A Book Of Quaker Saints Part 29

'Christ disarmed Peter, and in so doing He unbuckled the sword of every soldier.'

TERTULLIAN.

A dauntless fighter in his day was Captain Amor Stoddart, seeing he had served in the Parliamentary Army throughout the Civil Wars. In truth, it was no child's play to command a body of men as tough as Oliver's famous Ironsides. Therefore Captain Stoddart had doubtless come through many a b.l.o.o.d.y struggle, and fought in many a hardly fought contest during those long wars, before the final victory was won.

But now, not a single memory remains of his small individual share in those

'Old unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago.'

His story has come down to us as a staunch comrade and a valiant fighter, in a different kind of warfare. His victory was won in a struggle in which all the visible weapons were on the other side; when, through long years, he had only the armour of meekness and of love wherewith to oppose hardship and violence and wrong.

Wherefore, of this fight and of this victory, his own name remains as a symbol and a sign. Not in vain was he called at his birth 'Amor,'

which, in the Latin tongue signifies 'Love,' as all men know.

The first meeting between Captain Amor Stoddart and him who was to be thereafter his spirit's earthly captain in the new strange warfare that lay before him, happened on this wise.

In the year 1648, when the long Civil Wars were at last nearing their close, George Fox visited Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and held a meeting with the professors (that is to say the Puritans) there. It was in that same year of 1648, when every day the shadow was drawing nearer of the fatal scaffold that should be erected within the Palace at Whitehall the following January. But although that shadow crept daily nearer, men, for the most part, as yet perceived it not. Fox himself was at this time still young, as years are counted, being only twenty-four years of age. Four other summers were yet to pa.s.s before that memorable day when he should climb to the summit of old Pendle Hill, and, after seeing there the vision of a 'great people to be gathered,' should begin himself to gather them at Firbank and Swarthmoor and many another place.

George, though still young in years, was already possessed not only of a strange and wonderful presence, but also of a gift to perceive and to draw the souls of other men, and to knit them to his own.

'I went again to Mansfield,' he says in his Journal, 'where was a Great Meeting of professors and people, where I was moved to pray; and the Lord's power was so great that the house seemed to be shaken. When I had done, one of the professors said, "It was now as in the days of the Apostles, when the house was shaken where they were."'

After Fox had finished praying, with this vehemence that seemed to shake the house, one of the professors began to pray in his turn, but in such a dead and formal way that even the other professors were grieved thereat and rebuked him. Whereupon this praying professor came in all humility to Fox, beseeching him that he would pray again.

'But,' says Fox, 'I could not pray in any man's will.' Still, though he could not make a prayer to order, he agreed to meet with these same professors another day.

This second meeting was another 'Great Meeting.' From far and wide the professors and people gathered to see the man who had learnt to pray.

But the professors did not truly seem to care to learn the secret.

They went on talking and arguing together. They were 'jangling,' as Fox calls it (that is to say, using endless strings of words to talk about sacred things, without really feeling the truth of them in their hearts), jangling all together, when suddenly the door opened and a grave young officer walked in. ''Tis Captain Amor Stoddart, of Noll's Army,' the professors said one to another, as, hardly stopping for a moment at the stranger's entrance, they continued to 'jangle' among themselves. They went on, speaking of the most holy things, talking even about the blood of Christ, without any feeling of solemnity, till Fox could bear it no longer.

'As they were discoursing of it,' he says, 'I saw through the immediate opening of the invisible Spirit, the blood of Christ; and cried out among them saying, "Do you not see the blood of Christ? See it in your hearts, to sprinkle your hearts and consciences from dead works to serve the living G.o.d?" For I saw the blood of the New Covenant how it came into the heart. This startled the professors who would have the blood only without them, and not in them. But Captain Stoddart was reached, and said, "Let the youth speak, hear the youth speak," when he saw that they endeavoured to bear me down with many words.'

