Civilization and the Making of the State

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MIDDLE EAST TODAY

Civilization and the

Making of the State in
Lebanon and Syria

Andrew Delatolla
 Middle East Today

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Fawaz A. Gerges
Department of International Relations
London School of Economics
London, UK

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Josef Korbel School of International Studies
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 Andrew Delatolla

Civilization
and the Making
of the State
in Lebanon and Syria
Andrew Delatolla
Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies
School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK

Middle East Today

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 Acknowledgements

This book developed from a specific interest in the politics of Lebanon and
Syria within a global context, and is the result of continuous discussion
and debate with friends and colleagues on issues of statehood, imperi-
alism, colonialism, Orientalism, and race. The extensive group of remark-
able friends and colleagues that have thoughtfully engaged with me in
these discussions include, but are by no means limited to Katerina Dala-
coura, Fawaz Gerges, George Lawson, for their constant mentorship,
as well as Daniel Neep, Charles Tripp, Christine Cheng, Joanne Yao,
Hadi Makarem, Omar al-Ghazzi, Sophie Haspeslagh, Dima Krayem, Till
Spanke, Martin Hearson, Julia Himmrich, Kiran Phull, Annissa Haddadi,
Simone Datzberger, Margaret Ainley, Ida Danewid, Evelyn Pauls, Nicola
Degli Esposti, Shourideh Molavi, Maria Fotou, Terri Ginsberg, Iman
Hamam, Rabab el-Mahdi, and Marco Pinfari for having such great influ-
ence on my scholarship. I am indebted to these scholars, who have directly
and indirectly influenced the direction of the book and arguments, having
been generous in providing me with their insights and critiques. I am also
grateful to have presented various parts of this book at conferences and
workshops, having received terrific feedback at ISA, BISA, BRISMES, and
Millennium.
The project would not have been possible without the institutional
and financial support of the Middle East Centre and Department of
International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political
Science, the Department of Political Science at the American University in

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cairo, the RJ Vincent Memorial Scholarship, and the Middle East Centre
Emirates Ph.D. Scholarship.
The arguments made throughout this book were inspired by extensive
engagement with the Lebanese National Archives, the French Diplomatic
Archives, the French National Archives, the British National Archives, the
UK Parliamentary Archives, and the archives at l’Université Saint-Joseph
in Beirut. Without the generosity and patience of the staff at the archives,
this book would not have been possible.
In addition to the academic and professional support that I have
received over the years, making this endeavour a reality, none of it
would have been possible without the support of friends and family.
Lauren Sexton, Hayat Chedid, Karim Chedid, my parents Darlene and
George Delatolla, my sisters Andrea and Victoria, my brother-in-law,
Harry Williams, my grandparents Wadia and Romeo Shoiry and Catherine
and John Delatolla, for all the love, encouragement, and instilling in me
the importance of history and politics.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Contemporary State-Building and Development: The
(Re)production of a Civilizational Standard 4
Civilization and the State: Tying Development
and State-Building to Imperialism and Colonialism 15
The Argument: The Modern State as a Standard
of Civilization 19
Chapter Breakdown 22
Works Cited 26

2 The Standards of Civilization and the Production

of Statehood 33
Theories and Histories of State Formation in the Middle East 34
European State Formation: Historicizing the Conceptual
Foundations Modern Statehood 41
Post-colonial Statehood: The Result of a Standard
of Civilization 49
The Civilizing Project and European Colonialism
in the Middle East 56
Conclusion 59
Works Cited 61

vii
viii CONTENTS

3 Equality as a Standard of Civilization: The Opposition

Towards Ottoman Tolerance 69
Equality and Tolerance: Foundations of Governance
in Europe and the Ottoman Empire 71
Equality as a Standard of Civilization 77
The Tanzimat Reforms: The Failure of Equality 82
Conclusion 89
Works Cited 91

4 Race, Religion, and Civilization in Programs

of Governance and Modernization 95
Historic Intersections of Civilization, Race, and Religion 96
The Hatt-ı Şerif: Eradicating Inferior Government 106
Mount Lebanon: Racializing Religion 110
Continuing Civilizational Reform: The Hatt-I
Humayun 1856 115
Racialized Religion and National Consciousness 119
Conclusion 121
Works Cited 124

5 Territory, Identity, and Governance: Creating Order

from Disorder 129
Creating Civilized Boundaries: Territory, Identity,
and Governance 131
Split Authority in Mount Lebanon: Territorialization
and the Division of Greater Syria 136
The Land Code of 1858 144
Settling the Desert 148
Conclusion 151
Works Cited 153

6 Violent Resistance: Interactions with Modernity

and European Interference 155
Violence as Resistance: European Interference and Revolt 156
European Modernization, Modernity, and the Emergence
of Violent Resistance 161
The Aleppo Uprising, 1850 162
The Damascus Massacre, 1860 165
 CONTENTS ix

The Mandate System and Faisal’s Revolt 172

French Colonial Pacification: The Druze Revolt 1925 178
Conclusion 181
Works Cited 182

7 Nationalism as Resistance: Acquiescing to European

Identifiers 185
Nationalism, Resistance, and Response 187
The Young Ottomans 188
The Young Turks, Arab, and Syrian Nationalists 195
Conclusion 210
Works Cited 211

8 Preventing Autonomy: European Interests

and the Application of a Standard of Civilization 215
European Interests in the Ottoman Empire at the Beginning
of the Reform Period 217
Applying the Standard of Civilization: Methods to Attain
Political Interests 223
The Tanzimat: Hatt-ı Şerif (1839) and the Hatt-ı
Hümayun (1856) 223
The French Mandate and Lebanon and Syria 230
French Governance and Political Representation
in Lebanon and Syria 235
Conclusion 242
Works Cited 244

9 Conclusion: Taking Histories of Post-colonial

Statehood Seriously 247
The Standard of Civilization and the Production of the State
in Lebanon and Syria 248
(Re)Thinking Statehood 253
The Standard Lives On 256

Bibliography 257

Index 279
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The modern state in international relations and political science is often

described by a set of generalizable and, at times, abstract criteria. This
is inclusive of qualifications such as territory, government, population,
and international and domestic recognition. The conceptualization of the
state in an abstract manner, however, produces a significant problem for
social scientific research, specifically when attempting to engage in analysis
of modern statehood in the non-West. While some social scientists may
argue that it is necessary to simplify or abstract states as units of study to
develop generalizable theories from which we are better able to under-
stand domestic and global politics, the practice of simplification in the
social sciences can distort reality. Here, simplification and abstraction can
make important differences invisible while highlighting conclusions that
are problematic.1

1 This is most evident in realism, neorealism, liberalism, and, at times, in feminist and
post-colonial literature. Realism, neorealism, and liberalism treat states as units with similar
or the same goals and interests, with the same functions, or functioning in relation to
an accepted set of universal norms (Morgenthau 2005; Waltz 1979; van de Haar 2009;
Doyle 1996). Feminist and post-colonial scholarship, can, treat sources of oppression
and repression as singular objects (Hooper 2001), or constructs the ‘third world’ or
‘developing world’ as a singular actor (Mohanty 1984; Said 1978).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license 1

to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Delatolla, Civilization and the Making of the State
in Lebanon and Syria, Middle East Today,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57690-5_1
2 A. DELATOLLA

Abstraction is a particular problem that occurs in political science and

international relations with regard to the modern state. By engaging
in abstraction, differences between states are often dismissed or simpli-
fied, reduced to regime type, institutions, and culture. The dismissive
or reductive approach towards difference follows from arguments that
the structure of the international state system and the characteristics of
statehood create enough similarity to warrant the development of gener-
alizable theories regarding state interests, relations, and organization.
Based on this notion, political science, international relations, and devel-
opment studies produce the assumption, often implicitly, that states exist
on a linear scale, from strong to weak and failing; hegemonic to passive
and submissive (Morgenthau 2005; Waltz 1979; Bellamy 2008; Clapham
1998; Grant 1999).
Although the state can be viewed as a political system, one that is
now present in every society, Shmuel Eisenstadt argued that ‘different
types of political systems develop and function under specific social condi-
tions, and the continuity of any political system is also related to such
specific conditions’ (1993, p. 3). As such, abstracting and simplifying the
state becomes problematic. While the modern state can be, justifiably,
seen as a global system of social, political, and economic organization,
following from Eisenstadt, it cannot be generalized due to variation in
the historical social and political context from which it emerged. Herein,
a fundamental problem becomes evident: variations in historical social and
political contexts produce difference, yet an abstracted concept of modern
statehood has become a benchmark, or a standard, to be attained.
Investigating the application of this abstracted conceptualization of
modern statehood, this book draws attention to the emergence of the
post-colonial state in Lebanon and Syria and argues that the modern state
in Lebanon and Syria was the result of a standard of civilization. Here, the
standard of civilization is discussed as a political tool of the nineteenth
century to distinguish ‘civilized’ from ‘barbarian’ societies, ‘to gate-keep
membership of international society, and to justify colonialism’ (Buzan
2014, p. 576; Linklater 2016a). Although it can be argued that state-
hood has existed throughout history, not located in a single temporality
or geography, the concept and conceptual framing of the modern state
did not (de Carvalho et al. 2011).
The state, as a concept that frames the legal-political organization
of a society or a country through government and demarcated bound-
aries, began to take form in the fourteenth century, developing from the
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

thirteenth-century Old French ‘estat ’ or ‘estate’ and Latin word ‘status ’.

‘Estat ’ and ‘status ’ were used to describe the position, condition, status,
order, or arrangement of an entity. In a figurative sense, these terms
referred to public order or community organization, sometimes within
a legal context. In the fourteenth century, the term ‘state’ was used in
relation to status rei plublicae or the status or condition or the republic
(Lazzeri 1995). It is this foundation from which the knowledges and
practices of the modern state began to emerge and later, in the late eigh-
teenth century, was deployed as a standard of civilization. By making this
argument, it is possible to consider how the modern state, as a standard
of civilization, was embedded in histories of nineteenth-century global
transformations, altering the social, political, and economic conditions
and contexts of society in Lebanon and Syria. The book focuses empir-
ically on rational state-building, the civilizing project, in Lebanon and
Syria, tracing the developments and immediate consequences of rational
state-building into independence.
The following section of this chapter considers some of the arguments
and discussions concerning contemporary state-building and develop-
ment. It engages in these discussions to make an argument about histor-
ically constituted and embedded knowledges and practices of modern
statehood. Here, the arguments produced in the contemporary scholar-
ship highlight particular aspects of modern statehood as a standard of
civilization which can then be historicized. This includes how the state
or polity is abstracted from its social and political context and measured
against a set of criteria produced in relation to an ideal type. Addition-
ally, what becomes apparent in making this connection is the continuity
of the modern state as a standard of civilization in state-building and
development, which reproduces a practical and intellectual coloniality
regarding statehood. From this engagement, it is possible to historicize
these contemporary deliberations to the global transformations of the
nineteenth century. This follows from Aníbal Quijano, who argued that

the intellectual conceptualization of the process of modernity produced

a perspective of knowledge and a mode of producing knowledge […] it
is […] a specific rationality or perspective of knowledge that was made
globally hegemonic, colonizing and overcoming other previous or different
conceptual formations and their respective concrete knowledges. (Quijano
2000, pp. 549–550)
4 A. DELATOLLA

Emergent from intertwined processes related to colonialism and capi-

talism, the coloniality of knowledge/power, or Eurocentrism, functions
by establishing ‘binary, hierarchical relations between categories of object
and reflects a particular secular, instrumental, and technocratic rational-
ity’ (Tucker 2018, p. 219). Secularity, instrumentality, and rationality
are, as Quijano argues, ‘exclusively European products’, from which
‘intersubjective and cultural relations between Western Europe and the
rest of the world were codified’ in binary and hierarchical relations,
such as ‘East-West, primitive-civilized, magic/mythic-scientific, irrational-
rational, traditional-modern – Europe and not Europe’ (Quijano 2000,
p. 542). Building on this scholarship, Karen Tucker notes how this
coloniality of knowledge ‘refers to historically rooted, racially inflected
practices that routinely elevate the knowledge forms and knowledge-
generating principles of colonizing cultures’ (2018, p. 220). What is
produced from these binaries and hierarchies are benchmarks to be
attained by those exogenous to ‘exclusively European products’. Due to
the racial inflections of these binaries and hierarchies, and in relation to
the modern state, what emerges is a standard of civilization, discussed in
further detail in Chapter 2.
Specifically, and explored below, are discussions on contemporary state-
building and development as practices that are engaged in the abstraction
and simplification of modern statehood based on a European- or Western-
centric conceptualization.2 This, as argued below, produces typologies
and hierarchical measurements that are ‘racially inflected’ and reproduce
the state as a standard of civilization.

