I50 QUAKER ASPECTS OF TRUTH 



But it may be objected that the Jews, with all their 

 virtues, did not adopt the attitude of non-resistance, 

 so that I have not yet proved war to be inexpedient and 

 unnecessary* Well, I will proceed to do so. 



In the year 1681, William Penn and a handful of 

 Quakers founded the Colony of Pennsylvania. All 

 around them the white man was at war with the Indian, 

 whose tomahawk and scalping knife carried terror and 

 death and destruction into all the surrounding colonies. 

 Surely Penn's ^* holy experiment ** could not have been 

 tried under circumstances more prejudicial to its 

 success. 



Notwithstanding this, however, Penn and his com- 

 panions landed unarmed, and, from the very first, treated 

 the Indians with Christian kindness and loving for- 

 bearance. The land, though it had already been given 

 them by the English monarch, they obtained again by 

 treaty from the Indians themselves, whom they con- 

 sidered to be the real owners of the soil ; a treaty which 

 was described by Voltaire as the only treaty that was 

 ever made without an oath, and the only treaty that was 

 ever kept. 



For seventy long years the Colony remained under 

 Quaker rule, depending for its safety upon the absence 

 of all the usual means of protection. And what was the 

 consequence of this ** hare-brained folly '* ? — for that 

 was what it was called by the worldly-wise contemporaries 

 of William Penn. 



The consequence was that during the whole of those 

 seventy years, whilst blood flowed like water in the 

 surrounding states, not one single drop of Christian 

 blood was shed by the Indians in the colony of 

 Pennsylvania. 



Now I have heard the importance of this historical 

 fact discounted on the score that it was entirely excep- 

 tional. And truly exceptional it was. But where did 



