manner of his last hours, and repudiating the false accusations cast upon their dead friend. Already enshrined in their affections as a hero, he was now surrounded with the halo of a martyred saint. The climax of their grief arrived when they were forbidden to take away his body, and bury it decently after their own fashion.* Instead of this, it was huddled away into an unknown grave in the castleyard. Probably the authorities, knowing how excited was public feeling, and how numerous the Quakers had become, feared a demonstration on the part of the townspeople, which would have been very awkward for them. Thus pitilessly ended a young life, full of promise, beginning to ripen for rich fruit, and already showing signs of a most useful future. But the lesson of James Parnell's death was not forgotten, and for us is still full of fruitful inspiration. * Within four years, they were in possession of a graveyard in Moor Elms Lane, St. Botolph's Parish. See "Crisp and his Correspondents," 1892, p. 49. NOT CHAPTER VIII. AUTHORSHIP. OT two years after he had thrown in his lot with Fox and the Friends, young Parnell, then in his seventeenth year, began to use his pen in their behalf. His first published work, “A Trial of Faith,” of something less than ten quarto pages in length, was an impassioned appeal to his readers to see what they trust in. "Come, try your Faith, all you Professors of godliness," it begins, come search the ground and bottom of your Faith, what it is built upon." This short pamphlet is full of eloquence, its sentences are polished, its language picturesque and imaginative. Already the young author had advanced far in the realisation of that doctrine of the inner light of reason and conscience, the messenger of God," which had come to Fox with such amazing vitality out of the depths of his own experience. "Hearken," says Parnell," to that in your consciences, which raiseth up desires after righteousness. If you be guided by it, you shall find a Teacher continually present ; thou shalt need no man to teach thee, but it will be a Teacher unto thee, teaching and directing in righteousness, purity and holiness. And if thou art diligent, keeping thy mind within, with an ear open to the pure voice, thou shalt find it present with thee wheresoever thou art; in the fields, in thy bed, in markets, in company, when thy outward priest or teacher is absent (it may be in the ale house, or at his pleasures and delights, or far off), and will check thee and condemn thee for that which no outward eye can see, and will purify thy heart and make it a fit Temple for purity to dwell in." Then, anticipating Penn, who did not write his famous treatise till fifteen years later, he sums up: So there is no obtaining of Life but through Death, nor no obtaining the Crown but through the Cross." This little book met with so cordial a reception on its appearance in 1654, that Giles Calvert, the well-known Quaker printer, "at the Black Spread Eagle at the west end of Pauls," was |