I have named the illustrious GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS as the man,
above all, who first conceived, sketched, and propounded the grand
idea of such a state. What other colonies reached only through varied
experiments and gradual developments, Pennsylvania had clear and
mature, in ideal and in fact, from the very earliest beginning; and
the royal heart and brain of Sweden were its source.
Gustavus Adolphus was born a prince in the regular line of Sweden's
ancient kings. His grandfather, Gustavus Vasa, was a man of thorough
culture, excellent ability, and sterling moral qualities. When in
Germany he was an earnest listener to Luther's preaching, became his
friend and correspondent, a devout confessor and patron of the
evangelic faith, and the wise establisher of the Reformation in his
kingdom.
Adolphus inherited all his grandfather's high qualities. He was the
idol of his father, Charles IX., and was devoutly trained from
earliest childhood in the evangelic faith, educated in thorough
princely style, familiarized with governmental affairs from the time
he was a boy, and developed into an exemplary, wise, brave, and
devoted Christian man and illustrious king.
He ascended the throne when but seventeen years of age, extricated his
country from many internal and external troubles, organized for it a
new system, and became the hero-sovereign of his age. He was one of
the greatest of men, in cabinet and in field as well as in faith and
humble devotion. He was a broad-minded statesman and patriot, one of
the most beloved of rulers, and a philanthropist of the purest order
and most comprehensive views. That evangelical Christianity which
Luther and his coadjutors exhumed from the superincumbent rubbish of
the Middle Ages was dearer to him than his throne or his life. The
pure Gospel of Christ was to him the most precious of human
possessions. For it he lived, and for it he died. One of his
deep-souled hymns, sung along with Luther's _Ein Feste Burg_ at the
head of his armies in his campaigns for Christian liberty, has its
place in our Church-Book to-day. And the bright peculiar star which
appeared in the heavens at the time he was born fitly heralded his
royal career.
Cut off in the midst of a succession of victories in the thirty-eighth
year of his age, the influence of his mind nevertheless served to give
another constitution to the Germanic peoples, established the right
and power of evangelical Christianity to be and to be unmolested on
the earth, and confirmed a new element in the development and progress
of the European races and of mankind. With the loftiest conceptions of
human life, a thorough acquaintance with the agencies which govern the
world, a mind in all respects in thorough subjection to an
enlightened Christian conscience, a magnanimity and liberality of
sentiment far in advance of his age, and an untarnished devotion which
marked his history to its very end, his name stands at the head of the
list of illustrious Christian kings and human benefactors.[33]