and eighty statesmen have held this highest office of the kingdom from 1370 to 1789: most of them therefore scarcely more than two years. Many have been executed after a short time. One of the most esteemed Mohammedan princes, Soliman the Magnificent, executed during his government, one after the other, most of the men on whose shoulders he had laid the most important works and the highest offices of his kingdom. An instinct of obedience, an inclination to unconditional absolute subjection under absolute authority prevails among Mohammedans, to which the utmost cruelty appears endurable, the utmost perversity natural. It must be added that the Sultan of Morocco unites the spiritual, and the temporal power, as sheriff, that is descendant of the prophet through Hosein and Ali. He is a despot as absolute as the king of Persia. All depends upon his will. He makes, alters, suppresses, and restores laws. He changes them according to his humour, convenience, or interests. Here there is no body of Ulema, no Mufti clothed with an authority independent of the sovereign, no divan, colleges, or ministerial departments. All follows the single command of the ruler. The nature of the supreme authority in these three Moslem empires speaks at the present day of its origin in the person of Mohammed. What we see is this. The misuse of Cæsarean power in applying to the Church of God, which from the beginning by divine order was independent, a supremacy in spiritual things not belonging to the civil ruler, is allowed by Divine Providence to call forth a far more terrible despotism, in the guise of a false prophet who invents a religion of which he is to be the apostle, and then claims all power, spiritual and temporal, as belonging to him in the character of apostle, and the use of force as the means of propagation. That despotism is allowed to seize for permanent occupation the richest provinces of the eastern empire, and to make its capital in fear of perpetual subjection. But it is also used to check the imperial usurpation over the Church, and to begin an era, now lasting for twelve centuries and a half, in which two religions, and two forms of government springing from these religions, stand over against each other in perpetual and irreconcilable opposition. The structure of the Church was vehemently shaken by the earthquake(110) which attended the pouring out of Islam upon the south-eastern and southern countries of the former Roman empire. It had to be seen whether the whole fabric would maintain itself upon its foundation of rock when such mighty portions of its structure were torn by main force away. Moslem writers say, when the locust swarm darkened vast countries, they bore on their wings these Arabic words:—“We are God’s host, each of us has nine and ninety eggs; and if we had a hundred we should lay waste the world with all that is in it”.