minded to play the cynic or the mountebank, I should choose some corrupt
and effete despotism, already grown weak and ridiculous by its decay--as
did at last the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire--and, after raising a
laugh at the expense of the old system say: See what a superior people
you are now--how impossible, under free and enlightened institutions, is
anything so base and so absurd as went on, even in despotic France before
the Revolution of 1793. Well, that would be on the whole true, thank
God; but what need is there to say it?

Let us keep our scorn for our own weaknesses, our blame for our own sins,
certain that we shall gain more instruction, though not more amusement,
by hunting out the good which is in anything than by hunting out its
evil. I have chosen, not the worst, but the best despotism which I could
find in history, founded and ruled by a truly heroic personage, one whose
name has become a proverb and a legend, that so I might lift up your
minds, even by the contemplation of an old Eastern empire, to see that
it, too, could be a work and ordinance of God, and its hero the servant
of the Lord. For we are almost bound to call Cyrus, the founder of the
Persian Empire, by this august title for two reasons--First, because the
Hebrew Scriptures call him so; the next, because he proved himself to be
such by his actions and their consequences--at least in the eyes of those
who believe, as I do, in a far-seeing and far-reaching Providence, by
which all human history is

Bound by gold chains unto the throne of God.

His work was very different from any that need be done, or can be done,
in these our days. But while we thank God that such work is now as
unnecessary as impossible; we may thank God likewise that, when such work
was necessary and possible, a man was raised up to do it: and to do it,