The spread of Islam was stayed whenever military success was checked. The Faith was meant for Arabia and not for the world, hence it is constitutionally incapable of change or development. The degradation of woman hinders the growth of freedom and civilization under it. Christianity is contrasted in the means used for its propagation, the methods it employed in grappling with and overcoming the evils that it found existing in the world, in the relations it established between the sexes, in its teaching with regard to the respective duties of the civil and spiritual powers, and, above all, in its redeeming character, and then the conclusion come to that Christianity is divine in its origin. THE RISE AND DECLINE OF ISLAM. * * * * * INTRODUCTION. [Sidenote: Islam pre-eminent in its rapid spread.] Among the religions of the earth Islam must take the precedence in the rapidity and force with which it spread. Within a very short time from its planting in Arabia the new faith had subdued great and populous provinces. In half a dozen years, counting from the death of the founder, the religion prevailed throughout Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Egypt, and before the close of the century it ruled supreme over the greater part of the vast populations from Gibraltar to the Oxus, from the Black Sea to the river Indus. [Sidenote: Propagation far quicker than of Christianity.] In comparison with this grand outburst the first efforts of Christianity were, to the outward eye, faint and feeble, and its extension so gradual that what the Mohammedan religion achieved in ten or twenty years it took the faith of Jesus long centuries to accomplish. [Sidenote: Object of the Tract.] The object of these few pages is, _first_, to inquire briefly into the causes which led to the marvelous rapidity of the first movement of Islam: _secondly_, to consider the reasons which eventually stayed its advance; and, _lastly_, to ascertain why Mohammedan countries have kept so far in the rear of other lands in respect of intellectual and social progress. In short, the question is how it was that, Pallas-like, the faith sprang ready-armed from the ground, conquering and to conquer, and why, the weapons dropping from its grasp, Islam began to lose its pristine vigor, and finally relapsed into inactivity. I. THE RAPID SPREAD OF ISLAM. [Sidenote: Two periods in the mission of Mohammed.] The personal ministry of Mohammed divides itself into two distinct periods: first, his life at Mecca as a preacher and a prophet; second, his life at Medina as a prophet and a king.