But Mazzini reminds us that not only does every great revolution demand a great idea to be its centre of action, to furnish it both lever and fulcrum for the work it has to do; but "incarnation in action" is also and equally necessary,1 or else the incorruptible Word will not fructify in a large and nourishing harvest. Such incarnations were appearing and increasing in the Baptists and Independents of the time. John Smyth, the founder of the "General Baptists" in 1608-11, was first a clergyman of the Anglican Church, next a Separatist, then an Independent, and lastly an Arminian Baptist. A brave soul, of noble make and of incorruptible sincerity, "broad as the charity of Almighty God, narrow as His righteousness," he was ready to follow truth wherever and to whatever of loss and suffering she might lead; and for him a joyous acceptance of that leadership meant life as an exile for conscience sake in Holland, where, breathing an atmosphere inpregnated with the theological teaching of James Arminius, and the doctrine of toleration taught by the celebrated Dutch lawyer and statesman Grotius, he learnt in pain the truth that Helwise and Busher and their friends were to teach. Another Episcopalian, Roger Williams, infected with the "dingy meeting-house" doctrines, embarked for America in 1630, there founded the first Baptist Church in 1639, and was the first legislator who provided for free and absolute liberty of conscience. Dr. Gardiner, speaking of another hero of freedom, John Milton, says "his love of liberty was a high intellectual persuasion, not like that of Roger Williams, which sprang from Biblical study undertaken under stress of persecution." Hugh Peters succeeded Roger Williams as pastor of the church in Rhode Island, but coming back to this country in the time of civil war he became an army chaplain. He was a man entirely after the heart of that great Independent and stern warrior for liberty, Oliver Cromwell. He loved freedom "from the kindliness of a man of genial temper to whom a minute theological study was repulsive, and who, without disguising his own opinions, preferred goodness of heart to rigidity of doctrine." "Truly it wounds my soul," he said, "when I think Ireland would perish, and England continue her misery through the disagreement of ten or twenty learned men.

Could we but conquer each other's spirit, we should soon befool the devil and his instruments; to which end I could wish we that are ministers might pray together, eat and drink together, because, if I mistake not, estrangement hath boiled us up to jealousy and hatred." Those were heroes who, like William Sawtry, Sir James Bainham, Richard Woodman, Anne Askew, Joan Boucher, Benjamin Hewling, and Elizabeth Gaunt, could die and never yield, suffer but not flinch from their faithfulness; fight for ideas and impossibilities, but not dull the keen edge of their enthusiasm, or dim the brightness of their hope. They were possessed

of that "intrinsic conviction" described by John Morley as "the mainstay of human advancement," and like Bunyan were ready to reply to the judge who threatened hanging if they continued preaching, "If I were out of prison to-day, I should preach to-morrow by the help of God." Consequences! they cared not a jot for those that reached themselves so long as they were true to their conscience and their King. Safety they scorned the mean cowardice that put that before duty :

"Bodies fall by wild sword-law;
But who would force the soul, tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant." 1

... Men they were who could not bend ;
Blest pilgrims, surely as they took for guide
A will by sovereign conscience sanctified;
Blest while their spirits from the woods ascend
Along a galaxy that knows no end,

But in His glory who for sinners died."

V.

It is impossible for me to trace in all its fruitful issues this regal idea. "Liberty of Conscience" is not a phrase, but incarnate in men it is a force, and one of the most efficient in history. It springs from the value and possibilities of the individual man, and cannot cease in its creative and reforming work till it permeates all life-individual, political, social, and international—and fashions it in obedience to the great principle of soulfreedom. The men who, in the language of Froude, "assisted in their deaths to pay the purchase-money of England's freedom," did not foresee the range and elevation of their acquisitions. The total extinction of slavery of the body was in it; for if the higher faculties of conscience and will are free, by what right do the chains still hold the limbs? Hence those who had entered into the heritage of the Quakers and Baptists and Independents could not rank behind the most chivalrous and devoted warriors on behalf of the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, and all the colonies, and at last in the United States. Political liberty was in it,"one man one vote," aye, and " one woman one vote; " the sovereignty of the soul means personal obligation to promote the welfare of the body politic in its widest interests and ramifications. Social emancipation and social happiness were in it. Did not that Baptist, Hugh Peters, foresee our day when he said he had ever sought after three things: "First, that goodness which is really so, and such religion might be highly advanced; secondly, that good learning might have all countenance; and thirdly, that there may not be a beggar in Israel-in England"? Surely that last note in the army chaplain's legacy gives him high rank amongst the earliest British Christian socialists!

