William Penn realized his dream. He became the Conqueror of the World.
Indeed, he conquered not one world, but two. Or perhaps, after all, they
were merely two hemispheres of the selfsame world. One was the World
_Within_; the other was the World _Without_; and, of the two, the
_first_ is always the harder to conquer.
The victory that overcometh _the world_! What is _the world_? The
Puritans talked much about _the world_; and Penn was the contemporary of
the Puritans. Cromwell died just as the admiral was preparing to send
his son to Oxford. Whilst at Cork, Penn sat listening to Thomas Loe's
sermon on _the faith that overcometh the world_, John Milton was putting
the finishing touches to _Paradise Lost_, and John Bunyan was
languishing in Bedford Gaol. Each of the three had something to say
about _the world_. To Cromwell it was, as he told his daughter,
'whatever cooleth thine affection after Christ.' Bunyan gave his
definition of _the world_ in his picture of Vanity Fair. Milton likened
_the world_ to an obscuring mist--a fog that renders dim and indistinct
the great realities and vitalities of life. It is an atmosphere that
chills the finest delicacies and sensibilities of the soul. It is too
subtle and too elusive to be judged by external appearances. In his fine
treatment of _the world_, Bishop Alexander cites, by way of
illustration, still another of the contemporaries of William Penn. He
paints a pair of companion pictures. He depicts a gay scene at the
frivolous and dissolute Court of Charles the Second; and, beside it, he
describes a religious assembly of the same period. The _first_ gathering
appears to be altogether worldly: the _second_ has nothing of _the
world_ about it. Yet, he says, Mary Godolphin lived her life at Court
without being tainted by any shadow of worldliness, whilst many a man
went up to those solemn assemblies with _the world_ raging furiously
within his soul!
William Penn saw _the world_ in his heart that day as he listened to
Thomas Loe; and, in order that he might overcome it, he embraced the
faith that the Quaker proclaimed. '_This is the victory that overcometh
the world, even our faith._' And by that faith he overcame _the world_.
Many years afterwards he himself told the story.
'The Lord first appeared to me,' he says, in his _Journal_, 'in the
twelfth year of my age, and He visited me at intervals afterwards and
gave me divine impressions of Himself. He sustained me through the
darkness and debauchery of Oxford, through all my experiences in France,
through the trials that arose from my father's harshness, and through
the terrors of the Great Plague. He gave me a deep sense of the vanity
of the world and of the irreligiousness of the religions of it. The
glory of the world often overtook me, and I was ever ready to give
myself up to it.' But, invariably, _the faith that overcometh the world_
proved victorious. In his monumental _History of the United States_,
Bancroft says that, splendid as were the triumphs of Penn, his greatest
conquest was the conquest of his own soul. Extraordinary as was the
greatness of his mind; remarkable, both for universality and precision,
as were the vast conceptions of his genius; profound as was his
scholarship, and astute as was his diplomacy; the historian is convinced
that, in the last resort, his greatest contribution to history is the
development and influence of his impressive and robust character. 'He
was prepared for his work,' Bancroft says, 'by the severe discipline of
life; and love without dissimulation formed the basis of his being. The
sentiment of cheerful humanity was irrepressibly strong in his bosom;
benevolence gushed prodigally from his ever overflowing heart; and when,
in his late old age, his intellect was impaired and his reason
prostrated, his sweetness of disposition rose serenely over the clouds
of disease.' The winsomeness of his ways and the courtliness of his
bearing survived for many months the collapse of his memory and the loss
of his powers of speech.
Such was his faith's _first_ victory. It was the conquest of the world
_within_.