Contemporary State-Building and Development:

The (Re)production of a Civilizational Standard
The state is often depicted as being a standard and universal object,
framed by the idea of centralized authority with a particular set of

2 The use of the terms European and Western are used to discuss the real consequences
regarding international power dynamics, material flows, and exclusions that produce and
reproduce global hierarchies that ascertain a group of ‘European’ or ‘Western’ civilized
states, norms, and ideals in contrast to the ‘other’ (Said 1978; Fanon 2001). While Europe
and the West are constructed, as is its ‘other’, this book does not aim to deconstruct the
binary, but explore how its construction has had real effects, highlighting the normative
and cultural transnational links that are made evident by the discussions of the standards
of civilization (Gong 1984; Donnelly 1998; Fidler 2001).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

government institutions. The central purpose of the state is argued to

be the successful and legitimate governance of a delineated territory and
population (Weber 1946, p. 77). From this definition, an ideal type3 is
produced. This ideal type facilitates the measurement of the state through
an analysis of capability and capacity, where the capability and capacity to
govern a population and territory without fault, external intervention,
or internal challenges exogenous to governing institutions is perceived as
strength. As such, the strongest states in the international state system are
often considered to be those that are the closest to the ideal type.
Measuring the state in this manner, however, creates a linear scale of
incapability to capability, from failure and weakness to strength. In this
regard, incapability, state weakness, and failure requires determined devel-
opment and state-building projects to re-establish domestic order and
legitimate governance. By engaging in such practices, the assumption of
what a strong state is and is not is reproduced, simplifying statehood to
the core institutions of governance. As such, the primary engagement of
state-building and development projects are to rebuild or fix deficiencies
in institutions. The strategies employed in state-building and develop-
ment are based on the notion that states, as objects, can be improved,
and that there is a single logic and practice of statehood that must be
followed to facilitate progress. This gives little-to-no attention to the
negative social, political, and economic consequences of external inter-
vention; or the impact of pre-existing logics and prejudices by individuals
and parties engaged in development and state-building.
To determine which states require interventions, in the form of
state-building or development, assessments of capacity and strength
are developed. The indicators that measure strength for contemporary
state-building and development projects are used to label states with
a typology: strong, weak, failing, failed. Robert Rotberg and Stewart
Patrick describe state failure and weakness as the inability or unwilling-
ness of governing bodies to provide the elements that are required for
statehood such as, legitimate political institutions that provide a frame-
work for economic management, social welfare, and physical security

3 The ideal-type is an abstract and hypothetical framing that establishes a generalized

conceptual benchmark. In this case, the ideal type with regards to the concept of the
state is a focus on its associated institutional characteristics and functions, which do not
correspond to any single case, but that are reproduced in scholarship and measurements
of statehood (Weber 1997, p. 90).
6 A. DELATOLLA

(Rotberg 2004; Patrick 2006, p. 29). Rotberg argues that indicators

of state failure include: enduring violence, victimization of citizens by
the state, loss of control over peripheral territory, growth of criminal
violence, flawed institutions, deteriorating infrastructure, lacking provi-
sions of basic services, uneven economic opportunity, and widespread
corruption (Rotberg 2004). Susan Rice and Stewart Patrick have devel-
oped a similar set of indicators as Rotberg to employ when examining
state capacity. In addition to the chosen indicators of state failure or
weakness, Rice and Patrick also propose a set of practical policies that
focus on the development of institutions with the aim to limit damage
and steer the state away from collapse.4 Regardless of whether measuring
states against an abstract set of criteria is unintentional, this practice places
the state on hierarchy, or scale, of effectiveness and efficiency that support
assumptions regarding the ability to ‘fix’ perceived deficiencies. Although
this may seem justified, developed with good intentions, the indicators
exclude further qualitative analysis that would often point to sociological
issues including customary political, economic, and social hierarchies that
can be in contention with official state institutions.
Despite the often overlooked sociological factors that either contra-
dict or become intertwined—in unpredictable and sometimes problematic
ways—with institutions of statehood, the concern of development and
state-building is focused on the end goal of such projects. The aim,
according to Amartya Sen, is to provide populations with new freedoms.
This references the Hegelian notion that the state is an environment that
provides freedoms which would otherwise not be enjoyed (Patten 1999).
Specifically, Sen argues that

Development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty

as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social
deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or over activity
of repressive states. (Sen 1999, p. 3)

4 Rice and Patrick (2008) provide indicators that place states on a scale depending
on their capacity to fulfil necessary criteria. This includes GNI per capita, GDP growth,
income inequality, inflation, regulatory quality, government effectiveness, rule of law, voice
and accountability, control of corruption, freedom ratings, conflict intensity, political inten-
sity, political stability and absence of violence, incidence of coups, gross human rights
abuses, territory affected by conflict, child mortality, primary school completion, under-
nourishment, percent population with access to improved water sources and with access
to improved sanitation facilities, life expectancy.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Similarly, Rotberg asserts that, notwithstanding the elements that may be

inducing failure and weakness, states can be revived through the devel-
opment of a stabilized environment by driving forward notions of law
and order. Once a relative peace has been established, three goals should
be pursued concurrently: economic development, rejuvenation of civil
society, and the reintroduction of rule of law (Rotberg 2004). The goals
outlined by Rotberg are commensurate with establishing effective control,
from which new freedoms are derived. However, the legitimate economic
development, rejuvenation of civil society, and the reintroduction of rule
of law are narrowly understood by those pursuing these goals. They do
not reflect the political, economic, and social customs of the society where
the projects are being developed, but those of the modern state as an ideal
type (Muppidi 2004).
By conceiving the modern state as an entity that is universal and objec-
tive, it gives credence to understanding rights and freedoms as being
universal standards that reflect global human progress (Sen 1999, p. 229).
Although poverty, tyranny, social deprivation, social neglect, and socio-
political intolerance are problems that require engagement, the methods
of engagement to alleviate these problems should be carefully considered.
By placing emphasis on state capacity and institutional reform to alleviate
sources of ‘unfreedom’, an international reproduction of paternalistic rela-
tions between the global north and the global south,5 the west and the
east, is (re)developed. It assumes that human progress is linear, ongoing,
and direct; that it follows a particular and unique experience of devel-
opment located in Western society and civilization. Here, divergence is
akin to moving backwards, reasserting binary and hierarchical relations
(Quijano 2000; Tucker 2018).
By engaging in state-building and development as a way to fix deficien-
cies, emphasis is placed on establishing political rituals that mimic those
present in the strongest states, specifically Western states. The goal of
intervention in state-building and development, whether such projects
include, or are limited to, institution building, capacity building, or

5 The global south as a concept can be critiqued due to its reproduction of an ordered
world that divides the ‘developed’ north from the ‘underdeveloped’ south, as had been
done with such conceptual framings of the ‘third world’. However, the global south is
a useful concept that reflects the core-periphery ordering of the world that developed in
the nineteenth century and that persists into the twenty-first century (see Levander and
Mignolo 2011; Dryzek 2006; Wallerstein 2007; Rosenberg 2010).
8 A. DELATOLLA

economic aid, is to pacify populations and governments that are deemed

subversive, unstable, and which pose an implicit or explicit threat domes-
tically or internationally. The aim, as with colonial endeavours, has been
to ‘fight war in the “social milieu”’ by engaging in practices to ensure
the ‘rise of social forms of governance [that are] distinctly modern and
capitalist variant on the science and practice of household rule’ (Owens
2015, p. 279). By encouraging the development of new political rituals
to replace those that are viewed as illegitimate, regressive, and uncivilized,
a set of supposed universal moral and ethical codes are also deployed.
State-building and development projects are, then, sustained strategies
to replace knowledges and practices that are perceived as backward, or
unruly, in an effort to reorder society within a rational design that is ‘com-
mensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws’ (Scott 1998,
pp. 4–5). By pacifying and stabilizing states that are considered under-
developed, underperforming, failed, or weak, economic growth can be
encouraged and the threat of violence is decreased, facilitating the estab-
lishment of new practices that are considered legitimate by the strongest
states in the international state system.
The assumption that engagement in state-building and development
can produce effective change to the benefit of the targeted state and
society is based on good intentions but, as argued by Raja Menon, it
‘can never become an ethically driven pursuit disentangled from power
and interests’ (2016, p. 11). Highlighted by Menon, the decision to
engage in state-building and development, targeting specific states, is
always, explicitly or implicitly, driven by power and interests. In making
the argument that state-building and development practices are entan-
gled in the pursuit of power and interests, Menon highlights the case
of the Kurdish population in Iraq. He argues that the U.S. had only
developed an interest in the Kurdish population following the Iran–Iraq
War (1980–1988), having ignored their plight throughout the period of
conflict with Iran (Menon 2016, pp. 11–12). Following the war, however,
and after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (1990–1991), the U.S. began to
further engage with the Kurds. U.S. policy in Iraq became concerned
with ensuring the safety of the Kurds, but also provided further justi-
fication for the isolation of Saddam Hussein as part of the policy of
containment (Zanger 2002). The U.S. decision to intervene and provide
support for autonomous and democratic development was not a decision
of moral or ethical selflessness. Rather, it produced favourable outcomes
for U.S. strategy and interests in the Middle East. Although state-building
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

and development are often framed by narratives of good intentions, self-

lessness, and moral impetus, intervening states make gains by nurturing
alliances with domestic partners, gaining access to new economic markets
and resources, and by ensuring beneficial regional stability and influence;
as discussed in Chapter 8 in relation to histories of European intervention
and interference.
Discussed thus far are two aspects of state-building and development
that follow from a single assumption about human social and political
development and progress. This single assumption holds that human
social and political development and progress occur on a linear trajec-
tory with the most powerful states in the international state system being
at the forefront of development and progress. From this assumption, two
arguments are developed. First, that state-building and development are
practices that are constructed on good intentions aimed at ‘helping’ back-
wards, weaker states and societies. Second, that these assumptions lead
to opportunities that allow the most powerful states in the international
system to pursue interests and power; shaping the targeted states to their
benefit.
Regardless of intent, whether it is to help other societies progress and
develop, or if state-building and development are tools in the pursuit of
power and interests, the focus on the modern state is an heir to historic
practices of imperial and colonial governance. The practices of state-
building and development, as well as imperial governance and colonialism,
are formed by the interactions between state-building and development
practitioners or imperial and colonial administrators and the populations
that are being engaged in programs of social re-engineering. In these
interactions, and related to differences in power, emerges a coloniality
of knowledge, as discussed above. While Quijano (2000) outlined these
dynamics in reference to the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries,
state-building and development represent its continuation, albeit under
new—seemingly benign—categories that appear detached from imperi-
alism and colonialism.
The practices of social re-engineering based on coloniality of knowl-
edge has continuously (re)produced a civilizing project, one that facili-
tates an ongoing link between Western or European imperialism, colo-
nialism and state-building and development. The civilizing project, or
mission, can be described as being conceived of as ‘a “benign” vision
of imperialism’, a liberal project, shrouded in moral reasoning, inflected
with—implicit and explicit—racist hierarchies. This project, or mission,
10 A. DELATOLLA

developed with the view that ‘Western rational institutions and norms’
were—and continue to be—the pinnacle of development, and sought to
insure a cultural conversion or assimilation of non-European societies into
these institutions and norms (Hobson 2012, p. 122). In other words,
the civilizing project was centred on a particular set of knowledges and
practices that were mobilized to ensure the expansion and replication
of European progress, modernity, and civilization. Unlike the logics of
imperialism and colonialism, which were justified based on a ‘moral voca-
tion’ that attempted to save brown and black men from the state of
nature, a ‘backward hereditary condition’ (Hobson 2012, p. 123), state-
building, and development forego the use of a direct and explicit racist
logic. Instead, state-building and development, in the production of a
civilizing mission, engage in an implicit racism, one that ‘locates “dif-
ference” through cultural, institutional and environmental criteria rather
than genetic properties’ (Hobson 2004, p. 220). This is not to say that
explicit and implicit racisms are separate, rather they often overlap and
function together; as is evident in the context of European imperialism
and colonialism of the nineteenth century.
Reflecting imperial and colonial justifications, as well as the moral voca-
tion of the nineteenth-century civilizing project, contemporary practices
of state-building and development, maintains that there is a cultural,
institutional, or environmental inability to engage with the structures,
norms, and institutions of the modern state. This is particularly evident
with regard to the typologies of states, with weak, failing, or failed states
requiring strategies to alleviate societies from their conditions of under-
development (Scott 1998, pp. 4–5). K. Adalbert Hampel critiques the
contemporary measurement of state capacity and the production of state
typologies as being ahistorical, reproducing narratives that the modern
state is analogous to the organic polity, reinforced by global hegemony.
Hampel correctly points to the modern state, in terms of its conceptual
formulation as well its practical development, being the unique conse-
quences of European political history. Despite its particular origin, it has,
nevertheless, been used to measure and test the development, progress,
and civilization of other societies and polities (2015, pp. 1632–1638).
In a similar vein, Branwen Gruffydd Jones argues that the language of
state weakness and failure in the post-colonial world conjures notions of
‘a general lack of capacity to develop, to rule or to be peaceful’ (2013,
p. 49). By categorizing states into typologies, a hierarchy is created that
reproduces the language of colonial and imperial governance, echoing
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

