Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/39

Rh will live,” said they, “in love with William Penn and his children as long as sun and moon shall endure.” And the sun, and the forest, and the river witnessed the treaty of peace and friendship which was made on the shores of the Delaware; the first treaty, says an historian, which was not ratified by an oath, and the only one which never was broken.

The Quakers said, “We have done a better work than if we, like the proud Spaniards, had gained the mines of Potosi. We have taught to the darkened souls around us their rights as men.”

Upon a stretch of land between the rivers Schuylkill and Delaware, purchased from the Swedes and blessed with pure springs of water and a healthful atmosphere, Penn laid the foundation of the city of Philadelphia, an asylum for the persecuted, a habitation for freedom, a home for all man- kind. “Here,” said the Friends, “we will worship God according to His pure law and light; here will we lead an innocent life upon an elysian, virgin soil.”

That Philadelphia was later to become the birth-place of American independence, and of that declaration which proclaimed it to all the world, and united all the individual States of the Union in the great name of humanity,—of this the Friends thought not.

My dear heart, I have written out the above for you, partly from books, partly from myself, from my own observation and thoughts. For I have been greatly fascinated by this episode in the history of man, and I see traces of its life still quite fresh around me.

Looking now at the principles of Quakerism in and for themselves, I see clearly that they are the same doctrines for which Socrates died and Luther lived, and for which the great Gustavus Adolphus fought and conquered, and died the death of the hero—the right of freedom of thought, of faith in the light and voice of God in the soul of man; this principle, arising in George Fox from the very heart