Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/32

Rh where some advised him to get married; others, to go into Cromwell's army. But his restless spirit drove him into solitude and out into the fields, where he wandered about for many nights in anguish of mind “too great to be described.” Yet, nevertheless, now and then, a ray of heavenly joy beamed in his soul, and he seemed to rest in peace in Abraham's bosom.

He had been brought up in the Church of England. But he now saw that a man might be educated in Oxford and in Cambridge, and yet be in no condition to solve the great problem of existence. He thought also that God did not live in temples made of stone, but in the living human heart. From the Church he went over to the Dissenters. But neither with them did he find “the fixed truth,” the firm foundation for that moral conviction which he sought.

He gave up, therefore, all religious sects, and the seeking for the truth among them, and, although shaken by tempests of opinion, he confided his heart to a Power superior to the storm, and found the anchorage of the spirit.

One morning, as Fox sate silently musing by the fire, and glancing into his own soul, a cloud came over his mind, and he thought he heard a voice, which said—“All things come by nature!” And a pantheistic vision darkened and troubled his soul. But as he continued musing another voice arose from the depths of his soul, which said—“There is a living God!” All at once, it became light in his inmost being; all clouds, all doubts fled; he felt himself irradiated, and raised upward by an infinite conviction of truth, and an unspeakable joy.

And the light and the conviction of truth which had enlightened his soul, which had arisen in him without the help of any man, spake thus: “There is in every man an inner light, which is God's revelation to man; an inner voice which witnesses of the truth, and which is