66 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



Conventicles Act^ when any meeting numbering more 

 than five persons was illegal outside a Church of England, 

 the other Nonconformist sects offered a feeble resistance, 

 but were easily dealt with. Their minister was 

 imprisoned, their books were confiscated, and their 

 meetings were at an end. But not so the Friends ! 

 The soldiers broke into their meetings and imprisoned 

 any one who happened to be speaking. But the meeting 

 went on as though nothing had happened. They locked 

 up the meeting-houses, but the meetings were held out- 

 side in the street. They pulled^down the meeting- 

 houses, but the meetings were held on the ruins. 

 In Bristol and Reading not only did they lock up the 

 meeting-houses, but they imprisoned all the adult 

 members of the meeting. But the following Sunday, 

 the children met outside the meeting-house door, and 

 hundreds came from far and near, some out of sympathy 

 and some out of curiosity, and the meetings were larger 

 than ever. And thus the Society grew, even though 

 more than 4,000 Friends were rotting in the filthy 

 dungeons of our land, until at last moral and spiritual 

 force triumphed over physical force, and the Toleration 

 Act was passed. 



Now it is just this practical and Primitive Chris- 

 tianity that the world needs to-day. It has been well 

 said that *' we have had two thousand years of 

 Christianity, but the religion of Christ has yet to be 

 tried,*' And so it is, for the so-called '* Christian ** 

 nations are utterly pagan, and even in the so-called 

 ** Christian ** Churches there is, as we have already seen, 

 much that is of pagan rather than of Christian origin. 

 Not only are they organised on a pagan model, but they 

 are, in large measure, pagan in their creeds and 

 practices. 



Now what the world wants is reality, and reality is 

 what the Society of Friends has always stood for. 



