common Christian cause that public prayers were offered up in the churches of England on behalf of 'the Emperor's excellent Majesty as God's principal minister, and all the Christian army assembled with him against the Turks;' and it was openly acknowledged here that 'our own danger or safety doth follow upon success of them.'

The plan and policy to subjugate all Christendom was genuinely Mohammedan. It was Islam which inspired it first in the Arabs and then in the Turks. The Arabs and the Turks adhered to it as long as they could, to the utmost of their power. If the desolating march upon Vienna, and the siege of that city by the Ottoman hosts two hundred years ago (A.D. 1683), was the last of its kind, it was so, only because experience had taught them that the enterprise they had taken in hand was beyond their power, that the national vitality of the Christian religion could not be crushed out by all the massive weight and fierce onslaught of the Mussulman world.

These hazardous and fanatical attacks upon Christendom, whose success would only have extended the reign of spiritual desolation and death over mankind, proved injurious to Islam itself, by the habits they fostered and the resources they squandered; and their final complete failure could not but accelerate that utter collapse and prostration of the Ottoman, and, in fact, of the whole Mohammedan, world, which is now bringing the rottenness of its foundation and the cancer in its vitals more and more to light. The entire Dar el Islam, or Islamic community, disunited and dismembered for generations, has now sunk into such a state of spiritual torpor and political impotence that, apart from fitful outbursts of fanaticism and spasmodic paroxysms of savagery, any serious aggressions against Christian nations are out of the question, and the signs of its approaching complete disintegration are rapidly multiplying. If, in some far-off places, such as the continent of Africa, Islam has of late been spreading to some extent, this has been effected by the notorious means of its propagandism, and can only remind one of those sparse green twigs sometimes still appearing at the extreme ends of half-dried-up boughs in trees whose core has for long been decaying from old age.

The Christian world, on the other hand, far from being stifled, was only stimulated, by the Mohammedan pressure of bygone ages, and has now reached such a commanding height of political power and general influence, that the Christian Governments of the day virtually exercise their sway over the whole earth. Thus far, then, the verdict of history has been clearly pronounced in favour of Christianity, on each stage of its past development, and against all those who strove to deprive the world of this salutary ferment and saving force. The Christian policy of Europe has already effected much in resuscitating and liberating the Christian nationalities which were so long kept in base subjection by Islam, and unpityingly trampled upon by its iron hoof. This Christian work of justice and mercy will, no doubt, be ultimately crowned with complete success, whilst the remaining Mussulman States are themselves hastening on the process of their final dissolution.

The external obstructions being thus providentially removed out of the way, one by one, Christianity can, in the future, more freely advance towards a still higher and wider sphere of its historical realisation, by assuming a predominantly universal or cosmopolitan character, and by effecting its final evolution as the one Church of Mankind, the Kingdom of God for all Nations.

Should the road to this great ulterior goal again be obstructed, perhaps from the midst of an apostate Christendom, and with all the fierceness of a desperate last effort, by an Adversary whose concentrated hostility to all that is Christian will merit for him the black distinction of 'the Antichrist,' then the past entitles us to hope that this severest combat between the kingdom of Light and the kingdom of Darkness on our earth will but prove the decisive birth-throe ushering in the crowning victory and everlasting peace. We read in the Word of God that at the most momentous final crisis, the King of kings shall descend in Person with the armies of heaven (Rev. xix. 11-16) and shall consume that Wicked One with the spirit of His mouth, and destroy him with the brightness of His coming (2 Thess. ii. 8), and, all conflict over, Himself shall reign as Prince of Peace for ever and ever (Rev. xi. 15; Heb. Vii. 2, 3).