In a few years after this memorable event the Archbishop Theophilus had gone to his account. His throne was occupied by his nephew, St. Cyril, who had been expressly prepared for that holy and responsible office by a residence of five years among the monks of Nitria. He had been presented to the fastidious Alexandrians with due precautions, and by them acknowledged to be an effective and fashionable preacher. His pagan opponents, however, asserted that the clapping of hands and encores bestowed on the more elaborate passages of his sermons were performed by persons duly arranged in the congregation, and paid for their trouble. If doubt remains as to his intellectual endowments, there can be none respecting the qualities of his heart. The three parties into which the population of the city was divided—Christian, Heathen, and Jewish—kept up a perpetual disorder by their disputes. Of the last it is said that the number was not less than forty thousand. The episcopate itself had become much less a religious than an important civil office, exercising a direct municipal control through the Parabolani, which, under the disguise of city missionaries, whose duty it was to seek out the sick and destitute, Determines on supremacy in Alexandria.

Riots in that city. constituted in reality a constabulary force, or rather actually a militia. The unscrupulous manner in which Cyril made use of this force, diverting it from its ostensible purpose, is indicated by the fact that the emperor was obliged eventually to take the appointments to it out of the archbishop's hands, and reduce the number to five or six hundred. Some local circumstances had increased the animosity between the Jews and the Christians, and riots had taken place between them in the theatre. These were followed by more serious conflicts in the streets; and the Jews, for the moment having the advantage over their antagonists, outraged and massacred them. It was, however, but for a moment; for, the Christians arousing themselves under the inspirations of Cyril, a mob sacked the synagogues, pillaged the houses of the Jews, and endeavoured to expel those offenders out of the city. The prefect Orestes was compelled to interfere to stop the riot; but the archbishop was not so easily disposed of. His old associates, the Nitrian monks, now justified the prophetic forecast of Theophilus. Five hundred of those fanatics swarmed into the town from the desert. The prefect himself was assaulted, and wounded in the head by a stone thrown by Ammonius, one of them. The more respectable citizens, alarmed at the turn things were taking, interfered, and Ammonius, being seized, suffered death at the hands of the lictor. Cyril, undismayed, caused his body to be transported to the Cæsareum, laid there in state, and buried with unusual honours. He directed that the name of the fallen zealot should be changed from Ammonius to Thaumasius, or "the Wonderful," and the holy martyr received the honours of canonization.

In these troubles there can be no doubt that the pagans sympathized with the Jews, and therefore drew upon themselves the vengeance of Cyril. Among the cultivators of Platonic philosophy whom the times had spared, there was a beautiful young woman, Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the mathematician, who not only distinguished herself by her expositions of the Neo-Platonic and Peripatetic doctrines, but was also honoured for the ability with which she commented on the writings of Apollonius and other geometers. Every day before her door stood a long train of chariots; her lecture-room was crowded with the wealth and fashion of Alexandria. Her aristocratic audiences were more than a rival to those attending upon the preaching of the archbishop, and perhaps contemptuous comparisons were instituted between the philosophical lectures of Hypatia and the incomprehensible sermons of Cyril. But if the archbishop had not philosophy, he had what on such occasions is more valuable—power. It was not to be borne that a heathen sorceress should thus divide such a metropolis with a prelate; it was not to be borne that the rich, and noble, and young should thus be carried off by the black The city of Alexandria. arts of a diabolical enchantress. Alexandria was too fair a prize to be lightly surrendered. It could vie with Constantinople itself. Into its streets, from the yellow sand-hills of the desert, long trains of camels and countless boats brought the abundant harvests of the Nile. A ship-canal connected the harbour of Eunostos with Lake Mareotis. The harbour was a forest of masts. Seaward, looking over the blue Mediterranean, was the great lighthouse, the Pharos, counted as one of the wonders of the world; and to protect the shipping from the north wind there was a mole three quarters of a mile in length, with its drawbridges, a marvel of the skill of the Macedonian engineers. Two great streets crossed each other at right angles—one was three, the other one mile long. In the square where they intersected stood the mausoleum in which rested the body of Alexander. The city was full of noble edifices—the palace, the exchange, the Cæsareum, the halls of justice. Among the temples, those of Pan and Neptune were conspicuous. The visitor passed countless theatres, churches, temples, synagogues. There was a time before Theophilus when the Serapion might have been approached on one side by a slope for carriages, on the other by a flight of a hundred marble steps. On these stood the grand portico with its columns, its chequered corridor leading round a roofless hall, the adjoining porches of which contained the library, and from the midst of its area arose a lofty pillar visible afar off at sea. On one side of the town were the royal docks, on the other the Hippodrome, and on appropriate sites the Necropolis, the market-places, the gymnasium, its stoa being a stadium long; the amphitheatre, groves, gardens, fountains, obelisks, and countless public buildings with gilded roofs glittering in the sun. Here might be seen the wealthy Christian ladies walking in the streets, their dresses embroidered with Scripture parables, the Gospels hanging from their necks by a golden chain, Maltese dogs with jewelled collars frisking round them, and slaves with parasols and fans trooping along. There might be seen the ever-trading, ever-thriving Jew, fresh from the wharves, or busy negotiating his loans. But, worst of all, the chariots with giddy or thoughtful pagans hastening to the academy of Hypatia, to hear those questions discussed which have never yet been answered, "Where am I?" "What am I?" "What can I know?"—to hear discourses on antenatal existence, or, as the vulgar asserted, to find out the future by the aid of the black art, soothsaying by Chaldee talismans engraved on precious stones, by incantations with a glass and water, by moonshine on the walls, by the magic mirror, the reflection of a sapphire, a sieve, or cymbals; fortune-telling by the veins of the hand, or consultations with the stars.

