ity out of the very blackness of the shadow thrown by 'The Light of the World.' Hence it is that wherever modern Christendom-which I will, for the sake of distinguishing it from the Christendom proposed by Christ, style Anti-Christendom * -comes into contact with the races who live under the dim religious light of their respective revelations, the feeble rays of the latter become extinguished by the gross darkness of this Anti-Christendom, and they lie crushed and mangled under the iron heel of its organised and sanctified selfishness. The real God of Anti-Christendom is Mammon: in Catholic Anti-Christendom, tempered by a lust of spiritual and temporal power; in Greek AntiChristendom, tempered by a lust of race aggrandisement; but in Protestant Anti-Christendom, reigning supreme. The cultivation of the selfish instinct has unnaturally developed the purely intellectual faculties at the expense of the moral; has stimulated competition; and has produced a combination of mechanical inventions, political institutions, and an individual force of character, against which so-called 'heathen' nations, whose cupidities and covetous propensities lie comparatively dormant, are utterly unable to prevail.

"This overpowering love of 'the root of all evil,' with the mechanical inventions in the shape of railroads, telegraphs, ironclads, and other appliances which it has discovered for the accumulation of wealth, and the destruction of those who impede its accumulation, constitutes

what is called 'Western civilisation.'

"Countries in which there are no gigantic swindling corporations, no financial crises by which millions are ruined, or Gatling guns by which they may be slain, are said to be in a state of barbarism. When the civilisation of AntiChristendom comes into contact with barbarism of this sort, instead of lifting it out of its moral error, which would be the case if it were true Christendom, it almost invariably shivers it to pieces. The consequence of the arrival of the so-called Christian in a heathen country is, not to bring immortal life, but physical and moral death. Either the native races die out before him-as in the case of the Red Indian of America and the Australian and New Zealander-or they save themselves from physical decay by worshipping, with all the ardour of perverts to a new religion, at the shrine of Mammon-as in the case of Japan- and fortify themselves against dissolution by such a rapid development of the mental faculties and the avaricious instincts, as may enable them to cope successfully with the formidable invading influence of AntiChristendom. The disastrous moral tendencies and disintegrating effects of inverted Christianity upon a race professing a religion which was far inferior in its origin and conception, but which has been practised by its professors with more fidelity and devotion, has been strikingly illustrated in the history of my own country. One of the most corrupt

forms which Christianity has ever assumed, was to be found organised in the Byzantine empire at the time of its conquest by the Turks. Had the so-called Christian races which fell under their sway in Europe during their victorious progress westward been compelled, without exception, to adopt the faith of Islam, it is certain, to my mind, that their moral condition would have been immensely improved. Indeed, you who have travelled among the Moslem Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who are the descendants of converts to Islam at that epoch, will bear testimony to the fact that they contrast most favourably in true Christian virtues with the descendants of their countrymen who remained Christians; and I fearlessly appeal to the Austrian authorities now governing those provinces to bear me out in this assertion. Unfortunately, a sufficiently large nominally Christian population was allowed by the Turks to remain in their newly-acquired possessions, to taint the conquering race itself. The vices of Byzantinism speedily made themselves felt in the body politic of Turkey. The subservient races, intensely superstitious in the form of their religious belief, which had been degraded into a passport system, by which the believer in the efficacy of certain dogmas and ceremonials might attain heaven irrespective of his moral character on earth, were unrestrained by religious principle from giving free rein to their natural propensities, which were dishonest and covetous in the extreme. They thus revenged themselves on their conquerors, by undermining them financially, politically, and morally; they insidiously plundered those who were too indifferent to wealth to learn how to preserve it, and infected others with the contagion of their own

of

cupidity, until these became as vicious and corrupt in their means of acquiring riches as they were themselves. This process has been going on for the last five hundred years, until the very fanaticism of the race, which was its best protection against inverted Christianity, has begun to die out, and the governing class of Turks has with rare exceptions become as dishonest and degraded as the Ghiaours they despise. Still they would have been able, for many years yet to come, to hold their own in Europe, but for the enormously increased facilities for the accumulation of wealth, and therefore for the gratification of covetous propensities, created within the last half-century by the discoveries of steam and electricity. Not only was Turkey protected formerly from the sordid and contaminating influence of Anti-Christendom by the difficulties of communication, but the mania developing the resources of foreign countries for the purpose of appropriating the wealth which they might contain, became proportionately augmented with increased facilities of transport-so that now the very habits of thought in regard to countries styled barbarous have become changed. As an example of this, I would again refer to my own country. I can remember the day when British tourists visited it with a view to the gratification of their æsthetic tastes. They delighted to contrast what they were then pleased to term 'oriental civilisation' with their own. Our very backwardness in the mechanical arts was an attraction to them. They went home delighted with the picturesqueness and the indolence of the East. Its bazaars, its costumes, its primitive old-world cachet, invested it in their eyes with an indescribable charm; and books were written which fascinated the Western reader