'Captain Stoddart was reached.' He, the soldier, accustomed to the terrible realities of a battlefield, knew the sight of blood for himself only too well. George Fox's words may seem perhaps mysterious to us now, but they came home to Amor and made him able to see something of the same vision that Fox saw. We may not be able to see that vision ourselves, but at least we can feel the difference between having the Blood of Christ, that is the Life of Christ, within our hearts, and only talking and 'jangling' about it, as the professors were doing. 'Captain Stoddart was reached.' Having been 'reached,'

having seen, if only for one moment, something of what the Cross had meant to Christ, and having felt His Life within, Amor became a different man. To take the lives of his fellowmen, to shed their blood for whom that Blood had been shed, was henceforth for him impossible.

He unbuckled his sword, and resigning his captaincy in Oliver's conquering army, just when victory was at hand after the stern struggle, he followed his despised Quaker teacher into obscurity.

For seven long years we hear nothing more of him. Then he appears again at George Fox's side, no longer Captain Stoddart the Officer, but plain Amor Stoddart, a comrade and helper of the first Publishers of Truth.

In the year 1655, Fox's Journal records: 'On the sixth day I had a large meeting near Colchester[33] to which many professors and the Independent teachers came. After I had done speaking and was stepped down from the place on which I stood, one of the Independent teachers began to make a "jangling" [it seems they still went on jangling, even after seven long years!], which Amor Stoddart perceiving said, "Stand up again, George!" for I was going away and did not at the first hear them.'

If Amor Stoddart had unbuckled his sword, evidently he had not lost the power of grappling with difficulties, of swiftly seeing the right thing to do, and of giving his orders with soldier-like precision.

'Stand up again, George!'--a quick, military command, in the fewest possible words. George Fox was more in the habit of commanding other people than of being commanded himself; but he knew his comrade and obeyed without a word.

'I stood up again,' he says, 'when I heard the Independent [the man who had been jangling], and after a while the Lord's power came over him and all his company, who were confounded, and the Lord's truth was over all. A great flock of sheep hath the Lord in that country that feed in His pastures of life.'

Nevertheless, without Amor Stoddart the sheep would have gone away hungry, and would not have been fed at that meeting.

Again we hear of Amor a little later in the same year, still at George Fox's side, but this time not as a pa.s.sive spectator, nor even merely as a resourceful comrade. He was now himself to be a sufferer for the Truth. He still lives for us through his share in a strange but wonderful scene of George Fox's life. A few months after the meeting at Colchester, the two friends visited Cambridge, and 'there,' says Fox in his Journal, 'the scholars, hearing of me, were up and were exceeding rude. I kept on my horse's back and rode through them in the Lord's power. "Oh," said they, "HE SHINES, HE GLISTERS," but they unhorsed Amor Stoddart before we could get to the inn. When we were in the inn they were so rude in the courts and the streets, so that the miners, colliers, and carters could never be ruder. And the people of the inn asked us 'what we would have for supper' as is the way of inns. "Supper," said I, "were it not that the Lord's power is over them, these rude scholars look as if they would pluck us in pieces and make a supper of us!"'

After this treatment, the two friends might have been expected to keep away from Cambridge in the future; but that was not their way. Where the fight was hottest, there these two faithful soldiers of the Cross were sure to be found. The very next year saw Fox back in Cambridgeshire once more; and again Amor Stoddart was with him, standing by his side and sharing all dangers like a valiant and faithful friend.

'I pa.s.sed into Cambridgeshire,' the Journal continues, 'and into the fen country, where I had many meetings, and the Lord's truth spread.

Robert Craven, who had been Sheriff of Lincoln, was with me [it would be interesting to know more about Robert Craven, and where and how he was "reached"], and Amor Stoddart and Alexander Parker. We went to Crowland, a very rude place; for the townspeople were got together at the inn we went to, and were half drunk, both priest and people. I reproved them for their drunkenness and warned them of the day of the Lord that was coming upon all the wicked; exhorting them to leave their wickedness and to turn to the Lord in time. While I was thus speaking to them the priest and the clerk broke out into a rage, and got up the tongs and fire-shovel at us, so that had not the Lord's power preserved us we might have been murdered amongst them. Yet, for all their rudeness and violence, some received the truth then, and have stood in it ever since.'

