born; and by striving "to do the best for himself" in it, may develop in a few generations into the supple and often cringing and deceitful person, whom we know as the Levantine of to-day—an instrument, that is, whom his soldier master of the ruling race uses for his convenience, and whom he despises. A youth of fire and ambition, with no more than the average young man's realization of things unseen and spiritual, is always tempted, under these circumstances, to find a career for himself where he will not be exposed to the constant fret of knowing himself undeservedly despised; and to find it either by abandoning the faith which for him spells humiliation, or the land whose laws impose it on the faith. Apostasy, indeed, except under actual stress of persecution, was and is a great rarity. Hereditary attachment to the faith of his fathers is an instinct rather than a habit with the oriental. And it is no mean testimony to her power that the Christian Church should, on the whole, be able to hold her own children under this constant temptation to leave her. All the same, through the ages the tendency of the dominant faith has been to draw away from Christianity, or from service to their own Church, those best worth perfecting. Islam has in this been only the heir of Zoroastrianism: both have taken throughout the centuries a "Janissary-tribute," not from the lives only, but also from the souls and characters of the Christian races subject to them.
