emerged all the religious teachers who have most powerfully
influenced mankind, for it was in Asia in an unknown antiquity
that the Persian Zoroaster taught the dualism of good and
evil; that the Indian Gautama 600 years before Christ declared
that self-abnegation was the path to a dreamless Nirvana; that
less than a century later the Chinese Lao-tse enunciated the
mysteries of Taoism and Confucius uttered his maxims
regarding the five earthly relations of man, to be followed within
another century by the bold teaching of Mencius that kings
should rule in righteousness. In Asia it was 1,000 years
afterwards that the Arabian Mohammed proclaimed himself as the
authoritative prophet. There the God and Father of us all
revealed Himself to Hebrew sage and prophet in the night vision
and the angelic form and the still, small voice; and in Asia are
the village in which was cradled and the great altar of the
world on which was crucified the Son of God.

We of the West boast of our national history. But how brief
is our day compared with the succession of world powers which
Asia has seen.

Chaldea began the march of kingdoms 2,200 years before
Christ. Its proud king, Chedor-laomer, ruled from the Persian
Gulf to the sources of the Euphrates, and from the Zagros
Mountains to the Mediterranean. Then Egypt arose to rule
not only over the northeastern part of Africa, but over half of
Arabia and all of the preceding territory of Chaldea. Assyria
followed, stretching from the Black Sea nearly half-way down
the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the eastern
boundary of modern Persia. Babylon, too, was once a world