The original religion of Arabia appears to have been the patriarchal monotheism in which there was still retained some knowledge of one, true, living, personal Deity. One supreme God was still worshiped, but in the language of the Koran they "gave Him companions," they paid adoration to various subordinate powers, as to the host of heaven--to three female intelligences spoken of as the daughters of God, and to various family, local and national idols of which three hundred and sixty were found in the temple at Mecca. This ancient temple, built according to Arabian tradition by the patriarch Abraham, contained besides these molten and graven images, the Black Stone--one of the stones of Paradise which fell down with Adam, but being taken up at the deluge, it was brought to Abraham by the angel Gabriel as a sacred ornament for his restored temple. At any rate, here at this temple in Mecca was the great center of worship, of sacrifice, and to it thronged in vast numbers the idolaters of Arabia. The wild Arab of the desert and the comparatively civilized Arab of the cities show, though in different degrees, the same great elements of national character. Among them all the virtues and the vices of the half savage state, its revenge and its rapacity, its hospitality and its bounty were to be seen in their full force. How often have we had pictured before us the simplicity and beauty of such a natural life. This wild man has been described as generous and hospitable. He delighted in giving gifts; his door was always open to the wayfarer, with whom he was ready to share his last morsel; and his deadliest foe, having once broken bread with him, might repose securely beneath the inviolable sanctity of his tent. His social life, however, was most degraded. Drunkenness, gambling and unrestrained licentiousness abounded: the horrible practice of female infanticide was prevalent among the pagan tribes: while polygamy, that curse of the East, everywhere prevailed. Though speaking a language, copious in the extreme, the words of which have been compared to gems and flowers, literature in the strict sense of that word can hardly be said to have existed; but the Arab had a quick intellect, was always ready with a native vein of rhetoric and was easily aroused by the appeals of eloquence and charmed by the graces of poetry. He was naturally an orator, delighted in proverbs and clothed his ideas in florid oriental style with apologue and parable. While thus a degraded and degrading polytheism was the prevailing religion of Arabia, many Jews were to be found at Medina and in the cities bordering on Syria, and there was also a corrupted form of Christianity incrusted with numerous errors and superstitions, so that in no part of the world did Christianity give forth so feeble a light. A very decided reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief in the unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality.