A BOOK OF THE MOMENT

GEORGE FOX AND HIS SUFFERINGS

[COPYRIGHT IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE

New York Times.] The Short Journals and Itinerary of George Fox. Edited by Norman Penney. With an introduction by T. Edmund Harvey. (Macmillan ; Cambridge University Press. 15s. net.) THOSE who think to find new matter of high importance in this volume (published in commemoration of the tercentenary of the birth of George Fox) will be disappointed. Though there are a certain number of " discoveries," it must be ad- mitted that, on the whole, Penn, Ellwood, and the other Friends who edited the itinerary journals did their work well. They left very little unused in the documents which underlie

the great Journal, either as regards the personality of Fox or the origins of the Society of " the Friends of truth." That is their full name, remember, and one in every way worthy.

They are not friends of each other, but of something higher.

But, though this warning against the expectation of dis- coveries is necessary in the case of those who value intensely the sayings and doings of Fox, it must not be supposed that the " hitherto unpublished " material is dull or trivial. Though there were no great things left out by Fox's original editors and biographers, several of the smaller omissions are very interesting. For example, " the healing of a woman believed to be possessed." Again, as the ably written intro- duction notes, there are the two very curious phrases in which before a passage of protest George Fox speaks of something " striking at his life." Presumably he meant by this a spiritual experience of a kind so strong as to be almost devitalizing—an experience such as modern men would call soul-shaking—an experience which rocks the very foundations of personality and identity. Such experiences are apt to seem like a blow at the heart.

One of the things which struck at Fox's life was the sight of the great church at Nottingham—" a great Idol and Idolatrous Temple," as he phrases it. On another occasion it was the sound of a church bell that overwhelmed him, and almost made the waters of Lethe pass over his head. But, though you might strike at it, you could never kill the life- spirit of Fox. To use his own phrase, that spirit was always `•` revived again by the power of God."

Fox did not merely suffer spiritual wounds. He was belaboured in body quite as badly as he was in spirit. It is difficult to read unmoved the account of his imprisonment in loathsome jails—often little better than pits of filth—and of the way in which he was stoned and belaboured with fists and clubs while he carried through England and Scotland his message to mankind.

In truth, he was born for whatever was arduous, both in

the spirit and the flesh, and his noble heart never betrayed him into fear, and very seldom into any thought of vengeance on his enemies. If he did record that these enemies usually came to a bad end, it was in the nature of an observation of the fact that the wicked did not really flourish, even in a dark and corrupted age. Here are noble words which express his permanent attitude when he was despitefully used. " I was so bruised when I was cold that I could not turn me in my bed, and bruised inwardly at my heart, but," he adds, ." after a while the power of the Lord went through me and healed me, that I was well : Glory to the Lord for ever ! "

In this context I may quote at length the following memor- able passage, one which shows how his greatness of spirit surmounted and illumined what in another man one must have called the horrors of life. To Fox they were not horrors,

since they never broke, or soured, or maimed his fervent spirit :—

" In Warwickshire in Adderstonne when I was two miles off it the Bell rung upon a Market day for a lecture, and it struck at my life, and I was moved to go to the steeple house, and when I came into it I found a man speaking ; and when as I stood among the people the glory and life shines over all, and with it I was crowned, and when the priest had done I spoke to him and the people the truth and the light which let them see all that ever they had done, and of their teacher within them and how the Lord was come to teach them Himself, and of the seed of Christ in them ; how ihe7 were to mind that, and the promise that was to the seed of God within men, which is Christ ; and it set them in a Hurry and under a rage and some said I was mad, and spoke to my outward Relations to tie me up, and set them in a rage but the truth came over all ; and I was passed away in peace in the power of the Lord God, and the truth came over all and reached the hearts of many people."

Here we are in touch with the essential thing in the person- ality of Fox—the thing that is the poise of his character. Nothing could upset his mental balance, though his nature, his spiritual and physical experiences, and the mystical character of his religious views seem superficially of the kind which belong to the unbalanced man. Instead of being unbalanced, he was a true statesman in religious politics. Ile never failed to penetrate to the essentials in human things. His mind was never awed by talk, or by other men's ideas, or by their prejudices. Ile knew what he wanted to do exactly, and knew how to do it. He never, from personal feeling, or to get ease of mind, or from what Bacon so cynically called " niceness and satiety," raised up obstacles against himself.

