Far away in India, a savage, hungry Tiger, with stealthy steps and a
yellow, striped skin, came padding into a defenceless native village,
to seek for prey. In the early morning he had slunk out of the Jungle,
with soft, cushioned paws that showed no signs of the fierce nails
they concealed. All through the long, hot day he had lain hidden in
the thick reeds by the riverside; but at sunset he grew hungry, and
sprang, with a great bound, up from his hiding-place. Right into the
village itself he came, trampling down the patches of young, green
corn that the villagers had sown, and that were just beginning to
spring up, fresh and green, around the mud walls of their homes. All
the villagers fled away in terror at the first glimpse of the yellow,
striped skin. The fathers and mothers snatched up their brown babies,
the older children ran in front screaming, 'Tiger! Tiger!' Young and
old they all fled away, as fast as ever they could, into the safest
hiding-places near at hand.
One man alone, a Stranger, did not fly. He remained standing right in
the middle of the Tiger's path, and fearlessly faced the savage beast.
With a howl of rage, the Tiger prepared for a spring. The man showed
no sign of fear. He never moved a muscle. Not an eyelash quivered.
Such unusual behaviour puzzled the Tiger. What could this strange
thing be, that stood quite still in the middle of the path? It could
hardly be a man. Men were always terrified of tigers, and fled
screaming when they approached. The Tiger actually stopped short in
its spring, to gaze upon this perplexing, motionless Being who knew no
fear. There he stood, perfectly silent, perfectly calm, gazing back at
the Tiger with the look of a conqueror. Several long, heavy minutes
passed. At length the villagers, peeping out from their hiding-places,
looking between the broad plantain leaves or through the chinks of
their wooden huts, beheld a miracle. They saw, to their amazement, the
Tiger slink off, sullen and baffled, to the jungle, while the Stranger
remained alone and unharmed in possession of the path. At first they
scarcely dared to believe their eyes. It was only gradually, as they
saw that the Tiger had really departed not to return, that they
ventured to creep back, by twos and threes first of all, and then in
little timid groups, to where the Stranger stood. Then they fell at
his feet and embraced his knees and worshipped him, almost as if he
had been a god. 'Tell us your Magic, Sahib,' they cried, 'this mighty
magic, whereby you have managed to overcome the Monarch of the Jungle
and tame him to your will.'
'I know no magic,' answered the Stranger, 'I used no spells. I was
able to overcome this savage Tiger only because I have already learned
how to overcome and tame THE TIGER IN MY OWN HEART.'
That was his secret. That is the story. And now let us return to
George Fox.
Think of the England he lived in when he was a young man, the
distracted England of the Civil Wars. Think of all the tiger spirits
of hatred that had been unloosed and that were trampling the land. The
whole country lay torn and bleeding. Some bad men there were on both
sides certainly; but the real misery was that many good men on each
side were trying to kill and maim one another, in order that the cause
they believed to be 'the Right' might triumph.
'Have at you for the King!' cried the Cavaliers, and rushed into the
fiercest battle with a smile.
'God with us!' shouted back the deep-voiced Puritans. 'For God and the
Liberties of England!' and they too laid down their lives gladly.
Far away from all the hurly-burly, though in the very middle of the
clash of arms, George Fox, the unknown Leicestershire shepherd lad,
went on his way, unheeded and unheeding. He, too, had to fight; but
his was a lonely battle, in the silence of his own heart. It was there
that he fought and conquered first of all, there that he tamed his own
Tiger at last--more than that, he learned to find God.
'One day,' he says in his Journal, 'when I had been walking solitarily
abroad and was come home, I was taken up into the love of God, and it
was opened to me by the eternal light and power, and I therein clearly
saw that all was to be done in and by Christ, and how He conquers and
destroys the Devil and all his works and is atop of him.' He means
that he saw that all the outward fighting was really part of one great
battle, and that to be on the right side in that fight is the thing
that matters eternally to every man.
