Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/31

Rh England. In Sweden we know the Quakers merely as a strange sect which says thou to everybody; will not take an oath; and wear their broad- brimmed hats in the presence of every one. We know them only from little outward peculiarities. I have here become acquainted with their inward significance for the whole of humanity.

It is about two hundred years since George Fox was born in England. His father, who was called “Righteous Christopher,” was a weaver of Leicestershire, and his mother was descended from the stock of the martyrs. As a boy Fox was early distinguished by deep religious feeling, and an inflexible and upright disposition. He was put apprentice to a shoemaker in Nottingham, who also owned some land, and by him was employed to keep his sheep. Reading the Bible, prayer and fasting, occupied him while so engaged. His young soul thirsted after perfection, and was excited by a vague longing for the supreme good, for the stedfast true light. His youth was passed during one of the most stormy periods, when Church and State were alike shaken by hostile parties, and the different religious sects were divided among themselves, and opposed the one to the other. The youth, who longed for the immovable truth, for a foundation which would sustain him, a clearness which would guide him and all men to the truth, to the supreme good, heard around him merely the strife of opinion and war. These darkened his soul still more.

Driven as it were by inexpressible anguish, he forsook his business and his flock, and burying himself in the solitudes of woods, he yearned after a revelation of God. He went to many priests for consolation, but obtained none.

He went to London to seek for the light; but there contending sects and the great professors encompassed him only with a deeper darkness. He returned to the country,