Let not the spirit of this world,
its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail
over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first
coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the
adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple,
rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan
monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing
the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without
them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in
the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth. Oh, preserve
in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and
in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him
who as a father careth for all His children."
"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!" said the lady, humbled in spirit,
and in tears.
The stranger took the hand of each. "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs
depart, for I have much work before me. God's peace be with you; and
that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and
the still water, the shadow in a weary land."
And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their
after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were
called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and
gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William
Penn.
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