l glories, how it paralyzes all virtuous
impulses, how it kills all enthusiasm, how it crushes out all hope and
lofty aspirations, how it makes slaves of its best subjects, how it
fills the earth with fear, how it drains national resources to support
standing armies, how it mocks all enterprises which do not receive
imperial approbation, how everything is concentrated to reflect the
glory of one man or family; how impossible, under its withering shade,
is manly independence, or the free expression of opinions or healthy
growth; how it buries up, under its armies, discontents and aspirations
alike, and creates nothing but machinery which must ultimately wear out
and leave a world in ruins, with nothing stable to take its place. Law
and order are good things, the preservation of property is desirable,
the punishment of crime is necessary; but there are other things which
are valuable also. Nothing is so valuable as the preservation of
national life; nothing is so healthy as scope for energies; nothing is
so contemptible and degrading as universal sycophancy to official rule.
There are no tyrants more oppressive than the tools of absolute power.
See in what a state imperialism left the Roman Empire when it fell.
There were no rallying forces; there was no resurrection of heroes.
Vitality had fled. Where would Turkey be to-day without the European
powers, if the Sultan's authority were to fall? It would be in the state
of ancient Babylon or Persia when those empires fell.

There is another side to imperialism besides dreaded anarchies.
Moreover, the whole progress of civilization has been counter to it. The
fiats of eternal justice have pronounced against it, because it is
antagonistic to the dignity of man and the triumphs of reason. I would
not fall in with the cant of the dignity of man, because there is no
dignity to man without aid from God Almighty through His spirit and the
message he has sent in Christianity. But there is dignity in man with
the aid of a regenerating gospel. Some people talk of the triumphs of
Christianity under the Roman emperors; but see how rapidly it was
corrupted by them when they sought the aid of its institutions to
bolster up their power. The power of Christianity is in its truths; in
its religion, and not in its forms and institutions, in its inventions
to uphold the arms of despotism and the tools of despotism. It is, and
it was, and it will be through all the ages the great power of the
w