Better stand in fear of one lion far away, than of many wolves, each in
the nearest wood. And so arise those truly monstrous Eastern despotisms,
of which modern Persia is, thank God, the only remaining specimen; for
Turkey and Egypt are too amenable of late years to the influence of the
free nations to be counted as despotisms pure and simple--despotisms in
which men, instead of worshipping a God-man, worship the hideous
counterfeit, a Man-god--a poor human being endowed by public opinion with
the powers of deity, while he is the slave of all the weaknesses of
humanity. But such, as an historic fact, has been the last stage of
every civilisation--even that of Rome, which ripened itself upon this
earth the last in ancient times, and, I had almost said, until this very
day, except among the men who speak Teutonic tongues, and who have
preserved through all temptations, and reasserted through all dangers,
the free ideas which have been our sacred heritage ever since Tacitus
beheld us, with respect and awe, among our German forests, and saw in us
the future masters of the Roman Empire.

Yes, it is very sad, the past history of mankind. But shall we despise
those who went before us, and on whose accumulated labours we now stand?

Shall we not reverence our spiritual ancestors? Shall we not show our
reverence by copying them, at least whenever, as in those old Persians,
we see in them manliness and truthfulness, hatred of idolatries, and
devotion to the God of light and life and good? And shall we not feel
pity, instead of contempt, for their ruder forms of government, their
ignorances, excesses, failures--so excusable in men who, with little or
no previous teaching, were trying to solve for themselves for the first
time the deepest social and political problems of humanity.

Yes, those old despotisms we trust are dead, and never to revive. But