Cyril at length determined to remove this great reproach, and overturn what now appeared to be the only obstacle in his way to uncontrolled authority in the city. We are reaching one of those moments in which great general principles embody themselves in individuals. It is Greek philosophy under the appropriate form of Hypatia; ecclesiastical ambition under that of Cyril. Their destinies are about to be fulfilled. As Hypatia comes forth to her academy, she is assaulted by Cyril's mob—an Alexandrian mob of many monks. Amid the fearful yelling of these bare-legged and black-cowled fiends she is dragged from her chariot, and in the public street stripped naked. In her mortal terror she is haled into an adjacent church, and in that sacred edifice is killed by the club of Peter the Reader. It is not always in the power of him who has stirred up the worst passions of a fanatical mob to stop their excesses when his purpose is accomplished. With the blow given by Peter the aim of Cyril was reached, but his merciless adherents had not glutted their vengeance. They outraged the naked corpse, dismembered it, and incredible to be said, finished their infernal crime by scraping the flesh from the bones with oyster-shells, and casting the remnants into the fire. Though in his privacy St. Cyril and his friends might laugh at the end of his antagonist, his memory must bear the weight of the righteous indignation of posterity.

Thus, in the 414th year of our era, the position of philosophy in the intellectual metropolis of the world was determined; henceforth science must sink into obscurity and subordination. Its public existence will no longer be tolerated. Indeed, it may be said that from this period for some centuries it altogether disappeared. The leaden mace of bigotry had struck and shivered the exquisitely tempered steel of Greek philosophy. Cyril's acts passed unquestioned. It was now ascertained that throughout the Roman world there must be no more liberty of thought. It had been said that these events prove Greek philosophy to have been a sham, and, like other shams, it was driven out of the world when detected, and that it could not withstand the truth. Such assertions might answer their purposes very well, so long as the victors maintained their power in Alexandria, but they manifestly are of inconvenient application after the Saracens had captured the city. However this may be, an intellectual stagnation settled upon the place, an invisible atmosphere of oppression, ready to crush down, morally and physically, whatever provoked its weight. And so for the next two dreary and weary centuries things remained, until oppression and force were ended by a foreign invader. It was well for the world that the Arabian conquerors avowed their true argument, the scimitar, and made no pretensions to superhuman wisdom. They were thus left free to pursue knowledge without involving themselves in theological contradictions, and were able to make Egypt once more illustrious among the nations of the earth—to snatch it from the hideous fanaticism, ignorance, and barbarism into which it had been plunged. On the shore of the Red Sea once more a degree of the earth's surface was to be measured, and her size ascertained—but by a Mohammedan astronomer. In Alexandria the memory of the illustrious old times was to be recalled by the discovery of the motion of the sun's apogee by Albategnius, and the third inequality of the moon, the variation, by Aboul Wefa; to be discovered six centuries later in Europe by Tycho Brahe. The canal of the Pharaohs from the Nile to the Red Sea, cleared out by the Ptolemies in former ages, was to be cleared from its sand again. The glad desert listened once more to the cheerful cry of the merchant camel-driver instead of the midnight prayer of the monk.

CHAPTER XI.

PREMATURE END OF THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE EAST.

THE THREE ATTACKS, VANDAL, PERSIAN, ARAB.

