hat led him to
regard Roman and Greek, Syrian and Egyptian, with ineffable arrogance
and scorn. Christians, too, are accustomed to think of those who are not
Christians as their inferiors; but the conviction which possesses them,
that they have what others have not, is obviously not open to the
temptation which nationalism presents. According to their own faith,
there is no insuperable gulf between themselves and the rest of mankind;
there is not a being in the whole world but is invited by their religion
to occupy the same position as themselves, and, did he come, would stand
on their very level, as if he had ever been there. Such accessions to
their body they continually receive, and they are bound under obligation
of duty to promote them. They never can pronounce of any one, now
external to them, that he will not some day be among them; they never
can pronounce of themselves that, though they are now within, they may
not some day be found outside, the divine polity. Such are the
sentiments inculcated by Christianity, even in the contemplation of the
very superiority which it imparts; even there it is a principle, not of
repulsion between man and man, but of good fellowship; but as to
subjects of secular knowledge, since here it does not arrogate any
superiority at all, it has in fact no tendency whatever to centre its
disciple's contemplation on himself, or to alienate him from his kind.
He readily acknowledges and defers to the superiority in art or science
of those, if so be, who are unhappily enemies to Christianity. He admits
the principle of progress on all matters of knowledge and conduct on
which the Creator has not decided the truth already by revealing it; and
he is at all times ready to learn, in those merely secular matters, from
those who can teach him best. Thus it is that Christianity, even
negatively, and without contemplating its positive influences, is the
religion of civilization.

7.

But I have here been directing your attention to Christianity with no
other view than to illustrate, by the contrast, the condition of the
Mahometan Turks. Their religion is not far from embodying the very dream
of the Judaizing zealots of the Apostolic age. On the one hand, there is
in it the profession of a universal empire, and an empire by conquest;
nay, military success seems to be considered the special note of its
divine origin. On the other hand, I believe it is a received notion with
them that their relig