rules which runs, in the words of the prophet:  “He who picks up the crumbs fallen from the table and eats them, will be forgiven by God.”  “He who licks the empty dishes and his fingers will be filled by God here and in the world to come.”  “When a man licks the dish from which he has eaten, the dish will plead for him before God.”  I regard these words as practical applications of the text, “Gather up the pieces that remain, that nothing be lost” (Matt. xiv. 10:  John vi. 12).  Even to-day South Italians kiss bread that has fallen to the ground, in order to make apology to the gift of God.  Volumes might be filled with rules of polite manners in this style:  hardly any detail is to be found in the whole business of daily life, even including occupations regarded as unclean, which was not invested with some religious significance.  These rules are almost entirely dictated by the spirit of early Christianity and it is possible to reconstruct the details of life in those dark ages from these literary records which are now the only source of evidence upon such points.  However, we must here content ourselves with establishing the fact that Islam adopted Christian practice in this as in other departments of life.

The state, society, the individual, economics and morality were thus collectively under Christian influence during the early period of Muhammedanism.  Conditions very similar in general, affected those conceptions which we explain upon scientific grounds but which were invariably regarded by ancient and mediaeval thought as supernatural, conceptions deduced from the phenomena of illness and dreams.  Islam was no less opposed than Christianity to the practice of magic in any form, but only so far as these practices seemed to preserve remnants of heathen beliefs.  Such beliefs were, however, continued in both religions in modified form.  There is no doubt that ideas of high antiquity, doubtless of Babylonian origin, can be traced as contributing to the formation of these beliefs, while scientific medicine is connected with the earlier discoveries of Greece.  Common to both religions was the belief in the reality of dreams, especially when these seemed to harmonise with religious ideas:  dreams were regarded as revelations from God or from his apostles or from the pious dead.  The fact that man could dream and that he could appear to other men in dreams after his death was regarded as a sign of divine favour and the biographies of the saints often contain chapters devoted to this faculty.  These are natural ideas which lie in the national consciousness of any people, but owe their development in the case of Islam to Christian influence.  The same may be said of the belief that the prayers of particular saints were of special efficacy, and of attempts by prayer, forms of worship and the like to procure rain, avert plague and so forth:  such ideas are common throughout the middle ages.  Thus in every department we meet with that particular type of Christian theory which existed in the East during the seventh and eighth centuries.