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PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

INTERPRETED BY

REPRESENTATIVES OF SIXTEEN
DENOMINATIONS

FOUNDERS' WEEK

Phii^adelphia, October Sixth
1908

Ckz3 a.io

Universalist
DR. SWEKTSER

Mennonite

^ fX

REV. N: B. GRUBB

fto

Friends
a
HENRY W. WILBUR
Colored Churches
!-•.P
BISHOP COPPIN
B'.
Presbyterian
DR. ROBERTS
iX
Baptist
^
DR. CONWELL
S
w
Episcopalian
M
X
DR. TOMKINS
I
nn
^
Catholic
s.
P
MONSIGNOR KIERAN
us'
THE CHAIRMAN
n
ftcnft
Hebrew
n
n
tt
> S
RABBI KRAUSKOPF
Lutheran
DR. DELK
B'
CTQ W
O pi
<! ftcnO
W ^
m
Congregational
ft
DR. RICE
tn
^
Friends
(T)
DR. BARTON
o
Reformed
cn
DR. MUSSER
o
Methodist
a3 as
BISHOP F. M. BRISTOL
» »-»•
Unitarian
DR. ST. JOHN
oCJ
Disciples
cn
DR. BATMAN
PREFACE.
FOUNDERS' WEEK was ushered in October 4, 1908.
In the midst of the days of celebration, with their
spectacular features, in which the progress of in
dustry and commerce, and the epochs of our history were
portrayed, the still waters of religious progress sought
deeper and more significant expression.
On the evening of the sixth of the month, by invitation
of the Religious Committee of Founders' Week, repre
sentatives of sixteen of Philadelphia's religious denomi
nations came together in the two Friends' meeting-houses
on Race and Cherry Streets, west of Fifteenth Street,
freely granted by Friends for the purpose, and considered
unitedly the topic, "Penn's Contribution to Religious
Liberty." Nearly three thousand persons filled the two
meeting-houses and listened with deep interest to the
tributes paid to the great Founder of Philadelphia, and
observed the exhibition of friendship and fellowship in
religious association with a delight that will remain an
inspiring and enduring memory.
To make the event fully understood by those who
were not present, it should be said that two meetings
were in progress at the same time, the addresses in the
Race Street meeting being repeated in the Cherry Street
house. Isaac H. Clothier presided at the Race Street
meeting, and Joseph Swain, President of Swarthmore
College, in the Cherry Street house. Both meetings were
(5)

6 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
called to order and each chairman introduced by Nathan
iel Richardson, of Byberry, a member of the Religious
Committee of the General Founders' Week Committee.
The event had no sooner become a thing of the past,
than its unique and important character began to make
a still deeper impression upon those who were privileged
to be present, and also a much larger company, who were
only able to share the uplift of the occasion by the narra
tion of others, or by reading the published accounts. A
demand has since arisen from many quarters that the
words spoken at the meeting might be preserved as a
permanent memorial of the occasion, and serve as a legacy
to posterity and a guide to those in the future who may
be called to write the history of the progress of religious
liberty in our country.
With the kind co-operation of the sixteen participants
in the meeting, this volume has been prepared, contain
ing the words spoken on the memorable occasion, with
other matter relating thereto.
Wherever men and women dream of and struggle to
ward a spiritual fellowship approaching the broadness of
the universal brotherhood, we trust the story of this
meeting may be a sign of promise, and may become a
semblance of a hope, that inasmuch as for one evening
brethren of widely different denominations and faiths
came together in unity, so may that experience be re
peated as the years go on, and become increasingly the
realization of the children of a common Father the wide
world over.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

RELIGIOUS BODIES HONOR PENN.
[From the Friends' Intelligencer, Tenth month 10, 1908,]
Unique meetings were held in both the Race and
Cherry Street meeting-houses, on Third-day evening, the
sixth inst., under the auspices of the Religious Committee
of the City of Philadelphia's Founders' Week Committee.
Nathaniel Richardson, of Byberry, representing the Reli
gious Committee, called both meetings to order, and intro
duced Isaac H. Clothier as Chairman of the Race Street
meeting, and President Joseph Swain, of Swarthmore
College, as Chairman in the Cherry Street house. Sixteen
representatives of as many religious organizations briefly
considered "William Penn's Contribution to Religious
Liberty," each speaker appearing in both meeting-houses.
Both places of worship were filled with representatives of
various religious denominations. On taking the chair in
the Race Street house, Isaac H. Clothier said: "This is
not a Friends' meeting, but as it is held in a meeting
house of the Friends, I ask for a brief period of entire
silence." After the silence, the Chairman opened the
meeting with the following remarks: —
" Friends (I use the term in no denominational sense,
but as including every person present, and especially the
members of the sixteen churches):
" In the anniversary celebrations now going on, it is
natural that the popular taste should incline to military
and other spectacular demonstrations illustrating the
power and progress of the State; but as the founding of
this Commonwealth was of a strictly religious character,
it is proper that at least some of the exercises of the week
should be of deeper significance, as illustrating the things
which are not merely temporal but eternal. Recognizing

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

this fact, it has been thought especially fitting that the
different religious denominations of our city should come
together in one body in recognition of the high and
enduring character of the work of the great founder and
his memorable contribution to religious liberty.
"It has also been deemed fitting by members of the
committee entirely outside the Society of Friends, that
as the founder of the city and his associates were members
of the religious organization called Friends, or Quakers,
and the city has ever since been styled The Quaker City,
that this gathering of the representatives of the different
denominations should be held in a meeting-house of the
Friends. "Thus have we met this evening, and on behalf of the
inheritors of the testimonies of George Fox, of Robert
Barclay, and of William Penn, I extend a warm welcome
to every representative and every interested individual
present. "While all denominations could not be included,
sixteen of the most prominent and historic church organ
izations are represented in this assembly. It is most
proper that all the representatives of the sixteen churches
should be heard from, and it is therefore obvious that
each address must necessarily be very brief. The commit
tee has arranged that the time of each shall be limited
to six minutes. I call your attention to the fact, that
under the unique — perhaps unprecedented — conditions, the
chairman of this meeting occupies a responsible and most
delicate position. The representation is an imposing one,
and the participants are among the most eminent and
scholarly churchmen of the period. There is perhaps not
one among them to whom all of us would not esteem it
a privilege to listen for an entire evening. It will, never
theless, be the hard duty of the Chairman, under his
instructions and out of respect to all and the necessities

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 9
of the occasion, to restrict each address to the short
time named. At the expiration of five minutes he will
therefore give notice, 'One minute more,' and when the
six minutes have passed, the gavel will fall.
"As economy of time is the order of the evening,
unnecessary speech, especially by the Chairman, should
be avoided, and therefore all formal introductions will
be omitted, and a simple announcement made of each
church organization in alphabetical order through its
representative. "This room is not nearly large enough to contain all
who desire to be present, and therefore an overflow meet
ing has been arranged, to which each speaker will pass
after delivering his address here, and repeat it to another
audience almost equally large."

IO PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

PENN'S CONTRIBUTION TO RELIGIOUS
LIBERTY.

AS PRESENTED BY MINISTERS OF MANY RELIGIOUS
DENOMINATIONS.

[From the Friends' Intelligencer, Tenth month 17, 1908.]
The William Penn meeting in Race and Cherry Street
meeting-houses on Third-day evening of Founders' Week,
in Philadelphia, was felt by Friends and Churchmen to be
in some respects the most wonderful religious meeting
ever held. In a row on the highest seats of a house, built
by a sect that was despised and persecuted 225 years ago,
were seated prominent ministers of sixteen religious
denominations. At the right of the Chairman, Isaac H.
Clothier, sat a Catholic Monsignor, with red cap and sash
and at his left a Jewish Rabbi ; at one end sat a Unitarian
and at the other a Univeralist; and in between were white
and colored Methodist bishops, and ministers representing
the Baptist, Congregational, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Pres
byterian and Reformed Churches, the 4Disciples, the Men
nonites, and both branches of the Society of Friends. All
these had come to give their individual answers to the
question, "What is William Penn's contribution to reli
gious liberty?"
This meeting had its origin in the Religious Committee
appointed for Founders' Week by the city authorities. At
first, the only Friend on this committee was Nathaniel
Richardson, with whom the idea of the meeting originated ;
afterwards Henry W. Wilbur's name was added to the
committee. The arrangements for the meeting were
admirable. No more tickets were given out than there
are seats in the two houses. The Race Street house

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. II
was filled before 7.30; at 7.45 those who had no tickets
were admitted to the Cherry Street house, which was so
full that many stood during the entire evening.
The Chairman: In the alphabetical order
THE BAPTIST CHURCH
comes first, and as its representative, I present the Rev.
Russell H. Conwell, D.D.
Remarks of Dr. Conwell.
Mr. Chairman: — Having taken upon myself, without
due meditation, the duty of this hour, I must first apolo
gize to the great body of Christians I am expected to
represent and to the beneficent and influential body of
Friends whose hospitality we all so gladly share.
But it is now too late to retreat. So let me say that the
holy influence of William Penn, as the benefactor of our
Baptist family of Christians, is too great and too subtle
to be understood, and consequently too far-reaching and
constant to be adequately appreciated. The example of
bravery which William Penn gave to the world, -^vhen
possessed with wealth, high birth, education and also the
power given by intimate association with kings, when he
obeyed his conscience and turned aside from all to be the
friend of the lowly teacher, George Fox, will always sug
gest and inspire like brave deeds among all intelligent
nations. When royal courts pressed on him their honors,
and palaces invited him to their luxuries, he meekly fol
lowed his tender heart into the homes of the lowly. He,
who could have been the orator in cathedrals and univer
sities, became the sweet teacher of a sweeter gospel of love
to the common people, the dome of whose place of wor
ship was God's sky ; and whose chandelier was the burning
sun or the vicarious moon. Such an imitation of the
Galilean teacher makes his debtors all who hear his stor>-.

12 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

The Baptists came to this land abused and hunted
strangers, seeking for some retreat where they could
follow the leadings of the Spirit without danger to the
lives of those they loved, and only two communities
would receive them with a fraternal welcome, and they
were founded by William Penn and Lord Baltimore. The
Baptist conscientious belief that each individual should
be permitted to choose his own manner of worship, un
disturbed by the forces of the State, was the practical
position of the Quakers when the Baptists came to Phila
delphia. Toleration here was sincere, and the fraternal
welcome was a new and sweet experience to our fathers.
God help us all to follow their God-fearing example !
Our debt ! Who can compute it in speech or figures ?
Every stranger who comes to the Quaker City to find
shelter for his family and employment for his hands or
brain, soon feels the pressure of that brooding spirit of
the Quakers, which is the Spirit of God. The Quaker
homes are plain, unassuming, substantial, neighborly
buildings. Within is cleanliness in food, purity of char
acter, economy of means and clothing, and a loving state
of devotion. Never in the history of all lands was there
found homes which teach the holiness of motherhood,
the honor of fatherhood, the reverent obedience of chil
dren, the restraint from folly and wickedness, the liberty
to be and to do good, as have and do the Quaker homes of
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Feminine grace, beauty,
intelligence and love found there their greatest protection
and most consistent encouragement. Manhood's truth,
strength, courage and self-control were brought nearest
to perfection. Education which was useful to man, to
better interpret the voices of God in their hearts, was
strongly encouraged, and education for pride, show or
folly were equally condemned.
We are all indebted alike to the moral, social and

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I3
religious life of the Friends, whose simplicity of worship,
integrity of business dealings, perseverance and accuracy
in industrial affairs have shaped beyond our tracing the
sentiments and the commerce of our great country.
As a denomination, the Baptists are ever grateful to
William Penn's father for his powerful friendship in the
days when martyrdom was the possible death of any
Baptist. We owe a debt of gratitude to William Penn's
disciples for their willingness to die with our fathers in
the prisons of Virginia during the persecutions of 1771.
For the unbroken brotherhood of two hundred and
twenty -five years in which we have worked together,
reaping often in fields where the other had sown, believ
ing in the same God, the same Saviour, the same Holy
Scriptures, the same soul liberty, the same dependence
on the Holy Spirit, and the same love and tolerance
toward all other denominations, and all other races, we,
as Baptists, here re-dedicate ourselves to the continuance
of our sincere friendship through the centuries yet to
come.