I have now to describe the end of the age of Faith in the East. The Byzantine system, out of which it had issued, was destroyed by three attacks: 1st, by the Vandal invasion of Africa; 2nd, by the military operations of Chosroes, the Persian king; 3rd, by Mohammedanism.

Of these three attacks, the Vandal may be said, in a military sense, to have been successfully closed by the victories of Justinian; but, politically, the cost of those victories was the depopulation and ruin of the empire, particularly in the south and west. The second, the Persian attack, though brilliantly resisted in its later years by the Emperor Heraclius, left, throughout the East, a profound moral impression, which proved final and fatal in the Mohammedan attack.

No heresy has ever produced such important political results as that of Arius. While it was yet a vital doctrine, it led to the infliction of unspeakable calamities on the empire, and, though long ago forgotten, has blasted permanently some of the fairest portions of the globe. When Count Boniface, incited by the intrigues of the patrician Ætius, invited Genseric, the King of the Vandals, into Africa, that barbarian found in the discontented sectaries his most effectual aid. In vain would he otherwise have attempted the conquest of the country Conquest of Africa. with the 50,000 men he landed from Spain, A.D. 429. Three hundred Donatist bishops, and many thousand priests, driven to despair by the persecutions inflicted by the emperor, carrying with them that large portion of the population who were Arian, were ready to look upon him as a deliverer, and therefore to afford him support. The result to the empire was the loss of Africa.

It was nothing more than might have been expected that Justinian, when he found himself firmly seated on the throne of Constantinople, should make an attempt to retrieve these disasters. The principles which led him to his scheme of legislation; to the promotion of manufacturing interests by the fabrication of silk; to the reopening of the ancient routes to India, so as to avoid transit through the Persian dominions; to his attempt at securing the carrying trade of Europe for the Greeks, also suggested the recovery of Africa. To this important step he was urged by the Catholic clergy. In a sinister but suitable manner, his reign was illustrated by his closing the schools of philosophy at Athens, ostensibly because of their affiliation to paganism, but in reality on account of his detestation of the doctrines of Aristotle and Plato; by the abolition of the consulate of Rome; by the extinction of the Roman senate, A.D. 552; by the capture and recapture five times of the Eternal City. The vanishing of the Roman race was thus marked by an extinction of the instruments of ancient philosophy and power.

The indignation of the Catholics was doubtless justly provoked by the atrocities practised in the Arian behalf by the Vandal kings of Africa, who, among other cruelties, had attempted to silence some bishops by cutting out their tongues. To carry out Justinian's intention of the recovery of Africa, his general Belisarius sailed at midsummer, A.D. 533, and in November he had completed the reconquest of the country.

This was speedy work, but it was followed by fearful calamities; for in this, and the Italian wars of Justinian, likewise undertaken at the instance of the orthodox clergy, the human race visibly diminished. It is affirmed that in the African campaign five millions of the people of that country were consumed; that during the twenty years of the Gothic War Italy lost fifteen millions; and that the wars, famines, and pestilences of the reign of Justinian diminished the human species by the almost incredible number of one hundred millions.

It is therefore not at all surprising that in such a deplorable condition men longed for a deliverer, in their despair totally regardless who he might be or from what quarter he might come. Ecclesiastical partisanship had done its work. When Chosroes II., the Persian monarch, A.D. 611, commenced his attack, the persecuted sectaries of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt followed the example of the African Arians in the Vandal invasion, and betrayed the empire. The revenge of an oppressed heretic is never scrupulous about its means of Fall and pillage of Jerusalem. gratification. As might have been expected, the cities of Asia fell before the Persians. They took Jerusalem by assault, and with it the cross of Christ; ninety thousand Christians were massacred; and in its very birthplace Christianity was displaced by Magianism. The shock which religious men received through this dreadful event can hardly now be realized. The imposture of Constantine bore a bitter fruit; the sacred wood which had filled the world with its miracles was detected to be a helpless counterfeit, borne off in triumph by deriding blasphemers. All confidence in the Triumphs of Chosroes. apostolic powers of the Asiatic bishops was lost; not one of them could work a wonder for his own salvation in the dire extremity. The invaders overran Egypt as far as Ethiopia; it seemed as if the days of Cambyses had come back again. The Archbishop of Alexandria found it safer to flee to Cyprus than to defend himself by spiritual artifices or to rely on prayer. The Mediterranean shore to Tripoli was subdued. For ten years the Persian standards were displayed in view of Constantinople. At one time Heraclius had determined to abandon that city, and make Carthage the metropolis of the empire. His intention was defeated by the combination of the patriarch, who dreaded the loss of his position; of the aristocracy, who foresaw their own ruin; and of the people, who would thus be deprived of their largesses and shows. Africa was more truly Roman than any other of the provinces; it was there that Latin was last used. But when the vengeance of the heretical sects was satisfied, they found that they had only changed the tyrant without escaping the tyranny. The magnitude of their treason was demonstrated by the facility with which Heraclius expelled the Persians as soon as they chose to assist him.