His " theeing " and " thouing," and his refusals to take oaths, or to remove his hat have been very much exaggerated, as picturesque touches of this kind always are in the stories of great men. It is obvious that his whims about his hat, his clothes, and his oaths, though this was, indeed, a piece of scriptural exactitude, were never practised in a boorish, or foolish, or offensive way. Ile was a man of extraordinarily

good manners, and good manners in the very best sense. I mean, he was not merely kind and benevolent at heart,

but showed no roughness in his demeanour. Penn, who unquestionably knew how great gentlemen behaved, says that

his manners were " civil beyond all forms of breeding." Only a man memorable in this way could also have won Penn's

description of Fox in moments of devotion. lie speaks of his " awful, living, reverent, frame in prayer." In a word, nothing could be more ridiculous than Macaulay's well-known epigram of Fox as a man " too much disordered for liberty and not enough disordered for Bedlam."

That the true view of Fox is the one I have given requires no justification beyond what it receives in the ordinary journal. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that it is distinctly supported by the fragments of new matter in the Short Journal and again in the Haistwell Diary. We get repeated examples of the man's simple and, therefore, deeply impressive magnanimity. Though the point sounds a small one, it is

evident from the account of his travels in Holland and Ger- many, and elsewhere, that he was not one of those travellers who lose their temper and make themselves objectionable, when tried by the stupidity of guides or the accidents of winds and waters.

An amusing indirect example of Fox's civility, good breeding, andgentlemanlike bearing in the highest sense is to be foundin the account of a Dutch female Quaker recruit, who got very much " above herself " after conversion. At a meeting near Amsterdam he encountered a woman who had gone fourteen years on her hands and knees. Through " the wonderful hand and Arm of the Lord " she was, however " restored to her strength again, and can go very well." Many people,

the Haistwell Diary says, " it being such a miracle," went to see her. After the meeting she came to George Fox, but, adds the diarist, " since her Recovery, so many people going to see her, and she not keeping Low in her mind, and in the

fear of the Lord, was much run into words, so George Fox spoke much to her, Exhorting her to fear the Lord, and telling her that if she did not keep Low and humble before the Lord, she would be worse than ever she had been, and the woman was much tendered, and confessed to the truth."

What a picture these stumbling words call to one's mind !

The raving of the woman and the gravity of Fox are vividly brought before us, and yet one gets no hint of the poor creature being an impostor or of being treated as such by Fox. Truly, his mind was always tender to sufferers. He never hinted to

his criminal fellow-prisoners that their sufferings were caused by their own folly, or weakness, or wickedness.

Before I leave the Diary I want to speak of two points which have struck me very much—points on which one would like further information from someone who has specially studied the psychology of Fox and the early Quakers.

One might have expected in an age so grossly, madly profligate as that of Charles II. and James II. to find constant allusions and exhortations of the Puritan order in Fox's Diaries. Yet that is not the case. He never denounces the sins of the flesh in his persecutors. I can only suppose that Fox instinctively felt that his business was to deal with the said rather than with the body. Though he must have disliked the want of sexual restraint under the Stuarts and been horrified by the orgies of the Restoration, he probably felt that the essential thing was the change of heart. The gambling, the drinking, and the profligacy would right them- selves as soon as the victory of the spirit had been attained. In the same way, though an enemy of war and force, Fox dwells comparatively little on such matters. Here, again, he was concerned with deeper things than social behaviour.

My second point has to do with the mystical and psychological side of Fox. This side, it seems to me, ought to be treated more scientifically and carefully than it usually is. I want to know exactly what was in Fox's mind when he said that he " had known God experimentally." The words had probably in Fox's days a slightly different connotation from what they have now. Again, what exactly did he mean when he used the following phrases during his examination before the magistrates at Carlisle ?-

" And they asked me if I were the son of God, I said yes ! They asked me if I had seen God's face, 1 said yes. They asked me whether 1 had the spirit of discerning, 1 said yes. I discerned him that spoke to me. They asked me whether the Scripture was the word of God ; I said God was the word, and the Scriptures were writings; and the word was before writings were ; which word did fulfil them."

It is not difficult to see what he meant by saying that lie was " the son of God," but what was the exact impression which he

wanted to convey by saying that he " had seen Gad's face " ? Presumably the phrase is to be allied with the phrase just

quoted of " knowing Gad experimentally." Did Fox mean that he had, through sonic mystic usage, the poWer of getting into touch, as an Indian Yogi might say, with the Universal

and the Absolute ? How one wishes that one of the magis- trates who tried him had been Sir Thomas Browne ! He might have drawn Fox out in regard to those mystical expressions and compared them with his own allusions to such Christian- mysteries as " Ingression into the Divine Shadow," and the other examples of ecstasy chronicled in the peroration of Urne Burial.

J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.