The Chairman : C comes next to B in the alphabet,
and the
CATHOLIC CHURCH
is next on the program. From the inception of the idea
of this meeting, perhaps no-one has taken greater interest
in it than the venerable and venerated Archbishop of
Philadelphia. He has not been able to be with us in
person this evening, but he has sent a letter which I
have pleasure in reading. Philadelphia, September 29, 1908.
My Dear Mr. Clothier: — I regret that I shall not be able to
deliver the address on Tuesday next. I am confident, however,

14 PENN and RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
that you and our friends will be pleased with the address
of Right Rev. Monsignor Kieran.
The Catholic Church owes so much to Pennsylvania, and
especially to its admirable founder, William Penn, and the
Society of Friends, to which he belonged, by their advocacy
of religious liberty at a time when it was but little appreciated
in this country, I feel that the present occasion is opportune
for the expression of our gratitude and our fidelity to the
great principles, to which we owe, under God, our progress
and our preservation.
I hope that the celebration shall prove worthy of the great
occasion and help to perpetuate the basic principles of our
institutions. I remain, dear Mr. Clothier,
Yours most faithfully,
P. J. RYAN.
As shown in the letter just read. Archbishop Ryan has
selected an eminent representative of the Church to act in
his stead, and I have pleasure to introduce to you the
Right Rev. Monsignor William Kieran.
Address of Monsignor Kieran.
Mr. Chairman: — On reading the life of William Penn,
which should be read by every man who loves "justice
and hates iniquity," one is filled with admiration for
the founder of this Commonwealth ; but the subject this
evening is limited to one view alone of his character— his
noble defense of religious liberty for all men. In an age
when the only cry for freedom of public worship was the
groans and moans, heard through prison bars, from the
victims of a cruel persecuting age, he began the struggle
for religious tolerance in his youth and continued it during
the best twenty years of his manhood. The whip of his
father could not beat it out of him, cruel imprisonment
only strengthened it, and the majesty of a king could
not awe him to betray it.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 15
It is remarkable that the zeal for religious freedom
drew upon him the suspicion that he was a Papist, a
seminary priest and even a Jesuit. And in his address
to a committee of Parliament on January 22, 1678, while
modestly denying the truth of these accusations, he boldly
proclaimed : "I am far from thinking that Papists should
be whipped for their conscience because I exclaim against
the injustice of whipping Quakers for Papists. We must
give the liberty we ask and cannot be false to our prin
ciples though it were to relieve ourselves, for we have
good-will to all men and would have none to suffer for
a truly sober and conscientious dissent." For these
principles he suffered several imprisonments. It is no
wonder then that he made tolerance in religion the
fundamental principle of the new colony, and in a law
prepared in England and passed in Chester, Pa., Decem
ber ID, 1682, two months after his landing, he declared
that "all persons living in this province shall in no way
be molested or prejudiced in their religious persuasion
or practice, or in matters of faith or worship ; " and in an
account of Pennsylvania, "We aim at duty to the king,
the preservation of rights to all, the suppression of vice
and encouragement of virtue and arts, with liberty to all
people to worship Almighty God according to their faith
and persuasion." In 1683, the year we now celebrate, he
wrote to the Duke of Ormond: "It is not our will to
vex men for their belief and modest practice of their
faith with respect to the other world, into which province
and sovereignty, temporal power reaches not from its
very nature and end."
The year after, 1684, his agent in Rotterdam, Benja
min Furley, gave an explanation of the establishment
of Pennsylvania: "In order that each may enjoy that
liberty of conscience which is a natural right belonging
to all men * * * it is established firmly that full

1 6 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
power is given to each to make freely, the public exercise
of his, without meeting with any trouble or interference
of any kind."
This tolerance was so well guaranteed during the life
time of Penn and after, that Pennsylvania was the only
land under the British flag where Catholics could publicly
in the sight of all men worship God according to their
conscience. Fifty years before Pennsylvania, Maryland
had been founded on the same spirit of tolerance, but a
triumphant majority had deprived many of her fellow-
citizens of that right. They looked to Pennsylvania as
a place of refuge where they could exercise their duties
of religion according to their conscience. There is even
a letter of Charles Carroll, father of Charles of Carrollton,
in which he speaks of removing to Pennsylvania from
Maryland in order to enjoy liberty of conscience which
was denied to him at home. This tolerance to Catholics
became one of the principal counts against Penn in the
accusations sent by his enemies to the home government.
Yet he never yielded by giving up his principle of reli
gious liberty, but ever defended his Catholic friends and
subjects against all their persecutors.
When, in 1688, William Popple, his friend, wrote to
him a long letter to impress upon Penn the dangers he
was exposing himself to by his frequent visits to the
Catholic King James II. ; that his enemies were calling
him a Papist ; believe him to be a priest and Jesuit,
Penn answered him in a noble letter, in which are these
words: "If the assertion of an impartial liberty of con
science ; if doing to others as we would be done by, and
an open avowing and a steady practicing of these things
at all times and to all parties, will justly lay a man under
the reflection of being a Jesuit or a Papist of any sort,
I must not only submit to the character, but embrace
it, too."

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 7
How flattering to every Catholic ! What an answer to
their accusers, to think that, in that cruel age, every man
who defended religious freedom was hounded as a Papist
and a Jesuit ! Is it possible that in the time of Penn the
conviction was common among the adversaries of the
Catholic Church that she alone believed in and advocated
the spirit of religious freedom and that Jesuits were the
stanchest defenders and champions of that doctrine?
The Catholic King James II., the friend of Penn, was
the first King of England to proclaim the equality of all
subjects in their religious rights ; but, alas ! his liberality
cost him his throne.
Under this monarch 1400 Friends came out of their
prisons. If there were Friends in hundreds then under
restraint and to be liberated, how many thousands of
Catholics must have been deprived of their freedom?
The example of the founder was followed by those who
came after him and has continued until this day. It is
the glory of Pennsylvania that during the 225 years of its
existence no law has been passed and allowed to stand
which would limit the rights of its people to the free and
public exercise of their religion, and to William Penn,
the noble founder, we owe this just and liberal spirit.
We Catholics will ever hold his memory in deep rever
ence and benediction.
Just fifty years after the foundation of the Common
wealth, in 1733, the first Catholic church was erected in
Philadelphia. A protest, however, was made, calling in
question their right to have a place of public worship.
In answer Father Greaton, the pastor, appealed against
such a protest to the charter of Penn granting liberty to
all, even the Catholic, and Lieutenant-Governor Patrick
Gordon and his counsel tabled the protest and thus
admitted that the charter of William Penn granting
liberty of conscience was more powerful than the narrow-
minded laws depriving men of such liberty.

l8 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
The Friends and Catholics were so united that the
old first chapel was next to the Friends' almshouse —
one for the ills of the body, the other for the ills of
the soul. On its site St. Joseph's church. Fourth and
WiUing's Alley, now stands, and at the entrance on
Walnut Street to that church the Knights of Columbus
last Sunday placed and dedicated a bronze tablet bearing
this inscription : St. Joseph's Cliurch
1733-
In memory of the
Founders of the Faith
in
Philadelphia,
and in gratitude for the triumph of
Religious Liberty.
1908.
This is the first tablet proclaiming religious liberty
ever erected so near a place of worship, and, strange to
say, the church was erected and is still served by Jesuits.
The bronze of that tablet will in time rust into dust,
but may the noble principle it recalls be engraved on
the hearts of all men and be ever an inspiration and a
stimulus to Christ-like deeds!
The Chairman : It is most fitting that the various
COLORED CHURCHES
of the city should be heard from in this house, which
long before the Civil War was a citadel of freedom for the
race. I have the pleasure to introduce as their representa
tive Bishop Levi J. Coppin.
Remarks of Bishop Coppin.
Mr. Ckairm.an: — Viewed from any standpoint, William
Penn must be considered one of the foremost men of his
age, and a good example for men of every age.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I9
Refusing to take the condition of his illustrious father.
Admiral Penn, and follow the fortunes of war, he chose
for himself an ideal that constantly appealed to the
highest and best instincts of his nature, and with admir
able courage, made that ideal the guiding star of his
eventful life.
Providentially, it would seem, it became his lot to tread
a new path and do initiative work in a new field, instead
of undertaking the very uncertain task of changing old
conditions and customs in an old and long-established
government. It was fortunate for the new State which he was destined
to found, that his religious bent was settled and fixed
before he entered upon the perplexing work of its organi
zation and developments.
The time was ripe for breaking away from old forms
of government where privileged classes took the place of
true democracy, and the leader of such an important
movement must needs be one whose sense of religious
obligation would enable him to withstand the almost
irresistible tide of popular sentiment.
It sometimes happens, that a people who are themselves
fleeing from political and religious oppression, will become
forgetful of the golden rule when they themselves become
dispensers of the law.
In the day when Penn launched his ship of state, the
evil of human slavery had not only received the sanction
of the potentates of the Old World, but had dragged its
debauching form into the New.
A writer of those times speaks thus : " Queen Elizabeth
had the honor of extending the commerce of England to
the slave-pens of the gold coast, and long before her time,
in continental countries, anything made in the image of
God, in a black skin, was considered property." Contin
uing, he says : ' ' Slaves were held in all the American

20 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

colonies, and if a man did not own slaves it was because
he was too poor to buy them."
Here, then, was the soil into which William Penn must
sow the seed of his ideal commonwealth and organize a
government that must stand for religious liberty, civic
righteousness, and the new doctrine proclaimed by the
Friends, that " God has made men peers, and that setting
up marks of separation was but dividing men without
a cause, and trifling with the noblest work of God."
That the new venture would be sure to meet with nu
merous obstacles, must have been evident. How well it
succeeded, the story of 225 years of effort must tell.
In 1688, at the Friends' meeting-house in Germantown,
a protest was made against slavery, and although its suc
cess at first was not all that was hoped for, it was the
" leaven in a measure of meal " that continued to work
until the blight of slavery was finally banished forever
from our fair land.
Thus it was that the city founded by Penn became the
cradle of abolitionism, and the Society with which he had
identified himself amid much persecution became a most
potent force against the evil that has been fitly styled " the
sum of all villainies."
But in answering the question : " William Penn's con
tribution to religious liberty," it will be well to ascertain
who in his day was considered eligible to profess religion.
The status of a negro, as a moral being, was undecided.
Indeed, it was generally agreed that he was but a higher
order of the beast creation, and that his brain was minus
the gray matter that would entitle him to a place among
men in the realm of thought.
Be it said, to the everlasting credit of the Society of
Friends, that after a mighty wrestling, like Jacob, with
their conscience, they were the first to discover that the
negro was nothing more nor less than a human being
with an immortal soul.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 21

Daniel Pastorious and others advised that Friends be
careful not to encourage the bringing in of any more
negroes, and that such as had them should be careful to
bring them to meetings and to restrain them from loose
living. In the year 1700, William Penn introduced a bill in the
Council to regulate the morals and marriages of the
negroes, with this significant injunction : " Friends should
be very careful in discharging a good conscience toward
the negroes and Indians in all respects." Following this
injunction, a meeting was appointed for them once a
month, which marked an epoch in the religious life of
the African in America.
This forward movement in the interest of God's sable
children proved to be seed sown into good ground, and
bore its first fruit in the city where it was set in motion.
The soul, once unfettered, began that growth and devel
opment that lifts a human being into his proper sphere.
The idea of religious liberty, that was all-pervading,
found a response in these newly awakened souls and a
change began to take place.
In 1787, a blacksmith shop became their meeting-house,
and in the true spirit of William Penn they made an
heroic struggle for religious independence.
Out of the smoke and ashes of that humble beginning
grew an organization that now numbers nearly a million
souls, and upon the very spot where stood the black
smith shop, stands a spacious building, modern in all its
appointments : a building, eloquently telling its own story
of what a people may do when given an opportunity.
History bears testimony to the fact, that in every great
movement in the unfolding of the divine plan for the
betterment of society, God always finds a man whom He
can rely upon as a leader.
Richard Allen, himself once a slave, became an apostle
of the doctrine of religious liberty among his people, and

22 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. r
it was through him that they were led on from a handful
to a great religious denomination.
When Philadelphia is compared with other great cities
of the country for churches, and schools, and libraries,
and hospitals, and organized charities, and institutions for
the protection of dumb animals, and kindred societies, I
think it will not suffer in comparison.
That the moral and religious forces set in action by the
Founders of the city — and especially by its one great
Founder — still have their influence upon the city's life,
there can be no reasonable doubt.
The statue of William Penn upon the city's highest
monument, visible to all, and overlooking all, is a con
stant declaration, that the principles for which he stood
are the principles by which we hope still to be guided.
The inhabitants of the city find no good reason to
change the name given it by its illustrious Founder.
The spirit of fair play and equal justice to all is still
the dominant spirit.
Those who from afar visit the City of Brotherly Love
during these series of celebrations, will do well to imbibe
her spirit, and carry to the uttermost parts of America the
doctrine of friendship and good-will ; of religious liberty
and equal opportunity for all men of every nationality,
color and creed.

