In the Christian West, indeed, both now and in the middle ages, the predominant tendency to error inclined toward the side of anarchy. Among the Mohammedan nations, on the contrary, from the very earliest days of their religion, the despotic lust of conquest has been, as it were, an inborn and homebred hereditary failing. It was indeed fed and encouraged by their national creed. But here also the greatest changes have taken place. The largest and most powerful of all the Mohammedan empires, that, viz., in India, is entirely overthrown, and scarcely a vestige of it remains in these times. By a natural revolution of things, the first irresistible conquerors are now themselves conquered and brought under the yoke of others. And so, too, on the other and western side of their once wide rule, they who formerly threatened the existence of civilized Europe are now dependent upon, essentially mixed up with, and owe their political existence to, European policy and the balance of power. This total change of the relative position of the Mohammedan states in general belongs undoubtedly to the characteristic signs which so peculiarly mark and distinguish our own age.
In the three centuries of modern history which fill up the interval between the middle ages and the revolutionary epoch of our own days, the moral constitution of the monarchy has been far more fully and clearly developed than in any previous era. But the most striking event of this period of history is furnished by the sad and melancholy phenomenon of the religious wars. These were the lamentable consequence of the schism in the faith, not indeed by any indispensable and necessary law, nor even as its natural, but still its perfectly explicable, result. In those lands where, as in England and France, there existed a weaker party of either side, which had either been fully conquered or was kept under by oppressive civil disabilities, this unhappy phenomenon assumed the most revolting appearance. But the same state of things took a very different turn in Germany. Here the religious disputes terminated in a higher and a nobler result. In a long and fruitless struggle of thirty years, which wasted and consumed the best energies of the nation, the two contending parties were taught, that with so nicely-balanced strength, no decisive result either way was to be expected. Coming at length to a wiser mind, they acknowledged their respective rights, and by a peaceable compromise they agreed to live together in the same social community. This great and famous religious peace, which, considered merely in the light of a treaty of general pacification, is a master-piece of policy, without equal or parallel, and serving for the basis for all subsequent treaties and questions of peace, is become for Germany a species of inborn national necessity, and, as it were, a second national character. She finds in it a full and perfect compensation for many disadvantages she labors under as compared with other lands, while she has acquired from it a great and important position in the world of the future. Considered with regard to the whole world, one can not well avoid ascribing to this indestructible religious peace in Germany a still higher importance, however little it is commonly understood or regarded in this light. Indeed, we can not but look upon it as the precursor, with hopeful promises, of a far greater and completer religious peace--a peace, I mean, which shall reconcile not only all differences in the faith, but also that more universal and more pervading dissension between faith and unbelief; the quarrel between science and faith being first adjusted, and unity restored thereby between them, and, consequently, also to life. But to effect this object, God, who wills nothing but peace and unity, must take the upper hand and be stronger than man, who loves and desires strife, or, at least, without loving and seeking it, is still ever relapsing into it.