On almost all those great questions of civil and religious polity, which the world is now coming to a late discussion of, he made up his mind at once, and as at one splendid leap, vaulted across the broad morass of the errors and sophistries of ages. The grand discovery at which he arrived, was the clear perception of the spirituality and all-sufficiency of Christianity,—that it is a law to which we must bend all our morals, manners, and institutions, and not seek in vain to make it conform to them. The Christian system, is that alone which recognized the great rights of humanity; civil and religious liberty in its fullest extent; the casting down of all monopolies in religion, in trade, in education; the abrogation of every law, however ancient, however sanctioned by grave authorities or extended practice, which is not founded on the eternal principles of justice; and the erection of the divine law of love in its stead. It holds in abhorrence customs, however deemed by ages and nations to be allowable, the customs of national bloodshed, and national force, for settling questions of right. This was his system, a system of the most radical reform,-the system of abandoning the pernicious doctrine of expedience, the authority of names and precedents, and substituting that of "doing to others as you would be done by ;" and so far was it carried beyond the notions of that age, or even of this, that it placed women on a footing of social equality with man, and gave them in his society, meetings of civil discipline of their own, where they transacted their own affairs of association, and learned to rely on their own intellectual and moral resources.

George Fox was born in 1624, at Drayton, in Leicestershire, England, and apprenticed to a small farmer and shoemaker. To the farming he attached himself, and as he advanced to manhood, working alone in the solitary fields, his active and sensitive mind began powerfully to turn its inquiries upon itself-upon its own nature and destiny; what it was, why here, and whither advancing,-questions that one would imagine must vividly affect every living spirit, but which appear little to visit the multitude, and sink deep only into minds of a certain temperament. Soon satisfying himself, that Christianity was the best guide in this inquiry, he next was anxious to possess himself of the best means of studying it.

How

Taught, as the bulk of the people are, not to depend upon their own inquiries, but to lean upon somebody in the shape of a priest, he immediately went to those who had the greatest reputation in his neighborhood. well qualified they were to instruct such a mind as his, may be sufficiently understood from this ;- the first advised him, in order to settle his spirit, "to chew tobacco and sing psalms," another began to condole very sympa. thetically with him, till George happened to set his foot on the edge of a flower bed, as they walked in the garden, which put the priest into a passion, as if the house was on fire," and all was over. He went therefore to the New Testament, and studying it night and day, with the greatest earnestness, after standing whole days with it in his hand, in a hollow tree,-at length he

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saw the Christian system in so clear and beautiful a light, that he was not only filled with happiness for himself, but felt it his bounden duty to go forth. and proclaim it to the world.

To him the gospel appeared a free gift-that every one might literally come, and receive it without money and without price; the Bible a book that every one might study for himself, and that to every such sincere student, would be vouchsafed free teaching of the Eternal Spirit, and that he would be led to a perfect knowledge of the Divine will; that the great essence of Christianity was love, and that all true Christians must become a band of brothers. Against mercenary preaching, the vanity and pride of life, against all oppression and systematized wrong; war, slavery, the plunder of wrecks, he wrote to the authorities and preached to the people, with a fierce and impetuous eloquence.

How far he was qualified for this great undertaking, we may learn from a very competent judge, William Penn, who had seen human life from the parlor to the cottage, and whose honorable and capacious mind made him a fitting evidence.

Penn says, George Fox was about the ordinary size, of a graceful countenance, and having an eye so piercing, that many who contended with him were unable to bear it; that he had great majesty of presence, and that his addresses to the people possessed a strange and stirring power; so that whole multitudes, collected in market places, in the open fields, under the shade of large trees, on wild heaths, sea-shores, or amongst the mountains of Wales, Scotland, and Westmoreland, and amid the forests of America, or the plantations of the West Indies, were wonderfully moved, and melted, or subdued, or exalted, by his grave and burning eloquence, and by the bold, simple dignity of the doctrines he taught. This system of a free gospel and renouncement of the vanities of the world, was sure to bring upon him all the vengeance of the proud and interested; yet, in spite of this, not only the common people, but the clergy, magistrates, and officers of the army, came over to his opinions, and enrolled themselves in his new society.