The Chairman : As representing the
CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
I present the Rev. Edward Wilbur Rice, D. D.
Remarks of Dr. Rice.
Mr. Chairman: — In the fullness of time. Heaven's
great clock had struck the hour for liberty of the soul.
After a long period of religious ferment within the civil-

PENN AND religious LIBERTY. 23
ized nations of the world, America became an asylum for
the oppressed. From five great families of peoples came
those who were longing for freedom to get in right rela
tions with God.
Liberty of conscience was to become a religious axiom.
From his prison at Newgate, where Penn had been sent
for preaching the gospel, he wrote the first of a series of
vigorous tracts, declaring that whoever fettered the con
science, defeated God's work of grace. He demanded
liberty in religion as an " Undoubted right by the law of
God, of nature, and of his country."
In this demand, the great Founder of Philadelphia joined
that galaxy of noble reformers, who for two generations
had been persecuted and in prison for proclaiming the
principle of religious liberty.
Puritan and Pilgrim (early Congregationalists) stoutly
held to the belief ; i, that the revealed written Word of
God was the final authority in religion ; 2, that every soul
had the right freely to follow the doctrines of that Word,
in his worship of God, and in the conduct of his life.
From these two principles sprang the great cause of
liberty to the individual. However widely Puritan and
Pilgrim and Penn differed on other points of faith, they
agreed in this — the authority of the Bible, and the right
of private interpretation thereof. The Pilgrim carried
the latter principle to its logical end in his church polity.
From these principles, liberty of conscience was a neces
sary corollary. These principles made John Milton (an
original Congregationalist) an apostle of liberty of the
press. They made the Pilgrim, John Robinson, the
apostle of liberty of conscience before Fox was born ;
they made the Puritans John Owen and John Howe
apostles of freedom of faith ; they forced the learned John
Cotton and Increase Mather into exile — pilgrims to
America — where they became the apostles of civic liberty
and foremost advocates of personal freedom to worship

24 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
God as their consciences dictated, and as enlightened by
God's Word and Spirit.
Out of these same seething conditions of religious un
rest came the fervid spirit of George Fox, accounted like
many other reformers as a fanatic, wrong-headed in a
right direction. Later also came the sober, calm, edu
cated Oxford man, William Penn. But both of these
drew their creed, if not their inspiration, from the study
of God's Word, and a personal interpretation of it, by
the inward light of the Spirit.
Penn carried the principle of religious liberty a step
farther than had the Pilgrim Fathers, demanding liberty
of conscience and of worship not alone for himself, but
the same liberty for every soul, provided that liberty did
not run into license and lawlessness. His liberty of con
science had a narrow interpretation from our point of
view, forbidding any soul to speak loosely, profanely or
contemptuously of God, Christ, the Holy Scriptures or
religion, on pain of forfeiting the protection in his liberty
before the civil magistrate.
Puritan and Pilgrim regarded the extreme radical claim
of Fox and his followers, "to wit," that they, though
illiterate, were directly inspired of God, to reveal His
will — as evidence of madness, or of being under the power
of the devil. The then not, very peaceful Quaker (so
called) was irritable, if not warlike, in arrogating his
claim, which, in the light of the Puritan, was subversive
of all true liberty of conscience, and a menace to the
safety of the colony. Hence, the Puritan commanded
silence. When they refused to observe more than a
Quaker silence, and were constantly " moved " to speak
forth their claims of inward light as apparently superior
to the written Word, the Puritan was moved to put them
forth out of the colony for its safety. They exercised the
same rights which every church still exercises for its own
purity and life. Later, both parties came to a better

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 25

interpretation of their principles, as applied to conduct.
From this belief, held in common by Congregationalists,
and confessed by the Friends, to wit, the authority of and
the right of personal interpretation of the Word of God,
Penn deduced several rules — fundamental in character
and of foremost value now as then. We have time to
cite only these : —
I. Whoever is right, the persecutor must be wrong.
2. Liberty for the souls of men calls for freedom from
bribery and corruption.
Penn declined an offer of 6ooO;^ and 2>^ % from a syndi
cate for control of the Indian trade between the Delaware
and Susquehanna rivers. Modern syndicates in this terri
tory have not met the spirit of Penn ; more's the pity.
3. Punishment of criminals should not be merely to
deter others, but, if possible, to reform the criminals
themselves. 4. Education : physical, intellectual and spiritual ; by
worship, by schools, by the printing press ; by every other
lawful mode, is needful to perpetuate liberty, civic and
spiritual, and for the safety of the State.
Congregationalists welcome with both hands Penn's
contribution to the cause of liberty of conscience and
freedom to worship God.
The Chairman : I now present to the meeting the
Rev. L. G. Batman, D. D., as representing
THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST.
Address of Rev. L. G. Batman, D.D.
Mr. Chairman: — William Penn has long been at rest,
but his work is going on. This evening, almost two
centuries after his death, we have met in the city which
he founded to review his work. As the geologist goes

26 penn and religious liberty.
forth with pick and shovel to dig in the earth among the
rocks in search of the traces of some long-since vanished
glacier, so we have come this evening to search in our
religious institutions and life for the traces of Penn.
It is not always easy to follow a stream back through
the fields, the valleys and among the hills, to the spring
from which it bubbles forth. There are always so many
contributing brooks ; so many springs in the hills, each
sending forth its water to swell the stream, that it is diffi
cult to find and know the fountain -source. So it is
difiicult to trace back through the centuries any phase of
our religious life to its beginning. There are always so
many persons working simultaneously, that it is hard to
say that this or that man is the source. However difl&cult
it may be to trace back any phase of our religious life to
Penn, we may be sure that some of the ideas which pre
dominated his thinking are common with us to-day.
The fundamental conception of Penn, out from which
all others grew and radiated, was that of the capability
of man to have direct divine communion with God. To
the man who holds this conception the voice within is
sovereign. He knows, in the matter of religion, no ex
ternal authority — neither that of the State, nor that of
the Church, nor that of the Book. He hears and obeys
only the voice within as it is taught by the Church, the
Book and his God. In the course of time he naturally
casts off the shackles of State, of tradition, of creed, and of
ecclesiastical organization which bind his soul. William
Penn and the Society to which he belonged, in empha
sizing this fundamental conception, have pointed men to
the voice within which has helped to set them free.
In a tract published in 1668, the title of which is the
"Sandy Foundation Shaken," Penn attacked some of the
doctrines of the Church which have long been under dis
cussion, and appealed for the restoration of the primitive

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 27
faith and worship. This appeal, with the simple faith,
worship and organization of the Society of Friends, has
helped men to free themselves from all external authority,
and to find the satisfaction of their souls in the freedom of
the fellowship of the Man of Galilee.
The bigotry of the age in which Penn lived, and the
struggle of the Church to maintain its authority over the
conscience of man, had resulted not only in strife and
persecution, but also in war. Penn's soul, taught by
direct divine communion with God, revolted against the
war-spirit of the day and cried for peace, peace ; first for
the peace of God and then for peace among men. It was
his desire to found a colony without the support of mili
tary power ; a colony in which fair dealing, righteousness
and love would bind men together in one great brother
hood. As this spirit of peace which predominated his
life spread abroad it tempered men's lives, turned bigotry
into charity, hatred into love, and gave men liberty.
As a representative of the Disciples of Christ, a Christian
body which had its origin in America a century and a quar
ter after the founding of Philadelphia, I want to express
my gratitude for the contribution which Penn made to
religious liberty, and which we as a people have inherited.
In the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews
we have a gallery of the heroes of religious faith. He
who reads, there beholds the men of ages long since past
who, under the most difiicult circumstances, contributed
to the world's faith in God. Some modern preacher and
prophet should write another letter and give us a gallery
of the heroes of religious liberty. The list of names which
he would record would be a long and illustrious one. He
who would walk and read therein would behold the name
of William Penn, and out of the past would rise a vision
of the founding of Philadelphia, the " City of Brotherly
Love," for the sake of religious liberty.

28 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
The Chairman : I now present to you as represent
ing the PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH
the Rev. Floyd W. Tomkins, D. D.
Remarks of Dr. Tomkins.
Mr. Chairman: — Three words by way of introduction :
First, I shall exercise my inherited religious liberty by
speaking without notes. Secondly, I shall say nothing
about the Episcopal Church ; she speaks for herself.
Thirdly, I am taking the place of Bishop Whitaker, and I
know you sympathize with me. " Nolo Episcopari.''^
When we speak of William Penn as advocating reli
gious liberty, we must guard against exaggeration. Some
people, when they mention religious liberty, mean " irre
ligious license ;" but that was not what Penn stood for or
urged upon his followers. Liberty must have a shape,
a skeleton, a backbone ; it cannot be all flesh, else its
flabbiness would make it useless. Our founder was no
weak man, nor did he show himself satisfied with those
who lacked stability, character, and fixedness of opinion.
Some folks have a very large wishbone and a very
diminutive backbone. Not so William Penn. From his
youth he had passed through many strenuous experi
ences ; he spent more time in prison, because of his
honest convictions, than any other religious Englishman,
unless we except John Bunyan. He never receded from
his original convictions. Such a man must have had
some principles to govern, for without strong principles
to shape it there can be no such thing as religious liberty.
What were these principles? I name them as four — a
kind of quadrilateral to enclose the boundaries of liberty
and give it content.
First, William Penn urged to a belief in God, and he

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 29
had little regard for the man who was either atheist or
agnostic. He agreed with the Psalmist, that only a fool
could say in his heart, "There is no God." It is well for
us to remember this, in an age when religion is con
founded with esthetic morality, and when the human will
is exalted to a place of too great supremacy, and God's
will is easily ignored.
Secondly, William Penn emphasized the responsibility
of the individual to both God and man. Excellent were
his appeals to the sovereignty of the single man, but he
always based them upon a clear duty, never to be dis
regarded, which he owes to his Maker and his brother.
Man's personal sense of his being a son of God should
make him strong not in any cheap disregard of the
rights of others, but in the intelligent knowledge of his
responsibility. "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."
We are not advocating religious liberty when we cry out
for that so-called freedom which permits every man to
do as he pleases. My "please" must be ruled by the
"please" of God and of my fellows; and he only can
enter into the fullness of liberty who hears and answers
the claims of the Almighty and of his brethren.
Thirdly, William Penn made it clear that every man
was bound to observe the laws of righteousness. No man
can be free to live a bad life ; no man can defy the laws of
God regarding holiness without sinking into a slavery to
vice which robs him of character and sovereignty. Our
founder manifested this in many ways. His treatment of
the Indians ; his treatment of other religious bodies ; his
indignation at the idea of slavery, all testify to his strong
conception of right. And he urged that conviction in the
individual which should make his faith and his right
eousness exactly his own. "I abhor," he wrote, "two

30 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
principles in religion and pity them that own them ; the
first is obedience upon authority without conviction ; and
the other, destroying them that differ from me for God's
sake. Such a religion is without judgment, though not
without teeth."
And, fourthly, Penn emphasized the duty of public
service. He only is free who seeks to banish public
wrong and establish public right. He is the meanest
slave, and knows not the alphabet of liberty, who sits
selfishly in the enjoyment of his own emoluments and
cares not that sin and injustice and crime are sitting in
high places. He only can be possessed of religious liberty
who battles for public righteousness and seeks for the
reign of holy law. Penn did not hesitate to castigate
those who ruled the people as if they were children or
slaves. His ideas of individual sovereignty were so lofty
that he could not admit for a moment that one should sit
supine and quiet under wrongs which ate the marrow out
of the common life. Quaker though he was and opposed
to conflict, he demanded of men the heroism which he
himself manifested again and again in his deeds and writ
ings — a heroism which should take such part in public
affairs as the enforcement of law and the principles of
morality demanded.
Whenever I think of William Penn I am reminded of
those fine words written by J. G. Holland in 185 1 : —
' ' God give us men ! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands ;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill ;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy ;
Men who possess opinions and a will ;
Men who have honor ; men who will not lie ;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And down his treacherous flatteries without winking !
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking."

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 31
At this stage of the proceedings Mayor Reyburn en
tered, and after being introduced to the meeting by the
Chairman, made a few remarks of greeting to the great
assembly of different church members, and then taking
a seat to the right of the Chairman, listened to the
remarks of Rabbi Krauskopf before leaving for the meet
ing in the Cherry Street end of the house.
The Chairman : I have now to present a distinguished
member of the HEBREW CHURCH
whom in my representative capacity I am exceedingly
happy to welcome this evening, Rabbi Joseph Kraus
kopf, D.D. Remarks of Rabbi Krauskopf.
Mr. Chairman: — I have heard of great men tackling
great subjects, and doing full justice to them within a
very short time, but I have never yet heard of so small a
man as myself tackling so great a personality as William
Penn, and doing justice to it within the space of five
minutes. I shall scarcely be able to do more than to express to
Mayor Reyburn and his committee my deep sense of
gratitude for having instituted the celebration of this
week. Not so much because of the festivities it affords,
but because of the opportunity it presents to Philadel
phians to become acquainted with themselves, and more
especially because of the attention it calls to Religion's
part in the founding of our city. State, and TPpublic.
No-one can reflect upon the meaning of this week and
not become deeply conscious of the fact that it was be
cause of religion that the seekers of liberty of conscience
forsook the Old World for the New ; that with the aid of