In vain, after these successes, what was passed off as the true cross was restored again to Jerusalem—the charm was broken. The Magian fire had burnt the sepulchre of Christ, and the churches of Constantine and Helena; the costly gifts of the piety of three centuries were gone into the possession of the Persian and the Jew. Never again was it possible that faith could be restored. They who had devoutly expected that the earth would open, the lightning descend, or sudden death arrest the sacrilegious invader of the holy places, and had seen that nothing of the kind ensued, dropped at once into dismal disbelief. Asia and Africa were already morally lost. The scimitar of the Arabian soon cut the remaining tie.

Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man who, of all men, has exercised the greatest influence upon the human race—Mohammed, by Europeans surnamed "the Impostor." He raised his own nation from Fetichism, the adoration of a meteoric stone, and from the basest idol-worship; he preached a monotheism which quickly scattered to the winds the empty disputes of the Arians and Catholics, and irrevocably wrenched from Christianity more than half, and that by far the best half of her possessions, since it included the Holy Land, the birthplace of our faith, and Africa, which had imparted to it its Latin form. That continent, and a very large part of Asia, after the lapse of more than a thousand years, still remain permanently attached to the Arabian doctrine. With the utmost difficulty, and as if by miracle, Europe itself escaped.

Mohammed possessed that combination of qualities which more than once has decided the fate of empires. A preaching soldier, he was eloquent in the pulpit, valiant in the field. His theology was simple: "There is but one God." The effeminate Syrian, lost in Monothelite and Monophysite mysteries; the Athanasian and Arian, destined to disappear before his breath, might readily anticipate what he meant. Asserting that everlasting truth, he did not engage in vain metaphysics, but applied himself to improving the social condition of his people by regulations respecting personal cleanliness, sobriety, fasting, prayer. Above all other works he esteemed almsgiving and charity. With a liberality to which the world had of late become a stranger, he admitted the salvation of men of any form of faith provided they were virtuous. To the declaration that there is but one God, he added, "and Mohammed is his Prophet." Whoever and title to apostleship. desires to know whether the event of things answered to the boldness of such an announcement, will do well to examine a map of the world in our own times. He will find the marks of something more than an imposture. To be the religious head of many empires, to guide the daily life of one-third of the human race, may perhaps justify the title of a messenger of God.

Like many of the Christian monks, Mohammed retired to the solitude of the desert, and, devoting himself to meditation, fasting, and prayer, became the victim of cerebral disorder. He was visited by supernatural appearances, mysterious voices accosting him as the Prophet of God; even the stones and trees joined in the whispering. He himself suspected the true nature of his malady, and to his wife Chadizah he expressed a dread that he was becoming insane. It is related that as they sat alone, a shadow entered the room. "Dost thou see aught?" said Chadizah, who, after the manner of Arabian matrons, wore her veil. "I do," said the prophet. Whereupon she uncovered her face and said, "Dost thou see it now?" "I do not." "Glad tidings to thee, O Mohammed!" exclaimed Chadizah: "it is an angel, for he has respected my unveiled face; an evil spirit would not." As his disease advanced, these spectral illusions became more frequent; from one of them he received the divine commission. "I," said his wife, "will be thy first believer;" and they knelt down in prayer together. Since that day nine thousand millions of human beings have acknowledged him to be a prophet of God.

Though, in the earlier part of his career, Mohammed exhibited a spirit of forbearance toward the Christians, it was not possible but that bitter animosity should arise, as the sphere of his influence extended. He appears to have been unable to form any other idea of the Trinity than that of three distinct gods; and the worship of the Virgin Mary, recently introduced, could not fail to come into irreconcilable conflict with his doctrine of the unity of God. To his condemnation of those Jews who taught that Ezra was the Son of God, he soon added bitter denunciations of the Oriental churches because of their idolatrous practices. The Koran is full of such rebukes: "Verily, Christ Jesus, the Son of Mary, is the apostle of God." "Believe, therefore, in God and his apostles, and say not that there are three gods. Forbear this; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far be it from Him that he should have a son." "In the last day, God shall say unto Jesus, O Jesus, son of Mary! hast thou ever said to men, Take me and my mother for two gods beside God? He shall say, Praise be unto thee, it is not for me to say that which I ought not." Mohammed disdained all metaphysical speculations respecting the nature of the Deity, or of the origin and existence of sin, topics which had hitherto exercised the ingenuity of the East. He cast aside the doctrine of the superlative Institution of polygamy. value of chastity, asserting that marriage is the natural state of man. To asceticism he opposed polygamy, permitting the practice of it in this life and promising the most voluptuous means for its enjoyment in Paradise hereafter, especially to those who had gained the crowns of martyrdom or of victory.