Another time he writes: 'I saw into that which was without end, things
which cannot be uttered and of the greatness and infiniteness of the
love of God, which cannot be expressed by words, for I had been
brought through the very ocean of darkness and death, and through and
over the power of Satan by the eternal glorious power of Christ; even
through that darkness was I brought which covered over all the world
and shut up all in the death.... And I saw the harvest white and the
seed of God lying thick in the ground, as ever did wheat that was sown
outwardly, and I mourned that there was none to gather it.'
When George Fox speaks of the 'seed,' he means the tender spot that
there must always be in the hearts of all men, however wicked, since
they are made in the likeness of God. A tiny, tiny something, the
first stirring of life, that God's Spirit can find and work on,
however deeply it may be buried (like a seed under heavy clods of
earth), if men will only yield to It. In another place he calls this
seed 'THAT OF GOD WITHIN YOU.' And it is this tender growing 'seed'
that gets trampled down when fierce angry passions are unloosed in
people's hearts, just as the tender springing corn in the Indian
village was trampled down by the hungry Tiger. George Fox believed
that that seed lay hidden in the hearts of all men, because he had
found it in his own. Everywhere he longed to set that seed free to
grow, and to tame the Tiger spirits that would trample it down and
destroy it. Let us watch and see how he did this.
One day when he was about twenty-five years old, he heard that some
people had been put in prison at Coventry for the sake of their
religion. He thought that there must be a good crop of seed in the
hearts of those people, since they were willing to suffer for their
faith, so he determined to go and see them. As he was on his way to
the gaol a message came to him from God. He seemed to hear God's own
Voice saying to him, 'MY LOVE WAS ALWAYS TO THEE, AND THOU ART IN MY
LOVE.' 'Always to thee.' Then that love had always been round him,
even in his loneliest struggles, and now that he knew that he was in
it, nothing could really hurt him. No wonder that he walked on towards
the gaol with a feeling of new joy and strength. But when he came to
the dark, frowning prison where numbers of men and women were lying in
sin and misery, this joyfulness left him. He says, 'A great power of
darkness struck at me.' The prisoners were not the sort of people he
had hoped to find them. They were a set of what were then called
'Ranters.' They began to swear and to say wicked things against God.
George Fox sat silent among them, still fastening his mind on the
thought of God's conquering love; but as they went on to say yet
wilder and more wicked things, at last that very love forced him to
reprove them. They paid no attention, and at length Fox was obliged to
leave them. He says he was 'greatly grieved, yet I admired the
goodness of the Lord in appearing so to me, before I went among them.'
For the time it did seem as if the Tiger spirits had won, and were
able to trample down the living seed. But wait! A little while after,
one of these same prisoners, named Joseph Salmon, wrote a paper
confessing that he was sorry for what he had said and done, whereupon
they were all set at liberty.
Meanwhile, George Fox went on his way, and travelled through 'markets,
fairs, and divers places, and saw death and darkness everywhere, where
the Lord had not shaken them.' In one place he heard that a great man
lay dying and that his recovery was despaired of by all the doctors.
Some of his friends in the town desired George Fox to visit the
sufferer. 'I went up to him in his chamber,' says Fox in his Journal,
'and spake the word of life to him, and was moved to pray by him, and
the Lord was entreated and restored him to health. When I was come
down the stairs into a lower room and was speaking to the servants, a
serving-man of his came raving out of another room, with a naked
rapier in his hand, and set it just to my side. I looked steadfastly
on him and said "Alack for thee, poor creature! what wilt thou do with
thy carnal weapon, it is no more to me than a straw." The standers-by
were much troubled, and he went away in a rage; but when news came of
it to his master, he turned him out of his service.'
Although that particular man's Tiger spirit had been foiled in its
spring, the man himself had not been really tamed. Perhaps George Fox
needed to learn more, and to suffer more himself, before he could
really change other men's hearts. If so, he had not long to wait.
