the path of virtue. This is the only worthy course, and the only wise one, wiser and worthier, I venture to assert, than a whole century of crusade.

In conclusion, I would say to Mohammedans that if I have drawn a gloomy picture of their immediate political fortunes, it is not that I despair even of these. Their day of empire in the world seems over, but their day of self-rule may well dawn again, though under changed conditions from any we now witness. I foresee for them the spiritual inheritance of Africa and Southern Asia, and as the intelligence of the races they convert shall have risen to the level of their present rulers, and Europe, weary of her work, shall have abandoned the task of Asiatic and African government, the temporal inheritance too. How long this shall be delayed we know not. Their prophet has foretold that Islam shall not outlive two thousand years before the Mohdy shall come, and the thirteen hundredth is just commencing; nor do I believe their deliverance will be so very long delayed. A "man of justice" may yet restore their fortunes; but it will hardly be by present violence or by wading to Mecca through seas of blood; and when the end of their humiliation

shall have come, it may be found that his true mission has commenced already, and that the battle he was to fight has been long waging in the hearts of those who have striven to reform their ways and purify their law, rather than lament their broken power and the corrupt vanities of their temporal empire.

THE END.

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