Jesus Christ over the heathen world

When Constantine, 1500 years ago, was marking out lines of fortification for his new capital, some of his couriers, surprised at the greatness of the included space, asked “ How far are you going to carry the lines?” “ Until lie stops who goes before me,” was the answer of the Emperor. He deemed the city to belong to Jesus Christ; a token of the triumph of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ over the heathen world. To emphasize this idea, Justinian in reconstructing the Cathedral of St. Sophia, tore from the temples of Jupiter, and Venus, and Diana, and Baal, and Astarte, and Isis, and Osiris through all the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, their finest marbles and most noble columns. And the gracious majesty of that venerable monument to the overthrow of paganism still draws visitors from all parts of the world.

The name of Mohammed gleaming

The church is now a Mohammedan mosque. The name of Mohammed gleaming in letters of gold by the side of the name of God above the place where the Christian altar used to be, testifies to the failure and downfall of Oriental Christianity in that place, and makes this ancient Cathedral a monument to warn men of the doom awaiting political Christianity everywhere. Knowing by experience, ourselves, the blinding splendour of the temptation when the devil insidiously offers to satisfy all cravings of selfishness in return for some small concession—the Kingdoms of the earth in return for admission that the glory of such possession will content our cravings —we may not judge too harshly the fall of the early Church into this snare. But thus it was that this Church, after celebrating here in the fourth century the triumph of Christianity over the pagan world, became itself in the tenth century an object lesson in the capacity of the old pagan covetousness and lust for power to deaden disinterested devotion to Jesus Christ, so that in the fifteenth century the Lord “ removed its candlestick out of its place sightseeing sofia.”

Eastern Roman Empire

By the time that Islam finally crushed the Eastern Roman Empire, the name of Constantinople had long been synonymous in Western Asia with Imperial power. The Arabs to this day give it the dreadful name of Imperial Rome (Rourn) and know its sovereign as the Sultan of Rome. To the people of the whole region between Bokhara and Afghanistan and the Mediterranean this city is the wonderful place where might and wealth and knowledge take their source. As for the Turkish Empire the whole mass of doleful, disheartened territory is a mere appendage to Constantinople. Throughout its whole extent not a church nor a school, nor a factory nor a sawmill nor a village road nor a bridge over a rivulet can be built, not a book or newspaper can be printed nor a printing press set up, not a single petty official can take office without examination of the question at Constantinople. To this city young men in all Turkey look for their career, merchants for their goods, farmers for their market, mechanics for a field for their skill, and day-laborer’s for unlimited employment.

The whole male population of the Empire has for its ideal of success in life the opportunity to spend some years in Constantinople, and a large part of each successive generation attains to this ideal and is thus more or less formed by the influences of the great city. The eyes of all religious denominations too, instinctively turn to Constantinople for instruction in doctrine and polity and for the crown of successful effort. There lives the great head of Mohammedanism in all the world. There the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church still sits in the chair of Chrysostom, unmoved by the vain and restless curiosity respecting the nature of truth which first drove the Western Church into schism, and then tore the wandering schismatics of Rome into separate and discordant sects of many names.