Shortly after this, it was his own turn to be imprisoned. He was shut
up in Derby Gaol, and given into the charge of a very cruel Gaoler.
This man was a strict Puritan, and he hated Fox, and spoke wickedly
against him. He even refused him permission to go and preach to the
people of the town, which, strangely enough, the prisoners in those
days were allowed to do.
One morning, however, Fox was walking up and down in his cell, when he
heard a doleful noise. He stopped his walk to listen. Through the wall
he could hear the voice of the Gaoler speaking to his wife--'Wife,' he
said, 'I have had a dream. I saw the Day of Judgment, and I saw George
there!' How the listener must have wondered what was coming! 'I saw
George there,' the Gaoler continued, 'and I was afraid of him, because
I had done him so much wrong, and spoken so much against him to the
ministers and professors, and to the Justices and in taverns and
alehouses.' But there the voice stopped, and the prisoner heard no
more. When evening came, however, the Gaoler visited the cell, no
longer raging and storming at his prisoner, but humbled and still. 'I
have been as a lion against you,' he said to Fox, 'but now I come like
a lamb, or like the Gaoler that came to Paul and Silas, trembling.'
He came to ask as a favour that he might spend the night in the same
prison chamber where Fox lay. Fox answered that he was in the Gaoler's
power: the keeper of the prison of course could sleep in any place he
chose. 'No,' answered the Gaoler, 'I wish to have your permission. I
should like to have you always with me, but not as my prisoner.' So
the two strange companions spent that night together lying side by
side. In the quiet hours of darkness the Gaoler told Fox all that was
in his heart. 'I have found that what you said of the true faith and
hope is really true, and I want you to know that even before I had
that terrible vision, whenever I refused to let you go and preach, I
was sorry afterwards when I had treated you roughly, and I had great
trouble of mind.'
There had been a little seed of kindness even in this rough Gaoler's
heart. Deeply buried though it was, it had been growing in the
darkness all the time, though no one guessed it--the Gaoler himself
perhaps least of all until his dream showed him the truth about
himself. When the night was over and morning light had come, the
Gaoler was determined to do all he could to help his new friend. He
went straight to the Justices and told them that he and all his
household had been plagued because of what they had done to George Fox
the prisoner.
'Well, we have been plagued too for having him put in prison,'
answered one of the Justices, whose name was Justice Bennett. And here
we must wait a minute, for it is interesting to know that it was this
same Justice Bennett who first gave the name of Quakers to George Fox
and his followers as a nickname, to make fun of them. Fox declared in
his preaching that 'all men should tremble at the word of the Lord,'
whereupon the Justice laughingly said that 'Quakers and Tremblers was
the name for such people.' The Justice might have been much surprised
if he could have known that centuries after, thousands of people all
over the world would still be proud to call themselves by the name he
had given in a moment of mockery.
Neither Justice Bennett nor his prisoner could guess this, however;
and therefore, although his Gaoler's heart had been changed, George
Fox still lay in Derby Prison. There was more work waiting for him to
do there.
One day he heard that a soldier wanted to see him, and in there came a
rough trooper, with a story that he was very anxious to tell. 'I was
sitting in Church,' he began. 'Thou meanest in the steeple-house,'
corrected Fox, who was always very sure that a 'Church' meant a
'Company of Christ's faithful people,' and that the mere outward
building where they were gathered should only be called a
steeple-house if it had a steeple, or a meeting-house if it had none.
'Sitting in Church, listening to the Priest,' continued the trooper,
paying no attention to the interruption, 'I was in an exceeding great
trouble, thinking over my sins and wondering what I should do, when a
Voice came to me--I believe it was God's own Voice and it said--"Dost
thou not know that my servant is in prison? Go thou to him for
direction." So I obeyed the Voice,' the man continued, 'and here I
have come to you, and now I want you to tell me what I must do to get
rid of the burden of these sins of mine.' He was like Christian in
_Pilgrim's Progress_, with a load of sins on his back, was he not? And
just as Christian's burden rolled away when he came to the Cross, so
the trooper's distress vanished when Fox spoke to him, and told him
that the same power that had shown him his sins and troubled him for
them, would also show him his salvation, for 'That which shows a man
his sin is the Same that takes it away!'
