GEORGE FOX, FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.
The name of George Fox belongs to the list of practical philanthropists; for Fox may be said to have given himself body and soul to the good of his fellow-men, and to have lived the life of a martyr to the cause to which he felt called to consecrate himself. He was born in 1624, the year in which Jacob Boehmen died. We are the more inclined to notice this coincidence because the character and work of George Fox suggest a comparison between the two men. Both men were pietists and mystics; but in this alone are they alike. When we look at their life-work, we are at once reminded of their nationality. The German is speculative, the Englishman is practical; the one turns his dreams and visions into books, and the other into acts.[161]
George Fox’s early life was spent near his native place, Drayton, in Leicestershire, with a man who combined the occupations of shoemaker and dealer in wool and cattle. After eight years’ service with this master, the young shoemaker, then at the age of nineteen, clad in a leathern doublet of his own making, went forth into the world as a preacher and reformer. He was led to adopt this life by what he regarded as a voice from heaven. He had been to a fair, and was grieved by the intemperance of two of his youthful friends whom he saw there. In his “Journal” he speaks of the effect this sight produced upon his mind, and the resolve to which it led him. “I went away,” he says, “and when I had done my business, returned home; but I did not go to bed that night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up and down, and sometimes prayed and cried to the Lord, who said unto me, ‘Thou seest how many young people go together into vanity, and old people into the earth; thou must forsake all, young and old, keep out of all, and be a stranger to all.’” After living the life of a wandering preacher for a few years, he was induced to return home for a short time, but the voice from heaven forbade his resisting, and summoned him again into the Lord’s vineyard. In 1648, when only twenty-four years of age, he began to preach in Manchester, and to gather round him a number of adherents. From Manchester he went on a tour through the northern counties of England. Two years after this his followers began to be known by the name of Quakers. This term was first used by Justice Bennet of Derby, before whom Fox was cited for disturbing the peace. In 1655 he was summoned to appear before Cromwell, who dismissed the Leicestershire shoemaker as a harmless enthusiast, whose attempts at moral and religious reform could not do anything but good among the people. In fact, Cromwell, a sturdy Puritan and a religious enthusiast himself, was deeply moved by the spiritual fervor of the simple-hearted preacher; for Fox, who never feared the face of any man, did not fail to speak his mind to Cromwell on religious matters. As the preacher left the room, the Protector said to him, “Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other.”
In the reign of Charles II., when the anti-puritan reaction set in, Fox fared far worse than before. Time after time he was thrown into prison for speaking in the “steeple-houses” (churches) and disturbing public worship. It was not at all an uncommon thing for the rough preacher, clad in his leathern doublet, to stand up in church while service was going on, and rebuke the lukewarmness of the minister and the formalism of the worshippers. This he conceived to be part of the mission to which the spirit-voice had called him. Nor did he expect to be allowed to discharge it without bringing down the hand of the civil authorities upon his own head. But he had counted the cost, and was prepared to suffer. A large part of his time was spent in jail, where he underwent terrible hardships from want of food and clothing. Nothing, however, could daunt his ardor, or make him “disobedient unto the heavenly vision.” He was no sooner at large than he began again to deliver his message, calling on men to listen to the voice of Christ within, and to reform their lives. Surely nothing could have been more pure, more simple, and more unselfish than the life of this devout and eccentric preacher of the gospel of love, peace, and truth; yet he was hounded from jail to jail by the bigots of his day as if he had been a common vagrant or thief. The sufferings he endured at the hands of furious mobs are often recorded in his journal. These he bore with the utmost meekness, as a firm believer in the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. Once when he had been half killed, and the mob stood round him as he lay upon the floor, he says, “I lay still a little while, and the power of the Lord sprang through me, and eternal refreshings revived me, so that I stood up again in the strengthening power of the eternal God, and stretching out my arms among them, I said, ‘Strike again! here are my arms, my head, my cheeks!’ Then they began to fall out among themselves.” The distinctive principles of the Society of Friends, of which George Fox was the founder, are too well known to need description here. In 1669 Fox married the widow of Judge Fell. After visiting Ireland, America, Holland, Denmark, and Prussia, this apostle of the seventeenth century returned to England, and died in London, January 13th, 1691, at the age of sixty-seven.
Spite of all his so-called vagaries, his want of education and culture and grasp of intellect, the Leicestershire shoemaker, by dint of moral earnestness and undaunted courage, succeeded in laying the foundation of a religious society, which in proportion to its numbers has exerted a greater moral influence than any other denomination of Christians. His “Journal,” which is one of the most singular records of mental experience and missionary adventure ever written, was first published in 1694. His “Epistles” were printed in 1698, and his “Doctrinal Pieces” in 1706.