divinity-he felt no freedom, as it involved a training, in which he had no faith, and the maintenance of a system of which he thought he discerned the absence of any true foundation; and so, relinquishing all ideas of qualifying himself for practice in either of the learned professions of the day, he went forth alone, endeavouring simply to follow the same guidance that had thus brought him to peace in his own heart. He was earnest and faithful in the rebuke of sin and sinners. He attended markets and fairs, warned men of judgment, and entreated to repentance and godly living, and to the practice of truth in all things. But his chief work appeared to be with men acquainted with religion and professing it--whom he sought to bring to a knowledge of its power; to consciously possess (as he termed it) what they professed.

In this way we read of him again seeking the society of pious people-not now as an inquirer but as a teacher-and he freely mingled in their conferences and discussions, promulgating his views and sustaining them against opposers. On one of these occasions his great power in prayer was manifested-the people present said it was as if the place was shaken; and the last public service, a few hours before his death, was a prayer. Thus, from youth to old age, it was the clothing of his fervent spirit; and his friend William Penn said of him, when he was gone, that above all things he excelled in prayer. But his prayers were no formal utterance, nor put up at the call of man-" bidding to prayer" was repudiated by him; faith in the Spirit's promptings most earnestly believed in-and in the awful gravity of his frame, the fewness yet fulness of his words, such exercises came forth from him with an unction that showed their source, and carried the souls of the hearers with him to that throne of grace before which he so powerfully could plead.

He was, at the time of which we have been speaking, a young man of some twenty-two years of age, and was now fairly embarked on an evangelistic mission, travelling about to all kinds of places and among all kinds of religious people, chiefly in the midland districts of England. As, in doing this, he soon became involved in violent contests with other Christians, it is perhaps well to consider the peculiar ground of his mission.

George Fox, as we have before said, bore a resemblance in his frame of mind to the great Apostle Paul, and, like him, wherever he preached he made a ferment. New truths generally do make a stir before they find their berths-in men's minds.

The Apostle Paul, though brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the "perfect law of his fathers," found peace away from his native land, smitten down in the suburbs of a Gentile city. So George Fox, trained by pious parents, inheriting the very blood of martyrdom in his veins, acquainted with the teachings of the churches, and deeply learned in the written Word, found his peace in the unspoken word and he went forth and preached a gospel so free from customs, rites, or ritual, that the Conservatives of his day were in arms everywhere.

It was a day of violent religious controversy, and his strong voice was soon heard in the midst of the disputants. There were usurpers in the Churches-a wordy, stormy set of men who had stepped up into the pulpits, and were enjoying the revenues of ejected ministers. George Fox never spared these, and they, retreating from argument, would so often give him over to the civil power, that he early became acquainted with prisons, in which places so many years of his life were spent. Nottingham gaol was his first experience-but here the Sheriff came to believe in the youth (as he was then called) and had him to his

house, and was so moved as to go out himself to the market and preach that repentance which George Fox had been put into his custody for doing. He left Nottingham with a fame of the power of his ministry, and found much influence attending him, and many came to him to be healed even of their bodily infirmities, and went off cured body and mind under his searching soul-awaking word and presence. But as some admired, others raged; and one verbal encounter with one of these usurping priests led to an attack by a mob, in which it seemed as if all his ministry was ended, so nearly did they beat and stone him to death; but there was much more service in him yet, and we soon find him revived and moving about in undaunted vigour and undiminished alacrity, confronting the ministers and priests, and with the same result, until, by strict confinement in Derby gaol, he was restrained from this service for a whole year, and here we now leave him.

But in concluding our notice of the few years of his ministry that preceded this, let us pause to reflect on what we have learned as the teachings of this part of George Fox's life. Fox's life. He was up to this time known but as an earnest youth, a preacher of repentance and righteousness; he had not become the apostle of any particular sect; the term Quaker had not been given. But the foundation of those views which almost directly after this Derby imprisonment developed into a sect, had been laid.

He was convinced that no amount of religious training, no self-directed strictness of life, could make any man a true Christian believer. He had dwelt on the necessity of individual personal conversion.

He believed, for he had himself found it, that God by His Spirit doth condescend to make of the human soul a Temple, and to dwell there, and that only by such consciously-admitted indwelling of the Holy Spirit can a man know Jesus to be the Lord his

Saviour. Hereby, to some of his own day, and to many even in ours, he will seem to encourage mere inward raptures, personal feelings, and imaginations. But he never let go their corrective-which is the written word. He had no faith in any personal illuminations unless they corresponded with the testimony of Scripture. There must be two witnesses, he maintained, not one; he thus found himself in opposition to the Ranters, of whom, pursuing his history, we shall have frequent mention-for they despised the written word, and exalted the mental personal feelings above it. He was also in opposition to the worshippers of the letter, stoutly maintaining that to understand the letter there must be the personal experience of the same Spirit's work that gave forth the letter.

It is interesting thus early in his life's career, and when but a stripling, to find this youth-imprisoned under a horrible charge of blasphemy-enabled to take the middle line, and hold fast to Scripture as the record of the Spirit's work, as firmly as he held to the work of the same Spirit in the individual heart. He had said to his persecutors, "Christ is in me;" but when they temptingly said, "Then thou, thyself, art Christ," Nay," he replied, in those memorable words of his -"We are nothing; Christ is all." Here the true gravitation was acknowledged, the central Sun confessed; and we now leave in the dungeons of Derby, George Fox, the youth, a prisoner of hope, assured that, so much zeal and sound discretion will be found in his after years to have taken a fuller and wider course.

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ON THE MORMONS.

PART III.

On the deaths of Joseph and Hyram Smith, the Mormons were left as sheep without a shepherd. Sidney Rigdon, who had been associated with them in the First Presidency, had quarelled with Joseph Smith on family matters, and had been for sometime so lukewarm in the new faith as to withdraw to his home in Ohio, where he was living in retirement. On hearing of the murder of "the Prophet," he immediately hastened to Nauvoo to place himself at the head of "The Church ;" but he had to meet the opposition of one who, happening to be the eldest of the apostles, stood next in order, and who was determined to be in no way scrupulous as to the use of means to supplant his rival, and obtain the coveted command. This man was Brigham Young. He also was absent from Nauvoo at the time of the death of the Smiths, but with all speed he hastened to the spot; called a council at once, charged Rigdon with desiring either "to rule over or ruin the Church;" had him arraigned before the elders, brought on his immediate trial, and moved and carried a resolution "that he be cut off from the Church and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan." Rigdon was no match for his rival, who, forthwith, proposed that the affairs of the body should be managed by the twelve apostles, of which he was already president.

Having borne down all opposition, Brigham soon showed how different was to be the arrangement of things from what it had been under Joseph Smith. His shrewd discernment saw that nothing would be likely