Fox did not speak in vain. The trooper 'began to have great
understanding of the Lord's truth and mercyes.' He became a bold man
too, and took his new-found happiness straight back to the other
soldiers in his quarters, and told them of the truths he had learnt in
the prison. He even said that their Colonel--Colonel Barton--was 'as
blind as Nebuchadnezzar, to cast such a true servant of God as Fox
was, into Gaol.'
Before long this saying came to Colonel Barton's ears, and then there
was a fine to do. Naturally he did not like being compared with
Nebuchadnezzar. Who would? But it would have been undignified for a
Colonel to take any notice then of the soldiers' tittle-tattle; so he
said nothing, only bided his time and waited until he could pay back
his grudge against the sergeant. A whole year he waited--then his
chance came. It was at the Battle of Worcester, when the two armies
were lying close together, but before the actual fighting had begun,
that two soldiers of the King's Army came out and challenged any two
soldiers of the Parliamentary Army to single combat, whereupon Colonel
Barton ordered the soldier who had likened him to Nebuchadnezzar to
go with one other companion on this dangerous errand. They went; they
fought with the two Royalists, and one of the two Parliamentarians was
killed; but it was the other one, not Fox's friend. He, left alone,
with his comrade lying dead by his side, suddenly found that not even
to save his own life could he kill his enemies. So he drove them both
before him back to the town, but he did not fire off his pistol at
them. Then, as soon as Worcester fight was over, he himself returned
and told the whole tale to Fox. He told him 'how the Lord had
miraculously preserved him,' and said also that now he had 'seen the
deceit and hypocrisy of the officers he had seen also to the end of
Fighting.' Whereupon he straightway laid down his arms.
The trooper left the army. Meanwhile his friend and teacher had
suffered for refusing to join it. We must go back a little to the
time, some months before the Battle of Worcester, when the original
term of Fox's imprisonment in the House of Correction in Derby was
drawing to a close.
At this time many new soldiers were being raised for the Parliamentary
Army, and among them the authorities were anxious to include their
stalwart prisoner, George Fox. Accordingly the Gaoler was asked to
bring his charge out to the market-place, and there, before the
assembled Commissioners and soldiers, Fox was offered a good position
in the army if he would take up arms for the Commonwealth against
Charles Stuart. The officers could not understand why George Fox
should refuse to regain his liberty on what seemed to them to be such
easy terms. 'Surely,' they said, 'a strong, big-boned man like you
will be not only willing but eager to take up arms against the
oppressor and abuser of the liberties of the people of England!'
Fox persisted in his refusal. 'I told them,' he writes in his Journal,
'that I knew whence all wars arose, even from men's lusts ... and that
I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the
occasion of all wars. Yet they courted me to accept their offer, and
thought I did but compliment them. But I told them I was come into
that covenant of peace which was before wars and strifes were. They
said they offered it in love and kindness to me, because for my
virtue, and such like flattering words they used. But I told them if
that was their love and kindness, I trampled it under my feet. Then
their rage got up, and they said, "Take him away, Gaoler, and put him
into the prison among the rogues and thieves."'
This prison was a much worse place than the House of Correction where
Fox had been confined hitherto. In it he was obliged to remain for a
weary half-year longer, knowing all the time that he might have been
at liberty, could he have consented to become an officer in the army.
His relations, distressed at his imprisonment, had already offered
£100 for his release, but Fox would not accept the pardon this sum
might have obtained for him as he said he had done nothing wrong. He
was occasionally allowed to leave the horrible, dirty gaol, with its
loathsome insects and wicked companions, and walk for a short time in
the garden by himself, because his keepers knew that when he had given
his word he would not try to escape from their custody.
