Here we have the spectacle of a man that could neither read nor write who, after twenty years of incessant struggle, had succeeded in extirpating a system of idolatry which, by fostering morals the most depraved and practices the most hideous, had for centuries made the fairest parts of Arabia reeking sinks of iniquity. In place of a blighting and debasing fetishism he substituted the worship of one God, the Greater of heaven and earth--a God who is eternal, omnipotent, merciful; who presides over the destinies of all His creatures; who sees all their actions, even the most secret; who punishes the wicked in another world and rewards the good, and who never abandons them for a single instant either in this life or in the one to come. He preaches submission, the most humble and the most confiding submission, to the holy will of Him who is not only the Author of their existence but also their unfailing support and their just and omniscient judge. And the sole worship which the Mussulman is required to give to this one God is prayer at stated periods of the day and an annual fast during the month of Ramadan--a fast which is designed to direct his thoughts to Him who has created him, who sustains him during life and who, for weal or for woe, will be his Sovereign Lord after death. Such essentially is Islam in all its simplicity as preached to the Arabian world by the unlettered camel driver of Mecca; such the doctrine which was destined to be adopted by many races and nations in every clime. There is nothing new in it. Mohammed never pretended to introduce anything new. He simply proclaimed to his benighted countrymen not a new revelation, but, as he always insisted, the long-forgotten faith of Abraham and Moses and Christ, as he understood it. With the exception, therefore, of Christianity, based on the Old and New Testaments, with all its marvelous and beneficent consequences, there is no religion in the world which can justly be compared with Islam or which even remotely deserves to be placed in the same category.[241] And, with the exception of Christianity and Judaism, it is the only religion in the world which has recognized and consecrated monotheism. It is, therefore, far superior to the debasing paganism of Greece and Rome. It is loftier and nobler than the repugnant dualism of Zoroaster and the selfish and materialistic utilitarianism of Confucius. It is incomparably more elevating than the fantastic metempsychosis and the atheistic Nirvana of Gautama Buddha, which, with Confucianism, holds in spiritual bondage a great majority of the teeming millions of Central and Eastern Asia.