1-Mbl 
 
§rom f 0e feifiratg of 
 
 (professor TWfidtn JE)enrg d5reen 
 
 Qgequeaf #eo 6g 0im to 
 f^e feifirar^ of 
 
 (prtncefon ^eofogicdf £&emtnarj> 
 
 5?5Z, 
 
 ,C5 
 

f s|imul ani t\t C|urt| 
 
 BY 
 
 LEWIS CHEESEMAN, D.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 PARRY AND M C MILLAN, 
 
 SUCCESSOKS TO A. HAKT, late CAREY & HART. 
 1856. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year lS56,by 
 
 PARRY & MCMILLAN, 
 
 the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States in and 
 for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON AND CO. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 PRINTED EY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In introducing the following work to the pub- 
 lic, an answer to the following questions may be 
 justly expected: — 
 
 "What is the subject of which it treats ? 
 
 What call is there for such a treatise at this 
 time ? 
 
 What range has been taken, and what method 
 adopted, in treating it ? 
 
 In the title, "Ishmael and the Church," is con- 
 tained a short and comprehensive reply to the 
 first question. This is the text of the discourse, — 
 the thread that ties all its several parts together. 
 
 Ishmael has ever " dwelt in the presence of all 
 his brethren," and his fortunes aud those of the 
 church have been remarkably blended from first 
 to last. They cross each other's track in the 
 patriarch's tent, in the visions of the prophets, 
 in the creed of Mohammed, in the empires of the 
 Saracens and Ottomans; so that in treating of 
 Ishmael and his descendants we necessarily fol- 
 low them through the church; for here their 
 way lies. With its affairs they have ever inter- 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 meddled, and on its changeful and suffering des- 
 tiny they have ever left the deep impressions of 
 their power. Such, then, is our theme :— " Ishmael 
 and the Church." 
 
 Such a work as this is demanded by the stir- 
 ring events of our own times,— a portable volume, 
 accessible to all, comprehending succinctly "Is- 
 lamism" in its origin, uses, progress, and end. It 
 should be examined in the light of prophecy as 
 well as of history, and thus made to appear what it 
 truly is,— a creation of Providence, subserving its 
 ends and illustrative of its wonders and its ways. 
 For such a volume the way seems to be now open. 
 It will fill a space occupied by no other. 
 
 We are to bear in mind, also, the present ano- 
 malous condition of Turkey. Her disappearance 
 from Europe and the appropriation of her soil by 
 the Western Powers are events regarded as im- 
 minent. She is a bone of contention, — a centre on 
 which questions of war and peace hinge, — a gate- 
 way to most momentous social, political, and re- 
 ligious changes. 
 
 A bare glance at these facts will suggest at once 
 that such a theme is necessarily invested with a 
 present interest, and, if rightly treated, must 
 prove highly acceptable to the reading public. 
 
 Indeed, would we understand "the Italian 
 question," the policies and necessities of cabinets 
 and princes, this subject needs first to be studied 
 and comprehended. Dark problems with respect 
 to the future will receive by this means a probable 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 solution, and remote and otherwise unperceived 
 causes will be seen to have attained a controlling 
 maturity, and helpless nations to be afloat upon a 
 sea wbose resistless surges carry them where they 
 will not. 
 
 Political questions have their religious aspects. 
 These belong to the divine, and fall within the 
 range of his appropriate studies. The questions 
 that now agitate Europe are essentially religious. 
 Religion underlies all its policies and impulses ; 
 and hence the religious sympathies of the various 
 parties in the strifes of princes are all the more 
 important to be understood. It is one design of 
 this work to make these palpable* 
 
 As to the range taken, it is wide. The rela- 
 tions of Ishmael to the church, and his influence 
 on its destinies, from the days of the patriarch to 
 the fall of the Ottomans, are comprehended in it. 
 The lead of the prophets has been followed, and 
 history is expanded just where the prophets pause 
 and make it necessary — -just w T here after an inter- 
 val of centuries they point out some new centre of 
 influence, that, springing up irresistibly, changes 
 the entire course of events ; or just where, the 
 crescent crossing into the plane of the church, an 
 adorable Providence becomes conspicuous in the 
 use that it makes of this formidable power in 
 compassing its ends. 
 
 This has made the line of the true church, as 
 distinguished from the false, an important object 
 of interest and search. It has hence been care- 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 fully eliminated and traced from Asia and Africa 
 to Europe and America. 
 
 It has also made the " Testament of Moham- 
 med," and the consequent protection of persecuted 
 disciples by the Saracens, the subject of special 
 inquiry and elucidation. The aggressions of the 
 Turks in Asia, — the Crusades, and their favour- 
 able effects on the church left behind in Europe, 
 —the fall of the Eastern capital,— the desirable 
 results accruing from that event, and the indirect 
 though real protection of the Keformation of the 
 sixteenth century, arising from the military ardour 
 and successes of Solyman the Great, — come also 
 under review ; and, throughout, the ways of Provi- 
 dence are made obvious, and our confidence in its 
 integrity and wisdom becomes revived and con- 
 firmed. 
 
 As to method, history has been relied on for 
 facts, and the Divine testimony for evidence that 
 those facts were arranged by Providence to fulfil 
 its purposes. 
 
 The work has been prepared for the Protestant 
 world, and care has been taken not to offend 
 against its denominational preferences. If the 
 author has succeeded in making himself useful 
 to the church of our common Master, it will 
 be his sufficient reward. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chap. I. — Ishmael in his Youth 17 
 
 II. — Ishmael in the Wilderness 22 
 
 III. — The Comprehensive Nationality of Ish- 
 mael SO 
 
 IV.— His Evil Destiny..... 36 
 
 V. — The Nationality of Ishmael obtaining De- 
 velopment in Mohammed 41 
 
 VI. — Ishmael and Mohammed. — Continued.... 50 
 
 VII. — The Secret of Mohammed's Success 58 
 
 VIII. — Islamism a Perversion of Christianity.... 66 
 
 IX. — The Saracens — Their Fanatic Courage. ... 72 
 
 X. — Mohammed and his Successors 82 
 
 XI. — The Saracens, a Scourge to Christendom 89 
 XII. — The Saracens, a Scourge to Christendom. 
 
 — Continued 96 
 
 XIII.— Mohammed protecting the True Church : 
 
 The Nestorians 99 
 
 XIV. — Mohammed protecting the True Church : 
 
 The Paulicians 109 
 
 XV. — Mohammed protecting the True Church : 
 
 The Philadelphians 117 
 
 XVI. — Mohammed protecting the True Church: 
 
 The Albigenses 130 
 
 vii 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chap. XVIL— Founding of Bagdad the End of the 
 
 Prophetic Months 134 
 
 XVIII. — The Contrast between Christ and Mo- 
 hammed 137 
 
 XIX. — The Saracenic merged in the Ottoman 
 
 Empire 148 
 
 XX.— The Crusades— Their Causes and Ends 158 
 XXI.— Peter Waldo on the Track of Peter the 
 
 Hermit 169 
 
 XXII. — Constantinople menaced 175 
 
 XXIIL— The Fall of Constantinople 185 
 
 XXIV.— The Mission of Ishmael one of Strife 194 
 XXV. — The Providential Warning disregarded 197 
 XXVI.— The Antecedents of the Reformation . 201 
 XXVIL— The Art of Printing and the Reforma- 
 tion 213 
 
 XXVIII.— The Art of Printing and the Reforma- 
 tion. — Continued 222 
 
 XXIX. — The Discovery of America, and the 
 
 Reformation 234 
 
 XXX. — Islamism and the Reformation 240 
 
 XXXI. — Islamism and the Reformation. — Con- 
 tinued 254 
 
 XXXII. — The Witnesses not slain 265 
 
 XXXIII. — Ishmael and the Western Allies 281 
 
 XXXIV.— Rome — Her Aspirations 292 
 
 XXXV.— The Fall of Islamism 299 
 
 XXXVI. — Isaac's Patrimony restored 313 
 
ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ISHxMAEL IN HIS YOUTH. 
 
 " I see a mighty arm, by man unseen, 
 Resistless, not to be controll'd, that guides, 
 In solitude of unshared energies, 
 All these thy ceaseless miracles, world !" 
 
 Lamb. 
 
 There are extensive regions in Asia, Africa, 
 and in the east and south of Europe, in which 
 the Mohammedan religion prevails. It is false, 
 intolerant, and antichristian. Instances there 
 are in which, as in Roman Catholic countries, 
 this intolerance has been for a season inter- 
 mitted; but still, these instances are exceptions 
 to a rule otherwise universal, and cannot alter 
 a character inherent in the very creed of the 
 false prophet, and traced in blood on the pages 
 of history and on the symbol of his faith. 
 
 According to the traditions of Mecca — 
 
 17 
 
18 [SHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 which are in harmony, on this point, with 
 the intimations of the prophets of Zion — 
 Mohammed sprang from the loins of Abraham, 
 and from the scoffer lshmael. " It is written, 
 that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond- 
 maid, the other by a free woman. But he 
 who was ot^ the bondwoman was born after 
 the flesh ; but he oi^ the free woman was by 
 promise. Which things are an allegory. . . . 
 For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and 
 answereth to Jerusalem which now is. and is 
 in bondage with her children." Gal. iv. 
 22-25. 
 
 He of the bondwoman was born after the 
 flesh, inherited the unsanctiiied nature oi^ his 
 Egyptian mother, carried the stamp of in- 
 feriority on his brow, and cherished her en- 
 mity to true religion in his heart. Nature, 
 true to her laws, had carried down the mental 
 and moral characteristics, the physical tastes, 
 and spiritual idiosyncrasies, from the mother 
 to the child. It occurred also that Sarah's 
 jealousy imparted to her domestic rule a 
 severity difficult for unrenewed humanity to 
 bear, and which, in the mind of the irritated 
 lshmael. doubtless fully justified the bitter com- 
 plainings and reproaches of Hagar. " When 
 Sarah dealt hardly with her she tied from her 
 
ISHMAEL IN HIS YOUTH. 19 
 
 face :" Gen. xvi. G. Day by day her native 
 hostility to the patriarch's faith received fresh 
 irritation, and in the recesses of the desert, in 
 her frequent communings with her son, would 
 naturally impress its antipathies deeply upon 
 a heart already under the control of a matured 
 impiety. " It set him in a way that was not 
 good ; he abhorred not evil." Domestic feuds, 
 embodying so many causes of enduring and 
 increasing repulsiveness, must reach their crisis 
 at last ; the parties will seek relief ultimately 
 either in the exercise of mutual forbearance or 
 in a voluntary separation. The latter was the 
 result in the present instance; the aliens be- 
 came outcasts from a home in which the 
 mistaken Ha gar had aspired to rise from the 
 condition of a subordinate and a slave to that 
 of a mistres -. 
 
 In the church, when it was placed under 
 patriarchal rule, the first-born son succeeded, 
 at the death of the patriarch, to his authority, 
 dignity, and estates, and took, ordinarily, his 
 honoured place as next in the line among the 
 illustrious progenitors of the promised Messiah. 
 Isaac, the child of promise and of miracle, 
 was correctly regarded by Abraham as his 
 successor. 
 
 For years previously to the birth of this 
 
20 ISHMAEL AND TIIE CHURCH. 
 
 divinely-appointed rival, Ishmael had occupied 
 the place and had held in just expectancy the 
 coveted immunities of the first-born, — had been 
 the accredited heir; and, considering the ex- 
 treme age of his parent, there existed no 
 reasonable prospect of his being supplanted 
 by another. The patriarch also, up to the 
 time of the predicted birth of Isaac, had been 
 satisfied with this arrangement ; had prayed, 
 "Oh that Ishmael might live before thee !" nor 
 had he even dreamed of another. But, when 
 it was said, " In Isaac shall thy seed be called,"* 
 God revealed a preference which, in its very 
 nature and in the very terms in which it had 
 been conceived, rejected Ishmael from the 
 privileges of primogeniture. 
 
 When the solemn yet joyous preparations 
 for the festival in which Isaac was to be 
 weaned and publicly recognised and installed 
 in the succession were in progress, Ishmael was 
 seventeen years of age, capable of comprehend- 
 ing the extent, at least, of his earthly loss, 
 and of an humble and intelligent submission 
 to the known will of heaven ; but from that 
 hour his rival became the object of his most 
 unreasonable envy and resentment. 
 
 * Gen. xxi. 12. 
 
ISHMAEL IN HIS YOUTH. 21 
 
 Cain rejected the same Lord on whom Abel 
 depended alone for salvation. Ishmael fol- 
 lowed in the way of Cain. His desire for the 
 patriarchate terminated in its temporal advan- 
 tages. When these were alienated in Isaac, he 
 scorned the spiritual patrimony and persecuted 
 the child of promise. Similar alternate cha- 
 racteristics are now discoverable in the fami- 
 lies of the godly. Some betake themselves in 
 life's young day to Jesus, are seen in the ways 
 of piety, and grow up in the fear of the Lord ; 
 others become restive and desire to free them- 
 selves from the restraints of a Christian fire- 
 side. Born after the flesh, they despise the 
 blessings of the covenant. Controversies in 
 the church, intermarriages with unbelievers, 
 the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of 
 riches, the very bread and water which they 
 acquire and carry with them, serve but to in- 
 crease their dreary distance from all succour 
 amid the spiritual wastes that surround them. 
 Ishmael, in a word, in his rejection of his Lord, 
 is an allegory, and represents Christ in the 
 covenant as the uniform and chosen test of 
 human character, as alternately a sanctuary 
 and a rock of offence, "set for the rising and 
 falling of many in Israel." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 ISHMAEL IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 
 " There was in him a vital scorn of all, 
 As if the worst had fallen that could befall ; 
 He stood a stranger in this breathing world, 
 An erring spirit from another hurl'd." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 Beersheba lay at the southern extremity of 
 the land of Canaan. Hence, in any descrip- 
 tion of the country intended to include its 
 entire area, Beersheba was referred to as the 
 extreme southern limit. The wilderness of 
 Beersheba — sometimes also called the wilder- 
 ness of Paran — comprehended a region lying 
 still farther south, covered with low shrubs 
 and loose sands. On its southern division 
 rises abruptly, from the bosom of a vast and 
 thirsty plain, the frowning battlements of 
 Sinai. In this gloomy solitude, far from the 
 abodes of the godly, Hagar and Ishmael found 
 their congenial retreat. 
 
 "Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia." That 
 covenant of which she is the allegory "gen- 
 22 
 
ISHMAEL IN THE WILDERNESS. 23 
 
 dereth to bondage."* Ishmael inherited his 
 mother's nature, imbibed her religious pre- 
 judices, espoused her quarrel against Sarah, 
 met with a rival in Isaac, turned against the 
 patriarchal church, persecuted the child of pro- 
 mise, became an outcast; and thus, step by 
 step, commenced his career of wo. 
 
 Such is the covenant of Sinai. It is one of 
 hardship and servitude. Under its rigorous 
 workings is engendered the base spirit of ser- 
 vility. Here the moral bondman toils for life 
 in services in which he has no pleasure, is 
 goaded on by curses that appal and a con- 
 science that torments him ; and yet every step, 
 every change, is for the worse, involving him 
 in ever-increasing difficulties, and widening 
 more and more fatally his separation from the 
 blessed vicinity of joy and hope. 
 
 Such, indeed, is ever the normal career of 
 unbelief. Whenever the true Messiah is left or 
 scorned, whichever plausible alternative after 
 that may be substituted for him, such must 
 ever be the invariable result; perish at last 
 the wanderer must, in an arid waste "where 
 no water is." That course is dark and hope- 
 less indeed in which Christ is not the centre 
 
 * Gal. iv. 24. 
 
24 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 to which the weary spirit ever tends. There 
 is an awful spiritual solitude before it; and 
 there also is that Mount Sinai, with its barren 
 declivities and rocky turrets, scarred by thun- 
 der ; and beyond it is the Red, red sea in which 
 the weary never rest. 
 
 Our uninstructed sympathies ever take 
 part with the oppressed and the unfortunate. 
 Sarah's jealousies and cruelties are readily 
 remembered, together with the destitution of 
 the unhappy exiles ; but the want of interest 
 on their part in the blessings of a spiritual 
 and a higher life, their promptness in for- 
 saking without a single regret the pure and 
 holy faith of the church because adherence 
 to it had become environed with temporary 
 obstacles, is as readily pardoned and forgotten, 
 though it was their great unworthiness, the 
 true cause of their condemnation and ruin. 
 God, on this account, because he knew they 
 loved him not and cared not for the pro- 
 mised spiritual deliverer, dictated the severity. 
 Sarah's execrations would have proved all 
 impotent and unavailing if God himself had 
 not turned against the aliens. They had 
 merited his displeasure, since they had in- 
 truded themselves into his church, whose 
 most sacred things they hated and had dared 
 
ISHMAEL IN THE WILDERNESS. 25 
 
 to make the objects of their unhallowed 
 scorn. 
 
 While the prophetic description — to wit, 
 that he should be a wild man, and that his hand 
 should be against every man* — involved in it 
 no creative or coercive processes, it neverthe- 
 less revealed a law inherent in his very nature 
 and in that of his race. During the long 
 period of twenty-seven hundred years his wild- 
 ness remained untamed. Each one of his off- 
 spring, separated from all others in his sym- 
 pathies for himself alone, maintained his own 
 proud personal independence and marked out 
 for himself his own solitary track. Submission 
 to a chief, if made at all, arose from interest, 
 and was cast off, transferred, or continued, at 
 pleasure. In predatory bands in the clays of 
 Jeremiah, they (the descendants of Ishmael) 
 sat for the travellers in the ways of the w T ilder- 
 ness,f dreaded by all, lying concealed in the 
 shadows of mountains, or peering from behind 
 the clumps of trees that, bordering the water- 
 courses, invited the wayfarer, at burning noon, 
 to repose. The captive Israelites, released from 
 servitude in Babylon, crossed the track of this 
 inhospitable foe and made grateful mention of 
 the good hand of God upon them, in that he 
 
 * Gen. xvi. 12. t Jer. iii. 2. 
 
 3 B 
 
26 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 had delivered them from " such as lay in wait 
 by the way."* Impelled by hunger or by 
 lust of plunder, their marauding companies, 
 mounted on the fleet horse of the wilderness 
 that stumbled not,f made frequent incursions 
 into districts governed by neighbouring emirs. 
 The swift and stealthy advance was effected 
 under cover of night. When the morning 
 rose, "and the oxen" (of the unsuspecting) 
 "were ploughing and the asses feeding beside 
 them, the Sabeans" (or Ishmaelites) "fell upon 
 them and took them away ."J The assault, 
 seen perchance by a flying servant whose less 
 fortunate companions were slain, is reported; 
 but redress is unth ought of and pursuit im- 
 possible: the wily robbers had vanished as 
 they came, — in unknown paths and in the 
 solitudes of the wilderness. The Bedouins of 
 the present day perpetuate the original cha- 
 racter — the wild and warlike habits of the 
 earliest times, and form a continuous illustra- 
 tion of the extreme individuality and lawless- 
 ness of the descendants of Ishmael. 
 
 This character, also, is one that equally de- 
 velops itself in that mighty offshoot from the 
 parent stock which lias spread the shadow of 
 its rule for ages over Arabia and over the 
 
 * Ezra viii. 31. f Isa. lxiii. 13. j Job. i. 15. 
 
ISHMAEL IN THE WILDERNESS. 27 
 
 entire Southern hemisphere. Ishmael, as it 
 had been previously revealed in the prophecy 
 concerning him, became a great nation ; and 
 in this new form of his continued existence 
 were merged the idiosyncrasies of the original 
 and isolated type. In other words, the indi- 
 vidual, ever unreliable, treacherous, and ariti- 
 christian, incapable alike of a permanent 
 adherence to a treaty or of a continued sub- 
 mission to a ruler, when once fully subdued 
 and constituting with his fellows a great 
 nationality, made it with respect to all other 
 nations just what the individual man had 
 previously been with respect to all other indi- 
 viduals. It became the world's disturbing 
 centre, and broke in alike for centuries upon 
 all its harmonies. 
 
 The identity of the same people in succes- 
 sive ages is more than conventional or legal; 
 it has its seat in the constitution of things, in 
 nature itself, and belongs to a nation in its 
 successive generations, just as it belongs to 
 a man in the successive periods of his life. 
 His body is not composed of the same particles 
 at fifty of which it was at twenty ; his mind 
 has, likewise, had an infinite succession of 
 volitions and emotions; and yet, though in so 
 many respects a new and a different creature, 
 
28 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 he still is the same, and is so held to be, both 
 in law and in fact. " Who ever perished be- 
 ing innocent?" Under the government of a 
 righteous God punishment pursues the guilty. 
 Amalek was cut off by Saul for murders com- 
 mitted by a previous generation four hundred 
 years before. (1491 B.C.) Ex. xvii. 14-16: 
 " The Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a 
 memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears 
 of Joshua : for I will utterly put out the re- 
 membrance of Amalek from under heaven. 
 And Moses built an altar, and called the name 
 of it Jehovah-nissi : for he said, Because the 
 Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war 
 with Amalek from generation to generation." 
 (1070 B.C.) 1 Sam. xv. 2, 3 : " Thus saith the 
 Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek 
 did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in 
 the way when he came up from Egypt. Now 
 go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all 
 that they have." Verse 9: "But Saul and 
 the people spared Agag." Verses 10, 11 : 
 "Then came the word of the Lord unto 
 Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have 
 set up Saul to be king." Verses 32, 33 : 
 " Then said Samuel, Bring ye hither to me 
 Agag the king of the Amalckites. And Agag 
 came unto him delicately. And Agag said, 
 
ISHMAEL IN TIIE WILDERNESS. 29 
 
 Surely the bitterness of death is past. And 
 Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women 
 childless, so shall thy mother be childless 
 among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in 
 pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." Great social 
 wrongs, unredressed and unregretted, and still 
 repeated by a seed of evil-doers, demanded the 
 providential visitation. The children had risen 
 up "an increase of sinful men to augment yet 
 the fierce anger of the Lord."* Samuel remind- 
 ed Agag of this; and, while we do not under- 
 stand him to deny his connection with the guilt 
 of a former age, he assures him that he suffers 
 for his own:— "As thy sword hath made wo- 
 men childless, so shall thy mother be childless 
 among women." Such is the unity and re- 
 sponsibility of each distinct race. 
 
 Destitute of all fraternal loves and local 
 attachments, his hand against every man, an 
 outlaw and a robber, Ishmael entered on his 
 chosen domain and became the lord and the 
 terror of the wilderness. On its wild clans, 
 and on the twelve powerful tribes and the 
 great nation that sprang from him, he stamped 
 in indelible characters his own native love of 
 war and plunder and his ever-living animosity 
 to the blessed Messiah. 
 
 * Num. xxxii. 14. 
 3* 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE COMPREHENSIVE NATIONALITY OF ISIIMAEL. 
 
 "The gatlier'd guilt of elder times 
 Shall reproduce itself in crimes." 
 
 Gal. iv. 24, 25 : " Which things are an alle- 
 gory: for these are the two covenants; the 
 one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth 
 to bondage, which is Agar. For this Agar is 
 Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answereth to Jeru- 
 salem which now is, and is in bondage with 
 her children." The allegory has a wide range. 
 There is not only more in it than appears in 
 the original narrative, but in this instance it 
 is perhaps unusually comprehensive, and in- 
 cludes the personal rejection of Ishmael and 
 that of his posterity, as also those other 
 descendants of the patriarch who, moved with 
 envy, delivered their Lord to a cruel 'death, 
 persecuted those born after the Spirit, and were 
 become " contrary to God and contrary to all 
 men."* 
 
 " This Ao;ar is Mount Sinai, in Arabia, and 
 
 * 1 Tbess. ii. 15. 
 30 
 
COMPREHENSIVE NATIONALITY OF ISHMAEL. 31 
 
 answereth to Jerusalem, wliicli now is, and is 
 in bondage with her children." Having re- 
 jected her Lord, (thus Paul instructs the 
 church in the above-quoted passage,) Jerusa- 
 lem, amid her faded glories as a doomed city, 
 was for this in bondage with her misguided 
 offspring. In a few short years she too, like 
 the son of the bondwoman, would become out- 
 cast from patrimonial possessions and spiri- 
 tual privileges, and be houseless, the sport ol 
 oppression and want, in that wide wilderness 
 in which she should wander and perish for 
 ages. The wrath of Roman legions in her 
 spoliation and in her wo would but express 
 toward her, as did Sarah's severities toward 
 Ishmael, the punitive justice of offended 
 Heaven. And when the day should ulti- 
 mately come for Isaac's effectual calling and 
 spiritual birth, — when, raised from the slum- 
 ber of centuries and weaned from the love of 
 the world, his return should commence, and 
 the great feast should be spread in his native 
 mountains, and he should be about to be so- 
 lemnly installed anew in the blessed line of 
 the spiritual succession, — then (as we under- 
 stand the prophet*) shall the scoffing and per- 
 
 * Isaiah xxv. 5-8; Dan. xi. 44, 45. 
 
32 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 secuting Ishmael again and for the last time 
 become an outcast from the patriarch's down- 
 trodden heritage. The power of Sarah's pro- 
 phetic curse shall revive afresh amid the ruins 
 of her fallen towers, the perils of her returning 
 children, and prove mightier than the armies 
 of the aliens. 
 
 Ishmael was, according to the prediction, to 
 "dwell in the presence of all his brethren."* 
 And, as the great conquerors of the world have 
 ever failed to subdue Arabia, — as still, from the 
 earliest times till now, the Arabs have watched 
 the traveller who has crossed their unprofitable 
 sands and made him pay tribute, — as they 
 have escaped successively the rule of the Per- 
 sians, the Macedonians, and the Romans, — it 
 has been supposed that this passage was in- 
 tended as a prophetic description of the future 
 independence of their wild tribes, from age 
 to age, in their own hereditary dominions. 
 "Arabia, though its frontier-provinces ex- 
 perienced some vicissitudes, preserved in the 
 depths of its deserts its primitive character 
 and independence; nor had its nomadic tribes 
 ever bent their haughty necks to servitude."f 
 
 Gibbon, in his great eagerness to cast discredit 
 
 * Gen. xvi. 12. -j- Irving. 
 
COMPREHENSIVE NATIONALITY OF ISHMAEL. 33 
 
 on this prophecy as fairly furnishing satis- 
 factory evidence in favour of the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, first sneers at the idea and 
 then denies the fact of the continued indepen- 
 dence of the Ishmaelites ; but, before he closes 
 this extraordinary paragraph, he indirectly re- 
 tracts and fully contradicts his first state- 
 ment. "The perpetual independence of the 
 Arabs has been the theme of praise among 
 strangers and natives; and the arts of con- 
 troversy transform this singular event into a 
 prophecy and a miracle in favour of the pos- 
 terity of Ishmael. Some exceptions, that can 
 neither be dismissed nor eluded, render this 
 mode of reasoning as indiscreet as it is super- 
 fluous. The kingdom of Yemen has been suc- 
 cessively subdued by the Abyssinians, the 
 Persians, the sultans of Egypt, and the 
 Turks; the holy cities of Mecca and Medina 
 have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian 
 tyrant; and the Roman province of Arabia 
 embraced the peculiar wilderness in which 
 Ishmael and his sons must have pitched their 
 tents in the face of their brethren. Yet 
 these exceptions are temporary or local : the 
 body of the nation has escaped the yoke of 
 the most powerful monarchies. The arms of 
 Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey and Trajan, 
 
34 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 could never achieve the conquest of Arabia. 
 The present sovereign of the Turks may exer- 
 cise a shadow of jurisdiction; but his pride 
 is reduced to solicit the friendship of a people 
 whom it is dangerous to provoke and fruitless 
 to attack."* 
 
 Others suggest that the text simply describes 
 the place of their abode as it related geogra- 
 phically to the land of Canaan. It should be 
 " to the east of their brethren." The meaning 
 is confessedly obscure ; and, though inclined to 
 adopt as most correct the view first named, 
 yet, were either opinion the received one, it 
 would not affect the obvious meaning of the 
 other portions of this remarkable prophecy. 
 If, as we have seen, the historic record, after 
 you exhaust its literal meaning, is also alle- 
 gorical, and comprehends in it even the lineal 
 descendants of Isaac, who, in imitation of their 
 scoffing brother, turn their hand against every 
 man, then, though the Bedouin tribes who are 
 the present robber-lords of Paran may be the 
 lineal descendants of Ishmael, still, the alle- 
 gory fairly comprehends all the tribes to whom 
 Ishmael became related by intermarriage and 
 by mastery, together with any other of the 
 
 * Gibbon. 
 
COMPREHENSIVE NATIONALITY OF ISIMAEL. GO 
 
 descendants of Abraham by Keturah, whose 
 tribal life was finally merged and lost in his 
 own. 
 
 It is enough, indeed, for our purpose, that 
 the characteristics of Ishmael — his love of war 
 and booty, his irreconcilable hatred of the 
 Christian religion, and his disposition ever to 
 persecute its nominal or its real disciples — 
 have impressed themselves alike on all the races 
 united by his descendants under the sway of 
 the Koran ; enough, that Mohammed attracted 
 to his standard the contending factions that 
 descended from his renowned progenitor, and, 
 out of these wild elements, formed and founded 
 his empire; enough, that throughout Asia, 
 Africa, and a part of Europe, other nations 
 were confessedly lost in it, as rivers and 
 streams are lost in the sea. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HIS EVIL DESTINY. 
 
 " The Maker justly claims the world he made: 
 In this the right of Providence is laid ; 
 Its sacred majesty through all depends 
 On using second means to "work his ends." 
 
 Parnell. 
 
 What a sweet relief is given to that spiritual 
 night which stretches its gloomy curtains from 
 the fall to the resurrection-morn, when, one 
 by one, the living types of the Messiah, in an 
 unbroken succession, springing up amid whis- 
 pers of comfort and angel footfalls, span the 
 tlight of intervening ages with the ever-recur- 
 ring evidences of a coming and a glorious dawn ! 
 It is among these that even Ishmael, during 
 seventeen years, holds his elevated position. 
 The patriarch regards him as his heir; and, 
 as he was his first-born son, he continued to 
 be the visible representative of Christ, in the 
 succession, until Isaac, by divine direction, 
 took his place. His rejection, however, as a 
 progenitor of a coming Saviour, did not neces- 
 
HIS EYIL DESTINY. 37 
 
 sarily remove him from his saving interest in 
 a Redeemer. By the divine will he fell from 
 the succession; but by his own fault he fell 
 from the covenant, and sank, a baleful meteor, 
 to the earth. Obviously, however, he is a 
 being, though never so evil, whose existence is 
 invested with no ordinary interest ; since that 
 wide world into which he is banished is to be 
 made the theatre of his wonderful providential 
 mission. God's kingdom is immeasurably great; 
 and, in its administration by the infinite One, 
 no instructions are gathered from the lessons 
 of experience to modify or change original 
 arrangements. Indeed, all the innumerable 
 details of the comprehensive rule are original 
 and immutable, lying back of the genesis of 
 the heavens and the earth in the fiat of the 
 uncreated mind. In a kingdom so vast, and in 
 events whose origin must remain hidden in the 
 bosom of remote ages, it is not strange to see 
 things that to human sagacity appear use- 
 less or even injurious, — blots on the cheek of 
 nature, imperfections in divine creations, con- 
 necting themselves only with the chariot of 
 God as mire on the pavement or dust from its 
 wheels. But the appearances are most decep- 
 tive. The globe itself, curtained in night, flew 
 for unknown ages on its desolate track, with 
 
38 ISIBIAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 its elements slowly maturing, that they might 
 be ready at the appointed time to be formed 
 into a habitation for its living generations. 
 And in its present state, with its ocean-beds, 
 volcanic fires, atmospheric plagues, and mighty 
 annual deposits of perished life, it is but ma- 
 turing for another change in which, purified by 
 the flame that consumes it, it shall be repro- 
 duced and covered in every part of it with 
 more than its primeval bloom and beauty. In 
 forming an opinion, then, of the utility of 
 things in God's immense and eternal kingdom, 
 we should not forget the lessons of humility 
 which lie all along our daring flight upward 
 toward that point, immeasurably distant, which 
 separates the wisdom of God from the ignorance 
 of a creature. The long preparation of Ish- 
 mael's descendants for their mission of wo, and 
 the long separation of Isaac from Canaan, and 
 the long night that settled for ages over Europe, 
 Asia, Africa, and America, are but preparatory 
 processes to the introduction of a better and a 
 brighter day. What though we cannot account 
 for these mysterious footprints in the ways of 
 heaven ? what though the gulfs we attempt to 
 fathom are of an unknown depth and their 
 unsightly bosoms covered with a pall ? in the 
 fulness of time, the great results will have 
 
HIS EYIL DESTINY. 39 
 
 been secured, and God shall say, " Let there be 
 light." It is a voluntary folly in any to hide 
 from his eyes the agency of Heaven in all this 
 world's beauty or deformity, in all its good or 
 evil. "I form the light and create the dark- 
 ness ; I make peace and create evil ; I the 
 Lord do all these things." Night and day, 
 volcanoes and Edens, war and peace, demons 
 and angels, hell and heaven, are alike his crea- 
 tions, are alike subservient to his ultimate will. 
 Moses was born and reared in the court of the 
 Pharaohs, and, for eighty years, kept under 
 processes of discipline which fitted him for his 
 future mission. The broken remnants of par- 
 tially-subjugated tribes were reserved in Ca- 
 naan to be thorns in the sides and briers in 
 the eyes of offending Israel. And when Ish- 
 mael was banished, and wandered in the soli- 
 tudes of Paran, he was for the same reason 
 not left to perish. He was a providential 
 instrument, and his was, though an evil, yet a 
 protected, life. In that thirsty desert, sur- 
 rounded by interminable and burning sands, 
 without shelter from the sun, and worn out 
 in a long and fruitless search for water, he 
 fainted, and was left under a shrub to die; 
 and, but for a divine interposition, this had 
 been his end and the point at which we might 
 
40 ISIBTAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 now have commenced to write a totally differ- 
 ent history of Asia and of the world. Great 
 events were suspended on the restoration of that 
 wasting breath. Hence God said to his mother, 
 "Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine 
 hand; for I will make of him a great nation. 
 And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well 
 of water ; and she went, and filled the bottle 
 with water, and gave the lad drink. And God 
 was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in 
 the wilderness, and became an archer." Yes, 
 God was with the lad, as he is with the tiger 
 and his cubs, the earthquake, the pestilence, 
 and the tornado. He was with him to make 
 him a minister of his }3rovidence, — to fulfil its 
 decrees and to inflict its chastisements on the 
 guilty. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE NATIONALITY OF ISHMAEL OBTAINING 
 DEVELOPMENT IN MOHAMMED. 
 
 " Their breath is agitation, and their life 
 A storm whereon they ride." Byron. 
 
 The transition of the descendants of Ishmael 
 from a state of extreme personal independence 
 and of selfish isolation to that of an organ- 
 ized and a united people was effected by Mo- 
 hammed in the seventh century. The religious 
 creed of this extraordinary man was artfully 
 adapted to the native and long-cherished tastes 
 of his countrymen. It turned their guilty 
 love of war and spoil and their long-indulged 
 animosity to the true Messiah into the ele- 
 ments of success, threw open the gates of 
 unbelieving provinces and kingdoms to in- 
 vasion, and doomed them alike to tribute, the 
 Koran, or the sword. An army, irresistible 
 from its fanatic courage if not from its dis- 
 ciplined valour, sprang "from the dust of his 
 feet" and took peace from the world. The 
 fierce contentions of twenty-seven centuries 
 
 4* C 41 
 
42 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 had been, up to this period, either the resist- 
 ance of intruders on their appropriated soil, 
 or the bloody strifes of individuals, families, 
 and tribes. A spirit had reigned which had 
 hitherto acknowledged no code of justice or 
 of honour, no common tribunal to which 
 the weak could appeal for redress against 
 the strong, — none, but that which each one 
 carried in the nice appreciations of his own 
 mind or in the sure and sudden stroke of his 
 scimitar. Falling back upon his tact or cou- 
 rage, the injured committed the arbitrations or 
 the inflictions of the lex talionis to no other 
 hands than his own. An unrelenting foe, he 
 watched with calm and unsuspected vigilance 
 the obnoxious party, for the opportunity of 
 successful revenge. His victim fell in the very 
 act of embracing a supposed friend. Life's 
 warm current often purpled the lonely heath 
 with a deeper dye ; and the blood of war, shed 
 in peace, was often put without remorse " on 
 his girdle and in his shoes." The traditions of 
 the Arabs recount the occurrence of seventeen 
 hundred battles which preceded the birth of 
 their prophet. Up to this period Ishmael's 
 hand had ever been put forth, either in self- 
 defence, or it had been stained with fraternal 
 blood. 
 
MOHAMMED. 43 
 
 The first outbreak in which his wild de- 
 scendants became formidable and left their 
 burning solitudes to interrupt the peace of 
 nations was under the discipline of Moham- 
 med. He breathed through " their roving 
 bands the spirit of a common fanaticism, sup- 
 pressed their domestic feuds, and turned their 
 united strength against mankind." How won- 
 derful the prophecy ! — " He will be a wild 
 man ; his hand will be against every man, and 
 every man's hand against him:" Gen. xvi. 12. 
 " Behold, I have blessed him, and will make 
 him fruitful, and will multiply him exceed- 
 ingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I 
 will make him a great nation :" Gen. xvii. 20. 
 "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a 
 star fall from heaven unto the earth : and to 
 him was given the key of the bottomless pit :" 
 Rev. ix. 1. According to this prophecy, a great 
 national life had been communicated. The facts 
 of history show that it gained ultimate de- 
 velopment in the Arabian impostor. He pos- 
 sessed the secret of power. " To him was 
 given the key of the bottomless pit." He was 
 born a.d. 5G9. And, though his parents died 
 when he was yet an infant, his uncles were rich 
 and noble, and the most considerable of these 
 became his guardian. At the age of twenty- 
 
44 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 five he married Kadijah, a widow of rank and 
 fortune, and at once took his station among 
 the proudest of his countrymen. His admirers 
 are fond of representing him as having had 
 a well-knit and vigorous frame ; as insinuating 
 and persuasive ; with a world of intelligence in 
 the dark eye that lighted up the ever-varying 
 features of his expressive countenance; with 
 vocal cadences of rare harmony, that swept the 
 secret chords of human sympathies and gave 
 character and sway to his slightest utterances ; 
 with a memory most retentive; with a judg- 
 ment invested with an intuitive maturity, — a 
 maturity reached by others only after long 
 and careful study; as generous and self-pos- 
 sessed : — in a word, as having had in himself 
 that wonderful concentration of all those quali- 
 ties by which he was enabled to rise to power, 
 by which he became the profound master of 
 uncultivated tribes, on whose credulity he 
 knew how to practise, and whose ruinous in- 
 dominancy he could discipline and wield. 
 This, I think, cannot be justly regarded as a 
 mere fancy sketch. Providential instruments 
 have ever had impressed upon them the law 
 of a most perfect adaptation to their ends ; and 
 for this reason this instrument was fitted to 
 become at once the idol and the oracle of the 
 
MOHAMMED. 45 
 
 desert, the terror and the scourge of erring 
 Christendom. The secret of his power was, in 
 this and in every other respect, the secret de- 
 cree of heaven. 
 
 This will appear all the more obvious when 
 you consider how numerous the obstacles that 
 barricaded his way to the throne and re- 
 pressed — almost fatally — his proud aspirations 
 after dominion. In his infancy he is an orphan. 
 His parents leave him without even the means 
 of subsistence. All that falls to him from pa- 
 trimonial estates is five camels and a maid- 
 servant. At the age of forty he had, after 
 most earnest toil, made but three converts : 
 one of these was his wife. He proclaimed the 
 unity of God, — an offensive dogma among the 
 polytheists of Arabia. They were enraged, 
 and sought his life. Among both his execu- 
 tioners and his judges it was arranged that a 
 sword from each tribe should be buried in his 
 heart, that their kindred tribes might mutually 
 bear his blood if his death should rouse to 
 war, or, as superstition might have suggested, 
 mutually share the benefit of the expiation at 
 the altars of their gods. 
 
 At the dead hour of night he made his 
 escape from his dwelling, now narrowly 
 watched, and unexpectedly eluded the vigi- 
 
46 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 lance of the disappointed and remorseless 
 Koreishites. Accompanied by a single friend, 
 he concealed himself for three clays in a 
 cavern in Mount Thor. The Koreishites ex- 
 plored every supposed hiding-place in the vi- 
 cinity of Mecca, — came to the very mouth of 
 the cave in which he was lying concealed. 
 Here a spider's web and a pigeon's nest,* " art- 
 fully arranged," proved a successful deception. 
 His unsuspecting foes turned away. The next 
 morning finds him springing from the top of 
 the rock to his camel's back and flying for 
 safety to Medina. The quick tramp of pur- 
 suers at this critical moment startles his ear : 
 his foes are indeed close upon him. On that 
 unbounded plain, as far as the eye could reach, 
 not a hill, not a mound, not a shrub, offers a 
 hiding-place to the exposed and defenceless 
 fugitive. The nest of a bird, the web of a 
 spider even, are not now his frail protectors, — 
 cannot now mislead and turn away his armed 
 foes. But, as Ishmael had escaped death 
 even when the chill of its last agony froze his 
 blood, so is Mohammed also destined to escape, 
 _ _ 
 
 * "During the three days they had lain hid here, a spider, 
 they tell us, had spun its web over the mouth of the cave, 
 and a pigeon laid two eggs near it." — Oclrfcy. 
 
MOHAMMED. 4 i 
 
 since his, too, is a protected life. His secret 
 mission it was that threw a spell upon his 
 captors. His fine figure, generous gifts, fair 
 promises, and insinuating address, abated their 
 resentment. It is said, also, that the horse of 
 the fierce Soraka fell at this juncture, and, re- 
 garding it as an evil omen, the savage returned 
 with his band. It was as though it had been 
 by a divine intervention that he escaped ; and 
 such, I think, we are bound to regard it. No 
 doubt the Koreish troop were amazed even at 
 themselves, and at an event which the Mo- 
 hammedans have ever since deemed miraculous. 
 "In this eventful moment the lance of an 
 Arab might have changed the history of the 
 world."* 
 
 After sixteen days Mohammed reached Me- 
 dina in safety. He was mounted on a she- 
 camel. It was all of this world he had retained ; 
 it was all the throne he had to occupy ; but he 
 assumed, as far as circumstances admitted, the 
 ensigns of royalty, and entered Medina with 
 an unfurled turban for his banner, suspended 
 from the point of Boreida's lance, and a palm- 
 leaf canopy held over his head by his follow- 
 ers. His train and body-guard amounted now 
 
 * Gibbon. 
 
48 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 to seventy men. In this city his reverses ter- 
 minated : his converts rallied around him, 
 Medina acknowledged his mission, and in 
 seven years from the Hegira* he returned to 
 Mecca and entered it in triumph. He had now 
 become both the prophet and the prince of his 
 converted countrymen, — the former and the 
 leader of the first general confederacy among 
 the descendants of Ishmael. Fierce tribes, 
 that force could not subdue nor fear intimi- 
 date, were under him, made the victims of a 
 despotism to which superstition imparted an 
 absoluteness and a control more intimate and 
 effective than any other. His body, until his 
 death, was regarded as invulnerable and im- 
 mortal. "When he died, the reported event 
 was rejected as a fable ; and, while he lived, 
 every wish, every motion, was carefully ob- 
 served and religiously venerated.f 
 
 Many pages have been written for the pur- 
 pose of tracing and restricting his sudden 
 elevation and wonderful successes to second 
 causes ; but to all this it is sufficient to reply, 
 that second causes were divinely arranged and 
 
 * The era of the flight from Mecca to Medina, 
 f "The hair of his head that falls/' said an eye-witness, 
 "is picked up by his devout soldiers. " 
 
MOHAMMED. 49 
 
 made to minister to the will of heaven, while 
 they, at the same time, ministered to the ele- 
 vation of the impostor. But for this, he might 
 have died in his cradle. But for this, the web 
 of a spider would not have deceived, nor his 
 eloquent tongue or the fall of a horse palsied 
 the arm of those who, thirsting for his blood, 
 had overtaken his flying steps. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ISHMAEL AND MOHAMMED. CONTINUED. 
 
