Turn Your Back on Evil Crowds

In 1643, a young English shoemaker’s apprentice went to Leicestershire for a business fair.  While there, he was invited by a cousin and another friend to share a jug of beer with them in the pub where they had gone to eat.  Being thirsty, he joined them.

After each of the men had drunk a glass apiece, the man’s cousin and friend began to drink to the health of first this one and then the other.  They agreed that the person who didn’t join in with their toasts would have to pay for the jug.  This shocked the serious shoemaker’s apprentice.  He rose from the table, took out a coin, and said simply, ‘If it be so, I will leave you.’

At that, he left the pub and spent much of the night walking up and down the streets of the city, praying and crying to the Lord.  The Lord spoke to him these words as recorded in his journal: “Thou seest how young people go together into vanity and old people into the earth.  Thou must forsake all–young and old–keep out of all, and be a stranger unto all.”  In obedience to this command, the young man left his relations and his home and became a wanderer in England.  His name?  George Fox, the founder of the Quakers.