“Show me a people’s God,” said Euripides, “and I will tell you that people’s history.” To the history of Islam is this significant remark especially appropriate. The Moslem conception of the Deity is one of unapproachable grandeur and sublimity. While placed immeasurably above His creatures, their praise and their petitions are always tendered Him without the officious intervention of a privileged caste, and wherever the hour of prayer may find the worshipper, whether in the retirement of his home, in the noisy bazaar, upon the deck of a vessel in mid-ocean, or amidst the awful stillness and solitude of the Desert. The practical value and consequent importance of a religion consist not so much by whom or under what circumstances it is alleged to have been founded, but in what it has effected for the happiness and permanent improvement of humanity. Through the enthusiasm inspired by its exalted ideas of Almighty power, Islam extirpated idolatry so thoroughly, that in the second generation after it was promulgated men feared even to mention the names of the false gods of their fathers. It made cannibalism detestable, and swept away human sacrifices, with which the Arabs had been familiar for a period whose commencement was long anterior to the days of Abraham. It softened the asperities of warfare; extended to the vanquished the advantages of instant liberty and prospective distinction, upon the sole condition of conversion; it protected the unfortunate captive from violence, and abolished the shocking practice of mutilation of the dead. Its hostility to the spirit of feudalism insured the protection and freedom of every degree and profession of mankind. It elevated the position of woman; repressed the unblushing licentiousness prevalent in the Age of Ignorance; formulated an equitable law of divorce, where separation had been previously a matter of caprice; and shielded the wife from the cruelty, avarice, and injustice of the husband. It stamped out, at once and forever, the horrible crime of infanticide. It prohibited not merely the abuse of wine and other intoxicants, but even the slightest indulgence in them. It declared divination and all games of chance to be devices of Satan, whose practice would inevitably cause a forfeiture of Paradise. While countenancing slavery, it ameliorated the condition of the slave, who, under the patriarchal customs of the Orient, enjoyed the familiar intercourse and shared the paternal care of the master; declared his manumission to be the most commendable of acts and the most effective of penances; defined his rights, regulated the measure of his punishment and the amount of his ransom, and established the humane provision that, when sold, the slave-mother should never be separated from her child. It recommended as indispensable duties of the true believer the practice of humility, of resignation, of benevolence. By proclaiming the equality of all