who taught a modified form of the original doctrines of predestination. After this he went to Italy and returned home in 1664, a scholar, swordsman, diplomat, courtier, orator and author, and immediately began the study of law at Lincoln's Inn. The war with Holland breaking out, he went with his father on that naval campaign and personally brought back despatches to Charles II. As to how he presented them on this occasion we are ignorant!

The Admiral then sent him to look after family property in Ireland and to take a small office under the Lord Lieutenant. He became infused with military ardour and volunteered in the expedition sent to quell an insurrection at Carrickfergus. One day in Cork he heard that his old Quaker acquaintance, Thomas Loe, was about to preach at a meeting of the Friends. Penn attended that meeting. The deep convictions of his heart were awakened from the partial sleep into which worldly occupation had lulled them. He knew that, cost what it might, he was in mind. and soul one with the Quakers, and one of their band he determined to become. He joined them then and there, and with eighteen others was actually committed to prison by the Mayor of Cork for having formed what the authorities were pleased to call "a tumultuous assembly!"

The sequence may be readily guessed. The Admiral recalled his son with all possible speed! But nothing now could persuade Penn to alter his course, and so, disowned. by his father, at the age of twenty-four, he became a recognized minister of the Society of Friends, and in a very short time after, a prisoner in the Tower!

The cause of his imprisonment was the publication of three pamphlets, Truth Exalted, The Guide Mistaken, and The Sandy Foundation Shaken, which so roused the antagonism of the Bishop of London that to the Tower he was

sent. The irony of it was that from the windows of this grim fortress he could look across at his own home, for the Penns had a fine house on the East side of Tower Hill (then a very fashionable quarter) within a court adjoining London Wall. When we reflect that the name London Wall stands today for perhaps the busiest telephone exchange of the metropolis, we can hardly believe that little more than two hundred years ago the district surrounding the Tower was a pleasant rural suburb, with old gardens rich in flowers and fruit.

It must have been galling indeed to the proud and peppery Admiral to know that his brilliant heir was suffering the indignity of imprisonment within sight of his own windows. To William the experience only brought a measure of intense spiritual exaltation. It was here in the Tower, surrounded as he was by a ghastly host of terrible memories and the names of many a gallant Englishman who had never issued from behind those walls alive, that he wrote his most remarkable treatise "No Cross, No Crown." The Quakers had indeed gained a splendid champion for their cause, for Penn, with his liberal education and aristocratic advantages, united to his fervent religious conviction, was able to take the most beautiful and profound tenets of the Quaker faith and follow them to their logical conclusion with the highest degree of insight and spirituality.

"No Cross, No Crown" bears the stamp of youth in the multiplicity and simplicity of its classical illustrations and allusions. It springs from the active brain of the young student whose university knowledge flows forth with fresh and accurate memory. Yet at the same time it somewhat lacks the art of using knowledge rather than reciting it, a power which comes with more mature experience.

But youth, if less skilled in technique, has an inspiring fire of its own which comes at no other period in life. Innocent and clear-eyed, the shifts and shams of worldly intercourse are trenchantly seen to be the absurd nonsense of a chimerical dream. Expediency and compromise are words which enter not into the vocabulary of the young and ardent mind. Rather are they the fungus growths of the years spent in grappling with the foibles of mankind. Youth, like the new-blown flower, opens its heart freely and naturally to the light. There is no ideal so exalted which it will not confidingly dare to make its own.

"The thoughts of youth are long, long, thoughts," and William Penn's vision of truth was never more pure, more focussed on reality, more absolutely resting on the laws of spirit than at the age of twenty-four when he was a prisoner in the Tower of London for conscience' sake. "How comes it," he demands, "that from a Christendom that was thus meek, merciful, self-denying, suffering, temperate, holy, just and good, so like to Christ whose name she bore, we find a Christendom now which is superstitious, idolatrous, persecuting, proud, passionate, envious, malicious, selfish, drunken, lascivious, unclean, lying, swearing, cursing, covetous, oppressing, defrauding, with all other abominations known in the earth, and that to an excess justly scandalous to the worst of heathen ages, surpassing them more in evil than in time: I say, How comes this lamentable defection?"

The Crusader has flung down his gauntlet on the floor of this material world. Let the carnal mind put up what defence it may, Penn is ready to answer the question with the unequivocable truth. It is within the heart itself, in the secrecy of its own intimate desires, that the choice between right and wrong is made, and the seed of thought germinates for good or evil.

"I lay this down as the undoubted reason of this degeneracy," he declares with fearless deliberation, "to wit, the inward disregard of thy mind to the light of Christ shining in thee, that first shewed thee thy sins and reproved them, and that taught and enabled thee to deny and resist them. For as thy fear towards God and holy abstinence from unrighteousness was at first not taught by the precepts of men, but by that light and grace which revealed the most secret thoughts and purposes of thine heart and searched the most inward parts . . . not suffering one unfruitful thought, word, or work of darkness to go unjudged, so when thou didst begin to disregard that light and grace, to be careless of that holy watch that was once set up in thine heart, and didst not keep Centinel there (as formerly) for God's glory and thy own peace; the restless enemy of man's good quickly took advantage of this slackness, and often surprised thee with temptations whose suitableness to thy inclinations made his conquest over thee not difficult."

As one reads Penn's reproof to those who did not "keep Centinel" he is reminded of Mrs. Eddy's counsel to her students. She gives them as a motto Jesus' words, "What I say unto you I say unto all WATCH," and the need for spiritual alertness is emphasized over and over again in her letters. In her message to the Church in Lawrence she writes:

"Watch diligently; never desert the post of spiritual observation and self-examination. Strive for selfabnegation, justice, meekness, mercy, purity, love. Let your light reflect Light. Have no ambition, affection, nor aim apart from holiness." (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 154.)

Penn's trenchant analysis of the causes of religious

decadence follow on. He writes, "Thus religion fell from Experience to Tradition, and worship from Power to Form, from Life to Letter, so that instead of putting up lively and powerful requests animated by the deep sense of want and the assistance of the Holy Spirit, by which the Ancients prayed, wrestled and prevailed with God, behold a by-rote Mumpsimus, a dull and insipid Formality, made up of corporal bowings and cringings, Garments, and Furnitures, Perfumes, voices and musick, fitter for the reception of some earthly prince, than the heavenly worship of only true and immortal God, who is an Eternal, Invincible Spirit. . . . A man may say with truth, thy condition is worse by thy religion, because thou art tempted to think thy self the better for it and art not."

Penn's deep, bed-rock sincerity is characteristic of the real Puritan Reformation. The desire for the truth of life, cost what it may, was the mainspring which set the wheels of human thought revolving in the direction of progress. "No Crown, but by the Cross!" he exclaims, and with Penn, the cross was no mere denominational sign. It had a metaphysical and urgent meaning.

"His (Jesus) cross is the Death of Sin that caused his death, and he the Death of Death according to that passage, 'O Death, I will be thy Death.'"

"So that the cross mystical" he continues, "is that Divine grace which crosseth the carnal wills of men and gives a contradiction to their corrupt affections. . . ." "Well, but then, where does this Cross appear, and must it be taken up? I answer, Within: That is, in the Heart and Soul."

This unswerving recognition that the battleground between truth and error lay in a man's own consciousness, was the particular spiritual contribution of the Quakers.