4 Life q/'Sir Stamford Raffles — Introduction, 



having in the lapse of ages heen perverted into polytheistic idol- 

 atry of the grossest character, the Mosaic dispensation took place. 

 But though the Israelites thus became the depositaries of reve- 

 lation, yet were they greatly inferior in civilization and mental 

 acquirements, to their neighbours the Phoenicians, as well as to 

 the Assyrians, vrhose empire was at this period at the zenith of its 

 glory. Still however from Western Asia proceeded all the streams 

 of knowledge which fertilized the rest of the world ; and though 

 the ascendancy which the Greeks and Romans, in subsequent 

 times, successively obtained over the affairs of mankind, partially 

 carried forward into Europe the chief seats of power and intel- 

 lectual cultivation ; yet the sources of their greatness had been 

 received directly from Egypt and the East, and their empires 

 were established in districts of the European continent, lying im- 

 mediately adjacent to that of Asia. 



This anomaly in the history of the world, appears to have arisen 

 from some peculiarity in the character of the Jews, which, whilst 

 it fitted them to be the instruments of preserving a written reve^ 

 lation, rendered them incapable of pursuing the refinements, whe- 

 ther moral or intellectual, which are invariably consequent on the 

 . full reception of revelation, and its development throughout the 

 human faculties. But the establishment of Christianity restored 

 all things to order; and henceforward the possessors of Divine 

 Truth became the rulers of mankind, and enjoyed the highest 

 degree of intellectual attainment; the new condition of things 

 being first consolidated, by the erection, in the fourth century, 

 of a powerful Christian state, the " Eastern Empire" of histo- 

 rians, in the very centre of the then civilized world. In propor- 

 tion, however, as Christianity advanced in Europe, it declined in 

 Asia, and when its former seat on the shores of the Euxine was 

 no longer useful as a medium of its communication to the sur- 

 rounding world, in consequence of the corruptions it had there 

 sustained, the fall of Constantinople before the Mohammedan 

 arms, in the year 1453, terminated the independence of the 

 Christians in Asia. Western Europe now became, as it has conti- 

 nued to be, the grand centre of vital impulse to the globe ; the 

 chief seat of religion, of power, of science, and of the arts. The 



