present we simply wish to unfold his views as they gradually dawned upon his mind.

Being persuaded that he was specially enlightened by the Spirit of God, even as the prophets and apostles were, he now felt called upon to declare to others that spiritual liberty which he enjoyed, and exhort them to the practice of virtue, and explain to them the mysteries of revelation. He maintained that by faithful obedience to the inward teaching of the Holy Spirit, men would not only acquire a clear understanding of the Scriptures, but could attain perfection. Believing in the certain guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that it would lead all men, if sought, into the way of truth, he began to doubt the necessity or expediency of the institution of the ordinary ministers of religion. Not the clergy were to teach men, but the Spirit alone, and he therefore felt commissioned to bring people away from the forms and ceremonies of the established church, which he regarded as unnecessary, and a perversion of spiritual Christianity. He made the worship of God to consist in a patient and humble waiting in silence for the guidance of the Spirit, and looked upon the ordinary observances as so many forms by which God was mocked and dishonored. The inner light had revealed to him, as he supposed, the absurdity and folly of the external economy of the church, which he entirely swept away, the ordination of the clergy, baptism, the Lord's Supper, the regular service, even churches, the music of the choir, all emblematical ceremonies, and the peculiar dresses of the officiating clergy. He would institute a purely spiritual church, and make religion entirely a matter between the soul and its Maker.

He then found that the Lord forbade him to put off his hat to any man, high or low; that he was required to say thou and thee to every man and woman without distinction, and not to bid people good morrow or good evening, nor to bow and do reverence to people in authority, as was the custom of the times. He looked upon all these things as marks of honor which man ought not to bestow on his fellow-man, but only upon God.

But that which most wounded the mind of Fox, was what seemed to him the earthly spirit of the clergy in accepting tithes

and offerings for their preaching. It seemed to him that they sold the word of God, which should be free to all the world. Nor did he like the sound of the church bell. It rung in his ears like the bell of the market calling the people together for the selling of wares. So he abolished what he called a hireling priesthood, and bells on the churches which he called steeplehouses, and insisted that no man ought to receive an earthly recompense for preaching the word, or be summoned to worship the Almighty by the sound of a bell. He also objected to oaths in a court of law as anti-christian, in direct opposition to the commands of our Saviour. The literal injunctions of the Scriptures were never to be slighted, and, in obeying them no principles of expediency should divert him from his course. He was to obey God indifferent to all consequences.

If the first great principle of Quakerism was the spirit of God, specially acting on the mind as the only interpreter of truth and the only guide to duty, rather than the light of reason or the voice of authority, the second great principle was the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, in spite of all the commentators of the world, and all the aids of human learning and the traditions of the early church. This Fox strenuously declared, and it led him not merely to reject the ordinary oaths administered in courts of law, but to refuse to enlist as a soldier in the army, not because many of the primitive Christians refused to do so, but because the Bible told him not to kill. Hence he regarded war as not merely an evil, but a crime in all conceivable circumstances, an evil per se, and he would not fight to gain or retain any worldly blessing, not even liberty, or the sanctity of the family circle, or honor, or life itself. He would die even rather than kill the assassin who threatened the life of his wife or children, or who would take away the dearest interests of society. He would dispense with armies, and firearms, and strife of war. He would coerce nothing, if coercion required the life of man. No circumstances could induce him to take life, even of the convicted culprit. He would abolish all capital punishments. And if he could not confine the murderer or the robber in a prison without killing him, if he made resistance, he would, if true to his principles, let him go at large, and strive to remedy the evil by moral suasion

alone. Hence he was led to magnify the force of love. He believed it was the only omnipotent principle of society, that it reigned in heaven and ought to reign on earth. By moral suasion the world was to be converted and saved. It was of more power than armies, even in subduing murderers and ruffians and robbers. He was led to adopt absolute non-resistance. His principles of literal interpretation pushed him there, and he was not ashamed of the doctrine, for it seemed in harmony with the spirit of the Gospel and the great fundamental law of love, which requires us to forgive our enemies, and to return good for evil. Even Christ himself seemed to have set the example by yielding up his life as a martyr, when he could have commanded legions of angels.

This law of love became the third great principle of his ethical creed, and he was willing to give it the most indefinite application. He would interfere with no man's rights. He would allow all the spiritual freedom which he enjoyed. He would punish no one for heresy. He would abolish all penal laws for religious opinions not in accordance with the established church. He would divide his substance with the poor. He would knock off the fetters of the slave. He would inculcate a universal philanthropy. There was to be no limitation to the objects of charity, forbearance and love.