George Fox was not the only man to find a faithful and staunch supporter in Amor Stoddart. There is another glimpse of him, again standing at a comrade's side in time of danger, but the comrade in this case is not Fox but 'dear William Dewsbury,' one of the best loved of all the early Friends.

Amor Stoddart was Dewsbury's companion that sore day at Bristol when the tidings came from New England overseas, that the first two Quaker Martyrs, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, had been hanged for their faith on Boston Common. Heavy at heart were the Bristol Friends at the news, and not they only, for a.s.sembled with them were some New England Friends who had been banished from their families and from their homes, under pain of the same death that the martyrs had suffered.

'We were bowed down unto our G.o.d,' Dewsbury writes, 'and prayer was made unto Him when there came a knocking at the door. It came upon my spirit that it was the rude people, and the life of G.o.d did mightily arise, and they had no power to come in until we were clear before our G.o.d. Then they came in, setting the house about with muskets and lighted matches. So after a season of this they came into the room, where I was and Amor Stoddart with me. I looked upon them when they came into the room, and they cried as fast as they could well speak, "We will be civil! We will be civil!"

'I spoke these words, "See that you be so." They ran forth out of the room and came no more into it, but ran up and down in the house with their weapons in their hands, and the Lord G.o.d caused their hearts to fail and they pa.s.sed away, and not any harm done to any of us.'

Eleven years after this pa.s.s in almost complete silence, as far as Amor is concerned. Occasionally we hear the bare mention of his name among the London Friends. One short entry in Fox's Journal speaks of him as having 'buried his wife.' Then the veil lifts again and shows one more glimpse of him. It is the last.

In 1670, twenty-two years after that first meeting at Mansfield, when Captain Stoddart came into the room, and said, 'Let the youth speak,'

George Fox, now a man worn with his sufferings and service, came into another room to bid farewell to his old comrade as he lay a-dying. Fox himself had been brought near to death not long before, but he knew that his work was not yet wholly finished, he was not yet 'fully clear' in his Master's sight.

'Under great sufferings, sorrows, and oppressions I lay several weeks,' he writes in his Journal, 'whereby I was brought so low that few thought I could live. When those about me had given me up to die, I spoke to them to get me a coach to carry me to Gerard Roberts, about twelve miles off, for I found it was my place to go thither. So I went down a pair of stairs to the coach, and when I came to the coach I was like to have fallen down, I was so weak and feeble, but I got up into the coach, and some friends with me. When I came to Gerard's, after I had stayed about three weeks there, it was with me to go to Enfield. Friends were afraid of my removing, but I told them that I might safely go. When I had taken my leave of Gerard and had come to Enfield, I went first to visit Amor Stoddart, who lay very weak and almost speechless. I was moved to tell him "that he had been faithful as a man and faithful to G.o.d, and the immortal Seed of Life was his crown." Many more words I was moved to speak to him, though I was then so weak, I could scarcely stand, and within a few days after, Amor died.'

That is all. Very simply he pa.s.ses out of sight, having heard his comrade's 'well done':--this valiant soldier who renounced his sword.

His name, AMOR, still holds the secret of his power, his silent patience, and of his victory, for

'OMNIA VINCIT AMOR.'

FOOTNOTES:

[33] It was on this visit to Colchester that George Fox had his farewell interview with James Parnell, imprisoned in the Castle.

XXV. THE MARVELLOUS VOYAGE OF THE GOOD SHIP 'WOODHOUSE'

_'In the 17th Century England was peculiarly rich, if not in great mystics, at any rate in mystically minded men. Mysticism, it seems, was in the air; broke out under many disguises and affected many forms of life.'--E. UNDERHILL, 'Mysticism.'_

_'He who says "Yes," responds, obeys, co-operates, and allows this resident seed of G.o.d, or Christ Light, to have full sway in him, becomes transformed thereby and recreated into likeness to Christ by whom the inner seed was planted, and of whose nature it is.'--RUFUS M. JONES._

_'Through winds and tides, one compa.s.s guides.'--A.H. CLOUGH._

_'Have mercy upon me, O G.o.d, for Thine ocean is so great, and my little bark is so small.'--Breton Fisherman's Prayer._