Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The great business of man's life, is to answer the end for which he lives;”
- Source
- No Cross, No Crown
- Date
- 1669
- Local voice
- Authorial / signed preface voice · William Penn (signed preface voice)
Meaning of “The great business of man's life, is to…”
Penn frames a meaningful life in explicitly Christian terms: a person’s central task is to live toward the religious purpose for which Penn believes human life was given.
Where does it come from?
No Cross, No Crown, Preface, Project Gutenberg #44895. Penn opens by saying that the great business of life is to answer the end for which one lives, immediately defining that end as glorifying God and saving one’s soul. The frozen catalog retains only the opening clause. This is explicitly Quaker Christian devotional exhortation, not a neutral or universal factual definition of life’s purpose.
Why the local voice matters
No Cross, No Crown, Preface. Penn directly exhorts the reader inside an explicitly Christian Quaker devotional argument.