A Book of Quaker Saints | Page 7

I know now what really and truly, and most especially, makes a Saint, and that is
LETTING THE SUNLIGHT THROUGH!'
So Lois had found out something for herself at last, had she not? Those are always the best sort of discoveries; but there are a great many more things to find out about Saints that Lois never thought of, in those days long ago. Most interesting things they are! That is one comfort about Saints--they are always interesting, never dull. Dull is the one thing that real Saints can never be, or they would stop being Saints that very minute. Even when Saints are doing the dullest, dreariest, most difficult tasks, they themselves are always packed full of sunshine inside that cannot help streaming out over the dull part and making it interesting.
This is one thing to remember about Saints; but there are many other things to discover. See if you can find out some of them in the stories that follow.
Only a few Saint stories are written here. You will read for yourself, by and by, many others: stories of older Saints, and perhaps of brighter Saints, or it may be even of saintlier Saints than these. But in this book are written the stories of some of the Saints who did not know that they were Saints at all: they thought that they were just quite ordinary men and women and little children, and that makes them rather specially comforting to us, who are just quite ordinary people too.
Moreover, these Quaker Saints never have been, never will be put on glass windows, or given birthdays or haloes or emblems of their own, like most of the other Saints. They have never even had their stories told before in a way that it is easy for children to understand.
That is why these particular stories have been written now, in this particular book
FOR YOU.

I. 'STIFF AS A TREE, PURE AS A BELL'

'I am plenteuous in ioie in all oure tribulacione.'--ST. PAUL (Wiclif's Translation).
'Stand firm like a smitten anvil under the blows of a hammer; be strong as an athlete of God, it is part of a great athlete to receive blows and to conquer.'--IGNATIUS.
'He was valiant for the truth, bold in asserting it, patient in suffering for it, unwearied in labouring in it, steady in his testimony to it, immoveable as a rock.'--T. ELLWOOD about G. FOX.
'George Fox never lost his temper--he left that to his opponents: and he had the most exasperating way of getting the best of an argument. His Journal ... is like a little rusty gate which opens right into the heart of the 17th Century, so that when we go in by it--hey presto! we find ourselves pilgrims with the old Quaker in the strangest kind of England.'--L.M. MACKAY.
'And there was never any persecution that came but we saw it was for good, and we looked upon it to be good as from GOD. And there was never any prisons or sufferings that I was in, but still it was for bringing multitudes more out of prison.'--G. FOX.

I. 'STIFF AS A TREE, PURE AS A BELL'
When the days are lengthening in the spring, even though the worst of the winter may be over, there is often a sharp tooth in the March wind as it sweeps over the angry sea and bites into the north-eastern coast of England.
Children, warm and snug in cosy rooms, like to watch the gale and the damage it does as it hurries past. It amuses them to see the wind at its tricks, ruffling up the manes of the white horses far out at sea, blowing the ships away from their moorings in the harbour, and playing tricks upon the passers-by, when it comes ashore. Off fly stout old gentlemen's hats, round like windmills go the smart ladies' skirts and ribbons; even the milkman's fingers turn blue with cold. It is all very well for children, safe indoors, to laugh at the antics of the mischievous wind, even on the bleak north-eastern coast nowadays; but in times long ago, that same wind could be a more cruel playfellow still. Come back with me for two hundred and fifty years. Let us watch the tricks the wind is playing on the prisoners in the castle high up on Scarborough cliff in the year of our Lord 1666.
Though the keen, cutting blast is the same, a very different Scarborough lies around us from the Scarborough modern children know. There is a much smaller town close down by the water's edge, and a much larger castle covering nearly the whole of the cliff.
Nowadays, when children go to Scarborough for their holidays in the summer, as they run down the steep paths with their spades and buckets to dig on the beach, they are too busy