 " There is a fire and motion of the soul 
 Which will not dwell in its own narrow heing, 
 And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, 
 Preys upon high adventure." Byron. 
 
 The ninth chapter of the Apocalypse is 
 generally admitted to relate to the Saracenic 
 and Turkish empires. The correctness of this 
 view I do not think it necessary to defend, 
 believing that the few who dissent from it 
 will be more likely to be convinced by illustra- 
 tions of the prophecy, drawn from the facts of 
 history, than by any direct attack upon their 
 opinions. An error is often most successfully 
 refuted by a clear presentation of the truth. 
 
 "And the fifth angel sounded; and I saw a 
 star fall from heaven unto the earth : and to 
 Mm was given the key of the bottomless pit. 
 And he opened the bottomless pit, and there 
 arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a 
 great furnace :" Rev. ix. 1, 2. With a key the 
 door is opened, the apartment is entered. It 
 
 50 
 
MOHAMMED. 51 
 
 is the emblem of power. He to whom heaven 
 gives it is destined to have dominion. It will 
 fit the wards of every lock ; the bolts must 
 give way before it. The expression " To him 
 was given" suggests that the agent designated 
 is a man ; and the word " star" that he was 
 an illustrious person. The passage points us 
 to a distinguished individual providentially 
 called to execute the divine will. Mohammed 
 not only descended from Ishmael and from 
 Abraham, but he belonged to the Koreish 
 line,* and to that branch of it regarded not 
 only as the most considerable for its nobility, 
 wealth, and power, but also most remarkable 
 as having had committed to its keeping, for 
 many generations, the sacred temple of Mecca. 
 Amid its mysterious ceremonials Mohammed 
 had been instructed and reared, and from his 
 youth had been known throughout Arabia as 
 its most accomplished and most devoted hiero- 
 phant. The same star that falls rises and 
 opens the pit. Loosened from its zone in the 
 Abrahamic covenant, it descends to make the 
 world the future theatre of its baleful influ- 
 ences ; and, as John the Baptist was but the 
 
 * He descended from Hashem, the father of the Hashem- 
 ites, and a prince of great distinction in Arabia in his day. 
 
52 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 reproduction of Elijah, so Ishmael reappears 
 also in his successor. The restless energy of 
 the long-silent founder of the robber-kingdom 
 starts from the ashes of his sepulchre and 
 walks abroad again in the hardness and daring 
 of his martial son. The mighty progenitor 
 marked out for himself his own track, — 
 stamped his own character on more than fifty 
 generations. His renowned descendant had 
 the same gift of power, invented the dark 
 sentences of Hara, and founded an empire in 
 blood. By the retained rite of circumcision, 
 as well as by the testimony of tradition, he 
 and his associate dwellers in the desert have 
 justly claimed to be the lineal descendants of 
 Ishmael. If the rite of circumcision among 
 the dispersed Jews proves their descent from 
 Abraham, then the same rite in immemorial 
 usage among the large and powerful families 
 of the Koreishites should be received as 
 equally satisfactory evidence of their descent 
 from the same original stock. Palestine and 
 Arabia have alike the seal of circumcision 
 and are alike under the rule of the patriarch's 
 seed. 
 
 "And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as 
 the smoke of a great furnace." Mecca, the 
 sacred city of the Mohammedans, is situated 
 
MOHAMMED. 53 
 
 in the centre of a barren plain and surrounded 
 by naked and precipitous mountains. Within 
 its walls is the Kaaba, the sacred house or 
 temple of the Arabs, built, as their traditions 
 affirm, by Abraham and Ishmael, and accord- 
 ing to a heaven-descended model. Within the 
 same enclosure is situated the memorable well 
 Zem-zem, said to have been the one pointed 
 out by the angel to Hagar when her child 
 was dying with thirst. In the walls of the 
 Kaaba was placed the sacred stone that, tradi- 
 tion says, came down from heaven. Laying 
 aside for the time their weapons and their 
 feuds, the idolaters were accustomed to meet 
 here annually, and from the earliest times, for 
 the worship of their idols. Seven times they 
 made the circuit of the temple, and, having 
 kissed the black stone* in the walls, they 
 went forth to resume their weapons and their 
 wars. This desolate spot — the centre and 
 
 * The black stone, which the Mohammedans held in great 
 reverence and believed to be one of the stones of Paradise 
 which fell down with Adam from heaven, is a small stone 
 set in silver and fixed in the southeast corner of the Kaaba, 
 about four feet from the ground. It is said to be white 
 within, but to have turned black on the outside by the 
 sins of the people, or, more probably, by the kisses of the 
 pilgrims. " — Ocklcy's Saracens, Part III. 
 5* 
 
54 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 support of a dark superstition — was the place 
 of Mohammed's nativity ; and the gloomy pit 
 on the slopes of Mount Hara, hard by, the 
 crater whence issued his desolating creed. 
 The character of this creed, its unscrupulous 
 perversions of truth, the opposition to the 
 Messiah which it inculcates, and the unclean- 
 ness and cruelty to which it incites, are alike 
 in keeping with the known sympathies of the 
 father of lies, are alike suggestive of pande- 
 monial influences. The surrounding desert is 
 likewise a vast solitude, without either water 
 or verdure, and covered with loose sands. 
 To these the tornado sometimes imparts the 
 motions of a troubled sea, in whose burning 
 bosom caravans and armies perish. The 
 winds — especially those that prevail from the 
 southeast — are usually burdened with heat, 
 and are often destructive of animal life. "At 
 eleven o'clock," says Bruce, "while we con- 
 templated with great pleasure the rugged top 
 of Chiggre, to which we were fast approaching, 
 and where we were to solace ourselves with 
 plenty of good water, Idris, our guide, cried 
 out, with a loud voice, ' Fall upon your faces, 
 for here is the Simoom !' I saw from the south- 
 east a haze come, in colour like the purple 
 part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or 
 
MOHAMMED. 55 
 
 thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in 
 breadth, and was about twelve feet high from 
 the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the 
 air, and moved very rapidly, for I scarce could 
 turn to fall upon the ground with my head to 
 the northward, when I felt the heat of its 
 current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat 
 on the ground, as if dead, till Idris told us it 
 was blown over. The meteor or purple haze 
 which I saw was indeed passed, but the light 
 air which still blew was of a heat to threaten 
 suffocation. For my part, I found distinctly in 
 my breast that I had imbibed a part of it; 
 nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I 
 had been some months in Italy, at the baths 
 of Poretta, near two years afterwards." 
 
 These hot blasts might well be regarded as 
 the fiery gusts that rush up from the prison- 
 house of the lost. The hills rise abruptly 
 from the cheerless plain. No forests protect, 
 with their grateful shade, from the blaze of 
 noon; no rivers cross the weary track; they 
 are absorbed in sandy basins of unknown 
 depths; and, when an oasis is reached, the 
 springs that rise to the surface are brackish 
 and offensive, from the saline or bituminous 
 deposits through which they have made their 
 secret way. It is a region in contrast with 
 
56 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 every other inhabited by man. If, amid the 
 flowers and fruits, the verdure, salubrity, and 
 melody, the gorgeousness of the skies and of 
 the plumage of unknown birds, in the New 
 World, the early navigators believed them- 
 selves in the immediate vicinity of the garden 
 of Eden, and made its precise situation the 
 object of persevering search, then might the 
 Evangelist, in his vision of the Kaaba, as it 
 presented itself to him, surrounded by no signs 
 of vegetable life, standing on deep beds of 
 sulphur and of salt, overshadowed by desolate 
 mountains, in one of which opened the gloomy 
 cell of the great deceiver of the southern 
 hemisphere, describe it as the hold of foul 
 spirits, the open crater of the bottomless pit. 
 
 There are also traceable resemblances be- 
 tween fallen spirits and the gaunt and wily ban- 
 ditti that lie in wait amid the dusky haunts of 
 the desert. Their fierce black eyes, elfish locks, 
 high cheek-bones, and dragon-teeth, warn you 
 at their approach of the neighbourhood of evil. 
 Such faces never mask a heart of love. They 
 are the outward signs of the long-indulged 
 impulses of cruelty and selfishness. They are 
 the designations of a race whom heaven re- 
 strains not. Their home has ever been one 
 of unatoned wrong. From it pity fled when 
 
MOHAMMED. 57 
 
 the scoffer set his foot in it; since when its 
 retaliations, enraged into fiercer reprisals at 
 every turn, have arrested in rivers of kindred 
 blood an increase which, but for this, would 
 of itself, in its own native outworkings, have 
 proved fatal to Eastern civilization. 
 
 Thus, in a thirsty and boundless waste, 
 swept by fiery winds, traversed by sharp and 
 naked mountains, the hold of superstition, 
 deceit, and murder, the patrimony of outcast 
 generations, John saw a master-spirit rise, 
 open its pandemonial gates, and let loose its 
 hitherto pent-up furies upon erring Christen- 
 dom. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SECRET OF MOHAMMED'S SUCCESS. 
 
 " To him was given the key of the bottomless pit." — St. John. 
 " The sword is the key of heaven and of hell." — Mohajlmed. 
 
 A great idea, clearly brought out by a 
 master-mind, possesses often a volcanic power. 
 Of this kind was that which Moses presented 
 in the court of the Pharaohs. It asserted the 
 supremacy of God over all kings, kingdoms, 
 and laws, and demanded, on that single ground, 
 the immediate and unconditional liberation of 
 his people. "Thus saith the Lord God of 
 Israel : Let my people go." Thus was asserted 
 God's unbounded and righteous dominion. It 
 was a lost truth. Its reproduction convulsed 
 the world : proud kings were awed, and idola- 
 trous kingdoms toppled and fell before it. In 
 that great idea God "beheld and drove asunder 
 the nations. He uttered his voice; the earth 
 melted." 
 
 A great idea gained distinct utterance in the 
 commencement of the Christian era. It an- 
 
 58 
 
THE SECRET OF MOHAMMED'S SUCCESS. 59 
 
 nounced the righteousness of faith, — a lost 
 though a vital truth. It agitated the com- 
 monwealth of Rome to its political and moral 
 centres as though it had been the voice of 
 God, and changed the religions and habits of 
 all its provinces. The reproduction of the 
 same idea in the sixteenth century produced 
 the greatest and the most desirable revolution 
 of modern times. 
 
 When Mohammed gave himself up to the 
 devices or the rhapsodies of Hara, his country- 
 men were the worshippers of the luminaries of 
 heaven, and of numerous other deities. Three 
 hundred and sixty idols, of every conceivable 
 variety of form and ritual known to the Ori- 
 entals, rilled the niches and adorned the pedes- 
 tals of the temple of Mecca. And throughout 
 all the world, in the East and in the West, 
 wherever the visible church had spread her 
 faith, with limited exceptions, there had sprung 
 up a disguised paganism. Retaining the names 
 of things divine, the church had changed their 
 meaning. Her images, the objects of her ado- 
 ration, were not called idols, but saints; not 
 named Jupiter and Minerva, but Peter and 
 Mary, and after the canonized worthies of her 
 communion. True religion had fled to the 
 mountains. Idolatry had been restored. That 
 
60 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 we may understand the providential Reasons 
 for the elevation of the hierophant of the Kaaba 
 and of the cavern, at this juncture, to his 
 throne, we should not forget or overlook the 
 concomitant universal prevalence of idolatry, 
 nor the coincident revelation of the man of 
 sin, who had just then become unmasked by 
 being proclaimed universal bishop, and had 
 commenced openly to exercise his spiritual 
 lordship by enforcing the worship of pieces of 
 wood, wafer gods, and dead men's bones, pro- 
 voking by his idolatries and oppressions the 
 retributions of Heaven. 
 
 The creed of the wily Arab was not the 
 offspring of chance, but one in the formation 
 of which his sagacity had been providentially 
 instructed, and which was destined, in work- 
 ing out its own hidden life, to develop and 
 fulfil the mission to which he and his race 
 had been so wonderfully reserved. That creed 
 contained a grand and an eternal truth, — a 
 truth simple, sublime, and in harmony with 
 the teachings of Abraham, Moses, and Messias, 
 and yet a truth that put him in debate with 
 the world. " There is no God but one !" was 
 the short but sententious utterance that shook 
 on their polluted thrones the idols of Arabia 
 and of Christendom ; that originated in the 
 
THE SECRET OF MOHAMMED'S SUCCESS. 61 
 
 desert that fierce civil war which ended in 
 the triumph of Mohammed, and in the union 
 of its segregated tribes under the government 
 of a single chief. Persuasion and miracles, he 
 maintained, had been the abortive alternatives 
 in the gentler mission of Jesus; but more 
 effective measures were now demanded, and 
 Heaven had committed to his hand the sword. 
 With it he was required to chastise and reform 
 the worlds idolatrous kingdoms. 
 
 Truth is often essential to success, — even 
 when error mars and defaces it. The great truth 
 that headed the creed of Mohammed turned a 
 daring fiction into a probable verity. Both 
 were necessary to create an army of fanatics 
 and to found the Saracenic empire. He began 
 his mission, like Moses, with the professed sen- 
 tences of inspiration : but no signs attended 
 him ; no sea opened at the exodus of a nation ; 
 no mountain, wrapped in fire and darkness, be- 
 came for a whole year his mighty oracle. His 
 fables about Gabriel's midnight visits to his 
 cavern, bringing with him the chapters of the 
 Koran, and of his ride on his mysterious Borak 
 from Mecca to Jerusalem, and thence through 
 the seven heavens, where he passed the veil 
 of unity, approached within two bowshots of 
 the throne, and felt a cold that pierced his 
 
62 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 heart as his shoulder was touched by the hand 
 of God, were esteemed fables, and awakened 
 for him the scorn and persecution of his coun- 
 trymen. Ten years he toiled at Mecca. His 
 inventions and his eloquence won him few 
 converts ; yea, rather alienated his friends and 
 exasperated his foes. At length, abandoned 
 by all, he mounted his camel and fled for his 
 life. His mission thus far had proved a total 
 failure, and he must have perished in oblivion 
 but for the addenda to his creed, — an after- 
 thought to which he is now at length driven 
 by defeat and despair. 
 
 He was now become sufficiently enlightened 
 as to the hopelessness of his cause if he did 
 not at once resort to the alternative of force. 
 Moses and our blessed Lord gave credibility 
 to their missions by their miracles; but Mo- 
 hammed was but a pretender, and could suc- 
 ceed in but one way. When this idea had 
 at length struggled into distinct being in the 
 mind of the forlorn deceiver, he recovered 
 at once his fallen courage. One can hardly 
 fail to see his eye kindle and his bosom swell 
 as the accents fall from his lips : — " The sword 
 is the key of heaven and of hell." As he 
 grasps its hilt, it becomes in his vision instinc- 
 tive with his destiny. "A drop of blood shed 
 
THE SECRET OF MOHAMMED'S SUCCESS. 63 
 
 in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is 
 of more avail than two months of fasting and 
 prayer." The gulf that had opened its smould- 
 ering chasm at his feet is thus passed at a 
 single bound. "Mohammed had now a dream 
 that he held in his hand the key of the Kaaba, 
 and that he and his men made the circuit 
 round it and performed all the ceremonies of 
 the pilgrimage. Having told his dream next 
 morning, he and his followers were all in high 
 spirits upon it, taking it for an omen that 
 they should shortly be masters of Mecca."* 
 
 In commemoration of this dream of the key, 
 the Andalusian Moors suspended one on the 
 arch of their Alhambra, and bore the sign of 
 one painted on their standards. He had now 
 found out the secret of power. He grasped the 
 key; the bolt yielded to its magic touch; the 
 obstruction gave way amid the successive 
 shocks of a great social revolution. He drew 
 his sword to enforce his creed. The idolaters 
 resisted. Three hundred and thirteen armed 
 fanatics were all that supported his infant em- 
 pire. Undismayed by superior numbers, though 
 in peril of his life, his companions overpowered 
 and falling around him, he is nevertheless 
 
 *Ockley, p. 46 : 5th Loudon edition, (Bohn ; ) 1848. 
 
64 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 equal to the terrible exigency. Springing to 
 the back of his white mule, he rallies his fol- 
 lowers, rushes upon his foes, and, in imitation 
 of the ancient prophets, casts dust in their 
 faces. Superstition now comes to his aid : it 
 oppresses his enemies. They fly in their turn ; 
 and, in the very moment of defeat, the impostor 
 is suddenly victorious, and that almost without 
 striking another blow. Amia, a surviving 
 idolater, when pointed to the pit at Beder in 
 which Mohammed had cast the bodies of his 
 fallen foes, uttered the death-wail of Arabian 
 paganism. The courage of the lonely chief 
 spent itself in pathetic lamentation rather than 
 in an appeal to the sword : — 
 
 " Alas ! the peers and princes of the people, — 
 How fallen at Beder and at Kandali ! 
 All night exposed lie there both old and young, 
 Naked and breathless. 
 
 Oh, what a change has come to Mecca's vale ! 
 Even sandy desert plains are drown' d in tears."* 
 
 But larger armies rally; marches and 
 countermarches, battles and sieges, follow 
 each other in quick succession. The alarm of 
 war falls back deep into the interior; dusky 
 warriors rush up from their wild retreats ; ten 
 
 Ockley, p. 35. 
 
THE SECRET OF MOIIAMMED'S SUCCESS. 65 
 
 thousand watch-fires glimmer at the siege of 
 Mecca. The idolaters are everywhere routed. 
 The lieutenants of Mohammed spread his sway 
 from the Gulf of Persia to the Red Sea. The 
 idols are destroyed, the altars of superstition 
 demolished ; and, amid the crash of arms and the 
 cloud of battle that settled dark over the 
 bosom of the desert, the false prophet esta- 
 blished his creed and stood at the head of an 
 army of devotees, the conqueror of Arabia, the 
 founder of a new kingdom, the author and 
 propagator of a new faith. 
 
 Surrounding nations did not understand the 
 nature of that fierce domestic war that shook 
 the depth of the wilderness with the tramp of 
 camels and horses, and that skirted the horizon 
 with its long lines of tents and camp-fires. All 
 was indistinct; Mohammed, his creed, his as- 
 sault upon the religion of his native land, all 
 were invisible to the distant beholder at the 
 time. The signs of tumult and of war, the pro- 
 gress of a great and destructive conflict sweep- 
 ing over the entire peninsula, — this was visible, 
 but visible only as it stood alone, without ex- 
 planation of its causes and aims, — visible, "as 
 the smoke of a great furnace" rising from the 
 bosom of the desert. 
 
 6* 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ISLAMISM A PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 "A king, .... understanding dark sentences, shall stand up." 
 Dan. viii. 23 
 
 Throughout the Koran, in maintaining the 
 unity of God, Mohammed in almost every 
 chapter assails the divinity of Christ. While 
 he insists, in his opposition to the Jews, that 
 Jesus was not an impostor, and holds them to 
 a terrible account for what he declares to have 
 been an abortive attempt to put him to death, 
 he also insists, with a still greater earnestness 
 and frequency, that he was a mere man, though 
 a prophet, and that to maintain that he was 
 the Son, companion, or equal of God, deserved 
 not only death but the everlasting torments of 
 hell. He makes himself our Lord's equal, if 
 not his superior, and turns his promise of an- 
 other comforter into a prediction that relates 
 to himself. He sets aside necessarily the ex- 
 piatory nature of the crucifixion, inasmuch as 
 he denies the fact ; asserting that our Lord was 
 
 66 
 
ISLAMISM A PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 not crucified at all, the Jews having mistaken 
 another for him. While, in the apprehensions 
 of his unenlightened mind, the divine unity 
 seemed ever in conflict with his deity and lord- 
 ship, his actual crucifixion detracted also largely 
 from his glory as a prophet. Nor does it ap- 
 pear ever to have occurred to him that the 
 deity of Christ could possibly be held by any 
 one who did not of necessity at the same time 
 repudiate the favourite dogma of his creed. He 
 therefore doomed all who held it to the sword 
 and to the flames. His grand idea not only 
 threw up a black cloud upon the face of the 
 sun; it also obscured the whole atmosphere of 
 truth. He maintained that the Koran came 
 from heaven and was sent down for the con- 
 firmation of the Scriptures and for their true 
 and ultimate interpretation. 
 
 The sun and the air are in this prophecy 
 representative terms. Their obscuration pro- 
 ceeds from the well-known source of oppo- 
 sition to things heavenly and divine. Christ 
 is the Sun of righteousness and the glory of 
 revealed religion. The Holy Scriptures, which 
 contain and exhibit him, are the atmosphere 
 illuminated by him. And, as the " dark sen- 
 tences" of Hara confused and perverted their 
 testimony, they were represented as the in- 
 
68 ISHMAEL AND THE CIIURCH. 
 
 ventions of infernal malevolence, the smoke 
 of the bottomless pit. The Koran is a re- 
 production of many of the facts contained in 
 Moses and in the Evangelists, but so modified 
 as to suit the sinister purposes of the im- 
 postor. Everywhere the unity of God is as- 
 serted and idolatry condemned. Even Jesus 
 is 'made to deny that he ever taught his 
 own divinity or ever authorized the divine 
 honours paid to him. And Noah, Abraham, 
 Moses, and David, are all brought up as wit- 
 nesses, and each one in his turn is made to 
 testify to the divine unity and to endorse the 
 mission of the prophet of Mecca. As he had 
 no miracles to fall back upon, he thus fell back 
 upon the authority of those who had, and, in 
 this manner, with a consummate artfulness, 
 turned the sacred books of both Jews and 
 Christians into witnesses to the truth of his 
 own dogma. 
 
 It is thus that the sun and the air are 
 darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 
 A room is darkened when you put out the 
 candle; a city, when you turn off its light; but 
 if a black pall be hung on the face of the sun 
 the whole world is darkened. Though the ex- 
 istence and the unity of God are assumed and 
 taught in the Scriptures, as they are also in the 
 
ISLAMISM A PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY. G9 
 
 whole universe of material things, yet the grand 
 idea that ever occurs and that ever lights up 
 and adorns the sacred page is that of atone- 
 ment. When sin had entered the world and 
 Eden and hope were lost, embodied in the first 
 promise, it whispered comfort to the race and 
 broke the silence of despair. And from this 
 blessed hour it began to unfold and expand 
 and impress itself on human convictions. 
 
 It glimmered in sacrificial fires, for ages, over 
 whole countries and from a thousand altars. 
 From the exodus to the crucifixion, it shed 
 upon Mount Zion the never-ceasing sacrifice 
 of blood. It reflected its significance and its 
 remedial glory from all the incidents of the in- 
 spired history, — in Noah's ark, the offering of 
 Isaac, the brazen serpent, the falling manna, 
 the smitten rock. The high-priest, the gar- 
 ments that he wore, and the ritual that regu- 
 lated and directed his mediations, were its 
 "image and superscription." The tabernacle, 
 the temple, the lamb, the scape-goat, the altar, 
 the mercy-seat, all, all were shadows of Him 
 who by one offering should forever perfect all 
 them that are sanctified. He was the grand 
 basis of the everlasting covenant; and when 
 those holy bards, inspired to sing of things 
 divine, rose to the loftiest range of thought and 
 
70 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 melody, it was "when they saw his glory and 
 spake of him." "To him gave all the pro- 
 phets witness." His death and resurrection, 
 his love, his conquests, his mediatorial reign 
 and work, permeate the pages of the Old Testa- 
 ment. In the New, the four Evangelists fur- 
 nish us with his biography; the Acts of the 
 Apostles, with the testimony of the Spirit to 
 his mission of mercy. The Epistles contain a 
 formal statement and defence of the expiatory 
 nature of his sacrifice and intercession, and, from 
 first to last, the sum of the inspired utterance 
 is that of atonement made, a ransom found, a 
 remedy provided, a Messiah offered up, a high- 
 priest passed into the heavens, — Jesus, the Son 
 of God, able to save to the uttermost, seeing he 
 ever liveth to make intercession. 
 
 Take this away, and, while the idea of the 
 divine unity would still stand impressed on 
 the sacred page as it does on the face of na- 
 ture, yet there would be there no recorded 
 hope for lost man; its lustre would be tar- 
 nished, its harmony and its benediction lost. 
 While it preached to me most incoherently 
 of unity and purity, it would present to my 
 wistful search no Kedeemer, and leave me in 
 despair. It is thus that the glory of our Lord 
 is obscured by the effusions of Hara. He is 
 
ISLAMISM A PERVERSION OF CHRISTIANITY. 71 
 
 not indeed denied a place in the prophetic 
 galaxy, but he is denied to have been the Son 
 of God in his incarnation, and an expiatory 
 sacrifice in his crucifixion. The Scriptures are 
 in like manner not denied, but professedly con- 
 firmed, by the Koran, while throughout their 
 entire and illustrious testimony hell spreads 
 out her torn cloud, intercepting the rays of the 
 Sun of righteousness and hanging an atmo- 
 sphere heavy and dark between earth and 
 heaven. Ah me! thou blessed apostle of 
 Jesus ! that were indeed the smoke of a pan- 
 demon furnace that could thus throw a shadow 
 on the glory of our Lord and obscure the efful- 
 gence of his word. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE SARACENS — THEIR FANATIC COURAGE. 
 
 "And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth." — 
 Rev. ix. 3. 
 
 An obvious truth — a truth lying at the 
 foundation of all enlightened conviction and 
 worship — formed the basis for the errors of 
 the superstructure in the religion of the false 
 prophet. All attempts to refute the dogma — 
 a dogma made prominent in every ground of 
 invasion or treaty of peace, in every orison or 
 battle-cry — were ever a failure. It challenged 
 the assent of Jew and Gentile as to an in- 
 tuitive truth that carried with it its own evi- 
 dence, and that imposed on all the obligations 
 of an unhesitating faith. Joshua had waved 
 the sword of doom over Canaan for denying 
 it; and Arabia, it was now affirmed, was called 
 upon, by the last and the most illustrious of 
 heaven's prophetic missionaries, to maintain in 
 the earth " the worship of one sole and mighty 
 God." The truth contained in the creed made 
 
 72 
 
THE SARACENS — THEIR FANATIC COURAGE. 73 
 
 the error respectable; the error made war a 
 duty; and the rewards of booty and of para- 
 dise made the unitarian army destructive and 
 terrible, if not invincible. 
 
 "And there came out of the smoke locusts 
 upon the earth." 
 
 " I swear," said the impostor, " by the moun- 
 tain upon which God spake to Moses, by what 
 is contained in the book written in parchment, 
 by the first temple of Mecca, by the arches of 
 the heavens, and by the sea full of water, 
 that God is one sole God, and the punishment 
 
 promised to unbelievers is infallible 
 
 They shall be precipitated in the fire of 
 
 hell Who are the more happy? — they 
 
 who are in our felicity, or such as are near to 
 Zacon, the tree of hell? This tree cometh 
 out of the bottom of hell ; it riseth high, and 
 the branches themselves resemble the heads of 
 devils. The damned shall eat the fruit thereof. 
 
 They shall drink boiling water The 
 
 fruit of the tree of hell, called Zacon, shall 
 serve for fruit to the wicked. It shall boil in 
 their bellies like pitch or water. They shall 
 cry, 'Take the wicked; drag them into the 
 fire of hell ! pour upon their heads all manner 
 of torments!' It shall be said to them, 
 ' Taste the pains of hell I' . . . . The righteous 
 
74 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 shall be in delicious places, in gardens adorned 
 with fountains. They shall be clothed with 
 purple. They shall behold each other face to 
 face. We will assemble them with women 
 pure and clean, who shall have most beautiful 
 eyes. They shall have fruits savoury and de- 
 licious, of all seasons. They shall never die. 
 .... They shall be clothed with silk, repose 
 on stately beds, and shall not be troubled 
 either with the heat of the sun or the cold of 
 the 'moon. They shall be under the shadow 
 of the trees of paradise. There shall they 
 gather fruits as they stand, sit, or lie 
 
 down Whoever falls in battle, his 
 
 sins are forgiven him: at the day of judg- 
 ment his wounds shall be odoriferous as musk, 
 and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied 
 by the wings of the cherubim." Such mo- 
 tives engendered in the warm climate and in 
 the warm constitutions of the Arabs a fana- 
 tic and a voluptuous zeal, that sent them in 
 swarms from their barren and burning sands 
 to ravage and lay waste the fair provinces of 
 Christendom. 
 
 When Syria had fallen, and Africa had 
 been spoiled, and the Atlantic coast had been 
 reached, it is said that "Akbah spurred his 
 horse into the waves, and, raising his eyes to 
 
THE SARACENS THEIR FANATIC COURAGE. 75 
 
 heaven, exclaimed, c Great God! if my course 
 were not stopped by this sea, I would still go 
 on to the unknown kingdoms of the West, 
 preaching the unity of thy holy name, and 
 putting to the sword the rebellious nations 
 who worship any other gods but thee !' ".* 
 
 The emotion of Akbah was common to 
 the masses composing the Saracenic armies. 
 The woes of hell and the blessings of a sen- 
 sual paradise were alike motives of amazing 
 power, drawn from the invisible world, to in- 
 duce the lover of war and plunder to follow 
 the martial seer and his lieutenants. 
 
 Both worlds were given to the faithful Mos- 
 lem soldier. The spoils of war were his ; fair 
 castles, gardens, and conquered provinces, were 
 the just possessions of the successful. If they 
 fell in battle, they rose at once to their sensual 
 rewards. Silver goblets, fastened on diamonds 
 filled from wine-bottles never before opened, 
 and mingled with the water that sparkles 
 in the fountains where the cherubim drink, 
 should slake their thirst, without danger of 
 satiety or inebriation. Beautiful black-eyed 
 virgins, with skin as white as polished pearls, 
 should become their wives. Keposing on ele- 
 
 * Ockley, p. 3GG : Bo!m ; 5th Ed. 
 
76 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH 
 
 vated beds, amid verdant fields, gardens, and 
 fountains of exquisite beauty, and bordered 
 by rivers that refresh and flow forever, the 
 sufferer should find the compensations for 
 courage and for death in the field of battle. 
 Motives such as these, presented to a race so 
 ardent and impulsive, kindled the wildest en- 
 thusiasm, and vast hordes rose from their soli- 
 tudes and followed each other on the bloody 
 trail of war and carnage. 
 
 Ethiopia and Arabia are alike the prolific 
 home of the locust. They darken the air in 
 their flight, create a rushing sound with their 
 wings, like distant thunder, and cover a fron- 
 tier, it is said, sometimes of five hundred miles. 
 "This plague," says Pliny, "is considered a 
 manifestation of the wrath of the gods. By 
 their numbers they darken the sun, and the 
 nations view them with anxious surprise. 
 Their strength is unfailing, so that they cross 
 oceans and pervade immense tracts of land. 
 They cover the harvests with a dreadful cloud, 
 their very touch destroying the fruits of the 
 earth, and their bite utterly consuming every 
 thing." 
 
 "The quantity," says Volney, "of these in- 
 sects is incredible to all who have not them- 
 selves witnessed their astonishing numbers. 
 
THE SARACENS — TI1EIR FANATIC COURAGE. 77 
 
 The whole earth is covered with them for the 
 space of several leagues. The noise they 
 make in browsing on the trees may be heard 
 at a great distance. The Tartars themselves 
 are less destructive than these little animals. 
 One would imagine that fire had followed their 
 progress. Wherever their myriads spread, the 
 verdure of the country disappears; trees and 
 plants stripped of their leaves give the appear- 
 ance of winter to the spring. When clouds 
 of them take their flight, the heavens are lite- 
 rally obscured by them." 
 
 " The land is as the garden of Eden before 
 them, and behind them as a desolate wilderness, 
 yea, and nothing shall escape them. The ap- 
 pearance of them is as the appearance of horses* 
 .... Like the noise of chariots on the tops of 
 the mountains; . . . like the noise of a flame 
 of fire that devoureth the stubble; as a strong 
 people set in battle array. . . . The earth shall 
 quake before them, the heavens shall tremble, 
 the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the 
 
 stars shall withdraw their shining The 
 
 Lord shall utter his voice before his army. . . . 
 
 * " Its head is of the size of a pea, though longer, — its 
 forehead pointing downward^ like the handsome Andalusian 
 horse .' ' — Dillo n* s Travels 
 
tb ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 His camp is very great/'* Saracenic armies, 
 issuing from the home of the locust, and like 
 them in number and destructiveness and in 
 many other respects, are said by the prophet, 
 metonymically, to be those insects just rising 
 up in their appalling migrations. 
 
 The ungrateful soil of the Arab returned 
 him no remuneration for his labour. His camel 
 or horse, his tent and scimitar, constituted his 
 wealth and his resources. Always on the 
 alert, ever armed, governed by no law but his 
 will, his interest, or his impulses, his conscience 
 and his understanding uninstructed, his saga- 
 city and his emotional nature alone strongly 
 developed, he must be ranked just where he 
 has ever been, — with the most impressible of 
 the human race. A verdant field, a flowing 
 river, the shadows of trees, pendent fruit of a 
 most delicious flavour, women of extraordinary 
 beauty, a paradise of voluptuous ecstasies; — 
 the ever-recurring imagery of the Koran,*)" were 
 the appropriate excitements of his imaginative 
 being, the prolific sources of fanatic courage 
 and religious delusion. 
 
 In that hotbed of cruelty and lust over 
 
 * Joel ii. 
 
 ■j* De Rycr's Koran, ch. lxxxiii. to ch. lxxxviii., inclusive. 
 
THE SARACENS — THEIR FANATIC COURAGE. 70 
 
 which the impostor held sway, the effusions of 
 Hara had become an incubation of intense 
 activity, as they settled on its bosom and 
 invited its slumbering myriads into aggressive 
 life. Never did an army more effective, of 
 a more destructive and irresistible fanaticism, 
 rise at the conjurations of a wily magician, or 
 evolve from the dark creations of a heated 
 imagination. 
 
 A turban, unfurled and suspended for a 
 banner from the point of Boreida's spear, when 
 the forlorn prophet entered Medina, made the 
 yellow head-dress ever after the distinguishing 
 badge of his Saracenic disciples.* It became 
 the ornament and golden crown of Moslem 
 soldiers. Their long black tresses escaping 
 from underneath its graceful folds, their loose 
 and flowing robes, often ornamented with rib- 
 bons and rich silks, (the spoils of war,) gave 
 to these conquerors of the world, when seen in 
 the distance, the appearance of an army of 
 women. But John's nearer view of them cor- 
 rected first and false impressions : they had the 
 faces of men; they were armed for war. " Their 
 physical structure is in all respects more per- 
 fect than that of Europeans, their organs of 
 
 * The Turks wear white ones. 
 
80 ISHMAEL AND THE CHUKCH. 
 
 sense exquisitely acute, their size above the 
 average of men in general, their figure robust 
 and elegant."* 
 
 Their neatly-fitting breastplates were worn 
 not for ornament but for use. With eyes deep- 
 set, overshadowed by shaggy eyebrows and 
 supported by high cheek-bones, with mouths 
 large, teeth prominent and carnivorous, — in a 
 word, in their whole aspect, — the animal pre- 
 dominated over the man. Their look was 
 appalling; their battle-cry, accompanying the 
 charge of their rushing squadrons, loud and 
 courageous; their onset irresistible. It was 
 " as the sound of chariots of many horses run- 
 ning to battle." 
 
 Nothing truly peculiar and strikingly cha- 
 racteristic of the Moslem invaders escaped 
 the vision of John.f The compact infantry of 
 the Eomans was not before him in this pano- 
 rama. These strange soldiers were mounted, 
 and rushed on their mission of wo in the 
 saddle. The camel, at the first in more gene- 
 ral use among the poorer classes of the Mo- 
 hammedans, soon gave place to the horse, — 
 
 * Baron De Larrey, surgeon-general of Napoleon's army 
 in Egypt. 
 
 t Rev. ix. 7-9. 
 
THE SARACENS — THEIR FANATIC COURAGE. 81 
 
 the native and the favourite of Yemen and 
 the main dependence of Saracenic armies. 
 Encumbered by no baggage, quartering, like 
 the locust, on newly-appropriated districts, con- 
 tinued enterprises of war were undertaken at a 
 moment's warning, and distant cities, assured 
 of safety from their very remoteness from 
 the scenes of late invasions and disasters, were 
 themselves suddenly stricken and oppressed. 
 The first intimation of danger arose usually from 
 the actual perception of its immediate vicinity. 
 At break of day there is perceived an unusual 
 rush, as of winds, or commotions in the air, 
 or as of a prolonged, undulating sound, a low 
 tremulous thunder, in the earth. It reaches 
 the ear of the sentinel on the walls, of the 
 citizen in the gate, of the mother at her cradle, 
 of the bride at her toilet. It is the hostile 
 camp just put in motion; it is the tramp of a 
 hundred thousand horse. Every eye is now 
 directed toward the unprotected and invaded 
 frontier. A long waving line skirts the hori- 
 zon ; it rises higher and darker, like a cloud of 
 locusts just taking wing in myriads from the 
 bosom of the desert. It is the dust from the 
 feet of the Moslem cavalry 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MOHAMMED AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 
 
 "Earth seems a garden in its loveliest dress 
 Before them, and behind a wilderness." 
 
 COWPER. 
 
 We shall now take our leave of the false 
 prophet, to follow those that succeeded to his 
 bloody throne and spread his martial and his 
 ghostly dominion. Mohammed at his death 
 ceased from beins; an actor in the scenes that 
 originated from the effusions of the pit. He 
 sent out its smoke, put in motion those im- 
 portant social convulsions and changes which 
 ended in the establishment of his faith and of 
 his government, subverted the idolatry and 
 independence of his native country, and then 
 disappeared forever. 
 
 The army that had sprung up around him 
 gave to his " dark sentences" a more compre- 
 hensive meaning, a wider range, than suited 
 the timidity of old age or the imbecility inci- 
 dent to the poison he had imbibed three years 
 before. 
 
 82 
 
MOHAMMED AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 83 
 
 "After his return to Medina from his late 
 pilgrimage," says Prideaux, (pages 87-89.) "he 
 began daily to decline through the force of 
 that poison which he had taken three years 
 before at Kaabar, which, still working in him, 
 at length brought him so low as forced him, on 
 the 28th day of Saphar, (the second month of 
 the year,) to take his bed ; and on the twelfth 
 day of the following month he died, after 
 having been sick thirteen days 
 
 " The beginning of his sickness was a slow 
 fever, which at length made him delirious; 
 whereon he -called for a pen, ink, and paper, 
 telling them that he would dictate a book to 
 them which should keep them from erring after 
 
 his death Daring his sickness he much 
 
 complained of the bit* which he had taken at 
 Kaabar, telling those that came to visit him 
 that he had felt the torments of it in his body 
 ever since; that at times it brought on him 
 very dolorous pains, and that then it was going 
 to break his very heart-strings. And when, 
 among others, there came to see him the mother 
 of Bashar, who died on the spot of that poison, 
 he cried out, ' mother of Bashar, the veins 
 of my heart are now breaking of the bit which 
 
 * Meat poisoned by a female. 
 
84 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 I eat with your son at Kaabar.' .... Some of 
 his followers would have had him buried at 
 Mecca, some at Jerusalem, others at Medina. 
 Abu Beker, coming in, told them that he had 
 often heard from the prophet himself that 
 prophets were to be buried in the place where 
 they died ; and then, without more ado, com- 
 manded the bed whereon he lay to be plucked 
 out, and a grave to be immediately dug under 
 it, to which all consented; and there they 
 buried him forthwith, in the place where he 
 died, which was in the chamber of Ayesha, 
 his best-beloved wife, at Medina ; and there he 
 lietli to this day, without an iron coffin or 
 loadstones to hang him in the air, as the 
 stories which commonly go about of him 
 among Christians fabulously relate." 
 
 The flame of an unholy ambition, in any 
 event, had spent itself in the frame which it 
 had excited and consumed. He had become 
 weary of long marches and sieges, of exposures 
 and privations. The prospects of distant and 
 dangerous campaigns filled the prematurely 
 old and infirm pretender with pacific inten- 
 tions. His councils were now shaped to re- 
 press the ardour of his followers. But the 
 locust horde had already taken wing, — had in- 
 herited a destructive nature with all the energy 
 
MOHAMMED AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 85 
 
 of its young and ungratified propensities ; and 
 scarcely had his body sunk to its last resting- 
 place in the earth, underneath the bedchamber 
 of Ayesha, in Medina, a.d. 632,* when the 
 bloody drama which his inventive genius had 
 prepared was opened in Asia by his fierce lieu- 
 tenants. The world, through other leaders, 
 felt the shock of his now palsied arm. 
 
 "The evil that men do lives after them." 
 Mohammed, like his famed progenitor, had 
 left a sad legacy to the world. Both stand 
 out by themselves in a solitary and gloomy 
 grandeur of nature, with the awful capabilities 
 of impressing their ruinous individualities on 
 the men of their own times and of making 
 their own deep footprints the highway of 
 af ter-gener ation s . 
 
 The caliphs gave perpetuity to a creed 
 which they embraced with sincere and fanatic 
 zeal, snatched from the failing grasp of their 
 dying prophet the whip of scorpions, and be- 
 came in their turn the propagandists of his 
 
 * Mohammed was evidently delirious at his death. His 
 call for materials to write a new book just before he 
 breathed his last is in evidence of this ; and his last words, 
 " God, pardon my sins ! yes, I come among my fellow- 
 citizens on high!" should not be put down as evidence of 
 his sincerity, but of mental aberration. 
 
86 ISIBIAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 imposture and the scourge of the world. In 
 the first great battle of the Moslems with a 
 foreign foe at Muta, " Zeid fell like a soldier 
 in the foremost ranks. The death of Jaafar 
 was heroic and memorable. He lost his 
 right hand; he shifted the standard to his 
 left. The left was severed from his body; 
 he embraced the standard with his bleeding 
 stumps till he was transfixed to the ground 
 with fifty honourable wounds. ''Advance!' 
 cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant 
 place; ' either victory or paradise is our own !' 
 The lance of a Eoman decided the alternative ; 
 but the falling standard was rescued by Caled, 
 the proselyte of Mecca; nine swords were 
 broken in his hands, and his valour withstood 
 and repulsed the superior number of the 
 Christians. 
 
 "Caled is renowned among his brethren and 
 his enemies by the glorious appellation of 
 the sword of God."* His shout was louder 
 than that of Mohammed, his agility and his 
 strength that of the tigeiyj- his cruelty as un- 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 141. 
 
 ■}■ "While lie was fighting with one of the Greeks, his 
 sword broke in his hand; but, closing with his adversary, he 
 squeezed him so hard that he broke his ribs and then threw 
 him down dead from off his horse."' — Oclley, p. 193. 
 
MOHAMMED AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 87 
 
 relenting. Over his head waved the stand- 
 ard of the black eagle ; and his battle-cry, as 
 he rushed to his banquet of blood, sent a thrill 
 of terror to the hearts of the brave. 
 
 When he led his troops into Damascus, his 
 ears were deaf to the supplications of the con- 
 quered. The bitter wail that rose around him 
 was drowned by his voice. It thundered along 
 the crowded street, lined with murderers : — 
 " No quarters to the unbelievers ! no quarters !" 
 Obeidah had entered the town at another point 
 and had granted the prayer of the trembling 
 Damascenes ; midway met the rival chiefs and 
 the tides of war and peace. The enraged Caled 
 claimed that Obeidah's grant was invalid and 
 an invasion of privilege. " The unbelievers," 
 shouted the gaunt murderer, u shall perish by 
 the sword! Fall on !"* 
 
 When Caled became a proselyte, he was com- 
 missioned by Mohammed to destroy the re- 
 maining idols of Arabia. His cruelty to the 
 Jodhamites shocked even the remorseless pro- 
 phet himself. For, after many were taken 
 prisoners, he tied the hands of numbers behind 
 their backs and put them all to the sword.f 
 
 Before his death he was charged with em- 
 
 * Mil. Gib. cli. 51. f Oekley, p. 55. 
 
88 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 bezzlement. "An examination was accord- 
 ingly instituted, with every indignity, and his 
 turban fastened round his neck in the igno- 
 minious grasp of the common crier. . . . The 
 imposition of a fine satisfied the public justice ; 
 but when his horse, his armour, and one slave, 
 w r ere found to constitute all his wealth, Omar 
 deigned to weep over the tomb, at Emesa, of 
 the injured conqueror of Syria."* Such were 
 the fierce whelps that howled for the prey as 
 soon as their leashes were dropped by the de- 
 parted Mohammed. Mischief was afoot, and 
 its inevitable march was down the waste of 
 years. 
 
