{37} Thirty-six years have elapsed since these words were penned, and although Turkey has been upheld by the European Powers, and has herself made one or two brave efforts on the battlefield and in the matter of constitutional reform, the process of decay has been rapidly advancing; yet even so who, at the beginning of the year 1912, could have foreseen the catastrophe which in a few short weeks has almost wiped Turkey from the Map of Europe? {45} And actually the very walls of Vienna. {47} Now in April, 1913, the four Balkan States and Greece in a brief but bloody campaign have brought Turkey apparently to her last gasp, and it is still a matter of speculation whether she will be allowed to retain possession of Constantinople and with it the merest thread of the littoral of Europe. This has now taken place, and _The Times_ of May 30, in a leader upon the signing of the Treaty of London, uses these epoch-making words—“The Ottoman Empire in Europe has now ceased to exist.” June, 1913. {48} The word “almost” may be removed, as Turkey in Africa has ceased to exist. The war with Italy in 1912 deprived Turkey of Tripoli, and thus the very last spot in Northern Africa emerged from the once overflowing waters of Mahommedan power by which it had been overwhelmed many centuries ago. {50} The number is rapidly diminishing, and day by day streams of Turkish refugees are pouring across the Bosphorus to the Asiatic side. {69} If the faithful preacher whose clear foresight is recorded here were to witness what we now see, would he not say, like St. Paul—“as we also forewarned you and testified?” When this book was published, Spiritualism, then recently imported from America, was only beginning to make itself felt, the destructive Higher Criticism, whose dry rot has now spread its subtle influence on all sides, had not landed on our coasts from Germany; the very names of Modernism, New Theology, and its offspring the Liberal Christian League, were non-existent; Christian Science had not then been imported to America from its Eastern home; and several other heresies and imitations (2 Timothy iii. 8), which under the guise of deep spiritual teaching are now crippling true spirituality and doing the Devil’s work, were still unborn. But they are with us now, and they have come to stay. Let us recognize their _source_ and their _significance_. {79} The significance of this clarion note of warning in connection with the events now taking place is of the greatest possible importance.