and bruises and putrefying sores; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. It cannot be urged that Islam is not responsible for this state of things, on the ground that Islam is merely a religion, and not a system of government; Islam is both. Neither can it be urged, in defence of Islam, that this or that country has enjoyed transient periods of greatness and prosperity, notwithstanding its dominating presence. The very fact that these periods have left no lasting memorials behind them, in the shape of improved laws or civic freedom, furnishes the strongest proof that reform and growth are utterly alien to the enduring spirit of Islam. We are, in consequence, compelled to inquire if it be not in the scheme of life propounded by Muhammad that we must look for the reason of this melancholy sterility.

What, then, was Muhammad's explanation of his own teaching? It was briefly this-that the Archangel Gabriel came down from heaven, and revealed the Koran to him in the exact words in which he communicated it to his followers. He had nothing to do either with its composition, or the doctrines it contains. This assurance has been accepted by the Faithful in all ages. From this conception of the character of the Koran, it follows that the contents of the revelation are above the reach of human criticism. It is either in every part the voice of the Archangel, or none of it is. The proof of its Divine origin is the assurance of Muhammad to that effect, not the character of the revelation itself, when tested by the human reason and conscience.

Another characteristic of Islam is, that it professes to regulate the relations between man and man, as well as between man and God. It founds a society and a polity, as well as supplying the elements of a creed. This important fact has been passed over by most writers with a very inadequate sense of its farreaching significance. Because Muhammad taught the doctrine of the unity of God, it has been too hastily concluded that he was a great moral and social reformer as well. But there is no charm in the abstract doctrine of the unity of God to elevate humanity. The essential point is the character attributed to this one God. Christ conceived of God as Love; He spoke of Him as building up a new society on the ruins of the old, of which love was to be the ruling principle, and sending forth His spirit into the hearts of men to guide them into all truth. Thus the regeneration of the moral life and the enlargement of the intellect were set forth as the primary objects of the one God. But Muhammad conceived of God as separated by an impassable gulf from the creatures He had made, and finding His ideal of human existence in the customs of the desert Arabs. To the end of time men were to venerate the black stone; to the end of time they were to practise slavery and polygamy, and believe in the doctrine of Fatalism. The last revelation had come down from heaven. The last Prophet had appeared among men. The Koran was the only and all-sufficient guide, and no change in its precepts was possible without the guilt of disobedience to a divine ordinance.

Islam, in fine, may be said to lay down these two propositions for the practical guidance of men: (1.) The idea of progress is impious, and should be eradicated from the mind. (2.) The knowledge of God is a fixed quantity revealed in a book; the mind of man has no capacity to attain to it, more or less. The elements of truth in the teaching of Muhammad imparted their soul-subduing power to all that was false and puerile in it. If Muhammad had not set forth with such convincing power the unity and majesty of God, it is possible that his disciples might not have received with unquestioning credence his decrees upon lesser matters. As it was, they were incapable of discriminating. The man, and the book which had taught them to worship the one God, could not be mistaken when they bade them also venerate the black stone, and consecrated the practice of concubinage.

Thus, the true, the false, the sensual, and the superstitious have been allowed to exist together in the creed of Islam, the latter choking and destroying the former. A chain is no stronger than its weakest link; and it is the veneration paid to a black stone, not that to the One God, which denotes the high-water mark of the moral and intellectual life of the Moslem world.

The prevailing impression of what Muhammad wrought in Arabia is, I fancy, something like this. He obliterated, as it were with a wet sponge, the preIslamite history of Arabia, by destroying the recollections of past feuds and welding the Arabs into a

single nation. Nothing could well be more opposed to the truth. The Arabs, at that time, were divided into two great branches-the tribes of Yemen, and the tribes of Modhar. For centuries before the appearance of Muhammad, these tribes had been engaged in interminable wars. Islam did nothing to efface these distinctions, or mitigate the bitterness of old hatreds. And the idea of political progress having been denounced as impious, it was inevitable that when the tide of conquest was stayed, the fierce and restless energies of the Arabs should find a vent, in the recommencement of old quarrels. This, in point of fact, was what actually occurred. All that Islam, on this, its political side, had done for the Arabs was to furnish them with a wider theatre of conflict. The battles which, in former times, had been fought behind the barrier of the desert sands, were now fought in the heart of Asia. These incessant civil wars occasioned the fall of the House of Ommaya. They were of the tribes of Modhar; the Persians sided with the tribes of Yemen against them, and drove them from power. The story of their ruin is told in my

first volume.

All this time, however, the other cardinal doctrine of Islam—that the knowledge of the will of God is a fixed quantity-was working out its own peculiar results. Islamism, as I have already said, is both a religious creed and a social and political system. The assumption which underlies it is, that the whole life of man is subjected to rigid ordinances which can be discerned by the aid of revelation alone. Conse

quently, in order to frame laws for a Muhammadan state, the qualities required were not knowledge of men and experience of affairs, but a retentive memory, in order to master the subject-matter of revelation, and an accurate knowledge of "pure Arabic," in order to understand the precise meaning of it. The lawmakers of Islam were secluded men, who founded their claim to be received as legislators, on the ground that they scrupulously abstained from all participation in public affairs. The actual needs of men were unknown and disregarded by them; the letter of the Sacred Text was all in all.

This is the strange paradox which goes so far towards accounting for the unimproveableness of Moslem states. The practised politician, because he was a practised politician, was regarded as unfit to act as a legislator; the recluse who knew nothing of the world, was for that very reason supposed to be the man best fitted to frame laws for its government.

The first part of the present volume, "The Church of Islam," devotes two chapters to an account of the building up of this inflexible theocracy; the last two chapters give an account of the efforts made by a few of the Faithful to escape from the prison-house in which they had been walled up, and the results of the attempts. The Orientalist will perhaps object that the chapter entitled "The Men of the Path," is a very insufficient account of Moslem mysticism. I am aware that this is so. But my purpose, in the present volume, is merely to exhibit the general tendency of the movement; its more detailed exposition I reserve