Moreover, a high principle of toleration has extended to them the benefit of the international laws of Christian states--a policy which only requires to be rightly understood to be pronounced in no ways deserving of blame or reprobation; for the evil can only be radically extirpated by the complete triumph of Christian truth over the false foundation and leading idea of this fanatical delusion. But, however improbable it may seem, regarded merely in an historical light, that the Mohammedan races will ever adopt Christian sentiments, morals, and principles, still in the great course of mundane things, or, in other words, in the counsels of Providence, nothing, however it may contradict human expectations, can rightly be held to be impossible. And, indeed, recent times furnish many speaking indications of a growing tendency to such an approximation. Many signs might be pointed out, which, while they bear witness to a widening and deepening feeling of its desirableness, encourage us to entertain higher and better hopes. To promote, and indeed to co-operate in bringing about so great and divine a consummation, so long as it can be done without violating higher duties and principles, does not appear to go in any degree beyond the sphere of a truly Christian and pacific policy, or to interfere with the relations which it is right to observe in regard to non-Christian states. On the contrary, the worst violation thereof, and one that most surely menaces danger and mischief, is for a Christian state, in direct opposition to its natural principle and vocation, to be seized and actuated by a fanatical lust of conquest similar to that which animated the Saracens. Such a subversion and confusion of all moral ideas, and of political life, was publicly manifested, for the first time in the Christian world, during the French Revolution. Breaking out with furious violence, in the brief period of its duration it developed itself with fearful rapidity. How many, or, rather, how few steps it would have required, had its reign been longer, to convert it into a military despotism, thoroughly heathenish, such as the Revolution indeed was from beginning to end; into a despotism which, like that of the caliphate already mentioned, should unite in the same person all spiritual, as well as temporal authority, we need not here further investigate. The dreadful possibility of such a contingency has been brought only too closely home to our fears.