historic discourses and divisions that ascertained regions in the global

south as backwards, uncivilized, and fanatical.
The language of state weakness and failure resonates with the colonial
civilizing missions that attempted large-scale assimilation of the global
peripheries within the dominant norms of governance in the European
state system. The categories employed throughout the nineteenth century
in the global south were not justified by the quantification and scientific
measurement of the social world, but were still organized into a hier-
archy that used the West as the benchmark of development, progress, and
civilization. Furthermore, the categories, labels, and characterizations that
are used in state-building, development, imperialism, and colonialism are,
and were, deployed to justify various kinds of interventions. Although the
language of colonial and imperial engagements of the civilizing project
were not as sophisticated as the language used in contemporary state-
building and development practices, the binaries, hierarchies, and logics
have been similar.
In addition to similar logical foundations, the practicality of imperial
and colonial civilizing projects, despite temporal and categorical differ-
ence from development and state-building projects were also quite similar.
Here, imperial and colonial civilizing projects as well as development
and state-building can be viewed through instrumentalist and strategic
purposes. Of particular concern has been external recognition, legitimacy,
and the facilitation of economic and geopolitical access. The aim, then,
has been to create environments amenable to the rational and civilized
societies, politics, and the economies of the West (Saouli 2012, p. 13;
Wallerstein et al. 1987; Sunar 1987, pp. 63–87).
To create environments amenable to the West, institutional engi-
neering was emphasized following interventions in states categorized as
weak, failing, or failed, or in polities that were considered uncivilized,
unmodern, or fanatical. The focus on institutional engineering during
imperial and colonial modernization, although developed to achieve
particular interests of the imperial and colonial powers, was justified based
on early scientific ideas of human progress. The aim in undertaking these
projects, as with state-building and development, was to reorder society
into organized formations that mirrored the ordering and organization of
societies in the imperial and colonial states, providing future ease of access
and engagement. Although the method of measurement in developing
the categories employed to engage in state-building and development
differ from those used throughout colonial and imperial governance, the
12 A. DELATOLLA

desire to help states achieve modernity and progress, whether this was
done with good intentions or to pursue interests and power, created a
set of paternalistic international relations (Scott 1998, pp. 4–5; Hefner
1998).
The assumption that state-building and development are practices
that help states and societies, primarily in the global south, to become
developed is based on good intentions, however, it is a worldview that
privileges Western forms of development as being empirically better.
Furthermore, such strategies fail to account for exploitive political and
economic relations that have facilitated, if not created, the conditions
for sustained underdevelopment (Gunder-Frank 1966; DeGannes Scott
1995). In taking these histories into serious consideration, it is possible
to trace political and economic exploitation into discussions of sustained
underdevelopment, state weakness, and failure and critique the inherent
assumption of universalism across social and political formations (Call-
inicos and Rosenberg 2008; Ashman 2009). Here, Eisenstadt’s basic
premise that ‘different types of political systems develop and function
under specific social conditions, and the continuity of any political system
is also related to such specific conditions’ (1993, p. 3) can be further
interrogated in relation to state-building and development.
Sen defends the point of universality by arguing that while differ-
ence may be paramount between the West and the East, the North
and the South, parallels exist. In providing examples, he notes similari-
ties between Western political ideas and Asian political thought, such as
Confucianism (Sen 1999, pp. 233–234). Although parallels between the
West and non-West can be emphasized to transcend disparate temporali-
ties and geographies, there is a problem with conflating Western concepts
with Eastern philosophy to assume universality. As argued by Muhammad
Asad,

One should always remember that when the European or American

speaks of “democracy,” “liberalism,” “socialism,” “theocracy,” “parliamen-
tary government,” and so forth, he uses these terms within the context of
Western historical experience.

It is this historical experience which gives these terms their particular

and unique meanings and usage in Western and Eastern contexts (Asad
1980, pp. 18, 19–23). Not only does drawing parallels threaten the
erasure of the contextual reality in which these non-Western texts were
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

written, but it further assumes that Western philosophy and political

concepts are unsurpassed by other philosophical traditions (Germond-
Duret 2016). By holding Western philosophy and political concepts as
the standard, the development of parallels between Western and non-
Western concepts requires intellectual acrobatics that ignore contextual
and linguistic meaning and connotation.
The assumption of universality of modern statehood, where univer-
sality is produced in relation to concepts and definitions, practices, and
logics of order and organization follows from the arguments made by
Sen. This logic of universalism, as argued by Brett Bowden (2004), trans-
lates into practices that attempt to produce uniformity. As such, there is
a disregard for social and political difference in the name of development
and progress. This is not only a critique of contemporary state-building
and development, but also the modernization and civilizing projects of
nineteenth-century imperialism and colonialism. With regard to the latter,
as a means to accede to modernity, modernization was perceived as linear
and path-dependent, a condition that could be replicated by the civi-
lizing project. Modernization therefore offered a ‘comprehensive solution
– applicable worldwide, based on universal agreement’. Although it could
be applied worldwide, Menon argued that this comprehensive solution
was not universally applied. Instead, only societies and polities that were
of particular strategic interest were engaged in the modernizing project
(Menon 2016, p. 171).
The modernizing, or civilizing, projects, were attempts to reorder,
reconstitute, and civilize the other, creating harm in two areas (Linklater
2002, p. 15). The modernizing, or civilizing, projects, as well as state-
building and development attempt to engage states that are deemed
unmodern by reconstituting those processes through modernization
reforms (Fortna 2013, p. 1). First, harm is produced in the form of
social, political, and economic alienation that develops from swift insti-
tutional and structural transitions. By altering the social, political, and
economic political institutions and structures individuals are unable to
access customary structures and institutions, and become alienated and
disenfranchised. Although the intent is often noble, the projects are
primarily concerned with Western conceptions of progress; emphasizing
institutional capacity and the prevalent categories used at any given period
of time (Rotberg 2004; Rice and Patrick 2008; Menon 2016, p. 10).
Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart demonstrate this problem with the case
of Nepal:
14 A. DELATOLLA

A civil society leader in Nepal recounted how the aid system reinvents
itself with new methods and languages, and the Nepali leaders spend their
time learning those languages to meet the criteria of the moment. But
as soon as they have mastered them and rewritten their documents, the
approach changes, and the cycle begins all over again: poverty reduction,
sustainable development, millennium development goals, capacity building.
(Ghani and Lockhart 2009, pp. 107–108)

The effort put into learning these new categories, redeveloping goals,
altering the raison d’être of the organization, changes the language of
development and the end goals of modernization, creating systemic alien-
ation until the language is learned, developed, mobilized. This constrains
the total amount of resources as well as creating institutional and struc-
tural outputs that are unnavigable for individuals and communities that
have not learned the language, creating social and political dislocation,
dissatisfaction, and alienation.
Second, harm is produced in the process of state-building, which
necessitates the use of force. Force, in this context, exists as threat and
use, resulting in coercion (Foucault 1995; Kertzer 1988, pp. 1–3; Belge
2013, p. 17). Even in cases where state-building and development are
primarily focused on economic capacity, economic aid, or local develop-
ment projects, the prescription of solutions often requires the presence of
a security apparatus that seek the pacification of individuals and commu-
nities. Paul Miller describes the use of force to facilitate state-building as
indispensable, having a great amount of impact on the potential success
of the project. The threat and use of force in state-building is to defend
civilian personnel responsible for institution and capacity building and
to limit the actions of domestic spoilers (Miller 2013, pp. 4, 117–174).
Describing instances of counterinsurgency interventions and occupations
with the aim to facilitate the ‘right’ kind of politics, Patricia Owens argues
that those involved in the deployment of force seek to control popula-
tions. By asserting power over populations, intervening states attempt to
re-engineer society through practices of domestic governance and institu-
tion building. She continues that such practices are a distinctive type of
governance, deployed through armed social work (Owens 2015, pp. 9–
10; Galula 1964, pp. 62–63; Sitaraman 2012, pp. 36–37). Here, armed
social work requires new social logics of engagement, bearing similarity to
colonial governance in its use of force as a tool to re-order (Owens 2015,
pp. 9–10; Galula 1964, pp. 62–63).
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Civilization and the State: Tying Development

and State-Building to Imperialism and Colonialism
The similarities between the logics and practices of colonial and impe-
rial governance with state-building and development reveal important
dynamics of statehood in the global south. These dynamics include the
paternalistic relationship that the West has maintained with the global
south; the assertion that there is a singular way to be modern or to
engage with modernity; the belief that institutions and structures of
centralized government will help in the development of order and ratio-
nality of society; the employment of the threat and use of force to
pacify populations and assert dominance; and the belief that engage-
ment, intervention, and capacity building is a moral vocation. Noting
these similarities, William Easterly (2006) argues that state-building and
development are constitutive of a form of postmodern imperialism, and
characterizes it as the continuation of the previous colonial era.
The continuity between colonialism and contemporary interventions
was a result of, according to Easterly, practices of colonialism that
impaired economic and political development; breeding conditions that
motivated the ‘new White Man’s Burden to clean up the mess left behind
by the old White Man’s Burden’ (Easterly 2006, p. 239). Noting the
relationship between state-building and development and imperialism and
colonialism, there is evidence that the post-colonial state in the global
south is subject to a similar set of conditions in the international state
system as it had been during periods of nineteenth-century imperial and
colonial governance. Where state-building and development have had
a substantial impact on the contemporary function of the post-colonial
state, the knowledges and practices of imperialism and colonialism have
had a substantial impact on the making of the modern state in the global
south. With regard to imperialism and colonialism, however, the conse-
quence of imperial and colonial knowledges and practices in the global
south have been a different set of attributes and characteristics from the
modern state in the West. This difference has required further interven-
tion and interference by engaging in contemporary state-building and
development practices. Rather than argue that this difference represents
incapacity or deficiency, the post-colonial state requires examination as
the result of a standard of civilization.
16 A. DELATOLLA

The post-colonial state, as a result of and continuously subjected to a

standard of civilization, is the outcome of a general and universal concep-
tual understanding of modern statehood that is measured on a linear
scale. This linear scale, a measurement of progress and development, as
discussed above, did not conclude with imperial and colonial engage-
ments of the nineteenth century. Instead, the standard of civilization, the
linear scales of progress and development were maintained and repack-
aged into a new language of state-building and development based on
social scientific measurements. Specifically, these measurements focus on
institutional capacity and sovereignty, resulting in discussions of strong
states, weak states, and failed states (Jones 2008, 2013). What emerges
in typifying states in this manner, is the maintenance of a standard or
benchmark that emphasizes the need to engage in a global reproduction
of ‘strong’ and ‘developed’ states. By holding the ‘strong state’, typi-
cally the state in the West, as the pinnacle of development, it becomes
the set benchmark or standard for ‘weaker’, ‘underdeveloped’—and often
post-colonial states. By placing emphasis on the state in the West as the
model to be copied elsewhere, the characteristics and the knowledges and
practices of statehood are assumed to be applicable globally. This allows
for, not only typologies of statehood to emerge, but an abstracted social
scientific measurement and classification of the state to be produced. This
abstraction, although discussed as being universal, imposes uniformity.
By measuring statehood and placing states in hierarchies, a number
of problems emerge regarding the manner in which states and—by
extension—societies are categorized and characterized. The hierarchiza-
tion of states lends itself to assumptions about which states require
development—being underdeveloped, or which states are incapable of
development—being considered undevelopable. These hierarchies also
inform knowledge concerning which states, polities, societies, and geogra-
phies are considered safe and law-abiding, in opposition to those that
are deemed violent, corrupt, and unruly. These ascribed characteristics,
whether they are concerned with politics or the economy, position states
and societies in relation to an ‘ideal type’ that relies on assumptions of
universality and the belief that there is a right way and a wrong way
to govern; that capacity and institutions can be measured in a quantifi-
able manner without concern for social, political, and economic histories;
and that states can be fixed by engaging in state-building (inclusive of
institution building) and development, without much concern for the
consequences of socio-political reorganization by external force.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

As Owens (2015) notes, by positioning the state as an object that can

be ‘fixed’, state-building and development creates an abstraction based
on an assumed universalism. In agreement with Owens, this abstraction
is problematic, as it emerges from a notion that progress occurs in a
linear fashion with a singular outcome. This foregrounds a universalist
objectivity with regard to the state, premised on the notion that social,
political, and economic progress occurs in stages, with the most advanced,
often Western states, being at the pinnacle of development. However, this
universalism disregards difference in social and political knowledges and
practices by placing those differences into hierarchies where the moral
imperative to ‘civilize’, to lead the hierarchically ‘underdeveloped’ or
‘uncivilized’ society into advanced stages of ‘development’ or ‘civilization’
is an attempt to produce uniformity.
This assumption of universalism and its consequences are rooted in
the global transformations of the nineteenth century (Buzan and Lawson
2015; Stearns 2007, pp. 21–27). The global transformation of the nine-
teenth century, according to Barry Buzan and George Lawson, ‘generated
four basic, but linked, types of changes’, including: ‘industrialization
and the extension of market to a global scale’, ‘processes of rational
state-formation’, the prominence of new ideologies (liberalism, nation-
alism, socialism, and ‘scientific’ racism), and a core-periphery global order
(2015, pp. 3–4). These four transformations were contained within and
directed by the development of European modern states. Because of
the importance of the modern state in relation to these global trans-
formations, modern statehood in the nineteenth century was the central
evidence of development and progress. It was associated with rationality,6
order, governance, and allowed for centralized economic productivity.
Indeed, the modern state in Europe in the nineteenth century facili-
tated global European expansion and domination. Subsequently, in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries, modern statehood continued to be
benchmarked—although by more ‘scientific’ means. This allowed govern-
ments, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations
determine capacity and capability, development and progress; building
on previously held assumptions, albeit by employing new conceptual
frameworks.