It is not possible, in an article like this, to follow his career at length; it is enough to say, notwithstanding great persecutions, a host of able and zealous coadjutors gathered about him, whose names, labors, and singular adventures, may be found in Sewell's history of that people. For the propagation of his principles, George Fox visited all parts of the kingdom, and extended his travels into America, Germany and Holland. In the presence of Protector or King, he never for a moment lost that simple dignity which distinguished him,-a Christian dignity of mind, so opposite to pride, that while it made him feel no abjectness in the presence of human greatness, never inspired him to the low and the poor with any thing but the most thorough courteousness, kindness and compassion. For these he always expressed the greatest sympathy, and so organized his society, as to restore them to the rights and consideration of men.

Penn says, that Fox possessed on all occasions the most undaunted courage. Though of an ardent temperament, yet he possessed such self command, as rarely, if ever, to be thrown off his guard, by insults and outrage, and he manifested the most forgiving disposition. He was simple, dignified, and manly in behavior, grave, yet affable and pleasant in conversation, and so ready in reply, as to continually baffle his most subtle antagonists. He died at the age of sixty-seven, having seen a large community established on hist principles, and that, too, through a career of the most violent persecution; imprisonment of thousands at a time, and the destruction and seizure of their property.

Of his disciples, the most illustrious were Penn, the founder of Penn. sylvania, and Barclay, the author of the famous "Apology" for Quakerism. What were the doctrines George Fox and his friends proposed to the world? They were principally these:

1st. The influence of the Divine Spirit on the spirits of His creatures. 2nd. The spirituality of Christianity; consequently, the non-essentiality of ceremonies.

3rd. The civil and religious freedom of all men; consequently, an abhorrence of tyranny, political or ecclesiastical, in the shape of despot, or the priest.

4th. The Anti-Christianity of War.

5th. The free gift of the gospel.

6th. The Anti-Christianity of Oaths.

7th. The contempt of fawning and flatteries, and foolish titles given to men, as inconsistent with our own self-respect and respect for truth.

8th. The equality of the sexes,-no sexes in souls.

9th. Simplicity and purity in language, in manners, and in dress.

These did not comprise all their doctrines. They held others with the Christian world in general; but these they held in contra-distinction to most of their times. The influence of the Divine Spirit, now in some shape or other, received by all denominations, was then held by some as little short of madness, and ridiculed without measure by others. The spirituality of Christianity was then as little comprehended. All reformers before them, and the Puritans, their contemporaries, were so little illuminated on this subject, that though they were determined not to conform to the ceremonies set up by the government, they were all busy in frami: g ceremonies for themselves. Fox at once pronounced ceremonies and externals to be merely beggarly elements;"-the essence of Christianity a renewed vitality of mind.

So far, indeed, did he outgo the ordinary grasp of public opinion, that at this day the Christian world has much to learn before it can comprehend the full nature of that system which shall go on till "they shall no more teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother," saying, "know ye Lord; for they shall know Him, from the least of them to the greatest."

