188 WITNESS TO THE MIRACULOUS V 



congregations, and his energy in visiting them, not 

 merely in Great Britain and Ireland and the West 

 India Islands, but on the continent of Europe and 

 that of North America, were no less remarkable. 

 A few years after Fox began to preach, there were 

 reckoned to be a thousand Friends in prison in 

 the various gaols of England ; at his death, less 

 than fifty years after the foundation of the sect, 

 there were 70,000 Quakers in the United Kingdom. 

 The cheerfulness with which these people women 

 as well as men underwent martyrdom in this 

 country and in the New England States is one of 

 the most remarkable facts in the history of 

 religion. 



No one who reads the voluminous autobiography 

 of " Honest George " can doubt the man's utter 

 truthfulness; and though, in his multitudinous 

 letters, he but rarely rises far above the incoherent 

 commonplaces of a street preacher, there can be 

 no question of his power as a speaker, nor any 

 doubt as to the dignity and attractiveness of his 

 personality, or of his possession of a large 

 amount of practical good sense and governing 

 faculty. 



But that George Fox had full faith in his own 

 powers as a miracle-worker, the following passage 

 of his autobiography (to which others might be 

 added) demonstrates : 



Now after I was set at liberty from Nottingham gaol (where I 

 had been kept a prisoner a pretty long time) I travelled aa 



