successful in the moral regeneration of whole communities of the superstitious and licentious?

The only event in the annals of time that has ever been supposed to bear any resemblance to the propagation of Christianity, is the rapid progress of Mohammedanism. But a little reflection will show you that the single fact of its rapid and extensive progress is the only point of resemblance, while in every thing else there is direct opposition. The Koran based its cause upon no profession of miracles, and therefore had no detection to fear. The gospel rested all upon its repeated miracles; and consequently, unless it had been true, would have been certain of detection. Mohammed was of the most powerful and honorable family in Mecca, the chief city of his nation, and though not rich by inheritance, became so by marriage. Jesus was of a family of poor and unknown inhabitants of an obscure village in Judea, and had not where to lay his head. Mohammed began his work among the rich and great. His first three years were consumed in attaching to his cause thirteen of the chief people of Mecca. Jesus commenced among the poor. During his three years of ministry on earth, twelve obscure Jews, many of them fishermen, all unlearned and powerless, were his chosen disciples. Of the first thirteen apostles of the Koran, all ultimately attained to riches and honors, to the command of armies and the government of kingdoms. Of the twelve apostles who commenced the propagation of the gospel, all attained to the utmost poverty, contempt, and ignominy, and all but one to a violent

death on account of their cause. The age, when Mohammed set up his banner, was eminently propitious to his enterprise. "Nothing can equal the ignorance and darkness that reigned in this century.' Science, philosophy, and theology had everywhere declined into almost nothingness. The age when the apostles of Christ began their work, was eminently unpropitious to any cause but that of God. It was the Augustan age. Mohammedanism took its rise in an interior town of Arabia, among a barbarous people, and its first conquests were among the rudest and least enlightened of the most ignorant regions of the world. Christianity arose in the splendid metropolis of a populous and intelligent nation, and achieved her earliest victories in some of the most polished and enlightened cities of the world. In the town of Mecca, where Mohammed opened his mission, there was no established religion to contend with. In the city of Jerusalem, where Jesus and his apostles began their work of love, an established religion was powerfully fortified within the triple wall of priest, magistrate, and people, and defended by all the powers and passions of the nation. When the prophet of Arabia appeared, his cause was favored by the feuds that prevailed among the Arab tribes around him, and by the bitter dissensions and cruel animosities then reigning among various sects of degenerate Christians— dissensions that filled the greater part of the East with such enormities as rendered the very name of Christianity odious to many. When the great Prophet

Mosheim.

of Christianity appeared, the temple of Janus was shut, in token of universal peace, so that all the schools of philosophy, all sects of superstition, and all the powers and animosities of the nations were free to combine against his gospel. Mohammed attempted to conciliate the prevailing religion of the empire, by preaching to the ignorant generation of Christians that his religion was no other than what had been originally their own. The unity of God, the prophetic character of the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, and the divine mission of Jesus, he carefully and artfully asserted, pretending to restore the purity, instead of attacking the foundations of the religion they had taught. This was politic. The apostles, on the other hand, attacked boldly and unsparingly the religion of all the world. While asserting the essential principles of the religion of Moses, they aimed directly at the subversion of its then degenerate institutions; and, as to all Gentile nations, they pretended to nothing but uncompromising opposition. This certainly was any thing but politic. Mohammed, while he required nothing of his followers that called for self-denial,* expressly sanctioned and promoted their strongest passions. Impurity, revenge, ambition, pride, were his cardinal and honored indulgences. Thus he enticed human nature. I need not say that the requisitions and allurements proclaimed

The prohibition of wine, the fast of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to Mecca, were no part of Mohammedanisin until several years after its commencement, when military successes had completely established its authority.

by the apostles of Christ were precisely the contrary. But thus they repelled human nature.

Even with all these advantages in his favor, Mohammed at the end of the first twelve years of his enterprise had not extended his cause beyond the walls of Mecca, and had gained but few disciples within them, because his efforts had been confined to persuasion. While Christianity with all its disadvantages, in half the time from the beginning of the ministry of Christ, could number more than ten thousand disciples in Jerusalem, and churches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria; and yet her efforts were also confined to persuasion. But Mohammed, after twelve years experience, discovered that even with all his indulgence to passion and pride, some argument much more cogent than that of persuasion was necessary to convince the nations. This was found at the edge of the sword. He sounded the trump of war, promised the spoils of nations, the fairest of the captives, and the most luxurious arbor in paradise, to those who would join his standard. Then proselytes were multiplied. The roving Arabs, converted to the faith for the sake of the plunder, flocked to his cause. Death or conversion was the only choice of the idolater. "The Koran, the tribute, or the sword," was vouchsafed to Jews and Christians. Henceforward the demon of Mohammedanism was always seated on the hilt of the sword, and made its way by force and slaughter. How and why it prevailed both rapidly and extensively from this time, I am as little bound to explain as to account for the

martial prowess of Napoleon, or of the Goths and Vandals. It was the success of the warrior, not of the prophet.

But I may not leave this subject without turning what to some may have seemed almost parallel to the success of the gospel, into an auxiliary illustration of its superhuman power. It is a strong fact in evidence that God was on the side of the apostles, that when they had every thing on earth to contend with, they succeeded, by mere efforts of persuasion, in subduing kingdoms, and bringing innumerable multitudes to holiness of life; while Mohammed and his apostles, in the most favorable circumstances, were confined, as long as they used no weapon but that of persuasion, to a few followers, and had they never taken the sword would probably never have been heard of beyond the sands of Arabia.

But should it still be contended that the success of the apostles may be accounted for without reference to supernatural aid, let the question be answered why, when the same human means have since been employed in so many instances, nothing even approximating to the same results has ever ensued. Jews are found at present as numerous as ever. Some of the strongest obstacles which opposed the success of the gospel among them in the apostolic age, do not now exist. They have no religious establishment, no regular priesthood, no power to persecute. Christianity, on the other hand, is established. Instead of appearing to the Jew as a thing of yesterday, advocated but by a few obscure men, as she did of old, she now presents