It was not until a year later that the delighted children discovered that the long spell of sunshine and the Enchanter Wind had worked a lasting magic. The ripened seed had been scattered far and wide. The primroses had come to the North to stay; and new Paradises were springing up everywhere. Now this is a primrose parable of many things, and worth remembering. Among other things it is an illustration of the change that was wrought all over England by the preaching of George Fox. Think once again of the long bleak years of his youth, when he was struggling in a dark world into which it seemed as if no ray of light could pierce; when he and everyone else seemed to be frozen up in a wintry religion, without life or warmth. Then think how at length he felt the sap rising in his own soul, turning his whole being to the Light, as he found 'there is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.' This discovery taught him that in all other men's hearts too, if they only knew, there was 'that of God.' Henceforward, to proclaim that Light to others and the seed within their own hearts that responds to the beams of the Sun of Righteousness, was the service to which George Fox devoted his whole life. As his own being blossomed in the spiritual sunshine of his great discovery, he was able to persuade hundreds and thousands of other frozen hearts to yield themselves and turn to the Light, and open and blossom also in that same sunshine. A greater wonder followed. Those other lives, as they yielded themselves, began to ripen too, in different ways, but silently and surely, until they in their turn were ready to scatter the new seed, or, in the language of their day, to 'Publish Truth' up and down all over the country, until the whole face of England was changed. By the time of George Fox's death, more than one out of every hundred among all the people of England was a Friend. But the Friends never regarded themselves as a Sect, although Sects were flourishing at that time. In 1640 it is said that twenty new kinds of Sects blossomed out in the course of one week. George Fox and his followers believed that the discovery they had made was meant for everybody, as much as sunshine is. Other people nicknamed them 'Quakers,' but they always spoke of themselves by names that the whole world was welcome to share: 'Children of the Light,' 'Friends of the Truth,' or simply 'Friends.' There was nothing exclusive about such names as these. There was no such thing as membership in a society then or for more than fifty years afterwards. Anyone who was convinced by what he had heard, and lived in the spirit of what he professed, became 'Truth's Friend' in his turn.