As I say, it is the time
of tremendous moral and political agitation; ideas of conflicting
forms, governments, theologies, seethe and dash like ocean storms, and
ebb and flow like mighty tides. It was, or had been, the time of the
long feud between the Parliament and the Crown. In the midst of
the sprouts, began George Fox--born eight years after the death of
Shakspere. He was the son of a weaver, himself a shoemaker, and was
"converted" before the age of 20. But O the sufferings, mental and
physical, through which those years of the strange youth pass'd! He
claim'd to be sent by God to fulfill a mission. "I come," he said, "to
direct people to the spirit that gave forth the Scriptures." The range
of his thought, even then, cover'd almost every important subject of
after times, anti-slavery, women's rights, &c. Though in a low sphere,
and among the masses, he forms a mark'd feature in the age.
And how, indeed, beyond all any, that stormy and perturb'd age! The
foundations of the old, the superstitious, the conventionally poetic,
the credulous, all breaking--the light of the new, and of science and
democracy, definitely beginning--a mad, fierce, almost crazy age!
The political struggles of the reigns of the Charleses, and of the
Protectorate of Cromwell, heated to frenzy by theological struggles.
Those were the years following the advent and practical working of the
Reformation--but Catholicism is yet strong, and yet seeks supremacy.
We think our age full of the flush of men and doings, and culminations
of war and peace; and so it is.
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