6 Rationality refers to the ability to make decisions based on scientific reason, to suffi-
ciently disentangle the mind from wider obstacles created by barriers such as religion,
kinship, or political favouritism (MacFarlane 1992, p. 123).
18 A. DELATOLLA

By historicizing modern statehood in the context of the nineteenth-

century global transformations, the modern state, as it is discussed in
political science and international relations, owes its conceptual origins
to the unique history of European state formation. Consequently, while
these disciplines often disassociate the modern state from its historical,
geographic, and temporal origins, it is nevertheless important to consider
how histories of modern state formation have influenced ideas of state-
hood going forward. Whether the origin of the modern state is discussed
through the histories of conflict and war, elite politics, religion, or tech-
nological and intellectual progress, the modern state conceived of in the
Weberian framework is a social enterprise rooted in pre-modern European
history. By understanding the relationship between history and concep-
tual development, it is possible to understand how the modern state
became increasingly central to the organization and governance of society,
and its central role regarding ideas of development and progress.
Notably, attempts to measure development and progress by assessing,
measuring, and testing states, is not a contemporary development of inter-
national politics. Benchmarking progress and development by examining
statehood and political organization emerged in the nineteenth century,
justifying the establishment of the core-periphery global order (Broome
and Quirk 2015; Buzan and Lawson 2015). Although these dynamics
are not novel, by considering their historical emergence, it is possible to
examine the emergence of the modern state in the global south as a result
of a standard of civilization, one that has continued into the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
The classical standard of civilization, discussed in relation to the global
transformations of the nineteenth century, was a comparative measure-
ment of progress and development, a tool that was deployed to discipline
uncivilized bodies, societies, and polities. This standard emerged from a
comparison of development and progress, one which assumed a linear
scale, using the most progressed and developed states as benchmarks. By
deploying a standard of civilization, interference, oppression, and violence
was justified as a necessary practice of the civilizing project. The stan-
dard of civilization that was mobilized in the nineteenth century was
framed by the discourse of the ‘white man’s burden’, and while this
discourse is no longer considered legitimate, contemporary categories of
progress and development are maintained by the language of develop-
ment studies (Fidler 2001; Gong 1984). Still, however, it is of importance
that the context of this history is understood, not only to critically engage
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

and discuss how state-building and development represent its unfinished

project, but to contextualize histories of imperial and colonial led state
formation, and critique the categories and concepts used with the aim of
using more accurate categories and concepts.

The Argument: The Modern State

as a Standard of Civilization
This book explores how the modern state, as a standard of civilization,
was historically produced in the global south, and specifically in Lebanon
and Syria. In doing so, it considers how the exogenously produced
knowledges and practices regarding statehood were layered, or assembled,
onto pre-existing knowledges and practices, with the aim to replicate the
former and eradicate the latter. Here, the modern state, symbolic of civi-
lized engagement, was central to the ‘civilizing project’. This book further
argues that the concept of civilization and the benchmarking of civiliza-
tion was embedded in the discourses, structures, and practices of explicit
and implicit racism (Hobson 2004, pp. 219–242). By understanding the
racist starting point of the civilizing project, tied to modern statehood,
what becomes evident is how practices of modernization, state-making,
and the emergence of the post-colonial state and subsequent global
relations continue to be embedded in racist structures of civilizational
hierarchies.
Racial hierarchies were mobilized in the explanations for why polities in
the global south had not progressed or reached civilizational development
in comparison to European societies and states. This helped European
states, and of particular focus throughout this book—France and Britain,
determine the kind of civilizing program that was to be applied and the
kinds of knowledges and practices that were to be transferred to the unciv-
ilized societies, in this case the Ottoman Empire, the Syrian provinces, and
Lebanon and Syria. Because the Ottoman Empire had not been classified
as a final-tier civilization in the civilizational league tables (Hobson 2004,
pp. 225; Anghie 2002), it was believed that the kind of civilizing project
required was not of direct colonial control and governance. As such, the
Ottoman Empire was autonomous, but not recognized as an independent
state with access to international law. In this subordinated position, the
Ottoman Empire was advised—often under coercive or economic pres-
sure—on the terms of modernity and modernization. Only by acceding
to these terms, or benchmarks that were exogenously created, could
20 A. DELATOLLA

the Empire be recognized as a full and equal member to the group of

‘civilized nations’, with recourse to international law.
This book explores the multifaceted application and consequences of
modern statehood as a standard of civilization. Although the European
powers—Britain, France, and Russia in the case of this book—are exam-
ined as the arbiters of civilization in relation to the Ottoman Empire,
their programs of modernization were assembled onto existing social,
political, and economic dynamics, having unexpected and ongoing conse-
quences (Sassen and Ong 2014). Argued in this book, the process
of early-to-mid nineteenth-century modernization programs, particularly
with regard to institutional and structural transformations, evoked senti-
ments of dissatisfaction and alienation from local populations in the Syrian
provinces. Feelings of alienation were exploited by the European powers
and justified by moral duty of protecting civilizational kin. Here, and
explored throughout the book, racial hierarchies were redeployed at a
local level, where religion became a racial signifier of development and
civilization. As such, it was often argued that certain religious groups were
inherently more civilized than others, leading to a process of racializa-
tion that attributed civilizational characteristics, assumed to be biological,
to the different religious groups. Following from these developments, it
is argued that race became an embedded characteristic of the modern
state—not only in the hierarchization of states globally, but in the struc-
tures of the states; evident, for example, in the development of modern
nationalisms.
That is not to say that the Ottoman Empire and the populations of the
Syrian provinces did not exhibit agency, but that agency became confined
to the creeping structures established by foreign powers. Indeed, where
agency and resistance were exhibited, they were exogenously perceived
as the result of a civilizational failure that required further ‘fixing’. Here,
failure was either caused by resistance or the consequence of assembled
knowledges and practices that blended the ‘pre-modern’ and ‘modern’,
‘non-European’ and ‘European’ (Tibi 1971; Jones 2013; Lamarck 1914),
producing ‘scars’, ‘imperfections’, or ‘defects’, written on the body-politic
of the Lebanese and Syrian states. Following from this argument, Sandra
Halperin and Ronen Palan state that the institutions and logics of past
polities do not entirely disappear, instead, their mark is left on the ‘struc-
tures and processes and on the institutions, cultures, politics and legal
systems of the peoples who inhabit [these] territories’ (2015, p. 1).
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

In relation to Halperin and Palan’s argument, by revisiting and empha-

sizing the histories of imperial and colonial engagements, exploring the
knowledges and practices of these engagements, it is possible to historicize
the ‘scars’, ‘imperfections’, or ‘defects’ that continue to be of concern for
contemporary state typologies. Furthermore, by historicizing the modern
state in the post-colonial world as a product of a standard of civilization,
it is possible to conceptualize and define the post-colonial state as a sepa-
rate entity from European, or Western, modern states. This allows for a
better understanding of how coloniality has impacted the development of
the modern state in the post-colonial world.
Of primary focus in this book, is the examination of the displace-
ment and erasure of important social and political organizing principles
including ideas and practices of tolerance; the transformations regarding
the relationship between territory, identity, and governance; the changing
nature of resistance through imperial and colonial modernization; and
the impact of global governance. The book interrogates the histories of
the modern state and considers how the Lebanese and Syrian states were
assembled in relation to nineteenth-century international transforma-
tions,7 European expansion into the global south, imperial modernization
projects directed by the Sultan and the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman
Empire, and French colonial governance. By exploring the histories and
interactions between the international and the local, the legacies of which
have impacted post-colonial statehood and created difference in concep-
tualization and practice, the book argues that the post-colonial state in
the global south was a product of a standard of civilization, a project of
state-building that led to an assemblage, which ultimately impacted the
knowledge and practice of the post-colonial modern state, domestically
and internationally.
Influenced by debates in international historical sociological, post-
colonial, anti-colonial, and decolonial scholarship, the arguments made in
this book emerge from a re-engagement of the global political and soci-
ological histories of statehood. The book draws from secondary source
histories on the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, and Syria. It also makes
extensive use of archival documents, including government dispatches,
newspapers, and recorded first-hand accounts from the British National

7 Jennifer Mitzen (2013), Barry Buzan and George Lawson (2015), John Hobson
(2004), and Andrew Linklater (2016b) note that the nineteenth century was a period of
global transformation that gave way to contemporary international relations and politics.
22 A. DELATOLLA

Archives, the French Diplomatic Archives, the French National Archives,

the Lebanese National Archives, and the archives at the Université Saint-
Joseph in Beirut. It triangulates these histories, by engaging in historical
analysis, to develop a better understanding of French and British percep-
tions of the Ottoman Empire, the Syrian provinces and the communities
therein, as well as the responses from these communities. By triangu-
lating these accounts and histories, the notion of historical ‘facts’ is
carefully rejected by understanding history as being the product of a story
which represents the situated knowledge and action of the individual or
group who is narrating. For this reason, the research attempts to accord
historical accounts to interests, power relationships, and goals (Rowlinson
2004; Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). In doing so, it uses content
analysis, and discourse analysis. Content analysis is used to reveal under-
lying meanings and ideas in the narration of historical accounts in the
primary source documents (Krippendorff 2004, pp. 11–12). At times,
this research employs a discourse analysis, particularly when meanings
and ideas require contextualization with regard to power. Using discourse
analysis, this research also draws on language as source of power that influ-
ences, reinforces, and legitimates the worldviews, actions, and positions of
the actors involved (Bryman 2004, pp. 528–540).

Chapter Breakdown
Building on the discussion of statehood as a the standard of civiliza-
tion, the following chapters explore the various ways that the state in
Lebanon and Syria were developed from a civilizing project that empha-
sized the replication of the modern state in Europe; first by means of
Ottoman reforms and modernization and, second, in relation to the
French Mandate of Lebanon and Syria. These chapters also explore how
the application of the standard of civilization, its associated knowledges
and practices, became institutionalized within the structures of the state
and state–society relations.
Chapter 2 frames the argument that is presented here. It first discusses
some of the existing scholarship on state formation and statehood in the
Middle East and North Africa. It then considers the relationship between
the history of state formation in Europe and the conceptualization of
modern statehood in political science, international relations, and devel-
opment studies. Chapter 2 argues that the state, as it is defined, framed,
and conceptualized in universal terms, exists as a standard of civilization.
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