Too often, in this world, success is the criterion of right. The Mohammedan appeals to the splendour and rapidity of his career as a proof of the divine mission of his apostle. It may, however, be permitted to a philosopher, who desires to speak of the faith of so large a portion of the human race with profound respect, to examine what were some of the secondary causes which led to so great a political result. From its most glorious seats Christianity was for ever expelled: from Palestine, the scene of its most sacred recollections; from Asia Minor, that of its first churches; from Egypt, whence issued the great doctrine of Trinitarian orthodoxy; from Carthage, who imposed her belief on Europe.

It is altogether a misconception that the Arabian progress was due to the sword alone. The sword may change an acknowledged national creed, but it cannot affect the consciences of men. Profound though its argument is, something far more profound was demanded before Mohammedanism pervaded the domestic life of Asia and Africa, before Arabic became the language of so many different nations.

The explanation of this political phenomenon is to be found in the social condition of the conquered countries. The influences of religion in them had long ago ceased; it had become supplanted by theology—a theology so incomprehensible that even the wonderful capabilities of the Greek language were scarcely enough to meet its subtle demands; the Latin and the barbarian dialects were out of the question. How was it possible that unlettered men, who with difficulty can be made to apprehend obvious things, should understand such mysteries? Yet they were taught that on those doctrines the salvation or damnation of the human race depended. They saw that the clergy had abandoned the guidance of the individual life of their flocks; that personal virtue or vice were no longer considered; that sin was not measured by evil works but by the degrees of heresy. They saw that the ecclesiastical chiefs of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria were engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy, carrying out their purposes by weapons and in ways revolting to the conscience of man. What an example when bishops were concerned in assassinations, poisonings, adulteries, blindings, riots, Civil weakness produced by ecclesiastical demoralization. treasons, civil war; when patriarchs and primates were excommunicating and anathematizing one another in their rivalries for earthly power, bribing eunuchs with gold, and courtesans and royal females with concessions of episcopal love, and influencing the decisions of councils asserted to speak with the voice of God by those base intrigues and sharp practices resorted to by demagogues in their packed assemblies! Among legions of monks, who carried terror into the imperial armies and riot into the great cities, arose hideous clamours for theological dogmas, but never a voice for intellectual liberty or the outraged rights of man. In such a state of things, what else could be the result than disgust or indifference? Certainly men could not be expected, if a time of necessity arose, to give help to a system that had lost all hold on their hearts.

When, therefore, in the midst of the wrangling of sects, in the incomprehensible jargon of Arians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Monophysites, Mariolatrists, and an anarchy of countless disputants, there sounded through the world, not the miserable voice of the intriguing majority of a council, but the dread battle-cry, "There is but one God," enforced by the tempest of Saracen armies, is it surprising that the hubbub was hushed? Is it surprising that all Asia and Africa fell away? In better times patriotism is too often made subordinate to religion; in those times it was altogether dead.

Scarcely was Mohammed buried when his religion manifested its inevitable destiny of overpassing the bounds of Arabia. The prophet himself had declared war against the Roman empire, and, at the head of 30,000 men, advanced toward Damascus, but his purpose was frustrated by ill health. His successor Abu-Bekr, the first khalif, attacked both the Romans and the Persians. The invasion of Egypt occurred A.D. 638, the Arabs being invited by the Copts. In a few months the Mohammedan general Amrou wrote to his master, the khalif, "I have taken Alexandria, the great city of the West." Treason had done its work, and Egypt was thoroughly subjugated. To complete the conquest of Christian Africa, many attacks were nevertheless required. Abdallah penetrated nine hundred miles to Tripoli, but returned. Nothing more was done for twenty years, because of the disputes that arose about the succession to the khalifate. Then Moawiyah sent his lieutenant, Akbah, who forced his way to the Atlantic, but was unable to hold the long line of country permanently. Again operations were undertaken by Abdalmalek, the sixth of the Ommiade dynasty, A.D. 698; his lieutenant, Hassan, took Carthage by storm and destroyed it, the conquest being at last thoroughly completed by Musa, who enjoyed the double reputation of a brave soldier and an eloquent preacher. And thus this region, distinguished by its theological acumen, to which modern Europe owes so much, was for ever silenced by the scimitar. It ceased to preach and was taught to pray.

