e Fox devoted his whole life. As his own being
blossomed in the spiritual sunshine of his great discovery, he was
able to persuade hundreds and thousands of other frozen hearts to
yield themselves and turn to the Light, and open and blossom also in
that same sunshine. A greater wonder followed. Those other lives, as
they yielded themselves, began to ripen too, in different ways, but
silently and surely, until they in their turn were ready to scatter
the new seed, or, in the language of their day, to 'Publish Truth' up
and down all over the country, until the whole face of England was
changed.

By the time of George Fox's death, more than one out of every hundred
among all the people of England was a Friend. But the Friends never
regarded themselves as a Sect, although Sects were flourishing at
that time. In 1640 it is said that twenty new kinds of Sects blossomed
out in the course of one week. George Fox and his followers believed
that the discovery they had made was meant for everybody, as much as
sunshine is. Other people nicknamed them 'Quakers,' but they always
spoke of themselves by names that the whole world was welcome to
share: 'Children of the Light,' 'Friends of the Truth,' or simply
'Friends.' There was nothing exclusive about such names as these.
There was no such thing as membership in a society then or for more
than fifty years afterwards. Anyone who was convinced by what he had
heard, and lived in the spirit of what he professed, became 'Truth's
Friend' in his turn.

Neither was there anything exclusive in George Fox's message. 'Keep
yourselves in an universal spirit' was what he both preached and
practised. It was in 'an universal spirit' that he and his followers
scattered all over the country. No wonder they earned the name of 'the
Valiant Sixty,' that little band of comrades who in 1654 started out
from the North Country on their mission of convincing all England of
'the Truth.'

They were nearly all young men, their leader Fox himself still only
thirty at this time. Francis Howgill and John Camm were two of the
very few elders in the company. They usually travelled in couples,
dear friends naturally going together; for is not the best work always
done with the right companion? George Fox, who was leader, not by any
outward signs of authority but by fervour of inward power and zeal,
occasionally travelled alone. More often he took with him a comrade,
such as Richard Farnsworth (of whom we have hea