Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great ReformersHubbard, Elbert
History
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 09: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers
Hubbard, Elbert
Reformers
Fox had no intention of founding an organization, nor was he in
competition with any other religion. Such a movement, of course,
depends entirely upon the quality of the man who advocates it. George
Fox had personality--character--and so people flocked to hear him
speak. His plea was so earnest, so direct, so vivid, so irrefutable,
that as the listeners listened, some trembled with emotion. "Quakers,"
a scoffer called them, and this word, flung by an unknown hoodlum,
stuck like a mud-ball. The name of the particular hoodlum, like the
man who fired the Alexandrian Library, still lies mired in the mud
from which he formed the ball that stuck. That ball escaped the fate
of the mass because it hit a great man; had the thrower thought only
to have attached his name, it might have gone down the ages linked
with that of greatness.
In a short time Fox found himself in troubled waters. He had offended
the Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Baptists, and to save
himself and his people he finally banded them into an organization.
About this time William Penn appeared (with his hat firmly on his
head) and organized colonies of Quakers to go to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania. The Quakers refused to accept the sacrament, claiming
that no one part of life was any more holy than the rest, and that no
one man was any more worthy of performing a rite than another.
Parliament then stepped in and made church attendance compulsory, the
sacrament obligatory, and the protest against war and advocacy of
universal peace a misdemeanor.
Those early Quakers were really people who had graduated from the
Church. When the scholar graduates from school the teacher is proud,
and friends send flowers and kindly congratulations. When you graduate
from Church the preacher declares you are lost, and the congregation
calls you bad names. Up to Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine, things were
not allowed to rest even there, for you were considered by the law to
be the enemy of the State. In Sixteen Hundred Fifty-six, a thousand
Quakers were in prison in England on account of their religious
belief, several hundred had been hanged, a few were burned at the
stake, many had their ears cut off, others were branded, and many
others had their tongues bored through. But strangely enough, the
number of Quakers increased. A king can't kill all his people, even if
they are all wrong, and so in fear the government changed its tactics.
In Sixteen Hundred Eighty-nine came the Toleration Act, which put a
stop to violent persecution, retaining merely the passive sort. The
Quakers were excluded from all schools, colleges and universities, and
from all right of franchise and the holding of political office; like
unto the fond mother who orders her child to come into the house, and
then when the child does not obey, says, "Well, stay out then!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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