32 penn and religious liberty.
religion they formed their settleinent ; that in religion
they founded our Government, and that by it has it been
maintained unto this day.
Oh, that we might every now and then have a celebra
tion such as this so that the people might perceive more
and more clearly that the foundations of our republic are
imbedded in the rock of faith, and that only so long as
that rock continues intact, so long will our Government
continue secure.
I never appreciated this truth so clearly as I did this
summer, when it was my privilege to behold the monu
ment which our nation erected in honor of the Pilgrim
Fathers, upon an eminence overlooking Plymouth Har
bor. It is built of granite, of material typical of the men
it commemorates. On its main pedestal stands an heroic
figure, said to be the largest and finest piece of granite
statuary in the world, as it well deserves to be. It is the
figure of a woman and symbolizes Faith. In her left
hand she holds a Bible ; her right hand uplifted, points
to heaven. Upon each of the four smaller pedestals is a
seated figure, emblematic of the four basic principles upon
which our Commonwealth was founded — one represents
Morality, the other Law, the third Education, the fourth
Freedom. Great as is the art of that monument, yet
greater to me is the thought which is sculptured into its
enduring stone. In language far more eloquent than
tongue can tell or pen can write, it tells of the rocks upon
which our forefathers reared our mighty republic. For
its chief support they chose the rock of Faith, and for its
four cornerstones they chose Morality, Education, Law
and Freedom. Upon these rocks our nation has rested
securely from the day it was founded, and, in the light of
recent happenings, we may well prophesy that only so
long as our nation will continue to rest upon these rocks
will it continue to be secure.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 33
What was done there in the New England States was
done in Pennsylvania. The spirit which the Pilgrim
Fathers implanted there, the Friends implanted here.
Yea, they had Faith., these founders of our nation, and
it was because of it they succeeded where others without
it have failed. There was no suffering so great, no hard
ship so trying, but that they had their God before whom
to lay their trouble and from whom to draw their help
and hope. While establishing for themselves home and
liberty, they felt that they were at the same time the
instrument chosen by God to secure the same privileges
for the homeless and oppressed of other nations. For
that purpose had God guided Columbus to the New
World ; for that same end had He guided the " Mayflower "
into Plymouth Harbor and the " Welcome " into the
Delaware river. They regarded themselves the Chosen of
God of the New World, the people whom God had led out
of a house of bondage, across the Atlantic, even as, in the
days of yore, he had led the Children of Israel across the
Red Sea to the Rock of Sinai. Had William Penn, the
Friend, not landed here, we of the Jewish people could
probably never have come to these shores, nor could I
have spoken to you to-night.
You have heard to-night from representatives of other
denominations of their sense of gratitude to William
Penn. But what is their debt to the noble founder of
our city compared with that which the Jews feel ? We
honor the name of William Penn as we reverence the
names of our prophets of old, and we love his people as
we love our own. Penn and his followers were people of
the true faith, and because they had that faith did they
establish the true freedom of conscience upon the soil of
the New World, and did they spread it to the confines
thereof. It was because of that faith that they wrote
upon the bell, that was ultimately destined to ring out

34 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
liberty throughout the land, the words of the Old Testa
ment, " Proclaim ye liberty throughout the land and unto
all the inhabitants thereof." It was because they had the
true faith of God within their hearts that their lips spake
also to the Jew, " Come hither, and freely share our bless
ings with us." And this at a time when, throughout the
Old World, the Jew was hounded and lashed from country
to country, denied not onl)^ his human rights but even
humane treatment, by people who called themselves
Christians ; by people who professed to worship the God
whom the Jews gave them ; to reverence the Bible which
the Jews wrote ; to follow the Commandments which the
Jewish law-giver proclaimed, and to obey the precepts,
" Love thy neighbor as thyself," " Do unto others as thou
wouldst have others do unto thee," which Jewish masters
taught. To this day, the lessons which William Penn and his
followers preached and practiced within this city, two
hundred and twenty-five years ago, have not yet been
learned in some such European lands as Russia and
Roumania. God grant that one of the results of the celebration of
this week may be the spreading across the Atlantic the
gospel of universal peace and mutual good-will preached
withiii this city two and a quarter centuries ago, so that
the spirit of '''¦Philadelphia,^'' of '¦''Brotherly Love'''' may
sjjread wider and wider, and embrace more and more of
the human family into a universal brotherhood of men,
under the Common Fatherhood of God.

The Chairman : I greatly regret to have to announce to
this assembly, that there are two branches of the Society
of Friends. Perhaps no portion of the Christian world
regrets the fact as much as the two divisions of the

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 35
Society, as in these days of Christian advance and reli
gious fellowship such a separation as occurred eighty
years ago would nowadays be most improbable if not,
indeed, impossible. The great, though small. Society
could be adequately represented by either of the repre
sentatives of the two Branches of the Society present. As
representing one Branch of
THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
I have pleasure to welcome and present my friend. Dr.
George A. Barton. Remarks of Dr. Barton.
Mr. Chairman: — William Penn was one of the greatest
religious statesmen that ever lived. Religious leaders are
of three kinds — the prophet who inspires with new visions
and hopes and leads multitudes to a higher spiritual and
ethical life ; the thinker who outlines a reasonable explan
ation of the new experience, becoming its theological
leader, and the statesman who organizes a land in such a
way and with such a religious purpose that the new life
may express itself without fetters. Some men, like Cal
vin, have been both the theologian and the statesman of a
religious movement. Of the great Quaker revival of the
seventeenth century, George Fox was the prophet, Robert
Barclay the theologian, and William Penn its statesman.
William Penn not only created a new province in which
the new faith should be free, but a province in which all
other faiths should also be free. This tolerance, which
grew so naturally out of the great doctrine of the Inner
Light — i. e. , the Quaker faith that God had revealed him
self in a measure to the soul of every man — was in part
the mainspring of Penn's treatment of the Indians — a
treatment that reveals William Penn removed as far from
race prejudice as he was from religious bigotry.

36 > PENN AND religious LIBERTY.
As this Splendid assemblage, composed of representa
tives of many of the faiths which have flourished in the
free air of Pennsylvania, gathers to celebrate the anniver
sary of the founding of Philadelphia, one of the most
important events in the early history of the colony, the
one fact of most importance to us all — which indeed
should be uppermost in the minds of us all — is this great
principle of liberty of conscience — of tolerance and the
kind of life to which it should give rise.
As Pennsylvanians or as Quakers we may look with
pride to the fact that the example of Penn was followed
by the Framers of the National Constitution, and that by
this act liberty of conscience has become the heritage of
one of the greatest nations on earth.
Are there not, however, in the history of our city and
our State some facts which go to prove that we have used
our heritage of liberty too selfishly ? Invited by the free
dom which Penn instituted, the Welshman came, the
German came, the Scotch-Irish came, each with at least
one, and often with several new types of creed — each
settled in a section of his own, enjoying not only his own
creed but his own language, and keeping aloof from other
sections not only in religious sympathy but in civic sym
pathy. It has thus come about that to this day there is
no unified civic consciousness nor a unified civic con
science in Pennsylvania. Each faction has worked for
itself, each has been an easy prey for demagogues, and
politically the city and State of Penn is, to put it mildly,
not regarded as a model by citizens of her sister common
wealths. It was, perhaps, inevitable in the past that we should
each appropriate the great boon of liberty somewhat self
ishly, and that each faith should seek to build up itself,
while looking on other forms of religion with such aloof
ness, if not suspicion, as to prevent the development of a

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 37

civic conscience. While this condition is not the fault of
the Quaker alone, the Quakers must bear their portion of
responsibility for it. We have manifested our fair share
of the spirit of aloofness from our fellows.
In reality, the condition to which I am referring is the
outcome of a grand 'principle applied to a human nature
that did not fully appreciate its significance. Owing to
human weakness, liberty of conscience has been made
hitherto an occasion for exclusive denominationalism
which has stifled the growth of a healthy civic sensitive
ness ; it should have been regarded as an opportunity for
the development of a broad sense of Christian brother
hood, of mutual respect and love, of reciprocal trust and
cooperation, which should have united all the religious
forces of the Commonwealth in working for the overthrow
of every form of evil, and the creation of a city and a
State which should be steps toward the establishment of
the kingdom of God in the world.
No celebration of the founding of Philadelphia could
be more appropriate than the beginning, by such a meet
ing as this, of a new and different era — an era in which
there should be no emulation except to see who could be
foremost in broad-minded respect and in unselfish love,
and no rivalry except in unselfish service of God and of
men — the men of the city, the State and the world.
Such an attitude on the part of the religious bodies of the
State would soon make it a commonwealth with a civic
conscience worthy of its great founder.
To such a course our age is by many voices calling us.
The conscience of humanity is awakening to the terrible
indictment that the existence of a submerged tenth brings
against our civilization and the religion which finds in it
its highest social expression. Men are demanding not
simply individual charity, but social and industrial jus
tice. The conscience of our generation is awakened —

38 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
it is in many respects in advance of the conscience of
organized religion, and unless Christianity can apply its
lofty principles to conduct and to ecclesiastical, social
and political institutions so as to prove its worth, not by
words, but by social, industrial and civic results, more
and more men will have none of it. If the religious
bodies represented here do not heed this call, we shall
soon find written on the wall over each unfaithful one,
"Thou art weighed in the balances and art found
wanting." Could this religious celebration beget in us all a mutual
respect and a unity of devotion to the high call which
God is sending us in the twentieth century, such that
we should cooperate rather than antagonize one another,
there would be more hope that the creative power of
religious faith might so work upon the hearts of men,
that the present opportunity of religion — the greatest
that the history of mankind has furnished — might be
successfully met.
Such an outcome would prove us not only worthy
followers of the great founder of our city, but of that
divine Man of Nazareth, who, whether we call ourselves
Jews or Christians, is in this work the Master of us all.

The Chairman : I now present the representative of
the other Branch of
THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS,
may I not say as also representative of both Branches?
Henry W. Wilbur. Remarks of Henry W. Wilbur.
Mr. Chairman: — Penn's mental and spiritual make-up
was broad, tending to brotherliness and toleration. In

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 39
his personal experience he had tasted the cup of religious
bigotry and intolerance to its dregs, and this led him to
seek the protection of consciences as tender as his own.
In so far as the early Friends had any theology, if con
sistently and logically applied, its tendency was naturally
in the direction of religious liberty.
Denying such a thing as divine favoritism, and affirm
ing that all men had in them a measure of the Divine
Spirit, it has always been an unpardonable Friendly act
to grieve the Spirit, in the neighbor. But inasmuch as
Friends are intensely human people, it would be claiming
too much to contend that they have never lapsed from
their own logically right line.
If God does reveal himself individually and inwardly to
every human spirit ; if the law of mathematics holds good
in the vaster concerns of the spiritual universe, and the
whole of a thing is still equal to the sum of all its parts,
then it will take the united revelation to all souls to
even inadequately represent the sum of God's revealed
will and way to men.
Therefore we may conclude that every religions organ
ization, and the choice spirits of every faith, have made
their contribution to the sum of spiritual truth, and to
that inner wisdom which helps every soul to clear up the
great mysteries and maintain its right attitude toward
the Heavenly Father. Considering the mind of Truth as
the mind of the Father impressed upon His children, no
sect or system can claim the last word of God to men, nor
monopolize the knowledge of His will to His children.
This claim classifies the abundant spiritual insistence
and egotism which have characterized the religious world
at many points, as not of the right spirit but rather the
stuff out of which bigotry and intolerance have been
made. We may be glad that the religious world has improved

40 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
its manners, and now behaves itself better than it did
aforetime. But we have not yet reached the limit of our
conception and application of real religious liberty. That
means that we shall learn how more industriously to
spiritually mind our business and let our brethren do the
same thing. In other words, we may be content in apply
ing our own conceptions of truth, resting assured that
they will at the best be partial, while our souls rejoice in
the thought that others in their way are doing as well
as we.
We cannot have too large an application of the real
pith of Penn's conception of liberty and brotherhood,
based on unity of spirit and purpose rather than on uni
formity of doctrine and conformity of creed. To get the
latter, the human spirit will not be dwarfed or the individ
ual conscience crippled and crushed, while genuine unity
of spirit broadens and sweetens all lives.
In front of all of our theories and philosophies are the
fog-banks of the mysteries, and around us the material be-
setments that militate against the right life. We need the
largest measure of love for men, and the broadest sense of
the spiritual brotherhood to enable us to help each other
up the hills of life.
Penn had a large heart, a comprehensive faith, and an
abundant hope. He believed in the final triumph of the
truth, and in the full realization of the religious liberty
which as the founder of a commonwealth he did so much
to establish. That made him a prophet of a new social
order and a broader religious system. It fortified him in
that phenomenal friendliness which was not bounded by
the theological and doctrinal fences which hdve helped to
promote ignorance and foster prejudice in the world. He
could see in defeat the potency of victory, and in delay
the prophecy of better things. Like every brave soul that
has ever blessed the world he could sing in his heart, as

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 41

he embodied in his life, the spirit of Massey's optimistic
poem : — ' ' 'Tis weary watching wave on wave.
But still the tide heaves onward ;
We build like corals, grave on grave,
The path that leadeth sunward.
We're driven back in many a fray,
Yet fresher strength we borrow ;
And where the vanguard camps to-day,
The rear shall rest to-morrow. ' '

The Chairman :
THE LUTHERAN CHURCH
is represented by the Rev. Edwin Heyl Delk, D. D., whom
I now present to you .
Remarks of Dr. Delk.
Mr. Chairman: — It is with peculiar feelings that I rise
to speak within these hallowed walls. As a little boy I
was brought from the South, at the close of the Civil
War, and placed in the lowest form of the school con
nected with this Society of Friends. My father was
known as a "Rebel" and firmly believed in the right of
white men to hold in slavery the negro race. He was
an ardent "States' Rights" champion, and fed me on
Alexander H. Stephens' War Between the States. I had
never seen a Quaker or attended a Friends' meeting.
For eight years I was compelled to attend your Fourth-
day meeting, and though I was not always attentive to
the words spoken by the good men and women who then
sat upon these benches, nor, I confess, was I always in a
heavenly frame of mind, nevertheless, I wish to express
my profound gratitude for two great lessons I learned in
this place of worship. I learned first of all the value of

