first Khalifas.¹ The Beduin sons of Arabia were for a time the rulers of some of the richest nations in the world. But these riches and this power were lost again, almost as quickly as they had been acquired; and the Arabs, instead of becoming a civilized, prosperous people, under the influence of Islam, are still, after enjoying for twelve centuries all the benefits of their religion, the same semi-barbarous, ignorant, and marauding Beduin tribes they were before Muhammad was born; not so civilized as some even of the heathen nations. The other countries in which the Muhammadan rule and religion were established shortly after the prophet's death, and where they have prevailed ever since, are; Syria, Persia, Asia Minor, Egypt, and North Africa. At the time when these countries were subjugated by the Muslim armies they abounded with towns and villages, the land was well cultivated, and the population, while generally prosperous, belonged to the most civilized nations of the day. But under the sway of Islam this degree of prosperity and civilization, so far from increasing, has diminished so lamentably, that now those lands are little better than vast deserts, where, in some parts, the traveller can walk for days together without coming to a town, or even a village, and the soil is so little cultivated, that extensive districts, once densely

inhabited, are now abandoned to the herds of roaming Beduins or Turkomans, and the population is not only greatly reduced in number, but impoverished in an equal degree, and exists in a condition but little above actual barbarism. How different the effects produced by Christianity, where it has been embraced! If we except Italy and Greece, in which a heathen civilization prevailed, the whole of Europe, when Christianity was first offered to it, was in a barbarous or (to say the least) semi-barbarous condition. In England, people still clothed themselves in the skins of animals, and the Germans were so savage that women went forth with their husbands to battle, and sometimes might be seen driving them back into the fight with reproaches and even whips, if they began to flee. But the gospel was stronger than these indomitable sons and daughters of nature: the love of God in Christ gradually softened and subdued them. All the nations of Europe, one after another, cast away their idols, and worshipped the only true God, revealed to them in His Son Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind; and this new faith proved to them a fountain of blessings, both temporal and spiritual, so that, in their subsequent experience, the truth of the divine word was amply fulfilled, that 'Godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life which now is, and of that which is to come' (I Tim. iv. 8).