ed to adapt his religion to the depraved
hearts of his followers. He would mix up truth with error; he would make
truth palatable; he would use the means which secure success. It was
success he wanted, and success he thus far had not secured. He was
ambitious; he would become a mighty spiritual potentate.

So he allowed polygamy,--the vice of Eastern nations from remote
periods; he promised a sensual Paradise to those who should die in
defence of his religion; he inflamed the imagination of the Arabians
with visions of sensual joys. He painted heaven as a land whose soil was
the finest wheaten flour, whose air was fragrant with perfumes, whose
streams were of crystal water or milk or wine or honey, flowing over
beds of musk and camphor,--a glorious garden of fruits and flowers,
whose inhabitants were clothed in garments of gold, sparkling with
rubies and diamonds, who reclined in sumptuous palaces and silken
pavilions, and on couches of voluptuous ease, and who were served with
viands which could be eaten without satiety, and liquors which could be
drunk without inebriation; yea, where the blissful warrior for the faith
should enjoy an unending youth, and where he would be attended by
houris, with black and loving eyes, free from all defects, resplendent
in beauty and grace, and rejoicing in perpetual charms.

Such were the views, it is maintained, with which he inflamed the
faithful. And, more, he encouraged them to take up arms, and penetrate,
as warlike missionaries, to the utmost bounds of the habitable
world, in order to convert men to the faith of the one God, whose
Prophet he claimed to be. Moreover, he made new and extraordinary
"revelations,"--that he had ascended into the seventh heaven and held
converse with Gabriel; and he now added to his creed that old lie of
Eastern theogonies, that base element of all false religions,--that man
can propitiate the Deity by works of supererogation; that man can
purchase by ascetic labors and sacrifices his future salvation. This
falsity enters largely into Mohammedanism. I need not add how discrepant
it is with the cheerful teachings of the apostles, especially to the
poor, as seen in the deeds of penance, prayers in the corners of the
streets, the ablutions, the fasts, and the pilgrimages to which the
faithful are exhorted. And moreover he accommodated his fasts and feasts
and holidays and pilgrimages to the old customs of the people, thereby
teaching lessons of worldly