ver pipes from the river Al-Cawthor. The soil of
Paradise is of musk. Its rivers tranquilly flow over pebbles of rubies
and emeralds. From tents of hollow pearls, the Houris, or girls of
Paradise, will come forth, attended by troops of beautiful boys. Each
Saint will have eighty thousand servants and seventy-two girls. To
these, some of the more merciful Mussulmans add the wives they have had
upon earth; but the grimly orthodox assert that hell is already nearly
filled with women. How can it be otherwise since they are not permitted
to pray in a mosque upon earth? I have not space to describe the silk
brocades, the green clothing, the soft carpets, the banquets, the
perpetual music and songs. From the glorified body all impurities will
escape, not as they did during life, but in a fragrant perspiration of
camphor and musk. No one will complain I am weary; no one will say I am
sick.

[Sidenote: The Mohammedan sects.]

From the contradictions, puerilities, and impossibilities indicated in
the preceding paragraphs, it may be anticipated that the faith of
Mohammed has been broken into many sects. Of such it is said that not
less than seventy-three may be numbered. Some, as the Sonnites, are
guided by traditions; some occupy themselves with philosophical
difficulties, the existence of evil in the world, the attributes of God,
absolute predestination and eternal damnation, the invisibility and
non-corporeality of God, his capability of local motion: these and other
such topics furnish abundant opportunity for sectarian dispute. As if to
show how the essential principles of the Koran may be departed from by
those who still profess to be guided by it, there are, among the
Shiites, those who believe that Ali was an incarnation of God; that he
was in existence before the creation of things; that he never died, but
ascended to heaven, and will return again in the clouds to judge the
world. But the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply accepting the
doctrine of the Oneness of God as the only thing of which man can be
certain, look upon all the rest as idle fables, having, however, this
political use, that they furnish contention, and therefore occupation to
disputatious sectarians, and consolation to illiterate minds.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Effect of Mohammedanism on Christianity.]

Thus settled on the north of Africa the lurid phantom of the Arabian
crescent, one horn reaching to the Bosphorus a