_A prayer for the soldier spirit. 'Teach us, good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest: to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labour and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will: through Jesus Christ our Lord.'--IGNATIUS LOYOLA._ XXIV. THE VICTORY OF AMOR STODDART 'Christ disarmed Peter, and in so doing He unbuckled the sword of every soldier.' TERTULLIAN. A dauntless fighter in his day was Captain Amor Stoddart, seeing he had served in the Parliamentary Army throughout the Civil Wars. In truth, it was no child's play to command a body of men as tough as Oliver's famous Ironsides. Therefore Captain Stoddart had doubtless come through many a bloody struggle, and fought in many a hardly fought contest during those long wars, before the final victory was won. But now, not a single memory remains of his small individual share in those 'Old unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.' His story has come down to us as a staunch comrade and a valiant fighter, in a different kind of warfare. His victory was won in a struggle in which all the visible weapons were on the other side; when, through long years, he had only the armour of meekness and of love wherewith to oppose hardship and violence and wrong. Wherefore, of this fight and of this victory, his own name remains as a symbol and a sign. Not in vain was he called at his birth 'Amor,' which, in the Latin tongue signifies 'Love,' as all men know. The first meeting between Captain Amor Stoddart and him who was to be thereafter his spirit's earthly captain in the new strange warfare that lay before him, happened on this wise. In the year 1648, when the long Civil Wars were at last nearing their close, George Fox visited Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and held a meeting with the professors (that is to say the Puritans) there. It was in that same year of 1648, when every day the shadow was drawing nearer of the fatal scaffold that should be erected within the Palace at Whitehall the following January. But although that shadow crept daily nearer, men, for the most part, as yet perceived it not. Fox himself was at this time still young, as years are counted, being only twenty-four years of age. Four other summers were yet to pass before that memorable day when he should climb to the summit of old Pendle Hill, and, after seeing there the vision of a 'great people to be gathered,' should begin himself to gather them at Firbank and Swarthmoor and many another place. George, though still young in years, was already possessed not only of a strange and wonderful presence, but also of a gift to perceive and to draw the souls of other men, and to knit them to his own.