 * Major Pierce, in note to Ockley, p. 255 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE SARACENS, A SCOURGE TO CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 "Their torment was as the torment of a scorpion when he 
 striketh a man." — Rev. ix. 5. 
 
 The locust, though destructive to vegetation, 
 is not malignant in its disposition or poisonous 
 in its bite or sting. It became necessary, 
 therefore, as inspiration would represent the 
 true character of the woe, to introduce into 
 the description of it another insect or reptile 
 common to the torrid zone, and of extra- 
 ordinary and deadly irascibility. Said the 
 prophet, "And they had tails like unto 
 scorpions, and they had stings in their tails. 
 Their torment was as the torment of a scor- 
 pion when he striketh a man." 
 
 The sting of a scorpion is a sharp-pointed 
 downward curve at the end of his tail; and, 
 when excited, he raises it and inflicts a deadly 
 wound. The stroke is sudden and without 
 warning. The poison— a cold, colourless fluid 
 — oozes out with either the exertion or pres- 
 
 8* F 89 
 
90 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 sure attending the stroke, or both combined;, 
 and is left in the incision made. It is very 
 diffusive. It is taken up at once into the cir- 
 culation, and assimilates in a very short time 
 the whole mass of the fluids, the wound itself 
 remaining but slightly inflamed. 
 
 Such was the venom of that spiritual poison 
 in the creed of the false prophet. It was 
 left behind in every conquered country, to 
 assimilate every thing to its own nature. Its 
 stealthy approach was unobserved, like that 
 of the scorpion in the footpath, until it, or 
 the resistless stroke of the scimitar, or a life 
 of bondage, became the alternatives to be at 
 once chosen, and that without debate. Many 
 chose death; and torrents of Christian blood 
 were rained upon the pavements of fallen 
 cities. Many chose to pay tribute, and to drag 
 out a sickly being under heavy exactions and 
 most destructive religious prohibitions. Others 
 chose at once to imbibe the poison and to pur- 
 chase social and political equality among their 
 conquerors by an open and shameless apostasy. 
 
 Said Eomanus, the fallen governor of Boz- 
 rah, "I renounce your society, both in this 
 world and in the world to come ; and I deny 
 Him that was crucified and whosoever wor- 
 ships him; and I choose God for my Lord, 
 
THE SARACENS, A SCOURGE. 91 
 
 Islam for my faith, Mecca for my temple, the 
 Moslem for my brethren, and Mohammed for 
 my prophet, who was sent to lead men into 
 the right way and to exalt the true religion in 
 spite of all those who join partners with God."* 
 
 A venerable Greek, issuing on one occasion 
 from an army of seventy thousand Christians, 
 offered presents and terms of peace to the in- 
 vader of Syria; but Caled's reply was, "Ye 
 Christian dogs! ye know your option. The 
 Koran, the tribute, or the sword/'f 
 
 When the Moslems sat down before the 
 gates of a besieged Christian city, the sum- 
 mons to surrender ran usually in the following 
 terms : — " We require you to testify that there 
 is but one God, and that Mohammed is the 
 prophet of God." 
 
 "In the name of the most merciful God. 
 From Abu Obeidah Ebn Aljirahh to the chief 
 commanders of the people of iEliahJ and the 
 inhabitants thereof. Health and happiness 
 to every one that follows the right way and 
 believes in God and the apostle. We require 
 of you to testify that there is but one God, and 
 Mohammed is his apostle, and that there shall 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 192. 
 
 -j- Ibid. p. 195. J Jerusalem. 
 
92 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 be a day of judgment when God shall raise 
 the dead out of their sepulchres ; and when 
 you have borne witness to this, it is unlawful 
 for us either to shed your blood or meddle with 
 your substance or children. If you refuse this, 
 consent to pay tribute and be under us forth- 
 with; otherwise I shall bring men against you 
 who love death better than you do the drink- 
 ing of wine or eating of hogs' flesh ; nor will I 
 ever stir from you, if it please God, till I have 
 destroyed those that fight for you and made 
 slaves of your children."* 
 
 Those who consented to these terms im- 
 bibed the poison of a false faith in its dead- 
 liest form. That was a scorpion-sting indeed, 
 which penetrated to the very soul, corrupted 
 the blood of an immortal nature, and brought 
 on the endless horrors of the second death. 
 He who embraced that creed perished ; for he 
 sinned against the remedy itself: and what sin 
 could be more mortal? For, though he ex- 
 alted God in his unity, he in the next breath 
 degraded him in his Son. This was the sting 
 in the tail, — the venom of the scorpion left 
 behind; and this was it that was ever de- 
 manded, while the scimitar, dripping with gore, 
 
 * Ockley, p. 206 
 
A SCOURGE. 93 
 
 waved over the head of the fallen disciple. It 
 was the deadliest sting in the Saracenic woe. 
 
 The stroke of the scorpion, though gene- 
 rally, was not uniformly, fatal; perhaps be- 
 cause its most concentrated venom failed to 
 bo always ejected into the wound. Those that 
 survived, however, lost their vigour and viva- 
 city, and sank to an early grave from the 
 effects of the poison, — a true and sad picture 
 of an expiring Christianity consuming away 
 under Mohammedan exactions, prohibitions, 
 and influences. The masses of those who 
 purchased life and toleration by paying tri- 
 bute were gradually either absorbed and lost 
 to the church in an amalgamation with the 
 social and religious habits of their conquerors, 
 or were led in despair to emigrate to distant 
 lands. The vast regions that stretch from 
 India across Asia and Africa to the Atlantic, 
 and a part of Europe, became Mohammedan 
 countries. Over all these fair Christian pro- 
 vinces the scorpion made his disgusting trail 
 and left everywhere his deadly venom. Those 
 who were not at once destroyed were doomed 
 to experience a torment, to fall into a despond- 
 ency and a despair, like to that which the scor- 
 pion diffuses through life's wasting fountains 
 "when it striketh a man." 
 
94 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 It is of all reptiles the most irascible and 
 destructive. Shut up under a glass with the 
 mouse, the spider, — yea, with even its own 
 kind, — it will at once commence a deadly feud 
 with all, and will fight till it destroy or be 
 destroyed. A female, it is related, killed all 
 its offspring successively but one. That one, 
 more vigorous than the rest, sprung upon the 
 back of its unnatural mother and stung her 
 to death. It is said that, when highly exas- 
 perated, the undaunted suicide will kill itself 
 with the stroke of its own tail. 
 
 Such traits are remarkably illustrative of 
 the irascible and destructive dispositions of 
 the descendants of Ishmael as they appeared 
 prior to the advent of Mohammed among them. 
 They have since then been put under a reli- 
 gious discipline which restrains their tendency 
 to kill one another. Their animosities are no 
 longer optional and impulsive, but organized and 
 obligatory. The Koran pours its venom round 
 the Moslem's heart, and makes its outworkings 
 toward all others but the ordinary evidences 
 of his religious sincerity. It requires that no 
 debate be had with unbelievers; that all gain- 
 saying should be ended at once by the thrust 
 of the spear or the sword. 
 
 " Pray," said Omar, " mind what I say to 
 
95 
 
 you : if any man makes profession of our re- 
 ligion, and then leaves it, we kill him."* 
 
 Omar, in the course of an address, quoted 
 this passage from the Koran : — " He whom 
 God shall direct is led in the right way; but 
 thou shalt not find a friend to direct him 
 aright whom God shall lead into error." A 
 Christian priest that sat before him stood up 
 and said, " God leads no man into error," and 
 repeated it. Omar said nothing to him, but 
 bade those that stood by strike off his head if 
 he should say so again.f 
 
 While success attended the arms of the 
 Saracens, they seem to have laid aside alto- 
 gether their former domestic retaliations. Dis- 
 appointment and defeat, however, rouses the 
 latent fury of their nature still, and even the 
 precepts of the Koran prove at such conjunc- 
 tures an insufficient restraint. The finest army 
 they ever marshalled, when partially defeated 
 by Charles Martel, became enraged at the severe 
 handling they were receiving from the heavy 
 blows of the Normans, and, without any other 
 assignable reason, cut each other in pieces. 
 
 * Ockley, p. 209. f Ockley, pp. 210-11. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SARACENS, A SCOURGE TO CHRISTENDOM. 
 
 CONTINUED. 
 
 "And in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it; and 
 shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them."— Rev. ix. 6. 
 
 It is simply fanciful to interpret this of the 
 fanatic Derar, and perhaps a very few others 
 of the Moslems, who sought or seemed to court 
 death for the purpose of joining at an earlier 
 hour their black-eyed wives in paradise ; since 
 it is the intention of the Evangelist, obviously, 
 to describe the woe as it was seen to affect 
 those on whom it fell. 
 
 "Oppression maketh a wise man mad;" but 
 there are forms of it that tempt even to 
 suicide. Among men of conscience and of 
 courage, though at the same time destitute 
 of true piety, the alternative of death was 
 often sought in posts of danger and in fields 
 of battle to avoid a constrained apostasy, a 
 base submission, or the sight of domestic 
 violation and dishonour. And even here, 
 
 96 
 
THE SARACENS, A SCOURGE. 07 
 
 amid falling and flying thousands, though 
 covered with many wounds, death fled their 
 eager embrace. And, as their religious princi- 
 ples would not allow them to inflict a volun- 
 tary death-stroke with their own hands upon 
 themselves, they envied their more fortunate 
 brethren-in-arms who had sought and who had 
 obtained the gift to die. 
 
 Sad indeed it was to hear the jackal growl 
 and the raven croak in the fields of the slain; 
 but sadder far to hear the Moslem shout as he 
 bore away a wife or a daughter to his harem; 
 to endure his look of scorn for holy things and 
 holy ties ; to see his strong hand bear aloft the 
 standard of the black eagle, plant it on Chris- 
 tian battlements, and unfold and wave it in 
 triumph over the broken crucifixes and tram- 
 pled images of Jesus. Oh, the living madness 
 of this form of the woe ! It was heaven's whip 
 of scorpions, to torment before the time, in the 
 visible church, those that repented not of their 
 thefts, idolatries, and persecutions. 
 
 How terrible was the doom of Babylon, and 
 how signal as to the time and manner of its in- 
 fliction ! In the sumptuous halls of its palace 
 were gathered the impious revellers. The ves- 
 sels of Jehovah's temple were brought forth, 
 drink-offerings poured out; and all united in 
 
 9 
 
98 ISHMAEL AND TUE CHURCH. 
 
 praising the idols of silver and of gold. Sud- 
 denly above their heads appeared the hand- 
 writing on the wall; and, while princes and 
 courtiers were seeking to define their terror and 
 restore their courage, the battle-cry of Cyrus is 
 heard : — " Awake, ye princes, and anoint the 
 shield !" His soldiers rush through the opened 
 gates, and the blood of the revellers is mingled 
 with their sacrifices. Said the prophet, " It is 
 the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of 
 his temple." 
 
 The Christian church, the vast visible temple 
 of the Holy Ghost, was now again likewise 
 profaned in the East and in the West, and God 
 again went through it, armed with a whip of 
 scorpions twisted long before and prepared to 
 his hand, driving out thence the vile priest reek- 
 ing with lust, blood, and simony, overturning 
 the tables of the money-changers and trampling 
 images and crucifixes underneath his burning 
 feet. The Saracenic woe, destructive though it 
 was, had a divine commission : "it was the 
 vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his 
 temple." 
 
 "And in those days shall men seek death, 
 and shall not find it, and shall desire to die, 
 and death shall flee from them." 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MOHAMMED PROTECTING THE TRUE CHURCH : 
 THE NESTORIANS. 
 
 " They lived unknown 
 Till persecution dragged them into fame 
 And chased them up to heaven." 
 
 Cowper ; Task, p. 763. 
 
 The locusts were commanded to subsist on 
 that which they were never known to select 
 for food. How like the Arab (the bosom of 
 whose deserts had from time immemorial been 
 covered with idols) violating the cherished in- 
 stincts of ages in making war upon the world's 
 idolatry ! 
 
 The locusts were also commanded not to 
 hurt that which they were never known to 
 spare. " It was commanded them that they 
 should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither 
 any green thing, neither any tree; but only 
 those men who have not the seal of God in 
 their foreheads." Ishmaei's animosities to true 
 religion, ever natural and ever injurious both 
 before the rise and after the fall of the empire 
 
 99 
 
100 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 of the caliphs, were, during its continuance, 
 required to be put under most effectual re- 
 straint. 
 
 The Saracens were not to make war in any 
 event upon the sealed. Wherever else the 
 blight of their shadow might fall or the stroke 
 of their vengeance smite, the living verdure 
 must remain unharmed on the slopes of Zion, 
 the olive nourish unmolested in the courts of 
 the Lord, and no axe be raised to fell the ever- 
 greens that waved over Lebanon. 
 
 The exception is comprehensive and dis- 
 criminative. It includes each organized fra- 
 ternity of true believers. These were as con- 
 spicuous for their purifying and persevering 
 testimony as were the image-worshippers for 
 their impiety, whose degenerate Christianity 
 they rejected and whose oppressions they bore. 
 IT was the seal that heaven had placed on 
 their open and manly brow. To point them 
 out, to vindicate their injured fame, and to 
 trace their progress and preservation under 
 this most singular protectorate, will be made 
 the agreeable toil of a passing hour. 
 
 The worship of the Virgin Mary is not only 
 deeply rooted in the Greek and Latin sects, but 
 it was the earliest form and evidence of their 
 apostasy. By the true church Mary has ever 
 
TIIE NESTORIANS. 101 
 
 been regarded as a subject of the fall, a sinner 
 saved by grace, the mother of our Lord's human- 
 ity, as probably the mother of other children,* 
 and not properly as the mother of God or the 
 proper object of religious veneration. 
 
 In A.d. 428, the presbyter Anastasius pub- 
 licly and earnestly condemned the title Oeoroxog, 
 "mother of God," given to Mary. Xpigroxog, 
 "mother of Christ," he insisted, was far more 
 expressive of the truth on this point both in 
 divinity and philosophy. Deity could not be 
 born, and humanity alone could derive its 
 being from a human parent. Nestorius de- 
 fended these views ; and the controversy thus 
 originated in Constantinople spread through- 
 out the church. Numbers of the pious and 
 the learned in Asia and Africa held and de- 
 fended the same Scriptural views. 
 
 Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, procured the 
 calling of a council at Ephesus, A.d. 431, in 
 which he presided, and, without waiting for 
 the arrival of the Eastern bishops, or even the 
 decencies of apparent justice, deprived Nesto- 
 rius of his episcopate and banished him into 
 a solitary place in the deserts of Egypt. Here 
 he died, a.d. 435. Thus commenced the contro- 
 
 * Matt. i. 25 ; Luke ii. 7. 
 9* 
 
102 ISHMAEL AND THE CHUKCH. 
 
 versy and the persecution. But the Nestorians, 
 with unbroken resolution, upheld the primitive 
 faith, refused all divine honours to the Virgin, 
 and were numerous and powerful throughout 
 the East. 
 
 Proscribed and persecuted by the Greeks 
 and Latins, they penetrated the interior of 
 Arabia, Transoxiana, and even China. Their 
 sufferings inflamed their zeal and awakened 
 the pity of savage breasts. 
 
 The celebrated "Testament of Mohammed" 
 is among the earliest productions of the Ara- 
 bian prophet, and originated, it is believed, in 
 his sympathy for them. If not written by his 
 own hand, it is all the same to us in the pre- 
 mises, since in the solemn convictions of the 
 Saracens it was so written, did contain his 
 signature and seal, and its provisions were con- 
 sequently sacredly heeded and carried out by 
 them. 
 
 This extraordinary document secured to the 
 Nestorians freedom from service in war, per- 
 fect toleration of their customs and laws, ex- 
 emption of their clergy from tribute, imposed a 
 moderate tax on their people; and even their 
 poor serving-maids employed in Mohammedan 
 families were to be permitted to observe all the 
 ceremonies or fasts enjoined by their church, 
 
THE NESTORIANS. 103 
 
 and to have no restraint whatever put upon 
 their Christian liberty. 
 
 "As to this testament," says Maclane, " whe- 
 ther it be genuine or spurious, it is certain that 
 its contents were true, since many learned men 
 have fully proved that the pseudo-prophet, at 
 his first setting out, prohibited in the strongest 
 manner the commission of all sorts of injuries 
 against the Christians, and especially the Nes- 
 torians."* The fall of Persia and of Asia into 
 the hands of the Saracens procured therefore, 
 for these persecuted disciples, privileges which 
 they did not previously possess, and which 
 they chronicle with pious gratitude. 
 
 "Even the Arabs," writes Jesujabus, their 
 patriarch, "on whom the Almighty has in 
 these days bestowed the dominion of the earth, 
 are among us, as thou knowest ; yet they do 
 not persecute the Christian religion, but, on the 
 contrary, they commend our faith and commend 
 the priests and saints of the Lord, conferring 
 benefits on his churches and convents.''^ 
 
 When the vicar of Mohammed had collected 
 troops for the invasion of Syria, his language 
 in his instructions to his lieutenants and army 
 is in conformity with the provisions of this 
 
 * Maclane's note in Mosheim, vol. i. p. 183 
 f Assemani, vol. iii. p. 131. 
 
104 ISHMAEL AND 1HE CHURCH. 
 
 testament " Destroy no palm-trees nor 
 
 burn any fields of corn; cut down no fruit- 
 trees nor do any mischief to cattle As 
 
 you go on you will find some religious persons 
 who live retired in monasteries and propose 
 to themselves to serve God in that way. Let 
 them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy 
 their monasteries. And you will find another 
 sort of people, that belong to the synagogue of 
 Satan, who have shaven crowns; be sure you 
 cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter 
 till they either turn Mohammedans or pay 
 tribute."* 
 
 Even as late as the seventh century the 
 monasteries were occupied by laymen. They 
 wore their hair long ; but when they became 
 priests they shaved the hair from the top of 
 their heads. 
 
 The words used by the apostle and by the 
 caliph are strikingly similar. It is as though, 
 through the vista of years, and in the bosom 
 of the desert, John had seen Abubeker ascend 
 a hill, review his troops, and had heard and 
 did but recite his very words, when he said, 
 "It was commanded them that they should 
 not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any 
 green thing, neither any tree, but only those 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 188. 
 
TIIE NESTORIANS. 105 
 
 men that had not the seal of God in their 
 foreheads." It is as though he intended to 
 select at least just so much of that remarkable 
 charge to the Moslem army as should serve to 
 identify it with the very woe to which he re- 
 ferred, as protective with respect to the sealed, 
 and as containing heaven's cup of trembling to 
 image-worshippers. 
 
 "When Heraclius, the emperor, expressed 
 his astonishment at this extraordinary suc- 
 cess of the Arabs, who were inferior to the 
 Greeks both in number, strength, arms, and 
 discipline, after a short silence, a grave man 
 stood up and told him that the reason of it 
 was that the Greeks had walked unworthily 
 of their Christian profession, and changed their 
 religion from what it was when Jesus Christ 
 first delivered it to them, injuring and oppress- 
 ing one another, taking usury, committing 
 fornication, and fomenting all manner of strife 
 and variance among themselves. And, indeed, 
 the vices of these Christians were at that time 
 so flagrant as to make them offensive to the 
 very infidels, as confessed by the Greek writers 
 themselves and exaggerated by the Arabic 
 ones. The emperor answered, 'That he was 
 too sensible of it.' "* 
 
 * Ockley, pp. 194, 196. 
 G 
 
106 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 All the countries over which the Csesars 
 bore sway, with but limited exceptions, had 
 in the seventh century joined the general de- 
 fection from Christ, and were regarded by the 
 invaders as doomed to the sword, as Canaan 
 had previously been to that of Joshua. The 
 idols of a fallen paganism had revived every- 
 where, as by enchantment, and, adorned with 
 holy garments and gilded crosses and named 
 after Jesus, Mary, the apostles and martyrs, 
 were set up and worshipped in all the sanctu- 
 aries of Christendom. Men with bare feet 
 and shaven crowns conducted the idolatrous 
 services of the people, and often bore the idols 
 on the walls of besieged towns and along the 
 lines of Christian armies, to inspire devotion 
 and courage. Even in the recesses of the 
 desert they were known as the priesthood of 
 an apostate church, and are hence specifically 
 designated by the indignant caliph as not the 
 limit, but the butt, of the woe. 
 
 The exception in favour of the refugees of the 
 monasteries originated, doubtless, in the deep 
 veneration felt for the testament of the Arabian 
 prophet. When the battle raged around the 
 monastery of the holy fathers, about thirty miles 
 from Damascus, the monastery was spared; and 
 the priest, though he treated with scorn the 
 
THE NESTORIANS. 107 
 
 bloody Caled, was not slain. Said the chief, 
 curbing his rage,* — "if the apostle of God, of 
 blessed memory, had not commanded us to let 
 such men as you alone, you should not have 
 escaped any more than the rest, but I would 
 have put you to a most cruel death." 
 
 "The successors of Mohammed in Persia 
 employed the Nestorians in the most important 
 affairs both of the cabinet and of the pro- 
 vinces, and suffered the patriarch of that sect 
 alone to reside in the kingdom of Bagdad."* 
 Under the caliphs, the Nestorians continued to 
 flourish. From Persia to China their metro- 
 politan sees dotted the whole interior of Eastern 
 Asia. But when the Turks arose and intro- 
 duced the second woe, they were brought under 
 another sort of men, to whom it had not been 
 said, "Hurt not the grass of the earth, neither 
 any green thing, neither any tree, but only 
 those men who have not the seal of God in 
 their foreheads." It is not the divine purpose 
 always to preserve his people from persecu- 
 tion: their preservation, on the contrary, is an 
 exception at any time to a general rule, a rule 
 thus expressed: — "He that will live godly in 
 Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Their 
 
 * Ockley, p. 168. f Assemani, p. 97. 
 
108 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 preservation therefore under the caliphs, made 
 prominent in prophecy and in history, gains 
 thus the distinctness of a great event; is 
 pointed out as " the white spot in the hide of 
 the black camel," the oasis that for four cen- 
 turies continued to smile amid Mohammedan 
 desolations; and is beheld in the retrospec- 
 tions of our own times as beautiful and me- 
 morable. 
 
 The Nestorians, it is quite evident also, had, 
 at the period of the Turkish conquests in Asia, 
 fallen from their first love; and their candle- 
 stick, like that of the seven churches, could not 
 in that event have retained its place. It is 
 quite probable also that Providence, in nume- 
 rous eclective processes, had already drawn the 
 piety of declining Nest'orianism into the higher 
 purity of the Paulicians, and had effected its 
 ultimate exodus through the Alps. 
 
 With the decline of the caliphs the emigra- 
 tion of the godly evidently set toward the 
 West. The connecting link between the East 
 and the West was formed by the Paulicians. 
 Their churches were spread out on the western 
 confines of Nestorianism, and fringed with 
 light the eastern borders of the Greek empire. 
 It will break the chain in our illustrations to 
 omit a brief notice of this sect. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MOHAMMED PROTECTING THE TRUE CHURCH: 
 THE PAULICIANS. 
 
 "The evil that men do lives after them; 
 The good is oft interred with their bones." 
 
 A deacon returning from captivity in Syria, 
 A.d. 660, tarried for a night near Samosata 
 with a man named Constantine. With him he 
 left a copy of the New Testament, It to him 
 became an invaluable treasure, the study and 
 the rule of his life; his house and his heart 
 the place of its sanctifying influence. The 
 Paulicians, thus incidentally originated, suf- 
 fered for one hundred and fifty years all the 
 rigours of a most violent persecution. 
 
 During all this period their patience failed 
 not. Under the decree of the cruel empress 
 Theodora, to say nothing of other persecutions, 
 the army of their martyrs was numbered, by 
 their foes, at a hundred thousand. The bleed- 
 ing remnant, just at the point of total extermi- 
 nation, fled for protection to the Moham- 
 medans. Here they found pity and shelter, 
 
 10 109 
 
110 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 liberty to build a city, and perfect religious tole- 
 ration. And here also, in after-years, sprang 
 up that alliance which enabled their exaspe- 
 rated and valiant sons to win back again for a 
 season their country and to make inquest for 
 the blood of their injured and unresisting sires. 
 Unable to ruin them, on account of their 
 Saracenic resources, their transportation into 
 the different countries of Europe became the 
 settled policy of the emperors. Separated from 
 their Asiatic friends, their conversion might 
 perhaps be possible; or their burial in the 
 silence of the grave the easier and the more cer- 
 tain alternative. " Under the Byzantine stand- 
 ards the Paulicians were often transported to 
 
 the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily 
 
 Their opinions were silently propagated in 
 Rome and in the kingdoms beyond the Alps. 
 .... It was in the country of the Albigois, in 
 the southern provinces of France, that the Pau- 
 licians were most deeply implanted In 
 
 the thirteenth century, the visible assemblies 
 of the Paulicians were extirpated by fire and 
 
 sword A confession of simple worship 
 
 and blameless manners is extorted from their 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. pp. 397, 398. 
 
THE PAULICIANS. Ill 
 
 Previously to his conversion the father of 
 the Paulicians was probably a Manichaean. 
 This would lay a sufficient foundation for the 
 most injurious imputations, — for charging upon 
 him and his followers the worst forms of the 
 repudiated error. The Manichseans would also 
 often be confounded with his followers by the 
 persecutors, who would care but little by what 
 name their victims were designated, so that it 
 was at the same time sufficiently odious. One 
 or two instances of this kind, taken up and art- 
 fully managed two hundred years afterward, 
 might easily be made to pass, among hasty 
 compilers, for " the voice of all antiquity." 
 
 Obloquy is Rome's best atonement for her 
 murders, — the uniform sequel to every mas- 
 sacre, the vile reservoir in which her drip- 
 ping skirts have ever been washed from inno- 
 cent blood. It is indeed difficult to defend 
 those whose tongues and whose manuscripts 
 have alike been dissolved and scattered in the 
 ashes of the stake; but, "as they cannot plead 
 for themselves, our candid criticism will mag- 
 nify the good and abate or suspect the evil 
 that is reported by their adversaries."* 
 
 They were very tenacious of denominational 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 385. 
 
112 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 life, and maintained it until the tenth century, 
 against the oppressions of force and the seduc- 
 tions of flattery. Both were employed to ex- 
 terminate or convert them; and both, during 
 four centuries, though aided by the assiduities 
 of an empire, proved unavailing. At the end 
 of this period, having been transported, they 
 became absorbed among the churches of the 
 Alps. This easy transition is traceable to the 
 identity of their views and sympathies with 
 the Albigenses. The same people, deriving 
 their origin from the same Word and Spirit, 
 meet in this instance, and, "like kindred 
 drops, mingle into one." Luther startled 
 Europe when he endorsed and vindicated the 
 injured Huss. It was a testimony, however, 
 demanded at the time, and both generous and 
 just. His own wronged motives and character 
 have stood all the brighter for it. The Wal- 
 denses, the Albigenses, the Nestorians, the 
 Paulicians, are now also being reached, and 
 are beginning to be rescued from obloquy and 
 oblivion with their later brethren. 
 
 The churches of the valleys, with which the 
 Paulicians became identified, were planted by 
 Paul, as current tradition affirms, — a fact, in- 
 deed, often admitted in substance by the In- 
 quisitors themselves. Never connected with 
 
THE PAULICIANS. 113 
 
 the church of Rome, and uniformly protesting 
 alike against its errors and those also of the 
 Gnostics and Manichseans, fraternization with 
 them is of itself a sufficient vindication of the 
 Paulicians from the scandals of Rome. 
 
 In and after the tenth century — the period 
 in which they become so favourably known to 
 us — the stream becomes too modern, broad, 
 and majestic, to be effectually clouded and 
 soiled by Papal hands. Pure and noble, say 
 we, must have been the fountains that, in a 
 remote antiquity and in desert places, began to 
 send out such healing and refreshing waters. 
 Providence is opening a brighter era for the 
 memory of the injured martyrs. The voices 
 of the present are mingled already with those 
 of past ages in most gratifying harmony. Ex- 
 treme intervals of time and space are becoming 
 annihilated. The deep beds of seas and rivers 
 are giving up their secrets, and fountains their 
 chronicles. The vaults of unexplored grottos 
 and the halls of buried cities are yet, it is also 
 believed, to break the painful silence of cen- 
 turies, and to make still more illustrious the 
 unity of Zion's testimony and the purity and 
 patience of the saints. But, in any event, it 
 is quite certain, even now, that the Saracens, 
 
 when they extended over the Paulicians their 
 
 10* 
 
114 ISIDIAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 effective protectorate, were but aiding the same 
 church in Asia on which heaven has so sig- 
 nally affixed its seal in Europe and America, 
 and which it was commanded them that they 
 should not hurt. 
 
 Thus the witnesses did not break, but con- 
 tinued, their succession. The disappearance 
 of the Paulicians from Asia was not their ex- 
 tirpation, but their exodus. The candlestick 
 was not destroyed ; it was removed from the 
 Euphrates to the Rhone. The star that set 
 in the mountains of Armenia rose to adorn 
 the glaciers of the Alps. Out of the East, 
 now finally become the field of blood and the 
 charnel-house of nations, God had but called 
 his Bride to hide her in her long-prepared 
 citadel of rocks in the West, It was her next 
 retreat, prior to her last, across the Atlantic. 
 IshmaeVs wild and bloody defence was now at 
 length to be exchanged for the safer defiles of 
 inaccessible mountains. 
 
 The distinct recognition of the doctrine of 
 the Trinity, and of Jesus as God's eternal Son, 
 possessed of equal power and glory with the 
 Father, on the part of the Nestorians and the 
 Paulicians, exposed them equally with all others 
 to the sword of the Saracens ; since all such are 
 indiscriminately denounced in the Koran, and 
 
THE PAULICIANS. 115 
 
 alike condemned to death, to tribute, or the 
 flames. The preservation of these Christians, 
 therefore, was an event not only not to have 
 been anticipated, but, even now that we have all 
 the facts before us, is to be accounted for with 
 the greatest difficulty, and even to be rejected 
 as a fable, were it not attested by the unbroken 
 voice of antiquity. 
 
 The Pagans and Jews, the Latins and 
 Greeks, experienced the rigour of Moham- 
 medan rule when under it, and, when not, 
 the torment of perpetual aggressions. But 
 these Christians, though holding the dogma 
 most offensive to the pseudo-prophet, and to 
 falsify and overthrow which he makes war 
 upon the world, do not so much as lose their 
 citizenship. Yea, even while their very contro- 
 versies make it all the more obvious that they 
 exalt Jesus to a divine Sonship, and worship 
 him as the equal and the companion of the 
 Father, they are carefully protected and their 
 wrongs avenged on their adversaries by those 
 who are by their principles and prejudices 
 arrayed against them. " What shall we then 
 say to these things," but that it was com- 
 manded them so to do by Mohammed, because 
 he could not curse, as Balaam could not, whom 
 God had not cursed ? — that the command was 
 
11 G ISIIMAEL AND THE CIIURCII. 
 
 repeated by the caliphs in every subsequent 
 age of their rule, because God had ordained 
 that "the people should dwell alone, and 
 should not be reckoned among the nations"? 
 The utterances of prophecy are laws of provi- 
 dence, that, amid all possible and conflicting 
 contingencies, cannot be broken. The flood — 
 the tendency of which, is the whole world's 
 destruction — bears up and saves the ark. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MOHAMMED PROTECTING THE TRUE CHURCH: 
 THE PHILADELPHIANS. 
 
 " He shall not .... shoot an arrow there." 
 
 Among the seven churches of Asia, Phila- 
 delphia alone received the distinct promise of 
 being kept from the hour of temptation that 
 should come upon all the world to try them 
 that dwelt upon the earth. (Rev. x. 3.) Perse- 
 cutions by pagan emperors could not have been 
 intended, it is thought, since these had already 
 commenced. John's banishment to Patmos be- 
 longed to such forms of oppression; and he 
 could not then in that conjuncture have re- 
 spected them as new, peculiar, and as yet to 
 come, or as yet to startle the church by a 
 sudden invasion and to seduce and destroy her 
 children. 
 
 The gradual growth of error, as tares spring 
 up imperceptibly and slowly among the wheat, 
 seems not either to suit the action of the temp- 
 tation which is to come upon the church from 
 
 117 
 
118 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 causes external to herself, or to be sprung 
 upon it suddenly, as a snare upon the unsus- 
 pecting bird. The great apostasy of the Greeks 
 and Latins did not come upon the church; it 
 grew up in it. It was not a sudden expansion 
 of a snare, but the gradual development of the 
 smallest beginnings of evil. That apostasy 
 continues still. It has not yet completed the 
 whole circuit of its prophetic hour; and from it 
 Philadelphia has not been preserved, as it must 
 have been if that snare had been intended. 
 She has fallen into the idolatry and supersti- 
 tion of the Greek church quite as deeply as 
 any of her sister churches. 
 
 No universal temptation suddenly brought 
 upon the whole world from a source wholly 
 external to its existing institutions, that began 
 to be, in a period subsequent to the banishment 
 of John, answers to the language of the text 
 like that of the rise and spread of the Mo- 
 hammedan delusion. It arose from a source 
 wholly external to all other religions. It came 
 suddenly, like a snare, upon the whole world. 
 In six years after the first invasion of Syria by 
 the Saracens the whole of that vast and popu- 
 lous country was in their power. Even Asia 
 Minor was reached, and Laodicea succumbed to 
 the false prophet. The subsequent subjugation 
 
THE PIIILADELFIIIANS. 119 
 
 of Egypt, Persia, Bokhara, and Africa, seemed 
 but the brief work of a day. As nothing can 
 stop the progress of the locust but Heaven's own 
 tempest driving them back into the sea, so 
 nothing could stop the progress of the Saracens 
 but a Divine interposition. They were, even 
 at the point of defeat, quite irresistible. 
 
 There was in the new faith also a snare, a 
 speciousness, a show of piety and of religious 
 zeal or sincerity, that made it and its pro- 
 fessors compare ycyv favourably with the reli- 
 gion and the disciples of a degenerate Christen- 
 dom. And, when social ecjuality with the 
 new lords of the civilized world, it was found, 
 could be at once purchased by embracing Is- 
 lamism, thousands chose this alternative and 
 renounced Christianity. It is not, therefore, 
 without strong reasons that this passage has 
 been supposed to relate to this temptation. 
 
 The spiritual or internal history of the 
 church of Philadelphia, since A. d. 96, lies 
 shrouded in deep obscurity. It was and still 
 is connected with the Greek church. Its dis- 
 tance from the sea, its neglect by the emperors, 
 (noticed by Gibbon,) must have been favourable 
 to its retention of primitive simplicity and 
 purity. Both commerce and imperial influence 
 would, in the fifth century, have proved ad- 
 
120 ISH1TAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 verse to its fidelity to Christ in a very high 
 degree. In its seclusion it may have retained 
 for a season its integrity. 
 
 And equally adverse would have been the 
 capture of the city by the Saracens. The testa- 
 ment of Mohammed granted to the Nestorians 
 would not have sheltered the Christians of 
 Philadelphia, since they belonged to the com- 
 munion of the Greek church, against which 
 the Mohammedans regarded themselves as 
 having had committed to them a mission of 
 special severity. If, in the event of their sub- 
 jugation, the same terms had been presented 
 to the Philadelphians which had been before 
 to other communities, the church must have 
 lost its Christianity by acceding to them, or 
 have been put to the sword if they refused. 
 The protection of the city from the Saracenic 
 invaders involves in it, therefore, the protec- 
 tion of the church which it contained, from the 
 temptation. The temptation spread its snare 
 over the conquered, and over those only. To 
 them were its awful alternatives invariably 
 submitted. 
 
 The promise likewise to keep the church of 
 Philadelphia "from the hour of temptation" 
 was based upon its previous fidelity to Christ, 
 — a past and finished virtue. This it was 
 
THE PHILADELPIIIANS. 121 
 
 that secured the reward. Whatever might 
 have been the possible character of the church 
 in after-years or during the period designated 
 in the benediction, it could not have affected 
 the specific result. "Because thou hast kept 
 the word of my patience, therefore will I 
 keep thee from the hour of temptation which 
 shall come/' — i. e. thy past fidelity shall secure 
 the future blessing. The preservation of 
 the city, therefore, from the Saracens during 
 the continuance of the prophetic hour — viz. : 
 during the whole period of the reign of the 
 caliphs — would be, as a well-ascertained 
 historic fact, a remarkable fulfilment of the 
 promise, even though we might suspect, at 
 the same time, that the church had perhaps 
 made herself quite unworthy of the divine 
 favour, or had lost her spiritual life long be- 
 fore the first woe,* from which she was to 
 have been kept, according to the promise, had 
 passed away. 
 
 Philadelphia was captured by the Turks in 
 A.D. 1391, 630 years after the first woe had 
 become merged and lost in the second.f Its 
 name was changed to that of " Allah Shihr," — 
 "city of God," or "high town." In 1824 it con- 
 
 * The Empire of the Caliphs. f The Ottoman Empire. 
 11 H 
 
122 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 tained three thousand houses. Two hundred 
 and fifty of these belonged to Christians of the 
 Greek sect, — i.e. to nominal Christians. These 
 point out the church in which the believers 
 were accustomed to assemble who were ad- 
 dressed in the epistle of him that had "the 
 key of David." It is now a mosque, in which 
 God is denied to have a Holy Spirit or a Son. 
 Another, once dedicated to St. John, is turned 
 into a dunghill to receive the offals of dead 
 beasts. Five other old ruins are occupied as 
 places of worship. Twenty other spots, the 
 sites of once flourishing churches, are covered 
 with their abandoned walls, on whose crumb- 
 ling stones are found the pictures of saints 
 badly painted or partially defaced. The palace 
 of the bishop (such it is sometimes called) is 
 but a cottage of clay. The Turkish conquest 
 has made Philadelphia a comparative solitude. 
 Christianity has left nothing behind her here 
 but the faintest traces of her departed feet, or 
 the moonlit shadows of her receding form 
 stealing through old ruins or idolatrous cere- 
 monials and sleeping on the pale faces of the 
 dead. Among the seven cities of Asia, Phila- 
 delphia was the last to capitulate; and the 
 articles agreed to, secured to her the free ex- 
 ercise of her religion; but still the Turks have 
 
THE PIIILADELPIIIANS. 123 
 
 sadly disregarded their covenants in this 
 respect. 
 
 " Among the Greek colonies and churches 
 of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect, — a column 
 in a scene of ruin, a pleasing example that 
 the paths of honour and of safety may some- 
 times be the same."* This is a beautiful 
 picture ; and, from the frequency with which 
 it is referred to, it seems to have been for- 
 gotten that it is but a picture. Philadelphia 
 is certainly not more prosperous than its sister 
 cities, — is not "a column erect" in a scene 
 of ruin. It does not stand out in striking 
 contrast with every other creation of genius 
 or of industry in Ionia or Lydia. It is itself 
 a ruin, lifting up its bare and desolate head 
 to mourn over its own and over surrounding 
 ruins. A few pillars, bearing their shafts aloft, 
 may remind the traveller of the promise, — " I 
 will make him a pillar;" but they can have no 
 real or intelligible connection with the pro- 
 phecy. The name "city of God" has ap- 
 peared to some very suggestive, because it was 
 written in the prophecy, " I will write upon 
 him the name of the city of my God, which is 
 New Jerusalem." But, unfortunately, "New 
 
 Gibbon vol. vi. p. 
 
 ooo 
 
124 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Jerusalem" is not the name of Philadelphia. 
 A few Greeks living in Philadelphia, calling 
 themselves Christians, — a circumstance com- 
 mon in many other Turkish towns ; — a few mas- 
 sive pillars not yet prostrate by earthquakes ; — 
 the name "city of God;" — and the rhetoric of 
 Gibbon respecting the seven churches of Asia, 
 and quoted above, — constitute the staple of 
 those materials from which are wrought out, I 
 regret to say, a supposed fulfilment of this pro- 
 phecy : — " I will keep thee from the hour of 
 temptation." And yet Philadelphia is even 
 more desolate and less Christian than some 
 other of the seven noted cities named in the 
 Patmos epistles. Smyrna, in particular, has a 
 population of 130,000:— 20,000 Greeks, 8000 
 Armenians, 1000 Europeans, 9000 Jews, — a 
 population in the aggregate of 38,000 who are 
 not Moslems, of whom 29,000 are nominally 
 Christian. Philadelphia, with but 250 Greek 
 families, and with only 3000 houses in all, 
 makes but a sorry appearance in the contrast. 
 It would seem, therefore, most reasonable 
 to conclude that the promise to Philadelphia 
 has already long ago had its complete ful- 
 filment, and that under the first woe. The 
 command given not to hurt the grass of the 
 earth., neither any green thing, neither any 
 
THE PIIILADELPHIANS. 125 
 
 tree, but only those men that have not the 
 seal of God in their foreheads," may then in 
 this view of the subject connect itself naturally 
 enough with the promise to the church of 
 Philadelphia that she should be kept from 
 that hour of temptation ;f and both find their 
 sufficient and satisfactory illustration in the 
 finished revolution of the same prophetic 
 period, or in the single empire of the caliphs. 
 The Turks, in the second woe, overthrowing 
 Greece, were placed under no such restrictions 
 as were the Saracens. They were sent out to 
 kill; and they have ever been distinguishable 
 from the Saracens in this respect more than in 
 any other. They have never discriminated 
 between the sealed and those who were not, 
 The first woe, therefore, must cover the epoch 
 designated, and that only. It was a world-wide 
 snare; had its origin, progress, and end, all 
 within itself; and of it it is said, " The first 
 woe is passed." It was restricted in its ravages. 
 It was made to respect the interests of the 
 sealed. 
 
 While, therefore, the first and the second 
 woes are connected, we should not forget 
 that they are, nevertheless, distinct from each 
 
 * Rev. ix. 4. t Kcv - iii- 10 - 
 
 11* 
 
126 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 other both in prophecy and in history. The 
 second originates in the first, revives while 
 it tramples it, and gives to it an aggra- 
 vated form; but this intimate union of the 
 two woes does not confound them with each 
 other. They are still to be kept distinct in 
 our conceptions of them, as they are in the 
 word of God. And in that event the whole 
 obscurity will vanish, and the promise to the 
 church of Philadelphia, that "she should be 
 kept from the hour of temptation," and the 
 command to the Saracens "not to hurt the 
 sealed," coincide as prophecies relating to the 
 same prophetic period, and find their mutual 
 illustrations in the facts of history and during 
 the reign of the caliphs: — a fulfilment this 
 of the word of God most complete in itself, 
 extending through a vast cycle of years and 
 events, which are already fully consummated; 
 a fulfilment that needs not to beg for illustra- 
 tions at the lying ruins of an old Turkish town, 
 or garble for sustentation at the rhetoric of an 
 infidel* 
 
 When the conquests of the caliphs had 
 swept up to the confines of Asia Minor and 
 t.hey were commencing to destroy its churches, 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. vi. p. 229, (Boston edition.) 
 
THE PIIILADELPIIIANS. V27 
 
 a pestilence arrested their farther progress in 
 that direction. The angel of death guarded 
 the passes to the favoured city. Horses, cattle, 
 25,000 soldiers, and their ablest officers, perished 
 without hand. The tents of Syria were in 
 affliction ; the curtains of the land of Ishmael 
 trembled. That year, called by them "the 
 year of destruction,"* put back their sword 
 into its sheath, and turned their camp into a 
 hospital. 
 
 Two hundred years after this, Asia Minor is 
 again invaded, Ephesus taken, and its lofty 
 cathedral turned into a stable for mules and 
 horses ; and perhaps it was from the influence 
 of the Paulicians over their Saracenic allies 
 that the battle was made to turn at this time 
 also from Philadelphia.-}* 
 
 Their rising empire spread in every direction 
 around the city, around the confines of Lydia 
 and Ionia, and left everywhere the deep and 
 bloody traces of its barbarism and the deadly 
 venom of its faith. But, under the protecting 
 care and love of Him who guarded her walls, 
 Philadelphia still stood secure. Syria, Egypt, 
 Africa, Spain, Persia, Bokhara, Samarcand, 
 
 * Ockley's Saracens, p. 255, (Bonn's edition.) 
 f Gibbon, vol. v. p. 393. 
 
