Three Apostles of Quakerism: Popular Sketches of Fox, Penn and BarclayRhodes, Benjamin
History
Three Apostles of Quakerism: Popular Sketches of Fox, Penn and Barclay
Rhodes, Benjamin
Barclay, Robert, 1648-1690; Fox, George, 1624-1691; Penn, William, 1644-1718; Society of Friends
The end came very gently and peacefully. After the long and stormy
voyage, the vessel came into harbour through unwonted calms and
waters almost without a ripple. He was laid in his grave in Jordan's
meeting-house beside his dearly loved Guli, and not far from his mother
and Isaac Pennington. Many gathered there to pay the last honours. And
since that day, the spot hallowed by his dust has been a well-visited
shrine, where many have not only thought admiringly of his deeds, but
have also thanked God for the grace that was in him.
If Macaulay was prejudiced against Penn, his testimony to his
world-wide fame is the more reliable. We will quote it as it stands.
"Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England
is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards
him with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for
Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respected society of which
he was a member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other
denominations he is usually regarded as a bright pattern of Christian
virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different sort have sounded his
praises. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned
what they regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration
of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence,
impartially extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has thus
become, throughout all civilised countries, a synonym for probity and
philanthropy."
"Nor is this reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt a
man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty, and
a fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two
points of high importance he had notions more correct than were in his
day common, even among men of enlarged minds; and as the proprietor
and legislator of a province, which, being almost uninhabited when it
came into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments,
he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into
practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing
institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as the founder of
a Colony, who did not in his dealings with a savage people abuse the
strength derived from civilisation, and as a law-giver who in an age of
persecution, made religious liberty the corner-stone of a polity."
This testimony is bare justice, indeed it needs supplementing. Macaulay
has done justice to his fame, but not to his usefulness or to his
beautiful character. For to use the beautiful figure which the Rt. Hon.
W. E. Forster employs, "like as the citizens of Philadelphia are even
now building the streets which he planned on the unpeopled waste, so
are the workmen in the temple of freedom yet labouring at the design
which he sketched out." And in the work they have not only his designs
to assist them, but the inspiration of his noble life to stimulate them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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