It further contends that this conceptualization emerges from a partic-

ular European history, a history that provides the reference point for the
nineteenth-century standard of civilization and contemporary practices of
development and state-building. By considering the conceptual develop-
ment of the state as being historically unique, it is possible to question the
application of a supposed universal framework of modern statehood to the
global south, and specifically, the post-colonial state in the Middle East.
Chapter 3 explores the application of the principle of equality in lieu of
the customary principle of tolerance. Where equality was seen as necessary
in relation to the modern state, particularly with regard to state–society
relations and the development of citizenship; tolerance was perceived,
by the European powers, as a customary foundation of governance that
inhibited the central authority of the state. The inability to apply reforms
concerning the principle of equality in a manner that was considered
acceptable was perceived as a marker of difference and evidence of the
Ottoman Empire’s ‘self-incurred immaturity’. This evidence was further
supported by the failure of sectarian communities to adjust to their altered
social–political relations and, ultimately, with each other. This chapter
further notes the domestic consequences of the relevant reforms, partic-
ularly in relation to the application of equality and its effect on religious
communal relations.
Chapter 4 examines how the standard of civilization and, specifically,
the failure of the Ottoman Empire to produce the appropriate outcomes
from the civilizing process facilitated and justified the racialization of
religious groups. The European powers, mainly France, argued that
the underdevelopment of the Ottoman Empire was a result of Muslim
barbarism and fanaticism, an inherent trait that suppressed the devel-
opment and natural civilized status of Christian communities. Through
this process of racialization that attached social characteristics as a biolog-
ical, or inherent, condition related to creed, Muslims were characterized
as barbaric, fanatical, and underdeveloped, while Christian communities
were considered the ‘civilizational cousins’ to the European powers; justi-
fying European interference and interventions on their behalf. In this
context, France justified their close political and economic relations with
Christian, and particularly Catholic, communities. Similarly, Russia had
formed relations and alliances with the Christian Orthodox communities.
The development of racial hierarchies based on assumptions of ethno-
sectarianism contributed to the development of political contestation
related to European alliances with, primarily, Christian communities. The
24 A. DELATOLLA

notion of racial difference further became embedded in the development

of a distinct Lebanese national conscience, particularly with the notion
of Phoenician history; facilitating justifications of separateness based on a
historical civilizational difference.
With the process of racialization placing emphasis on identity markers
and the pressure placed on the Ottoman Empire to engage in modern-
ization reforms in the nineteenth century, there was a changing dynamic
between territory, identity, and governance. In the first instance, discussed
in Chapter 5, the territorialization of Mount Lebanon split authority
and governance between the Maronite and Druze communities. This
altered intercommunal relations by dividing the populations and systems
of governance erasing practices of shared governance in Mount Lebanon.
In addition to the transforming relations between territory, identity,
and governance in Mount Lebanon, having particular consequences for
the development of a national conception of Greater Lebanon, more
explicit reforms were also developed; including the Land Code of 1858.
This reform was an attempt to modernize land tenure throughout the
Ottoman Empire, bringing the Empire into closer alignment with Euro-
pean states, and facilitating the development of governance through
territorial organization. Although this reform was developed to facilitate
order and governance, to territorialize the population through formal
ownership, it also skewed domestic relations by providing political and
economic elites the opportunity to extend their influence into new
geographies. Pressure from European states also necessitated Ottoman
imperial expansion by formalizing control over the sedentary and nomadic
tribes. This was done to ensure that control over these territories would
be maintained by the Sublime Porte, and that resource extraction from
these territories and populations could be secured.
Increased European interference and intervention in the Ottoman
Empire led to growing sentiments of alienation and dissatisfaction among
the populations in the Syrian provinces. This was particularly due to
the enforcement of the principle of equality, the process of racializa-
tion, sectarian alliance formation, and the application of modernization
reforms (Makdisi 2002, p. 771; Ayubi 1995, pp. 21–23). Discussed in
Chapter 6 is how this discontent led to violent forms of resistance; partic-
ularly among the Muslim communities in the nineteenth century, and
later with regard to the French mandate. While violence as a form of
resistance was used in various contexts to resist European encroachments
and the transforming political and economic realities between religious
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

communities, it failed to procure the desired ends of those engaged in

violence. Covered in this chapter are the dynamics and the results of
the Aleppo Uprising of 1850, the Damascus Massacre of 1860, Faisal’s
Revolt, and the Druze Revolt of 1925. The failures of violent engagement
to dislodge European interference led to further European, and in partic-
ular, French interventions, resulting in increased dissatisfaction. Further
interventions in the Syrian provinces were justified by violent engage-
ment, which was considered to be the evidence of a Muslim inability to
engage in civilization.
Resistance, however, is complex, and was not solely observable in rela-
tion to violence. Discussed in Chapter 7, nationalism, as part of the
nineteenth-century global transformations, became increasingly promi-
nent in the Ottoman Empire as a form of resistance. In the first instance,
the Young Ottomans were engaged in a political strategy that sought to
merge customary identity markers with aspects of modernity, including
the establishment of state institutions. Constructing their movement in
relation to European norms of civilized engagement and statehood, they
mobilized Islamic identity markers as a point of difference. By engaging
with, and acquiescing to, European standards or benchmarks, the Young
Ottomans attempted to resist continued European interference and inter-
ventions by engaging in the discourses, norms, and structures of moder-
nity. Although the Young Ottomans failed to successfully resist continued
European interference and intervention, they managed to make social and
political inroads. In particular, they were foundational for the develop-
ment of the Young Turk movement and the Syrian and Arab nationalists.
However, while the Young Turks, and Syrian and Arab nationalists were
attempting to resist European interference, they were also positioned
against each other, often relying on the racial characterizations to resist
each other’s demands. These nationalist movements were not only mobi-
lizing political programs, but also ethnic identity markers with the aim
of making legitimate claims to statehood. Despite attempts to engage in
what was perceived as civilized progress, the national movements were
continuously denied autonomy.
The standard of civilization, as it was applied to the Ottoman Empire
and, subsequently, to the French mandates of Lebanon and Syria,
produced a set of material and immaterial benchmarks. As such, the popu-
lations were required to accede to a set of socio-political norms as well
as apply modernization reforms that replicated the institutions and struc-
tures of statehood in Europe. However, and as discussed in Chapter 8, the
26 A. DELATOLLA

standard of civilization became intertwined with the interests of Euro-

pean states. Because the civilizing project and modernization reforms,
being the products of a standard of civilization, could not be divorced
from political and economic interests, the standard that was required of
the Ottoman Empire, Lebanon, and Syria continued to shift. The result
was the continued subordination of the Ottoman Empire and the Syrian
provinces, the continuation of the civilizing project, and—as such—the
continued application of imperial interference and intervention. This is
evident throughout the Tanzimat period as well as the French mandate
period.
By arguing that the state in Lebanon and Syria, and—more broadly—
the post-colonial state, is the result of a standard of civilization, it
begin a critical reassessment and reconceptualization of statehood. The
concluding chapter of this book, Chapter 9, provides an engaged discus-
sion on the importance of taking history seriously in political science and
international relations. In doing so, and as argued in the conclusion, it is
possible to understand how global structures resulting in the production
of the state and classifications of statehood were developed as a result
of the global transformations of the nineteenth century. By tethering
contemporary global dynamics concerning statehood to these histories,
it becomes evident that, despite intentions, coloniality is reproduced.

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 CHAPTER 2

The Standards of Civilization

and the Production of Statehood

The global transformations of the nineteenth century, a result of the

Enlightenment and industrialization, led to an expansion of European
influence and hegemony. Central to this expansion was the formation of
the modern state (Vu 2010), facilitated by central governmental organi-
zation, allowing for better control of the economy and military, enabling
European global influence. Based on these developments and the related
immaterial and material advances of statehood, the European modern
state became the evidence of human social and political progress. This
provided justifications for practices of domination over polities consid-
ered less progressed, customary, traditional, or backwards. The modern
state, as a standard of civilization, became the rational ordering principle,
replacing forms of household governance that were considered traditional
(Owens 2015; Engels 2010; Thomas 2001; Mansel 2010). Its production
in the global south was viewed as necessary in order to be considered a
recognized actor, able to engage in the frameworks of international law.
Although the modern state in Europe has provided order and orga-
nization, transforming global politics from the late eighteenth century
onwards, it was not a result of conscious efforts. Yet, its conceptualiza-
tion, despite developing from happenstance histories, is often discussed
as ordinary and prevailing; a normative framing of politics that exists de
facto, and a natural or organic means to organize society. By situating the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license 33

to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Delatolla, Civilization and the Making of the State
in Lebanon and Syria, Middle East Today,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57690-5_2
34 A. DELATOLLA

modern state, and its specific conceptualization emergent from European

histories of state formation, as a fact of nature or an organic development
of civilization, statehood has become a constant standard applied globally
throughout history.
This chapter discusses some of the scholarship on state formation in the
Middle East before historicizing the European modern state by exploring
discussions concerning state formation. By exploring the dynamics of
state formation in Europe, it is possible to draw connections between
these histories and the conceptualization of statehood. This chapter then
considers how these conceptualizations, tied to specific and unique histo-
ries, form the basis for the production and deployment of benchmarks
associated with statehood. From this discussion, it is then possible to
engage in the overarching critique of statehood, in its dominant framing,
as universal. The assumptions that the modern state, as it is conceptual-
ized in political science and international relations, is universal, provides
the foundation to apply it as a standard of civilization. Here, the notion
that failure to engage in knowledges and practices of statehood that mimic
the state in Europe is a result of socio-political, civilizational, and cultural
deficiencies, requiring interference and intervention, institution building,
and continued development is further explored. Referencing the discus-
sion in the introduction, this chapter continues to build the argument that
the state is produced as a standard of civilization, noting the relationship
this standard has with the post-colonial state.

Theories and Histories of State

Formation in the Middle East
The histories of state formation in the Middle East and North Africa tend
to refer to the emergence of independent and sovereign states in rela-
tion to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the developments of the
First World War (Halliday 2005, pp. 76, 87). For example, Adham Saouli
(2012, pp. 36–39) considers how the relative weakness of the Ottoman
Empire in relation to the European modern state system contributed
to the state formation process. Similarly, Fred Halliday (2005, p. 86)
points to the period of 1918–1939 as being crucial to internal devel-
opments of the state in the region. While these histories are important,
they need to be critically contextualized. First, by beginning the story of
state formation in the Middle East during this period, we become trapped
by a Eurocentric timeline that coincides with an international liberal
 2 THE STANDARDS OF CIVILIZATION … 35

politic that is assumed to be universal. Second, by locating the intel-

lectual starting point of state formation in relation to Ottoman decline
and European strength, assumptions of comparative weakness on a linear
scale of development and progress are reproduced.1 By questioning the
temporal process of modern state formation, tracing it to the global trans-
formations of the early nineteenth century and in the context of these
comparisons—particularly with regard to assumptions of ‘weakness’, it is
possible to reframe the Ottoman modernization period as structurally and
institutionally important for the development of modern states as being
embedded in coloniality. Whereby the Mandate project of the early twen-
tieth century can be framed as a continuation colonialism that reapplied
the civilizing project (Anghie 2002, 2006).
That is not to say that Halliday (2005), Saouli (2012), Mohammed
Ayoob (1996), and Raymond Hinnebusch (2003, 2010), have not dealt
with the historical dynamics of the Ottoman Empire and consequences of
empire and colonialism, but that their temporal and contextual focus and
engagement with the ‘state’, as a concept, is different from the framing
of this book. While Halliday (2005, pp. 86–90) focused on a gener-
alist account of state formation that placed national and institutional
developments in the interwar years as essential, Saouli (2012, pp. 9–
23) examined the state as a process that emerged from the social field.
Specifically, Saouli examines cycles of conflict, resistance, and domination
that have foregrounded the social constitution of the state as it relates to
material structure, cultural structure, political structure, and institutions.
Ayoob (1996, pp. 67–86), on the other hand, discusses the process of
state formation as developing, in parallel to modernization, in stages, and
being encumbered by contemporary political and technological contexts.
Similarly, and in reference to the scholarship on democratization, Hinneb-
usch (2010, pp. 201–214) has examined the historical sociological process
of state formation in relation to regime type, tracing the political histo-
ries of authority structures and contextualizing them within the context
of existing social structures and international positions. This builds on his
previous scholarship, where Hinnebusch (2003, pp. 73–91) considers the
consequences of imperial state-building efforts, but discusses this history
in relation to four identifiable stages, beginning in 1920 and ending in
the early 2000s.

1 Karen Barkey (2008) discusses the scholarship on the Ottoman Empire’s demise,
refuting the ‘decline narrative’ as Eurocentric.
36 A. DELATOLLA

Divergent from the above-mentioned studies, the starting point of this

book challenges the notion that the position that the Ottoman Empire
was of ‘weakness’. It critiques this position as one that emerges from
a European position that engaged in comparison under the assumption
that development and progress is linear and path-dependent. Here, weak-
ness was a characteristic that only existed in comparison to European
‘strength’. By engaging in such comparisons, civilizational hierarchies
have been reproduced, continuing to privilege a framing of European
exceptionalism and Ottoman barbarism and fanaticism. Indeed, ‘weak-
ness’ was not inherent to the Ottoman Empire, but was a constructed
comparative feature that had practical ramifications, where the Ottoman
Empire was viewed as ‘less civilized’ and unable to engage with European
states in an equal manner. As such, the Ottoman Empire was increasingly
becoming subject to an expansive European state system, one that it had
not been granted full membership to as a sovereign entity. With regard to
this system, the Ottoman Empire was not free from interference and inter-
vention and was treated as a subordinate power (Barkey 2008). Notably,
this position was upheld by coercive practices and racist ideological order-
ings of the world (Linklater 2016; Buzan and Lawson 2015; Hobson
2004; 2012; Vitalis 2015; Mitzen 2013). The subordinate position of the
Ottoman Empire in relation to European states reflected the dynamic of
nineteenth-century modern expansion: to bring societies out of the dark-
ness through the development of a rational ordering of society, by the
governance of public affairs, and the ‘exit from self-incurred immaturity’
(Immanuel Kant quoted in Deligiorgi 2002, p. 154).
While considerations of the relational position of the Ottoman
Empire are made central in this book, another point of diversion from
the argument presented here is Halliday’s focus on the acceleration of
internal state-making from 1918 to 1939. Although Halliday (2005,
p. 90) discusses the impact of colonialism and its embedded effects on the
Middle East, what Saouli (2012, pp. 36–39) examines as path-dependent
‘historical structuralism’, there is little discussion of how specific colonial
practices translated into statehood, impacting the state formation process.
For example, although Saouli remarks that ‘the Middle Eastern state was
born in an international structure not of its own choosing’ (2012, p. 37),
he further states that ‘in Lebanon, the state was established on the basis
of power distribution among the country’s sectarian communities’ and
‘became socially ingrained structures that determined and shaped the
politics of that country’. While neither of these statements are false, the
Another random document with
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that made a song in her heart despite all the trials—so much of a song that
occasionally it flowed into words, and Dorothy's untrained voice was sweet
and clear. She rarely used it over her work, but on this Monday twice she sang
clear and loud,—

"Mine is an unchanging love;

Higher than the heights above."

