October 13. George Fox’s journal is a leaf from a strange chapter of the world’s history: from the history of religion. If a plain man should come among us now, asking leave of none to speak, but “testifying” in religious assemblies to the reality of the inward life of light and peace in Christ, his blunt and simple ways might be unpleasing to many, but every scoffer would look on, more with wonder than with anger. Many, I am sure, would welcome such a voice of sincerity and “livingness,” sounding through the outward services of religion. The days of religious persecution can scarcely return again; nor, it is to be hoped, the days of those strange phenomena which so irritated our ancestors; men walking as “signs” to the people, declaring their dreams to be visions from God, and uttering wild, unmeaning prophecies for inspiration. How hard it is to learn what “true religion and undefiled” is! _Life_ is a better word for this universal bond than _religion_. And we shall see, sometime, that it is only by the redemption of all our powers, all that is in us and in the outward world, that we are truly “saved.” We must receive the true light through and through, we must keep our common sense, our talents, our genius, just the same;--only that light must glow through all, to make all alive. And when home, and friendships, and amusements, and all useful and beautiful thoughts and things are really made transparent with that divine light, when nothing that God has given us is rejected as “common or unclean,” the “new heaven and the new earth” will have been created, and we shall live in our Creator and Redeemer. The great difference between the early Quakers and the Puritans seems to me to be that the former had larger ideas of truth, deeper and broader revelations, yet mixed with greater eccentricities, as might be expected. The Puritans were most anxious for a place where they could worship undisturbed, as their consciences dictated; the Quakers were most desirous that the Word of Life should be spoken everywhere,--the Light be revealed to all. Each made serious mistakes,--what else could we expect, from the best that is human? And the errors of both were, in great part, the errors of the age,--intolerance and fanaticism. October 12. How refreshing the clear cold air is, after the summer-like fogs and rains we have had! I love the cold; the northern air is strengthening; it has the breath of the hills in it, the glow of Auroral lights, and the purity of the eternal snows. There is little of the south in my nature; the north is my home; Italy and the tropics will do for dream excursions; I should long for the sweeping winds of the hillsides, if I were there.