Chapter VII: The People in White Raiment

The summer twilight was fading into night. The moon, hidden at her rising by a bank of clouds, had now climbed high above them, and shone down, a golden lamp from the clear evening sky. It was already dusk when the Shepherd of Pendle disappeared with his flock into the dewy valley. It was already light again, with the pallid light of the moon, when at length George Fox descended old Pendle Hill. Heavily he trod and slowly. Wrapped in thought was he, as a man who has seen things greater and more mysterious than he can express or comprehend. Only as he descended the slope of the hill did he remember that he was bodily weary, having eaten and drunk little for several days. A short distance from the summit, his ear caught the tinkle of falling water; and guided by its gentle music he came to where a tiny spring gushed out of the hillside, and went leaping on its way, gleaming like a thread of silver. Fox knelt down upon the soft turf, and dipping his hand, cup-wise, into the water, he carried with difficulty a few shining drops to his parched lips. The cool freshness of even this scanty draught revived him. He looked round, his glance roaming over the wide landscape that lay, mist-filled and moon-filled, beneath him, but as yet scarce seeing what he saw. Then, rising and quickening his steps, he hastened down the hill to the place where, hours before, his companion, Richard Farnsworth, had promised to await his return.

Even faithful Richard had grown weary, as time passed and the night drew on apace. He had been minded to chide his friend for his forgetfulness and long delay, but as the two men met, something stopped him, or ever he began to speak. Maybe it was the moonlight that fell full upon George Fox's countenance, or maybe there was in truth visible there some faint reflection of the radiance that transfigured the face of Moses, when he too, coming down from a far mightier revelation on a far loftier mountain, 'wist not that the skin of his face shone.'

At any rate Richard, loyal soul, checked the impatient words of remonstrance that had risen to his lips. Silently putting his hand through his friend's arm, he led him a mile or two further along the road, until they came to the small wayside inn where they intended to spend the night.

No sooner were they within doors than Richard was startled afresh by the pallor of his companion's countenance. The glory had departed now. Nothing but utter weariness remained. In all haste Richard called for food and drink, and placing them before Fox he almost forced him to partake. Fox swallowed a few mouthfuls of bread, and drank a little clear red wine in a glass. Then as he set the glass down, he noticed the inn-keeper who was standing by, watching his guest's every movement with curious eyes.

A rough, plain countryman, he seemed, mine host of the ale-house, to most of those who had dealings with him. But Fox, in spite of his own bodily hunger and physical weariness, discerned that the spirit of the man before him knew the cravings of a yet keener need: was fainting under the weight of a yet heavier load. Instantly he recognised the seeking soul within, even as the Shepherd of Pendle a few hours previously, out on the hillside, had recognised his master's mark on the straying sheep. Forgetting his own weariness, even for the time putting aside the remembrance of the visions he had seen, he set himself to win and satisfy this humble soul at his side.

'I declared Truth to the man of the house,' so runs his Journal, 'and wrote a paper to the priests and professors declaring "the day of the Lord and that Christ was come to teach His people Himself, by His power and spirit in their hearts, and to bring people off from all the world's ways and teaching, to His own free teaching who had bought them, and was the Saviour of all them that believed in Him." And the man of the house did spread the paper up and down and was mightily affected with Truth!'

The inn-keeper went out full of gladness to 'publish Truth' in his turn. Henceforth he was a new man in the power of the new message that had been entrusted to him. A new life lay before him.

But when the two friends were once more alone together, and the immediate task was done, Richard Farnsworth perceived the strange look that had silenced him at the foot of the mountain returning to his companion's face. Only now the weariness was fading, it was the glory that returned.

Pushing away the table, George Fox rose to his feet, and stretched both his arms out wide. He and Farnsworth were alone in the narrow inn parlour, lighted only by one flickering rushlight. So small was the room that the whitewashed walls pressed close on every side. So low was the ceiling that when Fox arose and drew himself up to his full height the black oak beams were scarce a hand's breadth above his head.

Yet Richard, as he looked up, awed and silent, from his stool by the table, felt as if his friend were still standing far above him on the summit of a high hill, with nothing but the heights of sky beyond his head and with the hills and valleys of the whole world stretching away below his feet.

'I see,' said Fox, and, as he spoke, to Richard too the narrow walls seemed to open and melt away into infinite space on every side: 'I see a people in white raiment, by a riverside--a great people--in white raiment, coming to the Lord.'

The flickering rushlight spluttered and went out. Through the low casement window the white mists could be seen, still rising from every bend and fold of the widespread valleys that lay around them, rising up, up, like an innumerable company of spirit-filled souls, while the moon shone down serenely over all.

II

It was a few days later, and Whitsun Eve. The same traveller who had climbed to the top of old Pendle Hill 'with much ado, it was so steep,' was coming down now on the far side of the Yorkshire dales.

'A lusty strong man of body' but 'of a grave look or countenance,' he 'travelled much on foot through rough and untrodden paths.' 'As he passed through Wensleydale he advised the people as he met or passed through them' 'to fear God,' 'which ... did much alarm the people, it being a time that many people were filled with zeal.'[3]

At sunset he passed through a village of flax-weavers whose settlements lay in the low flatts that bordered the rushing river Rawthey a mile or two outside of Sedbergh Town.

