Take three great movements which are easiest to follow in these three centuries.Whether the spiritual independence of England would have been secured without the Quakers may be debated; but this fact can hardly be debated: certainly it was not so secured; whether or not the Quakers could have been without George Fox, certainly they did not occur without him.Take the second: whether or not some other movement could have done what Puritanism did is hardly a question for history; Puritanism actually did the work for England and America which gave both their strongest qualities.There is no testing the period to see whether Puritanism could be left out.There it stands as a powerful factor, and no analysis of the history can possibly omit it.Or the third: it is not a question for a historian whether English history could have been the same without Methodism and whether Methodism could have been at all without the Wesleys; certainly nothing took its place, nor did any one else stand at the head of the movement.
Here are these three great movements, not to seek others.All of them have had tremendous influence in the religious and political history ofboth the nations where they have moved most freely.Each of them is a direct and undisputed result of the influence of the Bible.Much has already been said of the Puritans in England, and there will be occasion to see what was their influence in America.But think for a moment of the Quakers.James Freeman Clark calls them the English mystics; certainly they were more than that.[1] George Fox had little learning but the Bible; that he knew well.He first came to himself out in the fields alone with the Bible.He was not stirred to the origin of the movement nor to his greatest activity by experiences he had in public places.He came to those public places profoundly affected by his familiarity with the English Bible.He came at a time when his protest was needed, a protest against formalism, against mere outward conformity.A thousand years before, Mohammedanism had really saved the Christian faith by its protest, violent and merciless, against its errors, challenging it to purity in faith and life.Now Fox and the Quakers saved church life by protest against church life.The Bible was still the law, but not the Bible which you read for me, but that which you read for you and I for me, each of us guided by an inner light.The Quaker movement was a distinct protest against church formalism in the interests of freedom of the Bible.
[1] David Gregg, The Quakers in America.