Mrs. Morgan heard it—heard the tune; caught no words—wanted to hear

none. The spirit of song was not in her heart that morning. All she said was,—

"Don't, for pity's sake, go to singing over the dish-pan. I always thought that
was a miserable, shiftless habit. There is a time for all things."

And Dorothy, wondering much when was her time to sing, hushed her voice
and finished the melody in her heart. So it seemed to her, when the day was
done, that really it had been an unusually hard one. Many steps added to the
usual routine. A dish broken; a leaking pail sending water all over the clean
floor; John's muddy feet tracking through the kitchen just after the mopping
was done; John's hands—traces of them on the clean towel; and then, by
reason of trying to do two things at once at the mother's bidding, she actually
allowed the starch to scorch. So that, in truth, when she sat down in the
wooden-seated chair of her own room for a moment's breathing space, before
it was time to set the table for tea, she looked back over the day with a little
wondering sigh. What had she done this day for the glory of God? How could
he possibly get any glory out of her honest efforts to do her whole duty that
day? True, she had resisted the temptation to slam the door hard, to set down
the tea-kettle with a bang, to say, in an undertone, "I don't care whether it is
clean or dirty," when her attention was called to some undone task. Yet what
had been the result? Mother certainly had never been so hard to please.

"She has found more to blame to-day than she ever did in the days when I
only half tried," said poor Dorothy to herself.

So where was there any glory for the Master to be found in the day? Even
then came the mother's voice calling,—

"Well, are we to have any supper to-night? or must I get it, with all the rest?"

Then Dorothy went down, and I am afraid that she set the cups and saucers
on the table with more force than was needed. Life looked full of pin-pricks
that hurt for the time being as much, or at least she thought they did, as
though they had been made with lancets.

What was the trouble with Mother Morgan?

I do want you to understand her. She did not understand herself, to be sure;
but that is no reason why you should not show more discrimination. It had
been an unusually trying day to her. Apart from the pressure of domestic
cares, which she, in common with many other housekeepers, made always
twice as heavy as they should be, her nerves, or her heart, or her conscience,
or all these combined, had been stirred within her by the words of prayer in
the twilight of the Sabbath. Memory took her back to an old hillside farmhouse,
surrounded by fields less rich and fruitful than those near which she dwelt; to
an old arm-chair, in which an old man sat night and morning, by his side
another chair, in which an old woman sat night and morning; and together
they read out of the same Bible, together they knelt and prayed, and this cold-
faced mother had heard herself prayed for many a time, not only by that old
man, but by the gray-haired woman. And they were her father and her mother,
both sleeping now, side by side, under the snow; and being dead, yet
speaking—speaking loudly to her on that very Monday. As she looked at
Dorothy she felt as though she were wronging her of a birthright. Dorothy had
never heard her mother pray as she had heard her old mother many a time.
Dorothy's mother had never said to her,—

"Dorothy, I want you to be a servant of God more than I want anything else."

That was what leer mother had said to her when she was Dorothy's age, and
many a time afterward; and she was not a servant of God yet, and her
conscience reproached her; and her child had never heard such words, and
her heart reproached her. As truly as I write it, she pitied Dorothy. Yet, can you
understand that this very feeling actually made her voice sharper and her
words more impatient when she spoke to her? The human heart unchanged is
a very strange and contradictory thing.

But I want to tell you what Dorothy Morgan does not know.

Her mother did discover the immaculate condition of the pudding-kettle, and
said aloud—

"I declare, for once this is clean!"

 CHAPTER XX.
CLOUDS.

I HAVE been tempted to linger over these first weeks connected with Louise
Morgan's home-coming in order that you might get a clear view of the
surroundings and a true idea of the family life. Now, however, I shall have to
take you away into the spring. The long, cold, busy winter, with its cares and
opportunities, had passed away, and the buds and blossoms, foretelling of the
coming summer, had begun to appear on every hand.

Many changes, subtle and sweet and strong, had been going on in the
Morgan household. Dorothy had held steadily on her course; the first lesson in
her Christian experience being ever present with her, that in the very smallest
matters of life her light might shine for Christ. She was learning the important
lesson to be "faithful over a few things." Little realized she the importance of
this faithfulness. Not an idea had she of the number of times in which the
mother had regarded her curiously, as she looked in vain for careless ways or
forgotten duties, and admitted to herself that "something had come over
Dorothy, and she only hoped it would last." Oh yes, it would last. Dorothy
believed that. She had anchored her soul after the first hours of unrest on the
sure promise of His "sufficient grace," and had no idea of doubting him. Not
much outside work had she been able to take up. Yet, little by little, came
changes. Carey Martyn was full of schemes.

"See here, let us do thus and so," was a favourite phrase of his, and he was
growing more and more fond of saying it to Dorothy.

The bright curtains in the parlour had not been taken down again; the old-
fashioned sofa still held its place in the coziest corner; and now that the sun
was getting around the corner, peeping in at the pleasantest window, the room
took a still more cheery look, and Dorothy had fallen into the habit of touching
a match to the carefully laid fire almost every evening just after tea, and one
by one the different members of the family dropped in.
The long-neglected old-fashioned brass knocker often sounded during these
days. People who had never called on the Morgans, chiefly because of the
fear that they would be coldly received, began to discover that Mrs. Lewis
Morgan was a very pleasant woman, very glad to see her friends; and the
mother was not so disagreeable as they had supposed; and, "really, that shy,
silent Dorothy had improved wonderfully."

Thus it was when the spring opened, only a few months since the new-
comer's first entrance; and nothing very remarkable, so far as outward eyes
could see, had transpired, and yet in a hundred little ways things were
different.

But on this particular May morning when I bring you into the family circle the
prevailing atmosphere was gloom.

In the first place it rained—a soft, sweet spring rain, when the buds swell, and
leaves almost seem to increase in size while you watch, and the spring
flowers nod at one another, and the world, though in tears, seems to the
happy heart to be keeping holiday. Yet, as Louise Morgan stood at her window
and watched the dripping eaves, and listened to the patter on the roof, and
saw the low gray clouds sail by, a rainy day seemed to her a dreary thing.

The truth was, the Morgan family were in trouble. During these passing
months Louise and her husband, reinforced by Dorothy, and afterward by
Carey Martyn, had carried John Morgan about on their hearts as special
subject of constant prayer. Louise had been often eager, persistent, steadfast
for a soul before; yet it seemed to her that the desire had never been so
intense as in this instance; and as she looked over the past, it seemed to her
that she had never had so little encouragement. From the time when she took
that walk home with him in the moonlight, and tried to speak earnest words,
John Morgan had seemed to withdraw more utterly into himself. He carefully
avoided Louise; he refused, positively, all invitations to attend church on the
Sabbath. He plainly informed Lewis that he was wasting words in trying to talk
religion at him, and might consider himself honourably excused from any such
attempts; and to Dorothy, who, with tearful eyes and trembling lips, said simply
to him one night in the darkness, "O John, won't you give yourself to Jesus?"
he unceremoniously and roughly answered, "Shut up."

In every respect John had seemed, during the last few months, to travel
rapidly backward. The corner grocery now saw him more frequently than ever
before; indeed, almost every evening, late into the night, was passed there.
The smell of tobacco and of liquor lingered more constantly now about his
clothing, and pervaded the atmosphere of his room. In vain did Louise
struggle to keep that room pure. Gradually it had changed its outward
appearance. Christmas and Now Year, and then John's birthday, had been
helpful anniversaries to her plans. The bed was spread in spotless white; the
twisted-leg stand had its scratched and pointless top concealed under a white
and delicately crocheted tidy; a little rocker occupied the corner by the
window, with a bright-coloured tidy fastened securely to its back. The space
between the hall door and the clothes-press was occupied by a neat toilet-
stand, with all the convenient accessories of the toilet carefully disposed on it;
the walls were hung with two or three choice engravings and an illuminated
text; and on the white-covered stand there daily blossomed, in a small pure
vase, a rose, or a bunch of lilies of the valley, or a spray of delicate wild flower
—some sweet-breathed treasure from the woods or garden, which struggled
with the tobacco-scented air—placed there by Louise's tasteful fingers.

Once she ventured on a gift in the shape of a nicely-bound Bible, containing

John's name and her own on the fly-leaf, and she made a place for it on the
white-covered stand; but found that the very next morning it had been placed
on the highest shelf in the clothes-press along with a pile of old agricultural
papers that reposed there from one house-cleaning to another. All of these
patient little efforts had been greeted hitherto with nothing but frowns or
sneers or total indifference.

John Morgan seemed to have deliberately determined to ruin his prospects for
this life and the next, and to forbid any one to hold him back. Yet they did not
give him up, these four. The more hopeless the case seemed to grow, the
more steadily did they try to hold their grasp on the arm of power.

But on this rainy morning of which I write, not one of the four but had been
plunged into more or less anxiety and gloom. Apparently, not only had all their
efforts failed, but the subject of them had resolved to remove himself from all
further influence or molestation from them. The threat that he had often and
often made, to leave his home and go where he pleased, he had now
determined to put into execution. A week before he had suddenly and fiercely
announced his decision, and no amount of persuasion had effected the least
change. He was indifferent alike to his father's advice or threats.

"You needn't give me a copper if you haven't a mind to," he had said sullenly
during one of the stormy talks. "I'll risk but that I can take care of myself. I can
beg or can drown myself, if I feel like it. Anyhow, I'm going, and there's no kind
of use in talking."

"But where are you going?" pleaded the mother.

One less indifferent than John could not have failed to notice that her face was
pale and her voice husky with pent-up feeling.

"Just exactly where I like, and nowhere else. If I knew where that was I might
tell you, but I don't. I never did as I pleased an hour since I was born, and I
mean to do it now."

What was the use of talking to one in such a mood? Yet they talked, and
argued, and threatened, and used sharp words, and bitter words, and words
that were calculated to leave life-long scars on hearts; and the talks were
frequently renewed, and lasted away into the midnight; and at last John had
declared that he would not stand this sort of thing another hour, and he would
not take any money—not a copper of it, even if it was offered; and he would
not take his clothes along—not a rag.

"You can sell them to the first rag-man that comes along, and build another
barn with their value, for all I care," he said to his father, in a pitiful attempt at
sarcasm.

And then, without another word or a glance at his mother or a pretence at

good-bye, he strode out of the room, closing the door after him with a bang.
That was the evening before, just at supper-time, and though his mother did
that night what she had never done before in her life—put some of the supper
down, carefully covered to keep warm for John—he came not. The next
morning's milking was done without him, and as the long rainy day waned it
became evident to each heart that John was gone.

Now I have not told you the worst of this. For the past week the mother's heart
had been wrung with such anxiety that she had humbled herself in a manner
that she, a few days before, would not have imagined possible. She had
followed Louise one morning up to her room, coming with slow and doubtful
tread, closing the door after her, and looking behind her in a half-frightened
way, as if to be sure that there were no other listeners to her humiliation than
this one, and had said to Louise, catching her breath while she spoke,—

"You know how I feel about John. I have heard you talk about praying over
everything; if you believe that it does any good, why don't you pray to have
him kept at home?"

"Mother," said Louise, coming close to her, taking the hard old hand in hers, "I
do pray for him, every hour in the day, almost every minute it seems to me,
and I believe it will do good; I believe He will hear our prayer. But there is no
one who could pray for John as his mother could. I do so desire to have his
mother's prayers infold him like a garment. Won't you pray for him?"

"I'm not a praying woman," said Mrs. Morgan, trying to keep her voice steady.
"Still, if I believed in it as you do, I would pray now if I never did again."

Then she turned and went swiftly away. She had actually humbled her proud
heart to ask her daughter-in-law to pray for John! She could not get away from
the feeling that Louise's prayers would be likely to avail if any would. More
than that—but this at the time was known only to her own heart, and to the
One who reads the heart—in the silence and darkness of her own room, after
Nellie was asleep, and before Farmer Morgan had drawn the last bolt
preparatory to coming to his bed, she had got down on her knees and had
offered what, in her ignorance, she thought was prayer. "O God," she said, "if
thou hearest human beings in their need, hear me, and keep John from going
away." There was no submission in her heart to the divine will, no reference to
the name which is the only name by which we can approach God, no
realization of anything save John's peril and a blind reaching out after some
hand that had power. Yet it was a nearer approach to prayer than that mother
had made for fifty years!