128 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 became conquered provinces; the victorious 
 Moslems had reached alike the confines of 
 China and the waves of the Atlantic; the 
 Tiber had been entered, the iEgean Sea had 
 been crossed, Rome and Constantinople shaken ; 
 forty thousand churches, cities, and castles, 
 had been subverted, had opened their gates, 
 had lost their defences, had descended, altar, 
 crucifix, and battlement, to the dust; but Phila- 
 delphia still survived, — surveyed in security, 
 from her heaven-sealed palaces, the wild up- 
 roar of war, the ruin of surrounding churches 
 and provinces, the tears and the wreck of na- 
 tions : yea, saw in peace the close of the pro- 
 phetic " hour" itself, — the end of the woe, as it 
 sank and disappeared in the sepulchre of the 
 last of the caliphs. 
 
 How she stood, while every town and fenced 
 wall and strong nationality in Asia and in 
 Africa went down under the rush of the 
 Moslem host, remains sealed up among the 
 mysteries not yet unfolded. The barriers of 
 stone and the "courage"* of her sons cannot 
 be assigned as the causes of safety; since the 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. vi. p. 229. If, instead of by the Turks, 
 it had been captured by the Saracens, this sneer at the 
 " prophecy" would have worn a graver aspect. 
 
THE PHILADELPHIANS. 129 
 
 Saracens never appeared before Philadelphia 
 at all, "to cast a hank against it or shoot an 
 arrow there." Oh, what a law of Providence 
 is that word of promise ! " Because thou hast 
 kept the word of my patience, I also will 
 keep thee from the hour of temptation, which 
 shall come upon all the world, to try them that 
 dwell upon the earth." No law of material 
 nature is more abiding. " He speaks, and it is 
 done. He commands, and it stands." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 MOHAMMED PROTECTING TIIE TRUE CHURCH : 
 THE ALBIGENSES. 
 
 " Their fates were painted ere the men -were born." 
 
 Famine ever follows on the track of war. 
 The Saracens looked from the Atlantic coast 
 over conquered but exhausted countries. They 
 were impoverished by the ruin that had 
 blighted the creations of genius and the fields 
 of the reaper along their own broad and de- 
 solate path. Before them lay a vast ocean ; 
 behind them a social wilderness, — cities broken 
 down and without walls or enterprise, pro- 
 vinces uncultivated or forsaken. Europe alone 
 expanded her untouched treasure and inflamed 
 their cupidity and their courage. The narrow 
 Straits of Gibraltar presented no barrier to 
 their resistless progress. An Andalusian king- 
 dom was soon acquired and added to the do- 
 minions of the caliph. 
 
 An ocean, breaking at their feet, had turned 
 
THE ALBIGENSIAN CHURCH. 131 
 
 back the Saracens ; but the Pyrenees and the 
 warlike nations of the frigid North invited 
 their squadrons to new enterprises of war. 
 France is also invaded. Her fair provinces 
 are oppressed by gathering armies and horses 
 running to battle. The sanctuary of the sacra- 
 mental host is now on a sudden thrown open 
 to the spoiler, lies in the immediate vicinity 
 of the doubtful strife. The Rhone alone sepa- 
 rates the Albigenses from the scimitar and the 
 Koran. And here, as on the invaded borders 
 of Asia Minor, the conquerors of the world are 
 again arrested, and the dismayed remnant 
 never return to gather the spoil or bury their 
 dead. 
 
 "After a bloody field, in which Abderame 
 was slain, the Saracens in the close of the even- 
 ing retired to their camp. In the disorder and 
 despair of the night the various tribes of Yemen 
 and Damascus, of Africa and Spain, were pro- 
 voked to turn their arms against each other; the 
 remains of their host were suddenly dissolved, 
 and each emir consulted his safety by a hasty 
 and separate retreat. At the dawn of day the 
 stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by 
 the victorious Christians. On the report of 
 their spies they ventured to explore the riches 
 of the vacant tents The Arabs never 
 
132 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 resumed the conquest of Gaul ; and they were 
 soon driven beyond the Pyrenees. "* 
 
 Ah me ! but for this, what might have been 
 the result on the ensuing day ! On the issues of 
 its bloody debate hung the fates of Europe, the 
 church, and the world. Ten thousand centres 
 of purity and progress were at that moment in 
 reach of the scimitar, — might have been oblite- 
 rated forever. The last hunted remnant of a 
 pure Christianity lay exposed and helpless in 
 contiguous valleys. The terrible crisis had 
 come ; and now either Heaven must interpose 
 and destroy the destroyer, or leave the night 
 of an Asiatic barbarism to spread itself for 
 unknown ages over the fair provinces of West- 
 ern civilization. " It was commanded them 
 that they should not hurt the grass of the 
 earth, neither any green thing, neither any 
 tree, but only those men that had not the seal 
 of God in their foreheads." This was the im- 
 passable barrier that met them at Philadelphia 
 and on the Khone, and contains both the philo- 
 sophy and the secret of the successes and the 
 failures of the Saracens. 
 
 The new wine was in the cluster that adorned 
 the vine of the Alps; and Heaven had said, 
 
 * Gibbon, ch. 52, p. 290 
 
THE ALBIGENSIAN CHURCH. 133 
 
 "Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it." Paul, 
 in his journey to Spain, had planted in these 
 secluded regions a church that had never 
 adhered to Kome. Great accessions had been 
 made to its numbers when the remonstrants 
 and the persecuted, from time to time, retired 
 from the open idolatry of Christendom into 
 the shelter of the wilderness. And to that 
 fact, and not to her want of guilt, Europe 
 owed her preservation. Sodom could not fall 
 while Lot was there, nor could Jerusalem, 
 until the righteous had made good their escape 
 to the mountains. And, as God had chosen 
 the heart of Europe, the gorges of the Alps, 
 in which to gather and cherish his spiritual 
 family, that event became the living source 
 of security to the West, — kept the Asiatic 
 scourge, like lightning on the skirts of a cloud, 
 to expend itself on the borders of a guilty 
 land, which Heaven would not destroy because 
 a blessing was in it. 
 12 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FOUNDING OF BAGDAD THE END OF THE 
 PROPHETIC MONTHS. 
 
 " Their power was to hurt men five months." — Rev. ix. 10. 
 
 Mohammed, according to Dean Prideaux, 
 was born at Mecca, in the month of May, a.d. 
 571. Others leave the point undecided be- 
 tween a.d. 569 and 571. When he was forty 
 years of age, he took upon him the style of 
 " The Apostle of God," and began to propagate 
 his imposture. In one hundred and fifty 
 years from this time his followers ceased from 
 aggressive wars and founded the "City of 
 Peace," or, which is the same thing, the city 
 of Bagdad. 
 
 From that period (a.d. 762) the caliphs 
 abandoned the coarse habits and cultivated 
 hardiness of warriors, and gave themselves up 
 to luxuries that rivalled in their expensive 
 magnificence the palmiest displays of the 
 Babylonian or Persian princes. Here, amid 
 
 131 
 
THE PROPHETIC MONTHS. 135 
 
 gorgeous palaces and in the embraces of the 
 harem, expired forever the martial glory of 
 the Saracens. 
 
 The interval between a.d. 612 and a.d. 762 
 is just equal to John's five prophetic months, 
 or one hundred and fifty days, of years. If, 
 however, we assume the correctness of either 
 of the above dates assigned as the time of the 
 birth of Mohammed, the discrepancy would be 
 too inconsiderable to awaken any suspicion 
 of a want of truth in the prophecy, since mis- 
 takes of a few years in such calculations are 
 but too common. If intelligent individuals 
 among us even now are found who are quite 
 uncertain as to the time of their own births, 
 notwithstanding the living witnesses and the 
 recency of the chronological era to be fixed, 
 we ought not to be surprised that a possible 
 mistake of a few years obscured the question 
 relating to the time of Mohammed's birth, — 
 a fact lying back more than twelve centuries 
 from our own times, in an obscure spot, in 
 a barbarous age, and among a people who 
 reckoned time by lunar months and with con- 
 fessed inaccuracy. 
 
 And, as John was guided by inspiration, I 
 assume his correctness, and from this source 
 confirm the infallible correctness of the com- 
 
136 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 mon reckoning. In assuming the absolute cor- 
 rectness of any other date, we are left at all 
 uncertainties in the mists of an era that lies 
 back of the Hegira itself, and in the very chaos 
 of Arabian chronology. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. 
 
 To make them from restraint and conscience free, 
 Bad as thyself, or worse, — if worse can be." 
 
 The wars of the Saracens were prolonged 
 through a period of one hundred and fifty 
 years, with but partial intermissions. Their 
 path of carnage likewise was made through 
 the most densely-peopled portions of the globe. 
 It left desolate its richest cities and provinces. 
 " They destroyed wonderfully. And they had 
 a king over them, which was the angel of the 
 bottomless pit, w T hose name in the Hebrew 
 tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue 
 hath his name Apollyon."* 
 
 The waste of human life must have been im- 
 mense. To say nothing of the incalculable losses 
 in beautiful villas, castles, cities, palaces, — to 
 agriculture, commerce, and literature, — the loss 
 of life in battles and sieges, and the loss of im- 
 
 * Rev. ix. 11. 
 12* i 137 
 
138 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 mortal men, perishing without repentance, or 
 living to die in apostasy from Christ, justifies 
 the designation "Destroyer" — points out the 
 true character of the woe, and of the manner 
 in which the Mohammedans rose to power. 
 
 All along the line of their march, in town 
 and country, they have left everywhere their 
 broad trail of enduring desolation. Cities sit 
 solitary; thronged streets are become a portion 
 for foxes ; the raven's noisy croak rises from for- 
 saken balconies and from the area of palaces and 
 theatres. The brave defenders of their invaded 
 country sleep where they fell, amid ruins which 
 have never been restored. Progressive civiliza- 
 tion, which obliterates elsewhere the ravages of 
 war or of time, disturbs not their resting-places. 
 The mould of ages covers their bones. 
 
 The angel that presided at the incantations 
 of Hara was the "destroyer." He aided the 
 inventiveness of his dupe, deceived the de- 
 ceiver, instructed his revenge, poured venom 
 on his bitter communings respecting his per- 
 secutors at Mecca, whispered in his attentive 
 ear of the sweetness of bloody reprisals, made 
 him respect his own skill and courage, and 
 tilled him with the lust of success. Animated 
 with pandemonial zeal, he grasped the burning 
 brand, and felt it to be instinctive with the 
 
CONTRAST CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. 139 
 
 successes of his diabolical mission. He began, 
 and continued till he died, the work of "de- 
 struction." 
 
 The same angel also that inspired the fury 
 of the prophet inspired the courage of his 
 lieutenants, and led them on against the 
 church in their mission of woe. The same 
 untiring malignity that led Cain to murder 
 his brother, that led Balaam to desire to 
 curse whom God had not cursed, that led 
 Herod to slay the babes of Bethlehem, that 
 conducted the trial before, Pilate, and that 
 directed the tragedy of the cross, led on the re- 
 morseless bands of Arabia upon Christendom. 
 
 The result sought was the utter undoing of 
 the entire church, both the true and the false; 
 and that result was held in arrest only because 
 the reins of an ultimate restraint had been 
 placed in the hand of bleeding mercy. The 
 same mighty Man-child that ever confounded 
 the dark policies of the pit was he who pro- 
 tected the Nestorians, the Paulicians, the re- 
 fugees of the monasteries, his loved ones in 
 Philadelphia, and who broke up and scattered 
 the army of the aliens on the banks of the 
 Rhone. 
 
 The failure of the destroyer was the failure 
 of a bridled rage, of a hungry tiger that had 
 
140 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 reached the end of his chain and that still 
 roared after his prey. The same blessed 
 Messiah who said in the days of his flesh, 
 "Come out of him, thou unclean spirit/' had 
 also said, "Hurt not the grass of the field, 
 neither any green thing, neither any tree, but 
 only those men who have not the seal of God 
 in their foreheads." This, and this only, was 
 it that bounded and controlled the rage of the 
 destroyer. But for this, there would have 
 been no limit to the progress of the woe. 
 
 The hand that opened the cave of Hara 
 was the hand of him "that had the power of 
 death," unbarring the gates of perdition. The 
 spirit that presided over the dusky warriors 
 that rushed up from the recesses of the desert 
 was that of "Abaddon" The field of his con- 
 quests was that world which the cross had 
 turned into the theatre of redemption. That 
 lost world he would retain as his own, and 
 spread, over the bosom of a blighted orb and a 
 perished humanity, the crimes and the woes 
 of hell. 
 
 Contrasts there are between Christ and Mo- 
 hammed; but they are all too intense. They 
 are rather the contests between the seed of the 
 woman and > the seed of the serpent. The 
 object aimed at on the part of the adversary 
 
CONTRAST — CHRIST AND MOTIAMMED. 141 
 
 is the ruin of Christ and of his kingdom in 
 this world. The master-spirit in the contest 
 is that of the angel of the bottomless pit. 
 When first created, he kept not his first estate 
 or principality, but left his own habitation, 
 then assigned him, to invade that of others. 
 Ours was invaded, and paradise and immortal- 
 ity lost. And at this point it is that God 
 interposes and puts enmity between the seed 
 of the woman and the seed of the serpent. 
 
 Not that, previously to this period, harmony 
 had existed between Christ and Belial; but 
 now, while the world should stand, they should 
 be placed in the relations of an intimate and a 
 necessary antagonism. Satan, by the fall, 
 rose, in accordance with the decrees of eternal 
 justice, to be the tormentor of his dupes, — had 
 given to him "the power of death."* But, 
 while the evil, once originated, must take its 
 course according to determinate and immutable 
 laws, God, without changing these, originated 
 a new and an independent centre of life in a 
 Redeemer, who should in the fulness of the 
 times destroy him that had the power of 
 death. 
 
 Placed thus in the same world, there opens, 
 
 *Heb.ii. 
 
142 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 from the fall to the last shock of time, the con- 
 flict of ages. And this it is that we are to 
 see in the field of blood over which waves the 
 red right hand of Ishmael. It is Michael and 
 his angels, and the dragon and his angels. 
 
 But even between such antagonisms there 
 are contrasts. They may be drawn, just as 
 they are between righteousness and unright- 
 eousness, light and darkness, good and evil. 
 Commencing at Mecca and at Bethlehem, they 
 meet and astonish us in every step of our 
 way. 
 
 The words of war and slaughter come up 
 from the cave of Hara ; " Peace on earth, good- 
 will toward men" are the utterances that reach 
 the ears of prostrate and adoring shepherds 
 in Judea. Mohammed came to destroy men's 
 lives; Jesus came not to destroy men's lives, 
 but to save them. Mohammed stands with 
 garments rolled in blood, waving his drip- 
 ping scimitar over the scattered ranks of 
 death; Jesus went about doing good. His 
 progress was ever along the wards of a 
 vast hospital. Sights of woe ever met his 
 weeping eye, and words of comfort ever fell 
 from his blessed lips. While he moved 
 through Judea, there was "balm in Gilead; 
 there was a Physician there." When the eye 
 
CONTRAST CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. 143 
 
 saw him, it blessed him; when the ear heard, 
 it bore witness to him, because he delivered 
 the poor that cried, the fatherless, and him 
 that had none to help. 
 
 Mohammed was guilty of a wholesale and 
 remorseless assassination of the Jews. " Seven 
 hundred were dragged in chains to the market- 
 places of the city. They descended alive into 
 the grave, prepared for their execution and 
 burial; and the apostle beheld with an inflex- 
 ible eye the slaughter of his helpless ene- 
 mies."* But when Peter drew his sword, 
 Jesus healed the wounded Malchus and re- 
 buked his hasty disciple. Nor was this the 
 policy of weakness or the resort of fear; for 
 twelve legions of angels hung in invisible 
 squadrons around him to bathe the holy moun- 
 tains in blood for him. He was the Prince of 
 peace. 
 
 Mohammed taught the duty of forgiveness 
 and harmony among his followers, but never- 
 theless devoted all the rest of mankind to 
 tribute or the sword. Jesus said, " Love your 
 , ^emies; bless them that curse you; do good 
 to them that hate you, and pray for them 
 that scornfully use and persecute you." And 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p.134. 
 
144 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 when, abandoned by all, he hung upon the 
 cross, and heard the insults and the scoffs of 
 those who cast vile imputations in his teeth, 
 he said, "Father, forgive them; for they know 
 not what they do." The very wretch that 
 pierced his side but opened the fountains of 
 his own salvation ; and in that very city which 
 wronged and slew him, — whose blood-steeped 
 pavements cried loudest to the frowning hea- 
 vens for retribution, — in that very city was 
 the apostolic commission first opened, were the 
 propositions of pardon first made. The army 
 likewise which rose and spread his empire had 
 their feet shod with the preparation of the 
 gospel of peace. The sword they wielded was 
 the sword of the Spirit; and friends and foes 
 were alike pointed to the bleeding cross as 
 prisoners of hope. 
 
 It is quite too revolting — quite beyond the 
 pale of even a tolerable delicacy — to take up 
 the question of comparative moral purity. 
 
 When we pass from the divine presence of 
 him who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and 
 separate from sinners, and begin with that 
 satyr of the desert, that unclean beast in 
 married life, who justified himself in pro- 
 miscuous intercourse by pleading a dispensa- 
 tion, — when we attempt to touch, even in this 
 
CONTRAST — CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. 145 
 
 respect, that indelible blot on the cheek of 
 humanity, — the touch itself is pollution. It is 
 a shame even to speak of those things, in any 
 minuteness of detail, which were done by the 
 prophet of Mecca. 
 
 And, as to truth, it was foreign to the daily 
 utterances of the hardened impostor. To talk 
 of his probable sincerity may suit the senti- 
 mentalist, or the infidel in want of a reason; 
 but it is difficult for the candid to be in such 
 a milky humour respecting one whose very 
 successes depended on successful falsehood, 
 hypocris}', and the sword. 
 
 The signs and wonders attesting the verity 
 of our Lord's blessed mission are sought for in 
 vain in the history of the Arabian prophet. 
 The bed of lust and the blood of murder alone 
 speak for him, and point him out as the enemy 
 of Christ and of man. Contrasts there are in- 
 deed; but they are contrasts of things that 
 differ in nature, and are in necessary and end- 
 less opposition. 
 
 The power and permanency of evil may be 
 traced by the historian and the philosopher to 
 the deep impressions made by one mind of 
 singular strength on kindred tribes and on 
 successive generations ; but the instructed dis- 
 ciple in accounting for the phenomena must 
 
 18 
 
146 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 look behind the veil to a more potent indi- 
 viduality, ever active in its untiring malignity, 
 which reproduces in a successor the wasted 
 energies of the fallen prophet and perpetuates 
 the woe. And it was for this purpose — that we 
 might not lose, in the detail of visible agencies, 
 the vision of the one ever-active master-spirit 
 that stamps its own dark features on Islamism 
 from generation to generation — that it is said, 
 in concluding the delineation, "And they had 
 a king over them, which was the angel of the 
 bottomless pit." 
 
 One of the twelve disciples rises from the 
 table of the Lord, goes out and betrays his 
 Master. We look at causes as they appear to 
 us. He is exposed by our Lord's reference to 
 his dipping in the dish. The eyes of all turn 
 on him, and he is offended. He had thought 
 of the profits of treason before, but now he is 
 enraged and resolved; and why? The ulti- 
 mate determination of his will is traceable 
 to an invisible agency: "Satan entered into 
 him." 
 
 Ananias sold his lands and kept back part 
 of the price. His vanity was clamorous for 
 the reputation of liberality, and his covetous- 
 ness for the possession of his golden treasures. 
 To cater to the gratification of both the one 
 
CONTRAST CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. 147 
 
 and the other required the utterance of a lie to 
 the Holy Ghost. Such are the outward phe- 
 nomena : but the true cause was invisible ; and, 
 in an account that should comprehend all the 
 facts in the history of the crime of Ananias, 
 that invisible cause must be made prominent : 
 — " Why hath Satan filled thy heart to lie unto 
 the Holy Ghost?" 
 
 In like manner also, in the history of all 
 evil in those who deliberately enter upon a 
 course of opposition to Christ and to his king- 
 dom, there is the same account to be given 
 of the secret cause which determined the will 
 and instigated the iniquity. Satan enters into 
 the erring soul, fills the false heart. And, 
 indeed, all evil men, respected as individuals 
 or as communities, when at war with Christ 
 and his church, " have a king over them, which 
 is the angel of the bottomless pit." 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SARACENIC MERGED IN THE OTTOMAN 
 EMPIRE. 
 
 " In the small compass of a grave, 
 In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown : 
 No bard had they to make all time their own." 
 
 Byron. 
 " One woe is past." — Rev. ix. 12. 
 
 The sudden and vast expansion of the em- 
 pire of the caliphs was the wind in its sails that 
 dashed it on the rocks. It resulted in destruc- 
 tive domestic wars and in the erection of sepa- 
 rate and powerful states. 
 
 Spain, Mauritania, Africa, and Egypt, were 
 severed by distance, interest, and the sword, 
 from their Oriental masters. Arabia also, too 
 remote and sparsely peopled to form an influ- 
 ential and a continued centre for a great mon- 
 archy, the resort of fierce and impracticable 
 fanatics, the theatre of strifes, of assassina- 
 tions, and stained often with patrician blood, 
 was finally abandoned from necessity rather 
 than policy. 
 
 148 
 
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 149 
 
 A new and splendid city, founded by Alman- 
 zor, rose as by enchantment on the eastern 
 bank of the Tigris, and near its confluence 
 with the Euphrates. To it was transferred the 
 throne and palace, the staff of the Apostle of 
 God, and the other ensigns of civil and of 
 sacred authority. And, though the rival mon- 
 archies of the West held for ages a position of 
 grandeur almost equal to that of the Abassides, 
 yet, when the shepherd-kings rose to supre- 
 macy in Bagdad, they brought back again to 
 the ancient site of the long-Mien Babylon the 
 balance of power and the revived " beauty of 
 the Chaldees' excellency." 
 
 Hence, in designating the change, and the 
 continuation at the same time of the same 
 power, the Euphrates, and the innumerable 
 armies of horsemen that on a sudden rushed 
 from its confines, are made the striking em- 
 blems of the second woe. 
 
 The smoke, issuing from a pit, suited the 
 locality of Mecca, sunk as it was in a gulf 
 formed by sharp and naked mountains, under 
 torrid suns, and surrounded by burning sands. 
 And when the martial zeal of the Saracenic 
 empire revived again in its original prestige 
 on the banks of the Euphrates, and, issuing 
 from thence, reproduced the first woe through- 
 
 13* 
 
150 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 out the southern hemisphere in more than its 
 original bitterness, finishing a ruin that had 
 been but begun, and completely subverting the 
 throne of the Caesars, it becomes quite natural, 
 in a continued symbolic delineation, to speak 
 of it as the second woe, and as issuing from the 
 celebrated river on the banks of which it un- 
 expectedly culminates and becomes again the 
 scourge and terror of the world. 
 
 The Nestorian patriarch residing at Meru, 
 on the southwestern slopes of those vast 
 steppes that ascend toward the confines of 
 China, had observed the progress of a race of 
 Scythian shepherds toward the wide savan- 
 nahs of Transoxiana and Carisme. This fact 
 he at length communicated to the patri- 
 arch at Bagdad, intimating that they were 
 hastening to change the face of Asia and the 
 fortunes of the world. Repairing to the coun- 
 cil-chamber of the caliphs, the letter was read 
 to the astonished chiefs. 
 
 It stated that "a people numerous as the 
 locust-cloud had burst from the mountains 
 between Thibet and Katan, and were pouring 
 down upon the fertile plains of Kashgar. 
 They were commanded by seven kings, each 
 at the head of seventy thousand horsemen. 
 The warriors were as swarthy as Indians. 
 
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 151 
 
 They used no water in their ablutions, nor 
 did they cut their hair. They were most 
 skilful archers, and were content with simple 
 and frugal fare. Their horses were fed upon 
 meat."* 
 
 Such were the first intimations of approach- 
 ing change. It, however, fell upon the ears 
 of a degenerate race, who, though descended 
 from the mighty conquerors of Syria, had en- 
 tombed the hardness and daring of the earlier 
 caliphs in the magnificent harems of Bagdad. 
 
 Extremes meet in their history. " Moham- 
 med used at first, when preaching in his 
 mosque at Medina, to lean upon a post of a 
 palm-tree driven into the ground; but, being 
 now invested with greater dignity, he had a 
 pulpit built which had two steps up to it and 
 a seat within. When Othman was caliph he 
 hung it with tapestry, and Moawiyah raised it 
 six steps higher."f 
 
 Omar the caliph, in his journey to Jerusa- 
 lem, " rode upon a red camel with a couple of 
 sacks, in one of which he carried that sort of 
 provision which the Arabs call t sawik,' which 
 is either barley, rice, or wheat, sodden and 
 
 * " Nineveh and its Remains/' chap. viii. 
 | Ockley, p. 46. 
 
152 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 unhuskecl ; the other was full of fruits. Be- 
 fore him he carried a very great leathern 
 bottle, (very necessary in those desert coun- 
 tries to put water in;) behind him a large 
 wooden platter. When encamped, he sat on 
 the ground to eat. Then, filling his platter 
 with the sawik, he very liberally entertained 
 his fellow-travellers, who, without distinction, 
 ate with him, all out of the same dish."* 
 
 " Having met with some of the Saracens, 
 richly dressed in silks that they had taken by 
 way of plunder after the battle of Yarmuk, 
 he spoiled all their pride ; for he caused them 
 to be dragged along in the dirt with their 
 faces downward, and their clothes to be rent 
 in pieces."f 
 
 But when success had crowned their arms, 
 and for three centuries they had had the lord- 
 ship of the southern hemisphere, — an empire in 
 which the sun rose and set, — the contrast with 
 the simplicity of earlier times became intense. 
 
 "When the Greek ambassador visited the 
 court of Bagdad, the caliph's whole army," 
 says the historian Abulfeda, " both horse and 
 foot, was under arms, which together made a 
 body of one hundred and sixty thousand men. 
 
 Ockley, p. 208. f Ibid - P- 211 - 
 
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 153 
 
 His state-officers — the favourite slaves — stood 
 near him in splendid apparel, their belts glit- 
 tering with gold and gems. Near them were 
 seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of them 
 white, the remainder black. The porters (or 
 door-keepers) were in number seven hundred. 
 Barges and boats, with the most superb decora- 
 tions, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. 
 
 " Nor was the palace itself less splendid, in 
 which were hung up thirty-eight thousand 
 pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hun- 
 dred of which were of silk, embroidered with 
 gold. The carpets on the floor were twenty-two 
 thousand. One hundred lions were brought 
 out, with a keeper to each lion. 
 
 " Among the other spectacles of rare and 
 splendid luxury was a tree of gold and silver, 
 spreading into eighteen large branches, on 
 which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a variety 
 of birds made of the same precious metals, 
 as well as the limbs of the tree. While the 
 machinery effected spontaneous motions, the 
 several birds warbled their natural harmony. 
 Through this scene of magnificence the Greek 
 ambassador was led by the vizier to the foot 
 of the caliph's throne."* 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 298. 
 K 
 
154 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Such splendour, however, was but the final 
 blaze of an expiring greatness, to go out all 
 the sooner for its unnatural brightness. The 
 very menials that composed the trains of 
 servants, and the very soldiers that filled the 
 ranks of the army, defended the city, and 
 upheld a decrepit dynasty, were foreigners, 
 who learned to despise their effeminate em- 
 ployers and the confessed imbecility which re- 
 quired their aid. The transition from idolatry 
 to Mohammedanism is easy. They embraced 
 the short creed of the prophet with sincerity, 
 and thus, though of a different origin, amalga- 
 mated their nationality with that of their 
 recent masters. 
 
 Having, after a signal victory, founded the 
 dynasty of the shepherd-kings in Persia, 
 Togrul Beg, their rude and successful chief, 
 aspired to the throne and sceptre to the de- 
 fence of which he had been called amid the 
 domestic and bloody factions of Bagdad. 
 
 Marrying the daughter of the caliph whom 
 his sword supported, he died A.d. 1063, leav- 
 ing no issue. Alp Arslan, his nephew, suc- 
 ceeded to his title as sultan; and from this 
 period "his name, after that of the caliph, was 
 pronounced in the public prayers of the Mos- 
 
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 155 
 
 lems."* The union and the revolution was 
 now complete, and the Turkish sultany had 
 succeeded in every respect to the caliphate. 
 
 The prophetic interval of three hundred 
 and ninety-one years lies between this period 
 and A.d. 1453, during which the four angels 
 remained bound in the great river, and pre- 
 pared, whenever they should be summoned, to 
 rush forth and slay "the third part of men."f 
 
 The first third fell before the Goths and 
 Vandals; the second before the caliphs; the 
 third was now destined to fall before the Otto- 
 mans. Such is the origin of the Turkish 
 empire; and thus are connected the first and 
 the second woes. 
 
 The sword of the dying Mohammed was 
 effectually wielded by his lieutenants. It 
 became the symbol of his faith and the instru- 
 ment of its success. When his followers threw 
 it aside for the trowel, the plough, the lancet, 
 studied the instructions of wisdom and sought 
 the embraces of pleasure, the empire, like its 
 founder, lost its vitality and sunk into the tomb. 
 
 Just at this point it is, also, that its resusci- 
 tation commences. The Scythian shepherds 
 rise to the dominion, and, while they trample 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. v. p. 511. f Rev - ix> 15 ' 
 
156 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 its ashes, warm into unexpected life the cur- 
 rent of its blood. The two races mingle into 
 one, in the principles of their faith, in their 
 intermarriages with each other; and the long- 
 spent fury of Ishmael revives again in the 
 children of the East. 
 
 The empire of the shepherds remained a 
 unit, swayed by a single mind, until the death 
 of Malek Shah, when the succession was dis- 
 puted in bloody debates by his brother and 
 his four sons. These ended in the erection of 
 the four sultanies, — viz. : Persia, Koum, Syria ? 
 and Kerman. These are the noted ministers 
 of divine and long-restrained vengeance, — the 
 four angels of the great river on whose banks 
 they rise to power and from whence they 
 spread their conquests. 
 
 The prophet speaks of them as the four 
 angels of the river, since it was during their 
 fourfold division that the binding processes, in 
 the wars of the cross, commenced. 
 
 It seems also quite appropriate to retain this 
 designation even after these divisions termi- 
 nated, or to give the title to the main division 
 or branch of the four, when it finally absorbs 
 the strength of the other branches and becomes 
 the prominent instrument in executing the 
 decrees of Providence. As they had been 
 
THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE. 157 
 
 bound when existing as the four sultanies, so 
 the loosing of them would suggest that the 
 restraint was taken off from them all alike 
 and at the same time; which was the fact 
 when their common foes, the Crusaders, had 
 finally left the battle-fields of Asia. 
 
 The preparation also "to slay the third part 
 of men" belonged alike to all the sultanies; 
 since during the period of the preparation to 
 the time in which they were loosed to slay, 
 they were a mutual aid to each other, and 
 during the oppressions of the Crusades their 
 combined power was needed for mutual pre- 
 servation from extinction. 
 
 It does not hence seem of much force to 
 urge inasmuch as the Turkish branch of 
 the great monarchy of the Euphrates mainly 
 effected the overthrow of Greece, that there- 
 fore the other branches could not have been 
 included in the processes of the long-continued 
 preparation. 
 
 It is quite obvious, on the contrary, that the 
 four sultanies mutually sustained each other 
 amid the wars that threatened their total ruin 
 as separate or as confederate states; and hence 
 the processes of the preparation, the binding 
 and the loosing, belong alike to the four, and it 
 is proper and natural so to speak of them. 
 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE CRUSADES — THEIR CAUSES AND ENDS. 
 
 "Hail, Calvary, thou mountain hoar, 
 Wet with our Redeemer's gore ! 
 Ye trampled tombs, ye fanes forlorn, 
 Ye stones by tears of pilgrims 'worn ! 
 Your ravish'd honours to restore, 
 Fearless we climb this hostile shore !" 
 
 Warton. 
 
 The Turks, in the zeal of recent converts 
 and in the cruelty of slaves just risen to be 
 masters, exceeded the Saracens in intolerance 
 and oppression, demanded of the pilgrims in 
 the holy city impossible sums, dragged their 
 patriarch by the hair of his head on the pave- 
 ment, and turned the plains of Asia into 
 a highway for their robber-bands. Princes, 
 nobles, the ministers of religion and trains of 
 unarmed peasants, on their way to the holy 
 sepulchre, were alike pillaged, beaten, slain, 
 and sometimes their stomachs ripped open and 
 examined for treasures supposed to have been 
 swallowed. 
 
 There was in the Turkish accession to Mo- 
 
 158 
 
THE CRUSADES. 159 
 
 hammedanism a revival of the zeal and cru- 
 elty of the tiger Caled, and of those that fol- 
 lowed him in " the paths of blood." The time 
 however for their peculiar mission had not 
 yet arrived. They were anticipating it by 
 centuries. They must therefore back again to 
 their enclosures, lose Palestine and Peninsular 
 Asia, and struggle in vain to burst their bonds 
 or break from the frail barriers of the Eu- 
 phrates, until the time appointed. 
 
 In God's providential government of the 
 world, his care for his church is ever a con- 
 trolling consideration. 
 
 When her safety is endangered, the caverns 
 and gorges of the Alps become the hollow of his 
 hand in which he hides her. His seal is placed 
 upon the forehead of his people, and his pro- 
 tective shield hangs at the gate of the monas- 
 tery as soon as they enter there. An invisible 
 rampart surrounds Philadelphia, because she 
 shelters those who kept the word of his pa- 
 tience. His people are in the valleys, and a 
 vast army falls without hand, and flies in 
 hopeless disarray from the banks of the Rhone. 
 
 And to that same tender care of his church, 
 so obvious in the past and so cheering in our 
 anticipations of the future, are we to look for 
 the causes of the Crusades. 
 
160 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 The voice of Peter the Hermit, summoning 
 the fierce chivalry of the North to the rescue 
 of the holy sepulchre, was the voice of God, 
 commanding those who would have heen sure 
 to have arrested his gracious work in blood to 
 a distant land, to gratify there their love of 
 war, to expend there their martial rage on the 
 turbulent sultanies, and finally to disappear 
 there themselves, and bury their hosts forever 
 in the oblivion of the desert. 
 
 There is a choice in approaching or liable 
 evils, and in the selection from among which 
 of one rather than another a providential in- 
 telligence discovers its wisdom. 
 
 An apostate is also often a persecuting church, 
 the implacable foe of Zion. But, evil and de- 
 structive though it be, yet there are occasional 
 mitigations, periods of intervening repose, and 
 here and there a ray of a pure and sanctifying 
 light. But a false system of faith, such as that 
 of the Arabian prophet, is a ruin that leaves 
 behind it no trace of that Christianity which 
 it wholly exterminates. 
 
 Catholic Europe, as compared with Britain 
 and the United States, is one among the dark 
 places of the earth ; still, an intenser darkness 
 broods over Mohammedan countries. 
 
 To bind these angels, therefore, within the 
 
THE CRUSADES. 1G1 
 
 limits of their original dominions, was the 
 will and the work of a protective Providence. 
 God waits not till the myriads of the Turkish 
 horse slake their thirst in the rivers and foun- 
 tains of the Alps, ere he rouses to the defence 
 of his bride in the wilderness. He anticipates 
 and turns away the threatened ruin by turn- 
 ing the tide of battle to the East. 
 
 This event, then, is invested with a peculiar 
 interest not only in itself, as it is a history of 
 remarkable occurrences, but also with a rela- 
 tive interest, as it is the next step in the series 
 of those processes by which the church is pre- 
 served from extermination, and by means of 
 which she is enabled to spread through Europe 
 the imperishable elements of the great Kefor- 
 mation. 
 
 In a.d. 1095 Peter the Hermit visited Je- 
 rusalem, and saw and felt the brutal violence 
 of the Turks with emotions of unutterable 
 horror. The patriarch also recounted the 
 trials of cruel mockings and scourgings, of 
 bonds and exactions, to which his suffering 
 flock had been subjected under the new regime. 
 He witnessed also, with his own eyes, the tomb 
 of Jesus defaced, the church of the resurrection 
 violated, and the pilgrims perishing in want 
 and misery around him. 
 
 14* 
 
162 ISnMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Convinced that expostulation would but 
 tempt to heavier oppressions, and that, if Eu- 
 rope would preserve the poor remains of an 
 expiring Christianity from being entombed, 
 amid the holiest memorials of her triumphs, 
 in the very church of the resurrection, in the 
 very sepulchre of Messias, she must do it 
 with the sword, he resolved to arm her against 
 Asia. 
 
 He was an enthusiast, whose religious emo- 
 tions, uninformed by revelation, took their 
 complexion from the superstitions of the times. 
 To him a hermitage was as congenial as Hara 
 to Mohammed. Here his excited fancy created 
 visions of saints and angels, of Jesus, Mary, 
 and the martyrs; and here the arch-deceiver 
 inflamed his resentment and his zeal, until he 
 turned his willing dupe into the enraptured 
 seer, commissioned to call the West, not to 
 the humanity of the Prince of peace, but to 
 the carnival of blood in Palestine. 
 
 When he came to Eome, Urban the Second, 
 influenced either by .policy or fanaticism, en- 
 dorsed his inspiration and cherished his burn- 
 ing ardour by his pontifical benediction. 
 
 The flesh in this extraordinary man had 
 become subject to the spirit. His strong and 
 wiry frame, though attenuated by fasting and 
 
THE CRUSADES. 163 
 
 frenzy, seemed but to increase in its power of 
 endurance by the energy of a soul that ab- 
 sorbed and supplied its vitality with a higher 
 principle of life. Covered with a coarse gar- 
 ment, with head and feet bare, and swaying a 
 ponderous crucifix, he rode through Italy and 
 France, the universal centre of an amazing in- 
 terest, summoning the church to the enterprise 
 of a holy war. 
 
 There are times in which such an apparition 
 would but awaken the merriment of the gay 
 or the pity of the benevolent. But the ex- 
 ample and the success of Mohammed had made 
 its impression on a church which had lost her 
 Bible in the manuscripts of a dead language 
 and had gone back in the name of the cross to 
 be governed by a disguised paganism, to re- 
 gard the shield and battle-axe as more reliable 
 than the sword of the Spirit in the defence and 
 propagation of the gospel. The bread of the 
 sacrament had also become a divinity to be 
 worshipped. And, by an easy transition, the 
 sepulchre of Jesus was invested with an awful 
 sanctity. 
 
 A kiss imprinted on the black stone of the 
 Kaaba had never been so impassioned as the 
 kiss of the pilgrim on the cold and stony floor 
 of a Saviour's tomb. It was a means of salva- 
 
164 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 tion, a sign of love and devotion, more merito- 
 rious than penitent emotions or the righteous- 
 ness of faith. 
 
 And when the dark eye of the hermit 
 flashed at the recital of the wrongs and the 
 sacrileges he himself had witnessed, rage crim- 
 soned every cheek, and the long-cherished de- 
 sire for retaliations on Asia turned into decrees 
 in the bosoms of princes. 
 
 A council of "two hundred bishops, four 
 hundred of the clergy, and thirty thousand of 
 the laity," assembled at Placentia. The am- 
 bassadors also of the emperor reached the spot 
 from Constantinople. 
 
 These united in urging the Latins instantly 
 to arm, not to wait for the inevitable invasion 
 of Europe, but to anticipate and forestall that 
 event by becoming themselves the invaders. 
 
 The vast concourse heard the recital of 
 dangers imminent, and wrongs already inflicted 
 on a bleeding church and long endured with- 
 out either mitigation or redress, with tears of 
 sympathy, and sent back to Alexius their 
 solemn pledges of material aid. 
 
 From this great council went out also the 
 coadjutors of the hermit, seconding his efforts, 
 spreading themselves throughout the provinces, 
 addressing excited and superstitious crowds, 
 
THE CRUSADES. 165 
 
 and invoking the war-spirit in the remotest 
 villages. 
 
 France in the same autumn became also the 
 theatre of another vast conclave, whose de- 
 liberations ended in the active mustering of 
 the armies of the cross. 
 
 From the borders of France the successful 
 Peter led out sixty thousand fanatics. & poor 
 soldier led on another band, and still another 
 of twenty thousand started from Germany. 
 Their path was followed by two hundred 
 thousand more. 
 
 But these wild hordes were those whom want 
 and crime had made outlaws; and the evils 
 they inflicted on their way to Asia were cala- 
 mities too grievous to bear, roused kingdoms to 
 arm in self-defence against their fellow-Chris- 
 tians, and suggest to us the necessity of such 
 a drain upon European society to make a re- 
 vival of true religion possible within its limits. 
 
 After incredible crimes and sufferings, their 
 lawless thousands reach Asia, and encounter 
 the Turks in the vicinity of Nice. Here they 
 all perish. A mausoleum was made of their 
 bones on the plains near the city by the vic- 
 torious Solyman. The princes and knights, the 
 priests and peasants, that composed, after them, 
 the better-disciplined armies of the cross, were 
 
166 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 men of Belial also, and providentially sepa- 
 rated by their cruel and superstitious sympa- 
 thies from the masses of a less intolerant and a 
 more hopeful humanity. 
 
 Those that took the cross and started for 
 Asia are estimated at six millions. When this 
 eruption of human beings passed in review be- 
 fore the daughter of Alexius, she is said to have 
 exclaimed, "Europe is loosened from her foun- 
 dations and hurled against Asia." 
 
 Before this mighty army Solyman is totally 
 defeated, flies in despair toward the Euphrates; 
 and, from this period to the end of the Cru- 
 sades, Asia becomes the battle-field of contend- 
 ing nations and the charnel-house for their 
 bones. 
 
 The chivalry of Europe were governed by a 
 law of exalted gallantry to ladies, and of pro- 
 found and senseless veneration for the minis- 
 ters of a religion whose badge they wore and 
 whose holy places they rescued ; but here ended 
 the virtues of these grim and bloody Caleds of 
 the North. 
 
 Simon de Montfort, the beloved son and 
 champion of the church, was a stanch mur- 
 derer. Courtesy to a lady was a law of his 
 knighthood; and on one occasion he pre- 
 served several women from military outrage. 
 
THE CRUSADES. 167 
 
 But the same Simon laid waste the country of 
 the Albigenses with fire and sword ; and when 
 the castle of Menerbe, on the frontiers of 
 Spain, surrendered, for the single and only 
 crime of constancy in their religious opinions,* 
 this true specimen of Western chivalry united 
 with the papal legate in arranging the fagots 
 and in kindling the fire that burned to death a 
 hundred and forty-one Christians of both sexes. 
 
 "The sword of Godfrey divided a Turk 
 from the shoulder to the haunch, and one-half 
 of the infidel fell to the ground, while the 
 other was transported by his horse to the city 
 gate. As Kobert of Normandy rode against his 
 antagonist, 'I devote thy head/ he piously 
 exclaimed, 'to the demons of hell;' and that 
 head was instantly cloven to the breast by the 
 resistless stroke of his descending falchion. "f 
 
 When Jerusalem fell into the hands of the 
 Crusaders, Bohemond and Tancred, Baldwin, 
 Godfrey, the Koberts, and others, the illus- 
 trious leaders in the siege, followed by trains 
 of devotees, and with heads and feet bare, as- 
 
 * For the same offence, in this crusade against the 
 Albigenses, a million were slain in France alone. Knights 
 and Ecclesiastics united in the work of slaughter " with 
 infinite joy." (See Sismondi's History.) 
 
 f Gibbon, vol. v. p. 581. 
 
168 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 cended the slopes of Calvary to bedew with 
 tears the precious sepulchre of the Lord, and 
 to imprint their tenderest kisses on its walls. 
 
 Incredible, however, to relate, these very 
 men, so intensely Christian as to make even 
 the rock touched once by the body of Jesus 
 most sacred in their esteem, had just arisen 
 from the banquet of blood, — had just massacred 
 seventy thousand of all ages and sexes with- 
 out mercy or discrimination. For three days 
 the area of the slaughter-house stretched from 
 wall to wall throughout Jerusalem. The cry 
 for mercy and the crash of the battle-axe re- 
 sounded on every side; and, thus reeking in 
 the blood of recent murder, came these unre- 
 lenting men up the sides of Calvary to worship 
 the sepulchre. 
 
 Such were the men, whose tender mercies 
 were cruel, from whom Europe and the church 
 had been delivered by the armies of the cross, 
 that for one hundred and ninety years bound 
 the sultanies. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 PETER WALDO ON THE TRACK OF PETER THE 
 HERMIT. 
 