'I came through the Dales,' says George Fox in his Journal, 'and as I was passing along the way, I asked a man which was Richard Robinson's, and he asked me from whence I came, and I told him "From the Lord."'

This must have been a rather unexpected answer from a traveller on the high road. Can you not see the countryman's surprised face as he turns round and stares at the speaker, and wonders whatever he means?

'So when I came to Richard Robinson's I declared the Everlasting Truth to him, and yet a dark jealousy rose up in him after I had gone to bed, that I might be somebody that was come to rob his house, and he locked all his doors fast. And the next day I went to a separate meeting at Justice Benson's where the people generally was convinced, and this was the place that I had seen a people coming forth in white raiment; and a mighty meeting there was and is to this day near Sedbarr which I gathered in the name of Jesus.'

These flax-weavers of Brigflatts were a company of 'Seekers,' unsatisfied souls who had strayed away like lost sheep from all the sects and Churches, and were longing for a spiritual Shepherd to come and find them again and bring them home to the fold.

George Fox was a weaver's son himself. Directly he heard it, the whirr of the looms beside the rushing Rawthey must have been a homelike sound in his ears. But more than that, his spirit was immediately at home among the little colony of weavers of snowy linen; for he recognised at once that these were the riverside people 'in white raiment,' whom he had seen in his vision, and to whom he had been sent.

Not only the flax-weavers, but also some of the 'considerable people' of the neighbourhood accepted the message of the wandering preacher, who came to them over the dales that memorable Whitsuntide. The master of the house where the meeting was held, Colonel Gervase Benson himself, and his good wife Dorothy also, were 'convinced of Truth,' and faithfully did they adhere thereafter to their new faith, through fair weather and foul. In later years, men noted that this same Colonel Benson, following his teacher's love of simplicity, and hatred of high-sounding titles, generally styled himself merely a 'husbandman,' notwithstanding 'the height and glory of the world that he had a great share of,'[4] seeing that 'he had been a Colonel, a Justice of the Peace, Mayor of Kendal, and Commissary in the Archdeaconry of Richmond before the late domestic wars. Yet, as an humble servant of Christ, he downed those things.'[5] His wife, Mistress Dorothy, also, was to prove herself a faithful friend to her teacher in after years, when his turn, and her turn too, came to suffer for 'Truth's sake.'

But in these opening summer days of 1652, no shadows fell on the sunrise of enthusiasm and of hope, as, in the good Justice's house beside the rushing Rawthey, the gathering of the 'great people' began.

The day was Whitsunday, the anniversary of that other gathering in the upper room at Jerusalem, when the Apostles being all 'in one place, with one accord, of one mind,' the rushing mighty Wind came and shook all the place where they were sitting, followed by the cloven tongues 'like as of fire, that sat upon each of them.'

The gift given at Pentecost has never been recalled. Throughout the ages the Spirit waits to take possession of human hearts, ready to fill even the humblest lives with Its Own Power of breath and flame.

This was the Truth that had grown dusty and neglected in England in this seventeenth century. The 'still, small Voice' had been drowned in the clash of arms and in the almost worse clamour of a thousand different sects. Now that, after his own long search in loneliness and darkness, George Fox had at length found the Voice speaking to him unmistakably in the depths of his own heart, the whole object of his life was to persuade others to listen also to 'the true Teacher that is within,' and to convince them that He was always waiting to speak not only in their hearts, but also through their lives. 'My message unto them from the Lord was,' he says, 'that they should all come together again and wait to feel the Lord's power and spirit in themselves, to gather them together to Christ, that they might be taught of Him who says "Learn of Me."'

This was the Truth--an actual, living Truth--that not only the flax-weavers of Brigflatts, but many other companies of 'Seekers' scattered through the dales of Yorkshire and Westmorland, as well as in many other places, had been longing to hear proclaimed. 'Thirsty Souls that hunger' was one of the names by which they called themselves. It was to these thirsty, hungering Souls that George Fox had been led at the very moment when he was burning to share with others the vision of the 'wide horizons of the future' that had been unfolded to him on the top of old Pendle Hill.

No wonder that the Seekers welcomed him and flocked round him, drinking in his words as if their thirsty souls could never have enough. No wonder that he welcomed them with equal gladness, rejoicing not only in their joy, but yet more in that he saw his vision's fulfilment beginning. Here in these secluded villages he had been led unmistakably to the 'Great People,' whom he had seen afar off, waiting to be gathered.

Within a fortnight from that assembly on Whit-Sunday at Justice Benson's house George Fox was no longer a solitary, wandering teacher, trying to convince scattered people here and there of the Truths he had discovered. Within a fortnight--a wonderful fortnight truly--he had become the leader of a mighty movement that gathered adherents and grew of itself, spreading with an irresistible impulse until, only a few years later, one Englishman out of every ninety was a member of the SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] First Publishers of Truth.

[4] First Publishers of Truth.

[5] First Publishers of Truth.