As time went on, many dismal people (looking on the gloomy side of
things, as dismal people always do) began to shake their heads and
say, 'Poor young man, he will spend all his life in gaol. You will see
he will never be set free or get his liberty again.' But Fox refused
to be cast down. Narrow though his prison was, Hope shared it with
him. 'I had faith in God,' his Journal says, 'that I should be
delivered from that place in the Lord's time, but not yet, being set
there for a work He had for me to do!' Work there was for him in
prison truly. A young woman prisoner who had robbed her master was
sentenced to be hanged, according to the barbarous law then in force.
This shocked Fox so much that he wrote letters to her judges and to
the men who were to have been her executioners, expressing his horror
at what was going to happen in such strong language that he actually
softened their hearts. Although the girl had actually reached the foot
of the gallows, and her grave had already been dug, she was reprieved.
Then, when she was brought back into prison again after this wonderful
escape Fox was able to pour light and life into her soul, which was an
even greater thing than saving her body from death. Many other
prisoners did Fox help and comfort in Derby Gaol;[2] but though he
could soften the sufferings of others he could not shorten his own.
Once again Justice Bennett sent his men to the prison, this time with
orders to take the Quaker by force and compel him to join the army,
since he would not fight of his own free will.
'But I told him,' said Fox, '"that I was brought off from outward
wars." They came again to give me press money, but I would take none.
Afterwards the Constables brought me a second time before the
Commissioners, who said I should go for a soldier, but I said I was
dead to it. They said I was alive. I told them where envy and hatred
is, there is confusion. They offered me money twice, but I refused it.
Being disappointed, they were angry, and committed me a close
prisoner, till at length they were made to turn me out of Gaol about
the beginning of winter 1651, after I had been a prisoner in Derby
almost a year; six months in the House of Correction, and six months
in the common gaol.'
Thus at length Derby prison was left behind; but the seeds that the
prisoner had planted in that dark place sprang up and flourished and
bore fruit long after he had left.
Eleven years later, the very same Gaoler, who had been cruel to Fox at
the first, and had then had the vision and repented, wrote this letter
to his former prisoner. It is a real Gaoler's love-letter, and quite
fresh to-day, though it was written nearly 300 years ago.
'DEAR FRIEND,' the letter begins,
'Having such a convenient messenger I could do no less than give
thee an account of my present condition; remembering that to the
first awakening of me to a sense of life, God was pleased to
make use of thee as an instrument. So that sometimes I am taken
with admiration that it should come by such means as it did;
that is to say that Providence should order thee to be my
prisoner to give me my first sight of the truth. It makes me
think of the gaoler's conversion by the apostles. Oh! happy
George Fox! that first breathed the breath of life within the
walls of my habitation! Notwithstanding that my outward losses
are since that time such that I am become nothing in the world,
yet I hope I shall find that these light afflictions, which are
but for a moment, will work for me a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory. They have taken all from me; and now
instead of keeping a prison, I am waiting rather when I shall
become a prisoner myself. Pray for me that my faith fail not,
and that I may hold out to the death, that I may receive a crown
of life. I earnestly desire to hear from thee and of thy
condition, which would very much rejoice me. Not having else at
present, but my kind love to thee and all friends, in haste, I
rest thine in Christ Jesus.
'THOMAS SHARMAN.
'Derby, the 22nd of the fourth month, 1662.'
This Gaoler was one of the first people whose Tiger spirits were tamed
by George Fox. But he certainly was not the last. Fox himself had told
the soldiers in Derby market-place that he could not fight, because he
'lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the
occasion of all wars.' As a friend of his wrote, after his death many
years later: 'George Fox was a discerner of other men's spirits, AND
VERY MUCH A MASTER OF HIS OWN.'