with pictures of our manners and customs, because they were so different from those with which he was familiar. Now all this is changed; the modern traveller is in nine cases out of ten a railroad speculator, or a mining engineer, or a financial promoter, or a concession hunter, or perchance a would-be member of Parliament like yourself, coming to see how pecuniary or political capital ean be made out of us, and how he can best exploiter the resources of the country to his own profit. This he calls 'reforming' it. His idea is, not how to make the people morally better, but how best to develop their predatory instincts, and teach them to prey upon each other's pockets. For he knows that by encouraging a rivalry in the pursuits of wealth amongst a people comparatively unskilled in the art of money-grubbing, his superior talent and experience in that occupation will enable him to turn their efforts to his own advantage. He disguises from himself. the immorality of the proceeding by the reflection that the introduction of foreign capital will add to the wealth of the country, and increase the material well-being and happiness of the people. But apart from the fallacy that wealth and happiness are synonymous terms, reform of this kind rests on the assumption that natural temperament and religious tendencies of the race will lend themselves to a keen commercial rivalry of this description; and if it does not, they, like the Australian and the Red Indian, must disappear before it. Already the process has begun in Europe. The Moslem is rapidly being reformed out of existence altogether. Between the upper and the nether millstone of Russian greed for territory and of British greed for money, and behind the mask of a prostituted Christianity, the Moslem in Europe has been

ground to powder: hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children have either perished by violence or starvation, or, driven from their homes, are now struggling to keep body and soul together as best they can in misery and desolation, crushed beneath the wheels of the Juggernauth of 'Progress,'their only crime, like that of the poor crossing-sweeper, I think, in one of your own novels, that they did not move on.' This is called in modern parlance the civilising influence of Christianity.' At this moment the Russians are pushing roads through their newly-acquired territory toward Kars. I am informed by an intelligent Moslem gentleman who has just arrived from that district, that the effect of their 'civilising' influence upon the inhabitants of the villages through which these roads pass, is to convert the women into prostitutes and the men into drunkards. No wonder the Mohammedan population is flocking in thousands across the frontier into Turkish territory, abandoning their homes and landed possessions in order to escape the contamination of Anti-Christendom.

"In these days of steam and electricity, not only has the traveller no eye for the moral virtues of a people, but his æsthetic faculties have become blunted; he regards them only as money-making machines, and he esteems them just in the degree in which they excel in the art of wealth-accumulation. Blinded by a selfish utilitarianism, he can now see only barbarism in a country where the landscape is not obscured by the black smoke of factory - chimneys, and the ear deafened by the scream of the locomotive. For him a people who cling to the manners and customs of a bygone toms of a bygone epoch with which their own most glorious traditions are associated, have no charm. He sees in a race which

still endeavours to follow the faith of their forefathers with simplicity and devotion, nothing but ignorant fanaticism, for he has long since substituted hypocrisy for sincerity in his own belief. He despises a peasantry whose instincts of submission and obedience induce them to suffer rather than rise in revolt against a Government which oppresses them, because the head of it is invested in their eyes with a sacred character. He can no longer find anything to admire or to interest in the contrast between the East and West, but everything to condemn; and his only sympathy is with that section of the population in Turkey who, called Christians like himself, like him devote themselves to the study of how much can be made, by fair means or foul, out of their Moslem neighbours.