42 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
silence — a silence in which the human unrest subsides
and is made vocal by the still voice of God. Since those
days I have never doubted the value and eloquence of a
devout silence. There was a still greater lesson you
taught the boy of those days. Many words and faces
impressed upon me the privilege and the duty of securing
political and religious freedom for all men ; but there was
one face and one form which is burned ineffaceably upon
the walls of my brain and heart — the slight, gentle,
brave, flaming figure of Lucretia Mott. It was through
her ardent, refined, spiritual appeal to the sleeping sense
of justice and brotherhood which exist in the heart of
every normal soul that the vision of freedom for the black
man and the more glorious union of the States took pos
session of me. I hope you will pardon this personal
reference on this public occasion, for I feel that I would
be ungrateful to the Friends in whose place of worship
we meet to-night if I did not make this public acknowl
edgment of the endless debt of gratitude I owe to Lucretia
Mott and to your Society.
It is very difficult, after so many comprehensive and
eloquent tributes to the character and work of William
Penn have been spoken by the gentlemen with me on
these benches, to say anything that is new and important.
I venture, however, to offer a thought, as yet unexpressed,
which seems to me fundamental to all Penn's heroic
martyrdom, his generous plan of colonization, and the
actualized liberty of civil and religious life found in his
"Holy Experiment." I refer to his doctrine of the
"Inner Light."
There are three sources of authority in religion, i. e.,
the Church, the Bible, and the reason. Of course, there
is but one final authority for us Christians, i. e., God,
revealed in Jesus Christ. Penn, a profound student of
the New Testament and Ecclesiastical history, early

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 43
discovered that the claim of infallibility by the Church
was a myth. Like Luther, a century and a half before, he
knew that there was much in the dogmatic teaching
and practices of the Church which was not only an un
warranted addition to the teachings of Jesus and His
Apostles, but that such teachings and practices were in
flagrant contradiction to the spirit and ideal of Christ.
He knew that no number of fallible men, however
regular their ordination, could make an infallible organ
ization. The contradictions of Popes and Councils were
too apparent to every scholar of even Penn's day for any
fully informed man to accept the traditions of the Church
as an infallible guide in matters of religion.
Further, the work of German and English students of
the Bible had shown him the danger of a literal interpre
tation of the Holy Scriptures. A section of Protestant
ism, in order to meet the claim of the infallibility of the
Church, had proclaimed the dogma of the infallibility of
the Bible. Without qualification, the teachings of the
Bible in every province of nature, history, ethics and
religion were to be unquestionably accepted as the truth.
But the physical sciences, anthropology and comparative
ethics had made sufficient progress in his day, so far as
scholars were concemed, to show that the creation stories,
Hebrew history, and the imprecatory Psalms needed a
fresh and more Christian interpretation before the Bible,
as a whole, could be truthfully designated as "The only
infallible rule of faith and practice." He felt, indeed,
that a third and more intimate organ of Christian revela
tion was needed in order that both Church and Bible
might be properly understood and estimated. That organ
of religious thought and life he called the "Inner-Light."
It is what we call in our modern theology ' ' Christian
consciousness." It is a form of reason. I use the word
reason in its German, philosophical sense, which includes

44 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
not only the ratiocinative process but also the conscience,
the sympathetic response and aspirations of the soul. To
call it the "Inner-Light" and treat it as an independent
source of revelation carries with it the danger of theolog
ical and moral vagaries ; but the worth of the substance
of Penn's contention, present-day religious thought and
life amply confirm. To the touchstone of " Christian con
sciousness" we bring both Church and Bible, to-day, for
justification and illumination. The need and perpetuity
of .1 truly Holy Catholic Church is based on the very con
stitution of human nature and the word of our Lord. The
endurance of the truly saving truths of the Bible grows
clearer and clearer to the student of Biblical criticism.
The value of the inner, subjective, genuinely mystical
union with a loving, regnant Lord and God grows more
impressive as we study the history of religious thought
and life. It was this belief and loyalty to the Christian
"Inner-Light" which made possible Penn's heroism,
martyrdom, plan of religious freedom, the colonizing of
Pennsylvania and the City of Brotherly Love.
There are other praiseworthy and beneficent results of
Penn's faith and lovable character I would like to recite
here to-night, but let this one supreme contribution of
his to the religious thought and life of our city and Com
monwealth suffice.
I am a Lutheran, but I am glad that such an apostle of
freedom as Penn is commemorated in enduring bronze
upon the highest pinnacle of our city's architecture. Far
above the rush, the turmoil, the dishonesty, the pride, the
pleasures, the sorrow, the jealousies, the contentions of
sects and parties stands, not in the attitude of a grafter,
or mailed knight, but with hand outstretched in benedic
tion, the form of one who, since the days of St. Paul and
Luther, was, and is, the finest expression of Christian
manhood the world has ever seen and honored. As I

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 45
walk, henceforth, toward and beneath that benign figure,
I shall lift my hat in reverence to Penn's memory, thank
ing God I am a Philadelphian, and try to actualize in my
own small life something of the courage, the faith, the
magnanimity and love which filled his great soul.

The Chairman :
THE MENNONITES
are represented by Rev. N. B. Grubb, whom I now
introduce. Remarks of Rev. N. B. Grubb.
Mr. Chairman: — William Penn has almost as great a
claim upon the regard of the Mennonite People as he has
upon that of the Society of Friends.
The Mennonite Church is of Dutch origin, and in the
development of the Dutch and German peoples its testi
mony for peace, non-resistance, opposition to oaths of all
kinds and the entire separation of Church and State, has
played as conspicuous a part as did the testimony of the
Friends in England for the same things.
The Church that I represent, with the many other
churches, owe to William Penn a debt of great gratitude
for having made possible its existence in free America
unencumbered by the harassing persecutions with which
the European governments hindered the development of
dissenting faiths. Were it not for the linguistic differ
ences between the Dutch and German Mennonites and the
English Friends, it is altogether likely that these two
religious organizations would have begun life in America
as one body. Both taught practically the same doctrines.
Both stood for a type of Christian life and character rather
than for a correct statement of creed or confession. In

46 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
both there was a feeling that the ministry should not
offer the slightest opportunity by which a mere hireling
should profit, and in either of the organizations there
developed a sentiment which could not tolerate the bond
age of human beings in slavery.
Penn's relation to the Mennonites began long before
Pennsylvania was ever considered. His mother, as you
know, was a Dutch woman, of whom Pepsy in his diary
says, "she was pretty and I believe hath more wit than
her husband."
Penn was brought up to know and speak the tongue of
his mother as well as the speech of his native land.
Whether his mother was of Mennonite extraction, as some
profess to believe, I am not quite prepared to say. But it
would not seem strange to us that while visiting Holland
he should seek out the relatives of his mother and lay be
fore them the form of faith for which he was making
every effort to make proselytes. We do know that he
visited many Mennonite communities, both in Holland
and in Germany, and that both he and his followers im
mediately set about expounding the Friends' doctrines.
No Mennonite congregation, as such, became a Friend's
Meeting, but many Mennonite individuals did identify
themselves with the Society.
The debate on the essentials of the Christian faith which
Penn carried on with de Haan., the scholarly Mennonite
minister at Amsterdam, might lead one to suppose that
the differences between the two faiths were sharply drawn,
but this was not the case in America at least, for we leam
that one of Penn's Dutch followers called himself a Friend
while living in Philadelphia, and when in London several
years later he speaks of himself as a Mennonite.
Through Penn's liberality to the persecuted German
religionists a new language was bom to America. The
tongue spoken by the Germantown settlers through more

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 47
than two hundred years has continued as the mother
tongue and the family language of that large body of
Pennsylvania Germans, of whom the Commonwealth may
be justly proud. An isolation of many generations from
the Germanic people and contact with English-speaking
neighbors, and the changes that time always works in a
language have made the Pennsylvania-German language
the child of America, different in many respects from its
brother across the sea, who developed under the infiuence
of continental Europe.
Pennsylvania-German is still the language of the family
and Church which I have the honor to represent to-night.
But be it English, or Dutch, or German, or Pennsylvania-
German, the name of William Penn mentioned in either
of them commands the reverence that all men accord to
the one who served well his God and his fellowmen.

The Chairman : I now present as representing the
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
Bishop Frank M. Bristol, D.D., LL.D.
Remarks of Bishop Bristol.
Mr. Chairman and Christian Friends : A significant fact
impresses itself upon my mind as with you I look into the
past and call up the names of the illustrious men whose
memories we delight to honor. William Penn and John
Wesley were students of the same University — glorious old
Oxford. And, moreover, they studied in the same college,
Christ Church College, of that ancient seat of leaming.
Of this fact both the Friends and the Methodists should
be justly proud.
And now the honor falls to me, on this impressive occa
sion, of bearing to you and expressing the appreciation and

48 PENN AND religious LIBERTY.
most hearty felicitations of the people called Methodists.
In this incident how the extremes do meet, as it was once
vulgarly supposed that the Friends could worship God
only in silence, and the Methodists could worship the same
God only with a great noise ! Just what the poet meant
by "thunders of white silence" we do not know, but we
have imagined that unique metaphor illustrated the throne-
shaking power of the Quaker's silent prayer, for out of
those silences have come forces that have moved heaven
and earth, caused tyrannies to tremble and make the
clouds of God to rain until with righteousness and liberty
the desert has rejoiced and blossomed as the rose.
This meeting, representing, as it does, a score of the
different phases of religious thought and expression, like
so many facets of one great diamond with its heart of fire,
is evidence most convincing that the spirit of William
Penn is abroad in our land and in this age; the spirit of
brotherly love and Christian catholicity.
William Penn was bom in turbulent times paradoxically
to become the apostle of peace, and he sprang from aris
tocracy to announce the true democracy.
There were great men in those times : soldiers and schol
ars, theologians and poets, philosophers and statesmen,
preachers and reformers. Cromwell's sword and Bunyan's
dream, Locke's great reasoning and Milton's mighty song
made that age to rival in splendor the age of Elizabeth
when Bacon and Raleigh, Hooker, Jonson and Shakespeare
shed the light of their genius upon England. But of all
the worthies of that seventeenth century, not one has
suffered less diminution of his true fame; not one has
grown more steadily majestic in the wide-world's venera
tion than William Penn. The England of the seventeenth
century bestowed upon this new world the noblest gift
within her power when she sent to America that great-
souled and inspired man. He was the one true ideal of

penn AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 49
our Colonial character and life. The triumphal arch of
our Americanism rested for its moral support upon two
strong, beautiful and majestic pillars : the character of
George Washington and the character of William Penn.
Great as were those Revolutionary heroes, the ideas of
William Penn made their heroism and their greatness
possible. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
of the United States have in them more of the life, charac
ter and spirit of William Penn than of any other one man,
or of any other six men of the Colonial times. When we
recall his contention for the integrity of the institution of
trial by jury ; his plea for the true basis and validity of law
in constitutionality; his opposition to slavery; his cham
pionship of human equality before the law; his advocacy
of religious liberty and toleration ; we must say that it was
not the spirit of Plymouth Rock, nor the spirit of James
town so manifestly as it was the spirit of the " Holy Ex
periment " that first created, inspired and animated this
" govemment of the people, by the people and for the
people." The fundamental doctrine of the Declaration,
that all men are created equal, has been credited to the
political genius of Thomas Jefferson. But, fifty years
before Jefferson was bom, William Penn taught that great
self-evident truth to the Indians on this very spot. There
fore, it was one of the inevitable equities of history that
the Declaration of Independence should have been signed
in the city of William Penn, and that the experiment of
representative self-government should have been consti
tutionally inaugurated where William Penn's " Holy Ex
periment" was begun in faith, hope and charity.
The world is following in the footsteps of this apostle of
freedom, toleration, brotherly love and peace. Two hun
dred and twenty-five years ago, William Penn proposed
arbitration to the European nations as a substitute for

5© PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
cruel and unchristian war in the settlement of interna
tional misunderstandings. The civilized world is only
just catching up with this broad-brimmed, broad-brained
statesman and philanthropist of the seventeenth century.
May that "Holy Experiment" which sprang from the
vision and dream of William Penn, international arbitra
tion, speedily make war as unpopular and as impossible
as the good Quakers have always believed it to be
unchristian and inhuman!
Mr. Gladstone, conscience incarnate in the English
statesmanship of the nineteenth century, once asked a very
startling and most significant question: " Shall the soul
of England be preserved ? " And shall we not ask, with
our great prosperity, our unparalleled wealth, our inex
haustible material resources, and with our modern tenden
cies to commercialism, shall we not ask: " Is America in
danger of losing her soul ? "
" What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole
world and lose his own soul ? " or. What shall it profit a na
tion if it shall gain the whole world and lose its own soul ?
Shall America preserve her soul ? Yes ; and for a great
and glorious national immortality if we preserve among us
in civic righteousness and our love of country and of man
kind, the spirit of William Penn.

