Christianity made no progress in Arabia until after its political alliance with Constantine had imparted such a tremendous impulse to the dissemination of its doctrines. The latter do not seem to be adapted to the Asiatic mind, and have never been able either to appeal to the reason or to arouse the enthusiasm of nations of Semitic blood. It offered little that was congenial with, and much that was abhorrent to, the lax and tolerant code of the independent and polytheistic rovers of the Desert. At the birth of Mohammed it had already, for four centuries, been established in the Peninsula, and still, in the very shadow of its temples, the mocking Arab bowed before his thousand gods. The principles of the Ebionite sect, which prevailed in the Arabian churches, so far from attracting the curiosity or awakening the reverence of the sarcastic Bedouin, only served to excite his ridicule. The sublime truths of the religion of the Bible, the eloquence of its teachers, the piety of its saints, the pomp of its ritual, the promises and threats of its revelation, were lost upon the reckless freebooters, devoted to sensual pleasures, to escapades of gallantry, to the generous rivalry of poesy, to daring feats of arms. The only mark of attention its adherents received was their classification with the despised Hebrew as Ahl-al-Kitab, “The People of the Book.” In its adaptability to the requirements and the mental capacity of the multitude, it was ill-fitted to cope with the religion that eventually supplanted it. On one side were the incomprehensible dogmas of a debased Christianity, indispensable to its acceptance; on the other, the simplicity of the profession of Islam, which even a child could understand. For these reasons it made comparatively few proselytes in the Peninsula, and at no time was acknowledged over any considerable area, except during the short period which intervened between the Abyssinian conquest of Yemen and the rise of Mohammedanism.