Page:Calvinism, an address delivered at St. Andrew's, March 17, 1871.djvu/34

 passion of conviction they became, as I said, the soldiers of a purer creed. In Palestine, where they found idolatry in a form yet fouler and more cruel than what they had left behind them, they trampled it out as if in inspired abomination of a system of which the fruits were so detestable. They were not perfect—very far from perfect. An army at best is made of mixed materials, and war, of all ways of making wrong into right, is the harshest; but they were directed by a noble purpose, and they have left a mark never to be effaced in the history of the human race.

The fire died away. 'The Israelites,' we are told, 'mingled among the heathen and learned their works.' They ceased to be missionaries. They hardly and fitfully preserved the records of the meaning of their own exodus. Eight hundred years went by, and the flame rekindled in another country. Cities more splendid even than the hundred-gated Thebes itself had risen on the banks of the Euphrates. Grand military empires had been founded on war and conquest. Peace had followed when no enemies were left to conquer; and with peace had come philosophy, science, agricultural enterprise, magnificent engineering works for the draining and irrigation of the Mesopotamian plains. Temples and palaces towered into the sky. The pomp and luxury of Asia rivalled, and even surpassed, the glories of Egypt; and by the side of it a second nature-worship, which, if less elaborately absurd, was more deeply detestable. The foulest vices were consecrated to the