In ancient times, to compel the observance of a salutary law, it was connected with public worship and directly sanctioned by the precepts of religion. In this way, hallowed by divine authority, it acquired a force not obtainable by human enactment, and conclusively indicated the wisdom of the sovereign or lawgiver who promulgated it. It was thus with circumcision among the Jews, with the cultivation of the soil in Mesopotamia, and with irrigation in Egypt, where the Nile was deified as the creator and preserver of the harvests and the source of the material prosperity of the nation. Mohammed was not blind to the advantages to be secured by this theocratic supervision of the affairs of mortals, and, by recourse to it, enforced the adoption and practice of many healthful customs and profitable employments whose effects upon the subjects of his successors were of the greatest importance. The contagion of superstition, the impression produced by the grandeur of scenery, and the periodical recurrence of mysterious natural phenomena must always be attentively considered in determining the philosophical belief and religious tendencies of a people. Intimate relations with Egypt, sustained for a vast but unknown period of time, have left ineffaceable traces upon the traditions of Arabia. In the religious system of the former country there was one Supreme Being. All other divinities were but manifestations of his majesty and omnipotence concealed under different names. From him emanated the multifarious triads, the personification of the Nile, the countless array of gods to whom the days, the months, and even the very productions of the earth, were sacred. The great secret that these inferior deities were mere abstractions proceeding from a common Essence, to be eventually absorbed into it,--a fate to which even the soul of man, after divers transmigrations, was subject,--was jealously guarded by the Egyptian priesthood, and was the chief of its famous mysteries. The Sabeans of Yemen, instructed through their mercantile relations with the inhabitants of the Valley of the Nile, had long been familiar with the idea of a Supreme God and the personified attributes of His power and dignity. This doctrine had spread from the South, and, at the date of the advent of Mohammed, underlay the idolatrous worship of which Mecca was the centre, and whose ramifications extended in every direction to the borders of the Peninsula. A considerable number of the more intelligent Arabs who professed adherence to the religion of Abraham, yet, in fact, knew nothing of that religion except that it was monotheistic, repudiated all forms of idolatry, and styled themselves Hanifs--a word variously defined as “Incliners” and “Heretics.” The Manichean conception of the Spirit of Darkness--or, in other words, that important and enterprising personage the Persian devil, without whose presence no modern creed would seem to be