Neither could she help a feeling, which she told herself was probably
superstition, that something somehow would prevent John from carrying out
his designs. Yet the days went by, and no unseen arm stretched out its hand
of power to arrest John. Instead, the rainy day wore on with the feeling settling
down hopelessly on the mother's heart that her son had gone from her with
hard words on his lips, and with the echo of hard words from her sounding in
his heart. For, so strange a thing is this human heart, Mrs. Morgan had
actually never seemed more hard or cold to her son than she did during the
week that her heart was torn with anxiety for him.

But I have not told you the worst of this. The days moved on, and it became
evident to all that John had carried out his threat and was gone. Then the
mother's grief and dismay found vent in hard and cruel words. She turned in
bitterness from Louise, yes, and from Dorothy, indeed from every one. To
Louise she said plainly it was not strange that John had wanted to get away;
she had given him no peace since she had been there; always tormenting him
to go to church or to prayer-meeting, or to do something that he did not want
to do. For her part, she did not see but he was quite as good as those who
were always running off to meeting. He could not even have any peace in his
own room; it must be cluttered up with rubbish that any man hated—vases to
tip over, and tidies to torment him!
And she flung the tidies on a chair in Louise's room, and folded and packed
away the cover which she said she had been "fooled into buying," and
restored every corner of that little hall chamber to its original dreariness. And,
worse than all, she declared that she hoped and trusted she would hear no
more cant about prayers in that house. She had not been able to see for many
a year that the kind of praying that was being done in these days
accomplished any good.

To Dorothy she declared that if she had had the spirit of a mouse she might
have exerted herself, as other girls did, to make a pleasant spot for her
brother; that she had never tried to please him in anything, not even the
mending of his mittens when he wanted them; she would rather dawdle over
the fire roasting apples with Carey Martyn than give any thought to her own
brother.

Now all this was bitterness itself to poor Dorothy, whose own heart reproached
her for having been so many years indifferent to her brother's welfare, but who
had honestly tried with all the force of her heart to be pleasant and helpful to
John ever since she had been doing anything from a right motive.

Neither did Mrs. Morgan spare her husband. She would not have let a boy like
that go off without a penny in his pocket, she said,—no, not if she had to sell
all the stock to get him ready money. He had as good a right to money as
Lewis ever had, and he had been tied down to the five barns all his life. No
wonder he ran away. He showed some spirit, and she was glad he had.

Do you suppose Farmer Morgan endured this in silence? Not he. And sharp
words grow sharper, and bitter feelings ran high, until the once quiet kitchen
was transformed into a Babel of angry words, and poor Louise could only go
away and weep.

But I have not told you the worst of this: actually the worst was in this Christian
woman's own sore heart. The awful question, "Why?" had crept in and was
tormenting her soul. She had been sincere in her prayers; she had been
honest in her desires; she had been unwavering in her petitions. Why had
God permitted this disastrous thing to come? Had she not tried—oh had she
not tried with sincere desire ever since she came into this home to live Christ
in it? Why, then, had she been allowed to so utterly fail? Would it not be to
God's glory to save John Morgan's soul? Was it not evident that through him
the mother might possibly be reached? Was it not perfectly evident that John,
at home, under her influence and Lewis's and Dorothy's, would be in less
danger than away among strangers, wandering whither he would? Was it not
perfectly evident that this conclusion to their prayers had caused Mrs. Morgan
to lose faith in prayer—to grow harder and harder in her feelings toward God
and toward Christians? Why was all this allowed?

She had prayed in faith—or, at least, she had supposed she had; she had felt
almost sure that God would answer her prayer. She had said to Dorothy, only
the night before John went away—said it with steady voice and a smile in her
eye—"I don't believe John will go away; I don't think God will let him go."

And Dorothy, half-startled, had answered: "O Louise, I don't mean to be

irreverent, but I don't understand. How can God keep him from going, if he will
go?"

And Louise, smiling outright now, so sure was she of her trust, had answered:
"I don't know, dear; he has infinite resources; I only know that I believe he will
do it."

Now what had become of her faith? It grieves my heart to have to confess to
you that this young servant of Christ, who had felt his "sufficient grace" in her
own experience again and again, allowed Satan to stand at her elbow and
push before her that persistent and faithless "Why?"

It was that word in all its changes which was crowding into her heart, on that
May morning, as she looked out at the dripping eaves and the leaden clouds.

CHAPTER XXI.
HEDGED IN.

As for John, perhaps he was quite as much astonished at the turn of events
as was any of the family. It is true he had been threatening for many weeks to
turn his back on the old homestead, but it is doubtful if he had really, during
that time, a well-defined intention of doing any such thing.

No plans as to where he should go or what he should do had taken shape;

only a vague unrest, and a more or less settled determination to some time
get away from it all.

Therefore, as he turned his back on the familiar barns and long-stretching

fields, and went out from them in the darkness of that May evening, not one of
the family was more in fog as to what he would do next than was John
himself. Instinctively he turned his steps to the village, spending the evening in
his old haunt, showing only by a more reckless manner than usual that there
had been any change in his life. In fact he realized no change; he never
turned toward the family road leading homeward as he came out from that
corner grocery at a later hour than usual; but he stopped abruptly before he
reached the top of the hill, considered a moment, then turned and retraced his
steps, and presently struck out boldly on the road leading cityward. The great
city, only sixty miles away, was of course the first point for an enterprising
young man about to start out in life for himself.

About midnight he reached the station where the express train stopped. By
the station lamps he discovered that the eastern-bound train would be due in
five minutes. He drew from his pocket the handful of silver and copper that
constituted his available means, slowly counted them, lounged into the
station, and inquired the price of a ticket to the city, then smiled grimly to
himself to discover that after purchasing one he should have just fivepence
left. "I guess I can live on that for a week or so," he muttered; "father could. If I
can't I can starve. I'm going to the city anyhow." And the ticket was bought.
Presently came the train, and our reckless young traveller sauntered into it,
selected the best seat he could find, settled himself comfortably, and went to
sleep, apparently indifferent to the fact that his mother was at that moment
shedding bitter tears for him. No, he was not indifferent; would not have been,
at least, had he known the fact. Nothing in all his young life's experience
would have amazed him more. He did not understand his mother, which is not
strange, perhaps, when one considers that she had spent years in learning
how to hide her heart away from the sight of those she loved best. John
Morgan actually did not believe that he had ever caused his mother to shed
one tear; he did not believe that she loved him. What did he know about
mother love, save as she revealed it to him?

It is not my purpose to take you wandering with John Morgan. Even if we had
time for it, the experience would be anything but pleasant. He went into many
places where you would not like to follow; he did many things that were better
left undone, and are much better left untold. Yet I will be just to poor, silly,
wicked John. He held back, or rather was held back by a force which he did
not in the least understand, from many a place that otherwise he would have
entered. There were depths of sin and folly into which he had abundant
chance to sink, and from which nothing in his own depraved heart kept him
from sinking, and yet into which he did not sink. He would have smiled in
superior scorn over the thought that the incense of prayer, which had been
rising day and night concerning him during the passing weeks, had anything
to do with the unseen force that held him when he would have plunged
headlong. Still he was held. He is not the first one who has been saved from
self-shipwreck by a power outside of himself, unrecognized and unthanked.

Still it must be confessed that John Morgan took long enough strides in the
road to shipwreck, and did what he could for his own overthrow, goaded
meantime by an exasperating and ever-increasing sense of failure. Here was
he at last, his own master, able to work, if he could find anything to do, or to
let it alone, just as he pleased; no one to direct, or, as he had always phrased
it, to "order." No one to complain, no one to question—a life of freedom at last.
Was it not for this he had pined? It was humiliating to discover that it did not
satisfy him. He could not, even for an hour, cheat himself into believing that he
was happy in the life that he had chosen. A very vagabond of a life he led. He
tried working and lounging and starving, and the time hung heavily. It was
more than humiliating, it was exasperating; but the fact remained that he could
no more get away from the memory of that clean, sweet-smelling, sweetly
kept room, in which he had lately passed his nights, than he could get away
from his own miserable self. Nay, the very smell of the wild-wood violets which
had nodded on him from the tiny vase that last morning at home, and which
he had affected to despise, seemed to follow and haunt him. How perfectly
absurd it was in him here, in the very centre of this great centre of life, to
actually long for a whiff of those wild violets! He sneered at himself, and swore
at himself, and longed for them all the same.

So passed the days, each one bearing him steadily downward, and yet each
one holding him back from the downward depths into which he might have
plunged. And the summer heats came in all their fierceness and wilted him
with their city-polluted breath; he had been used all his life to the free, pure air
of the country. At times it was hard for him to believe that this crowded, ill-
smelling city could belong to the same earth on which the wide-stretching
harvest-fields lay and smiled. And the summer waned, and the rich, rare
October days, so beautiful in the country, so barren of all interest to the
homeless in a great city, came to him, and John Morgan had actually become
a tramp! The work which he had at first despised and hated he now could not
find; and if he would not carry his early threat into execution and literally
starve, he must tramp and beg. Now starving had lost its charms somewhere
among the parchings of those summer months; he had so nearly tried that
way as to shudder over it; to ask for a bite at the back door of country-looking
houses was more to his mind.

One never-to-be-forgotten October day he shook himself out from the shelter
of a wrecked car, near which he had passed the night, and resolved upon a
breakfast of some sort. I wish I could give you a picture of him. His own
mother would not have recognized him. His clothing in the old days had been
none of the finest, but whatever passed through Mother Morgan's hands was
clean, and carefully mended. Now this bundle of rags and dirt would have
been in danger of being spurned from her door without a second glance.
"There is no excuse for filth!" she was wont to say grimly. Her son John had
heard her say it many a time. He thought of it this morning as he shook
himself; yet how could he help the filth? He had no clothes, he had no place in
which to wash, he had nothing with which to brush, and very little left to brush!
True, he had brought himself into this very position, but of that he did not
choose to think; and besides, everybody knows it is easier to get into certain
positions than to get out of them. I wish I could tell you how he felt. He did not
understand his own mood. He was not repentant, not in the least; if anything,
he was more bitter and defiant than ever. But he was disappointed: assuming
control of one's own actions was by no means so comfortable or desirable a
lot as he had imagined. There were days in which he believed that to have
milked the gentle cows, and cared for the fine horses, would have been a
positive relief. It was not work that John had shirked. Yet he had no idea of
going home; his proud spirit and defiant nature would not let him even suggest
that thought to himself.

On this particular morning he had resolved to try again for work. He managed
to get on the last car of an outgoing goods train, and was thus whirled a few
miles into the country. At the first station he jumped off, and began his search
for work. He found a farmer who was compassionate, and gave him wood to
carry into the already well-stocked shed by way of earning his breakfast.
Presently the farmer came to the door and called:

"We are about ready for breakfast now. You can come in while we have
prayers and then have breakfast."

"I don't want prayers," said John, stopping short midway between the door
and the wood-pile, his arms full. "I asked for something to eat, not for praying."

"I know that, and you shall have the something to eat; but a little praying won't
hurt you. Why, man, you can afford to be thankful that you have found a
chance to eat again!"
"No, I can't," said John fiercely. "If I can't have the breakfast without the
praying, I'll go without the breakfast."

"Very well," said the sturdy farmer, "I'm bound you shall then. I declare, if a
fellow has got so far that he can't even listen to a word of prayer, he doesn't
deserve to eat."

"Then I'll starve," said John in anger, and he threw the wood on the floor and
strode away.

"Oh, I don't know about that, father," said a motherly voice, and a motherly
face looking out after angry John. "Seems to me I'd have given him some
breakfast if he didn't want to come to prayers. Maybe he was ashamed to, he
looks so much like a rag-bag."

"Why didn't he say so then!" said the disturbed farmer. "Who expected him to
fly off in a passion at the mention of a prayer? He's a hard case, I'm afraid."

That was true enough; and yet the incident was not so much against John as
it sounds. Poor John! he was angry at his own heart for remembering, with a
certain lingering touch of tenderness, that prayer in the kitchen at home in the
Sabbath evening twilight; he wanted no experience that would call it up more
plainly. Breakfastless, and supperless last night, John Morgan! There had
always been plenty to eat in his father's house. What a bitterness it was to
think that, now he was independent, he was actually a dependent on the
chance charities of the world!

He tramped on; he was growing hungrier; he felt that he really could not work
now until he had a chance to eat; it was actual pauperism this time. A neat-
looking house, a neat kitchen door; he knocked at it and asked for a bit of
bread. A trim old lady answered it,—

"Yes, to be sure. Come in. And so you're hungry? Poor fellow! It must be hard
to be hungry. No home, I suppose?"

John shook his head.

"Poor fellow! You look young too. Is your mother dead, did you say?"

