He Has
No Other Knowledge Of Syria But What He Derives From The Prophecy;
And This (As He Takes The Office Gratis) Has Been Considered A
Sufficient Reason For His Appointment By The United States
Government.
As soon as he arrived, he sent and demanded an
interview with the Pasha; explained to him his interpretation of
the Apocalypse, in which he has discovered that the Five Powers and
America are about to intervene in Syrian affairs, and the
infallible return of the Jews to Palestine.
The news must have
astonished the Lieutenant of the Sublime Porte; and since the days
of the Kingdom of Munster, under his Anabaptist Majesty, John of
Leyden, I doubt whether any Government has received or appointed so
queer an ambassador. The kind, worthy, simple man took me to his
temporary consulate-house at the American Missionary Establishment;
and, under pretence of treating me to white wine, expounded his
ideas; talked of futurity as he would about an article in The
Times; and had no more doubt of seeing a divine kingdom established
in Jerusalem than you that there would be a levee next spring at
St. James's. The little room in which we sat was padded with
missionary tracts, but I heard of scarce any converts - not more
than are made by our own Episcopal establishment.
But if the latter's religious victories are small, and very few
people are induced by the American tracts, and the English
preaching and catechising, to forsake their own manner of
worshipping the Divine Being in order to follow ours; yet surely
our religious colony of men and women can't fail to do good, by the
sheer force of good example, pure life, and kind offices.
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