It is worthy of a passing notice, that from the origin of the Assyrian empire down to the Christian era, the sway, over the whole Pagan world, of the Oriental doctrines, embodied in the Sabian, Magian, Brahminical, Lamaist, Boodhist, and other systems, laid the foundation and prepared the way for the rise and spread of the Mohammedan imposture, after those doctrines had, by the propagation of Christianity, been in some degree intercepted and modified within, and in some directions beyond, the limits of the Roman empire. The theory of the system of Mohammed, like that ascribed to Zoroaster, which aimed to unite the Sabians, who worshipped images, and the Magians, who refused them, with the Jews of Babylon and its provinces after they had renounced idolatry and the doctrine of mediation, involved a union of the same school of Jews in the seventh century, with the nominal but already apostate churches (churches characterized by Gnostic heresies and Pagan corruptions) of Babylonia, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Northern Africa, Spain, &c. Hence the first and, with respect to the Divine Being, the only article of the Mohammedan faith is that of THE UNITY. For this, the Jews, the judaizing professors of Christianity, the Cerinthians, Arians, &c., were prepared; and in like manner for the exclusion of the doctrine of mediation and the consequent proscription of images and sacrificial offerings. Who that considers the character and mission of Mohammed, as depicted Rev. ix. 1-12, and illustrated by the histories of his time, can fail to regard him as, in the hands of the great Adversary, one of the most extraordinary visible agents of his antagonism. With no preliminary indications, like a meteor fallen to the earth, he suddenly appears on the scene. He receives the key and opens the abyss of darkness. The blinding smoke of the pit ascends, and generates a locust army with the power of scorpions, led on by Satan as their king, "whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, the Destroyer." As visible head of the apostate faction, he subdues, and with enduring chains of mental darkness manacles and holds fast the Eastern empire: while, in the Western, essentially the like results, under the same leadership, are accomplished by the head of the Papal hierarchy. These great systems of influence and control, by which, in the Eastern world, the Arch-deceiver held the human mind in bondage, required and depended on implicit, unquestioning faith. Thus, throughout the Roman empire prior to the Advent, and subsequently in the eastern division, under the Mohammedan, and in the western, under the Popish faith.