If, in
one small corner of this vast field, I shall have thrown a single ray of
light upon these subjects--if I shall have done anything in these pages
towards illustrating the pathology of a single people, I shall believe
that I have done better service to the Catholic Faith and the
Scriptures, than if I did really "know the times and the seasons, which
the Father has kept in His own hand." For by the former act I may have
helped to make some one man more prudent and brave to see and to do what
God requires of him; by the latter I could only add to that paralysis of
superstitious fear, which is already but too common among us, and but
too likely to hinder us from doing our duty manfully against our real
foes, whether it be pestilence at home or tyranny abroad.
These last words lead me to another subject, on which I am bound to say
a few words. I have, at the end of these Lectures, made some allusion
to the present war. To have entered further into political questions
would have been improper in the place where those Lectures were
delivered: but I cannot refrain from saying here something more on this
matter; and that, first, because all political questions have their real
root in moral and spiritual ones, and not (as too many fancy) in
questions merely relating to the balance of power or commercial economy,
and are (the world being under the guidance of a spiritual, and not a
physical Being) finally decided on those spiritual grounds, and
according to the just laws of the kingdom of God; and, therefore, the
future political horoscope of the East depends entirely on the present
spiritual state of its inhabitants, and of us who have (and rightly)
taken up their cause; in short, on many of those questions on which I
have touched in these Lectures: and next, because I feel bound, in
justice to myself, to guard against any mistake about my meaning or
supposition that I consider the Turkish empire a righteous thing, or one
likely to stand much longer on the face of God's earth.
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