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 wisdom.  Astarte, the old object of Sabaean idolatry, was particularly worshipped on a Friday; and this day was made the Mohammedan Sabbath.  Again, the month Rhamadan, from time immemorial, had been set apart for fastings; this month the Prophet adopted, declaring that in it he had received his first revelations.  Pilgrimages to the Black Stone were favorite forms of penance; and this was perpetuated in the pilgrimages to Mecca.

Thus it would appear that Mohammed, after his flight, accommodated his doctrines to the customs and tastes of his countrymen,—­blending with the sublime truths he declared subtile and pernicious errors.  The Jesuit missionaries did the same thing in China and Japan, thinking more of the number of their converts than of the truth itself.  Expediency—­the accepted Jesuitical principle of the end justifying