Under the great Khosru a war began which lasted more than twenty years and exhausted both nations and left them a more easy prey to the Saracens. The Asiatic provinces fell under his victorious armies and, as in the days of Darius, the Persian Empire extended to the Mediterranean and the Ægean Seas. When Heradius in 610 A. D. came to the throne of Constantinople, he was compelled to submit to the sight of a Persian army encamped at Chalcedon; but after some years' preparation, he entered on a series of campaigns which places his name beside those of Hannibal and Belisarius. Leaving his own dominions, he struck at the very heart of his enemy's country, and by a series of victories, one of them gained on the site of Nineveh, he utterly overthrew the Persian power, till Khosru was slain by his own subjects and a peace was concluded. Heradius returned to Constantinople leaving Persia torn by contending factions. The Prophet had been diligently watching from his safe retreat the course of the war which is alluded to in the Koran, and now the hour had come for the Saracens to strike their fatal blow. In the second year of his reign, therefore, Abu Beker prepared for the great enterprise contemplated by Mohammed--the conquest of Syria.--Under this general name was included all the country lying on the north of Arabia and extending from the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. This had long been a land of promise to them. It was a land of abundance. From it they had drawn their chief supplies of corn. Its cities had long been chief marts for the merchandise of their caravans; its seaports still were the centers of an opulent and widely extended commerce. This summons was sent to the chiefs of Arabia Petrea, and Arabia Felix: "In the name of the Most Merciful God * * * to all true believers, health, happiness and the blessing of God. Praise be to God and to Mohammed his prophet. This is to inform you that I intend to send an army of the faithful into Syria, to deliver that country from the infidels, and I remind you that to fight for the true faith is to obey God." This call to the conquest of nations in the name of the most merciful God is tender compared with the prayers which is now being daily offered up by the Mohammedans regarding the Armenians: "O Allah! make their children orphans, and defile their abodes. Cause their feet to slip, give them and their families, their households and their women, their children and their relations by marriage, their brothers and their friends, their possessions and their race, their wealth and their lands as booty to the Moslems, O Lord of all creatures." Has the spirit of Islam changed any during the last twelve hundred years? certainly not, except it be as much for the worse as the Turk is more lustful and cruel than the Saracen.