BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS 13 



goodness as ** a seed of God in the heart/' Now this 

 metaphor is, in some ways, even more suggestive than 

 the metaphor of Hght, for it obviously suggests that 

 salvation is achieved, not by a spiritual revolution, such 

 as was looked for by the Puritans, and by the Evangelical 

 Churches of later times, but by a growth in grace ; and 

 this, as a matter of fact, truly represented the religious 

 experience of the Friends, Even their vocabulary was 

 quite different from that of the Puritans, They never 

 spoke of ** conversion/' They spoke of men and women 

 bemg *' convinced of the truth,'' and when once this 

 convmcement was achieved, the Growth in Grace was 

 assured. So you will see, not only that the Quaker 

 outlook on life was entirely different from that of the 

 Puritan sects, but the consequences were entirely 

 different also. One could scarcely wish for a more 

 striking illustration of this fact, than the contrast between 

 the religious experiences of John Bunyan and those of 

 George Fox, The Spiritual experience of John Bunyan 

 is magnificently portrayed in his immortal allegory. 

 The Pilgrim's Progress. It is a thrilling story, if not a 

 very heroic one, and its interest is sustained to the very 

 end, for the good reason that, from the very beginning, 

 when Christian starts off with his burden on his back, 

 until the very end when he crosses the River, we are 

 quite uncertain as to what the end will be. Even when 

 Christian is half-way across, we fear he will never land 

 in safety. 



But George Fox's experience was of quite another 

 order. The burden of sin which lay so heavily on 

 John Bunyan was never felt by Fox, Distressed he 

 was, but It was not a morbid sense of sin that troubled 

 him ; It was the fact that he had not found the Truth, 

 Moreover, all the professors of religion failed to help 

 him to find it. They were but *' blind leaders of the 

 bhnd. But one day, as he wandered in the fields, he 