The Chairman: I have now the pleasure to present
the representative of the great
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
Rev. W. H. Roberts, D. D., LL. D.
Remarks op Dr. Roberts.
Mr. Chairman: — It is an honor and a privilege to
represent at this notable meeting and on so historic an

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 5 1
occasion the Presbyterian Church. For the Society of
Friends and for the memory of William Penn, Presby
terians cherish high regard.
In dealing with the subject, "William Penn's Contribu
tion to Religious Liberty," it is well to emphasize, in
Presbyterian fashion, the logical and theological basis
of liberty.
That God is sovereign, and that man is therefore free,
is the foundation-truth for all human liberty. History
is the evidence that the persons who are possessed with
the inward conviction that the God of the Bible is the
Sovereign God, act always in the direction of freedom
both in civic and religious matters. This inward convic
tion is a moral force, which compels the conclusion that
all men as children of the Sovereign God are themselves
sovereigns, and therefore in their relations to one another
bbth free and equal. In the household of the Sovereign
God there are no slaves and no inferiors, but all are
brethren. That William Penn held to the truth of the sovereignty
of God and acted upon the convictions vitally connected
therewith, is shown by the fact of his choice of a name
for the city which he founded. Philadelphia, the City of
Brotherly Love, derives its name from the New Testa
ment expression, " He Philadelphia maneto, let brotherly
love continue." This expression was not a mere motto
with him, but a rule of life, based upon the sovereignty of
God and the brotherhood of man. Penn's greatest contri
bution to religious liberty was the direct outcome of his
personal faith in the divine sovereignty. Men to him
were the children of God, and therefore the rule, "Let
brotherly love continue," was to control all their conduct.
It is true that Penn was out of harmony in his day with
the majority; and he and others who thought like him,
among whom were the Presbyterians of the American

52 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

Colonies, were for a considerable time in a minority ; but
having in this land an opportunity to work out practically
their faith in their lives, they became soon a majority.
One with God is always a majority, and therefore Penn
and his co-laborers not only established civil and religious
liberty in Pennsylvania, but had also faith in a future,
into whose fullness of blessing we and our children have
entered. One practical outcome of Penn's views as to liberty,
views practically controlling the policy of the government
of the city of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania from its foundation, appeared in the oppor
tunity given, as in no other Colony, for the application of
the ideas held by him. For instance, in Pennsylvania,
and it alone, was it at the beginning of the eighteenth
century feasible to organize, without legal hindrance or
moral opposition, the Presbyterian Church as a denomi
nation. The true idea of liberty was not then held
elsewhere in the Colonies — not even in Puritan New
England, and to William Penn and the Society of Friends
the Presbyterian Church owes a perpetual debt of grati
tude. In this city where men were recognized as pos
sessed by right of freedom in religion, the denomination
was organized, prospered and grew to strength.
The principles in whicli Penn believed found also out
ward expression in a unique manner in the Liberty Bell.
When that bell, which rang out Independence in 1776,
was cast in the year 1751, it was encircled with the motto,
"Proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the
inhabitants thereof." Liberty was then a fact in Phila
delphia, and the inscription was a prophecy for the future
of liberty, not only for this republic, but for all lands
and nations, especially for that religious liberty which is
the right to be free from control by man both as to
religious opinion and religious worship.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 53

Liberty, how precious an inheritance is it! how great
our obligation to cherish and defend it! how inspiring
the outlook for the future. The allied doctrines of the
sovereignty of God and the brotherhood of man will bring
one day true freedom everywhere, accomplishing results
not by leveling down, but by leveling up; not by the
destruction of authority, but by the exaltation of law ;
not by the overthrow of kings, but by the elevation of
all men to that sovereignty which is the likeness of God
in man.

The Chairman : I now present, as representing the
REFORMED CHURCH,
the Rev. C. J. Musser, D. D.
Remarks of Dr. Musser.
Mr. Chairman: — On the walls ofthe Parliament House of
Berlin, Germany, there is an inscription, which says : "The
first right of a State is the right to exist as a State and to be
acknowledged as such." That right we who are here gath
ered together as the intellectual and spiritual descendants
of William Penn, claim not only for the State, but for
every individual in the State. And as William Penn looks
down upon us from out that great cloud of witnesses,
which from heavenly places behold us, he must be pleased
with two things. He may have a passing interest in the
army parading our streets and in the battleships riding on
the Delaware ; for in early life he was a soldier and he was
the son of an Admiral. He may be pleased to note our
factories, the smoke of which darkens our air; and our
mines, the dust of which covers our streams ; and our
railroads, which like a web, cover the land ; for Penn
was thrifty and prosperous. But he would be especially

54 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
gratified that the small Commonwealth which he founded
has grown into a great free Christian State; and secondly, he
would be pleased with this gathering of the representatives
of the historic churches, each of whom claims for himself
and for his particular people only such rights as he is will
ing that all others should enjoy.
In his day such a meeting would have been impossible
anywhere in the world. It is possible in Philadelphia, and
possible elsewhere, now, because of the spirit of those who
founded Pennsylvania. In New England on the North,
and in Maryland and Virginia on the South, the colonists
who enjoyed free thought and religious liberty themselves,
denied it to others. It was only in the territory lying in
between, where the Friends and the Germans were in the
majority, that religious liberty became a fact.
That the State, whose founding by Penn we are now
celebrating, is a free Christian State, and such as would meet
with the approval of its founder, no one can successfully
deny. The spirit of the Christian God inspires our Con
stitution and is enshrined in our public institutions.
Jesus, we are told, discovered the individual and gave to
him an imperishable sense of his infinite worth by reveal
ing to him his filial relation to the Father of us all. It
was that thought which constrained Penn to champion
the rights of men, and in that service to become a fellow
laborer with the prophets and martyrs who have toiled and
suffered that others might be free.
To give the ballot to every man, therefore, is Christian.
Universal suffrage is the first important institution in a
free State. But if we give the ballot to the citizen, we
must educate him. The public school is the second great
institution in a free State. The Friends and the Germans
built their school-houses side by side with their churches.
Our public schools are Christian in principle. Education
and religion have this aim in common, namely, to make

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 55
the most of the man and to establish and strengthen
character. But it is not enough to give men the ballot and
to train them intellectually. For it is true at all times, as
it was in the times of Lord Bacon, that the wisest may be
the meanest of all mankind. The third great idea, there
fore, that rules this free Commonwealth is the separation
of Church and State, which insures to every man the right
undisturbed to worship God as he pleases. These three
ideas: a free ballot, a free school, and a free Church are
the results of that great movement in which Penn was
such a mighty force. These three institutions are still the
defense and guarantee of our freedom. One result of that
freedom is that we of different forms, but of one faith, meet
here to-night in this historic gathering, free citizens in a
free State, servants only of one common Lord.
And now permit me in conclusion, as a representative
of the Reformed Church, to pay a loving tribute to the
great founder of the Commonwealth. For of all the good
people represented here to-night, none are greater debtors
to him than the people for whom I speak. Our ancestors
are the Palatines. They lived in that fair land along
the Rhine — a country which, in the early part of the
eighteenth century, with its cities and towns; its farms
and vineyards; its cathedrals and its churches; its univer
sities and its schools was given to fire and sword until it
was no longer a home but a desert. From that land our
ancestors went out as pilgrims and strangers. As they
journeyed down the Rhine they were robbed at every
turn. They sought out the English, their fonner allies,
but in the British Isles they were a people of a strange
tongue and of strange manners. Only in Pennsylvania
did they find a welcome and a home.
And if the Germans, no longer Germans but Americans,
have by their domestic virtues, famous since the days of
the Roman historians ; by their thrift, which has made the

56 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
land wherever they have settled rich and fragrant, and by
their religious faith have done their share, as now all
freely admit, in making Pennsylvania a great free Com
monwealth, it is all due to the fact that William Penn
made that possible by giving them the opportunity when
he gave them a new country and a new home.

The Chairman : As representing the
UNITARIAN CHURCH
I present the Rev. Charles E. St. John.
Remarks of Dr. St. John.
Mr. Chairm,an :
' ' Now let all [high praise] await
Him who care[d] not to be great
But as he save[d] or serve [d] [our] State,"
William Penn! Chivalrous adventurer under God,
with thy "holy experiment," thou has set a standard for
all adventurers for conscience' sake. Possessed thyself
of the qualities thou saidst "are requisite to a good
officer ability, clean hands, dispatch, patience, and im
partiality," thou didst live to see thy dream come true
in part, and now an ever-increasing multitude dreams
with thee!
And what a dream it was! The dream that there
should be a spot on earth which should not be ruled
by bigotry and cruelty, and where each soul might be
free to seek after God in his own way, and to utter
his convictions without fear or reservation. Nowhere
in Christendom was there such a spot until Penn founded
Philadelphia. The union of Church and State,- from which our land is
happily free, always tends to make of a divergence in

PENN and religious LIBERTY. 57

religious opinion a political offense, and in the seven
teenth century the law of the land was heavy against all
theological independence of spirit. And so, under the
stress of persecution and suffering, the Quakers came to
Pennsylvania to demonstrate to the world that there was
a wiser, juster, holier way to live.
I cannot better set forth the spirit in which they came
than by reading several quotations from the writings of
William Penn. He said: —
"Inquiry is human; blind obedience, brutal. Truth
never loses by the one, but often suffers by the other."
Again: "Force may make an hypocrite; it is faith,
grounded upon knowledge and consent, that makes a
Christian." Again he says: "True spiritual liberty is deliverance
from sin by the perfect law in the heart."
Still again : "The liberty of God's people stands in the
truth, and their communion in it, and in the perfect
spiritual law of Christ Jesus, which delivers and pre
serves them from every evil thing that doth or would
embondage." "Liberty of conscience is the free and uninterrupted
exercise of our consciences in that way of worship we are
most clearly persuaded God requires us to serve Him in,
without endangering our undoubted birthright of English
freedom." And finally a passage which, although already uttered
at this meeting, is so weighty that I must repeat it :
"We must give the liberty we ask, and cannot be false
to our principles, though it were to relieve ourselves.
We have good-will to all men, and would have none
suffer for a truly sober and conscientious dissent on any
hand." There have always been men who stood ready to suffer

58 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
for their convictions. The list of the noble army of
martyrs who have died for their faith, died in the struggle
for personal liberty, is long and glorious. Many have
demanded liberty, but how often before Penn spoke can
you find men craving real religious liberty for others?
Indeed, it was a new note when Penn cried, "We must
give the liberty we ask!" The Puritan came to New
England to win freedom for himself and his especial
views. The Quaker came to Pennsylvania to give liberty
to all men and all opinions. A "holy experiment" in
very truth, a new and prophetic note in the world's reli
gious life. It was an inevitable outcome of the effort to
live by that golden rule : we must do unto others as we
would have them do unto us. We must always try to see
the other man's point of view. We must be just to every
man. We must give the liberty we ask. We must main
tain a free field for all and ask God's blessing upon every
sincere endeavor.
Let us understand one another! Here is a little band
holding peculiar opinions. Let them have freedom!
Here is a new method of dealing with sickness. Let it
be tried ! Let all honest striving after good have a free
field ! If any movement be a mistake, it will fail. If it
be useful, God will bless it. Meanwhile, let us all be
tolerant and brotherly, asking the blessing of God upon
all that are sincere. We need our various sects. Let us
strive to make them as strong as possible in order to do
good unto men with them. But let us respect one an
other, and each rejoice in the other's success. We should
make an end of bigotry and persecution, and use all
denominations and creeds in a united effort against sin,
ignorance, and misery.
A free field, and God's blessing upon all that are trying
to make it a kingdom of God ! That was the spirit and
message of William Penn.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 59
The Chairman : The hour is late, but I still reluc
tantly introduce the last speaker of the evening, the repre
sentative of the
UNIVERSALIST CHURCH
the Rev. E. C. Sweetser, D. D.
Remarks of Dr. Sweetser.
Mr. Chairm,an : — Astronomers tell us that some of the
stars are so far above us that a ray of light takes thousands
of years in traversing the intervening distance, and that
therefore, if one of them should be suddenly blotted out
of existence, the light which it has been emitting for many
generations past would keep on coming to this world for
many future generations, and no one on the earth would
be aware of its destruction till the last ray which it emitted
just before its destruction should have had time to arrive —
that is to say, till as many thousand years from now as a
ray of light requires for traversing the distance. In the
meantime it would continue to illumine the night, not
only for us, but for our distant posterity.
"So when a good man dies,
For years beyond our ken,
The light he leaves behind him lies
Upon the paths of men. "
Such a man was the founder of this city and Common
wealth. He was one of those of whom the Bible says that
they shine as the stars forever and ever. His statue, of
gigantic size, on the summit of our City Hall, overlooks
the great community which is now uniting to honor him ;
and more and more, as time goes by, the man himself
looms up above the mass of our common humanity as one
of the greatest characters whom our race has produced —
great as a thinker, great as a statesman, great as a civil

6o penn and RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ruler, great as a religious leader, great as a controversialist
in defense of the truth, great as a philanthropist, great as
a reformer, great as a moral hero, great as a man.
To-night we commemorate him chiefly for his greatness
as a religious leader, and especially as the champion of
two great principles in religion which should never be dis
sociated. Those two principles he plainly indicated when he was
criticised and stigmatized on a certain occasion for insist
ing that the English Protestants should respect the right
of the Roman Catholics to hold their own religious views
and observe their chosen forms of worship. Listen to what
he said in reply to his critics: "I abhor two principles in
religion, and pity them that hold them: the first is obedi
ence upon authority without conviction; and the other,
destroying them that differ from me for God's sake. Such
a religion is without judgment, though not without teeth."
To his way of thinking, a person who held those two prin
ciples — that of obedience to authority without personal
conviction, and that of persecuting others for holding
different opinions — was as great an anomaly as a newborn
baby having a full-grown set of teeth, utterly lacking in
judgment, but not lacking in power to bite and to injure —
a peculiarly dangerous form of childishness.
Over against those two principles, which he so strongly
condemned, he set his own principles of independency or
freedom in religion, on the one hand, and toleration of the
beliefs of his fellowmen, on the other. Allowing no man
or body of men on the earth to dictate to his individual
conscience or to prescribe any set of religious beliefs for
him, he insisted that the same freedom which he claimed
for himself should be given to everyone, and that no-one
should be persecuted by word or by deed on account of his
religious beliefs or observances. That was a wonderful
advance over the sentiment which generally prevailed in

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 6l
his time ; and even yet, sad to say, a large part of the world
has not caught up with it.
But such a meeting as we are holding here to-night
shows that progress is being made, and that he did not
bear his witness entirely in vain. His spirit seems to be
with us to-night; and, being dead, he yet speaks to us,
telling us to be unfalteringly true to our consciences,
faithful to the inner-light, standing fast in our Christian
liberty, at whatsoever sacrifice of popularity or possessions
or personal comfort, and at the same time to treat those
who differ with us in a kindly, friendly. Christian spirit,
according to the golden rule. In Philadelphia, of all
places in the world, those two principles should prevail,
and anyone who is faithless to them should feel rebuked
and ashamed whenever he lifts his eyes to the broad-
brimmed statue of William Penn on our City Hall.
Let us, then, be followers of him, even as he also was of
Christ ; for, above everything else, William Penn was a
Christian. A great leader of men, he was a meek and
faithful follower of the Crucified One. The light which
he sheds on the paths of men is reflected from Him who is
the light of the world. God help us all to walk in that
light until our traveling days are done.

