Kutztown University - Keystonia Yearbook (Kutztown, PA)

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PENN'S PROMISE—OUR PRIDE

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1331S

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WILLIAM PENN, the great founder of Pennsylvania, the three-hundredth anniversary of whose birth we celebrated in 1944, was one of the great practical visinoaries among the leaders of the New World. His dreams and how they became realities makes an inspiring story to remember as we be- come teachers in our beloved state. At eighteen William Penn was expelled from Oxford because he v as toe religious. His action then, in a large part, set the course of his life. There might never have keen a Pennsylvania had Penn been another kind of man. He could have been a seventeenth-century courtier for he had his education at Oxford, a stay at the French court and a year at Lincoln's Inn. Follow- ing this ritual, peculiar to that of an admiral's sen, he might have lived a life of ease and luxury, were it not for the fact that Penn came under the influence of a new rel.gious doc- trine circulating England at that time. It v as at Oxford that Penn heard Thomas Loe preach the doctrine of Quakerism, which taught that life in this world should be apart from this world, that there should be temper- ance in all things, and that daily conduct should conform to a set of stated ideals. Immedi- ately upon hearing this message, Penn become a convert. His father bitterly opposed him, doing everything within his power to bring Penn around to his way of thinking, and it was not until his dying day that Admiral Penn finally endorsed the course of his son's faith. Penn began to preach the doctrines of Quakerism in England, which resulted in his imprison- ment several times, for it v as opposed to many tenets of the Church of England. So general was the interest in the new faith, however, that there was finally issued a declaration of in- dulgence for dissenters and Penn's life became easier.