable events in the history of man. It marks the moment when intellectual freedom was claimed unconditionally by the people as an inalienable birthright. It was the consequence of the moral warfare against corruption; the aspiration of the human mind after a perfect emancipation from the long reign of bigotry and superstition. Thus did the mind of George Fox arrive at the conclusion that truth is to be sought by listening to the voice of God in the sole. This principle contained a moral revolution; it established absolute freedom of mind, treading idolatry under foot, and entered the strongest protest against the power of the hierarchy. It was the principle for which Socrates died and Plato suffered; and now that Fox went forth to proclaim it among the people, he was everywhere resisted with