62 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

A REMARKABLE GATHERING.
[Evening Bulletin, October 7, 1908.]
There was a meeting last night which should be long
remembered among the notable and agreeable events
that are now going on in the city, for it exemplified a
spirit which truly entered into the foundation of Phila
delphia. At this meeting a leading representative of every im
portant religious faith in Philadelphia made his appear
ance to testify to its belief in the principle of religious
tolerance and the duty which each owes to the other
and to all in living together as citizens in a common amity
and good wUl.
There were not fewer than sixteen denominations
represented, including the Roman Catholics, the various
branches of Protestantism and the Hebrews, and for
once they all found common ground together in a Friends'
meeting-house, to express their appreciation of the
character of the city's founder and the benevolent
service which he performed for men of all creeds in his
capacity as a statesman or lawgiver.
None of the ceremonial exercises of the week is likely
to be more significant and more impressive than this
meeting, simple as it was. May the broad-minded spirit
which animated it enter into every church or congrega
tion and spread anew those beneficent principles of tol
erance which will always be associated with the memory
of William Penn.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 63

A GREAT POWER FOR GOOD.
[Philadelphia Press, October 8, 1908.]
The two meetings over which Mr. Isaac H. Clothier
and President Joseph Swain presided this week in the
Race Street and Cherry Street Friends' meeting-houses,
at which the clergymen of all denominations were gath
ered to express their appreciation of William Penn and
his tolerance and Christian character, were of all the
celebrations this week the one in which he would have
rejoiced. To him, 225 years ago, the presence in the same relig
ious edifice of Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic,
Friend and Episcopalian, Presbyterian and Baptist,
would have seemed inconceivable. All, but the Friend,
the Jew and the Baptist, were in his day refusing toler
ance to others and protecting their spiritual faith by the
fleshly arms of the law.
For all this has to-day passed, but there remains dif
ferences and divisions which this meeting obliterated in
a common testimony of reverence and admiration for
a good man. There is nothing in the moral improve
ment and advance of Philadelphia which these various
communions and denominations could not accomplish
if they acted together. Their collective influence and
effort safeguards the city and leads it on to better things.
As the years go on, the value of united action, not only
in commemorating the past but in improving the present,
suppressing its evils and promoting its moral growth,
will grow plain to all represented in this remarkable
union of the religious interests of Philadelphia.

64 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

RELIGIOUS TRIBUTES TO PENN.
[From the Philadelphia Record, October 7, 1908.]
One of the most interesting and eminently appropriate
features of the Founder's Week Celebration occurred
last night when representatives of sixteen religious bodies
made brief addresses on "William Penn, Statesman and
First Champion of Religious Liberty," at two Friends'
meeting-houses, Race Street and Cherry Street. Cath
olic and Protestant, Hebrew and Christian, liberal and
orthodox, paid tribute to the memory of the founder of
this city, a man of education and high breeding, of
wealth and fashion, who devoted his life to a religious
society that was ridiculed far more than the Salvation
Army is to-day, and was harshly persecuted besides.
He was a courtier and a pietist, a man of the world
in its better significance and a preacher of the Gospel in
its simplest and barest form. He was a statesman a
century ahead of his time in his comprehension of the
possibilities of religious liberty and his conception of the
meaning of civil liberty, and the world has not yet caught
up with him in his vision of peace among mankind main
tained, not by superior military resources, but by a
policy of unbroken justice and kindliness.
While Penn established his colony as a refuge for per
secuted Quakers, his purposes went far beyond that; he
sought to give, and measurably succeeded in giving while
the Quakers remained in control of the colony, an ex
ample of civil society administered on the principles of
the Gospel. Nothing in this entire week is so suitable
a commemoration of the founding of Philadelphia as these
two meetings to listen to the estimates of its founder by
Catholic and Quaker, Presbyterian and Unitarian, He
brew and Lutheran; ministers of the Mennonites who

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 65
followed Penn here, of the Anglican communion, of the
Congregationalists who drove Quakers out of Boston, of
the Baptists who shared the same fate, of the colored
churches that have always found their most faithful
friends among the Quakers, of the Universalists, Lu
therans, Reformed Churchmen, Methodists and Disciples.
The central feature of the belief of the Society of
Friends was the doctrine of the inward light, which is
but another name for spiritual religion, whose sway is
increasingly felt in all Christian communions, so that
while the society's numbers have always been small, it
may justly claim its influence to have extended deeply
through other religious bodies.

66 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

AFTERMATHS.
[From Friends' Intelligencer, Tenth month 31, 1908.]
"The Great Occasion," as Archbishop Ryan had
previously styled the meeting of Tenth month 6th, is
now nearly three weeks past, and yet the interest therein,
so far from dying out, seems to increase as we draw farther
from it, and are thus enabled to more nearly estimate it
in its true proportions, as a mountain from a not too near
view. Having been the accidental Chairman of the meet
ing, and thus necessarily somewhat conspicuous in con
nection therewith, I have perhaps heard more of the effect
it has had upon the community, through many communi
cations which have reached me from widely different
sources, than has fallen to the lot of others. Not only
from deeply interested members of our own Society have
the communications come, but the expression from clergy
men and laymen of the different churches is surprisingly
great. The impres.sion which seems to prevail is that the
meeting was not only an event in the religious history of
the city, but that it almost marked an era.
When the meeting was first proposed, while I thought
the idea a grand one, I feared that members of the different
churches sufficiently eminent to be representative might
not participate. Such an affair had never before to my
knowledge been attempted, and while I determined to do
all I could to aid it, I feared the result. The result is now
before us and it proves the fears were groundless. While
just after the meeting I was more than satisfied and even
marveled at the completeness of its success, I did not then
estimate its importance in its true proportions. But the
expression which has come to me since, even extraordinary
in its quality and character, has led me to believe that

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 67
right here at home, and in our own meeting-house, an
event has occurred which will become historic, and per
haps have an effect, not to be estimated now, upon the
future relations of the religious denominations in Philadel
phia and the nation. That it may not be considered I have
been led, from my personal interest in the meeting, to
overestimate its importance and its probable effect, it may
be said that the affair has grown on me day by day since
the holding of the meeting, partly no doubt from reflection,
but chiefly from the impression made upon the minds of
others, information of which has poured in upon me by
letters and by personal expression ever since, and con
tinues up to the date of this writing. Of the speakers
of the evening I have personally heard from the Catholic
Monsignor, the Jewish Rabbi, the Episcopalian representa
tive. Dr. Tomkins ; the Presbyterian, Dr. Roberts ; the Bap
tist, Dr. Conwell ; the Lutheran, Dr. Delk ; and all expressed
to me their profound appreciation. Numerous others, some
of them not in attendance on the occasion, have expressed
their great satisfaction, not unmixed with wonder.
I have in mind a prominent member of the Episcopal
Church who came to me and said, " Such an event could
not have been possible ten years ago, and I would not have
believed it possible even now." After a week's absence
in New England he spoke to me again, and said his
interest and wonder had not grown less, and that during
his absence he had discussed the matter with a number of
his friends, church members. One of them, an eminent
clergyman of Boston, while agreeing with him in his
estimate of the value of the meeting, asked a question
which we. Friends, may well ponder over — that is :
Whether the feeling in the Society, which led its members
to speak of churches as "steeple-houses" and concemed
religious workers as "hirelings" still exists? My in
formant told him that while it is trae that a generation

68 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
ago some Friends made use of such expressions, no such
narrowness in religious matters as led to the expressions
referred to exists among Friends nowadays. The letter
from Rabbi Krauskopf to Henry W. Wilbur, which fol
lows this, is an evidence of that eminent churchman's
estimate of the importance of the meeting, and I have
since had a note from him telling me that his meeting
would occur next First-day, Eleventh month ist (not
their Sabbath) at the Temple, North Broad Street, and
asking me to be present as his guest, which invitation I
am only too glad to accept.
I have felt that it is perhaps fitting I should make the
present expression to our interested "Friends," and I
would also thus acknowledge numbers of kindly letters
from our own people, which I have not had the oppor
tunity to acknowledge, other than in this way, but all
of which I greatly appreciate.
In conclusion, is it too much to hope that the Society
of Friends of this day, though small in numbers may,
by faithfulness to the spirit which led to their founda
tion, be an instrument in the hands of Divine Grace, to
assist in spreading abroad in the world the principles
of religious liberty as expressed in civil government by
William Penn in the settlement of this city and State,
and that as the remarkable manifestation referred to
of the coming together in one body of all the historic
Churches, and our own Friends' meeting-house being
chosen for the gathering without any effort on our part,
may it not indeed be held as a token not only of the evi
dence of religious liberty as enunciated by the founder,
but as pointing to a still further ultimate advance, that
of Christian fellowship, including all the Churches,
which though varied in faith and differing in forms of
worship, acknowledge the common Father of us all.
THC
Wynnewood, Pa., 10th Month 25, 1908.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 69

THE SIXTEEN PREACHERS AT THE
PENN CELEBRATION.
[From the Friends' Intelligencer, Eleventh raonth 7, 1908.]
[A Discourse at Tempi,e Keneseth Israei., by Rabbi Joseph
Krauskopf, D.D., Phii,adei,phia, Ei,eventh Month, 1908.]
Opinions differ as to the worth of Philadelphia's
recent celebration of the two hundred and twenty-
fifth anniversary of its founding. Some, while con
ceding that the affair was, in every respect, a brilliant
one, are quite emphatic in their statements that it
was a needless expenditure of time and means and
energy; that commerce, industry, education and the
ordinary routine of life were seriously interfered with
for more than a week; that the money expended on
the magnificent pageantries and processions and deco
rations might have been more wisely spent on per
manent improvements; on providing labor for the
unemployed; on affording accommodations for the
thousands of children for whom there is no room in
our schools.
Personally, I am of the opinion that, while the needs
of our city should at all times receive our full attention,
celebrations such as we recently had are of great value,
and should be encouraged. In a manner not equaled
by any other mode of instruction, they tell the story
of the rise and development of our city; they give
object-lessons of our vast enterprises; they tell of the
part our city had in the molding of our nation, and
the result is: greater civic pride, larger patriotism,
keener appreciation of our possibilities, failings and
duties.