(2) You will not imagine that I forget for a moment that Baptists have Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Wordsworth, Part III., No. 7, p. 63. Ibid., No. 13, p. 67.

only been one regiment of the soldiers fighting for these victories. I merely keep to my text, but with a deep sense that the debt to our predecessors and allies is immeasurably great; and specially to those nearest us-the stalwart and aggressive Independents on the right and the quietly invincible Quakers on the left All I have striven to show is that the place of Baptists in the evolution of British Christianity is :

First, that of fearless warriors in the struggle for reality and personal responsibility in religion; and that to that struggle they owe their partial detachment from the religious organizations in the midst of which they were living.

Secondly, that of leaders in the conception and promulgation of the glad tidings of freedom from the interference and control of state and ecclesiastical authorities.

Thirdly, that of fellow-workers for the emancipation of the slave, the uplifting of the lower races, and the improvement of the social condition. of mankind. I have said nothing of the contributions made to British Christianity by the theologian Andrew Fuller, and by the re-creation of foreign missions by William Carey in the last century; nor yet of that superlative wealth of character in the host of nameless saints, members of Baptist churches, and heroic toilers for the redemption of men and the destruction of all evil.

"The healing of the world

Is in its nameless saints. Each separate star
Seems nothing, but a myriad scattered stars
Break up the night and make it beautiful."

(3) Nor have I said anything about the future. I know little about it. It is affirmed that all ecclesiasticisms, chemically speaking, are in a state of decomposition, and I cannot deny it. Fortunately, "the loudest beating of the drum will not check the rising of the sun." The energy of the Renaissance is not yet spent. The Reformation waits still for its completion. The simple ideas of the Christianity of Christ are full of revolutionary power, and need living application to the legislative, commercial, and social life of the world. In that work Baptists ought to have a large share, and the larger because our task, in so far as it relates to the exposition of New Testament baptism, is nearly done. Exegesis is wholly with us in teaching that baptism is not more and not less than an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace of loyalty to the Lord Jesus, a loyalty of which the recipient of baptism himself is really and dimly conscious. Priestism, apparently growing and nourished by the materialistic and æsthetic fashions of the hour, has lost for ever its basis on the Scriptures and the traditions of the Early Church. The return to the Christ of the Testament is delivering the Churches from the blinding doctrine of the magical efficacy of sacraments, and sapping the inward forces of sacer

1 Contemporary Review, vol. liii., p. 510.

dotalism. Baptists to-day are as loyal as ever to the supremacy of the spirit and to freedom of conscience; as emphatic as of old in proclaiming personal responsibility; more resolute in their repudiation of ritualism, word and thing; more emphatic in their recognition of spiritual and ethical affinities as the basis of Church fellowship; more eager than ever to have their windows open to all the daylight, to secure perfect religious equality, and to promote the true brotherhood and social well-being of

men:

"Spirit of Freedom, on,

And pause not in thy flight,
Till every clime be won
To worship in thy light!"

THE QUAKER REFORMATION.

BY WILLIAM POLLARD.

THE Founders of the Society of Friends, in the seventeenth century, were accustomed to say that the aim of the Reformation movement in which they were engaged was the Revival of Primitive Christianity. By this they did not mean a mere imitation of the practices and arrangements of the Early Christians, but a revival of that spirit of simple genuine unclerical religion that was so characteristic of the first century. They felt that the Christian Church had grievously lapsed from the pure and primitive faith. The great Central Truth of Christianity-the Real Presence of the Spirit of Christ in the hearts of His followers-had come to be almost ignored. The free spiritual Republic that Christ had instituted had been largely supplanted by the despotism and tyranny of a human priesthood. Externals had taken the place of spirituals. Forms had replaced realities. Observances had been substituted for duties. Elaborate metaphysical creeds had been gradually constructed and made the test of orthodoxy, because it was more in accord with priestly aim and worldly nature to profess faith in theological doctrines and outward cere monies, than to seek after and obey the Spirit of Christ. Even the great upheaval of the Reformation in the sixteenth century had, as they believed, by no means removed these evil growths. Startling and wide-reaching as the Reforming movement had been, both in Germany and England, it was of necessity very imperfect. Even the Great Leaders of that movement were far from seeing all the beautiful simplicity and breadth of spiritual Truth, as it had been recognised in Primitive days. The times. were ripe for another advance toward the simple practical Religion of Christ, and George Fox was manifestly called by God to lead in the work.

Fox has been fittingly called "the last of the Reformers." His aim was to complete what the earlier Reformers began: what the Puritans had in some respects carried forward, but which still remained unfinished ;the Restoration of Primitive Christianity.

George Fox was born in 1624; so his youth was passed at a most eventful time in English History, when it seemed doubtful whether the Government would go on-as it had done for ages-gradually developing into a limited and constitutional monarchy, or would sink into a Despotism.

In his early boyhood there was for years no Parliament; there was no free speech. Heretics were remorselessly hunted in almost every parish