 " When Waldo, flying from the apostate West, 
 In German wilds his righteous cause confess'd." 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 Let us now turn to Zion in the wilderness ; 
 and, while Ishmael takes peace from the world 
 in Asia, it will be interesting to trace the pro- 
 gress of the church left behind by that flood, 
 of reprobate humanity disappearing in suc- 
 cessive surges in Oriental aceldemas. 
 
 Fifteen years after the commencement of 
 the second Crusade, and forty-four years before 
 the establishment of the Inquisition, a.d. 1206, 
 there occurs a very interesting revival of re- 
 ligion. 
 
 To Peter Waldo is the church indebted for 
 the first modern translation of the New Testa- 
 ment in the vulgar tongue. This translation, 
 and his apostolic zeal and success, made him 
 the object of papal persecution. Himself and 
 
 15 L 109 
 
170 ISIOIAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 followers fled from Lyons; and, as they went, 
 they spread everywhere the principles and the 
 impulses of the Reformation. The existing 
 churches caught the spirit of their afflicted 
 brethren, and the attack on Waldo became a 
 wide-spread source of salvation. 
 
 In the province of Picardy — the place of the 
 nativity of Peter the Hermit, and on which 
 region he drew most largely — Peter Waldo 
 found a generation of right-minded men. Here 
 his success was great, among a people that 
 would not be induced to expel him or renounce 
 his doctrine. 
 
 Philip Augustus invaded this favoured spot, 
 battered down three hundred houses and 
 several walled towns, and pursued the flying 
 converts into Flanders, where several suffered 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Peter himself escaped into Bohemia, another 
 broad and beautiful valley drained of its 
 bigots to recruit the armies of the cross. Here 
 the word of God grew and multiplied. In 
 Bulgaria, Croatia, Dalmatia, and Hungary, in 
 Alsace, and along the valleys of the Rhine, 
 powerful revivals spread their healing influ- 
 ence. Persecutions indeed arose; hundreds 
 were imprisoned or slain ; but Christianity 
 was not exterminated, as it was ultimately in 
 
PETER WALDO. 171 
 
 Spain and Calabria, as it might well have been 
 over all Europe but for the Crusades. 
 
 In a.d. 1228, Keinerius Saccho, the Roman 
 Inquisitor, represents their numbers to have 
 been very great, the sect to have been most 
 generally diffused through every part of Europe 
 and found in all its circles. 
 
 Certain French bishops "desired the monks 
 of the Inquisition to defer a little their work 
 of imprisonment till the Pope was advertised 
 of the great numbers apprehended, — numbers 
 so great that it was impossible to defray the 
 charges of their subsistence, and even to pro- 
 vide stone and mortar to build prisons for 
 them."* But would such a difficulty in the 
 work of extermination have stayed its pro- 
 gress, had not the bigotry of Rome wasted its 
 energies in its foreign wars ? 
 
 Along the bloody trail of that demon army, 
 had it been permitted to sweep through the 
 Alps, we would not have gathered up a rem- 
 nant from the papal slaughter-houses of eight 
 hundred thousand Waldenses, nor would the 
 blood of a million martyrs in the twelfth 
 century have been the seed, but rather the 
 grave, of the church. 
 
 * Millner, vol. ii. p. 65. 
 
172 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 The four sultanies are bound for Zion's sake; 
 kept back from invading Europe, curbed with- 
 in the valleys of the Euphrates, to subserve 
 the purposes of salvation ; and the very hand 
 that forges the restraints that bind them is the 
 hand of a parricide, turned from the home 
 his remorseless cruelty would otherwise have 
 desolated, to grapple with Ishmael and perish 
 at last himself in the fruitless struggle. 
 
 The history of Ishmael, or of the Crusaders 
 in their Asiatic wars, is but the recital of the 
 outrages, the woes, and the strifes of ages. 
 
 And, as the panorama opens in the fierce 
 reprisals of the desert, or unfolds itself in the 
 empire of the caliphs, or shifts again in the 
 rise of the Turks or the wars of the cross, 
 we have but the painful reproductions suc- 
 cessively, with but little variation, of the same 
 sad pictures of ruin. And from it we in- 
 stinctively turn away. 
 
 But, when the church is ever the centre of 
 a thrilling interest in heavenly places, and men 
 and wars and empires are made to be subsidiary 
 to its preservation, (though they knew it not,) 
 then the aspect of unalleviated violence and 
 wrong is mitigated, and Ave watch that frail 
 ark, now in the trough of the sea, and now on 
 the crest of the surge, and now in the eddies 
 
PETER WALDO. 173 
 
 of the Maelstrom, with an emotion of gratified 
 wonder and veneration ; since, while one and 
 another among the mighty disappear, — since 
 Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Kome, the caliphs, 
 and the Crusaders, struggle in vain in that wild 
 uproar and are successively dashed upon the 
 rocks, — that frail ark, invested with a protected 
 life, piloted by an unseen hand, encounters 
 and survives the same dangers, and is seen to 
 emerge at last from the night of ages and the 
 wreck of empires, itself unchanged, unharmed, 
 as when first it was floated out and left to 
 make its own perilous way across the dark 
 and pathless ocean. 
 
 Milton's wars of angels are invested with 
 interest, since the good oppose the bad and 
 triumph, and Heaven shines all the brighter 
 for the trial of her imperilled and preserved 
 virtue. And this it is that makes the world's 
 prophetic history most interesting; since the 
 bride, the Lamb's wife, is ever the centre of an 
 amazing love, the ultimate care of a resistless 
 Providence. Around her otherwise defence- 
 less home the angels keep perpetual vigil, and 
 in her palaces God is known for a refuge. 
 
 And, while she is often at the very verge of 
 an inevitable destruction, she is all the more 
 pure for her trials and her triumphs. And we 
 
 15* 
 
174 ISnMAEL AND THE CIIURCn. 
 
 love for her sake to glance over earth's bloody 
 annals, not simply to gather and chronicle the 
 details of wars and wrongs, — subjects only and 
 always revolting, — but for her sake, that we 
 may gaze after her through the dark night 
 and in the deep sea where she is ever followed 
 by the outgoings of those feet once nailed to 
 the cross for her sins and that ever tread down 
 for her the fury of the waves. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 CONSTANTINOPLE MENACED. 
 
 " Greece ! thine ancient lamp is spent : 
 Thou art thine own monument." 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 From a.d. 1063 — at which point of time we 
 commence our reckoning of the hour, the day, 
 the month, and the year, of this prophecy — to 
 the fall of Constantinople, in a.d. 1453, there 
 stretches an interval of three hundred and 
 ninety-one years. 
 
 The Crusaders lose Acre, the Holy Land, 
 and disappear from Asia, in A.d. 1291, leav- 
 ing the sultanies loose from their long-con- 
 tinued restraints to rush forth upon abandoned 
 Asia and impoverished Europe. No sooner do 
 their foes disappear, than, true to their in- 
 stincts, they begin to execute before the time 
 their terrible mission. They at once spread 
 their conquests over Komania, Anatolia, and 
 across into Europe as far as the Danube. Con- 
 stantinople is itself invested, and lies at the 
 mercy of the foe. 
 
 175 
 
176 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHUKCH. 
 
 " The third part of men" are thus unexpect- 
 edly placed in imminent peril of being slain, 
 and that long before the fulness of the pro- 
 phetic hour. But Providence is always equal 
 to all exigencies. Its prepared and reserved 
 force rushes to the rescue of the helpless city 
 and binds again the Euphratean angels. 
 
 In a.d. 1356 — about forty-six years before 
 Bajazet menaced the falling throne of the 
 effeminate Ca)sars — a poor adventurer, escaped 
 from prison, flings himself into the Oxus, and 
 reaches with extraordinary exertions the op- 
 posite bank. After leading for some time the 
 life of an outlaw, he returned to his native 
 Transoxiana. Here he gathered around him 
 his little army and delivered his country from 
 the usurpations of its conquerors. Ambition 
 had already taken full possession of his soul, 
 and the fortunate Tamerlane now began to 
 aspire to the conquest of the world. 
 
 In the message that he sent to Houssein,he 
 expressed, while yet an inferior, his aspirations 
 and his policies : — " He who wishes to embrace 
 the bride of royalty must kiss her across the 
 edge of the sharp sword." Guided by this 
 maxim, he pursued his career of conquest till 
 the twenty-seventh crown glittered on his 
 head. 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 177 
 
 From Samarcand to the forests of Siberia 
 the successful Tartar stretched his conquests. 
 Turning from thence, he recrossed the continent 
 to the shores of the Indian Ocean, subduing 
 every intervening kingdom by his resistless 
 arms. 
 
 When, ultimately, he became the proud 
 master of this wide domain, he still panted for 
 other and still more illustrious acquisitions. 
 And, being told of the sudden and successful 
 irruptions of the ambitious sultan, — of his de- 
 signs upon the capital of the Caesars, — the tale 
 inflamed his envy, and, leaving the banks of 
 the Ganges, he determined to humble his rival 
 in the fields of his triumphs. 
 
 His military preparations were made upon a 
 scale suited to the greatness and difficulty of 
 the enterprise; and in due time his victorious 
 army swept over the snow-clad hills of Georgia, 
 and brought, as he intended, the line of his 
 operations in conflict with those of Bajazet. 
 
 And now opens the angry and menacing cor- 
 respondence which issues in the defeat and 
 ruin of the latter. " Thou art no more than a 
 pismire: why wilt thou seek to provoke the 
 elephant? Alas! they will trample thee 
 under their feet," said the scornful Tamerlane. 
 " If," replied Bajazet, with a sneer of studied 
 
178 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 insolence, " thou hast not courage to meet me 
 in the field, mayest thou again receive thy 
 wives after they have thrice endured the em- 
 braces of strangers !" 
 
 These were words of offence never to be for- 
 gotten by the enraged Mogul. And, alas for 
 Bajazet ! it was not his hour. And, as though 
 in derision of his weakness and of his impudent 
 haste, Providence gives him up to defeat and 
 ruin. He is taken prisoner by Tamerlane, put 
 in an iron cage, and made a spectacle to Asia 
 and the world. 
 
 The bonds that had so long bound the sul- 
 tanies had been snapped in the disappearance 
 of the Crusaders. The Turks had broken forth 
 to anticipate the will of Heaven and fulfil be- 
 fore the time their bloody mission ; but the 
 strong arm of the Mogul is lifted up from the 
 distant Ganges, and the daring Bajazet is 
 caught like a wild beast escaped from the 
 menagerie, and recaged in the neighbourhood 
 of the doomed capital. 
 
 And now, if ever, the fierce Tartar is in the 
 very position to become the proud master of 
 the East and the West. But, strange to relate, 
 in the very vicinity of the empire-city, and at 
 the period and in the very conjuncture most 
 propitious, and still filled with the long-che- 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE MENACED. 179 
 
 rislied desire for the world's subjugation, he 
 most unaccountably turns from the key of 
 power, from the city's protected walls, — and 
 his victorious hordes vanish forever in the dis- 
 tant East. 
 
 Both Tamerlane and Bajazet were devout 
 Mohammedans, sympathized with each other 
 in their opposition to an idolatrous church, and 
 alike desired the fall of Greece and Rome. 
 United, two of the best generals of their times, 
 and they at the head of a combined army of 
 twelve hundred thousand men, would have 
 appeared in the field, and not only Constanti- 
 nople, but exhausted Europe, must have formed 
 at last on her Atlantic slopes the western ter- 
 minus of the Mohammedan emnire. 
 
 Such spirits, however, could not unite ; and 
 Christendom escaped because the processes of 
 the assigned preparation could not be com- 
 pleted until the time of the end. 
 
 Scarcely had this vision of approaching doom 
 vanished, when others became equally appal- 
 ling and imminent, and imploring cries for aid 
 were spread over the West. But the West had 
 already wasted their best energies in a strife 
 in which they had won and lost a tomb at 
 an incalculable sacrifice. 
 
 And neither was the West filled any longer 
 
180 ISHMAEL AND THE CIIURCH. 
 
 with bigoted men ready to fly to arms on the 
 first summons. That generation had passed 
 away. The rust had dissolved their armour 
 and death had congealed their blood. 
 
 The great schism also, in which three papal 
 bishops claimed each for himself the pontificate, 
 had augmented the general apathy; and, though 
 unity had been restored, in the election of 
 Martin the Fifth, and in his ascension to the 
 chair of St. Peter, a.d. 1417, still, emotions 
 of deep dissatisfaction pervaded the masses. 
 The union was the harmony of electric clouds, 
 exposed at every turn of the wind to an ex- 
 plosion that would scatter them again. 
 
 The confederate kingdoms of the West had, 
 many of them, united in earnestly demanding 
 the reformation of the church in its "head and 
 in its members." The Council of Constance, 
 which had assembled for the ostensible purpose 
 of carrying out the popular wish, sent John 
 Huss and Jerome of Prague to the stake, re- 
 moved from office the three contending popes, 
 and elected Martin the Fifth as their successor. 
 But, alas ! this was all : no other reformation 
 occurred. It had been promised; but, still, all 
 the evils complained of continued to reign. 
 
 Mutual confidence had been lost; no one 
 could trust another. Social honour and do 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 181 
 
 mestic happiness had alike disappeared. Jus- 
 tice had wholly forsaken the councils of the 
 church, and, indeed, all the tribunals which 
 were under the reach and rule of the clergy. 
 True piety, outraged and wronged, saw its 
 ablest and purest defenders perish at the stake 
 or vanish in the dungeons of the Inquisition. 
 
 The few controlled the many. They were 
 in power ; and the popular conscience, without 
 an organization in which it could gain indi- 
 viduality and utterance, broke forth only in 
 its desultory and abortive expostulations. 
 
 But still there prevailed everywhere the deep 
 impressions of unredressed grievances, of un- 
 atoned wrong; and therefore the power, if even 
 the will had existed, to revive the fanaticism 
 of a previous age once more, had disappeared 
 forever. 
 
 A new class of religious teachers and influ- 
 ences were weakening everywhere the bands of 
 Rome. New ideas, in the bosoms of thousands, 
 were beginning to struggle into life and to call 
 for other leaders in church and state of more 
 hopeful and holier sympathies. 
 
 An apathy with respect to the perpetual 
 encroachments of the Turks had, in conse- 
 quence, spread itself over the entire West. 
 
 Such was at this time the state of the popu- 
 
 ]6 
 
182 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 lar mind, that Peter the Hermit, had he been 
 reproduced, must have failed to have made 
 any considerable general impression. And if 
 the perfidious Martin, or the corrupt ministers 
 of a communion rendered execrable by its 
 shameless impieties, had attempted to raise an 
 army to defend the altars of the East from the 
 desecration of Islamism, the effort would have 
 been met with an emotion akin to a desire for 
 a change even to the latter as the more hope- 
 ful regime. 
 
 Popery had become a worn-out harlot, whose 
 shameless effrontery shocked even the common 
 sentiments of natural religion, and on whose 
 withered cheek there was no blush. 
 
 When, therefore, Tamerlane left the op- 
 pressed sultanies, he left them without an 
 enemy in the field. The tempest from Europe 
 had expended its rage in Asia ; the wars of the 
 cross had ended, and the fierce Mogul had be- 
 come lost to all further thoughts of the world's 
 subjugation. He had slept his last sleep on 
 his way to China. In that sleep he dreamed 
 no more of battles and sieges. 
 
 The tendency in the several sultanies after 
 these events was steadily and firmly toward 
 a union of their forces. Having for so many 
 years experienced the evils of dissension, their 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 183 
 
 leading minds kept ever in view, amid the 
 sharp and bloody debates of the successors of 
 the fallen sultan, the great advantages that 
 would accrue to them on a permanent cessa- 
 tion of all domestic feuds. To the great joy 
 of all, these terminated with the fall of the last 
 pretender to the throne of Bajazet. 
 
 From this period, (a.d. 1421,) Providence gave 
 to the Ottomans successful leaders and armies 
 of disciplined and available courage. 
 
 Mohammed the Second, son of Amurath, 
 ascended the throne in the twenty-first year of 
 his age. His infant brothers were ruthlessly 
 slain, and the insubordination of the janizaries 
 was taught to respect a master who knew how 
 to revenge an affront and how to direct and 
 exhaust their wild and fierce animosities. 
 Seven thousand useless falconers were turned 
 into citizens or soldiers, and the expenses of 
 a luxurious court made to minister to his am- 
 bitious desire, — a desire that fixed and ex- 
 pended itself solely on the conquest of Con- 
 stantinople. 
 
 To this all things else bowed and contri- 
 buted. The pleasures of his youth were for- 
 gotten and absorbed in the workings of a 
 mightier passion. It impelled him in the day- 
 time to extraordinary efforts, and broke his 
 
184 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 rest at night. His very clemency was studied. 
 His gifts of gold, titles, or place, alike pointed 
 the soldier to the walls of the coveted city. 
 His very words burned with an enthusiasm 
 which communicated to his army a correspond- 
 ing emotion, and his whole kingdom resounded 
 with the din of hostile preparations. 
 
 About five miles from Constantinople, on the 
 European side of the Bosphorus, he erected a 
 strong castle. The Greeks became alarmed 
 when they saw thus boldly thrown aside even 
 the mask of peace. They ventured to expos- 
 tulate by their ambassadors. "Return in 
 safety," said the inflexible chief, "but the 
 next who delivers a similar message may ex- 
 pect to be flayed alive."* 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. yi. p. 375. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 
 
 " Then the mighty pour'd their breath ; 
 Slaughter feasted on the brave : 
 'Twas the carnival of death ; 
 'Twas the vintage of the grave." 
 
 The Turks were celebrated — as have ever 
 been the Saracens before them — for their nu- 
 merous armies of horsemen. These, in pre- 
 vious centuries, had been their sole reliance in 
 war. Reposing in the daytime, their stealthy 
 advance upon the unguarded frontiers of de- 
 voted countries was made at night. Its silence 
 was broken by the quick tramp of their pant- 
 ing cavalry. The falling dew cooled the ar- 
 dour of their blood, and moonlit plains facili- 
 tated their approach. Long before the dawn, 
 the shout of battle woke the sleepers to man 
 walls already scaled, — to guard gates already 
 entered by the victors. 
 
 While the Crusaders relied on their horses 
 of massive proportions, steel armour, heavy 
 swords, spears, and battle-axes, the Saracen and 
 
 16* M 185 
 
186 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Turk had hitherto relied on the use of their 
 sharp scimitars, and on the light-footed, swift 
 steeds of the desert. With them, the onset, 
 the retreat, and the sudden onset again, to be 
 again followed by a retreat and a return to the 
 struggle, were but the ordinary evolutions of 
 the battle-field. 
 
 In this sort of warfare they were always 
 superior to the Christians. But, when brought 
 to close quarters, when the horse could not 
 any longer aid their courage, they fell before 
 the stronger arm of steel-clad knights. They 
 were known as warriors formidable in the 
 saddle and in fields suited to the operations 
 of an army of trained horsemen, but as in- 
 efficient in hand-to-hand fights. 
 
 These armies appeared often incredibly 
 numerous. Frequent attempts were made to 
 estimate the probable numerical force that 
 followed the invader; and at such times, 
 ordinarily, the alarms of fear aided the ex- 
 aggerations of the fancy. And, while all 
 agreed in stating the number as that of 
 myriads, it was quite impossible to count 
 accurately the scattered and rushing squad- 
 rons, for they were seen transiently and at 
 different points on a frontier of many hundred 
 miles. 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 187 
 
 The estimates ranged usually at from two 
 hundred thousand to six hundred thousand; 
 or, in the language of John, "two hundred 
 thousand thousand," — a very large, indefinite 
 number, impossible accurately to enumerate, 
 yet oppressing the imagination by the vastness 
 of their supposed destructive capabilities. 
 
 But, when Mohammed environed Constanti- 
 nople and took it, not only the horse, but also 
 the battering-rams of other days, had become 
 quite insignificant in comparison with the 
 newly-discovered engine of destruction em- 
 ployed by the conqueror. 
 
 " Von Hammer states that he had himself 
 seen the great cannon of the Dardanelles, in 
 which a tailor who had run away from his 
 creditors had concealed himself several days."* 
 A cannon, it is said, was cast for Mohammed, 
 in which the measure of twelve palms was 
 assigned to the bore, and which propelled a 
 stone bullet of six hundred pounds' weight the 
 distance of a mile, when it buried itself a 
 fathom deep in the ground.f 
 
 Anciently, walled towns were not built to 
 resist cannon. The fortifications were con- 
 sidered sufficient if battering-rams would fail to 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. vi. p. 380. f Ibid - 
 
188 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 overthrow them. Constantinople could with- 
 stand these; but when its walls were struck 
 by the resistless hail that issued from amid 
 the fire and smoke and brimstone of the 
 Turkish batteries, and from an army of two 
 hundred and fifty thousand horse and foot, 
 they rapidly crumbled into breaches impos- 
 sible to be repaired or defended. 
 
 The Turkish horse, as they swept through 
 the villages and subdued the surrounding 
 country to the very gates of the city, were 
 enveloped in a cloud that gave to them an 
 appalling indistinctness. 
 
 One unused to such scenes, and not under- 
 standing the precise nature of the phenomena, 
 could but say, " Thus I saw the horses in the 
 vision and them that sat on them, having breast- 
 j:>lates of fire, and of jacinth, and of brim- 
 stone ;" (i. e. the red, blue, and yellow, in the 
 unique costume of the soldiers composing this 
 strange army.) "And the heads of the horses 
 were as the heads of lions, and out of their 
 mouths issued fire, and smoke, and brim- 
 stone." 
 
 Forty days the lines of cavalry performed 
 their evolutions, supported the batteries, ap- 
 proached and retired, and incessantly dis- 
 charged their muskets over the heads of the 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 189 
 
 horses. It appeared to John that the stream 
 of fire and smoke issued from the infuriated 
 animals themselves. They, with their riders, 
 would for a moment become visible, and seem 
 all the more terrible for the indistinctness with 
 which they were seen and for the incessant 
 volleys that thundered from their extended 
 lines, enwrapping the open plain alternately 
 in sulphureous flames or pitchy darkness. 
 
 To the apostle it was not given to know 
 what powder and ball were. It was given 
 him to be a spectator of the novel spectacle, 
 to behold the smoke, fire, and brimstone, and 
 to know that by these were the third part of 
 men killed. What this new source of destruc- 
 tion might be he knew not ; but, in prophetic 
 vision, Ishmael was the first who was seen to 
 employ it in battering down the walls of a 
 city; and John saw him rising up in the 
 second woe, enwrapped in clouds of enraged 
 brimstone, which he somehow hurled with ter- 
 rible effect upon the besieged. 
 
 The long rows of black ordnance, looking 
 like large boas, were stretched out at full 
 length on the tops of the numerous batteries. 
 Cannon have been frequently ornamented by 
 the founder with various devices according to 
 his fancy; and that these were made at their 
 
190 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 breeches with a coil like a serpent's tail, and at 
 their muzzles in the form of a serpent's head, 
 is not improbable. 
 
 One of these, cast by order of the sultan at 
 Aclrianople, was of enormous size. Sixty oxen 
 were required for its transportation. It had a 
 fellow on each side of it nearly its equal. One 
 hundred and fifty of these engines of ruin, of 
 different sizes, were reported as stretching their 
 black lengths on each battery; and fourteen 
 of these batteries blazed at once against the 
 tumbling walls. " Their tails," said the pro- 
 phet, " were like unto serpents', and had heads, 
 and with them they do hurt." 
 
 The Turks use a standard surmounted by a 
 crescent and adorned with one or more tails or 
 tufts of hair from the tail of a horse. The 
 number of these tails indicate the number of 
 pachalics under the rule of the chief whose 
 ensign it is, and, of course, his rank and power. 
 Many find in this fact an illustration of the 
 passage respecting the heads and tails with 
 which the hurt was seen to have been done. 
 
 The names of the invaders are not given to 
 John. The details are, nevertheless, sufficient. 
 The whole scene appears before him as a tran- 
 sient vision. The third part of men are slain, 
 and he is made to see and to describe the sad 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 191 
 
 event as it presented itself to him, simply as a 
 spectator. 
 
 No actor in the strife knows much about 
 what is occurring at a little distance from him; 
 and, in describing a siege or a battle, you are 
 obliged to collect a number of individual ad- 
 ventures and observations, so as to form a 
 pretty correct picture of the whole by com- 
 bining and comparing them with one another. 
 This is the office of the historian. But the 
 prophet gives you briefly a correct picture of 
 the general scene, without descending to inci- 
 dental details beyond what would be necessary 
 to identify the event intended. 
 
 John surveys at one view the whole field of 
 strife. He notices the army. It is composed 
 of cavalry; he hears its estimated numbers, — 
 myriads of myriads. He observes the military 
 costume of the Turkish soldiers, in which the 
 colours of red, blue, and yellow predominate. 
 He beholds the smoke, fire, and brimstone 
 enveloping the army, — an unprecedented phe- 
 nomena; the appearance of the horses, when, 
 at the discharge of musketry over their heads, 
 streams of fire and brimstone seemed to issue 
 from their mouths; and the* cannon, with 
 muzzles like serpents' heads and breeches like 
 serpents' tails. With an army and with means 
 
192 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 of ruin thus unique, he saw that the third 
 part of men were killed. 
 
 Gibbon attributes the loss of the city, at the 
 juncture in which it occurred, to a wound 
 which John Justiniana received from a bullet 
 or an arrow that pierced his gauntlet. He 
 fled in pain and despair from the walls which, 
 up to that moment, he had so bravely defended. 
 
 The Latin auxiliaries followed his example. 
 Such pusillanimity at such a time proved fatal. 
 It was perceived by the watchful foe, and the 
 untiring Mohammed flew along his lines, — the 
 angel of death to the fearful, and with the re- 
 wards of provinces and of paradise to the 
 courageous and successful soldier who should 
 first mount the breaches. 
 
 The Turks redoubled their exertions. Their 
 battle-shout resounded anew amid the roar, 
 the smoke, the blaze, of fourteen hundred can- 
 non and myriads of small-arms. "La I'laha 
 ilia Alia ! Mohammed Resoul Allah !" " There 
 is but one God ! Mohammed is the prophet of 
 God !" The walls are prostrated ; the breaches 
 are entered ; Constantine, the last of the Csesars, 
 is slain ; and on the twenty-ninth day of May, 
 A.d. 1453, Mohammed, surrounded by his 
 viziers, pachas, and guards, enters the fallen city 
 in triumph. From that hour the capital of the 
 
CONSTANTINOPLE. 193 
 
 East became the capital of the Ottoman em- 
 pire. 
 
 The Saracens tormented those that had not 
 the seal of God in their foreheads, but left 
 them in the possession often of their homes, a 
 subdued and a tributary people. The Turks 
 went further, — occupied as proprietors the ter- 
 ritories of the Greek church, and divided it 
 among themselves. The Greeks left their 
 homes and fled to the West. 
 
 The Turks were prepared to slay the third 
 part of men, — to destroy the Greek empire. 
 And from their establishment in Bagdad, a.d. 
 1063, to the conquest of Constantinople, a.d. 
 1453, there stretches out just the prophetic 
 interval named by John: — "an hour, a day, a 
 month, and a year," or a fraction over three 
 hundred and ninety-one years, — the exact 
 time assigned to the appointed restraint and 
 preparation. At the consummation of this 
 defined interval, the ruin is complete, and the 
 Empire of the East disappears forever from the 
 map of Europe. 
 
 17 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE MISSION OF ISIIMAEL ONE OF STRIFE. 
 
 " He came, he went, like the simoom, — 
 That harbinger of fate and gloom 
 Beneath whose widely-wasting breath 
 The very cypress droops to death." 
 
 Byron. 
 
 We have now surveyed a period of about 
 eight hundred and fifty years, during which 
 the great disturber and destroyer of the world's 
 peace, and that on a scale most stupendous, 
 has been Ishmael. His hand, since his scat- 
 tered and isolated tribes gained a great nation- 
 ality in Mohammed, has been against every man. 
 He has roused the nations to arms in all ages. 
 
 His creed opposes him alike to Pagan, Jew ; 
 and Christian. His method of propagating it 
 leads him ever to study and practise the art 
 of war. When the religious sentiment is the 
 strongest, his fierce martial spirit is at its 
 height and his enterprises most comprehensive. 
 
 His Saracenic conquests involved the world 
 in the strifes of centuries. When his decayed 
 manhood revived again in the sultanies of the 
 
 194 
 
ishmael's mission. 195 
 
 Euphrates, his bloody trumpet for three hun- 
 dred and ninety-one years startled the re- 
 motest tribes and countries. Its challenge 
 brought the Crusaders from Europe in millions, 
 and the vast armies of Saladin from Africa, 
 and finally the mighty host of Tamerlane from 
 the setting sun, to meet him in the field of 
 carnage. During all this interval he was ever 
 the great disturbing influence, breaking forever 
 the whole world's harmonies. 
 
 The conquests of Alexander the Great ex- 
 tended over a part of Asia. His progress was 
 that of a courier rather than that of a con- 
 queror. He died at the early age of thirty, 
 without issue to occupy his vacant throne. 
 
 The Goths and Vandals conquered Italy, 
 drove the Csesars to Constantinople, and merged 
 their nationality in that of the Romans. But 
 the wars of Ishmael have been carried into 
 every quarter of the globe; and, while he has 
 absorbed other nationalities, he has never lost 
 his own. 
 
 Christian, Jew, or Pagan, were alike the ob- 
 jects of his religious animosities, and their ex- 
 termination alike grateful to his bloody creed. 
 Others warred from ambition, for revenue, ex- 
 tension of territory, but Ishmael for these as 
 secondary grounds of invasion and conquest. 
 
196 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 His prophet and his God invoked his combative 
 spirit into a fiercer life by higher incentives ; 
 spread out before him the fields, the fountains, 
 the gardens, the lovely women, of the upper 
 paradise, to warm the ardour of his blood and 
 to turn him into both a fanatic and a soldier. 
 In him the war-spirit became the nourished 
 offspring of a religious sentiment animated by 
 interest and temperament. Hence it is that 
 the prophecy receives a fulfilment truly won- 
 derful and literal in his history. 
 
 Strife is his destiny. He was recently en- 
 gaged at his accustomed work; succeeded in 
 drawing into the field of carnage with himself 
 three of the most powerful transatlantic na- 
 tionalities. The war-cloud that but yesterday 
 hung heavy and dark over the Black Sea was 
 spread by his murderous hand. Those bones 
 that bleach on the bloody heights of Alma, In- 
 kermann, and Sebastopol, were gathered and 
 piled by him. 
 
 He sowed discord in the family of the pa- 
 triarch : God has doomed him to discord ever 
 since. It is his stereotyped character, chroni- 
 cled in the annals of every age; and the sad 
 issue is, that it shall be his end. His national 
 being shall perish at last just as it rose : — in 
 a sea of blood. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE PROVIDENTIAL WARNING DISREGARDED. 
 
 Thy harden' d cheek in wrinkles set 
 The contrite tear hath never wet ; 
 And darker grows and darker yet 
 The shadows of the minaret, 
 Portentous of thy doom. 
 
 The fall of the Empire of the East was 
 Heaven's menace to the West. But, when the 
 warning admonition spread through Christen- 
 dom, it produced — painful to relate — no re- 
 formation. 
 
 The Council of Constance had had its gath- 
 erings and its deliberations ; but its prolonged 
 sittings had been to no good purpose. Other 
 councils were called to reform the church " in 
 its head and in its members," but equally in 
 vain. The recurrence of such councils was 
 finally prevented by a formal denial of their 
 authority. 
 
 The idolatry of the church also remained 
 not only unchanged, but on the increase, in 
 the number of devils, demons, or sainted dead 
 
 17* 197 
 
198 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 who were canonized and made objects of reli- 
 gious veneration. Eelics were multiplied; holy 
 bones and garments, crucifixes of wood, stone, 
 gold, silver, and brass, rose at every crossing, 
 surmounted every sanctuary, hung upon every 
 bosom; and idolatry became every day more 
 and more visible and intolerable. 
 
 The murders committed by Innocent III. 
 on the Albigenses, the awful tortures of the 
 Inquisition, the streams of righteous blood that 
 had been shed, and that had for successive 
 ages purpled the Rhine, the Rhone, and the 
 rivers and fountains of the Ligurian Alps, were 
 still stains of guilt unwashed by the tears of 
 repentance or by the blood of atonement. 
 
 When the Council of Constance held its 
 prolonged sittings, it reformed not, it repented 
 not, but lured to its den of deceit and cruelty 
 the pure and zealous Huss, and the eloquent 
 and learned Jerome of Prague. Their true 
 and enlightened piety was adjudged to be their 
 crime. They testified not against the priests 
 as priests, but they testified against them as 
 bad men. Promises of safe conduct were 
 shamelessly violated. They were imprisoned, 
 and finally burned at the stake. 
 
 In this council there were no regrets for the 
 past. It destroyed the books of Wiclifie ; vio- 
 
WARNING DISREGARDED. 199 
 
 lated his resting-place to burn his bones, that 
 it might show every possible indignity to the 
 memory of the just. In the most solemn 
 manner did the emperor, his court and nobles, 
 surrounded by kings and princes, by popes and 
 cardinals, by every centre of influence and re- 
 sponsibility in church and state, in a vast 
 oecumenical council, justify in a formal and 
 solemn declaration, practically and publicly 
 made, the acts of violence, oppression, and 
 murder, which had for ages cried to Heaven 
 for redress. 
 
 To warn these guilty generations of the ap- 
 proaching retribution if they repented not, 
 the Eastern estates of the church were sub- 
 verted, the third part of men slain. 
 
 The warning, however, was unheeded. The 
 outrages against Huss and Jerome were fol- 
 lowed by persecutions against their numerous 
 followers ; and up to the time of the great Ke- 
 formation of the sixteenth century nothing is 
 more obvious than the continued impenitence 
 and increasing corruptions of the Koman church: 
 — her sorceries or pretended miracles, — her for- 
 nications, too gross even for Mohammedan con- 
 sciences, — her thefts, obtaining money on false 
 pretences by the sale of indulgences, — all con- 
 tinued to be practised and to increase in their 
 
200 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 shameless effrontery up to the time cf Tetzel's 
 conflict with the indignant Luther. 
 
 And even now, with all the light of three 
 hundred years poured upon Europe, her papal 
 kingdoms are still full of darkness; and the 
 whole civilized world has been called with 
 pain to hear of the deification of the Virgin 
 Mary, — to see her made, in the dogmas of 
 Koine, the fourth person in the Godhead. 
 
 "And the rest of the men which were not 
 killed by these plagues yet repented not of the 
 works of their hands, that they should not 
 worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, 
 and brass, and stone, and of wood; which 
 neither can see, nor hear, nor walk : neither 
 repented they of their murders, nor of their 
 sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their 
 thefts."* 
 
 * Rev. ix. 20. 
 
CHAPTER XXYI. 
 
 THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 "A hundred years hence ye shall render an account of your 
 doings to God and to me." — John Huss before his judges. 
 
 "When Jesus ascended to heaven a bright 
 cloud received him out of sight. In the vision 
 of John* which immediately followed that of 
 the second woe, he reappears, surrounding 
 himself with the tokens of a departed deluge. 
 The bow is painted on the cloud in which he 
 is clothed, and by which we are assured that, 
 whatever alternations in the future might oc- 
 cur, yet the church should not again be sur- 
 rounded and overwhelmed by the flood of a 
 universal ungodliness. 
 
 In the great apostasies which had succeeded 
 the joyous progress of a primitive Christianity, 
 the world had lost its balance. Its vast reser- 
 voirs of depravity had emptied their basins, 
 and the ruined hulk had floated on for a2fes in 
 
 o 
 
 * Rev. x. 1. 
 
 N 201 
 
202 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 its starless and desolate track. But the in- 
 timations now are, in this new vision, that it 
 is turning back again on its own axis, and that 
 it should never fall in a similarly disastrous 
 manner from its zone. 
 
 The bow on the cloud is the symbol of a 
 receding flood. The angel's face also is like 
 the sun rising on the ark on the morning of 
 that day in which it was opened. The mists 
 of the mediaeval night were vanishing, and the 
 green and joyous earth was seen rising once 
 more above the loosened fountains of the great 
 deep. The open book in his mighty hand, it 
 is intimated also, could not be closed again a 
 second time as it had been, upborne as it was 
 by such a hand, and that, too, amid the lumi- 
 nous and irresistable outgoings of his mighty 
 providence on land and sea. If the land 
 should prove less favourable where his left foot 
 less firmly and less favourably rested, then the 
 sea should prove more propitious to the exodus 
 of his flying people into a better land. 
 
 In this manner is introduced to us the next 
 great series of events occasioned by the con- 
 quests of Ishmael, — viz. : the dispersion of the 
 expatriated Greeks over the kingdoms of the 
 West, and the consequent spread and popu- 
 larity of the language in which the Scriptures 
 
THE REFORMATION. 203 
 
 were written and from which they were to be 
 translated, the discovery of the art of printing 
 and of a new continent, and the exodus of the 
 church, together with the death and resurrec- 
 tion of the witnesses, — events that culminate at 
 the disappearance of the second woe. At the 
 close of the prophet's narrative respecting these, 
 it is said, without any other regard to time 
 and manner as to the occurrence, and just as 
 though it had been simply incidental, " The 
 second woe is past." 
 
 So the husbandman, annoyed by the marsh 
 spreading its stagnant basins for leagues around, 
 sees on a sudden the lake that feeds it escape 
 from the hill and rush to the sea. The head- 
 long plunge of that resistless torrent completely 
 rivets his attention. He does not observe that, 
 at the same time, the pestilential marsh has 
 also been drained. He sees the lake dried up, 
 the torrent shrunk to a little rivulet, creeping 
 silently along in the bottom of the torn chan- 
 nel, and finally discovers also, and with grati- 
 tude, that the spongy soil of the marsh has 
 become arable land. 
 
 In like manner the attention of the disciple 
 is perfectly absorbed by the amazing scenes 
 that were passing before him. The vision of 
 the angel with an open book, of the witnesses 
 
204 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 and their fortunes, of the fall of the tenth part 
 of the city, — these obliterate for the time the 
 recollections of the past and turn off his eye 
 from contemporaneous occurrences. But, when 
 he recovers his self-possession, he perceives also 
 that these mighty changes have borne away 
 the second woe, and he exclaims, " The second 
 woe is past." 
 
 In order, therefore, to reach the event, — viz. : 
 this disappearance of the second woe,* — it will 
 be necessary to follow in the track of the pro- 
 phet through the causes that immediately pre- 
 cede and produce it. 
 
 The great Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury is one of these. It influences, finally and 
 fatally, the destiny of the second woe; while, 
 at the same time, its origin is in the second 
 woe as one of its remote causes, and its best 
 successes were secured by the indirect aid of 
 the worst forms of that woe : — 
 
 " It was commanded [the Saracens] that they 
 should not hurt the grass of the field, neither 
 any green thing, neither any tree; but only 
 those men that have not the seal of God in 
 their foreheads." While the injuries inflicted 
 were not to fall on Zion, they were to fall on 
 
 * The fail of the Ottoman empire. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 205 
 
 her foes, — were to employ and absorb their de- 
 structive energies, to suspend and confound 
 their cruel' policies. Zion, in the mean time, 
 was to escape, — was to be the spectator of a 
 conflict in which the wild beasts had left the 
 prey to devour each other. 
 
 This in a good degree proved true also with 
 respect to the Ottomans. The barbarous lords 
 of the Eastern capital despised the culture of 
 its educated sons, desecrated their altars, and 
 buried their hopes in the tomb in which they 
 had buried the last of the Caesars 
 
 The consequent dispersion of the Greeks be- 
 came a great event of those times. The weep- 
 ing exiles spread themselves through Europe. 
 Their superior refinement and ruined fortunes 
 awakened universal sympathy. Their elegant 
 manners were imitated, their language studied, 
 and their shining and solid attainments placed 
 them at the head of Western universities and 
 awakened the emulation of the Latins. New 
 ideas expanded the soul, and unaccustomed 
 voices broke the slumber of ages. 
 
 Among the patrons of learning, the church 
 of Rome at this time was most conspicuous. 
 By her learned Erasmus was the Greek text 
 purified and prepared for the use of her Pro- 
 testant foes; by her treasures were teachers 
 
 18 
 
206 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 sustained and institutions endowed; and by 
 her hand, all unconscious of the tendency of 
 her own acts, was the dark pall lifted from 
 the sun. Its glance was day; the revelations 
 appalling. 
 
 Alarmed at the outcry from the exposure 
 of her sores and her sorceries, she from that 
 hour sought to hide her shame in the covert 
 of her gloomy den. The fruitful source of 
 religious error and of political anarchy was all 
 at once discovered by her to have been in the 
 revival of letters and in the spread of free 
 opinions. She therefore addressed herself with 
 energy to the work of reversing the alarming 
 tendency; but in vain. The dike was broken, 
 the sea was let loose, and its irresistible surges 
 went where she would not. 
 
 The extreme depravity of the popes, car- 
 dinals, and religious orders, served also to 
 strengthen the tendencies toward the Keforma- 
 tion. A good cause cannot but suffer from the 
 evil conduct of its advocates, since the masses 
 are superficial, and judge a system rather by 
 its fruits than by its principles. But when, 
 while impiety and immorality is most rife and 
 most unblushing in the church, her very prin- 
 ciples are themselves assailed by the wisest and 
 the purest citizens, and held to be the fruitful 
 
THE REFORMATION. 207 
 
 sources of "murders, sorceries, fornications, 
 and thefts," the long-cherished feeling of vene- 
 ration could not but give place to that of dis- 
 trust and abhorrence. Her continued impeni- 
 tence aided more than all other causes put 
 together to quicken the insulted consciences 
 of the people, and to awaken their confidence 
 in the proffered aid of a holier ministration. 
 
 Our religious prejudices are extremely stern 
 and sensitive. And when Rome trifled with 
 these, broke her promises, and continued in 
 sin, she isolated herself more than ever from 
 popular sympathies. The ties of her power 
 were loosened and fell off at every stride she 
 took in the opposite direction. 
 
 Oppression served but to aggravate the 
 rising animosity. Books might be burned, 
 and bold spirits pay for their temerity with 
 their lives ; but the spirit of reform could not 
 be allayed by this course. It was already a 
 living sentiment in the minds of thousands. 
 It rose stern and inflexible, and made some 
 great change imminent and inevitable. 
 
 But Rome was never more conscious of 
 safety. She rode a sea whose agitated surface 
 concealed the strength and the depth of the 
 wave that convulsed underneath. Repentance 
 would have awakened confidence ; but, with a 
 
208 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 fatal disregard to her character for purity 
 as the source of her influence, she threw 
 off the last reserves of decency, and assailed 
 in here and there a popular leader, every day 
 renewedly, some one of the great and fa- 
 vourite ideas of the people. It was a policy 
 most suicidal. The fall of every fresh victim 
 offended more deeply than ever the enlightened 
 consciences of men, and served but to prepare 
 them for the testimony of the true witnesses 
 whenever the sacred volume should at length 
 be fully opened in the vulgar tongue. 
 
 The cruelties of Rome tended also in the 
 same direction. There is in providence a just 
 resentment, often marked and palpable even 
 in this life, against great social wrongs, and 
 especially against those of murder. And not 
 the less sure and terrible are its reprisals, 
 even though the murder be committed under 
 the forms of law, in the holy name of religion, 
 and on the plea of a social or a moral ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 The blood of Huss cried from the ground. 
 Armies sprang into being at that cry to avenge 
 his death ; and the seeds of the great Reforma- 
 tion were quickened into a more vigorous 
 germination by the ashes of the martyr. The 
 interference of the Bohemian nobles was all 
 
THE REFORMATION. 209 
 
 emotional, all uncalculating. It was indeed 
 but the first excited throb of a sympathetic 
 humanity, — nevertheless most certain to settle 
 down ultimately into purposes of deliberate 
 and organized retaliation. 
 
 " Ye have put him to a cruel and an igno- 
 minious death," said they, "though convicted 
 
 of no heresy Ye have also unmercifully 
 
 imprisoned, and perhaps already put to death, 
 Jerome of Prague, — a man of most profound 
 learning and copious eloquence. Him also ye 
 
 have condemned unconvicted We are 
 
 resolved to sacrifice our lives for the defence 
 of the gospel of Christ and of his faithful 
 preachers." Such was the stern remonstrance 
 of the indignant nobles; and for thirteen years 
 Bohemia terribly avenged her martyrs in the 
 Hussite war. 
 
