fifth year, he entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and fortune. The marriage-contract stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. In the fortieth year of his age, he assumed the title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of the Koran."* Three years were silently employed in the conversion of fourteen proselytes, the first fruits of his mission."† A mighty power arose from nothing. He won an empire over the minds of men, such as mocked the ephemeral and evanescent kingdom of Alexander the Great. And without a single adherent at first, after he announced his mission, Mahomet soon gave the law to millions. The roving Arabs were attracted to his standard by the hope of plunder, and the license to slay the enemies of the faith. Mahometanism, in its rise, progress, extent, and fall, occupies that prominency, and distinctiveness of character, in prophecy, which it has maintained in the world. It is the contrast between his original powerlessness and the might and influence which he attained, which is here marked; and no contrast could be greater: In this, as in all other respects, he stands forth distinguished from all the kings that were before him. The camel-driver, a poor Arabian trader, aud the servant of Cadijah, are forgotten in the name of Mahomet.

And he shall destroy wonderfully, and prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people.-Ver. 24. No historical fact is better known, over the wide world, than that Mahometanism, identified with the name and the faith, and maintaining the principles, of its founder, has prosper

* Gibbon's Hist. vol. ix. pp. 255, 256. c. 50.

+ Ibid. p. 284.

ed and practised. At first, and for a long period, it destroyed wonderfully. The blood of martyrs was the seed of the Christian church; but the progress of the Mahometan faith was tracked by the blood of its enemies, and marked out by their destruction. Fanaticism went forth armed with carnal weapons of warfare. And Mahomet and his successors have to be ranked among the greatest conquerors. So won

derful was the destruction which they wrought, the prosperity which attended on their arms and their creed, and the success of the arts which they practised, that the sway of the Saracen caliphs extended from India to Spain. After the power of the caliphate of Bagdad was undermined by luxury, a new series of conquerors arose, in the race of Othman, to renew the terrors and extend the destruction which were wrought on Christendom, under the name and authority of the prophet of Mecca.

The little horn, that became thus exceeding great, not only destroyed wonderfully and prospered, but practised also; and artifice effected what the sword alone could not accomplish. "In the field of battle," says Gibbon, in describing (chap. li.) the propagation of Mahometanism, "the forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of their masters; and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually multiplied by the education of the infant captives. But the millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured, rather than constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle of God. By the repetition of a sentence, and the loss of a foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or the criminal, arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the victorious Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved; the

vow of celibacy was superseded; the active spirits who slept in the cloister were wakened by the trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world, every member of a new society ascended to the level of his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted by the temporal as well as invisible blessings of the Arabian prophet." Through his policy also shall he cause craft to prosper in his

hand.

It waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and it cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them. He shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. When transgressions were come to the full, an impostor triumphed over the nominal professors of the Christian faith. The highest stations in church and state fell to the ground before him. Principalities and bishoprics were cast down. The shaven heads were peculiarly marked out to be cloven. They who should have shone as lights in the world, and held, like the angels of the seven churches of Asia, the name and the place of stars, were cast down, and stamped upon; and the mollahs of Mahomet supplanted the ministers of Jesus, who had become lords over God's heritage, and who taught their people to bow down to stocks. The place of the sanctuary was cast down. The cross was displaced, and the crescent was planted on the site of the temple of Jerusalem.

He shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall he destroy many. He shall also stand up against the Prince of princes. Acknowledging the mission of Christ as a prophet, he announced himself as a greater. "The disciples of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus, were solemnly invited to accept the more perfect revelation of Mahomet; but if they preferred the payment of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the freedom of conscience and religious

worship."* He magnified himself in his heart above all the sons of men, and above all the prophets of God. The summary of his creed, ever in the mouth of his blinded followers, is, "there is no God but one; and Mahomet is the prophet of God." He blasphemously professed that he was the Paraclete or Comforter, whose coming Christ had foretold; that no other revelation would be given; and that he was the last and greatest of the prophets. He established his faith on the ruins of a corrupted Christianity, which man had planted, and not God. But he stood up against the Prince of princes, and set himself to subvert the Christian religion, by the substitution of his own, as if the cause of Jesus was to perish with its corruptions, or as if the kingdom of God was to be subverted by a mortal.

By peace shall he destroy many. Accommodating his creed to the opinions, and, by the promises of a sensual paradise, to the passions of men, he called up, from many many a heart, an advocate for an unholy faith. The peace which he promised to the vanquished Christians, was one of the arts of proselytizing which he so insidiously and successfully practised, and whereby many were destroyed, by abjuring the truth and giving heed to delusion. But even as indicating destruction in a natural sense, by peace has Mahometanism destroyed many. The peaceful reign, undisturbed by any foreign aggression, of an Arab Sheikh or of a Turkish Pacha, is unmitigated despotism and gradual but sure desolation. though recently and partially interrupted by war, the fairest portions of the earth, from Bagdad to Bosnia, have been destroyed under the blasting influence of the crescent, and are scantily peopled by, at the utmost, one-fourth part of the numerical population,

* Gibbon, chap. li. ̧

And

every age.

with which their many kingdoms teemed in ancient times; while the debased condition of the remnant gives too ample proof how greatly, in every sense, the moral pestilence of Mahometanism, even by peace, can destroy. It has preserved the same character in "The Turks," says Sir Paul Rycaut, than whom none had better means of judging, "have but one sole means to maintain their countries, which is the same by which they were gained, and that is the cruelty of the sword in the most rigorous way of execution, by killing, consuming and laying desolate the countries, and transplanting unto parts where they are nearest under the command and age (eye) of a governor. Another advantage, and that not inconsiderable, that this manner of dispeopling the country brings to this empire, is the difficulty an enemy would find in their march, should they with a land army attempt to penetrate far into the country; for without great quantities of provisions, they could not possibly be sustained; from the country none can be expected; what little it affords, the inhabitants will conceal or carry away, and have all places as naked and barren of food as the sea itself. The Turks account it one good part of their policy, to lay a considerable part of their empire desolate."* Such are the maxims of Turkish policy; and none more effective could be devised for, even by peace, destroying many. So closely is this principle ingrained in Mahometan despotism, that the first great reformer in Turkey, though the constituted head of the Moslem world, by the introduction of a more enlightened system of government, threatens Mahometanism with subversion.

But he shall be broken without hand. Greatly as Mahomet magnified himself in his heart, and long

*Sir Paul Rycaut on the Maxims of Turkish Polity, p. 32. vol. ii. Turkish History.