The Liberator

From the Practical Christian

George Fox.

The following stirring thoughts of Carlyle create deep emotions of soul. George Fox was great because he was good. He followed most devoutly the leadings of the Divine Spirit, and with a steadfast zeal fulfilled his glorious mission. What a mighty power of reform would the Quakers now wield, were they as true as their early predecessors.

'Perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern history,' says Teufelsdrockh, 'is not the Diet of Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other battle: but an incident passed carelessly over by most historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by others; namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, was one of those to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of ignorance, and earthly degradation shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, unspeakable beauty, on their souls; who, therefore, are rightly accounted prophets, God-possessed; or even gods, as in some persons it has chanced. Sitting in his stall, working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a living spirit belonging to him; also an antique, inspired volume, through which, as through a window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of victuals, and an honorable mastership in cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his Hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing,—was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind; but ever, amid the boring and hammering, came tones from that far country, came splendors and terrors; for this poor cordwainer, as we said, was a man; and the temple of immensity, wherein as man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him.

The clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained watchers and interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders of the blind! For what ends were their tithes levied and eaten; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, organing, or other racketing, held over that spot of God's earth,—if man were but a patent-digester, and the belly with its adjuncts the grand reality? Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher than Ætna, had been heaped over that spirit: but it was a spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free. How its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of heaven! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine.—'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, 'with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tag-rags, I can neither see nor move. Not my own am I, but the world's; and time flies fast, and heaven is high, and hell is deep. Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of thought! Why not; What binds me here? What! What!—Ha, of what? Will all the shoe-wages under the moon ferry me across into that far land of light? Only meditation can, and devout prayer to God. I will to the woods; the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild berries feed me; and for clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of leather!'

'Historical oil-paintings,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 'is one of the arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvass. Yet, often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing of man's free-will, to lighten, more and more into day, the chaotic night that threatened to engulph him in its hindrances and its horrors, were properly the only grandeur there is in history. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding heart, picture George Fox, on that morning, when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts cow-hide by unwonted patterns, and stitches them together into one continuous, all-including case, the farewell service of his awl! Stitch away, thou noble Fox; every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart of slavery, and world-worship, and the Mammon-God! thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her workhouse and rag-fair, into lands of true liberty; were the work done, there, there is in broad Europe one free man, and thou art he!

Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest height; and for the poor also a gospel has been published. Surely, if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of antiquity, only that he wanted decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the moderns; and greater than Diogenes himself; for he, too, stands on the adamantine basis of his manhood, casting aside all props and shores; yet not, in half-savage pride, undervaluing the earth; valuing it rather, as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks heavenward from his earth, and dwells in an element of mercy and worship, with a still strength, such as the Cynic's tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity were scornfully preached abroad; but greater is the leather hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not in scorn, but in love.'