CONFERENCE OF FRIENDS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 111, 12 May 1909, Page 2

CONFERENCE OF FRIENDS.

LECTURE ON GEORGE FOX. The Conference of the Society of Friends was continued yesterday at tho Druid 6' Hail, the chief v item of the afternoon being a lecture by Dr. Tlodgkin on George Fox, the founder of the society. The speaker classed Fox with such as Moses, Buddha, Socrates, Paul, Mohammed, Luther, and Carlyle — men. who changed the Suva of the planet. Fox was an original thinker, standing apart from or opposing both the AngloCatholics and the Calvanistic Puritans of his day. The ablest work in defence of his position — "Barclay's Apology" — Was a scarcely veiled attack on tho Westminster Confession. In opposition to the Puritan view, Fox, though reverencing the Bible, strongly insisted that not it, but the Holy Spirit's voice to the individual Christian was the primary rule of faith." The Puritan was always ready to use the sword of the Lord and of Gideon in defence of his creed, while Fox held that war, in even the most righteous cause, was utterly forbidden to the Christian. Affcer sketching the personal history of Fox — his early spiritual struggles, his emergence into the faith of a Christian mystic, his life of travelling and' preaching, varied by imprisonment, and his statesmanlike achievement of the organisation of Quakerism — Dr. Hodgkin alluded to the relationship between F-px's teaching and modern thought. His readiness to acknowledge religious instincts and aspirations in minds which had never come under the influence of the Christian revelation, distinguished him favourably from almost all the theologians of his time, and was in harmony with some of the best and most hopeful teaching of our day. Fox hpld that the Bible was not the word, but the words of God. The two hundred years that had passed since the death of Fox had seen many changes. But he 'was a real prophet of the Most High, and the world was' in some respects a better and a happier place because he was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. At the evening sitting, Captain Blackburne spoke on the opium question, and the meeting unanimously passed a resolution deploring the action of the Empire in connection with the opium traffic.