The Eastern Outlook

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1882

The Eastern Outlook.

While the star of empire is making its way westward, the crescent seems destined soon to make its way eastward, so far as its possessions on the European side are concerned. We take the following significant items from an article by J. M. Ludlow, D. D., written from Constantinople, and published in the Christian Weekly of March 11, 1882:—

Another very significant indication of the tendencies in Turkey was mentioned to me by an English officer who has been employed for several years in collecting statistics for the use of his government, and who has made many journeys through Turkey. He observed that already the property in the towns and farm districts was fast passing into the hands of the Christians. Moslemism has deadened not only the conscience, but also the enterprise of its devotees. Indeed they themselves, noticing their numerical and financial inferiority, speak of the probability of their withdrawing across the Bosporus whence they came into Europe. Many bury their dead at Scutari, on the Asiatic side, confessing the uncertainty of their possessions on this side.

The Moslems have a saying that their power in Europe will endure until the face of Jesus appears in St. Sophia; their ancestors meaning by this that they were to have perpetual possession. But the superstitious to-day find in the saying a prophecy of ill-omen. The early Christian builders of St. Sophia executed in rare mosaic work the face of Jesus in the wall above the altar site. The Turks, in their eagerness to efface every symbol of the faith they had conquered by arms, hastily covered the portrait with a thick coat of paint. But time is tearing off this desecration, and the face of Jesus is appearing in St. Sophia.

But a more rational omen is visible a few miles above Constantinople. There stand on the western bank of the Bosporus the frowning walls of the fortification built by Mahomet II., when the armies of the prophet first intrenched themselves on European soil. These walls are crumbling. The fortress was built in the shape of the initial of Mahomet’s name, which was to the faithful a pledge of its impregnability. But the devout Mussulman reads there now the word Kismet, “It is fate,” and looks longingly to the East, whither he has driven his hopes before him.