The Orient is the birthplace of prophecy.

Before the advent of our Lord, the very air of the East was resounding with the "unconscious prophecies of heathenism." Men were in expectation of great changes in the earth.
When Mohammed arose, he not only claimed to be the deliverer of a message inspired of Allah, but to foretell the events of futurity.

He declared that the approach of the latter day could be distinguished by unmistakable signs, among which were two of the most notable character.
Before the latter day, the _sun shall rise in the West_, and God will send forth a cold odoriferous wind blowing from _Syria Damascena_, which shall _sweep away_ the souls of all the faithful, and _the Koran itself_.

What the world of Islam takes in its literal sense, we may take in a deeper spiritual meaning.

Is it not true, that far in the West, the gospel sun began to rise and shed its beams on Syria, many years ago, and that in our day that cold odoriferous wind of truth and life, fragrant with the love of Jesus and the love of man, is beginning to blow from Syria Damascena, over all the Eastern world! The church and the school, the printing press and the translated Bible, the periodical and the ponderous volume, the testimony of living witnesses for the truth, and of martyrs who have died in its defence, all combine to sweep away the systems of error, whether styled Christian, Moslem or Pagan.
The remarkable uprising of christian women in Christian lands to a new interest in the welfare of woman in heathen and Mohammedan countries, is one of the great events of the present century.