the sea at the Wash in
Lincolnshire. An utter change in the political events which came after,
another history of England, and nothing short of it, would have been the
result. An illustration such as this will at least serve to express what
I would say of the point at which we now stand in the history of the
Turks. Mahmood turned to the east; and had the barbarian tribes which
successively descended done the same, they might have conquered the
Gaznevide dynasty, they might have settled themselves, like Timour, at
Delhi, and their descendants might have been found there by the British
in their conquests during the last century; but they would have been
unknown to Europe, they would have been strange to Constantinople, they
would have had little interest for the Church. They had rebelled against
Mahmood, they had driven his family to the East; but they did not pursue
him thither; he had strength enough to keep them off the rich territory
he had appropriated; he was the obstacle which turned the stream
westward; in consequence, they looked towards Persia, where their
brethren had been so long settled, and they directed their course for
good and all towards Europe.

But this era was a turning-point in their history in another and more
serious respect. In Sogdiana and Khorasan, they had become converts to
the Mahometan faith. You will not suppose I am going to praise a
religious imposture, but no Catholic need deny that it is, considered in
itself, a great improvement upon Paganism. Paganism has no rule of right
and wrong, no supreme and immutable judge, no intelligible revelation,
no fixed dogma whatever; on the other hand, the being of one God, the
fact of His revelation, His faithfulness to His promises, the eternity
of the moral law, the certainty of future retribution, were borrowed by
Mahomet from the Church, and are steadfastly held by his followers. The
false prophet taught much which is materially true and objectively
important, whatever be its subjective and formal value and influence in
the individuals who profess it. He stands in his creed between the
religion of God and the religion of devils, between Christianity and
idolatry, between the West and the extreme East. And so stood the Turks,
on adopting his faith, at the date I am speaking of; they stood between
Christ in the West, and Satan in the East, and they had to make their
choice; and, alas! they were led by the circumstances of the time to
oppose themsel