 It was in after-ages urged that the safe- 
 conduct granted to Luther ought not to be 
 regarded : — " that the Khine should receive 
 his ashes, as it had received those of Huss a 
 century ago." But the proposition was re- 
 garded by the Elector of Saxony with an emo- 
 tion of horror. "It," said he, "has brought 
 too many misfortunes on the German nation 
 for us ever to raise such a scaffold the second 
 time." 
 
 18* 
 
210 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 That scaffold is an imperishable chronicle 
 in the annals of time. Even the cry of the 
 furious bishops, when Huss refused to recant, 
 still rings in our ears and enrages our blood. 
 " ' He is a malicious and hardened heretic ! 
 Down, down from the platform!' With a 
 black and weighty chain around his neck, he 
 
 was fastened to the stake The wood 
 
 having been consumed, the corpse continued 
 suspended on the stake ; and the executioners, 
 having brought an additional quantity of fuel, 
 thrust both stake and corpse anew into the 
 
 fire, which consumed the whole The 
 
 Papists dug out the hole for a considerable 
 space around, conveyed away the earth and 
 ashes in carts, and cast the whole into the 
 Rhine."* 
 
 " The blood of the martyrs has ever been 
 the seed of the church." She has fallen in 
 one country but to rise in another ; and over 
 that "platf'f where she fell God has ever 
 emptied a vial and spread a troubled cloud. 
 On that cloud the Elector had fixed his 
 anxious gaze. It still hung there, (so it 
 seemed to him,) skirted with fire and drip- 
 
 * " History of the YValdenses," vol. ii. pp. 24, 25 
 -j" 2 Kings ix. 26. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 211 
 
 ping with intense wrath, over the stake of 
 Huss. The calamities of a century had not 
 made expiation; and he would not for the 
 wealth of an empire see Germany " raise such 
 a scaffold a second time." 
 
 The bleeding remnant of the Albigenses also 
 found their way into all the countries of Eu- 
 rope. Their persecutors, though they had 
 driven them from their native valleys, had to 
 meet them again in the Wicliffites, the Huss- 
 ites, the Lutherans and the Calvinists, of 
 after-times. Such are the laws of Providence. 
 But still the church could never have suc- 
 ceeded to any considerable extent in the peace- 
 ful utterance of her blessed testimony without 
 the discovery of some new world, in which 
 she might have an unobstructed growth, and 
 some new appliance which, like the inspiration 
 of the primitive age, would reproduce the 
 word, despite every effort to destroy it. 
 
 When inspiration ceased, the early church, 
 having but little access to the pure word of 
 God, dwindled amid surrounding corruptions 
 and oppressions, and at the end of the third 
 century was thought to have been almost 
 extinct. From that period to the beginning 
 of the sixteenth century it steadily declined, 
 and has often been on the very verge of ruin. 
 
212 ISIDfAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Asia, Africa, Europe, were all lost to her in 
 the total apostasy of her professed friends; 
 and the small remnant of her desolate children 
 wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins 
 in the fastnesses of inaccessible mountains 
 and in the solitudes of wildernesses, prolong- 
 ing a precarious and an afflicted life amid all 
 uncertainties and all sufferings. 
 
 The causes that tended toward the great 
 Keformation and that urged it forward, except- 
 ing those yet to be named, had all existed 
 in previous ages, under equally favourable 
 circumstances; and all had proved abortive. 
 Charles, when he regretted that he had not 
 slain Luther at Worms, and thus had strangled 
 the Keformation in its cradle, judged incor- 
 rectly of the influence of that event; because 
 this reformation, unlike any other since the time 
 of the apostles, connected itself with the art 
 of printing and with the discovery of a new 
 continent. These gave to the church a van- 
 tage-ground which Providence had never given 
 her before: these will require, therefore, a par- 
 ticular review. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 THE ART OF PRINTING AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 "That church, o'erborne, depress'd, unpeopled, dead, 
 Oft from the dust of ruin raised its head." 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 In God's economy, a knowledge of the gospel 
 is made essential to salvation. Men cannot 
 see without light; nor can they believe in 
 Christ without a knowledge of the word which 
 reveals him. " How can they believe in him 
 of whom they have not heard ?" As the lan- 
 guages in which the Scriptures were written 
 ceased to be spoken, the call for a transla- 
 tion of them into the vulgar tongue became 
 imperative. Translations, however, required 
 great labour and great erudition. A copy of 
 the Bible, fully written out, would require ten 
 months of close application ; and such a copy 
 would cost the yearly stipend of a curate. A 
 few verses, chapters, or sometimes one or 
 more of the epistles, were translated, and 
 were sparsely circulated. They were pos- 
 sessed by but few; and but a very small num- 
 
 213 
 
214 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 ber of persons in the whole world knew of the 
 existence of any other Scriptures than these. 
 
 Luther, at the age of twenty, had never 
 seen or heard of a Bible. His discovery of it 
 finally was the result of mere curiosity. In 
 examining the title-pages of old volumes in 
 the library at Erfurth, he lighted upon the 
 sacred manuscript for the first time; and 
 from this circumstance we may conclude that 
 at that time, and for all great practical ends, 
 the Bible had become wholly lost to the world. 
 It was buried in a dead language, in caverns 
 in the interior of Asia, in the solitary cells of 
 convents, or on the remote shelves of public 
 institutions. Most of those who had access to 
 it could not read it; and hence God's chosen 
 instrumentality, made indispensable to man's 
 salvation, had been taken away, and the 
 blessed day-spring was hid from human eyes. 
 
 But the Scriptures might have been restored, 
 — might have been given to the people, — had 
 not the whole world's nominal Christianity re- 
 sisted the attempt, — and that in all places and 
 for ages. When the nations were angry and 
 closed the blessed book by violence, it indeed 
 required an angel's mighty hand to open and 
 to restore it. 
 
 In a.d. 1229 the translations of the Albi- 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 215 
 
 genses were condemned and cast into the 
 flames. These afflicted disciples sought to 
 repair their infinite loss by committing the 
 Scriptures to memory; and among the inhabit- 
 ants of the valleys this became common. So- 
 cieties among the young were formed for 
 this purpose, and to each member was in- 
 trusted a portion of the word of God, which 
 it was required of him to commit and recite 
 perfectly. 
 
 A candidate for the ministry in those times 
 was not sufficiently qualified to preach the 
 gospel while as yet he remained unable to 
 recite all the books of both Testaments from 
 memory. The monks, the doctors of the Sor- 
 bonne, St. Bernard, and Keinerius the Inqui- 
 sitor, take special notice of the astonishing 
 familiarity of the Albigeois with the Scrip- 
 tures, and attribute their vast superiority in 
 debate to this cause. 
 
 Wicliffe's translation, made one hundred 
 years before the art of printing was dis- 
 covered, was violently suppressed. Any per- 
 son who possessed any portion of Wicliffe's 
 English version was condemned to the stake; 
 and many suffered martyrdom for no other 
 reason. And, though the true church sur- 
 vived in England and in many other places, 
 
216 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 yet she barely survived. In the twelfth cen- 
 tury Innocent III., by the tortures of the In- 
 quisition and by vast and merciless armies, 
 had well-nigh destroyed the last remnant of 
 God's elect ; and, but for the wars of the cross 
 in Asia at the time, the fearful consummation 
 might have been reached. 
 
 No loss to the church was ever so calamitous 
 as the loss of the Bible. When the Greek lan- 
 guage was generally spoken, the divine with- 
 drawal of inspired teachers was accompanied 
 with the substitution of the inspired word, 
 which occupied their places and afforded to 
 all its sufficient supply of saving light; but 
 when that language ceased to be spoken the 
 church perished over whole countries. She 
 lost the Word, and with it expired her vi- 
 tality. No course, then, when the object was 
 her total extinction, could have been pursued 
 that promised to be more fatally successful 
 than to deprive her of her Bible. It was a 
 policy well understood by her enemies, and 
 for three hundred years most rigorously 
 carried out. 
 
 From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries, 
 but here and there a copy escaped, either in 
 England or on the continent, the espionage of 
 those in the interests or in the pay of Rome. 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 217 
 
 Not only the great centres of the world's 
 gathered life, but rural districts, mountain- 
 gorges, and remote villages, were alike under 
 the argus gaze of the ever-watchful Antichrist. 
 And when the least indications of reviving 
 piety became visible, and the precious volume 
 began to distribute its healing leaves, the In- 
 quisitor was at once abroad, and the dungeon 
 and the stake proved but all too effective. 
 
 The true church seemed to lose ultimately, 
 in rivers of blood and in the despairing and 
 secret flight of the remnant of her children, 
 all that she had ever gained. The dead told 
 no tales. Her very history vanished in the 
 flames that consumed her martyrs. It is now 
 gathered mainly from the notes of Inquisitors. 
 Rome in all these conflicts was ever triumphant, 
 and ever pointed her monitory ringer from the 
 eternal hills to the dungeon, to the ra<ik, to 
 whole regions blackened by the flames she had 
 kindled and strewed with the whitened bones 
 of the godly, and cried to the scattered rem- 
 nant, "Who comes this way, let him behold 
 and fear to sin!" 
 
 Such had ever been the result until the com- 
 mencement of the sixteenth century. The 
 church survived ; but it was amid the solitudes 
 of deserts or in uninhabitable mountains. In 
 19 o 
 
218 ISID1AEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 these wild coverts of the tiger and the wolf 
 she sat in sackcloth, now singing her hymn 
 of praise, now surprised by the Dragoon that 
 hunted her life, and now bowing her head in 
 her spirit's desolation. 
 
 And, but for the discovery of the art of 
 printing, the Reformation of the sixteenth 
 century must have shared the fate of those 
 that had preceded it. " Oh !" exclaimed 
 Tyndale, "while I am sowing in one place 
 they ravage the field I have just left. I can- 
 not be everywhere. If Christians had the 
 Scriptures in their own tongue, they could 
 themselves withstand these sophists. With- 
 out the Bible, it is impossible to establish the 
 lait}^ in the truth." 
 
 Twenty-two years after the martyrdom of 
 Huss, while Rome was meditating a subjuga- 
 tion of the Greek church to the sovereign pon- 
 tiff, Laurentius Custos was engaged, in the 
 neighbourhood of Harlem, in cutting his name 
 in raised letters on the bark of a birch-tree. 
 He amused himself by reproducing copies, at 
 his pleasure, with these rude types, and finally 
 began to print on a larger scale. While per- 
 fecting his newly-discovered art, his servant 
 (he relates) stole his types and tools and fled 
 to Mentz. 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 219 
 
 Iii the latter place, in A.D. 1442, a company 
 of printers, aided by John Faustus, a wealthy 
 citizen, began to print with wooden and after- 
 ward with metallic types. It is said that the 
 first book they printed was a Bible, and that 
 they completed the task in eight years. The 
 company kept their art a profound secret. 
 They were mutually bound, under oath, not 
 to reveal their great and lucrative discovery. 
 But, in a.d. 1468, Mentz was stormed and 
 sacked by Adolphus, Archbishop of Nassau, 
 and, the printers having fled into different 
 countries, each set up for himself a printing- 
 establishment. The art ceased any longer 
 to be a secret. In 1530, when Tyndale 
 and Luther were issuing their Bibles, there 
 were two hundred presses in operation in 
 Europe. 
 
 The first translation of the Scriptures into 
 English, directly from the original, was made 
 by William Tyndale : (that made by Wicliffe 
 was translated from the Latin.) Tyndale 
 rose in England simultaneously with Luther 
 in Germany. Unable to proceed with his 
 great work at home, he in 1524 visited 
 Luther, and in less than two years succeeded 
 in printing three thousand copies of his ver- 
 sion. Shortly after numerous copies reached 
 
220 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 England, and were diligently though secretly 
 circulated. 
 
 Bishop Tonstall condemned " this most pes- 
 tiferous and most pernicious poison of Tyn- 
 dale," and prohibited its use. Many of the 
 people were imprisoned and many of the 
 books publicly burned. But the destruction 
 of the copies in England encouraged the 
 Dutch to resupply a market in which they 
 were in such demand. Their sales were rapid 
 and their profits enormous. Tonstall, to arrest 
 the evil in its source, went to Antwerp and 
 bought up all the copies he could obtain. 
 These were all committed to the flames in St. 
 Paul's churchyard by the zealous bishop. He 
 was not aware that printing was such a pro- 
 lific source of reproduction, and was amazed 
 that the Dutch had another edition, shortly 
 after, ready for the English market, desiring 
 to sell the books, not caring whether they were 
 read or burned. 
 
 Archbishop Warham also assembled a con- 
 vention, (a.d. 1530,) and sought to close the 
 open book. The good people were called upon 
 " to detest and abhor the New Testament 
 printed in English," and to deliver up all the 
 copies in their possession to the proper authori- 
 ties. Ah me! how many in that day gave 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 221 
 
 liberty and life itself away in their zeal for the 
 diffusion of the Holy Scriptures ! " To see," 
 says Fox, "their travails, their earnest seek- 
 ing, their burning zeal, their readings, their 
 watchings, their secret assemblies, their love 
 and concord, their godly living, their faithful 
 marrying with the faithful, may make us now, 
 in these our days of free profession, to blush 
 for shame." 
 
 Tyndale's Bible survived the martyr. He, 
 while prosecuting with ardour his great work, 
 was arrested at Antwerp and strangled for the 
 crime of heresy. His last prayer was for his 
 country, and especially that the Lord would 
 open the eyes of the king of England. In that 
 same year Henry gave the Bible to the people. 
 
 19* 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE ART OF PRINTING AND THE REFORMATION. 
 
 " Howl, winds of night ! your force combine : 
 Without His high behest 
 Ye shall not, in the mountain-pine, 
 Disturb the sparrow's nest." 
 
 Kirke White. 
 
 We now turn to Germany, not for the pur- 
 pose of following up the thrilling history of 
 Luther, not to survey the colossal proportions 
 of his massive intellect, not to observe his 
 courage amid perils, his hairbreadth escapes, 
 his triumphs over Dr. Eck, Cardinal Cajetan, 
 and the learned Erasmus, but to look in upon 
 him in his prison at the Wartburg, in which, 
 because he has nothing now to excite and em- 
 ploy his active mind and to turn him off from 
 his great work, he finishes the translation of 
 the New Testament into the German. 
 
 This, to use his own sententious words, was 
 to bring forth "the sun whence all teachers 
 receive their light." This, the greatest and 
 most effective of all the works of the ill us- 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 223 
 
 trious Keformer, was finished in the summer 
 of 1521. Before Tyndale and Luther knew 
 each other, the same blessed Spirit had em- 
 ployed them both, in different countries and 
 in different languages, in the consummation 
 of the same difficult and momentous task. 
 Shortly after, they met at Antwerp, and their 
 versions were issued very nearly at the same 
 time. 
 
 But for this, — but for the numerous copies 
 of the living word put in circulation by the Re- 
 formers, — like Waldo, Wicliffe, and Huss, they 
 also and their works would have perished 
 with their own living age. But, when the 
 Scriptures in the vulgar tongue became the 
 basis of the Reformation, the Reformation it- 
 self, despite an occasional winter, became pe- 
 rennial as the verdure which returning spring 
 ever renews and freshens on the martyr's 
 grave. 
 
 The book thus opened in Germany led the 
 alarmed enemies of reform to insist renewedly 
 and peremptorily on the execution of the sen- 
 tence against Luther and his Bible. " I say," 
 said the Papal legate to the Diet at Nurem- 
 berg, " on this point as I do of the rest. The 
 sentences of the pope and the emperor ought 
 to be implicitly obeyed; the books should be 
 
224 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 burned, and the printers and vendors of them 
 duly punished. There is no other way to 
 suppress and extinguish this pernicious sect. 
 It is from the reading of their books that all 
 these evils have arisen,"* "The flames of 
 their treason," says Pallavicini, "are not to 
 be extinguished by concessions, but quenched 
 by showers of blood. "f 
 
 George, Duke of Saxony, armed with In- 
 quisitorial and Papal authority, sought to 
 carry out these cruel policies, and for this pur- 
 pose purchased and destroyed all the copies 
 of the Testament in German he could obtain, 
 severely punishing at the same time those of 
 his subjects who refused to deliver them up. 
 His kingdom resounded with anathemas against 
 the Eeformers, falling in bitterness from priestly 
 lips, and with the uproar of persecution. 
 
 But the press astonished and confounded the 
 foes of truth. It restored the lost copies of 
 the inspired word, and oppression roused an 
 interest that gentleness would have left dor- 
 mant. The Bible was sought out and read 
 among all classes with unprecedented avidity, 
 and what the living teacher, without it, was 
 unable to do, the word did for him: — It in ten 
 
 * Millner, chap. xvi. f Ibid. 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 225 
 
 thousand dwellings became a burning and an 
 inextinguishable light, whether that teacher 
 were abroad or whether he slept in the 
 prison or the grave. "It is not I, I repeat 
 it, it is the divine word, which has done every 
 thing."* 
 
 In the days of the apostles, the inspiration 
 of numerous teachers gave the church her 
 vantage-ground. Her ministry was a living 
 word, — an epistle read of all. But when un- 
 inspired men succeeded to them, and the book 
 which they left behind became itself sealed 
 up in the silence and darkness of a dead lan- 
 guage, the teachers which appealed to it as 
 umpire in every debated point openly admitted 
 their own liability to err, and sunk at once out 
 of sight as ultimate authority whenever that 
 book was referred to. Not so the Papal eccle- 
 siastic. He claimed infallibility for his church, 
 and for himself, as the authorized and ultimate 
 interpreter of its faith. 
 
 The Protestant, following the impulses of a 
 better age, exalted against the infallibility of 
 the church the infallibility of the evangelists, 
 and against the infallibility of the priest the 
 infallibility of the Holy Spirit. The rage of 
 
 * Millner, ch. xvi. 
 
226 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH, 
 
 Home, therefore, at this time fell most severely 
 upon the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and 
 on what was termed by them " private inter- 
 pretation." The issue was in reality between 
 the open Bible in the angel's hand and Home. 
 And the conflict that now arose became one of 
 new, peculiar, and of overmastering difficulty. 
 
 Before the art of printing was discovered, 
 the dungeon and the fagot in a few short 
 years laid the rising Keformation low; now 
 the living teacher might perish from among 
 men, but Bibles and Testaments fell like the 
 dew, silently and secretly, in multiplied edi- 
 tions and copies, everywhere. They were on 
 the departed Inquisitors track while yet it was 
 warm ; or, while he snatched the copy from the 
 shelf of the peasant and cast it into the fire, 
 its fellow slept securely under the hearth- 
 stone. When the living teacher fell, his elo- 
 quent appeals were cut short forever. The 
 mighty champion had but one life, and one 
 blow ended it. But, when he added the press 
 to the pulpit, he reproduced himself in ten 
 thousand lives; depositing these in the safe- 
 keeping of numerous individuals, families, and 
 kingdoms. 
 
 We may well smile in this day at the Pope's 
 bull against Bible societies. Will he spread 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 227 
 
 his scarlet robe on the broad mountains and 
 absorb all the dews of heaven in its tiny folds? 
 Will he put up his little palm and expect to 
 quench in it the light of day ? thou impo- 
 tent and impious one! "God shall destroy 
 thee. He shall take thee away. He shall 
 pluck thee out of thy dwelling-place and root 
 thee out of the land of the living. The right- 
 eous also shall see and shall fear and shall 
 laugh at him. Lo, this is the man that made 
 not God his strength, but strengthened himself 
 in his wickedness." 
 
 Papal infallibility resolves itself ultimately 
 into the infallibility of every individual mem- 
 ber of its priesthood. It was an after-thought, 
 the result of a peculiar necessity. Perplexed 
 individuals were required to go to them, and 
 not to depend upon the guidance of their own 
 erring minds. 
 
 "The sacred writings," said Erasmus, "are an 
 abyss in whose depths even the most learned 
 men have often been lost The Scrip- 
 tures are committed to the learned, and to 
 them only." Such were the assumptions which 
 w r ere, in the new circumstances of the contend- 
 ing parties, resorted to to close again the now 
 open book. Since it could not be destroyed 
 by fire, it might be by construction. If its in- 
 
228 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 terpretation must ever be derived from the 
 priesthood, Rome would, after all her fears, 
 lose nothing by a translation. The Bible 
 would be quite as effectually sealed in such 
 an event as though it still had slept in the 
 unbroken repose of an unknown tongue. 
 
 It was, however, opened as an authoritative 
 record in two respects. In the first it was 
 opened in a translation ; in the second, to the 
 understandings of men by the Holy Spirit. 
 The author of the Bible should understand his 
 own meaning best, and had promised illumina- 
 tion to the sincere suppliant. "The sacred 
 writings are not to be understood but by that 
 Spirit with which they were written ; which 
 Spirit is never felt to be more powerful and 
 energetic than when he attends the serious 
 perusal of the writings which he himself dic- 
 tated."* 
 
 The alternative presented thus by the Pro- 
 testant was not that of a selection of a Papal 
 or a Protestant for a guide. The latter aban- 
 doned, at once and forever, the awful arena 
 into which he had been challenged by his 
 Papal antagonist, and elevated in his place 
 the Holy Spirit, to take charge of the per- 
 
 * Millner, vol. ii. p. 286. 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 229 
 
 plexities of every mind, and to open the mean- 
 ing of His own word to every humble and 
 earnest inquirer after truth. 
 
 " However blameless a life I might lead as a 
 monk," said Luther, "I experienced a most 
 unquiet conscience. I perceived myself a sin- 
 ner before God. I saw that I could do nothing 
 to appease him, and I hated the idea of a just 
 God that punished sinners. I was well versed 
 in all St. Paul's writings, and, in particular, I 
 had a most wonderful desire to understand the 
 Epistle to the Romans. But I was puzzled 
 with the expression, 'Therein is the right- 
 eousness of God revealed.' My heart rose 
 almost against God with a silent sort of blas- 
 phemy Over and over I turned the 
 
 above-mentioned passage to the Eomans most 
 importunately. My thirst to know the apostle's 
 meaning was insatiable. 
 
 " At length, while I was meditating day and 
 night on the words and their connection with 
 what immediately follows, — namely, 'The 
 just shall live by faith,' — it pleased God to 
 have pity upon me, to open my eyes and to 
 show me that 'the righteousness of God/ 
 which is here said in the gospel to be revealed 
 from faith to faith, relates to the method by 
 which God in his mercy justifies a sinner 
 
 20 
 
230 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 through faith Hence I felt myself a 
 
 new man, and all the Scriptures appeared to 
 
 have a new face This very passage 
 
 of St. Paul proved to me the entrance into 
 paradise."* 
 
 The Waldensos, the Wicliffites, the Hussites, 
 the Lutherans, the Calvinists, the true church 
 in every age, from the earliest times, obtained 
 her light from above, and sought not an in- 
 fallible but a converted ministry, whose un- 
 derstandings Jesus had opened that they 
 should understand the Scriptures. In deter- 
 mining whether teachers were true or false, 
 how did the church " sift their private spirit, 
 whether they had experienced any internal 
 distress of soul, the attacks of death and hell, 
 and the comforts of the new birth unto right- 
 eousness" ! " If," runs the instructions, " you 
 hear nothing from them but smooth, tranquil, 
 and, forsooth, what they call devout, religious 
 contemplations, regard them not."f 
 
 The opening of the Scriptures in a transla- 
 tion made them accessible to the people. But 
 they saw not to the end of that which was 
 abolished. The same veil that blinded the 
 Jew obscured the vision of the Gentile. He 
 
 * Millner, vol. ii. p. 232. f Ibid. p. 342. 
 
TUE ART OF PRINTING. Zol 
 
 too stood before the burning mount, and, 
 though he had heard of Jesus, yet to him 
 also, until divinely enlightened, his Lord re- 
 mained entombed underneath the ministration 
 of death. 
 
 The Keformation of the sixteenth century 
 was a revival of spiritual life in the kingdoms 
 of the West. This was the mainspring of its 
 power; and by it the translated Scriptures be- 
 came a lamp to the feet and a light to the path 
 of lost nations. Omit this most essential part 
 of the vision, and God's great work is effectu- 
 ally hid from our eyes. 
 
 The well-known symbol of a Papal church 
 is a cross. It is the universal sign of her faith, 
 whether made by the printer, the goldsmith 
 or carpenter, whether stamped on a book, or 
 worn on the breast, or elevated on the tops of 
 churches. But it is not a more universal badge 
 of Komanism than is an open Bible that of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 The Bible was never opened to any con- 
 siderable extent, as we have seen, until it 
 assumed the form of a printed book. And, as 
 the effort to close it again and the effort to 
 keep it open has made it the centre of debate 
 among civilized nations for three centuries, it 
 has become, providentially, the well-known 
 
232 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHUKCII. 
 
 sign of the Protestant religion. The printer, 
 the carpenter, and the gilder, are alike em- 
 ployed to supply the recognised symbol of a 
 Protestant Christianity by those who would 
 represent a Reformer or a modern clergyman, 
 or characterize a book by a sign on its cover, 
 or a Bible society by a sign at its door. 
 
 From the time in which in England the 
 Bible was fastened to a desk in the centre of 
 a library for public use, because the demand 
 exceeded the supply, until this day, when it is 
 offered gratuitously to all, it has ever been the 
 striking and significant emblem of our Pro- 
 testant faith. And while Rome continues to 
 elevate her cross and to condemn the Bible to 
 the flames, so long will the picture of an open 
 book in the hand of an angel, or in the hand 
 of a martyr or a minister, distinguish the 
 friends of the Bible from its foes and point 
 them out as the irreconcilable enemies of 
 darkness and of Rome. 
 
 And who can fail to see, in that halo round 
 about the head of the cloud-robed angel* of 
 the Reformation, the token of mercy? It is 
 here at this point in earth's sad history, — on 
 this Ararat where the ark finally rested, — 
 
 * Revelation x. 1. 
 
THE ART OF PRINTING. 233 
 
 that we look out on plats of living verdure 
 which here and there dot the desolate ex- 
 panse, and which are seen amid the remaining 
 and angry surges of the receding flood. And 
 while the mournful experience of the past 
 fills us with anxiety for the future, the bow is 
 seen in the cloud, and the face of the angel 
 that holds the little book in his right hand 
 shines through the tears of a tempest now 
 passing away. And we assuredly gather, from 
 that emblem, that that blessed book shall not be 
 again closed, until the heavens themselves 
 shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the 
 earth with the things that are therein shall be 
 burned up. 
 
 20* p 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, AND THE 
 REFORMATION. 
 
 Thy foot Lath left upon the sea 
 
 A glimmering path to guide our flight ; 
 
 But where proud Rome pursues our way- 
 It turns the day-spring into night. 
 
 The right foot of the angel of the great Re- 
 formation was in the sea. His most auspicious 
 outgoings were to be in connection with its 
 turbulent waves. Thus is it intimated that a 
 pillar of fire, to guide the church amid many 
 dark and disastrous providences, should cast 
 its light across the ocean and invite her perse- 
 cuted children to seek an asylum on the shores 
 of a distant continent. 
 
 Two short years after the storming of Mentz 
 and the consequent dispersion of its secret 
 conclave of printers, the same Providence 
 which had in this wonderful manner originated 
 printing-presses simultaneously in the different 
 countries of Europe brought to Lisbon the 
 
 234 
 
AMERICA. 235 
 
 son of a wool-comber, — a youth of most re- 
 markable genius and invention, and who, ob- 
 taining the command of vessels for the pur- 
 pose, undertook the discovery of an unknown 
 coast. 
 
 In a.d. 1492, Columbus reached the West 
 Indies, and shortly after the Western continent 
 became known to Europe. Numerous adven- 
 turers hastened to its shores in successive voy- 
 ages and in a fruitless quest of wealth and do- 
 minion. The mariner's compass and the art 
 of ship-building and navigation, however, be- 
 came by these means gradually perfected, and 
 the great end of Providence, in its mighty foot- 
 print in the sea, came in a few short years to 
 be realized. 
 
 Hitherto the emigration of nomadic tribes, 
 the wanderings of the persecuted, or the travels 
 of merchants, had been by land. A few islands 
 clotting the Atlantic coast of Europe had been 
 reached; the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and 
 the British Channel, and a few other inland 
 basins, had been coasted and crossed ; but these 
 were short voyages, made long before by the 
 Egyptians, the Phenicians, the Babylonians, 
 the Greeks, and the Romans, and their repe- 
 tition could make no new or considerable im- 
 pressions on the fortunes of the race, — could 
 
236 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 not be referred to as forming a grand epoch in 
 the world's eventful history, and be consist- 
 ently represented by the descent of an angel 
 from heaven throwing with his right foot, and 
 for the first time since the days of John, a 
 luminous track across the sea. 
 
 But when America was discovered, — when 
 the Western continent opened its bosom to the 
 refugees from the Old World and threw a wide 
 ocean between them and their oppressors, — this 
 became a great event, and must in all time be 
 chronicled as such. There originated then, 
 on that far-off and protected coast, a mighty 
 nationality under the sway of the little book 
 in the angel's hand. Thousands, finding that 
 they could not enjoy its chartered rights and 
 walk by its laws of salvation under the frown- 
 ing battlements of Borne, to escape the stake 
 and win their freedom fled to the sea, to join 
 the new commonwealth opening its gates to- 
 ward the setting of the sun. 
 
 It was in this manner that its most desirable 
 acquisitions were made. Persecution in the 
 Old World drove successive companies of weep- 
 ing disciples into the sea to form and to defend 
 the Western states. It, more than all other 
 causes put together, originated the great Be- 
 public. 
 
AMEEICA. 237 
 
 The aslies of Huss found their way to the 
 sea. Those of Wicliffe were thrown into the 
 Swift. "It/! says Fuller, " conveyed them 
 into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the 
 narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and 
 thus the ashes of Wicliffe are the emblem of 
 his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the 
 world over." 
 
 Into that sea, which shall yet yield up its 
 tears and its dead, the angel placed his foot. 
 There were the outgoings of his most illus- 
 trious providences ; there was the bow of pro- 
 mise round about his head ; and, though painted 
 on a nebula of tears, it assured the pilgrim that 
 the storm had passed away. 
 
 The early settlements of interested adven- 
 turers in the New World, in pursuit of gold 
 and gems, ended in disappointment and dis- 
 aster. The ruins of colonial villages, and the 
 bones that were strewed upon the clearings of 
 the wilderness, startled and discouraged those 
 that succeeded such unfortunate pioneers. 
 They looked in terror upon the ashes of their 
 huts and the trail of blood where the plough 
 stood in the half-finished furrow of the corn- 
 field, and turned away in despair. 
 
 But, when the persecuted fled successively 
 to the sea on a religious account, the settle- 
 
238 ISHMAEL AND TIIE CHURCH. 
 
 ments became permanent, and grew ultimately 
 into flourishing states. Their ships were pi- 
 loted by an unseen intelligence, and landed 
 their precious freights at the most desirable 
 points. Toward them the angel ever turned 
 his bright face and the bright side of the efful- 
 gent pillar. 
 
 Their favoured emigrations stand ever in 
 striking contrast with those of a pursuing 
 Rome. From her unblessed and sinister track 
 the face of the angel was ever averted ; and 
 the dark side of the fiery pillar cast a cheer- 
 less shadow over her missions and fortunes. 
 
 Every step with her has proved a mistake. 
 Her earlier and most numerous converts in the 
 New World were its aborigines, — a fated race, 
 that have already descended into the tomb 
 opened for them by the hand of a higher and 
 a holier civilization. 
 
 Her conquests also in South America and 
 the West Indies are now within the eddies of 
 a mightier and a more absorbing attraction ; 
 and her immigrant millions, scattered through 
 the North, surrounded by the nobler manhood 
 and superior intelligence of Protestant com- 
 munities, have failed to close the little book in 
 the angel's hand, or even to preserve them- 
 selves from its mysterious sway. 
 
AMERICA. 239 
 
 Hers is a failing struggle. And it is ob- 
 viously the destiny of the swaggering and 
 wrinkled harlot to waste away and perish 
 amid institutions and influences whose powers 
 of assimilation are steady, expansive, and irre- 
 sistible. While in Europe, during the same 
 period, she has won back most of her lost ter- 
 ritory and power, in America she mourns the 
 loss of most of her treasures and her children. 
 
 The future of this goodly land is also full 
 of hopeful intimations. The nature and ne- 
 cessary tendency of the mighty causes which 
 now already exist seem destined to make the 
 new continent the perpetual home of a vast 
 and a happy Protestant nationality. The de- 
 lightful experience of the past, and the bow 
 of promise encircling the angel's brow with its 
 halo of attractive benignity, assure us that 
 those pilgrims who fled to the sea took the 
 propitious track, reached the summit of safety 
 where the ark rested, and from the tops of 
 their Alleghanies we look back over perilous 
 and assuaged deeps, and recount on the historic 
 page the devastations of a deluge whose angry 
 surges can never reach us more. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 ISLAMISM AND THE REFORMATION". 
 
 " The ocean eagle soar'd 
 From his nest by the white waves' foam, 
 And the rocking pines of the forest roar'd : 
 This was their welcome home !" 
 
 We how turn from the sea, — that strik- 
 ing emblem of the church, of her unsettled 
 and changeful state, of her stormy doom, 
 of the crude and troubled elements out of 
 which she was to construct for herself her 
 home in the New World, — to the land where 
 society still continued to repose in the midst 
 of mediaeval dynasties, and, as the normal 
 law of its safety, undesirous and resistful of 
 change. 
 
 Well might the angel place his left foot on 
 a spot so unpropitious, where improvement 
 would be sure to be opposed, and new though 
 right opinions be made treason against princes 
 and impiety in the church. 
 
 In the New World the church found all 
 
 240 
 
EUROPE. 241 
 
 social circumstances appropriate or controllable, 
 and ultimately congenial. She had but to rise 
 there upon the broad and sufficient foundation 
 of her open book and her blessed testimony. 
 She had no one there to spy out her liberty, 
 or embarrass or retard the natural outwork- 
 ings of her inward life. 
 
 But, in the Old, both church and state fell 
 back on the iron forms of past mistakes; and 
 long-cherished errors, hallowed by time and 
 endorsed by custom, yielded slowly, reluct- 
 antly, and often but partially, to the progress 
 of the Reformation. Yea, many of the Re- 
 formers needed themselves to be reformed, — 
 needed all the treason, cruelty, and persecution 
 that pursued them to prevent their fatal con- 
 cessions to Rome, or, perhaps, their return to 
 her bosom. 
 
 Leo's bull, and the harsh treatment received 
 by Luther at Worms, proved a blessing. It 
 insulted his generous though impulsive na- 
 ture, and awakened an opposition which a 
 more gentle course might have modified or 
 neutralized. And yet, with all that tended 
 to isolate and freely develop the church, Ge- 
 neva, the British Islands, and Holland, became 
 finally the prominent centres of a reformation 
 that had halted sadly in other places. 
 
242 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Luther could scarcely ever be himself. 
 Erasmus, at the first, preached to him mo- 
 deration. Melancthon also, and the Protest- 
 ant princes, were ever ready to instruct his 
 caution and to restrain the free outworkings 
 of his evangelical spirit. With a nature so im- 
 pressible and social, and ever listening to the 
 counsels of the worldly-wise or the spiritually 
 timid, it is truly wonderful that he at length 
 broke through so many restraints and put so 
 wide a separation between himself and Home. 
 
 Zuingle, Calvin, and Knox, were farther 
 from the focus of such influences; and the 
 church under their auspices became more 
 thoroughly reformed, rose to a purer evangel- 
 ism. But in no country did she rise as she 
 did when the ocean rolled between her and 
 the Old World. 
 
 The struggles of the non-conformists and the 
 recent exodus of the Free Church of Scotland 
 are examples which show the tendency of the 
 church toward a more scriptural form and a 
 freer ecclesiasticism than she had ever attained 
 under her transatlantic surroundings. 
 
 The Protestantism of Germany also, unlike 
 that of the United States, trembled often on 
 the very verge of ruin, and gained at last for 
 herself a precarious footing, not by a natural 
 
EUROPE. 243 
 
 development of her own principles and power, 
 but by a wonderful intervention,* temporary 
 in its influence, whose aid was an indirection 
 of Providence, and which, having subserved 
 its purpose, would pass away. 
 
 Thus, in a.d. 1530, while yet in its infancy, 
 it was well-nigh strangled in its cradle. Papal 
 and imperial foes, having united, had taken 
 the initiatory steps for its destruction. The 
 princes, states, and cities which had thrown 
 off the papal yoke were required instantly to 
 return to their duty and to their allegiance to 
 the sovereign pontiff, on pain of imperial and 
 papal displeasure. And, but for the sudden 
 appearance of Solyman in great force thun- 
 dering at the gates of the empire, the Protest- 
 ant cause, in Germany at least, must have 
 been ruined. It had been resolved that " the 
 flames of its treason could not be extinguished 
 by concessions : it could be quenched only by 
 showers of blood." 
 
 In the United States it sprang up peacefully, 
 as plants spring up under genial skies. In 
 Germany it survived an impending ruin only 
 amid the terrors of invasion and the storms of 
 war. 
 
 * Invasions by the Turks. 
 
244 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 Mosheim, in accounting for the establish- 
 ment of Protestantism, shows it to have been 
 the result of a temporary necessity, a com- 
 promise for the present, that left it on a very 
 insecure basis : — "With respect to the emperor, 
 various reasons united to turn his views to- 
 ward peace. For, on the one hand, he stood 
 in need of succours against the Turks, which 
 the Protestant princes refused to grant while 
 the edicts of Worms and Augsburg remained 
 in force ; . . . . and, after various negotiations, 
 a treaty of peace was concluded at Nuremberg, 
 a.d. 1532, between the emperor and the Protest- 
 ant princes, on the following conditions : — That 
 the latter should furnish a subsidy for carrying 
 on the war against the Turks, and acknowledge 
 Ferdinand as lawful king of the Romans,"* &c. 
 Thus, the suspension of hostilities was the re- 
 sult of a stern necessity, — the brief and un- 
 certain lull of the volcano whose convulsions 
 might soon become still more terrible. 
 
 In a.d. 1542, the emperor renewedly disco- 
 vered his hostile intentions by turning against 
 the Elector of Cologne, and by summoning him 
 to answer the charges to be preferred against 
 him. In the mean time, in the Low Countries, 
 
 * Mosheim, vol. ii. p. 34. 
 
EUROPE. 245 
 
 his Protestant subjects were persecuted with 
 unrelenting severity. At Worms he silenced 
 the Protestant ministers; and, that he might 
 be unembarrassed by the Turks in his efforts 
 at this time to destroy the church, he sent 
 overtures of peace to Constantinople. 
 
 The Council of Trent, summoned for the 
 same sinister purpose, assembled, and com- 
 menced its deliberations, — a sanhedrim of 
 bigoted and fierce ecclesiastics, who were 
 again to deliver Jesus to Pilate to be cruci- 
 fied. A solemn protestation against a council, 
 called solely by the Papal authorities and 
 under their immediate control, was without 
 effect. Its sessions began in a.d. 1546, and were 
 in secret; but enough transpired at the time to 
 make it patent to all that the church of the 
 book was to be destroyed, and that on a sud- 
 den a blow was to be struck that should at once 
 annihilate the Protestant interest. Charles, 
 that he might be ready to enforce its expected 
 decrees, hastened his military preparations. 
 
 The death of Luther just at this juncture — 
 an event which was regarded in all Papal 
 circles as a most propitious coincident — aug- 
 mented the gloom that hung in increasing 
 darkness over the Protestant cause. 
 
 A decisive battle, fought on the Elbe, April 
 
 21* 
 
246 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 24, A.d. 1547, completed the catastrophe. The 
 unhappy confederates fell before a tact and a 
 generalship to which they were not equal, and 
 were placed completely at the mercy of a foe 
 bent on their extermination. Resist they could 
 not. Their armies were subdued and their 
 leaders dispersed or in captivity. Supplica- 
 tion without retraction would be vain. It 
 would fall on the ear of the deaf adder. Flight 
 w T as impossible, and whichever way they looked 
 it was " a red, red sea from shore to shore." 
 
 And now, at this fearful crisis, it is that 
 there occurs another of those wonderful in- 
 terventions to which the church had so often 
 been indebted for her safety. An army of a 
 hundred thousand Turks, already victorious 
 in battle, are wrenching from Ferdinand his 
 Hungarian crown, and their powerful fleet 
 hovers menacingly on the unprotected coasts of 
 Sicily and Naples. Even Maurice betrays his 
 trust and suddenly heads the Protestant con- 
 federacy. The astonished Charles flies to 
 Passau, and the Council of Trent disperse in 
 dismay. The distress of the Papal party forced 
 a capitulation. 
 
 The Protestants, armed simply in self-defence, 
 and seeking only for religious toleration, were 
 ready to listen to terms, and, to save the effu- 
 
EUROPE. 247 
 
 sion of fraternal blood, agreed to march against 
 Solyman, if on that condition Protestantism 
 could be permanently established and its open 
 book and holy ministry freed from further mo- 
 lestation. Ferdinand seized eagerly this pro- 
 position, influenced the chafed and defeated 
 Charles to sign the treaty, and the pacification 
 of Passau was consummated : — a religious peace, 
 to which Home was driven under terror of the 
 Turkish sword. 
 
 But toward the Protestant cause it was a 
 bare and a reluctant suspension of direct hos- 
 tilities. And the struggles by which it reached 
 this precarious security belonged to the sinis- 
 ter locality on which was placed the left foot 
 of the angel, and which were wholly unknown 
 to the happier experience of the church in the 
 New World. In it, no longer trammelled by 
 state control or old or wrong opinions, she 
 gained no stinted growth underneath the over- 
 shadowing walls of a venerable Establishment ; 
 nor is her very being, like that of her trans- 
 atlantic sister at the present time, threatened 
 by the encroachments of Rome. 
 
 While Germany thus warred, and gained 
 her bare permit to live in the heart of an 
 enemy's country, England became the scene 
 of remarkable changes, which, while they fa- 
 
248 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 voured the existence and growth of the church, 
 surrounded her nevertheless at the same time 
 with many uncongenial iniluences not felt 
 beyond the Atlantic. 
 
 Henry VIII., quite as imperious as the 
 sovereign pontiff whose ecclesiastical supre- 
 macy and benefices he appropriated, became a 
 Protestant, not from conviction, but from cir- 
 cumstances. Had the fear of offending Charles 
 not been in the ascendant in Italian circles, the 
 desired divorce of Catharine would have been 
 sanctioned, and Henry would have remained 
 the fast friend of the Papacy. He cast off its 
 jurisdiction, indeed, but retained its spirit, and 
 sought to transfer to himself a papal supremacy 
 over Great Britain : — to fix the star that fell 
 from the papal tiara into the Northern Sea in 
 his own crown. 
 
 Ignorant of the true nature of that kingdom 
 which is not of this world, it seems to have 
 occurred to him as most reasonable that the 
 crown of that spiritual lordship now lost to 
 his Holiness should grace the brow of some 
 other than that of Messias alone. Investing 
 himself, therefore, with a ghostly rule, he exer- 
 cised to a considerable extent an arbitrary 
 spiritual domination. Cranmer's superior in- 
 telligence modified indeed his usurpations; but 
 
EUROPE. 249 
 
 his influence over the church was untoward 
 and his reign oppressive. 
 
 Mary's ultimate accession restored Popery 
 again, and that, also, with an easy transition. 
 The poor Protestants were renewedly treated 
 with extreme rigour. England's gentler nature 
 recoiled in horror at witnessing tortures, unpre- 
 cedented for their cruelty, inflicted on men the 
 most venerable and the most virtuous in her 
 realms. 
 
 The accession of Elizabeth re-established the 
 Protestant faith. But it was a Protestantism 
 which, while it rejected in part the Catholic, 
 rejected also in part the Protestant, opinions ; 
 putting itself in opposition, in many respects, 
 to both, and laying the foundation for those 
 animosities and persecutions which reveal to 
 our calm retrospection the imprint on English 
 soil of the left foot of the angel. 
 
