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VI.] race has been in religion, and its influence has been hardly less unlimited, in space and in time.

It seemed at one period, as is well known, that Greece would succeed to the imperial throne of Persia, subjecting the civilized world to her sway; but the prospect lasted but for a moment: the sceptre of universal dominion slipped from the hands of Alexander's successors, and soon passed over into the keeping of another and younger branch of the same family. Rome, appropriating the fruits of Greek culture, and adding an organizing and assimilating force peculiarly her own, went forth to give laws to all nations, and to impose upon them a unity of civilization and of social and political institutions. And if Christianity was of Semitic birth, Greeks and Romans gave it universality. Rejected by the race which should have especially cherished it, it was taken up and propagated by the Indo-Europeans, and added a new unity, a religious one, to the forces by which Rome bound together the interests and fates of mankind.

Now came the turn of yet another branch, the Germanic. This had, indeed, only the subordinate part to play of aiding in the downfall of the old order of things, and preparing the way for a new and more vigorous growth. Its tribes ravaged Europe from east to west, and even to the farthest southern coasts, giving ruling class and monarch to nearly every country of the continent. But centuries of weakness and confusion were the first result of this great up-turning, and it even appeared for a time as if the dominion of the world were destined to be usurped by another race. The Semites, inspired with the furious zeal of a new religion, Mohammedanism, broke from their deserts and overran the fairest parts of Asia and Africa; and their conquering hosts entered Europe at either extremity, establishing themselves firmly, and pushing forward to take possession of the rest. They recoiled, at last, before the reviving might of the superior race, and the last and grandest era of Indo-European supremacy began, the era in the midst of which we now live. For the past few centuries, the European nations have stood foremost, without a rival, in the world's history.