網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

G

CHAPTER VIII.

ABROAD.

ULIELMA MARIA brought property to her husband; and the Springett estate at Worminghurst, in Sussex, coming into her possession, she and her husband removed to it from their house at Rickmansworth. "Worminghurst House was situated on an eminence overlooking the beautiful South Downs of Sussex, and within a few miles of the sea. It was razed to the ground long since, and the Worminghurst estate absorbed in the domains of the Duke of Norfolk, only the stables remain to mark the spot where stood that charming house so long brightened by the presiding presence of Penn's first wife, Gulielma Maria.”1

At this new abode began his cares respecting New Jersey; and there were born visions, hopes, and plans touching another portion of the same New World which before long he was to call his own. But before this came to pass he took an important journey abroad on religious service, of which he has left a full account in a journal kept at the time, and seventeen years afterwards published to the world.2

1 "Penn and Logan Correspondence," vol. i. chap. xvii. "Memoirs of the Hist. Soc. of Pennsylvania,” vol. ix. I think it is probable he had this estate in view when he wrote the letter referred to at the end of Chapter V.

2 It is printed separately under the title, "William Penn's Journal of his Travels.”

Friends have no missionary society, no organization of the kind supported by other religious bodies; yet no one of these has, from its origin down to our own day, shown so much of a missionary spirit. The spirit amongst Friends is individual rather than collective. One mind is stirred, and then another, to go in the name of the Lord and gather souls into His blessed fold. The conscious movement is felt to be a direct call, and the subject of it, like one of old, feels it a duty not to confer "with flesh and blood." So it was with George Fox; so in our own time it has been with Stephen Grellet, with William Forster, and with Joseph John Gurney, not to mention others. In like manner William Penn felt he had a Divine call to visit Germany. He had been there before, and knew friends on the Rhine banks, with whom he had held sweet council by voice and letter. There was a sympathy in him, as in others before and afterwards, with longing souls all over the world who waited for "the moving of the waters." He possessed a magnetic power, which drew towards him those who, dissatisfied with established forms, silently looked for a light from heaven, through whatever window God would make it shine. His manners, in spite of Quaker peculiarities, were of the winning order, and united to beauty of countenance and a commanding presence, they made a grateful impression wherever he went.

Not long before he started, Penn wrote a beautiful letter to the Princess Palatine of the Rhine, and Anne Maria Countess of Hornes. 1

"Jesus be with your spirits, the immaculate Lamb of God and glorious light of the world. His pure

'Penn's "Travels," 1677, p. 167.

Spirit redeem you from the evil and ignorance that are in it, and replenish you with His everlasting righteousness whose end is peace and assurance for evermore. Noble of this world, but more noble for your inquiry after the truth, and love to it, the fame. thereof has sounded to the ear of some of us in this island whom God hath made His certain witnesses and messengers through many and great tribulations : eternal heavenly praises to His holy and powerful Name, who lives and reigns over all principalities and powers and thrones and dominions for ever. I have had you, worthy women, often in my remembrance, with that honour which is not of this world; even then when my soul has been in its purest retirements, not only from all troubles, but from their very ideas in the mind, and every other imagination; resting with the Lord in His own sabbath, which is the true silence of all flesh indeed which profits above the formal Christian bodily exercise.

"Oh, if you truly love Jesus, hear Him; and since it hath pleased God in some measure, as with Paul, to reveal His Blessed Son in you, consult not with flesh and blood which are below the heavenly things-for that inherits not the kingdom of God-but, with sincere Mary, from a deep sense of the beauty, virtue, and excellency of that life which is hid with Christ in God, wait out of all cumber, free from that running, willing, sacrificing spirit that is in the world, in the pure obedience, humiliation, godly death or silence at the feet of Jesus, choosing the better part which shall never be taken from you: and Jesus will be with you; He will shed His peace abroad in the midst of you, even that which flows from the crystal

streams of life, that arise from under the throne of God."

Penn did not go alone on this important continental journey. He had for companions George Fox and Robert Barclay, another well-known celebrity, and also George Keith, a very impetuous sort of person, whose after history was very strange; others who joined in the party need not be named.

"On the 22nd of the fifth month, 1677," says our traveller, "being the first day of the week, I left my dear wife and family at Worminghurst, in Sussex, in the fear and love of God, and came well to London that night." They sailed on the 26th, and after two days' voyage they got to the Brill at nightfall, and were fetched on shore by a boat from Rotterdam, filled with Friends, who came out to meet the English party.

[ocr errors]

On first day following they met at the house of Benjamin Furly, somewhere in the beautiful city of trees and canals, tall houses and crowded shipping. There was a great company present, some of most considerable note," and so powerfully "fell the Gospel preached," that Penn declares, "the dead were raised and the living comforted." Monday they went about, not to see sights and inspect churches, not to visit pretty summer-houses in suburb and garden; but to seek "opportunities to make known what was the hope of glory; that mystery which to the Gentiles is now revealing, even Jesus Christ, the light and life." To the university city of Leyden, to Haarlem, famed in the annals of printing, and to Amsterdam, the Venice of Holland, they went on the same holy errand; and the Lord granted them in these

places seasons of refreshing, “and many sober Baptists and professors came in and abode in the meeting to the end."

From Amsterdam, Penn, Keith, Barclay, and Furly, after taking leave of Fox, proceeded to the marshencompassed Naarden, thence to Osnaburg, the (Hanoverian Osnabrück,) where they "had a little time with the man of the inn, and left," as was their wont, "several good books of Friends, in the Low and High Dutch tongues, to read and to dispose of." They pressed forward to Herwerden, where lived the Princess Elizabeth, Palatine of the Rhine. Penn had addressed, as I have noticed, a long letter to Her Highness some time before; now he received one bidding him welcome. She breakfasted early, and arranged to receive her guest at seven o'clock. When they

entered, she gave them "a more than ordinary expression of kindness. I can truly say it," remarks the traveller, "and that in God's fear, I was very deeply and reverently affected with the sense that was upon my spirit, of the great and notable day of the Lord, and the breakings-in of His eternal power upon all nations; and of the raising of the slain Witness to judge the world: who is the treasure of life and peace, of wisdom and glory, to all that receive Him in the hour of His judgments, and abide with Him. The sense of this deep and sure foundation, which God is laying as the hope of eternal life and glory for all to build upon, filled my soul with an holy testimony to them; which in a living sense was followed by my brethren: and so the meeting ended about the eleventh hour." 1

1 "Travels," p. 23.

« 上一頁繼續 »