In this political result—the Arabian conquest of Africa—there can be no doubt that the same element which exercised in the Vandal invasion so disastrous an effect, came again into operation. But, if treason introduced the enemy, polygamy secured the conquest. In Egypt the Greek population was orthodox, the natives were Jacobites, more willing to accept the Monotheism of Arabia than to bear the tyranny of the orthodox. The Arabs, carrying out their policy of ruining an old metropolis and erecting a new one, dismantled Alexandria; and thus the patriarchate of that city ceased to have any farther political existence in the Christian system, which for so many ages had been disturbed by its intrigues and violence. The irresistible effect of polygamy in consolidating the new order of things soon became apparent. In little more than a single generation all the children of the north of Africa were speaking Arabic.

During the khalifates of Abu-Bekr and Omar, and within twelve years after the death of Mohammed, the Arabians had reduced thirty-six thousand cities, towns, and castles in Persia, Syria, Africa, and had destroyed four thousand churches, replacing them with fourteen hundred mosques. In a few years they had extended their rule a thousand miles east and west. In Syria, as in Africa, their early successes were promoted in the most effectual manner by treachery. Damascus was taken after a siege of a year. At the battle of Aiznadin, A.D. 633, The fall of Jerusalem. Kalid, "the Sword of God," defeated the army of Heraclius, the Romans losing fifty thousand men; and this was soon followed by the fall of the great cities Jerusalem, Antioch, Aleppo, Tyre, Tripoli. On a red camel, which carried a bag of corn and one of dates, a wooden dish, and a leather water-bottle, the Khalif Omar came from Medina to take formal possession of Jerusalem. He entered the Holy City riding by the side of the Christian patriarch Sophronius, whose capitulation showed that his confidence in God was completely lost. The successor of Mohammed and the Roman emperor both correctly judged how important in the eyes of the nations was the possession of Jerusalem. A belief that it would be a proof of the authenticity of Mohammedanism led Omar to order the Saracen troops to take it at any cost.

The conquest of Syria and the seizure of the Mediterranean ports gave to the Arabs the command of the sea. They soon took Rhodes and Cyprus. The battle of Cadesia and sack of Ctesiphon, the metropolis of Persia, decided the fate of that kingdom. Syria was thus completely reduced under Omar, the second khalif; Persia under Othman, the third.

If it be true that the Arabs burned the library of Alexandria, there was at that time danger that their fanaticism would lend itself to the Byzantine system; but it was only for a moment that the khalifs fell into this evil policy. They very soon became distinguished patrons of learning. It has been said that they overran the domains of science as quickly as they overran the realms of their neighbours. It became customary for the first dignities of the state to be held by men distinguished for their erudition. Some of the maxims current show how much literature was esteemed. "The ink of the doctor is equally valuable with the blood of the martyr." "Paradise is as much for him who has rightly used the pen as for him who has fallen by the sword." "The world is sustained by four things only: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valour of the brave." Within twenty-five years after the death of Mohammed, under Ali, the fourth khalif, the patronage of learning had become a settled principle of the Mohammedan system. Under the khalifs of Bagdad this principle was thoroughly carried out. The cultivators of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and general literature abounded in the court of Almansor, who invited all philosophers, offering them his protection, whatever their religious opinions might be. His successor, Alraschid, is said never to have travelled without a retinue of a hundred learned men. This great sovereign issued an edict that no mosque should be built unless there was a school attached to it. It was he who confided the superintendence of his schools to the Nestorian Masué. His successor, Almaimon, was brought up among Greek and Persian mathematicians, philosophers, and physicians. They continued his associates all his life. By these sovereigns the establishment of libraries was incessantly prosecuted, and the collection and copying of manuscripts properly organized. In all the great cities schools abounded; in Alexandria there were not less than twenty. As might be expected, this could not take place without exciting the indignation of the old fanatical party, who not only remonstrated with Almaimon, but threatened him with the vengeance of God for thus disturbing the faith of the people. However, what had thus been commenced as a matter of profound policy soon grew into a habit, and it was observed that whenever an emir managed to make himself independent, he forthwith opened academies.

