By Leonard Ravenhill
"The most remarkable incident in modern history perhaps is not the Diet of Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz or Peterloo, or any other battle.
"The most remarkable incident is passed over carelessly by most historians and treated with some degree of ridicule by others - namely, George Fox's making for himself a suit of leather.
"No grander thing was ever done than when George Fox, stitching himself into a suit of leather, went forth determined to find truth for himself - and to do battle for it against all superstition and intolerance."
This was Thomas Carlyle's considered opinion about the poor, uneducated English shoemaker, George Fox. So hard was his itinerate preaching life that he made for himself that famous pair of leather breeches, which have since become historical. Those breeches were known all over the country, says Macauley the historian. In the middle of the 17th century men feared the man dressed in that famous suit as much as the Jordan spectators, centuries before, feared the man who had the leathern girdle about his loins and who ate locusts and wild honey. And rightly so, for George Fox and John the Baptist were kindred spirits.
George Fox first saw the light of day in 1624 at Drayton-in-the-Clay, Leichestershire, England. His godly parents belonged to the Church of England and endeavored to bring up their children in the fear of the Lord. George's first step in his long quest for spirituality was at the age of eleven when he surrendered his heart to the Lord. Ever after, he sought to live an honest and upright life.
The Reformation fires of one hundred years before had burned themselves out. Among the clergy there abounded much education, loose-living, and ease. The Protestant church had a name to live but was dead.
George Fox did not enjoy any personal direct communion with God until he was nineteen. Then for some time his soul was full of strange longings and continual reachings out after God. The Christians he met did not possess what they professed. So deeply was he grieved and distressed over examples of their hypocrisy that he could not sleep all night but walked up and down in his room praying to God. He sought help from man but found none.
His relatives did not know what to make of George. One kind soul said that marriage was the remedy for his melancholic state of mind. Another preferred the view that he should enlist in the army. A third believed the use of tobacco and singing psalms would bring relief. No wonder the seeking soul thought that his advisers were all "miserable comforters." One man, supposedly experienced in the things of God, was "like an empty hollow cask" to George Fox. Seeking the advice of a clergyman, Fox accidentally stepped on the minister's flower bed, whereupon the angry cleric flew into a rage.
Finding no help from men, Fox gave up seeking from that source. With the Bible as his guide, he began looking to the Lord alone for help. Slowly the light began to dawn upon him. He was led to see that only those who had passed from death to life were real believers in Christ. Once and for all Fox settled it that "being bred at Oxford and Cambridge did not qualify or fit a man to be a minister of Christ."
When George Fox was about 23, he began preaching to others the truths revealed to him. He was mightily used of God. Thus he came in the nick of time "to save the church from deadness and formalism, and the world from infidelity." He was sent of God to call the church to real spiritual worship.
Fox began his preaching with a limited education, without any special training, and without special advantages of any kind. He so preached that men got the shakes. The name Quaker was attached to Fox and his followers because of the quaking of the men who came to scoff but stayed to pray. Though he made others shake, no man could make him shake.
