Then again the new Society was a real brotherhood. The members stood shoulder to shoulder as fellow servants of the one Master. Their only emulation was which should do most and suffer most cheerfully. Their great question was "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Where wilt Thou have me to go?" The Jesuit was ready to go at an hour's notice wherever the Pope sent him. The Quaker was as ready in his obedience to the voice within. Not only Great Britain, but Italy, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt heard the truth before 1662. John Stubbs, "a remarkable Oriental scholar," and Henry Fell, who was also "well versed in Arabic and Hebrew," set out for the land of Prester John, but were stopped by the English Consul at Alexandria. Their leader was chief simply through gifts and devotedness. So strongly were Friends attached to him that when he was in Launceston gaol, one of them went to Cromwell and offered to lie in prison in his stead; which made the Protector turn to those around him and ask, "Which of you would do as much for me if I were in the same condition?" And Fox showed himself worthy of such devotion by always seeking the post of danger and the most arduous work. Urgent he might be, for he was tremendously in earnest, but to speak as Hepworth Dixon does of his "imperious instincts" simply shows ignorance of the man.
For centuries no such zealous and noble-spirited evangelism had been seen. No wonder that it won its way. Many who had been rich, like Isaac Pennington, were content to become poor by fines and distraints for "the truth's sake." Most nobly did they help each other. If they did not insist on community of goods as a theory, they carried out the spirit of it in practice.
There are two marked stages in Fox's work; first the Evangelistic Stage, and then the Organising Stage, which was, of course, overlapt by the other. Let us trace the salient points in his evangelistic work. In 1654 he was brought before Cromwell, and made a good impression on that keen judge of men. His sincerity stood testing, his zeal for God was manifestly genuine, and the grand, though not faultless Protector, learnt heartily to respect him. As he was turning to leave him, Cromwell caught him by the hand and said, "Come again to my house, for if thou and I were but an hour of a day together, we should be nearer one to the other." Next year he visited him again, to lay before him the ill-treatment to which Friends were subjected.