The Arabs furnish a striking illustration of the successive phases of national life. They first come before us as fetich worshippers, having their age of credulity, their object of superstition being the black stone in the temple at Mecca. They pass through an age of inquiry, rendering possible the advent of Mohammed. Then follows their age of faith, the blind fanaticism of which quickly led them to overspread all adjoining countries; and at last comes their period of maturity, their age of reason. The striking feature of their movement is the quickness with which they passed through these successive phases, and the intensity of their national life.

This singular rapidity of national life was favoured by very obvious circumstances. The long and desolating wars between Heraclius and Chosroes had altogether destroyed the mercantile relations of the Roman and Persian empires, and had thrown the entire Oriental and African trade into the hands of the Arabs. As a merchant Mohammed himself makes his first appearance. The first we hear in his history are the journeys he has made as the factor of the wealthy Chadizah. In these expeditions with the caravans to Damascus and other Syrian cities, he was brought in contact with Jews and men of business, who, from the nature of their pursuits, were of more enlarged Causes of the spread of Mohammedanism. views than mere Arab chieftains or the petty tradesmen of Arab towns. Through such agency the first impetus was given. As to the rapid success, its causes are in like manner so plain as to take away all surprise. It is no wonder that in fifty years, as Abderrahman wrote to the khalif, not only had the tribute from the entire north of Africa ceased, through the population having become altogether Mohammedan, but that the Moors boasted an Arab descent as their greatest glory. For, besides the sectarian animosities on which I have dwelt as facilitating the first conquest of the Christians, and the dreadful shock that had been given by the capture of the Holy City, Jerusalem, the insulting and burning the sepulchre of our Saviour, and the carrying away of his cross as a trophy by the Persians, there were other very powerful causes. For many years the taxation imposed by the Emperors of Constantinople on their subjects in Asia and Africa had been not only excessive and extortionate, but likewise complicated. This the khalifs replaced by a simple well-defined tribute of far less amount. Thus, in the case of Cyprus, the sum paid to the khalif was only half of what it had been to the emperor; and, indeed, the lower orders were never made to feel the bitterness of conquest; the blows fell on the ecclesiastics, not on the population, and between them there was but little sympathy. In the eyes of the ignorant nations the prestige of the patriarchs and bishops was utterly destroyed by their detected helplessness to prevent the capture and insult of the sacred places. On the payment of a trifling sum the conqueror guaranteed to the Christian and the Jew absolute security for their worship. An equivalent was given for a price. Religious freedom was bought with money. Numerous instances might be given of the scrupulous integrity with which the Arab commanders complied with their part of the contract. The example set by Omar on the steps of the Church of the Resurrection was followed by Moawiyah, who actually rebuilt the church of Edessa for his Christian subjects; and by Abdulmalek, who, when he had commenced converting that of Damascus into a mosque, forthwith desisted on finding that the Christians were entitled to it by the terms of the capitulation. If these things were done in the first fervour of victory, the principles on which they depended were all the more powerful after the Arabs had become tinctured with Nestorian and Jewish influences, and were a learned nation. It is related of Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed, and the fourth successor in the khalifate, that he gave himself up to letters. Among his sayings are recorded such as these: "Eminence in science is the highest of honours;" "He dies not who gives life to learning;" "The greatest ornament of a man is erudition." When the sovereign felt and expressed such sentiments, it was impossible but that a liberal policy should prevail.

Besides these there were other incentives not less powerful. To one whose faith sat lightly upon him, or who valued it less than the tribute to be paid, it only required the repetition of a short sentence acknowledging the unity of God and the divine mission of the prophet, and he forthwith became, though a captive or a slave, the equal and friend of his conquerer. Doubtless many thousands were under these circumstances carried away. As respects the female sex, the Arab system was very far from being oppressive; some have even asserted that "the Christian women found in the seraglios a delightful retreat." But above all, polygamy acted most effectually in consolidating the conquests; the large families that were raised—some are mentioned of more than one hundred and eighty children—compressed into the course of a few years events that would otherwise have taken many generations for their accomplishment. These children gloried in their Arab descent, and, being taught to speak the language of their conquering fathers, became to all intents and purposes Arabs. This diffusion of the language was sometimes expedited by the edicts of the khalifs; thus Alwalid I. prohibited the use of Greek, directing Arabic to be employed in its stead.

