246 SAMUEL FOTHERGILL CHAP. 



at this period, including amongst others Catherine 

 Payton, Samuel Neale, Abraham Harrington, John 

 Griffith and John Gurney, who, as their letters show, 

 were closely united in labouring for the uplift of the 

 Quaker church. There was much to weigh upon their 

 spirits ; divisions in some places ; elsewhere there was 

 union, " but I fear," S. Fothergill writes, " the unity of 

 the Spirit is not the source, but rather an agreement to 

 let things go as they may or will, without much care 

 about them ; and if any are zealous for the testimony, to 

 single them out as turners of the world upside down and 

 troublers of the church's quiet." It was no wonder that 

 the leaders had often to mourn and to use the language 

 of rebuke, and that their letters were fuller of fear and 

 perplexity than of joy. Alternations of light and dark- 

 ness were their experience ; sometimes they were filled 

 with a sense of divine glory, sometimes stripped of all 

 good, or feeling themselves as empty vessels. Such a 

 mental experience may seem to us unhealthy, but criticism 

 stands disarmed before the self-denial and untiring 

 labours of these saintly men and women, who raised the 

 spiritual level of the society in their own time. 



The Fothergills were not robust in bodily constitution ; 

 their nervous energy wore down the physical frame 

 before its time, and they were spared the " meanders and 

 mazes " of old age ; S. Fothergill lived but to fifty-six 

 years. The gout in his later years became chronic, and 

 he was beset with bronchial and digestive trouble and 

 feebleness of limbs. He knew that his days were drawing 

 to their close ; the end was before him, and he was content. 

 His spirit grew through suffering in humility and patience, 

 and shone forth in mastery over the weak body. Never 

 were his public addresses more powerful : his words " at 

 times went forth as a flame, piercing the recesses of 

 darkness," or, again, " descended like dew upon the tender 

 plants." In a long-remembered visit to Bristol in 1767 

 some of his addresses to large audiences were taken down. 

 "It is not possible for me by any language I have yet 

 learned," writes Sarah Champion, " to convey what were 



