in
and without. So farewell, and God
Almighty keep you.'--GEORGE FOX,
to a friend in the ministry._

_'So, all dear and tender hearts,
abide in the counsel of God, and
let not the world overcome your
minds but wait for a daily victory
over it.'--E. BURROUGH._

_'Give me the strength to
surrender my strength to Thee in
Love.'--RABINDRANATH TAGORE._

XVI. WRESTLING FOR GOD

'A brisk young man with a ready tongue' was the verdict passed upon
Edward Burrough, the hero of this story, by a certain Mr. Thomas
Ellwood when he met him first in the year 1659.

Ellwood himself, who thus described his new acquaintance, was a young
man too at that time, of good education and scholarly tastes. He
became later the friend of a certain Mr. John Milton, who thought
sufficiently well of his judgment to allow him to read his poetry
before it was published, and to ask him what he thought of it; even,
occasionally, to act upon his suggestions. Ellwood, therefore, was
clearly the possessor of a sober judgment, and not a likely person to
be carried away by the glib words of a wandering preacher. Yet that
'brisk young man,' Edward Burrough, did not only 'reach him' with his
'ready tongue,' he also completely 'convinced' him, and altered his
whole life: Ellwood returned to his family ready to suffer hardship if
need be on behalf of his newly-found faith.

Ellwood's own adventures, however, do not concern us here, but those
of the young man who convinced him.

Edward Burrough was one of the best loved and most valiant of all
those 'Valiant Sixty' ministers who went forth throughout the length
and breadth of England, in 1654, on their new, wonderful enterprise of
'Publishing Truth.' If Edward Burrough was still 'young and brisk'
when Ellwood first came across him, he must have been yet younger and
brisker on that summer's day, five years earlier, when he left his
home in Westmorland in order to 'conquer London.' This was an
ambitious undertaking truly for any man, however brisk and ready of
tongue.

It is true that the London of those long-ago days of the Commonwealth,
before the Great Fire, was a much more compact city than the gigantic,
overgrown London of to-day. Instead of 'sprawling over five or six
counties,'[21] and containing six or seven million inhabi