A Book of Quaker Saints

by L. V. Hodgkin

'I went again to Mansfield,' he says in his Journal, 'where was a Great Meeting of professors and people, where I was moved to pray; and the Lord's power was so great that the house seemed to be shaken. When I had done, one of the professors said, "It was now as in the days of the Apostles, when the house was shaken where they were."'

After Fox had finished praying, with this vehemence that seemed to shake the house, one of the professors began to pray in his turn, but in such a dead and formal way that even the other professors were grieved thereat and rebuked him. Whereupon this praying professor came in all humility to Fox, beseeching him that he would pray again. 'But,' says Fox, 'I could not pray in any man's will.' Still, though he could not make a prayer to order, he agreed to meet with these same professors another day.

This second meeting was another 'Great Meeting.' From far and wide the professors and people gathered to see the man who had learnt to pray. But the professors did not truly seem to care to learn the secret. They went on talking and arguing together. They were 'jangling,' as Fox calls it (that is to say, using endless strings of words to talk about sacred things, without really feeling the truth of them in their hearts), jangling all together, when suddenly the door opened and a grave young officer walked in. ''Tis Captain Amor Stoddart, of Noll's Army,' the professors said one to another, as, hardly stopping for a moment at the stranger's entrance, they continued to 'jangle' among themselves. They went on, speaking of the most holy things, talking even about the blood of Christ, without any feeling of solemnity, till Fox could bear it no longer.

'As they were discoursing of it,' he says, 'I saw through the immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ; and cried out among them saying, "Do you not see the blood of Christ? See it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to serve the living God?" For I saw the blood of the New Covenant how it came into the heart. This startled the professors who would have the blood only without them, and not in them. But Captain Stoddart was reached, and said, "Let the youth speak, hear the youth speak," when he saw that they endeavoured to bear me down with many words.'

'Captain Stoddart was reached.' He, the soldier, accustomed to the terrible realities of a battlefield, knew the sight of blood for himself only too well. George Fox's words may seem perhaps mysterious to us now, but they came home to Amor and made him able to see something of the same vision that Fox saw. We may not be able to see that vision ourselves, but at least we can feel the difference between having the Blood of Christ, that is the Life of Christ, within our hearts, and only talking and 'jangling' about it, as the professors were doing. 'Captain Stoddart was reached.' Having been 'reached,' having seen, if only for one moment, something of what the Cross had meant to Christ, and having felt His Life within, Amor became a different man. To take the lives of his fellowmen, to shed their blood for whom that Blood had been shed, was henceforth for him impossible. He unbuckled his sword, and resigning his captaincy in Oliver's conquering army, just when victory was at hand after the stern struggle, he followed his despised Quaker teacher into obscurity.

For seven long years we hear nothing more of him. Then he appears again at George Fox's side, no longer Captain Stoddart the Officer, but plain Amor Stoddart, a comrade and helper of the first Publishers of Truth.

In the year 1655, Fox's Journal records: 'On the sixth day I had a large meeting near Colchester[33] to which many professors and the Independent teachers came. After I had done speaking and was stepped down from the place on which I stood, one of the Independent teachers began to make a "jangling" [it seems they still went on jangling, even after seven long years!], which Amor Stoddart perceiving said, "Stand up again, George!" for I was going away and did not at the first hear them.'

If Amor Stoddart had unbuckled his sword, evidently he had not lost the power of grappling with difficulties, of swiftly seeing the right thing to do, and of giving his orders with soldier-like precision.

'Stand up again, George!'—a quick, military command, in the fewest possible words. George Fox was more in the habit of commanding other people than of being commanded himself; but he knew his comrade and obeyed without a word.

'I stood up again,' he says, 'when I heard the Independent [the man who had been jangling], and after a while the Lord's power came over him and all his company, who were confounded, and the Lord's truth was over all. A great flock of sheep hath the Lord in that country that feed in His pastures of life.'