Greater than the divinity that doth hedge a king is the divinity that encompasses the righteous man and the righteous people. The flowers of prosperity smiled in the footprints of William Penn. His people were unmolested and happy, while (sad, but true contrast!) other colonies, acting upon the policy of the world, building forts, and showing themselves in arms, were harassed by perpetual alarm, and pierced by the sharp arrows of savage war. This pattern of a Christian commonwealth never fails to arrest the admiration of all who contemplate its beauties. It drew an epigram of eulogy from the caustic pen of Voltaire, and has been fondly painted by sympathetic historians. Every ingenuous soul in our day offers willing tribute to those graces of justice and humanity, by the side of which contemporary life on this continent seems coarse and earthy. Not to barren words can we confine ourselves in recognition of virtue. While we see the right, and approve it too, we must dare to pursue it. Now, in this age of civilization, surrounded by Christian nations, it is easy to follow the successful example of William Penn encompassed by savages. Recognizing those two transcendent ordinances of God, the _Law of Right_ and the _Law of Love_,--twin suns which illumine the moral universe,--why not aspire to the true glory, and, what is higher than glory, the great good, of taking the lead in _the disarming of the nations_? Let us abandon the system of Preparations for War in time of Peace, as irrational, unchristian, vainly prodigal of expense, and having a direct tendency to excite the evil against which it professes to guard. Let the enormous means thus released from iron hands be devoted to labors of beneficence. Our battlements shall be schools, hospitals, colleges, and churches; our arsenals shall be libraries; our navy shall be peaceful ships, on errands of perpetual commerce; our army shall be the teachers of youth and the ministers of religion. This is the cheap defence of nations. In such intrenchments what Christian soul can be touched with fear? Angels of the Lord will throw over the land an invisible, but impenetrable panoply:-- "Or if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her."[111] [111] These are the concluding words of that most exquisite creation of early genius, the "Comus." Beyond their intrinsic value, they have authority from the circumstance that they were adopted by Milton as a motto, and inscribed by him in an album at Geneva, while on his foreign travels. This album is now in my hands. The truth thus embalmed by the grandest poet of modern times is also illustrated in familiar words by the most graceful poet of antiquity:-- "Integer vitæ scelerisque purus Non eget Mauris jaculis, neque arcu, Nec venenatis gravida sagittis, Fusce, pharetra." HOR., _Carm._ I. xxii. 1-4. Dryden pictures the same in some of his most magical lines:--