70 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
There was one feature, however, in connection with
the recent Founders' Week Celebration, concerning
the value of which there has been no difference of
opinion; conceming which there has been but one
thought: that it alone was worth all the expenditures
incurred. It was the gathering at the Friends' meeting
houses. Race and Cherry Streets, above Fifteenth,
at which representatives of sixteen religious organiza
tions addressed the two large audiences on the subject
of William Penn's Contribution to Religious Liberty.
Most of you probably hear of that meetuig for the
first time. Its taking place was not heralded with
the blare and glare with which other events of that
week were announced, nor did the press believe it to
be attractive enough for the general public to give it
the pictorial space it liberally gave to other gatherings.
Yet, a more impressive sight than that of represen
tatives of sixteen different denominations, sitting side
by side, in a Quaker meeting-house, a Catholic, Rt.
Rev. Monsignor, on the one side of the Chairman, a
Rabbi on the other, and to the right and left of these,
Baptist, Congregational, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Men
nonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Univer
salist, and so on — a more impressive sight than this
has rarely been witnessed. And words more inspiring
than those spoken that night have rarely been heard,
and a more inspired audience has rarely been seen,
an inspiration that changed the characteristic silence
of Quaker meetings to frequent and rapturous out
bursts of applause. The street processions and the
naval review of that week will be forgotten ; the memory
of the decorations and the fireworks will fade away;
the remembrance of that meeting will continue vivid
in the minds of those who witnessed it, and in many
a family it will echo from generation to generation.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 71
One would have naturally expected that preachers
representing such widely differing denominations would
differ widely in their remarks that night. But not
a clashing thought nor differing sentiment was heard
or felt. While viewpoints differed, the lessons pointed
out were strikingly alike. All expressed their pro
found appreciation of the character and religious prin
ciples of William Penn, the Friend. All acknowledged
the great debt our country and the world at large owe
to him for the precious gift of religious liberty in which
he founded our city and State, through which he helped
to shape the destiny of our nation, and by which he
ushered in a new epoch in the world of religion. All
expressed or implied their conviction that differences
in theological opinions should and must not constitute
a reason for ill-will between man and man; that, what
ever our creed or form or rite, mankind constitutes
a common brotherhood, under the common Father
hood of God.
What a change in the 225 years since William Penn
founded the City of Brotherly Love! Think of repre
sentatives of sixteen different denominations sitting
peacefully side by side, in the year 1683, expressing
their esteem of each other personally, and their respect
for each other's faith! In that year. Catholic and
Protestant slaughtered each other for the love of God,
and both visited endless cruelties upon the Jew, for
the sake of Christ. In that year, the most horrible
word to the ears of Protestant Englishmen was "Papist,"
and to the ears of Catholic Frenchmen and German
was "Huguenot" and "Lutheran," and to the ears of
both Catholic and Protestant was the word "Jew."
In that year, thousands of Catholics languished in
English prisons ; tens of thousands of Protestant French
men were either violently forced into the Catholic

72 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Church or driven into cruel exile; hundreds of Jews
were bumt at the stake in the market-places of Seville,
Granada, Cordova, Madrid; and hundreds of thousands
of their brethren were lashed and hounded over the
face of the earth by both Catholic and Protestant. In
that year no Catholic could sit in the English Parlia
ment, no Protestant could enjoy civil rights in Catholic
countries, and the Jew could enjoy but few human
rights in the few Catholic or Protestant countries in'
which he was tolerated.
In that year, even in the New World, religious liberty
was yet little understood. The Puritan colonies still
extended Christian welcome and equal rights only to
those who shared their religious views, and they ex
communicated and persecuted as enemies of God all
who differed from them even in trifles of belief. Only
too well did the followers of Penn remember how Puritan
intolerance had wreaked vengeance on their Quaker
brethren, when some twenty-five years earlier they
had endeavored to effect a settlement in Massachusetts;
how they were imprisoned and banished; how they
were whipped, branded, mutilated, even hanged, if
they dared to return. And but for the labors of such
men as Roger Williams and William Penn, the narrow
ness of the Puritans and the intolerance of European
countries might have extended over our land, and might
have put a fatal blight upon those early settlements,
which, under the breath of religious and political liberty,
have grown and prospered, and have become mighty
on the face of the earth.
Our country owes much to the spirit of the Puritans,
but infinitely more to the spirit which Roger Williams
and William Penn and their followers implanted upon
our shores. Especially here, within our city, were laid
the foundations of those principles of right and justice

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 73
that have made it possible for our country to become
the freest and mightiest under the sun. If Plymouth
Rock is the cradle of our nation, Philadelphia, the city
of Penn's founding, is the cradle of our liberties, and
as such the foundation of our greatness. Without
Philadelphia, Plymouth Rock would have availed us
little. It is the Liberty — religious and political — that
had its birth on the banks of the Delaware, which shone
forth like a beacon of light into a dark world, that at
tracted and guided hither the oppressed and persecuted
of other faiths and peoples, and who, in return for the
privilege of worshiping God in accordance with the
dictates of their conscience, gave the best that in them
lay toward the development of their new home. Great
as is our reverence for our Independence Hall, profound
as is the honor we show our Liberty Bell, sacred as
is the memory of Washington and Jefferson and Franklin
who, within our city, shaped the destiny of our Nation,
no less sacred to us is, and must continue to be, the
memory of William Penn, whose breadth of spirit and ¦
depth of mind and largeness of heart have contributed
mightily toward the power and glory that have come
unto our Nation.
And to none can the name of William Penn be more
sacred than to us, of the Jewish faith. We honor his
memory as we do that of the foremost of our leaders;
we reverence his people as we reverence our own. The
long story of our persecution bears no testimony against
the Society of Friends. Christian in profession, they
have ever proved themselves Christian in practice. It
is difficult to tell what the Jew's fate might have been
in the New World had Roger Williams and William
Penn not arrived upon our shores. The small Jewish
colony that had landed in New Amsterdam some thirty
years earlier had met with but a scanty welcome from

74 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
the Dutch. From the Massachusetts Puritans the
Jew would have received no welcome at all had he
attempted to settle among them. In the colonies of
Roger Williams and William Penn he found not only
no opposition to his settling but also the privilege to
worship God in accordance with his convictions.
Much as I admire the Puritans, and, in recognition
of their glorious achievements, readily as I forgive their
many offenses, still, I cannot but deplore that narrowness
that could not extend to others the religious liberty they
had sought for themselves. According to their concep
tion, he who believed not as they did, could only be evU,
and exert only an evil influence upon the community,
and therefore could not be tolerated among them.
Such was not the belief here in William Penn's colony.
More yet than the Puritans, had the Friends suffered for
their faith's sake, and, because of their suffering, had
they, like the Puritans, forsaken the Old World, that they
might enjoy religious liberty in the New. But, having
themselves been made to suffer for differing in faith from
others, they scorned doing to others what they had not
wanted others to do to them. Believing that God reveals
Himself to all men by means of an "Inner Light," and
that this light, like all light, manifests itself in different
modes of illumination, they recognized as much of God
in the Jewish and Indian mode of worship as in that of
the Christian, and, therefore, unlike other Christians,
they entertained brotherly feelings toward every Christian
sect, accorded friendly treatment to the Jew, cultivated
equitable relationship with the Indian, took active steps,
from the first, toward the emancipation of the negro
slave. Accepting the ethical teachings of the Rabbi of
Nazareth, they believed in non-resistance, in not only
doing no evil but even in retuming good for evil, in

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 75
loving God with all their hearts, and their fellowmen,
irrespective of race, creed or color, like themselves.
They believed it to be the worst of all errors to imagine
that one particular creed is the depository of all the
religious truth there is, and that, for that reason, it is
its divine appointed provmce to persecute all others for
not accepting it. They recognized in all religious sects
a unity of spiritual aspiration amid a diversity of creeds
and forms and rites, and, therefore, they welcomed the
unity and respected the diversity. Divining almost
instinctively the pagan accretions to the New Testament,
they discarded or ignored — as do the Jews — the creeds
and dogmas that were derived from them, and concemed
themselves all the more with the spiritual and moral
teachings of the Nazarene Master. Early they cut
themselves aloof from mythological fancies and theological
controversies, and, as a consequence, few denominations
have found more sweetness and light and peace in their
own, and have extended as much of their blessings to
others, as has the Society of Friends. Quietly, unob
trusively, peacefully, their spirit found its way into
other religious denominations of our land. Like a leaven,
it prepared the soil, and gradually it evolved that spirit
of religious and political liberty that echoes in the
Declaration of Independence ; that stands graven etemally
in our Constitution, which has become an integral part
of the American people and an inspiration and model to
other nations.
Who that lifts his eyes to the broad-brimmed statue
of William Penn, on our City Hall, and reflects upon the
debt of gratitude the world owes to him, can help wishing
that all who professed Christianity had become like unto
him and his people?
The long-expected Messianic Age would long since
have dawned. There would now have been peace on

76 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
earth and good- will among men. The prophet Isaiah's
dream would have been fulfilled, — swords would have
been beaten into plowshares, and spears into pruning-
hooks; nation would not have lifted sword against nation,
neither would there have been war any more. Might
would no longer have constituted right. The Jew, who
has given the Christian world its most cherished treasures,
would not have been rewarded with cruelty and outrage
inflicted by Christian hand. The Indian would not have
been first brutalized, then robbed of his all, then killed
off, by those who professed themselves followers of the
gentle Jesus. We would not have witnessed the strange
anomaly of William Penn, the opponent of arms and
armies and navies, commemorated by means of military
procession and naval review. We would not have seen
the sad spectacle of rulers, professing themselves followers
of the Prince of Peace, yet constituting themselves heads
of Christian denominations, eager to wage cruel wars
and ceaselessly preparing for them. We would not have
been confronted with the ludicrous practice of seeing
fortunes squandered on the hopeless task of converting
Jews to Christianity, when there is not a noble, historical
teaching in Christianity that is not Jewish ; when there is
not a virtue possessed by Christian that is not possessed
by Jew, nor a vice possessed by Jew which, judging by
penal records, is not found to a larger degree among
Christians. And who that saw and heard that night the representa
tives of the sixteen leading denominations of our city
did not go away feeling the better for having come,
feeling that that meeting was one step nearer to the
realization of the hope of seeing mankind federated as a
Common Brotherhood, under no other creed than Love
of God and Love of Man? Under the spell which the
story of the life and labors of William Penn cast that

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 77
night, how insignificant seemed those theological differ
ences that make impossible a hearing of a preacher of
another denomination on the pulpit platforms of some of
those denominations that were represented among the
sixteen that night ! A widening of hearts and a narrow
ing of partition-lines between denominations should be
one of the results of that meeting that night; raising
ethics above theology, practice above profession, deed
above creed, should be another. Once the Churches shall
have leamed to live and labor together in peace and
unity, it will not be long before there will be Glory unto
God, for then there will be peace on earth, and good-will
among men.

78 PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

Philadelphia, Nov. 17, 1908.
Rev. H. Richard Harris, D. D., Philadelphia.
My dear Doctor: — With this I enclose Rabbi Kraus
kopf 's address, feeling sure it will interest you. I have
sent copies to England, to President Fetterolf of Girard
College, and to several other friends, and have spoken to
others both about the address and its theme, the remark
able Wm. Penn Memorial Service of Founders' Week.
Am I right in my judgment that it was an impressive sign
of disintegration in the walls of partition ?
Surely such Founders of sects as George Fox, John
Wesley, even the stern John Calvin, would now rejoice
to see their followers coming nearer to oneness in the
service of the King of Righteousness and the Prince
of Peace. Very sincerely yours,
WM. WATERALL.

PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 79

Philadelphia, Nov. 19, 1908.
My dear Mr. Water all: — Many thanks for your kind
ness in sending me a copy of Rabbi Krauskopf 's lecture
on the religious meeting in the Friends' Meeting House,
held as a part of the programme for the celebration of
Founders' Week. It is admirable both in form and spirit,
and appreciates very justly the significance of that gather
ing of people of all the religious bodies, in which the
unity of the spirit in the bond of peace was so finely mani
fested. It is a sign that Christ is still in the ship, and is
making His redeeming power felt even while the storms
are raging. It is also a proof of the gradual advance of
His spirit of love, peace and good-will to its kingdom over
human nature. I can myself remember when such a
meeting would have been impossible in this country ;
when prejudice and narrow judgment would have ex
cluded Hebrews and Catholics from being associated with
Protestant Christians in such a service. There were good
men in those days, but they had not yet learned Christ in
all the breadth and fullness of His spirit. How thankful
we should be to have lived to see the day when men and
women no longer permit their hearts to be hardened and
their sympathies chilled by differences of opinion in reli
gion, but are glad to give play to their higher and better
feelings, and find through them their spiritual unity in
Christ. Opinions will always separate men, but the deep
est and truest feelings will always unite them. Christ's
work is to stir those sacred depths of feeling ; those depths

8o PENN AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
of faith and hope, and love and good-will, out of which go
forth the real spirit and the real experience of human
brotherhood and fellowship. This remarkable assemblage
of men and women of differing religious opinions, united
in fellowship and sympathy in their admiration and praise
of the genuine Christian character of William Penn, gives
unmistakable evidence that Christ's work is going on to
fulfilment, and will not cease until the kingdoms of this
world shall become the Kingdom of our God and His
Christ forever.
With sincere regards. Yours very truly,
H. RICHARD HARRIS.

PENN AND R:ELIGI0US LIBERTY.

CONCLUSION.
As this record goes to press two months after the meet
ing, the sum of the testimony from many sources is to the
effect that the most significant and important event of
Founders' Week
was the coming together of the representatives of
Sixteen Religious Denominations
as herein described. The spectacular incidents and dem
onstrations of the week are already fading from men's
minds and will soon be at most a doubtful memory ; but
it is believed that the impressive and important exercises
of the one evening will remain an object-lesson of spiritual
significance in the minds of all who were favored to be
present ; that the effects will be wide-reaching and endur
ing, and that when the next celebration comes, whether it
be twenty-five, fifty or one hundred years, and the present
participants have long since passed away, the influence of
the occasion may remain an incentive and an inspiration
to a still farther advance toward lowering the walls of
partition and as pointing toward the ultimate realization
of religious liberty and religious fellowship.
December 5, 1908.

KETTERLINU8, PHILADELPHIA

YALE UNIVERSITY

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