And as the Scriptures were to be literally obeyed, since God had revealed them by his Spirit to favored men of old, and since they could not be in opposition to what his Spirit taught in all ages, he would comply with their plain directions without regard to consequences. The laws of expediency were his peculiar abomination. They were, as he thought, the invention of Satan, of Antichrist. He based his ethics on the immutable principles of morality. He acknowledged no distinction between the laws which should regulate individuals and communities. He would do right though the world should perish. Nor would he entangle an obvious duty by sophistries and paradoxes, and ingenious theories, and artful supposition. Only one course was open to him, and to all mankind: to do right, because it was right, because God commanded it, leaving results to him. Honesty was the best policy, but he would welcome it, not because it was politic, but because it was his duty. "He would

obey the imperative dictates of truth," says one of the exposi tors of his creed, "even though the fires of hell were quenched.” From this principle, of obeying God rather than man, from striving to conform to a perfect law, from attempting to realize in his own life the ideal of a spotless perfection, even as Christ set him an example, and inculcated it as a duty, all his other doctrines received additional confirmation. Show him that absolute non-resistance would probably introduce anarchy, and consign the world to the government of the unprincipled and the base; he would reply that he was not responsible for the evils of society, that the great moral Governor could take care of his own people, and even if all the evils predicted from his course were to take place, these should not interfere with the practice of abstract and eternal duties, that God's absolute commands were not to be set aside for any accumulation of outward evils. But he nevertheless professed to have faith in the power of ideas and truth, although he could not see the manner of their triumph. Hence a lofty faith in God, as the author of truth, was kindled in his soul, which imparted to his character all the elements of a splendid and beautiful enthusiasm. He would be serene in persecution, in tribulation, in obloquy, in death, for God was his friend, and he was an omnipotent preserver. He would work, in accordance with truth, whether he saw results or not. He had nothing to do with them. They would, at some place, or at some time or other, follow necessarily from the seed he had sown, even as industry would produce thrift, in accordance with the uniform operation of immutable laws. It was not man, but the Spirit and truth of God which were to save the world; but whether saved or not, he had done his duty, which itself was a reward. It was not to win heaven merely, it was not to get influence and reputation and honor that he did his duty, but to conform to eternal and immutable principles. Great therefore were the majesty, and beauty, and glory of truth. It was its sublime perfection and reality which transported his soul. To conform to it was the end and highest object of his life, for its own sake, that he might be in harmony with the universe of God and his sublime perfections.

Doctrines so strange, so ethereal, so pure, so elevated were not understood by a wrangling generation contending for forms

and ceremonies, immersed in war, devoted to pleasure, struggling to secure the ascendancy of sects, or to extort from selfish kings and priests the blessing of liberty, and those advantages which lead to wealth and political importance. The doctrines were too purely spiritual to be relished. And they seemed to subvert the long-established customs and institutions of society. They seemed to make a mockery of dignities, and laws, and magistrates, and clergymen, of all the ordinances of the church, of all the precedents of former ages, of all the blessings which men had gained by protracted struggles. They seemed to subvert civilization, to depreciate learning and art, to clog the wheels of government, and undermine respect for the authority which God had established to rule nations and kingdoms. And when these high claims to special divine illumination, to greater Christian perfection, to profounder insight into the oracles of God, and to truer rules of life and duty, were advanced by a man who had never received a liberal education, who was supposed to be illiterate and fanatical, who had arisen from the plebeian class, who had spent his days as an unsuccessful shoemaker and a retired ship hand, absorbed in vain dreams and visions, they seemed absurd, ridiculous, pretentious. At first men were amazed or contemptuous, then they became irritated and enraged. And irritation and contempt were increased when the doctrines of Fox appeared, revolutionizing and threatening to subvert their most cherished principles, for he seemed the very incarnation of a radical, agrarian, destructive spirit. And when Fox and his followers made no compromise, did not seek to conciliate, but commenced a course of unmitigated denunciation, although it was after the fashion of the age, calling the clergy all sorts of names, hirelings, dumb-dogs, the priests of Baal, and their venerable churches steeple-houses of pride, and places of merchandize; refusing to honor the magistrates and dignitaries of the land by taking off their hats, or rendering them their customary titles; refusing even the oaths of supremacy to the sovereign of the realm, rebuking with rude familiarity the sins of the great, and even entering the churches at the time of worship and interrupting the officiating minister, thus showing no respect for any tribunal or dignitary or venerated custom, or established law; can we wonder they were prosecuted and im