prevail, but
into which Christian armies and Christian merchants have penetrated.
Christendom is the leading portion of the world, and is fast giving
law to lands in which Christianity is still hated. It is the policy of
Christendom that orders the world. A Christian race rules over the whole
of that immense country, or collection of countries, which is known as
India. Another Christian race threatens to seize upon Persia. Christians
from the extreme West of Europe have dictated the terms of treaties to
the Tartar lords of China; and Christians from America have led the way
in breaking through the exclusive system of Japan. Christian soldiers
have for a year past acted as the police of Syria, Christianity's early
home, but now held by the most bigoted and cruel of Mussulmans; and it
is only the circumstance that they cannot agree upon a division of the
spoil that prevents the five great powers of Europe--the representatives
of the leading branches of the Christian religion--from partitioning
the vast, but feeble Ottoman Empire. The Christian idea of man's
brotherhood, so powerful in itself, is supported by material forces so
vast, and by ingenuity and industry so comprehensive and so various in
themselves and their results, that it must supersede all others, and
be accepted in every country where there are people capable of
understanding it. From the time of the first Crusade there has been a
steady tendency to the unity of Christian countries; and notwithstanding
all their conflicts with one another, and partly as one of the effects
of those conflicts, they have "fraternized," until now there exists a
mighty Christian Commonwealth, the members of which ought to be able to
govern the world in accordance with the principles of a religion that is
in itself peace. Under the influence of these principles, the Christian
nations, though not in equal degrees, have developed their resources,
and a commercial system has been created which has enlisted the material
interests of men on the same side with the highest teachings of the
purest religion. Selfishness and self-denial march under the same
banner, and men are taught to do unto others as they would that others
should do unto them, because the rule is as golden economically as it is
morally. This teaching, however, it must be allowed, is very imperfectly
done, and it encounters so many disturbing forces to its proper
development that an observer of the course of Christian nat