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The great doctrine of civil and religious freedom,—a doctrine of the most superlative importance-a doctrine on which depends, not merely the present happiness, but the spiritual destinies of men,-inasmuch, as tyranny and ignorance go hand in hand, and ignorance and crime; this great doctrine. his contemporaries had glimpses of, but it can only be said of Fox, that he fully comprehended it. The Puritans and the Covenanters fought for their . liberties and their altars; they resisted the aggressions of ecclesiastical establishment, but they did not deny their right to exist; the Republicans. fought for their own freedom with one hand, and held with the other their fellow men in bondage; but Fox claimed freedom for all; one right for all; one law for all, for man in every situation, character, and aspect, for white and black. It did not square with his notions of Christianity, that we should be free ourselves, and hold others in slavery; that we should settle in the lands of the pagans, and drive them out of their ancestral possessions, as these nominal Christians did and do in America, in the Indies, and in the Cape of Good Hope. The Non-Conformists resisted the compulsory demands of uniformity of creed and ceremony of the Establishment; but Fox resisted and denounced establishments themselves. However all other reformers, biased by the force of education, might overlook the absolute free nature of Christianity,-given to be the charter of liberty, the birthright of Hope in Earth and Heaven, to all men-given to be the solace of all partaking the form, the affections, the sufferings of men, throughout the world-given "to break the bonds of the captive, and to let the oppressed go free" to be enjoyed without permission from Pope or Patriarch, conclave or convocation, fully and fearlessly,—its freedom and freedom-giving spirit did not escape the single eye of Fox. In the avowal of Christ, that "the heathen lorded it over one another, but it should not be so with his disciples," their bond and distinction should be love, he saw the law of brotherhood and not of subjection. The same recognised independence of the Christian code, which leads to the abjuration of political and ecclesiastical despotism, led him to resist, despise and expose those assumptions of absurd titles, those demands of servile obeisance and empty flatteries by men of wealth and factitious rank, which degrade both giver and receiver, and fill the world with so much misery from the reckless and vindictive rancour of over-fed pride. Civility to all, servility to none, was his rule and principle of action, and brought upon him and his friends unbounded insult and outrage; but they and the whole community have reaped, and will reap, the benefit of it. In that day there was a different style of address to the rich and to the poor, a practice still common on the Continent-you to a gentleman, thou to a man; and so odious and opposed to the whole spirit of the gospel did it appear to Fox, that he adopted the singular number in speaking to every individual; and his followers have retained the practice to the present day, though the cause has ceased. The language has firmly settled. into the other form, and the world is not likely, in this particular, to conform to a very small minority.

It has been said that a very great change has taken place in the Society of Friends. That they have abandoned the bold and innovating spirit, and many of the eccentricities of their ancestors, and have silently let fall, or greatly modified, many of their opinions. They have changed exactly as every religious, and almost every other human community does. The effervescence of their first zeal has evaporated with time; and as the spirit has escaped they have clung more closely to the letter. They have changed, too, with the silent change of the spirit and character of general society. Who does not see the wide difference between this age, and the puritanic age in which they arose? Then all the elements of religious and political unrest were in a state of chaotic turbulence. The common people were only beginning to be imbued with, and to feel the full effulgence of, that scriptural knowledge, language, and imagery, which the diffusion of the Bible in the vernacular tongue had produced. They were in the orgasm of intellectual intoxication. The Puritans in England, and the Covenanters in Scotland, were full of that Bible light, which had burst upon them in such a novel torrent, that it had half illumined and half bewildered them. Their speech was a tissue of prophetic and apostolic phrases, they were ready to fight and to die for their principles. The despotism of the Stuarts, pressing on the patience of the nation till it snapped, concurred with this religious enthusiasm to rouse the whole realm into one scene of confusion and strife. The different sects had not learned their own nature, and the real goal of their endeavors; the Presbyterians and the Independents wrestled not only for liberty but for power. All these circumstances have changed; the boundaries of religious liberty have been better defined by the continued labors of the great and the good of all parties; no contrast can be greater than the one between the Baptists, Independents and Presbyterians, of that day and this. The Friends have only partaken, in common with all other denominations, in the changes wrought by the same spirit passing over them. They have become a more quiet, less excited people; but they have not dropped one tenet, or abandoned one principle.

The cessation of persecution must have produced a strong effect upon them. From a state of perpetual harassing and outrage; from having their meetings broken up by drunken squires and rancorous parsons, by mobs and soldiery; their meeting-houses pulled down by order of government; themselves shut up by thousands in most miserable and filthy dens; their property plundered, their families insulted and abused; from such a state of things to one of sudden political rest and security, under the Toleration Act, the transition must have been one of a most sedative nature. Like the sudden ceasing of physical torture, it must have left upon them a most exquisite sense of ease. They would be inclined to repose themselves, and in that repose to look round and consider what they had lost, and what remained. They would see a government no longer in hostility to them, and would be disposed to a grateful abstinence from irritation. From being regarded by