It is generally believed in Europe that El Islam is on the decline; and the old prejudices bequeathed by Crusades tend to make the assertion popular. It is based upon insufficient grounds. With as much correctness might the Muslim predict the present fall of Christianity by the heresies and schisms that distract the Church, from the wide spread of visionary Swedenborgians and of the shallow imposture Mormonism.[221] Turkey and Egypt may show traces of latitudinarianism, even as France and Germany have done; no Muslim people, however, has yet ventured to abolish El Islam by law. But Arabia and Afghanistan still stand firm as in the first ages of the faith. Generally it may be remarked that in Eastern religions the propagandism and missioning of the West has tended to strengthen and confirm the tenets against which they have been directed. Thus Hinduism, after giving a few outcasts to Christianity, has entrenched itself behind the stronghold of Vedantism; the learned are pure Deists, the ignorant pure idolaters. Buddhism remains untouched, and the very nature of its encyclopedian tenets renders it unassailable. Even the sect of Guebres has been strengthened by polemical arguments, and bids fair to rival its antagonists in disputative theology. In spite of the mighty force brought against it, the Parsee converts to Christianity might be numbered on a man’s fingers. Nor can these faiths yield to compulsion. The laws of Menu, of Zoroaster, and of Muhammad have still bulwarks not easily to be battered down. And should Christianity, as it has often threatened, ever meet the Saving Faith in mortal conflict, and the Cross assail the Crescent in the latest of crusades, the Muslim scimitar, rusty as it is with the rust of ages, will prove the good metal of which it was in the beginning forged. Supposing, however, El Islam abolished by civilization, underminded by the slow action of the Christian Powers closing around it, or become decrepit from old age, what would be the result? Some renewal essentially the same, formally different; some revival of its eternal principle, Monotheism, disguised under a fresh garb of those outward accidents that constitute a religion. Such has ever been the history of the world’s creeds. At all times emerging from the storm, Primeval faith uplifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pile on wings of flame, And soars and shines another and the same. FINIS. FOOTNOTES: [211] Existence of God is not “the common and almost universal belief of mankind.” The truth that there is a God is usually thus demonstrated: 1. Physical argument, in which effects and events are traced to causes, till arrival at a First Cause, uncaused. 2. Argument from final causes and design, of which innumerable evidences in physical and mental worlds point to a Great Original Designer. 3. Moral argument, based upon innate feeling of obligation and responsibility.