rect supernatural influences! How rapid its triumphs when
it became adapted to the rude barbaric mind, or to the degenerate people
of the Empire! How popular and prevalent and widespread are those
religions which we are accustomed to regard as most corrupt! Buddhism
and Brahmanism have had more adherents than even Mohammedanism. How
difficult it was for Moses and the prophets to keep the Jews from
idolatry! What caused the rapid eclipse of faith in the antediluvian
world? Why could not Noah establish and perpetuate his doctrines among
his own descendants before he was dead? Why was the Socratic philosophy
unpopular? Why were the Epicureans so fashionable? Why was Christianity
itself most eagerly embraced when its light was obscured by fables and
superstitions? Why did the Roman Empire perish, with all the aid of a
magnificent civilization; why did this civilization itself retrograde;
why did its art and literature decline? Why did the grand triumphs of
Protestantism stop in half a century after Luther delivered his message?
What made the mediaeval popes so powerful? What gave such ascendency to
the Jesuits? Why is the simple faith of the primitive Christians so
obnoxious to the wise, the mighty, and the noble? What makes the most
insidious heresies so acceptable to the learned? Why is modern
literature, when fashionable and popular, so antichristian in its tone
and spirit? Why have not the doctrines of Luther held their own in
Germany, and those of Calvin in Geneva, and those of Cranmer in England,
and those of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England? Is it because, as men
become advanced in learning and culture, they are theologically wiser
than Moses and Abraham and Isaiah?

I do not cite the rapid decline of modern civilized society, in a
political or social view, in the most favored sections of Christendom; I
do not sing dirges over republican institutions; I would not croak
Jeremiads over the changes and developments of mankind. I simply speak
of the marvellous similarity which the spread and triumph of
Mohammedanism seem to bear to the spread and triumph of what is corrupt
and wicked in all institutions and religions since the fall of man.
Everywhere it is the frivolous, the corrupt, the false, which seem to be
most prevalent and most popular. Do men love truth, or readily accept
it, when it conflicts with passions and interests? Is any truth popular
which is arrayed against the pride of reason? When has pure moral trut