conference to be called THE FIVE-YEARS MEET

ING.

The Constitution does not contain any creed or formal Declaration of Faith, though a general statement of belief is given. For more explicit statements of belief reference is made to those officially put forth at various times, and especially to the letter of George Fox to the Governor of Barbadoes in 1671, and to the Declaration of Faith issued by the Richmond Conference in 1887.

The Constitution is briefer, simpler, more logical than the Disciplines which preceded it, and is probably better fitted to present-day needs. On the other hand it is somewhat lacking on the spiritual side. While it has been subjected to some severe criticism, it has worked so far remarkably well.

A

CHAPTER I.

BEGINNING IN ENGLAND.

MONG the many denominations which appeared in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that time of religious upheaval, none is more worthy of attention than the Friends. Though scarcely one of its doctrines was absolutely new, yet the combination of so many radical tenets produced a remarkable factor in the religious economy of Christendom, the effects of which are only beginning to be appreciated.

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England had been stunned for twenty years with religious polemics. The forms of church government-presbyterianism and prelacy-the claims of the independents and the clamors of the sectaries, the respective rights of the pastors and the people, were discussed in every pulpit, they distracted every parish and every house."1 Torn by civil war, agitated with bitter theological disputes, full of men dissatisfied with church, with state, with almost every existing institution, England was indeed in a sad way. It was amid such surroundings, influenced by such currents of

1 J. B. Marsden, " 'History of the Later Puritans," 2d ed., London, 1854, p. 235.

thought, out of such a hurly-burly, that the Society of Friends arose.1

...

The history of the early years of the Society is the history of its founder. George Fox was born at Fenny Drayton, sometimes known as Drayton, in the Clay, Leicestershire, July, 1624. "My father's name was Christopher Fox; he was by profession a weaver, an honest man. The neighbors called him Righteous Christer. My mother was an upright woman; her maiden name was Mary Lago, of the family of the Lagos, and of the stock of the martyrs." His youth "was endued with a gravity and stayedness of mind that is seldom seen in children." 5

Notwithstanding his sober and serious youth, he seems to have had no idea that he was to be called to any special work, and, as with many a man, a slight thing, apparently, proved the turning point in his life. Being asked to drink healths by some young men who were "professors" of religion, he

1 William Thistlethwaite, "Lectures on the Rise and Progress of Friends," London, 1865, pp. 1-35.

2 "The ideas of Quakerism came from many sources, foreign and English, but the formation of the Friends' Society was due to one man." G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts," London, 1904, p. 312.

3 The exact date is not known.

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4" Journal" of George Fox, London, 1694, p. I. This work is uniformly referred to as "Journal." We hear little or nothing of George Fox's relatives except now and then he simply mentions visiting them. (But see "Journal," pp. 390, 396.) Charles Marshall says, under date of "11th month, 19th, 1671 ”: “I went to see G. F.'s mother in Leicestershire." ("Journal" of Charles Marshall, London, 1844, p. 17.) She died in 1674, "Journal," 396. 5 William Sewel, "History of the Quakers," London, 1725, 2d ed., p. 6.

was so grieved that such persons should act in this way that he threw down his share of the cost of the previous entertainment and went out of the room. A sleepless night followed, during which he believed he heard the call of the Lord summoning him to leave all things. He went from place to place seeking peace of mind; once he says that "a strong temptation to despair came upon me, and then I saw how Christ was tempted, and mighty troubles I was in." He went from "priest to priest" to get help, but found them sorry comforters, for they did not see that he was one who needed spiritual food and enlightenment, not mental distraction. He remained more than a year in this state. At last, he writes, "about the beginning of the year 1646, as I was going to Coventry and entering toward the gate, a consideration arose in me how it was said that all Christians are believers, both Protestants and Papists. And the Lord opened to me that if all were believers, then were they all born of God and passed from death to life, and that none were true believers but such, and though others said they were believers yet they were not. Another time, as I was walking in a field on a Firstday morning, the Lord opened to me that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of Christ; and I stranged at it, because it was the common belief of people." He still did not find absolute peace,

1 "Journal," pp. 3–6.

but continued to go up and down through the country.

After the conviction that education was no essential qualification of a minister, he naturally turned more and more to the dissenters, but he found little satisfaction with most of them. So he goes on to say: "When . . . I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, oh, then I heard a voice which said, 'There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,' and when I heard it my heart did leap

" 1

for joy." And when he cried to the Lord, "Why should I be thus, seeing I was never addicted to commit those evils?' the Lord answered that it was needful I should have a sense of all conditions-how else should I speak to all conditions? And in this I saw the infinite love of God. I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness."' Again he says: "Now was I come up in spirit through the flaming sword into the Paradise of God. All things were new, and all creation gave another smell unto me beyond what words can utter." This was when he was about twentythree.

"3

The sentences quoted lie at the root of Fox's practice and teaching-consistency of the outward life with the profession; the necessity of divine

1 "Journal," p. 8.

2 Ibid., pp. 13, 17.

8 Ibid., p. 17.