Neither the Christian sisters nor the Christian brethren in England have seen their way to comply with this strange request. But it may perhaps interest Lucine Mussegh to learn that the six Great Powers of Europe are quite unanimous, and are manfully resolved, come what will, to shield His Majesty the Sultan from harm, to support his rule, and to guarantee his kingdom from disintegration. These are objects worthy of the attention of the Great Powers; as for the privilege of leading pure and chaste lives--they cannot be importuned about such private matters. What astonishes one throughout this long, sickening story of shame and crime is the religious faith of the sufferers. It envelops them like a Nessus' shirt, aggravating their agonies by the fear it inspires that they must have offended in some inexplicable way the omnipotent God who created them. What is not at all wonderful, but only symptomatic, is the mood of one of the women, who, having prayed to God in heaven, discovered no signs of His guiding hand upon earth, and whose husband was killed in presence of her daughter, after which each of the two terrified females was outraged by the band of ruffians in turn. When gazing, a few days later, on the lifeless corpse of that beloved child whom she had vainly endeavored to save, that wretched, heartbroken mother, wrung to frenzy by her soul-searing anguish, accounted to her neighbors for the horrors that were spread over her people and her country by the startling theory that God Himself had gone mad, and that maniacs and demons incarnate were stalking about the world!