been devised with more
consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has sway
from the light of truth. _Idolatrous_ Arabia (judging from the analogy
of other nations) might have been aroused to spiritual life and to the
adoption of the faith of Jesus. _Mohammedan_ Arabia is to the human eye
sealed against the benign influences of the Gospel.... The sword of
Mohammed and the Koran are the most stubborn enemies of civilization,
liberty, and truth which the world has yet known."--_Church Missionary
Intelligencer_, November, 1885.]

[Footnote 113: Osborne, in his _Islam under the Arabs_, and Marcus
Dodds, in _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, have emphasized the fact that
Islam, however favorably it might compare with the Arabian heathenism
which it overthrew, was wholly out of place in forcing its
semi-barbarous cultus upon civilizations which were far above it. It
might be an advance upon the rudeness and cruelty of the Koreish, but
the misfortune was that it stamped its stereotyped and unchanging
principles and customs upon nations which were in advance of it even
then, and which, but for its deadening influence, might have made far
greater progress in the centuries which followed.

Its bigoted founder gave the _Koran_ as the sufficient guide for all
time. It arrested the world's progress as far as its power extended.
Very different was the spirit of Judaism. "It distinctly disclaimed both
finality and completeness. Every part of the Mosaic religion had a
forward look, and was designed to leave the mind in an attitude of
expectation."

Mohammedanism, in claiming to be the one religion for all men and all
time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the
retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal
religion it has been tried and found wanting.]

[Footnote 114: It has been claimed that the spread of Mohammedanism in
India is far more rapid than that of Christianity. If this were true in
point of fact, it would be significant; for India under British rule
furnishes a fair field for such a contest. But it so happens that there,
where Islam holds no sword of conquest, and no arbitrary power to compel
the faith of men, its growth is very slow, it only keeps pace with the
general increase of the population. It cannot compare with the
advancement of Christianity. I subjoin an extract from Sir W. Hunter's
paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July, 1888:

"The offic