Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: EssaysHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Collected Essays, Volume V: Science and Christian Tradition: Essays
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Agnosticism; Miracles; Religion and science
Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I
had been kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled as
before, in the work of the Lord. And coming to Mansfield
Woodhouse, there was a distracted woman, under a doctor's
hand, with her hair let loose all about her ears; and he was
about to let her blood, she being first bound, and many
people being about her, holding her by violence; but he
could get no blood from her. And I desired them to unbind
her and let her alone; for they could not touch the spirit
in her by which she was tormented. So they did unbind her,
and I was moved to speak to her, and in the name of the Lord
to bid her be quiet and still. And she was so. And the
Lord's power settled her mind and she mended; and afterwards
received the truth and continued in it to her death. And the
Lord's name was honoured; to whom the glory of all His works
belongs. Many great and wonderful things were wrought by the
heavenly power in those days. For the Lord made bare his
omnipotent arm and manifested His power to the astonishment
of many; by the healing virtue whereof many have been
delivered from great infirmities, and the devils were made
subject through his name: of which particular instances
might be given beyond what this unbelieving age is able to
receive or bear.[45]
It needs no long study of Fox's writings, however, to arrive at the
conviction that the distinction between subjective and objective
verities had not the same place in his mind as it has in that of an
ordinary mortal. When an ordinary person would say "I thought so and
so," or "I made up my mind to do so and so," George Fox says, "It was
opened to me," or "at the command of God I did so and so." "Then at
the command of God on the ninth day of the seventh month 1643 (Fox
being just nineteen), I left my relations and brake off all
familiarity or friendship with young or old." "About the beginning of
the year 1647 I was moved of the Lord to go into Darbyshire." Fox
hears voices and he sees visions, some of which he brings before the
reader with apocalyptic power in the simple and strong English, alike
untutored and undefiled, of which, like John Bunyan, his contemporary,
he was a master.
"And one morning as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over
me and a temptation beset me; and I sate still. And it was said, _All
things come by Nature_. And the elements and stars came over me; so
that I was in a manner quite clouded with it.... And as I sate still
under it, and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true
voice arose in me which said, _There is a living God who made all
things_. And immediately the cloud and the temptation vanished away,
and life rose over it all, and my heart was glad and I praised the
living God" (p. 13).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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