A phrase has gone forth, and has become almost proverbial among us, which was spoken by one who was our enemy--spoken, we thought, with no honest intention, but one which has been recognised as containing a reasonable prophecy. It concerned the sickness and coming death of that empire for which we have been fighting. If sickness has overtaken, if death is to overtake, that once vigorous kingdom, this, I believe, is the explanation:--It bore at one time a strong and terrible witness for a living God, a Ruler of men, a Destroyer of idols;--God endued it with strength to bear that witness. It bore no witness for a Son of God and a Son of Man. It put humanity at a hopeless distance from God. Therefore seeds of weakness were latent in it when it was mightiest. They were certain to develop themselves in it more and more. They were certain at last to make its belief in God ineffectual, because it denied Him to be a Father. To adopt the modes of European civilization--to tolerate enemies of the prophet--may delay or may hasten the dissolution which has been foretold Certainly there is not in any of these things a power to restore life. Would the acceptance of Christianity restore it? If Christianity is taken up just as these changes have been taken up, as part of a new system--as the condition of admission into fellowship with more powerful states, I can conceive nothing so worthless, so detestable. The old Mahometan fanaticism is worthy of reverence; for it was real and honest. _This_ profession of Christ would be a pretence and a mockery. The faith in Jesus which the Moslem does cherish is better than this;--he does confess Him as a great, though an inferior, Prophet. This would be to degrade Him into the head of a rival sect, which it is convenient for state purposes to make supreme.