ancient monotheism, and
suppressed what remained of learning and science. As the Church had the
great task of disciplining wild and semi-barbarous races, there was little
room left for learning or for high ideals. At this time a rigorous avenger
of the persecuted spirit of pure monotheism arose among the sons of
Ishmael in the desert of Arabia in the person of Mohammed, a camel-driver
of Mecca, a man of mighty passions and void of learning, but imbued with
the fire of the ancient prophets of Israel. He felt summoned by Allah, the
God of Abraham, to wage war against the idolatry of his nation and restore
the pure faith of antiquity. He kindled a flame in the hearts of his
countrymen which did not cease, until they had proclaimed the unity of God
throughout the Orient, had put to flight the trinitarian dogma of the
Church in both Asia and Africa, and extended their domain as far as the
Spanish peninsula. He offered the Jews inducements to recognize him as the
last, "the seal," of the prophets, by promising to adopt some of their
religious practices; but when they refused, he showed himself fanatical
and revengeful, a genuine son of the Bedouins, unrelenting in his wrath
and ending his career as a cruel, sensuous despot of the true Oriental
type. Nevertheless, he created a religion which led to a remarkable
advancement of intellectual and spiritual culture, and in which Judaism
found a valuable incentive to similar endeavors. Thus Ishmael proved a
better heir to Abraham than was Esau, the hostile brother of Jacob.(1390)

5. The important, yet delicate question, which of the three religions is
the best, the Mohammedan, Christian or Jewish, was answered most cleverly
by Lessing in his _Nathan the Wise_, by adapting the parable of the three
rings, taken from Boccaccio. His conclusion is that the best religion is
the one which induces men best to promote the welfare of their fellow
men.(1391) But the question itself is much older; it was discussed at the
court of the Kaliphs in Bagdad as early as the tenth century, where the
adherents of every religion there represented expressed their opinions in
all candor. For centuries it was the subject of philosophical and
comparative investigations.(1392) Among these, the most thorough and
profound is the _Cuzari_ by the Jewish philosopher and poet, Jehuda ha
Levi. But the parable of the three rings also has been traced through
Jewish and Christian collections of tales dating back to the