 Elizabeth loved a spiritual supremacy, — in- 
 stituted her Court of High Commissions, which 
 has not unjustly been called "the British Inqui- 
 sition," — issued the "Act of Uniformity," — de- 
 nied that the Scriptures were the only rule of 
 faitli and practice ; and, claiming that the fathers 
 of the church in the first four centuries furnished 
 an improved and a matured ecclesiasticism not 
 found in the Scriptures alone, demanded that 
 Q 
 
250 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 all her subjects should conform to her esta- 
 blishment. Non-conformists were oppressed. 
 Many of therm after leaving their country and 
 wandering into Holland, embarked finally for 
 America, taking the track opened for them in 
 the paths of the sea. 
 
 In Switzerland, Protestantism won her tole- 
 ration by the valour of her sons. Her troubled 
 life, perpetuated amid the factions of Geneva 
 and the subtlety of Jesuitism, has, however, 
 finally met the fate that seems impending 
 over all her sister-confederacies in Europe. 
 
 Scotland, nourished at the fountains of 
 Geneva and roused by the wild eloquence of 
 Knox, embraced a Christianity which acknow- 
 ledged no rule of faith and practice save the 
 one fairly and sufficiently derived from the 
 open book in the angel's hand. But, neverthe- 
 less, after the struggle of centuries, with the 
 strong fetters of the Establishment upon her 
 vigorous limbs, she has at length also been 
 driven into her exodus, and in that solemn 
 event has fully asserted the superior excel- 
 lence of her American and her model Presby- 
 terianism. 
 
 In France, the contest for religious toleration 
 was long, vigorous, often most promising, but 
 finally disastrous. In the very era in which 
 
EUROPE. 251 
 
 Islamism experienced the greatest defeats and 
 the crescent waned permanently before the 
 cross, — in which, indeed, the Turks met with 
 those irreparable reverses from which they 
 have never since recovered, — the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes occurred, a.d. 1685. 
 
 This ruined in that kingdom the Protestant 
 cause, filled Geneva, the mountain-gorges of 
 the Alps, Holland, England, and America, with 
 French refugees. A million fled during the 
 extreme rigour of that long-continued persecu- 
 tion that knew no mercy, and a hundred 
 thousand perished in dungeons, at the stake, 
 or by the sword. 
 
 The drain upon France became a great poli- 
 tical event. It gave creation to Holland : to 
 it, and to England also, it gave the balance of 
 power, and likewise furnished the American 
 colonies — on the North Biver and in other 
 places — with many of their most valuable ac- 
 quisitions. New York became a Huguenot 
 island; and her prestige and her wonderful 
 prosperity is still welling up from these secret 
 fountains. 
 
 Providence, too, has his reprisals, and 
 avenged his servants in that " plat" in which 
 they suffered. The bloody scenes of the sub- 
 sequent revolution might well be expected to 
 
252 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 follow such an exhaustion of national purity 
 and conservatism. The councils of cruel Rome 
 had well-nigh ruined France, — had sent a 
 cancer on her cheek and a wolf into her 
 breast, — had first shed her best blood and ex- 
 patriated her best citizens, — and then had left 
 her to the tender mercies of men educated, by 
 the example of their persecuting sires, in the 
 school of a most brutal violence. 
 
 These, in the next age, became in their turn 
 the ministers of avenging Heaven, in whose 
 bosoms there was no pity and in whose cruel- 
 ties no relentings. By them were the fearful 
 butcheries of the Revolution enacted : — a wan- 
 ton waste of life more terrible than any ever 
 known in any example of former times; a 
 " reign of terror" that could exist only in the 
 lawlessness of such a generation. 
 
 And now, after a long interval, on a review 
 of such scenes of horror, and on following the 
 refugees to their respective retreats in the Old 
 and in the New World, it is not difficult to de- 
 termine whether those who fled to Geneva, to 
 Holland, to England, or those that crossed the 
 ocean, took the most desirable path. Geneva 
 has passed substantially into the hands of the 
 Catholics. Holland is losing her Protestant- 
 ism by the plottings of her foes and by the 
 
EUROPE. 253 
 
 emigration of her children to the New World ; 
 and what will be the destiny of England before 
 ten years shall have passed away, time will 
 show. Developments thus far, in any event, 
 award the wisdom of a happier selection to 
 those who followed the angel's track across 
 the sea. 
 
 Staten Island, the beautiful valleys of the 
 Hudson and the Mohawk, the James River in 
 Virginia, and the Trent, in North Carolina, 
 became in an early day the secure retreat of 
 thousands. The number, wealth, and pros- 
 perity of these settlements, in contrast with 
 the disfranchisements, increasing poverty, and 
 failing struggles of those left behind in the Old 
 World, are of themselves a demonstration of the 
 correctness of the view now taken, even though 
 that view were not endorsed by the vision of 
 John. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 ISLAMISM AND THE REFORMATION. CONTINUED. 
 
 Across the land the crescent flew, — 
 
 It flew across the sea ; 
 It shook the Papal turrets hoar ; 
 
 It shook the West for thee. 
 
 How wonderfully also were the fortunes of 
 the church, amid all the foregoing strifes and 
 changes, influenced by Ishmael! The fall of 
 Constantinople led to the revival of letters and 
 to the study of the languages in which the 
 Scriptures were originally written: a most 
 material auxiliary to the opening of the book 
 in the angel's hand. The subsequent wars and 
 invasions of the Turks led finally to the sale 
 of indulgences under the pontificate of Leo X. 
 It was the method suggested by the unscru- 
 pulous pontiff, and relied upon by him to raise 
 the means of conducting a crusade against the 
 Moslem infidel. 
 
 "In fact," said Luther, "the war with the 
 Turks was the war of the Pope. It was an 
 
 254 
 
THE OTTOMANS. 255 
 
 offensive war, and a war founded on no good 
 principle. It was made a pretext for exhaust- 
 ing Germany of its money by the sale of indul- 
 gences." But for this, then, the controversy 
 between Luther and Tetzel would not have 
 occurred. It w^as one of the indispensable links 
 in the chain of causes which led on to the great 
 Reformation. 
 
 Indeed, the rise, progress, and best suc- 
 cesses of that reformation synchronize with 
 the rising and progressing fortunes of the 
 Ottomans in Europe. When their empire 
 culminates and begins to decline, Catholicism 
 begins to repair hef losses and to rise again 
 to power. Seventeen years after Eugene's 
 great victory over failing Turkey, A.D. 1699, 
 the Order of the Jesuits is revived, and their 
 withering councils secretly influence the cabi- 
 nets of princes, and proscribed and manacled 
 Protestantism steadily loses, one by one, her 
 territorial acquisitions, and commences to be 
 beaten back from the foot of the Alps to the 
 British Channel. 
 
 And, if the decline of Protestantism and the 
 recovery of the Papacy shall continue to keep 
 pace with the decline and the probably ap- 
 proaching fall of Turkey in the future as it 
 has in the past, its ultimate disappearance 
 
256 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 from Europe is quite inevitable ; and Borne — 
 ambitious Rome — is yet destined to erect, on 
 the ruins of Mien rivalries, a throne more 
 magnificent and powerful than that which 
 crowned the seven hills in the palmiest days 
 of Hildebrand or Leo X. 
 
 The incursions and the conquests of the 
 Turks in Europe, from a.d. 1453 to a.d. 1697, — 
 a period of two hundred and forty-four years, — 
 were mighty, providential indirections, making 
 Ishmael the blind yet effective umpire between 
 the church and her powerful foes, calling off 
 the persecutors just on the eve of their success, 
 and that, from time to time, to attend to their 
 own safety. 
 
 During this period, — the period memorable in 
 all time, because traversed by the events and 
 consequences of the great Reformation, — Rome 
 continued to be besieged in all her coasts. 
 The iEgean Sea and the Mediterranean con- 
 tinued to be swept by successive fleets, fitted out 
 by the indefatigable Porte. Its armies followed 
 each other perpetually, and successively also, 
 into Austria, Hungary, and Transylvania. 
 The tw r o last-named regions were brought under 
 Ottoman rule, and retained for one hundred 
 and seventy, years in defiance of the Western 
 powers. Indeed, the warlike character of the 
 
THE OTTOMANS. 257 
 
 Turks at this time, the boldness and military 
 skill of their leaders, their frequent enterprises 
 of war and bloody victories, exhausted the 
 empire, and were its perpetual terror and 
 scourge.* 
 
 Having, however, at the end of this period, 
 fulfilled its mission, — having concentrated and 
 exhausted hostilities on itself that would other- 
 wise have expended their fury in the extermi- 
 nation of the church, — and having afforded the 
 church her providential opportunity of flight 
 across the sea, — its power was broken. Prince 
 Eugene, in A.d. 1697, gained over it a victory 
 from which it never recovered. It lost pro- 
 vinces, kingdoms, and the power of recupera- 
 tion, in that defeat. The peace concluded in a.d. 
 1699 gave back to the empire Transylvania, 
 Hungary, Asaph, the Ukraine, and Podolia, — 
 the entire peninsula of the Morea to the Isthmus 
 of Corinth, including Dalmatia. 
 
 From this epoch, the steady decline of the 
 Ottoman strength and prowess is marked; and 
 it continues to the present hour to give out 
 still the tokens of a deep and fatal decay in 
 
 * Mosheiin's Eccl. History, Sixteenth Century, and Mil- 
 nor's, covering the same period; Robertson's Charles V., 
 from book iii. to x. inclusive. 
 22* 
 
258 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 * 
 
 all those respects in which it had been formid- 
 able and terrible before. 
 
 The period selected for the great revival of 
 religion was one marked by the skill, courage, 
 and culture of the Rulers of the earth. Con- 
 spicuous among these were Henry VTIL, Francis 
 L, Charles V., and Leo X. But, among these, 
 Solyman the Great shone with a transcendent 
 lustre. 
 
 His accession to the throne in a.d. 1521 was 
 at once the summit of its grandeur and the 
 signal for the outbursting of Moslem propa- 
 gandism anew in its aggressive wars. Bel- 
 grade, deemed at that time the great barrier 
 in the North against Turkish invasion, was 
 invested by the sultan, and soon fell into his 
 hands. Against Rhodes, the impregnable for- 
 tress of the Archipelago, defended by the 
 chivalry of eight Christian nations, and hither- 
 to the terror of the Saracens, he persevered 
 in a siege of five months, with a fleet of four 
 hundred sail and an army of one hundred and 
 forty thousand men. And, though at a loss of 
 one hundred thousand of his troops, he con- 
 tinued the contest until it was reduced to his 
 sway. 
 
 This earnest of his iron will and pledge of 
 his future career was succeeded by the con- 
 
THE OTTOMANS. 259 
 
 quest of the Crimea. Hungary shortly after 
 delivered up the keys of her proud capital to 
 the fierce Solyman. The bloody Caled had 
 revived in his person ; and the right hand of 
 Ishmael wanted not one to wield its scimitar. 
 The whole country, as far as Raab, blackened 
 by the ilames of war, was encumbered and 
 pestilential from the mangled remains of two 
 hundred thousand inhabitants. 
 
 In A.D. 1529 his victorious army sat down 
 before the capital of Austria; and, though 
 arrested at this point, and obliged to retreat 
 on account of the fall rains, he reappeared in 
 the spring, A.D. 1532, at the head of two hun- 
 dred thousand men, against Charles V. He 
 finally intrenched himself on the Danube, in 
 which place he received and accepted the 
 emperor's propositions of peace. Shortly after 
 this he partially subdued the Venetian islands, 
 and, recruiting his forces, prepared for new 
 enterprises. 
 
 In 1541 he again invaded Hungary; and 
 numerous conflicts renewedly shook the trou- 
 bled West, until Charles succeeded in negotia- 
 ting another treaty of peace with his for- 
 midable rival. This treaty, nevertheless, was 
 speedily forgotten, and Transylvania was added 
 to the dominions of the sultan. He died a.d. 
 
260 ISHMAEL AND THE CnURCH. 
 
 1566, while actively engaged in a war with 
 Hungary. 
 
 The following corresponding dates are worthy 
 of special attention, since they furnish the suc- 
 cinct evidence of providential intervention to 
 save the church, while the Reformation was 
 in progress, through the agency of Moslem 
 armies. 
 
 In a.d. 1521 Luther is condemned by the 
 Diet at Worms, and by a ruse of his friends 
 lies concealed at the Wartburg; and at the 
 same time Solyman draws his terrific scimitar 
 and threatens the West with eventual subjuga- 
 tion. The empire is skirted with hostile Heets 
 and armies, and many a fair province is laid 
 waste with fire and sword. 
 
 In a.d. 1524 Clement VIII. sent his legate to 
 the Diet at Nuremberg, breathing threatenings 
 and slaughter against the Reformation, and de- 
 manding of the princes of the empire the 
 execution of the decree of Worms against 
 Luther. In the same year, and when his 
 safety is in imminent peril, Solyman again 
 entered Hungary in force, gained a signal vic- 
 tory, received the keys of the conquered capi- 
 tal, and put to death in the rural districts two 
 hundred thousand citizens. 
 
 The tranquillity enjoyed after the first Diet 
 
THE OTTOMANS. 261 
 
 of Spire was interrupted, in a.d. 1529, by a 
 second Diet in the same place. In the same year 
 the sultan appeared with a vast army and com- 
 menced the siege of Vienna. The persecutors, 
 eager to ruin the Keformation, had to turn back, 
 to repel the foe that hung in terror on their 
 bleeding rear; and at this juncture it was 
 that Luther, accused of indifference as to the 
 Turkish invasion, wrote his celebrated letter in 
 favour of the war against the Turks.* 
 
 The severe decree against the Protestants 
 issued by order of Charles, ever under the 
 controlling influence of the Pope and his car- 
 dinals, and which led the alarmed Protestants 
 to assemble at Smalcald, A.D. 1530, occurred 
 simultaneously with the revived hostilities of 
 Solyman against Hungary. The Catholics, 
 alarmed at his progress, were again forced to 
 abandon their bloody purposes and to implore 
 the aid of the Protestants.f 
 
 In a.d. 1532 the treaty of Nuremberg was 
 concluded, on condition that the Protestants 
 should furnish a subsidy for carrying on the 
 war against the Turks. 
 
 In a.d. 1541 Solyman again commenced a 
 
 * Milluer, p. 515. 
 
 f Maclane's Mosheim, vol. i. pp. o3 ; 34. 
 
262 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 bloody war against the West, resolved on its 
 subjugation. It raged most fearfully during 
 the sessions of the Council of Trent, wasting 
 the invaded provinces with fire and sword, and 
 as though in awful providential rebuke of that 
 council for consigning the Protestant church to 
 Inquisitorial and military destruction. And, 
 just in proportion as the Catholics wasted their 
 strength and fury upon the suffering church, 
 Solyman was successful against them, gaining 
 strength and maturing his plans for the con- 
 quest of Europe. 
 
 And, finally, when the pacification of Passau 
 was pending, "the Turks .... had prepared 
 a powerful fleet to ravage the coast of Naples 
 
 and Sicily Besides, Solyman .... had 
 
 ordered into the field an army of a hundred 
 thousand men, which, having defeated a great 
 body of Ferdinand's troops and taken several 
 places of importance, threatened not only to 
 complete the conquest of the province, but to 
 drive them out of that part of Hungary. 
 Maurice, having observed Ferdinand's per- 
 plexity, .... offered, if peace were re-esta- 
 blished on a secure foundation, that he would 
 march in person with his troops into Hungary 
 against the Turks. Such was the effect of 
 this well-timed proposal, that Ferdinand, desti- 
 
THE OTTOMANS. 263 
 
 tute of every other prospect of relief, became 
 the most zealous advocate whom the confede- 
 rates could have employed to urge their 
 claims ; and there was hardly any thing that 
 they could have demanded which he would 
 not have chosen to grant, rather than have 
 retarded a pacification to which he trusted as 
 the only means of saving his Hungarian 
 crown."* 
 
 In this extraordinary manner was the war of 
 extermination against the Protestants, though 
 resolved upon, and with hostilities already 
 begun in several instances, kept in arrest from 
 time to time. The Catholic princes needed 
 the aid of their Protestant subjects, and on 
 one occasion sought and obtained the aid of 
 the condemned Luther's vigorous pen in favour 
 of what was termed the defensive war. Pro- 
 testant and Catholic were exhorted to make 
 common cause against a common enemy. 
 
 The Reformers experienced for many succes- 
 sive years these alternations of papal smiles 
 and frowns, supplications and persecutions. 
 When the Turks were driven back, her foes 
 resorted at once to their cruel remedy for 
 heresy, — " the cautery and the knife." But, just 
 
 * Robertson's Charles V. ; book x. pp. 412, 413. 
 
264 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 as they were congratulating themselves, and 
 were about to sit down to the long-delayed 
 banquet of blood, they are suddenly called off 
 to meet the fierce Ishmael thundering at their 
 invaded gates. 
 
 Thus, while Islamism remained, the woe or 
 the scourge of Christendom, Protestantism 
 gradually rose and prevailed. But now, since 
 Turkey has commenced her fatal decline and 
 is just ready to disappear from Europe, Pro- 
 testantism is also in the same perilous con- 
 dition there, and is likely to lose very soon 
 her last inch of European soil. 
 
 But her decline and that of Turkey is 
 accompanied with the steady and simultaneous 
 growth of Romanism in Europe and of Pro- 
 testantism in America. 
 
 The decline of Protestantism in Europe is 
 not at present a loss by persecution or by a 
 return of her converts to Popery, but by a 
 vast exodus which has lasted for more than a 
 century, which still continues and increases, 
 and which year by year makes yet more bril- 
 liant and unmistakable the luminous footprint 
 of the an^el in the sea. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 THE WITNESSES NOT SLAIN. 
 
 The last are fallen, unwept, that bore 
 The bated cross in days of yore ; 
 They sleep as though, despite the rack, 
 The soul departed might come back. 
 
 The measurement of the holy places and 
 the death and resurrection of the witnesses 
 are the next events marked by the prophet, 
 and which are to precede and accompany the 
 passing away of the second woe. Along this 
 track, therefore, let us take our way, that we 
 may reach and understand the character and 
 tendency of the events of our own times, so 
 startling and portentous, and which are hardly 
 passed away in a sea of blood ere new and 
 threatening masses are beginning to gather and 
 to hang heavy and dark over the earth. 
 
 "And there was given me a reed like unto a 
 rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and 
 measure the temple of God, and the altar, and 
 them that worship therein. But the court 
 which is without the temple leave out, and 
 
 23 R 265 
 
266 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles : 
 and the holy city shall they tread under foot 
 forty and two months."* God took formal 
 possession of the land of Canaan by lot. It 
 was measured and thus appropriated.-)- This 
 method of taking possession of the Holy Land 
 made the act of measuring, in prophetic par- 
 lance, to signify the appropriation of that which 
 was measured. 
 
 To " divide Shechem and mete out the 
 valley of Succoth" was all the same as the 
 taking actual possession of these places. The 
 appearance of an angel with a measuriug-line, 
 and with it measuring Jerusalem, was the reve- 
 lation of the divine intention again to take 
 possession of the fallen and abandoned city. 
 
 The word of God — " the only infallible rule 
 of faith and practice" — began in the early part 
 of the seventh century to be used as a mea- 
 suring-rod or rule, in its discriminative appli- 
 cation to a true and a false Christianity. A 
 large proportion of the visible church was by 
 this rule declared to have lost its church-state, 
 and the Pope in consequence, even as early as 
 A.D. 606, was quite generally regarded as the 
 man of sin. 
 
 * Rev. xi. 1, 2. j- Josh. xxiv. 13. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 2G7 
 
 The court which was without was a square 
 enclosure, covering an area much larger than 
 that covered by the temple. Hence, the em- 
 blem suggests that the rejected portion of the 
 visible church, at the time intended by the 
 prophet, should comprise by far the greater 
 part of it. This was given to be trodden down 
 of Gentile feet, or by idolaters. 
 
 These, it is generally conceded, were the 
 Goths and Vandals, who overran and subdued 
 the Roman empire, appropriated its religion, 
 its lands, and its laws, as their own, and became 
 themselves Romans. Christianity, already 
 sadly deteriorated, was made far more so under 
 the profane alliance with its idolatrous con- 
 verts. The Pope and Bishop of Rome aided 
 also in its total desecration. He conformed it, 
 with misguided zeal, to the pagan tastes of the 
 conquerors, that he might thereby the more 
 readily turn them into Christians. 
 
 Christianity, while thus appearing to con- 
 quer the victors, but conquered itself. The 
 conversion was not of barbarism to Chris- 
 tianity, but of Christianity to barbarism. Re- 
 ligion fell in its holy city, or in the visible 
 church ; and, despite the resistance of a small 
 and a retreating minority, its rule of faith, its 
 
268 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 atonement, and its sanctity, were alike trampled 
 under Gentile feet. 
 
 The same sagacious ecclesiastic that filled 
 the church with idolaters restored also the 
 broken succession of the Cassars, by becoming 
 himself the true source of imperial and kingly 
 power. The imperial, the consular, and the 
 senatorial forms of government shone for ages 
 in the capital of the Caesars. But the last of 
 the Caesars finally disappeared, and the ensigns 
 of the throne and of the palace were transferred 
 to Constantinople. In the Eternal City, and 
 throughout the kingdoms of the West, the 
 savages of the North and their successors held 
 the mastery. The division of the imperial 
 rule between Rome and Constantinople was all 
 that saved the empire, at this time, from total 
 extinction. The interregnum lasted for two 
 hundred years. "The day shone not for a 
 third part of it, and the night likewise."* 
 
 From this epoch the Pope and Bishop of 
 Rome, proclaimed by the emperor at Constan- 
 tinople universal bishop, and being at the 
 same time a native Roman and a true patrician, 
 took up the fallen sceptre of the Caesars, and, 
 by conferring it on Charlemagne, restored the 
 
 *Rev. viii. 12. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 269 
 
 long-lost glory of the West. From France the 
 imperial dignity passed to Germany, and from 
 thence, in the memory of many now living, it 
 reverted again to France. It was conferred by 
 Pius VII. on Napoleon. He assumed the 
 golden crown of Charlemagne and the iron 
 crown of Italy. 
 
 Rome not only restored her ecclesiastical and 
 her civil ascendency by her wily and ghostly 
 representative ; she also recruited her exhausted 
 energies by absorbing in her own the hardier 
 manhood of Northern nations. The sources of 
 her ruin became thus, and in more respects 
 than one, the sources of her renovated strength ; 
 and she again reigned " over the kings of the 
 earth. "* It was, indeed, a wonderful event: — 
 the actual and the healthful reproduction of 
 an expired life, and that in the very moment 
 and by the very means of its total extinction. 
 
 But, alas, in thus for the second time setting 
 her iron heel on her recovered and submissive 
 domain she also placed, as the price of her 
 triumph, her dishonoured Christianity under 
 Gentile feet. Its true God gave place to patron 
 saints and local deities. In all her sanctuaries 
 His praise was given to crucifixes and graven 
 
 *Rev. xvii. 18. 
 23* 
 
270 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 images. Its blessed Redeemer was made in- 
 ferior to the Virgin, and was set aside in his 
 gracious mediation by a vast army of saints and 
 martyrs. Its unadorned simplicity of worship 
 disappeared in a pompous ritual. Its purify- 
 ing and intelligible utterances were supplanted 
 by unintelligible and awful mysteries addressed 
 to the senses. "Signs and lying wonders" 
 were made the incentives to obedience and 
 the sources of religious veneration. In a word, 
 almost all that was pure, distinctive, and di- 
 vine became, as the result, outcast and down- 
 trodden in the visible church. 
 
 The period in which this state of things be- 
 gan to be is marked, first, by the discriminative 
 application of the rule or rod (referred to as 
 above by the prophet) in determining the 
 limits of the true church. Such use of the word 
 had become common in the beginning of the 
 seventh century. 
 
 Secondly, in A.d. G06, when Phocas pro- 
 claimed the Pope of Rome universal bishop, he 
 became at once to the godly the revealed head 
 of the apostasy, and was denounced as the 
 Antichrist of this prophecy and of the Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 Thirdly, he was the man of sin before he 
 became a temporal prince : since the little 
 
THE WITNESSES. 271 
 
 horn spoken of by Daniel* was, nevertheless, a 
 horn, or power, before it rose above the three 
 dynasties which it subverted. Indeed, the 
 Pope's subsequent assumption of the dignity of 
 a temporal prince was the lesser form of the 
 iniquity. These are some of the reasons which 
 suggest the propriety of commencing our reck- 
 oning of the twelve hundred and sixty years 
 of the prophecy with the commencement of the 
 visible exaltation of the Pope to spiritual supre- 
 macy in the church, i.e. A. d. GOG. 
 
 Another distinct ground on which we arrive 
 at the same conclusion may be found in the 
 prophecy of Daniel.f "The- king of fierce 
 countenance," and understanding dark sen- 
 tences, arose, according to this prophet, at the 
 latter end of the four kingdoms into which 
 Alexander's dominions had been divided. He 
 terminated their reign when he conquered 
 Persia. Mohammed was fierce in the emo- 
 tions of his cruel nature and in the principles 
 and sympathies of his faith. His successes 
 w r ere also achieved by incoherent or dark sen- 
 tences. He obtained his KoranJ in sentences, 
 
 * Dan. vii. 8. f Dan. ™- 23 ' 
 
 J " The fragments of the Koran were produced at the 
 discretion of Mohammed The pages, without order 
 
272 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 as he affirmed, in which the last, however 
 contradictory, modified and explained all that 
 went before. Sentences most dark and contra- 
 dictory became also the ultimate foundations 
 of his power, gave creation to his army and 
 victory to his lieutenants. A coincidence so 
 striking should not be overlooked ; and it may 
 legitimately influence our judgment with re- 
 spect to the time of the end, since the rise of the 
 Southern Antichrist was evidently synchronical 
 with the exaltation of the Papacy. They are 
 both the renowned enemies of progress and of 
 piety in the North and in the South, originate 
 at the same time, run to the present day their 
 parallel courses. And is it not a probable con- 
 clusion that they are destined to joerish nearly 
 simultaneously, and especially as to each is 
 assigned the same prophetic period ?* 
 
 The period also in which the witnesses were 
 to prophesy in sackcloth is the same. And it 
 
 is quite natural to conclude that their sack- 
 « 
 
 or connection, were cast into a domestic chest. " Farther 
 down, on the same page, the Koran is described as "the 
 endless, incoherent rhapsody of fable and precept and decla- 
 mation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which 
 sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the 
 clouds." — Gibbon, vol. v. p. 110. 
 * Twelve hundred and sixty days. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 273 
 
 cloth garb was the result of Papal and Moham- 
 medan ascendency over the very regions of 
 the earth in which a primitive Christianity 
 had previously spread her principles and her 
 churches. Their respective empires were en- 
 gines of fearful misrule and of spiritual desola- 
 tion. And during most of the long interval 
 that has elapsed — an interval already rilling up 
 nearly the whole of the assigned cycle — the true 
 church has found a bare toleration among the 
 Saracens, or a precarious retreat in the gorges 
 of bleak and inaccessible mountains. The 
 periods of revival, of success, or of repose, have 
 been ever brief, and invariably partial. These 
 even have had their tears, have been accom- 
 panied with political and social oppressions. 
 On the whole, in all Papal and in all Moham- 
 medan countries, Zion has ever bowed her 
 dejected head, has ever been placed in a 
 comparatively depressed and sorrowful con- 
 dition. 
 
 Her members also have been comparatively 
 very inconsiderable; her home the circum- 
 scribed spot occupied by the temple and the 
 altar. Such is the small but consecrated en- 
 closure; while her numerous and powerful ad- 
 versaries are represented as spreading them- 
 selves over the whole area of the open court, 
 
274 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 whose sacred things they impiously monopolize 
 and profanely trample. 
 
 Her witnesses, likewise, during this same 
 prophetic interval, have been but two, — the 
 smallest possible number admissible in law to 
 establish a fact. So few indeed have they 
 been, that their unbroken succession during 
 this prophetic cycle has been often disputed 
 by their enemies; and confessedly by us they 
 have been, though sufficient, yet barely suffi- 
 cient to continue a visible descent and to 
 maintain the credibility of a holy testimony in 
 a world abandoned elsewhere in all its vast 
 communities to the reign of atheism or false 
 religion. 
 
 Such is the melancholy image presented b}' 
 the prophet, and such have been the corre- 
 sponding realities of history. " And I will give 
 power unto my two witnesses, and they shall 
 prophesy a thousand two hundred and three- 
 score days, clothed in sackcloth. "* 
 
 After the death and resurrection of the 
 witnesses the state of oppression shall cease. 
 But that blessed hour of Zion's joy and enfran- 
 chisement has not yet come. Her foes are first 
 to kill her witnesses, before they can rise again 
 
 * Rev. xi. 3. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 275 
 
 in the final and joyous prevalence of their 
 truthful prophecy : — "And when they shall have 
 finished their testimony," i.e. in sackcloth, "the 
 beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit 
 shall make war against them, and shall over- 
 come them and kill them."* Such an event, 
 it is maintained by some, has already occurred. 
 A brief examination of this question, however, 
 must, we think, result in the conviction that, 
 sad as has frequently been the state of the true 
 church in Catholic Europe, a sadder hour still 
 awaits her there. 
 
 In the twelfth century the country of the 
 Albigenses w T as made desolate by the Cru- 
 saders, under Simon de Montfort. The testi- 
 mony of the witnesses was for a season par- 
 tially, if not wholly, suppressed within its terri- 
 torial limits. But it was at the same time 
 fully uttered in other places. The suppression 
 was not such as that represented in the pro- 
 phecy, — the deep silence of the grave over all 
 the kingdoms of Europe, and that suddenly 
 and simultaneously. 
 
 Two hundred years afterward, (a.d. 1400,) 
 the "Waldenses, in the valley of Pragela, were 
 also nearly or quite exterminated. Starving 
 
 * Rev. xi. 
 
276 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 mothers ascended the mountains with their 
 children and perished. One hundred and 
 eighty little ones were found dead in their 
 cradles. Other churches, however, escaped 
 the visitation and continued their testimony. 
 In a.d. 1460, or sixty years after, in the 
 valley of Loyse, four hundred infants were 
 smothered in a cave in the arms of their dying- 
 mothers, and three thousand disciples slain. In 
 this valley the church at this time became 
 extinct, but not at the same time elsewhere. 
 
 One hundred years subsequently to this, (a.d. 
 1560,) the Calabrian Waldenses were wholly 
 exterminated. Silence and darkness spread 
 over that island in which they had main- 
 tained their suffering mission during ninety 
 years. But the witnesses still lived and testi- 
 fied in many other places in Europe, notwith- 
 standing. 
 
 In after-times, the Inquisition consigned the 
 true church in Spain to its dungeons, and her 
 voice was heard no more among the living in 
 that kingdom. Subsequently, her testimony 
 was silenced in France. Her Huguenots were 
 slain or expatriated. At another time, it was 
 for a season suppressed in Scotland by Arch- 
 bishop Laud, and by the bloody Mary in Eng- 
 land. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 277 
 
 But these, though terrible, were but par- 
 tial, exterminations, — circumscribed fields of 
 slaughter, placed at distant intervals from 
 each other, occurring in different and wide- 
 ly-separated districts and kingdoms; and no 
 one of them occurring on any single isolated 
 plat, can possibly be claimed to have been at 
 any time universal. Rome, indeed, at the suc- 
 cessive slaughter of the Albigenses, the Wal- 
 denses, the Huguenots, held her jubilees, and 
 claimed that the church, in these respective 
 areas, was wholly extinct; but she did not 
 claim at any period that the church was also 
 simultaneously extinct in every other country 
 subject to her rule. If she ever did, it was 
 falsely, and amid the contradiction of sur- 
 rounding facts and existing witnesses. 
 
 But when she shall "Mil them" (according 
 to this prophecy,) "their dead bodies shall lie 
 in the street of the great city, which spiritually 
 is called Sodom, and Egypt, where also our 
 Lord was crucified; and they of the people, 
 and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, shall 
 see their dead bodies three days and a half, 
 and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put 
 in graves. And they that dwell upon the 
 earth shall rejoice over them and make merry, 
 and shall send gifts one to another, because 
 
 24 
 
278 1SHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 these two prophets tormented them that dwelt 
 on the earth."* 
 
 Thus, when she shall actually hill them, — 
 when this hour of her final triumph shall have 
 fully come, — she is to survey the whole field 
 at once, and, during three years and a half, 
 claim on the clearest evidence — evidence 
 wholly uncontradicted and universally con- 
 vincing — that they are no more. On the 
 highway of the great spiritual city — her great 
 ecclesiastical domain, covering ten kingdoms 
 with its mighty hierarchy and ghostly rule, 
 the broad frequented thoroughfare of peoples 
 and nations, kindreds and tongues, a spectacle 
 for the whole world to gaze at — their bodies 
 shall lie exposed to every eye, shall be spurned 
 by every foot. 
 
 The jubilee also, like the massacre, shall be 
 universal. It shall not, as heretofore, confine 
 itself to Italy, but shall comprehend all the 
 kingdoms subject to Papal domination. If an 
 event like this had ever occurred, its great publi- 
 city, as well as its unprecedented cruelty, would 
 have so chronicled it in the annals of every 
 age, that to have questioned it now would have 
 been simply absurd, and quite impossible. 
 
 * Hev. xi. 
 
THE WITNESSES. 279 
 
 And, if the witnesses have not yet been 
 slain, we cannot now, at this late day, go 
 back to the seventh century in commencing 
 our computation of the prophetic interval 
 under consideration. 
 
 But not only has the event not taken place 
 as described in the prophecy: the witnesses 
 themselves are witnesses against this conclu- 
 sion, since they still exist, still prophesy in 
 sackcloth, in all Papal countries, — are still de- 
 pressed, disfranchised, and sorrowful. A single 
 glance at the state of the Protestant church 
 in Europe must satisfy the most incredulous 
 that her present state is more deplorable by 
 far than it was three hundred years ago. But 
 if the death and resurrection of her witnesses 
 has taken place long since, why does she still 
 prophesy in sackcloth, — since, when the de- 
 parted life revives in the dead bodies of the 
 fallen witnesses and they stand upon their 
 feet, the sackcloth drops from them and they 
 are ever after exalted to heaven ? The death 
 and resurrection of the witnesses is therefore, 
 we conclude, an event yet to come; and the 
 state of things in Europe, according to this 
 view of the question, must become worse than 
 it now is for Zion before it can become better. 
 
 The causes and tendencies of recent convul- 
 
280 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 sions, and of the present precarious peace, in- 
 vest themselves therefore with great religious 
 as well as political interest, and awaken an in- 
 tense desire in all to know what are to be the 
 events which are now imminent in the out- 
 goings of that Providence whose footfalls 
 and marshallings are already shaking the 
 earth, "and with fear of change perplexing 
 monarchs." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ISHMAEL AND THE WESTERN ALLIES. 
 
 "Proud Saracen, pollute no more 
 The shrines by martyrs built of yore ! 
 From each wild mountain's trackless crown 
 In vain thy gloomy castles frown." 
 
 Warton. 
 
 The invaders of the empire from the North, 
 inured to hardness, though they prostrated, 
 nevertheless renovated, the kingdoms of the 
 West. The effeminate offspring of patrician 
 luxury, mingling their blood with the rude 
 conquerors of their shattered states, restored 
 again the bone and muscle of earlier and 
 better days. 
 
 But the Eastern division of the empire lost 
 its Asiatic provinces without experiencing a 
 corresponding benefit. A humanity already 
 greatly deteriorated still continued to mingle 
 blood with blood, and to carry down among 
 the Grecians a progressive physical and social 
 degeneracy. Asiatic Greece was absorbed by 
 Ishmael. In the wreck of its cities and pro- 
 vinces there originated an amalgamation of 
 
 24* S 281 
 
282 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 its races with their Arab conquerors. This 
 counteracted for generations the tendency to 
 national weakness, and gave to the empire of 
 the caliphs its prestige and stability. Its 
 races, possessed of a mightier manhood, were 
 born to dominion. 
 
 While, therefore, the West and the South, 
 the Latins and the Saracens, rose up in a 
 renovated humanity, the East, isolated by her 
 position and repelled by her antipathies, was 
 not reached or benefited by the rushing and 
 restless tides of social change or of physical re- 
 generation. Greece, the world's admired centre 
 of learning and refinement, though possessed of 
 every other advantage over the Latins and the 
 Saracens, was nevertheless utterly incapable of 
 self-defence, — was daily tending, by the opera- 
 tion of an irresistible law, to national decay 
 and political ruin. 
 
 In her rise to supremacy in the fourth 
 century, her Constantinople, at that time the 
 world's proud imperial capital, became also the 
 metropolis of Christendom and assumed a pro- 
 tectorate over all its sacred places. The de- 
 cline of Rome transferred ultimately to her 
 the imperial purple and gave to her the tem- 
 porary supremacy. This she feebly grasped, 
 and therefore but briefly held. The revived 
 
THE WESTERN ALLIES. 283 
 
 energy o the Latins oppressed her effeminacy, 
 and the Eoman bishop at every turn of fortune 
 and of controversy came up in the ascendant, 
 obtaining ultimately from Constantinople, and 
 by imperial proclamation, the spiritual lord- 
 ship over the East and the West. 
 
 Just at this juncture also, and most unfortu- 
 nately for the Greek church, Ishmael gained 
 his terrible nationality and rushed fiercely 
 from the desert. Greece could not resist; and 
 Asia was lost to the church and to Caesar. 
 
 The holy places, sacred to the memory of 
 Christ and his apostles, from this unpropitious 
 hour became the objects of a painful interest. 
 Images were broken, altars subverted, cruci- 
 fixes trampled, and the holy sepulchre itself 
 marred and defiled. 
 
 The Crusades of the Middle Ages were under- 
 taken to retrieve these losses, and to restore to 
 the church a spot so blended in her visions 
 with all that now to her was most awful and 
 most tender in her recollections of her Lord. 
 
 The Crusaders obtained and held disputed 
 possession of the Holy Land, and protected it 
 from Moslem profanation; but it was a hope- 
 less and a wasteful protectorate. An uncon- 
 genial climate and the scimitar thinned the 
 ranks of Christian armies, deprived them of 
 
284 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 their conquests, and brought back upon mis- 
 guided Europe a bloody retaliation. In the 
 event she herself was invaded, the last of the 
 Caesars fell, and to this day "the crescent sur- 
 mounts the cross on the dome of St. Sophia." 
 
 Napoleon I., though he arose in the first 
 instance as a popular leader, discovered the 
 highway to supreme power to be through the 
 church. His crown must come from papal 
 hands, his legitimacy from the unction of 
 St. Peter, the stability of his throne from the 
 banks of the Tiber. He hence became a true 
 son of the church, catered to her superstitions, 
 and merited her blessing by the protection 
 which he extended over her holy places at 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 When he, however, fell before the stern Mus- 
 covite, the protectorate fell also into other 
 hands, — was assumed by the czar, who, with- 
 out contradiction, has been permitted to retain 
 it till recently, as though it had been ever his, 
 held in his own right, and that by common 
 consent. In executing the commission con- 
 ferred in this protectorate, he gradually en- 
 croached upon the territories of the Ottomans. 
 
 The Sublime Porte, cognizant of the con- 
 tinued desecration of the holy places, was 
 nevertheless appealed to in vain by Nicholas. 
 
TIIE WESTERN ALLIES. 285 
 
 Its subjects could not be restrained. The 
 antipathies of Ishmael to churches, altars, 
 crucifixes, holy places, and holy things, were 
 legitimate, were ever conscientious and on a 
 religious account. He was ever the sworn and 
 bloody foe of idolatry. In every place, and 
 especially at Jerusalem, the venerated remains 
 of a Christian antiquity, held most inviolably 
 sacred by the church, was ever made the object 
 of his most implacable rage and violence. 
 
 This it is which has unhinged the world's 
 harmonies for more than twelve hundred years. 
 In the Middle Ages it roused Europe to the 
 wars of the cross, and that by outrages com- 
 mitted on devotees peaceably though super- 
 stitiously gathered around the sepulchre of 
 their Lord. The indignities also practised 
 upon the bishop of the Greek church and the 
 Russian consul at Jerusalem on Easter Monday, 
 supplemented as it was by a forcible transfer 
 of stipulated sanctuary privileges from the 
 Greek to the Latin Christians, led to the 
 recent war of the Allies. 
 
 In a.d. 1673, it was conceded to Louis XI Y. 
 by the sultan, in a treaty, "that the King of 
 France be recognised the sole protector of 
 the Catholics in the East," Secondly, "that 
 churches be erected or repaired without the 
 
286 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 previous authorization of the Porte." Thirdly, 
 " that the holy shrines shall be restored to the 
 possession of the Latins, because they were 
 conquered by Frenchmen in the Crusades." 
 But subsequent changes had materially altered 
 the relations of parties, and the holy places, 
 in the judgment of many, had, both in justice 
 and in fact, fallen back again to the Greek 
 protectorate. 
 
 In a.d. 1850, France revived her claim, 
 based upon the above-named expired treaty; 
 but Napoleon was then a feeble recency in war 
 and in diplomacy, and the threatening attitude 
 of Nicholas led him to waive for the moment 
 his claim. 
 
 In the subsequent agitations of the questions 
 at issue, France appears as the protector of the 
 Latin, and Kussia of the Greek Christians 
 within the Turkish dominions. The war had 
 placed Turkey under the control of the Allies; 
 and, while it was claimed "that no Power 
 shall claim the right of exercising an official 
 protectorate over the subjects of the Sublime 
 Porte, no matter to which rite they belong," 
 France effectually protected the Catholic 
 Greeks in Turkey. 
 
 The sultan had, on one occasion, determined 
 to expel all Greeks not his own subjects from 
 
TIIE WESTERN ALLIES. 287 
 
 Constantinople. It was on account of the ani- 
 mosity of the Greeks against the Turks. It was 
 normal, it was universal ; and no Greek could be 
 trusted, whether he belonged to the one or the 
 other rite. France at once demanded that all 
 Greeks belonging to the Catholic church should 
 
 CD O 
 
 be made an exception to the rule. The sultan 
 refused to make any exception. " The French 
 ambassador," says the London Times, "there- 
 upon took fire, and demanded nothing short 
 of the dismissal of the Turkish ministers, on 
 whom the conduct of the war and the ex- 
 istence of the empire depend, and vowed that 
 if satisfaction were refused he should em- 
 bark with his whole embassy in forty-eight 
 hours." 
 
 Thus the depression of the Greek and the 
 exaltation of the Catholic church followed in 
 the train of the alliance, and signalized the 
 decline of the Russian protectorate. 
 
 If a quarrel arose at Jerusalem between the 
 Greek and Latin Christians, the Latins were 
 protected ; the Greeks had no one to speak on 
 their behalf. 
 
 France obtained a firman to build a church 
 in the Holy Land. The Pacha of Jerusalem 
 is instructed to purchase and present a piece 
 of ground for the building. A similar applica- 
 
288 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 tion, formally made by Prince MenschikofF, 
 was refused. 
 
 The Archbishop of Paris predicts that, in the 
 event of the overthrow of Kussia, the dominion 
 of the Papacy will become universal. 
 
 " It is," says the Koman archbishop in Que- 
 bec, " the cause of the church which has been 
 committed to the armies of France and Eng- 
 land; and their success while defending Turkey 
 against an unjust aggression on the part of the 
 enemy w T ill, at the same time, secure to the 
 church the twofold advantage of diminishing 
 schismatical influence in the East, and of esta- 
 blishing Catholicism on a more favourable and 
 independent footing." 
 
 In the peace-negotiations, first and last, the 
 phenomena that attended each step were their 
 ever-favourable phase toward the progress of 
 the Latin church. 
 
 " Letters from Home state that the Pope had 
 received from the czar an autograph letter 
 which announced the restoration of four Ko- 
 man Catholic bishops in Poland, and the esta- 
 blishment of six others in Kussia." 
 
 Constantinople has ever been, and yet is, the 
 great and dreaded rival of Koine. The Latin 
 sect is but a secession from the Greek. The 
 Greek is the mother-church. The fall of 
 
THE WESTERN ALLIES. 289 
 
 Constantinople, in a.d. 1453, was the fall of 
 Koine's great competitor, and the dawn of 
 her most hopeful processes of proselytism and 
 absorption. 
 
