Quakerism, as a congenial centre, speedily attracted them to itself. The true Friend, travelling in modern days on religious service, finds in churches the most remote, persons whose inner life presents strange affinities to his own. Discoursing in his peculiar way upon the mysteries of religious experience, he evokes recognitions of brotherhood from the Spanish Catholic and the Russian Greek;[364] no wonder, therefore, when mysticism in England found for itself such a voice in the middle of the seventeenth century, that it soon drew within the circle of its fellowship thousands who were waiting for its call. [Sidenote: _George Fox._] The rise of Quakerism must be sought in the life of its founder. If ever the child was father to the man, it certainly was so in the case of George Fox. Born of humble but virtuous parents--his father, Christopher, an honest weaver, winning amongst his companions the name of "righteous Christer;" his mother, Mary Lago, a pure-minded woman, sprung from a family stock which had borne fruits of martyrdom--he was not likely in his early days to see much of immorality, nor were the folks who crossed his parents' threshold, and whom the boy heard talking round the hearth-stone, likely to be otherwise than of the better sort in morals; yet their cheerfulness and mirth shocked little George so much, that he would say within himself, "If ever I come to be a man surely I will not be so wanton." He was too precocious to like childish games, and shewed his activity of intellect and depth of feeling in strange questions about religion, and in ways of worship unlike his mother's. When only eleven, he had inward monitions, inclining him to an ascetic life, and impulses which two hundred years earlier would have made a youth of his stamp an exemplary monk. Apprenticed to a dealer in leather and wool, who bred sheep for the sake of the fleece, George was set to watch the flocks, and in his shepherd life he found "a just emblem of his after ministry and service." As he grew older, men admired the justness of his dealings, and in his "verily" found what was more than equivalent to another man's oath, so that it became a proverb, "If George says verily there is no altering him." When business or persuasion took him to the market or the fair, his righteous soul was vexed with what he saw and heard--for even drinking healths appeared offensive--and he would return from the gaiety of the gathering to mourn in secret, through sleepless nights, over the world's vanity and sin. He resolved to separate from his acquaintances and to spend a life of retirement and devotion. None of the professions of religion in those days met his views. The Episcopal Church seemed little better than the world--Baptists and Independents were not sufficiently spiritual--current forms of theology did not supply the necessities of the young enquirer--and therefore in solitude and fasting, in the