a brilliant imagination, a proud and daring spirit were stamped upon their sallow visage, and flashed from their dark and kindling eye. Our language, naturally poetic, made them poets and the most eloquent of men. They were generous and hospitable. Their deadliest foe, having once broken bread with them, could repose securely beneath the inviolable sanctity of their tent. Their religion originally consisted of a belief in the unity of God, in future life, in the necessity of prayer and virtue. This was the creed of Abraham and was brought to them by Ishmael and Hagar. In the course of time it became contaminated with Sabean star worship and Magian idolatry." "When Palestine was ravaged by the Romans, and the city of Jerusalem taken and sacked, many of the Jews took refuge among them, and gradually many of the tenets of the Jewish faith and practices of the Jewish worship were again insensibly adopted by them. The same refuge Arabia offered later to many Christians who were fleeing from the persecutions of Rome, and these also engrafted gradually, some of their rites and ceremonies and beliefs upon the people. The result was a mixture of religious beliefs, the highest religious principles alternating with the most degrading idolatries. There was no accepted creed, no unified faith." A great reformer was needed, and the great _Allah_ sent his prophet, _Mohammed_, to establish the only true faith: _Islamism_. His birth was accompanied by signs and portents, announcing a child of wonder.[6] At the moment of his coming into the world, a celestial light, illuminated the surrounding country, and the new-born child, raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed "God is great! There is no God but God, and I am his Prophet." Heaven and earth were agitated at his advent. Palaces, and temples and mountains toppled to the earth. The fires, sacred to Zoroaster, which had burned, without interruption for upwards of a thousand years, were suddenly extinguished, and all the idols in the world fell down. Though his true Messiahship was thus made evident at his birth, and in his youth, he still waited to the age of fully ripened manhood before he made the attempt of establishing the creed, which the angel Gabriel had written down for him upon palm leaves. But when the time had come for raising his own nation from fetichism, from the adoration of a meteoric stone, and from the basest idol worship, he awakened his people out of their religious and political torpor, kindled the fire of enthusiasm among them, and they thirsted after opportunities for contest and conquests. [6] Talmud Babli in _Sotah 13a_, speaks of a similar supernatural light at the birth of Moses. * * * * * When death took the sword from his hand ten years later, the whole world trembled at the very mention of his name. * * * * *