They have learned, too, by their intercourse with strangers,
and in the towns by the newspapers which they now eagerly read, that
this has not been always so, and that servitude is not the natural state
of man or acquiescence in evil the true position of religion, and they
see in all they suffer an outrage inflicted on the better law of Islam.
I was much struck by hearing the Egyptian peasantry last year attribute
the lighter taxes they were then enjoying to the fact that their new
ruler was "a man who feared God."
At the same time the learned classes are shocked and alarmed at the
political decline of Islam and the still greater dangers which stare her
in the face, and they attribute them to the unchecked wickedness and
corruption with which the long rule of Constantinople has pervaded every
class of society, even beyond its own territorial borders. They complain
now that they have been led astray, and believe that the vengeance of
Heaven will overtake them if they do not amend their ways. In all this,
I say, there is something of the spirit which once goaded Christians
into an examination of the bases on which their belief rested, and of
the true nature of the law which tolerated such great corruption.
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