The experience of all ages, the history of all nations, have established the melancholy fact that systems of religion are, like institutions of human origin, subject to the ordinary incidents of mortality. They have their age of youthful vigor and enthusiasm; their stationary epoch, when their principles have lost their expansive power; their period of degeneracy and decay. Their duration, like that of created beings, corresponds to the degree of vitality which they may possess; their vitality is in proportion to the intrinsic merit of their doctrines, and their adaptability to the moral nature of man. As omniscience is denied to him, his estimate of the value of a divine revelation must necessarily be speculative and uncertain, largely dependent upon his intellectual capacity, and colored by the influences to which he has been exposed. On the other hand, many learned metaphysicians have argued with transcendent ability that faith is not accidental, and merely derived from volition and association, but is a matter of inexorable necessity, in which the will is absolutely powerless. As a result of inherited prejudice, the principles of every religion always appear heterodox, false, and absurd to sincere believers in other forms of faith. Of all theological dogmas, none have suffered more from the effects of ignorance and injustice than those of Islamism. The name of its founder has for thirteen centuries been a synonym of imposture. His motives have been impugned, his sincerity denied. His character has been branded with every vice which degrades or afflicts mankind. The greatest absurdities, the grossest inhumanity, have been attributed to his teachings. Ecclesiastical malice has exhausted its resources in efforts to blacken his memory. Even in our day, comparatively few persons are even superficially conversant with the doctrines which, in less than a century, were able to usurp the spiritual and temporal dominion of a considerable portion of the habitable globe. The love of novelty which reigns supreme in the human breast is nowhere more striking in its manifestations than in the facility with which men adopt a fresh revelation. No new religion ever lacks proselytes. Imagination, sentiment, hope, fear, interest, combine to induce its acceptance, notwithstanding the obscurity which may invest its doctrines or the illiteracy which often is the most prominent characteristic of its interpreters; and if the conditions which attend its promulgation are not decidedly unpropitious, it is morally certain of success.