"While I observe that this change has come over the Western traveller of late years. a change which I attribute to the mechanical appliances of the age-a corresponding effect, owing to the same cause, has, I regret to say, been produced upon my own countrymen. A gradual assimilation has been for some time in progress in the East with the habits and customs of the rest of Europe. We are abandoning our distinctive costume, and adapting ourselves to a Western mode of life in many ways. We are becoming lax in the observances of our religion; and it is now the fashion for our women to get their high-heeled boots and bonnets from Paris, and for our youths of good family to go to that city of pleasure, or to one of the large capitals of Europe, for their education. Here they adopt all the vices of Anti-Christendom, for the attractions of a civilisation based upon enlightened selfishness are overpoweringly seductive, and they return without religion of any sort

shallow, sceptical, egoistical, and thoroughly demoralised. It is next to impossible for a Moslem youth, as I myself experienced, to come out of that fire uncontaminated. His religion fits him to live with simple and primitive races, and even to acquire a moral control over them; but he is fascinated and overpowered by the mighty influence of the glamour of the West. He returns to Turkey with his principles thoroughly undermined, and, if he has sufficient ability, adds one to the number of those who misgovern it.

"The two dominant vices which characterise Anti-Christendom are cupidity and hypocrisy. That which chiefly revolts the Turk in this disguised attack upon the morals of his people, no less than upon the very existence of his empire, is, that it should be made under the pretext of morality, and behind the flimsy veil of humanitarianism. It is in the nature of the religious idea that just in proportion as it was originally penetrated with a divine truth, which has become perverted, does it engender hypocrisy. This was 80 true of Judaism, that when the founder of Christianity came, though himself a Jew, he scorchingly denounced the class which most loudly professed the religion which they profaned. But the Phariseeism which has made war upon Turkey is far more intense in degree than that which he attacked, for the religion which it profanes contains the most divine truth which the world ever received. Mahomet divided the nether world into seven hells, and in the lowest he placed the hypocrites of all religions. I have now carefully examined into many religions, but as none of them demanded so high a standard from its followers as Christianity, there has not been any development of hypocrisy out of them at all corresponding to that

which is peculiar to Anti-Christianity. For that reason I am constrained to think that its contributions to the region assigned to hypocrites by the prophet will be out of all proportion to the hypocrites of other religions.

"In illustration of this, see how the principles of morality and justice are at this moment being hypocritically outraged in Albania, where, on the moral ground that a nationality has an inherent right to the property of its neighbour, if it can make a claim of similarity of race, a southern district of the country is to be forcibly given to Greece; while, in violation of the same moral principle, a northern district is to be taken from the Albanian nationality, to which by right of race it belongs, and violently and against the will of the people, who are in no way consulted as to their fate, is to be handed over for an nexation to the Montenegrins-a race whom the population to be annexed traditionally hate and detest. "When Anti-Christian nations, sitting in solemn congress, can be guilty of such a prostitution of the most sacred principles in the name of morality, and construct an international code of ethics to be applicable to Turkey alone, and which they would one and all refuse to admit or be controlled by themselves, -when we know that the internal corruption, the administrative abuses, and the oppressive misgovernment of the Power which has just made war against us in the name of humanity, have driven the population to despair, and the authorities to the most cruel excesses in order to repress them,-and when, in the face of all this most transparent humbug, these Anti-Christian nations arrogate to themselves, on the ground of their superior civilisation and morality, the right to impose reform upon Turkey,-we neither admit their pretensions,

covet their civilisation, believe in their good faith, nor respect their morality.

"Thus it is that, from first to last, the woes of Turkey have been due to its contact with Anti-Christendom. The race is now paying the penalty for that lust of dominion and power which tempted them in the first instance to cross the Bosphorus. From the day on which the tree of empire was planted in Europe, the canker, in the shape of the opposing religion, began to gnaw at its roots. When the Christians within had thoroughly eaten out its vitals, they called on the Christians without for assistance; and it is morally impossible that the decayed trunk can much longer withstand their combined efforts. But as I commenced by saying, had the invading Moslems in the first instance converted the entire population to their creed, Turkey might have even now withstood the assaults of ' progress.' Nay, more, it is not impossible that her victorious armies might have overrun Europe, and that the faith of Islam might have extended over the whole of what is now termed the civilised world. I have often thought how much happier it would have been for Europe, and unquestionably for the rest of the world, had such been the case. That wars and national antagonisms would have continued is doubtless true; but we should have been saved the violent political and social changes which have resulted from steam and electricity, and have continued to live the simple and primitive life which satisfied the aspirations of our ancestors, and in which they found contentment and happiness, while millions of barbarians would to this day have remained in ignorance of the gigantic vices peculiar to AntiChristian civilisation. The West would then have been spared the