He inspired his preachers and his people with his own spirit and made everything subordinate to his overmastering purpose, the spread of scriptural holiness throughout the land.
At rare intervals a vision might perhaps be vouchsafed to some Montanistic old woman, or a brother might now and then have a dream that seemed to be of supernatural origin; but the overmastering power of religious enthusiasm was a thing of which the Montanists knew as little as the Catholics.
To achieve this one end had, indeed, become the overmastering passion of Mahmud's life, to defeat it the object of all Mehemet Ali's policy.
But, as he grew stronger, his desire for their good opinion paled before an overmastering propensity to meddle in the affairs of foreign nations.
Everything is made subordinate to the overmastering dictates of war.
