5.
We have now arrived at what may literally be called the turning-point of Turkish history. We have seen them gradually descend from the north, and in a certain degree become acclimated in the countries where they settled. They first appear across the Jaxartes in the beginning of the seventh century; they have now come to the beginning of the eleventh. Four centuries or thereabout have they been out of their deserts, gaining experience and educating themselves in such measure as was necessary for playing their part in the civilized world. First they came down into Sogdiana and Khorasan, and the country below it, as conquerors; they continued in it as subjects and slaves. They offered their services to the race which had subdued them; they made their way by means of their new masters down to the west and the south; they laid the foundations for their future supremacy in Persia, and gradually rose upwards through the social fabric to which they had been admitted, till they found themselves at length at the head of it. The sovereign power which they had acquired in the line of the Gaznevides, drifted off to Hindostan; but still fresh tribes of their race poured down from the north, and filled up the gap; and while one dynasty of Turks was established in the peninsula, a second dynasty arose in the former seat of their power.
Now I call the era at which I have arrived the turning-point of their fortunes, because, when they had descended down to Khorasan and the countries below it, they might have turned to the East or to the West, as they chose. They were at liberty to turn their forces eastward against their kindred in Hindostan, whom they had driven out of Ghizni and Affghanistan, or to face towards the west, and make their way thither through the Saracens of Persia and its neighbouring countries. It was an era which determined the history of the world. I recollect once hearing a celebrated professor of geology attempt to draw out the consequences which would have occurred, had there not been an outlet for the Thames, which exists in fact, at a certain point of its course. He said that, had the range of hills been unbroken, it would have streamed off to the north-east, and have run into the sea at the Wash in Lincolnshire. An utter change in the political events which came after, another history of England, and nothing short of it, would have been the result. An illustration such as this will at least serve to express what I would say of the point at which we now stand in the history of the Turks. Mahmood turned to the east; and had the barbarian tribes which successively descended done the same, they might have conquered the Gaznevide dynasty, they might have settled themselves, like Timour, at Delhi, and their descendants might have been found there by the British in their conquests during the last century; but they would have been unknown to Europe, they would have been strange to Constantinople, they would have had little interest for the Church. They had rebelled against Mahmood, they had driven his family to the East; but they did not pursue him thither; he had strength enough to keep them off the rich territory he had appropriated; he was the obstacle which turned the stream westward; in consequence, they looked towards Persia, where their brethren had been so long settled, and they directed their course for good and all towards Europe.
But this era was a turning-point in their history in another and more serious respect. In Sogdiana and Khorasan, they had become converts to the Mahometan faith. You will not suppose I am going to praise a religious imposture, but no Catholic need deny that it is, considered in itself, a great improvement upon Paganism. Paganism has no rule of right and wrong, no supreme and immutable judge, no intelligible revelation, no fixed dogma whatever; on the other hand, the being of one God, the fact of His revelation, His faithfulness to His promises, the eternity of the moral law, the certainty of future retribution, were borrowed by Mahomet from the Church, and are steadfastly held by his followers. The false prophet taught much which is materially true and objectively important, whatever be its subjective and formal value and influence in the individuals who profess it. He stands in his creed between the religion of God and the religion of devils, between Christianity and idolatry, between the West and the extreme East. And so stood the Turks, on adopting his faith, at the date I am speaking of; they stood between Christ in the West, and Satan in the East, and they had to make their choice; and, alas! they were led by the circumstances of the time to oppose themselves, not to Paganism, but to Christianity. A happier lot indeed had befallen poor Sultan Mahmood than befell his kindred who followed in his wake. Mahmood, a Mahomedan, went eastward and found a superstition worse than his own, and fought against it, and smote it; and the sandal doors which he tore away from the idol temple and hung up at his tomb at Gazneh, almost seemed to plead for him through centuries as the soldier and the instrument of Heaven. The tribes which followed him, Moslem also, faced westward, and found, not error but truth, and fought against it as zealously, and in doing so, were simply tools of the Evil One, and preachers of a lie, and enemies, not witnesses of God. The one destroyed idol temples, the other Christian shrines. The one has been saved the woe of persecuting the Bride of the Lamb; the other is of all races the veriest brood of the serpent which the Church has encountered since she was set up. For 800 years did the sandal gates remain at Mahmood's tomb, as a trophy over idolatry; and for 800 years have Seljuk and Othman been our foe, singled out as such, and denounced by successive Vicars of Christ.