 Her missionaries are ever active throughout 
 the East, and their successes by no means in- 
 considerable. Her plans have been most com- 
 prehensive ; the anticipated results most mag- 
 nificent. Her sober attempts after universal, 
 temporal, and spiritual rule — the mastery over 
 the souls and the bodies of men— surpass the 
 wildest dreams of earthly ambition. These, in 
 her darkest reverses, have never been inter- 
 mitted. In all the alternations of her change- 
 ful fortunes, during the revolutions of ages, she 
 has not, for a single moment, lost sight of her 
 proudest aspirations ; and while she retains her 
 organic life she never will. 
 
 The policy of every cabinet which she 
 rules must, whatever other interest it secures, 
 secure her ultimate triumph. The Anglican, 
 the Protestant, and the Greek Christians are 
 alike her rivals, and they are alike marked for 
 the sacrifice. The emperor in her interest is 
 alike the enemy of them all. His compliant 
 protectorate will spread its ages over the Latin 
 church, and over that only. The toleration 
 of Christians of all sects by the Porte is one 
 
 25 
 
290 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 thing; the protectorate of Napoleon is quite 
 another. 
 
 The battle of Navarino, that broke the power 
 of Turkey, placed that power completely at 
 the mercy of her natural foe; and her remark- 
 able preservation to the present day can only 
 be accounted for by an inquiry into the ob- 
 vious policies of Home. 
 
 Turkey has found grace in her sight, that 
 Greece might perish. The fall of Turkey before 
 the successful encroachments of Kussia would 
 have restored the Greek empire, and would 
 have placed at the head of its revived fortunes 
 a race surpassed by no other in ambition or in 
 battle ; and the contest so long and so advan- 
 tageously conducted against the Greek church 
 would have ended in defeat and shame. The 
 czar is, therefore, beaten back, and the hated 
 Turk fostered, that the dominions of the Otto- 
 mans may be kept open to the continued prose- 
 lytisms of Home. 
 
 The overthrow of Russia, in the opinion of 
 the Archbishop of Paris, will open the way for 
 universal Papal ascendency. 
 
 Turkey is the packhorse of France and Italy; 
 and when she ceases to be of any further use 
 she will be turned out upon the common to 
 die. 
 
THE WESTERN ALLIES. 291 
 
 England, in her solicitude for her Eastern 
 possessions, was drawn into a war against her 
 Anglican establishment and her Protestantism. 
 Every blow of her sturdy arm, while it weak- 
 ened the Greek church, served to strengthen 
 her far mightier foe, and to put in jeopardy 
 more and more her own precious faith. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 ROME — HER ASPIRATIONS. 
 
 ; The woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigneth 
 over the kings of the earth." — St. John. 
 
 The following pages, so far as they relate 
 to unfulfilled prophecy, are introduced to close 
 my theme. I do not set them down as certain- 
 ties, but as my speculative opinions on debat- 
 able questions; — questions whose satisfactory 
 solution must ever be left to the revelations of 
 time. 
 
 How striking the picture of the combined 
 weakness and strength of Rome! She is a 
 woman, most delicate and frail; but she is 
 supported by a monster of enormous propor- 
 tions, on whose back she rides, and whose 
 crowned horns sustain and adorn her glitter- 
 ing tiara. She was called to judgment at 
 Constance, sat weak and defenceless before the 
 tribunal that arraigned her, but rode away 
 at last triumphant over her foes, — over the 
 ashes of Huss and Jerome, and with princes 
 
 292 
 
ROME. 293 
 
 at her bridle-rein. Napoleon I. lorded it 
 over her in the verdancy of his career, but 
 bowed his neck to her iron yoke at last. 
 She held her soft palm on the gateway of 
 legitimacy. Her unction made sacred the per- 
 sons of kings and emperors. She controlled 
 the opinions of his subjects and of Europe; 
 and their veneration for him, on a religious 
 account, was to him every thing. She gave 
 him his crown; he, in his turn, supported 
 her ecclesiastical supremacy. He became 
 strong in her strength; she became strong 
 in his. 
 
 His act in taking the crown out of the 
 hand of the pontiff and placing it on his own 
 head, though it tended to deceive the vulgar, 
 changed not the fact respecting his imperial 
 homage and servility. He became religious 
 from policy. He supported and carried the 
 Pope, that he might the more securely support 
 and carry his crown. 
 
 The Revolution of 1848 exalted the present 
 imperial despot to the throne of his illustrious 
 uncle. This same revolution made his Holi- 
 ness a fugitive, until the bayonets of French- 
 men restored and supported his fallen strength. 
 And, indeed, from the time that Phocas, Pepin, 
 and Charlemagne gave him the mastery, until 
 25* 
 
294 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 this day, his strength has ever been in the 
 support of Catholic princes. 
 
 There is nothing abnormal in the inter- 
 ference of foreign troops in the affairs of 
 Italy. It has ever been the fact; and that 
 fact has ever been one striking illustration 
 of the prophecy. The Pope is in himself a 
 cipher, but he is strong in the power of his 
 imperial supporters. 
 
 Where is the mighty Protestantism of the 
 League of Passau? The throne of the sove- 
 reign pontiff toppled before it, and his im- 
 perial defender sought refuge in a compliant 
 treaty from its iron grasp. But look now on 
 that broad field of its triumph, and where is 
 its power? Let the martyred blood of a mil- 
 lion Huguenots respond from the Rhone ! Let 
 Catholicized Geneva answer. Let Holland, 
 once the keystone in the arch that supported 
 the great Reformation, reply from amid the 
 ruins of her crumbling towers. Let Hungary 
 answer, now hung up " like the empty and 
 bleeding skin of a slaughtered victim." Let 
 Prussia answer, the last stronghold left, — 
 bearded now, and reluctantly admitted to 
 the peace-councils of the Allies at Paris 
 
 Such are some of the melancholy shadow- 
 ings of the recent war, whose thunders have 
 
ROME. 205 
 
 been breaking along the confines of two ages, 
 heralding the outgoing of the one and the in- 
 coming of the other. 
 
 Ishmael, with a piece of bread and a bottle 
 of water, turns again his pale face toward the 
 wilderness. The death-wail of expiring Greece 
 is heard on the^coast of the Black Sea. The 
 protectorate has fallen to Napoleon and to 
 Rome. Protestant Prussia has been menaced 
 on the Rhine and scorned ; and she is looking 
 this way and that way, like one at his wits' 
 end. England likewise — Protestant England 
 — has been shocked at her successive mis- 
 fortunes. Her lion slinks to his lair, while 
 the sea and the waves thereof are roaring, and 
 "men's hearts are failing them for fear and for 
 looking after those things that are coming on 
 the earth." 
 
 The final war upon the witnesses, it is with 
 reason believed, is just at hand. The ter- 
 mination of the late war has not settled the 
 " Italian question." It is a volcano whose 
 smothered tones will probably soon find utter- 
 ance and amaze the world. The witnesses 
 must fall. The beast shall overcome and kill 
 them. Even their wild halls of nature's ma- 
 sonry in the Alps shall soon be deserted, and 
 their Northern and insular retreats refuse them 
 
296 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 both life and sepulture. Across the left foot- 
 print of the angel disastrous twilight is sweep- 
 ing, and thunderings and lightnings and voices 
 and great hail are deepening the gloom of the 
 descending night. 
 
 Such are the visions that, since the Bevo- 
 lution of 1848, flit alike athwart the political 
 and the prophetic horizon. They are of pale 
 and of expiring things ; of old and of worn- 
 out confederacies and nationalities. Their 
 death-groans reach tis even across the ocean, 
 and their vanishing forms are fast disappearing 
 behind the shadows of an everlasting evening. 
 
 They are also of more hopeful things, — of 
 another age, whose young life is already coming 
 in on the coasts of a New World. To it the 
 footprint of the angel in the sea led the way, 
 and in it they sing the song of Moses the ser- 
 vant of God, and the song of the Lamb. To it, 
 also, nations are turning their eye, and "watch 
 for it as they that watch for the morning." 
 
 A few short years are yet assigned, according 
 to our reckoning of prophetic time, to accom- 
 plish the predicted death of the witnesses. The 
 wrongs and oppressions of ages shall then have 
 reached their full. Their testimony shall then 
 have been finished, and their garb of sackcloth 
 dyed in the blood of a universal massacre. 
 
ROME. 297 
 
 In the streets of that great ecclesiastical 
 city — that city steeped in the lust of Sodom, 
 dark with Egyptian cruelty, the spot also of 
 our Lord's perpetual crucifixion in the sacrifice 
 of the mass — shall the fearful tragedy openly 
 proceed, and reveal to all its scenes of remorse- 
 less and deliberate murder. 
 
 This awful event precedes the passing away 
 of the second woe; and, judging from the 
 rapidly-declining star of Ishmael, (if we had 
 no other guide,) the catastrophe must be re- 
 garded as nigh, — yea, even at the doors. 
 
 The prophet, however, skirts the gloomy pic- 
 ture with a fringe of light. This sudden and 
 destructive revival of papal oppression is to be 
 brief and final, — the last fatal eruption of the 
 spiritual Etna, — its unexpected and its suicidal 
 victory. And though no Cromwell then shall 
 live to expostulate and threaten, — no surviving 
 Milton cry, 
 
 u Avenge, Lord, thy slaughter' d saints, whose bones 
 Lie scatter' d on the Alpine mountains cold/' — 
 
 yet in the short space of three years and a 
 half the witnesses shall themselves revive and 
 open again their testimony in cottages and 
 palaces, and amid the demon-revels of the 
 amazed Antichrist. 
 
298 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 And, ere she shall recover from her despair, 
 or he able to rally her forces, unexpected 
 political confederacies shall form around the 
 joyous witnesses and call them up to places of 
 honour and security. 
 
 And in the same hour, simultaneously, the 
 tenth part of the city shall fall, and in one 
 out of the ten kingdoms despotism find a 
 bloody grave. Such is the prophetic picture 
 of the antecedents and concomitants of the 
 passing away of the second woe. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 
 
 " This is the Moslem's hour of prayer ! 
 'Twas Judah's ouce ; but fane and priest, 
 Altar and sacrifice, have ceased." 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 The second woe reached its height in the 
 fall of Constantinople. And when the Ottoman 
 shall relinquish his European conquests and 
 retire to his old dominions in the Euphrates, 
 the woe shall have passed away. 
 
 The Ottomans had a national being before 
 they became a woe ; and when they cease to 
 be a woe they do not also necessarily cease to 
 be a nation. Their nationality, it is believed, 
 indeed, will end; but it will be at another 
 time and place than the present or than 
 Europe. When the return of expatriated Isaac 
 shall be resisted by them in Asia, then shall 
 they " fall without hand/' or by the immediate 
 interposition of Heaven. Rejected from the 
 patrimony of Isaac by the great Proprietor of 
 heaven and earth, they in after-ages invaded 
 
 299 
 
300 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 and obtained it by violence; but, as their illus- 
 trious father fell in his first contest in the tent 
 of Abraham, and Sarah's bitter words prevailed 
 to make the scoffer an outcast, so in the final 
 issue he shall fall again, and that hopelessly, 
 before the better destiny of his injured brother. 
 
 The following prophecy seems descriptive 
 of the event : — " The sixth angel poured out 
 his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and 
 the water thereof was dried up, that the way 
 of the kings of the East might be prepared."* 
 
 The Euphrates flowed under the walls and 
 through the midst of the ancient Babylon, fur- 
 nishing the city with an abundant supply of 
 water, and enabling it to hold out indefinitely 
 in a siege. Cyrus dried up tins bed of the 
 river by digging new channels, into which he 
 turned the current, and opened thus, under the 
 walls, an ample passage for his invading army. 
 
 Having taken the city by this stratagem, he 
 made it the capital of the Persian empire. 
 From that time the Babylonian ceased to 
 exist, — dried up like the channel of its river. 
 It became henceforth absorbed and lost in that 
 of the Persian. 
 
 Hence, in Scripture parlance, the drying up 
 of the Euphrates had both a literal and a figu- 
 
 * Rev. xvi. 12. 
 
TIIE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 301 
 
 rative meaning. According to the latter, it 
 signified the amalgamation with their con- 
 querors of the people that might at any time 
 be in possession of the ancient Chaldea. The 
 Babylonian empire was lost in the Persian; 
 the Persian in the Saracenic ; the Saracenic in 
 the Turkish. The prophet, in the above-quoted 
 passage, points to a period in which the last- 
 named occupier of this renowned site of Ori- 
 ental despotism is to take the course and 
 share the fate of its several predecessors. 
 
 The Ottomans rose to power on the Eu- 
 phrates. They in after-ages made Constanti- 
 nople their capital. They have, however, never 
 lost their original territorial possessions on the 
 Euphrates. And when in coming years they 
 lose their hold on Europe and return again 
 to this first and last stronghold of their na- 
 tional existence, they are but to return home 
 to die. 
 
 According to this view of the subject, the 
 second woe and the sixth vial relate to dif- 
 ferent events, but both belong successively to 
 the history of the same people. The Ottomans 
 rise as the Euphratean horsemen, retain this 
 designation appropriately ever after, and return 
 again at the time of the end to find in this 
 very region their national sepulchre. The 
 
 26 
 
302 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 passing away of the second woe, it is obvious, 
 would not necessarily involve any more than 
 the exclusion of the Turks from Europe; since 
 it became the second woe when the Turks, 
 loosed from their restraints in the Euphrates, 
 invaded Europe and became masters of the 
 Eastern capital. When, therefore, they shall 
 retire again to their original domain in Asia, 
 the second woe will have passed away. 
 
 But in the effusion of the sixth vial there 
 is more indicated than the passing away of a 
 woe> — the termination of a scourge to Chris- 
 tendom. It intimates that the very people 
 composing that woe are thereafter no longer 
 to be reckoned among the nations; that, 
 when the angel shall empty the vial and spread 
 his cloud, the pestilential drops that shall con- 
 dense and fall shall bedew the pale brow of 
 the expiring Ishmael and prove fatal to his 
 very being. His great national artery shall 
 cease to flow, and his succession be cut off by 
 pestilence or war, or by amalgamation, and 
 disappear as perfectly as a river whose channel 
 becomes dry, — the future field for the shepherd 
 and the reaper. 
 
 It is a reasonable conclusion, also, that, as the 
 two great antagonists to the world's social and 
 Christian regeneration have a distinct descrip- 
 
TIIE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 303 
 
 tion assigned to them in the prophecy, as to 
 their origin and progress, so, not only the one, 
 but also the other, should have some distinct 
 indication of their end. 
 
 The plagues are represented as preparing 
 the way for the universal prevalence of Christ's 
 kingdom on earth by destroying successively 
 the enemies of his reign in the West. They 
 sweep on in close proximity until they fall 
 finally on the very seat of the beast, crushing 
 the very heart of despotism, bearing throne, 
 sceptre, and tiara into the chasm that had 
 smouldered for ages underneath the chair of 
 St. Peter. And why should we conclude that 
 another and an equally-determined enemy of 
 our Lord in the East should now escape ? Did 
 not the angel lift up his hand to heaven, and 
 swear by Him that liveth forever and ever, who 
 created the heavens and the things that therein 
 are, and the earth and the things that therein 
 are, and the sea and the things that are 
 therein, that there should be no longer any 
 delay, but that God would finish the mystery 
 when the seventh angel should begin to sound ? 
 
 The seven last plagues were surely the 
 fulness of plagues and the final end of venge- 
 ful visitations, since they were to reach and 
 bear away every stronghold of iniquity from 
 
304 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 the bosom of a sin-burdened world. The 
 direction to the angels to pour out their vials 
 upon the earth, as they were to prepare the 
 way for the millennium, must have compre- 
 hended at least those portions of the earth still 
 at that time covered with oppressive govern- 
 ments and with false religions. And they 
 could not therefore have taken simply the 
 circuit of Europe and have finally paused at 
 Kome, but must have continued on their way 
 till every other centre of evil had been reached 
 and obliterated. 
 
 The first, accordingly, hovers over the citadal 
 of political despotism; the second, over the 
 spot where vast fleets of armed oppressors lie 
 congregated in capacious harbours, ready to 
 spread their sails and dye the sea with Chris- 
 tian blood; the third, over the rivers and 
 fountains of the Ligurian Alps. The fourth 
 pauses just over the broad disc of the imperial 
 sun; the fifth, over the chair of the triple 
 tyrant. The sixth rests not till he reaches 
 his station in the centre of Asia, spreading the 
 plague-spot over the doomed sultanies. And 
 the seventh and the last rises above the prince of 
 the power of the air. And, since all evil poten- 
 cies are included, Islamism must also in these 
 plagues have its days numbered and finished. 
 
THE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 305 
 
 That this plague relates to Islamism is fur- 
 ther evident, since the object for which the 
 vial is poured out is the removal of the great 
 barrier opposed to the return of the kings of 
 the East. The Jews were opposed in their 
 exodus from Egypt by the Egyptians, and the 
 Canaanites crossed their march and obstructed 
 their entrance into the Holy Land. The 
 Mohammedans of the present day would be 
 equally certain to refuse them peaceable pos- 
 session of their own country, were they now to 
 commence in great numbers their final immi- 
 gration into it. 
 
 Daniel, in the eleventh chapter of his pro- 
 phecy, is believed to describe tliis very opposi- 
 tion; and Zechariah, (chapter xiv. verse 12,) 
 the consequent miraculous ruin of the unblest 
 foe at the time of converted Israel's restoration. 
 
 The East likewise is the place of early dawn. 
 A bright star, as the harbinger of the sun, 
 flames on the forehead of the morning. Hence, 
 it has been common among sacred writers to 
 describe any great spiritual or literal appear- 
 ance of our Lord by a reference to these 
 agreeable and beautiful objects. His advent 
 is called the "day-spring from on high." A 
 star seen in the east was the sign of it, and the 
 guide of the wise men. His people " shine as 
 
 26* 
 
306 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 lights in the world," — "are made kings and 
 priests unto God." And "the kingdom and 
 the greatness of the kingdom under the whole 
 heaven is to be given to his saints." Of this 
 great kingdom Jerusalem is to be the metro- 
 polis, and in it the throne and the succession 
 is to be restored to the house of David. 
 
 God gave the Holy Land to Abraham and 
 to his seed. It was to be their patrimony and 
 their residence while the sun and moon should 
 endure and rule the alternations of clay and 
 night. From it they were temporarily rejected 
 for their criminal rejection of their Lord; but 
 the very sentence containing the statement of 
 this fact implies also their ultimate restora- 
 tion: — "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of 
 the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles 
 shall be fulfilled." 
 
 .First in the series of instruments, the Ko- 
 mans trampled with iron foot this sacred and 
 appropriated heritage. It was made by them 
 the theatre of war and bloodshed. Other 
 countries could be held in subjection in the 
 peaceable exercise of power by these conque- 
 rors of the world; but this could not. Its 
 inhabitants sternly and perseveringly resisted. 
 It was therefore of necessity covered with gar- 
 risons and patrolled and harassed by exaspe- 
 
THE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 307 
 
 rated soldiers. Its vineyards and gardens were 
 turned into places for camps, battles, and 
 sieges ; nor would the infatuated tribes yield, 
 until their cities were razed to the ground and 
 they themselves slain or expatriated. 
 
 Vfith unbroken resolution and a terrible 
 courage, they ever forced the alternative upon 
 their masters of either abandoning the pro- 
 vince altogether or of holding possession of it 
 , by a military force. It could not therefore be 
 cultivated and made fruitful and remunerative. 
 Eome could but cover it with the ruin of its 
 Availed towns, break down its hedges, and set 
 an armed heel on its desolate bosom. 
 
 The Romans lost Palestine just as they 
 gained it, — by violence. The Saracens suc- 
 ceeded to its bloody rule in their turn, and 
 made it the camping-ground for their camels 
 and horses, and marred every remaining ves- 
 tige of architectural taste or cultivated beauty. 
 It was wrested in the end also from their 
 hands, and that by a new race of conquerors, 
 who, strangers alike to policy or humanity, 
 roused the nations to the wars of the cross. 
 It was held alternately by one or the other 
 among the contending parties for a time; but 
 no permanent or desirable conquests were 
 made by any. In it " many were over- 
 
308 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 thrown." In it, for ages, Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa met, not to plant and build and restore, 
 but to pluck up and cast down and to defile. 
 
 But the Crusaders had their day and their 
 end. Their armies perished finally around the 
 sepulchre which they defended, and its hoary 
 walls were again broken by the hammer of the 
 Moslem. 
 
 A new foe also rushed upon the plains of 
 Asia from the distant East. Tamerlane, in his 
 turn, at the head of fifteen hundred thousand 
 horse, swept and trampled the devoted patri- 
 mony. He too had his day, and was suc- 
 ceeded by the Turks, who, to this hour, efface 
 its beauty, oppress its children, and, by tread- 
 ing it down with Gentile feet, continue to fulfil 
 the prophecy. 
 
 But this desolation is not to be perpetual. 
 That land is yet to be happy and prosperous. 
 Its wilderness is to become as Eden, its desert as 
 the garden of God. The language in the text 
 under consideration is in striking contrast with 
 that employed to describe the fate of Babylon, 
 of Rome, and of the tribes of Ishmael. 
 
 Of Babylon it is said, " It shall never be in- 
 habited. The satyr is to dance in its streets, 
 the wild beasts of the island are to cry in its 
 desolate houses, and dragons in its pleasant 
 
TIIE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 309 
 
 chambers. Never more in it shall the Arabian 
 pitch his tent, or the shepherd make his fold. 
 It shall be a possession for the bittern and for 
 pools of water." Said the great Avenger, " I 
 will sweep it with the besom of destruction." 
 
 Eome is to be "utterly burned with fire;" 
 is to sink and disappear in the volcano that 
 shall open under her walls like "a millstone 
 cast into the sea." The significant language 
 of the angel is, as she is seen to descend into 
 the abyss, " She shall be found no more at 
 all." 
 
 The tribes of Ishmael are likewise to perish, 
 to be absorbed like a river lost in deep basins 
 opened underneath its pebbly bed. 
 
 But of Jerusalem it is said, "She shall be 
 trodden down of the Gentiles until the times 
 of the Gentiles be fulfilled ;" and — surely it is 
 here intimated — not after that. The scene is 
 then, we justly infer, suddenly to change. Her 
 children are to return, to be "as aforetime," 
 and the voice of lamentation and the shout of 
 the oppressor to be hushed along her length- 
 ened ruins. 
 
 " The kings of the East" reside in the East, 
 but in exile, as is suggested by the drying up 
 of a river to prepare the way for their ascension 
 to power, — the removal of the oppressors from 
 
310 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 their soil that its legitimate owners and right- 
 ful rulers may occupy it. 
 
 The Jews, though dispersed into every land, 
 are to be found in greater numbers in Eastern 
 Asia or beyond the Euphrates than in all other 
 places. And, when the tidings of their gather- 
 ing in vast bodies, — now at length penitent for 
 their rejection of their Lord, — with the pur- 
 pose of resettling in their long-lost Canaan, 
 shall reach the ears of Ishmael, the cupidity 
 and the enmity of the outcast and the usurper 
 shall revive, " and he shall go forth with great 
 fury to destroy and utterly to make away 
 many;" yet "he shall come to his end, and 
 none shall help him."* 
 
 And when "he shall plant the tabernacle 
 of his palace between the seas," (the Medi- 
 terranean and the Dead Seas,) "in the glori- 
 ous holy mountains," (of Judea,) — when his 
 camp shall thus cover the whole frontier, his 
 troops man every mountain-pass and walled 
 town, and guard every avenue to the Holy 
 Land, — then shall be seen this great river, the 
 river Euphrates, stretching from shore to shore, 
 and sweeping on with its standards and tents 
 and turbans, in a channel deep, broad, and 
 
 * Dan. xi. 44, 45. 
 
THE FALL OF ISLAMISM. 311 
 
 impassable, between returning Israel and the 
 land of their fathers. 
 
 And it is this river over which the angel 
 hovers, and which he curtains with pestilen- 
 tial wreaths from his vial, and in whose sepul- 
 chral basins vanish forever the Euphratean 
 Pharaohs. 
 
 " This," says Zechariah, " shall be the plague 
 wherewith the Lord will smite all the people 
 that have fought against Jerusalem; Their 
 flesh shall consume away while they stand 
 upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume 
 away in their holes, and their tongue shall 
 
 consume away in their mouth And so 
 
 shall be the plague of the horse, of the mule, 
 of the camel, and of the ass, and of all the 
 beasts that shall be in these tents, as this 
 plague." And, as the Israelites spoiled the 
 Egyptians, so in this event they shall spoil the 
 smitten Ottomans. "The wealth of all the 
 heathen round about shall be gathered to- 
 gether, gold, and silver, and apparel, in great 
 
 abundance In that day shall there be 
 
 upon the bells of the horses, Holiness unto the 
 Lord." 
 
 According to Ezekiel xxxix., seven months 
 should be spent in burying the dead on the 
 coasts of the sea to cleanse the land ; and after 
 
312 ISIIMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 the seven months the authorities "shall sever 
 out men of continual employment" to search 
 for stray bodies and scattered bones, to bury 
 them; and the passenger who in his tour 
 through the land should chance to discover 
 a bone should be required to "set up a sign 
 by it, till the buriers should bury it," 
 
 "And at that time shall Michael stand up, 
 the great prince which standeth for the chil- 
 dren of thy people : and there shall be a time 
 of trouble, such as there never was since there 
 was a nation even to that same time ; and at 
 that time thy people shall be delivered, every 
 one that shall be found written in the book."* 
 
 Thus, the drama that opens in the tent of 
 Abraham, and reopens in the cave of Hara, 
 closes with the return of converted Israel to his 
 native land. A dark pall drops on Mameluke 
 and Fatemite, Saracen and Turk; the shadows 
 of the long night roll back, and the latter-day 
 glory dawns, after the lapse of intervening 
 a^es, on the renovated fortunes of the house of 
 David. 
 
 * Dan. si. 1. 
 
CHAPTER XXXYI. 
 
 Isaac's patrimony restored. 
 
 Nor is there — so is she bereft — 
 One stone upon another left. 
 The cross and crescent shine afar, 
 But where is Jacob's natal star?" 
 
 Montgomery. 
 
 In the sixth chapter of the. Epistle to the 
 Romans, Paul insists that the promise to 
 Abraham and to his seed was through the 
 righteousness of faith ; by which principle it 
 was that Abraham became the father of many 
 nations. Not a lineal descent, but faith in 
 Christ, constituted any one a member of the 
 patriarch's great commonwealth. 
 
 While faith thus inducted strangers and 
 aliens and made them fellow-citizens of the 
 saints and of the household of faith, the want 
 of it correspondingly excluded his natural de- 
 scendants from that condition. Ishmael, the 
 scoffer and the persecutor, though a child of 
 Abraham, lost by his impiety all connection 
 with the covenants of promise. The question 
 
 27 U 313 
 
314 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 of legitimacy was not mooted ; it was his un- 
 belief, his rejection of the Messiah, that ex- 
 cluded him. 
 
 Esau, likewise, though a Hebrew, was re- 
 jected. At the age of nineteen, and when 
 capable of judging and acting for himself, he 
 despised his birthright, rejected Christ in that 
 act, and God rejected him. The Ishmaelites 
 and the Edomites, therefore, though Hebrews 
 by blood, were not Hebrews in truth, since 
 they were both destitute of the vital principle 
 of Hebrew nationality. 
 
 The Jews also, as a people, ceased to be 
 Jews on their rejection of their Messiah. 
 " He is a Jew who is one inwardly." The 
 tribes that perished in the wilderness " could 
 not enter in, because of unbelief." Whole na- 
 tions, and that from the earliest times, had 
 had their claims to Hebrew nationality vitiated 
 on this principle. Faith was essential to it. 
 
 " They are not all Israel which are of Israel, 
 neither because they are the seed of Abraham 
 are they all children, 'but in Isaac shall thy 
 seed be called ;' i.e. they which are the children 
 of the flesh these are not the children of God, 
 but the children of the promise are counted for 
 the seed." 
 
 The Gentiles, also, by faith become Abra- 
 
Isaac's patrimony. 315 
 
 ham's seed, are incorporated into his great 
 family, are heirs according to the pi-omise. 
 They change their relations when they become 
 Christians. But the Jew, in becoming a Chris- 
 tian, changes not his. He is like an original 
 branch broken from the olive-tree and then 
 re-engrafted into the parent stock. He is 
 naturally an heir; and, if he severs his connec- 
 tion by unbelief, it is the fault of his conduct, 
 not of his blood. 
 
 Hence, the Gentile had no other tie of na- 
 tionality than that of faith. He, like a wild 
 branch, was grafted in among the natural 
 branches, and with them partook of the root 
 and fatness of the tree. The converted Gen- 
 tiles were, on this account, called by the 
 apostles strangers and aliens, who by their 
 faith had become fellow-citizens of the saints 
 and of the household of faith. The lineal Jew 
 was, therefore, respected as one having a na- 
 tural precedence over the Gentile. To his 
 people pertained the adoption, the glory, the 
 covenants, the service of Gocl, the promises, 
 whose were the fathers, and of whom, as per- 
 taining to the flesh, Christ came. 
 
 Christ was a Hebrew, and of the house of 
 David. The twelve apostles were Jews. To 
 them, as such, and respected as believers, it 
 
31 G ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 was given to edit the New Testament, to 
 gather and organize the Christian church, and 
 in it to remain umpires in the decision of 
 every question of faith and practice. Their 
 recorded utterances are hence made final in 
 every debate on these subjects to the end of 
 time. They "sit on twelve thrones, judging 
 the twelve tribes of Israel." The New Testa- 
 ment church was not a new church, but a con- 
 tinuation of the old under new forms and 
 with additional privileges. By uniting with 
 it, Gentiles became the children of Abraham. 
 
 The following admonition derives all its force 
 from this consideration : — " Boast not against 
 the branches ; . . . . thou bearest not the root, 
 
 but the root thee If thou wert cut out 
 
 of the olive-tree which is wild by nature, and 
 wert graffed contrary to nature into a good 
 olive-tree ; how much more shall these, which 
 be the natural branches, be graffed into their 
 own olive-tree? For I would not, brethren, 
 that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, 
 lest ye should be wise in your own conceits, 
 that blindness in part has happened to Israel, 
 until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. 
 And so all Israel shall be saved : as it is writ- 
 ten, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, 
 and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." 
 
Isaac's patrimony. 317 
 
 The Gentile, in common with the Jew, by 
 faith inherits the righteousness of faith. This 
 righteousness was not a political or a patri- 
 monial, hut a spiritual, blessing. It did not 
 entitle the Gentile to the Holy Land. But the 
 Jew, having been excluded from it as a just 
 severity against his unbelief, returns to his 
 normal state in it, when, by his faith, he is 
 restored to divine favour. 
 
 In harmony with this view, his blindness is 
 represented as partial, not perpetual. " Blind- 
 ness in part has happened to Israel, until the 
 fulness of the Gentiles be come in." It is 
 partial, temporary, and must cease at the ap- 
 pointed time. But his blindness and his exile 
 are to cease together. 
 
 I need not here repeat, but simply call to 
 mind, what I have already said in the previous 
 chapter on the down-treading of the land of 
 Canaan for a limited period. It sustains the 
 position now taken. 
 
 Other Scriptures suggest with equal clear- 
 ness this twofold restoration. The institutions 
 of the Jews were none of them conventional. 
 Their entire polity was theocratical throughout. 
 All authority, office, law, worship, and all the 
 forms of either, were from Heaven, not of men. 
 This made all Palestine, in all parts of it, 
 
 27* 
 
318 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 ultimately dependencies of Jerusalem, in which 
 city the theocratical king resided, and the 
 high-priest officiated as the divinely-appointed 
 president of the sanhedrim. To Jerusalem 
 the tribes went up not only to worship, but 
 for justice and for the ultimate determination 
 of controversies. 
 
 Hence, Jerusalem came to be the place of 
 trial and of execution, — the spot more stained 
 than any other with the blood of legalized 
 murder. In the twenty-third chapter of Mat- 
 thew, from verse 23, our Lord first addresses 
 the scribes and Pharisees, the men in power, 
 denounces their hypocrisies, frauds, and mal- 
 versations; and then he continues: — "Behold, 
 I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and 
 scribes : and some of them ye shall kill and 
 crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in 
 your synagogues, and persecute them from city 
 to city : that upon you may come all the right- 
 eous blood shed upon the earth 
 
 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
 prophets, and stonest them which are sent 
 unto thee, how often would I have gathered 
 thy children together, even as a hen gathereth 
 her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
 not! Behold, your house is left unto you 
 desolate. For I say unto you, Ye shall not 
 
Isaac's patrimony. 319 
 
 see me henceforth till ye shall say, Blessed is 
 he that cometh in the name of the Lord." 
 
 The terms "Jerusalem" and "generation," 
 though not precisely synonymous, comprehend 
 the same commonwealth: — "generation" com- 
 prising the people that compose it, " Jerusalem," 
 the same people under an organized government. 
 
 That our Lord here addresses the Hebrews 
 as a national unity is also evident from the 
 wide range over which his weeping eye passes 
 as he takes in the affecting estimate of their 
 guilt. The shadowy past rises up in the dis- 
 tinct recollection of its long-forgotten events. 
 
 The Jewish character had ever been the 
 same. The perverseness which now oppressed 
 him was that with which he had long been fami- 
 liar. " How often would I have gathered thy 
 children together, as a hen gathereth her chick- 
 ens under her wings !" How she sits and calls 
 her young, and tenderly chides delay, and 
 shelters them from the cold, and exposes her- 
 self, all uncomplaining, through the weary day 
 and livelong night, to the dew, the wind, the 
 rain and driving sleet, to save and rear them ! 
 Even so, as a hen gathereth and cherisheth her 
 brood, have I sought and cherished thee. Amid 
 the woes of bondage, in the mortar-beds of 
 Egypt, and in the wilderness forty years long, 
 
320 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 and in Canaan, how often would I have 
 gathered thee, and by the river of Babylon for 
 seventy years. And, during the last three years, 
 how often in long nights of prayer, on lonely 
 mountains, or amid shame and spitting till 
 reproach hath broken my heart, and ye would 
 not! 
 
 He also glances down upon the dark and 
 guilty future, and cries, " Behold, I send unto 
 you prophets, and wise men, and scribes : and 
 some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and 
 some of them ye shall scourge in your streets, 
 and persecute them from city to city." 
 
 Thus, in this vision of their guilt, their 
 character for evil had been uniform ; it clave 
 to their very being as a people. The dying 
 cadences of their past ingratitude were even 
 now mingling with the reproaches of the pre- 
 sent hour and evoking most bitter accusations 
 from the anticipated crimes of the future. It 
 was evidently a national character now so 
 severely reprehended; and it was a national 
 doom now so reluctantly pronounced. 
 
 " Behold, your house is left unto you deso- 
 late." The house, the place of residence, 
 when left desolate, is uninhabited, dreary, and 
 falls into decay. 
 
 During most of the time for four hundred 
 
ISAAC'S PATRIMONY. 321 
 
 years from the period of this denunciation, the 
 Jews were banished from Jerusalem. Its walls 
 and temple, levelled with the ground, were left 
 in ruins. 
 
 After this, Constantine permitted the out- 
 casts to assemble once a year to bewail their 
 exile and the loss of the beautiful house in 
 which their fathers worshipped. It was pain- 
 ful, even to a foe, to see them at each return- 
 ing anniversary, clothed in sackcloth, come in 
 long processions, sit down amid broken arches, 
 subverted walls and altars, and to hear the 
 bitter wail of the desolate as it rose and floated 
 sadly over the surrounding ruins. But even 
 this poor privilege has often been denied 
 them. 
 
 The soil also has lost its fertility, or, at least, 
 has been esteemed worthless for agricultural 
 purposes; and, with every form of possible 
 misrule to discourage industry, it still lies un- 
 tilled. " The grass withereth after it groweth 
 up ;" the fig-tree blossoms not as aforetime ; 
 there is no fruit in the vine ; the labour of the 
 olive fails ; the fields yield no meat ; the flock 
 is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in 
 the stall; the owl roosts on the forsaken bal- 
 cony; the bat clings to the mouldering walls. 
 No country on earth within the same limits 
 
322 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 was ever so filled with people. The smallest 
 villages contained at least fifteen thousand, 
 the larger twenty or thirty; and these were 
 quite contiguous to each other. 
 
 A population of four millions, according to 
 Volney, inhabited Judea alone. Out of one 
 gate of its capital (according to Josephus) six 
 hundred thousand dead bodies were carried 
 during the siege under Titus, and at least a 
 million perished on that occasion. 
 
 Its thronged thoroughfares have ever since 
 been comparatively deserted, its " cities wasted, 
 without inhabitant, its houses without man." 
 The solid masonry of its towns is everywhere 
 giving way. The stones are precipitated on the 
 inmates, who retire to other apartments for a 
 temporary shelter, and whose hands are never 
 raised to repair a ruin or to resist the progress 
 of decay. 
 
 In that devoted land, all social interest, all 
 political importance, is utterly lost, and the 
 universal downward tendency cannot be re- 
 strained. It is "left desolate." The provi- 
 dential segis has been taken off; and all at- 
 tempts, therefore, from external sources, to re- 
 store and to rebuild, have proved unavailing. 
 Julian, aided by the people and the treasures 
 of his empire, abandoned the attempt in de- 
 
Isaac's patrimony. 323 
 
 spair. Ruin could spoil and mar and im- 
 poverish, but no hand could restore and build : 
 the earth rose up in Heaven's controversy, and 
 fire-balls drove back the workmen. 
 
 These are some of the reasons for believing 
 that the Jews as a nation are intended where 
 it is said, "Ye shall not see me henceforth, 
 till ye [shall again exist as ye do now, and] 
 shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name 
 of the Lord." 
 
 The Jews then had a national existence and 
 a country ; since then they have had neither. 
 Outcast from their own land, they have been 
 dispersed into every other, and have been 
 mostly disfranchised in them all. They must 
 repent, return, and reconstruct their pros- 
 trated polity, and say, " Blessed is he that 
 cometh in the name of the Lord." For it was 
 not the individuals of that generation who 
 were addressed as such, but the Hebrews as 
 they existed in an organized state, in a col- 
 lective national unity and responsibility ; and in 
 this same capacity are they to see by faith and 
 acknowledge the Messiah. 
 
 Zechariah (chap. xii. verse 10) represents 
 the house of David and the inhabitants of Je- 
 rusalem as deeply penitent while looking on 
 Him whom they had pierced. The same nation, 
 
324 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 in the same land in which they rejected and 
 murdered, shall see and adore their Lord. 
 
 The promise also of a restoration to the 
 favour of God, and simultaneously to their 
 own land, is often repeated. "In the day" 
 (says Ezekiel, chap, xxxvi.) " that I shall have 
 cleansed you from all your iniquities I will 
 also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the 
 wastes shall be builcled." The repentance and 
 the return synchronize. The resurrection 
 (detailed by this prophet in the next chapter) 
 of the whole house of Israel makes equally 
 clear assurance of the twofold restoration, — the 
 one to spiritual, the other to national, life. 
 
 The promise also which in the same chapter 
 is subjoined — to wit : that they should never 
 more be divided into two nations, but ever 
 after that event be and remain one nation, 
 under one king and shepherd — fixes this pre- 
 dicted restoration to a period subsequent to the 
 Christian era, and, indeed, to our own times, 
 since it has never yet occurred. 
 
 The valley also seen in this vision stretches 
 out under the eye of the prophet to the horizon, 
 and is the vast charnel of Israel's dispersed 
 generations. Like the bones of an immense 
 and fallen army, separated the one from the 
 other, and promiscuously scattered over the 
 
ISAAC'S PATRIMONY. 325 
 
 plain, so had Israel lost home and country, 
 political and ecclesiastical life, ruler and priest, 
 law and altar; and, in the dissolution of all 
 the bonds of a living commonwealth, they 
 were found scattered into every kingdom, and 
 without a resting-place in any; — among foes 
 who, while they refused them organized life, 
 protected them at the same time from exter- 
 mination; who, while they repressed among 
 them every effort to reconstruct their ruined 
 nationality, refused also interment to its bones. 
 The resurrection takes place where the bones 
 lie scattered ; the restoration follows. 
 
 "If," says Paul, "the casting away of them 
 be the reconciling of the world, what shall the 
 receiving of them be but life from the dead ?" 
 Both events are operative. The casting away 
 is the reconciling of the world; the receiving 
 of them, life from the dead. 
 
 The original grant to Abraham and to his 
 posterity has never yet fully come into their 
 possession. That grant extended from the 
 entering-in of Hamath the Great, (far north of 
 any territory ever yet occupied by them,) to 
 the river of Egypt, — a limit far south of any of 
 their former possessions. It was also to extend, 
 from west to east, from the foot of the Medi- 
 terranean to the Euphrates. David made 
 
 28 
 
26 ISHMAEL AND THE CnUECH. 
 
 most of this whole country tributary; but Israel 
 never occupied it, never filled it from limit to 
 limit with men like a flock. A part of the 
 Holy Land has been very densely settled; but 
 the remainder has ever been in the possession 
 of others. 
 
 The land also evidently awaits the return 
 of its children. The materials for constructing 
 cities, dwellings, terraces, causeways, bridges, 
 are all on the ground, ready to rise out of the 
 heaps of rubbish and to subserve all the pur- 
 poses of the restored community. The soil 
 so long untilled has been drinking in fer- 
 tility from the dew of heaven, and is now more 
 capable than ever of sustaining an immense 
 population. Down-trodden and desolate, it 
 mourns the absence of its rightful cultivators, 
 and refuses to yield its increase to the hands 
 of aliens. 
 
 Its expatriated heirs are likewise without a 
 home or a country elsewhere, and who, as the 
 world's bankers and merchants, can, on the 
 shortest notice, when the way is prepared, 
 gratify their long-cherished desire to return. 
 
 The obstruction also at the present time in 
 their way in Europe and Asia is alread}^ fallen 
 into the processes of a fatal decay. Lshmael, 
 smitten with decline and consumption, cannot 
 
Isaac's patrimony. 327 
 
 long retain the sceptre or the sword. His eye 
 waxes dim; untoward events surprise him; 
 the angel of the bottomless pit, who opened 
 for him the cave of Hara, is now opening for 
 him the gates of death ; the pestilential damps 
 of the Crimea and of the Bosphorus are but 
 the margins of that dark cloud hanging in 
 deadly wreaths over every centre of life in 
 his doomed and perishing being. What then, 
 within a brief period, will there be to hinder 
 Israel's return ? 
 
 This great event, — oh ! how desirable, since 
 it is linked with the world's salvation ! — it shall 
 be life from the dead. Then "many people 
 shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up 
 to the mountain of the Lord, to the house 
 of the God of Jacob; and he will teach of his 
 ways, and we will walk in his paths;" then 
 shall sectional animosities and the wars of un- 
 congenial races cease, swords be beaten into 
 ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, 
 fierce men loose their destructive propensities, 
 and a renovated world resound with the melo- 
 dies of Zion and the songs of the reaper. 
 
 Egypt has become the basest of kingdoms ; 
 the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency is as 
 when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 Persia and Greece, loosed from their founda- 
 
328 ISHMAEL AND THE CHURCH. 
 
 tions by Ishmael, are afloat at all uncertainties 
 in a sea which is itself soon to waste away in 
 its own dissolving bed. Rome rises but to fall ; 
 while, amid the ruins of despairing nations, Zion 
 rises to fall no more. 
 
 'See thy bright altars throng' d with prostrate kings, 
 And heap'd with products of Sabean springs ! 
 For thee Idume's spicy forests blow, 
 And seeds of gold in Ophir's mountains glow. 
 See heaven his sparkling portals wide display, 
 And break upon thee in a flood of day ! 
 No more the rising sun shall gild the morn, 
 Nor evening Cynthia fill her silver horn ; 
 But lost, dissolved in thy superior rays, 
 One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze, 
 O'erflow thy courts : the Light himself shall shine 
 Reveal'd, and God's eternal day be thine. 
 The seas shall waste, the skies in smoke decay, 
 Rocks fall to dust, and mountains melt away ; 
 But, fix'd his word, his saving power remains : 
 Thy realm forever lasts ; thine own Messiah reigns. 
 
 Pope's Messiah. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BT L. JOHNSON AJND CO. 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 

 Date Due 
 
 
 -m^rettfcgr 
 
 
 
 
 t 
 
 mjjtffmwf*^ 
 
 tt 
 
 
 
 
 ^m-^smmm 
 
 ||p 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f) 
 
 
 
 
I (/ 
 
muxiuiumjjiiJiimijmijjijijjniiuu^iujujijjjj^ji^l^S