Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/33

Rh God's voice, in the soul of man, and which guides it to all truth. In order to come at the truth, it is only needful for man to turn attentively towards that inner light—to listen to that inner voice.”

That inner light!—that inner voice bade him go forth and proclaim that message to the human race. It commanded him to go into the churches, and in the midst of divine service to cry aloud against the priests—“The Scriptures are not the rule, but the Spirit, which is above the Scriptures!” It bade him stand against the hired ministers of religion, as against wolves in sheeps' clothing.

I shall not tell you of all the persecution which raged against this man, who thus opposed himself to old belief and custom, of the stones which were flung at him, who in the power of the Spirit made the walls of the church to quake, although nothing is more interesting than to follow this divinely possessed man, and to see him after ill-usage, imprisonment, danger of death, again stand forth always the same, only stronger and more resolute, and with a more fervent zeal; to see the crowd of disciples increasing around him, drunken with that flood of inner light, whilst the servants of the State Church feared and trembled, when it was said, “The man in the leathern breeches is come!”

And nothing is more interesting than to see these unlearned disciples of that revelation of the inner light and the inner voice stand forth in the power of that incorruptible seed which lives in every human soul, and deliver the oracles of conscience. Ploughmen and milkmaids became preachers, and sent forth their voices through the world, calling upon the Pope and the Sultan, upon Puritans and Cavaliers, Negroes and Hindoos, all to listen to the solemn judgment of the inner voice.

That light which had enlightened the noblest of the heathens, which had enlightened Socrates and Seneca as the surest foundation of moral determination, as the