xvin HIS MEMORABLE VISIT TO AMERICA 243 



" painful stupidity of heart " benumbing the people. 

 Many of those advanced in years were very insensible to 

 true feeling ; he had to rebuke their crooked footsteps, 

 yet it was hard to lift up a hand against grey hairs. " In 

 some places," he writes, " my passage seems through 

 briars and thorns, and my walking as amongst the tombs 

 of the dead." It was the most exercising and laborious 

 work he had ever engaged in. 



Besides his witness to a deep spiritual experience, a 

 chief aim with him was " a revival of that discipline 

 which divine wisdom placed as a hedge about his vineyard, 

 when He planted it in the morning of our day." This 

 was opposed in some parts by a ranting spirit ; the 

 libertines would " cavil and rage " ; he travelled among 

 scorpions and serpents. At Newport, Rhode Island, the 

 largest Yearly Meeting gathering in the world at Nan- 

 tucket, and at Flushing, Long Island, he wrought stead- 

 fastly, seconded by faithful Friends, to establish church 

 order, and carried through something like the reformation 

 which took place in England a little later. Queries were 

 instituted to be sent down to the meetings. These were to 

 be used in Rhode Island as a test of membership, a 

 privilege which was there loosely held. 



Whilst he had thus much to do in raising the standard 

 of religious life in the society, he drew many others from 

 outside to hear his message ; crowded gatherings attended 

 his coming, and the court-houses of the towns were often 

 put at his service. At Elizabethtown, where his father 

 had met determined opposition, the governor of the 

 Jerseys procured the Presbyterian meeting-house for him, 

 and himself attended the meeting. S. Fothergill dined 

 with the old man afterwards, and deemed his "immortal 

 part not far from the Kingdom." 



Boston was the Aceldama of the Quakers. In the 

 persecution that raged against them in the days of Oliver 

 and Charles II. many Friends laid down their lives in 

 British jails or as a result of hardships, but on Boston 

 Common alone they had been put to death. William 

 Robinson, Mary Dyer and their companions had slept in 