If thus without difficulty we recognise the causes which led to the rapid diffusion of Arab power, we also without difficulty recognise those which led to its check and eventual dissolution. Arab conquest implied, from the scale on which it was pursued, the forthgoing of the whole nation. It could only be accomplished, and in a temporary manner sustained, by an excessive and incessant drain of the native Arab population. That immobility, or, at best, that slow progress the nation had for so many ages displayed, was at an end, society was moved to its foundations, a fanatical delirium possessed it, the greatest and boldest enterprises were entered upon without hesitation, the wildest hopes or passions of men might be speedily gratified, wealth and beauty were the tangible rewards of valour in this life, to say nothing of Paradise in the next. But such an outrush of a nation in all directions implied the quick growth of diverse interests and opposing policies. The necessary Necessary disintegration of the Arabian system. consequence of the Arab system was subdivision and breaking up. The circumstances of its growth rendered it certain that a decomposition would take place in the political, and not, as was the case of the ecclesiastical Roman system, in the theological direction. All this is illustrated both in the earlier and later Saracenic history.

War makes a people run through its phases of existence fast. It would have taken the Arabs many thousand years to have advanced intellectually as far as they did in a single century, had they, as a nation, remained in profound peace. They did not merely shake off that dead weight which clogs the movement of a nation—its inert mass of common people; they converted that mass into a living force. National progress is the sum of individual progress; national immobility the result of individual quiescence. Arabian life was run through with rapidity, because an unrestrained career was opened to every man; and yet, quick as the movement was, it manifested all those unavoidable phases through which, whether its motion be swift or slow, humanity must unavoidably pass.

Arabian influence, thus imposing itself on Africa and Asia by military successes, and threatening even Constantinople, rested essentially on an intellectual basis, the value of which it is needful for us to consider. The Koran, which is that basis, has exercised a great control over the destinies of mankind, and still serves as a rule of life to a very large portion of our race. Considering the asserted origin of this book—indirectly from God himself—we might justly expect that it would Its asserted homogeneousness and completeness. bear to be tried by any standard that man can apply, and vindicate its truth and excellence in the ordeal of human criticism. In our estimate of it we must constantly bear in mind that it does not profess to be successive revelations made at intervals of ages and on various occasions, but a complete production delivered to one man. We ought, therefore, to look for universality, completeness, perfection. We might expect that it would present us with just views of the nature and position of this world in which, we live, and The characters it ought, therefore, to have presented. that, whether dealing with the spiritual or the material, it would put to shame the most celebrated productions of human genius, as the magnificent mechanism of the heavens and the beautiful living forms of the earth are superior to the vain contrivances of man. Far in advance of all that has been written by the sages of India, or the philosophers of Greece, on points connected with the origin, nature, and destiny of the universe, its dignity of conception and excellence of expression should be in harmony with the greatness of the subject with which it is concerned.

We might expect that it should propound with authority, and definitively settle those all-important problems which have exercised the mental powers of the ablest men of Asia and Europe for so many centuries, and which are at the foundation of all faith and all philosophy; that it should distinctly tell us in unmistakable language what is God, what is the world, what is the soul, and whether man has any criterion of truth; that it should explain to us how evil can exist in a world the Maker of which is omnipotent and altogether good; that it should reveal to us in what the affairs of men are fixed by Destiny, in what by free-will; that it should teach us whence we came, what is the object of our continuing here, what is to become of us hereafter. And, since a written work claiming a divine origin must necessarily accredit itself even to those most reluctant to receive it, its internal evidences becoming stronger and not weaker with the strictness of the examination to which they are submitted, it ought to deal with those things that may be demonstrated by the increasing knowledge and genius of man, anticipating therein his conclusions. Such a work, noble as may be its origin, must not refuse, but court the test of natural philosophy, regarding it not as an antagonist, but as its best support. As years pass on, and human science becomes more exact and more comprehensive, its conclusions must be found in unison therewith. When occasion arises, it should furnish us at least the foreshadowings of the great truths discovered by astronomy and geology, not offering for them the wild fictions of earlier ages, inventions of the infancy of man. It should tell us how suns and worlds are distributed in infinite space, and how, in their successions, they come forth in limitless time. It should say how far the dominion of God is carried out by law, and what is the point at which it is his pleasure to resort to his own good providence or his arbitrary will. How grand the description of this magnificent universe written by the Omnipotent hand! Of man it should set forth his relations to other living beings, his place among them, his privileges, and responsibilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last; but it should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the physical science, physical power, and physical well-being of our own times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit things that we are still ignorant of. The discussion of subjects, so many and so high, is not outside the scope of a work of such pretensions. Its manner of dealing with them is the only criterion it can offer of its authenticity to succeeding times.