Note M — THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

“Neither history nor more recent experience can furnish any example of the long retention of pure Christianity by a people themselves rude and unenlightened. In all the nations of Europe, embracing every period since the second century, Christianity must be regarded as having taken the hue and complexion of the social state with which it was incorporated, presenting itself unsullied, contaminated, or corrupted, in sympathy with the enlightenment or ignorance or debasement of those by whom it had been originally embraced. The rapid and universal degeneracy of the early Asiatic churches is associated with the decline of education and the intellectual decay of the communities among whom they were established.”—Tennent’s Christianity in Ceylon, p. 273. For the influence of Mohammedanism on the revival of letters in Europe, see Andres, Origine di ogni litteratura. Jourdain, Recherches critiques sur les traductions latines d’Aristote. Schmölders, Ecoles philosophiques entre les Arabes. Forster, Mohammedanism Unveiled. Urquhart, Pillars of Hercules. Lecky’s Rationalism, II., 284.