Beauty and government, that filled their hearts
With joy and gratitude, and fear and love;
And from their fervent lips drew hymns of praise,
That through the desert rung. Though favored less,
Far less than these, yet rich in their degree,
Were those bewildered pagans of old time."—P. 169.
So say the Friends; and to such a pitch do they carry their belief in their "universal and saving light," that they contend, that to the most savage nations, "having not law, it becomes a law," and that through it the spirit, if not the history of the Savior is revealed and made operative, and that thus the voice of salvation is preached in the heart where never outward gospel has been heard. The Friends contend that science and mere human wisdom most commonly tend to darken and weigh down this divine principle, to cloud this eternal luster in the soul. So says the eloquent Wanderer, the preacher of the Quakerism of poetry. He asks, Shall our great discoverers obtain less from sense and reason than these obtained?
"Shall men for whom our age
Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared,
To explore the world without, and world within,