All the while she bustled about, getting a savoury breakfast ready for him—a
cup of steaming coffee, and a bit of meat, and generous slices of bread and
butter—bread that looked and butter that smelled like his mother's. And this
was a farmhouse, and a neat, clean kitchen, and a yellow painted floor.
At that last question a strange feeling came over John Morgan. Was his
mother dead? "No," he almost said. He would not have liked to nod his head
to that. And yet, here he was among the October days, and it had been early
May when he left her. How many funeral processions he had passed on the
streets since, and he had had no word from his mother. Down in the pasture
meadow one day his father had said to him, "Don't plough that bit up; I've
never made up my mind to it. In spite of me, it looks as if it was meant for a
kind of family burying-ground." There was a great tree there and a grassy
hillside, and a small clear stream purled along very near. How did he know but
a grave had been dug on that hillside since he went away? His heart gave a
few sudden thuds, and then for a minute almost seemed to stop beating.
Could it be possible that John Morgan really loved his mother! He was eating
his breakfast now—a good breakfast it was, and the trim old lady talked on.

"Well, there are a good many homeless people in the world. It must be hard;
but then, you know, the Master himself gave up his home, and had not where
to lay his head—did it for our sakes too. Wasn't that strange? Seems to me I
couldn't give up my home. But he made a home by it for every one of us. I
hope you've looked after the title to yours, young man."

No answer from John. The old lady sighed, and said to herself, as she trotted
away for a biscuit for him,—

"He doesn't understand, poor fellow. I suppose he never has had any good
thoughts put into his mind. Dear me! I wish I could do something for him
besides feeding his poor, perishing body."

But John did understand perfectly. What was the matter with all the people this
morning? Why were they so persistently forcing that subject at him? He had
been wandering almost six months, and had never met so many
straightforward words concerning it in all the months as he had this morning.
Is not it possible, John Morgan, that God's watching Spirit knows when to
reach even your heart? The little old lady trotted back, a plate of biscuits in
one hand and a little card in the other.

"Put these biscuits in your pocket; maybe they'll come good when you are
hungry again. And here is a little card; you can read, I suppose?"

The faintest suspicion of a smile gleamed in John Morgan's eyes as he

nodded assent.

"Well, then, you read it once in a while just to please me. Those are true
words on it; and Jesus is here yet trying to save, just the same as he always
was. He wants to save you, young man, and you had better let him do it now.
If I were you I wouldn't wait another day."

As he tramped down the street, his inner man so wonderfully refreshed by the
good coffee and bread and butter, he could not help looking at the card,
which, also, after that breakfast, he could not help taking, although he wanted
to put it into the cheery fire. It was a simple enough card, and printed on it in
plain letters were these words, "It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Then
underneath, "I am the bread of life. He that believeth on me shall never
hunger." Still lower on the card, in ornamented letters, the words, "The Master
is come, and calleth for thee." Then a hand pointing to an italicized line, "I that
speak unto thee am he."

"Queer mess that," said John, and he thrust the card into his pocket and
strode toward the village depot. He meant to board the next train and get a
little farther into the country, and continue his search for work. The train
arrived, and he succeeded in slipping into it. But it was hardly fairly under way
when he discovered that he had miscalculated, and was being borne back
toward the great city, instead of farther into the country.

"I don't care," he said. "I don't know what I want of the country. On the whole, I
may as well try my chances in the city. I'll go up Greenwich Street and try my
luck in the warehouses. I can roll boxes about now since I've had another
breakfast."

But the train presently switched off and ran into another station, into another
part of the city, wherein John was as total a stranger as though he had just
dropped from the clouds.

"Where on earth am I?" he said bewildered, swinging himself down from the
top of the car and looking around. "Just my luck. I'm nowhere. East, west,
north, south,—which way shall I go? I'll go north. Which is north? Or no, I
won't; it's coming winter. I guess I'll go south, and walk as long as it looks
interesting, and see where I'll bring up. What difference does it make which
way I go?"

All the difference in the world, John Morgan. It is a link in the chain which is
narrowing around you. It is one of the apparently trivial movements which will
have its silent, unnoticed, unthought-of part in helping you to decide which
way you will go during all your future, and at what station you will finally land.
 CHAPTER XXII.
CORDS UNSEEN.

THE morning service was just over in the great church on Lexington Avenue.
A large company of men and women lingered in the broad aisles, shaking
hands with each other, saying a word here and there in subdued happy tones.
A looker-on, who was familiar with religious meetings, and who yet had not
been present at this one, would have known by the atmosphere lingering in
the church that the worshippers had been having a happy time. They were
loath to leave; they gathered in little knots, at convenient standing-places, and
discussed the events of the hour and the prospects of the evening. Large
numbers of the ladies had packages of white cards in their hands—not unlike
calling-cards in size and texture, and quite as carefully written on as ever
calling-cards were. The handwriting was peculiar—delicate, gracefully
rounded letters, skilful flourishes. Somebody had considered the work
important, and had bestowed time and skill.

"Estelle dear, won't you go forward and get some of the cards? I see very few
here who will go up Fairmount Street, and you may be able to reach some
who will be otherwise neglected."

So spoke one of the lingerers, a fair-faced woman, with silver-tinted hair, to a

very graceful young woman, who was evidently her daughter, and who
evidently lingered, not so much from personal interest in the scene as
because her mother did. She turned full, wondering, and yet deprecating eyes
on her mother at the question.

"O mamma! I cannot offer those cards to people. I am not one of the workers,
you know; it isn't expected of me. You have some, and that will be sufficient
for our family."

"I am not going up Fairmount Street," the mother answered quietly. "I have
only enough cards to meet my own opportunities, daughter. If Louise were
here, dear, can't you think how she would scatter those little white
messengers?"
"Louise is good, mamma, and I am not, you know; you mustn't expect me to
be Louise. I can no more take her place in that way than I can in a hundred
others."

"Oh yes, you can, my child; it doesn't require any special skill to hand a card
of invitation to a passer-by, or even to speak a word of encouragement to the
half persuaded."

"But, mamma, how would it look for me to invite people to the meetings? I am
not one of the church members. It wouldn't be very consistent, I think."

The mother's eyes were sorrowful and questioning as they rested on the face
of her fair young daughter. She seemed not to know just what would be well to
answer to this. At last she said,—

"Estelle dear, even though you refuse Christ yourself, don't you wish that
many others might come to him? Poor, sad hearts who have not your
opportunities, nor know the way as you do—shouldn't they have their chance
to choose, and aren't you willing to extend the invitation?"

The young girl's cheeks flushed a deeper pink, and her eyes drooped, but she
answered steadily,—

"Certainly I am, mamma."

Then she went forward and received from the pastor a package of the
beautiful cards, turning them over curiously in her hand, wondering much how
it would seem to pass them out to people, and whether the cards would be
accepted or refused.

Simple little cards they were; nothing pretentious or formidable about them;
just an announcement of daily religious services, giving the hours of meetings
and the name of the preacher; then, on the reverse side, in the most exquisite
penmanship, this simple quotation, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee."
Estelle read it, and the glow on her cheeks did not lessen. There was certainly
something very solemn in the suggestion. Estelle could hardly help giving a
moment's attention to the inquiry whether the Master really were calling for
her. Could she have brought her heart to the point of believing that such was
the case, it would have been well with Estelle, for she could not have said the
Master nay. The sin in her case was that she would not study the subject long
enough to be able to believe that she was personally included in the call.
Nevertheless she went her way up Fairmount Street on her unusual errand, a
little touch of vexation in her face over the thought that Louise would have
done all this so well, and would so have delighted in it, while she must
bunglingly try to supply her place. It was about this time that John Morgan
turned into Fairmount Street, much wondering where he was and what he
could be expected to do next.

"Will you have a card, please?" And a vision of loveliness fell on his
astonished gaze, and a delicately-gloved hand was stretched forth with the
fair bit of pasteboard. "It is just an invitation to the meetings; we hope you will
come." And still the card was outstretched, and still John stood and stared.
What was there about that face and voice that seemed familiar to him as one
whom he had met in a dream or in the far-away unreality of some other
existence? It bewildered him to the extent that he forgot either to decline or
accept the card, but stood looking and wondering. Estelle felt the importance
of saying something further to this silent starer. "They have very good singing,
and great crowds come every evening. I think you will like it. Will you take the
card?"

Thus petitioned, John, roused from his bewilderment, put forth his hand for the
proffered card, because for the moment he could not decide what else to do.

Then Estelle, her mission accomplished and her embarrassment great, flitted
away from him around the corner. "What a strange-acting fellow!" was her
comment. "How he did stare! One would suppose he had never seen a lady
before. Dear me! He looks as though he needed a friend. Somehow I can't
help feeling sorry for him. I really hope he will go to the meeting; but of course
he won't." And Estelle Barrows actually realized that for such a dreary,
friendless-looking person as he the love of Christ would be a great
transformation. She did not mean that she, Estelle Barrows, in her beauty and
purity, surrounded by the safeguards of her high position, had no need of
Christ; neither did she realize that this was the logical conclusion of her
reasoning.

"What in the name of common sense has got into all the people to-day? They
are running wild on cards." This was John Morgan's comment. He was
ashamed and vexed to think he had so forgotten his sullenness and
indifference as to stare at the fair young face. He read the card carefully, more
to get away from his present thoughts than from any interest in it; but the
verse on the reverse side held his attention for a few minutes, from the fact
that the words were the very same as those on the card given him by the old
lady who had supplied his breakfast. It struck him as a strange coincidence.
Presently he thrust the bit of pasteboard into his pocket, and dismissed the
incident from his mind.
Not again did it recur to him until he was passing, during that same evening, a
brightly-lighted building, from whence there issued sounds of music.
Something in the strains recalled, he knew not how or why, the incident of the
morning and the card of invitation. "I wonder if this is the place?" he queried.
"It would be rather queer if I had blundered on the very building, without the
least notion of doing any such thing." He paused before the door, listening to
the roll of the organ as it sounded on the quiet air. "That organ doesn't squeak,
anyhow," he said grimly, recalling the organ scene in the old church at home,
and Louise's pleasure in its improved condition after he had taken hold of it.
Thoughts of her suggested the card again, and he brought it forth from his
pocket, and by the light of a friendly lamp compared the name on the card
with the name on the building before him. Yes, they agreed; chance or
Providence, according as you are accustomed to view these matters, had led
him to the very spot. Still he had no intention of going in. "Pretty-looking object
I am to go to church," he said, surveying himself critically, something between
a smile and a sneer on his face. "I would create a sensation, I fancy. I wonder
if the bit of silk and lace that gave me the card is in there? And I wonder if she
expects to see me? And I wonder where I have seen her before, and why her
face haunts me?"

The organ had been silent for some minutes; now it rolled forth its notes
again, and voices, that to John seemed of unearthly sweetness, rang out on
the quiet:—

"Come home! Come home! You are weary at heart;

And the way has been long,
And so lonely and wild!
Oh, prodigal child, come home! Oh, come home!"

Was John Morgan homesick? He would have scorned the thought. Yet at the
sound of these tender words a strange choking sensation came over him, and
something very like a mist filled his eyes. He felt, rather than realized, how
long and lonely and wild the way had been; still he had no intention of going
in. He would step nearer and listen to that music; those voices were unlike
anything he had ever heard before. He drew nearer under the light of the hall
lamp. He could see into the church. The doors stood invitingly open; the aisles
even were full. Some were standing, not well-dressed people all of them, by
any means; but some were so roughly clad that even he would not attract
attention by the contrast. A young man, well-dressed, with an open hymn-
book in his hand, stood by the door, almost in the hall. He turned suddenly,
and his eyes rested on John; he beckoned him forward, then stepped toward
him.

"Come right in, my friend; we can find standing-room for you, and the sermon
is just about to commence."

"I'm not dressed for such places," said John, imagining that he spoke firmly.

"Oh, never mind the dress; that is not of the least consequence; there are
plenty of men in here in their rough working-clothes. Come right in."

"Come home, come home," sang out the wonderful voices. And John Morgan,
still with no intention of going in, yet impelled by a force which he no more
understood than he understood his own soul, stepped forward and followed
the young man into the crowded church. The singing ceased, and the minister
arose and immediately announced his text, "Friend, how camest thou in hither,
not having on a wedding garment?"

The sentence was spoken so like a personal question that John looked about
him, startled. Could it be possible that the man was addressing him—actually
referring to his uncouth dress? This only for an instant; then he discovered
that no one was paying the least attention to him, and that his dress, rough
enough, was not worse than that of some by whom he was surrounded. But
the preacher's manner was so new and strange, so unlike anything that John
Morgan had ever met before, that, despite his own half-formed determination
to get out of this, he stayed, and looked, and listened.

If I could I would tell you about that sermon; but sermons on paper, reported
by a second party, are so very different from the words that come burning hot
from the heart of the preacher, that on second thought I have deemed it
unwise to make the attempt.

To John Morgan the entire service was like a revelation of mysteries. That
which had seemed to him bewildering and contradictory, and finally actually
exasperating in the plan of salvation, was made as clear as the sunlight, and
one by one his own daring subterfuges were swept from him, so that before
the sermon closed he felt that he indeed stood unclothed and speechless
before the King. What next? Where should he go now? Whither flee? Was he
not sufficiently wretched before? Had he need to feel these truths in order to
make his condition less endurable?

The sermon closed, the few words of solemn prayer followed, and the choir
took up the service. Strangely clear, at least to John's ears, were the voices