of war showed plainly that medicines
may assuage pain, that skill may close wounds, that those who are
incontestably dying may be snatched from the grave. The Jewish physician
became a living, an accepted protest against the fatalism of the Koran.
By degrees the sternness of predestination was mitigated, and it was
admitted that in individual life there is an effect due to free-will;
that by his voluntary acts man may within certain limits determine his
own course. But, so far as nations are concerned, since they can yield
no personal accountability to God, they are placed under the control of
immutable law.

In this respect the contrast between the Christian and the Mohammedan
nations was very striking: The Christian was convinced of incessant
providential interventions; he believed that there was no such thing as
law in the government of the world. By prayers and entreaties he might
prevail with God to change the current of affairs, or, if that failed,
he might succeed with Christ, or perhaps with the Virgin Mary, or
through the intercession of the saints, or by the influence of their
relics or bones. If his own supplications were unavailing, he might
obtain his desire through the intervention of his priest, or through
that of the holy men of the Church, and especially if oblations or gifts
of money were added. Christendom believed that she could change the
course of affairs by influencing the conduct of superior beings. Islam
rested in a pious resignation to the unchangeable will of God. The
prayer of the Christian was mainly an earnest intercession for benefits
hoped for, that of the Saracen a devout expression of gratitude for the
past. Both substituted prayer for the ecstatic meditation of India.
To the Christian the progress of the world was an exhibition of
disconnected impulses, of sudden surprises. To the Mohammedan that
progress presented a very different aspect. Every corporeal motion was
due to some preceding motion; every thought to some preceding thought;
every historical event was the offspring of some preceding event; every
human action was the result of some foregone and accomplished action. In
the long annals of our race, nothing has ever been abruptly introduced.
There has been an orderly, an inevitable sequence from event to event.
There is an iron chain of destiny, of which the links are facts; each
stands in its preordained place--not one has ever been disturbed, not
one has ever been removed. Eve