In this respect the contrast between the Christian and the Mohammedan nations was very striking:  The Christian was convinced of incessant providential interventions; he believed that there was no such thing as law in the government of the world.  By prayers and entreaties he might prevail with God to change the current of affairs, or, if that failed, he might succeed with Christ, or perhaps with the Virgin Mary, or through the intercession of the saints, or by the influence of their relics or bones.  If his own supplications were unavailing, he might obtain his desire through the intervention of his priest, or through that of the holy men of the Church, and especially if oblations or gifts of money were added.  Christendom believed that she could change the course of affairs by influencing the conduct of superior beings.  Islam rested in a pious resignation to the unchangeable will of God.  The prayer of the Christian was mainly an earnest intercession for benefits hoped for, that of the Saracen a devout expression of gratitude for the past.  Both substituted prayer for the ecstatic meditation of India.  To the Christian the progress of the world was an exhibition of disconnected impulses, of sudden surprises.  To the Mohammedan that progress presented a very different aspect.  Every corporeal motion was due to some preceding motion; every thought to some preceding thought; every historical event was the offspring of some preceding event; every human action was the result of some foregone and accomplished action.  In the long annals of our race, nothing has ever been abruptly introduced.  There has been an orderly, an inevitable sequence from event to event.  There is an iron chain of destiny, of which the links are facts; each stands in its preordained place—­not one has ever been disturbed, not one has ever been removed.  Every man came into the world without his own knowledge, he is to depart from it perhaps against his own wishes.  Then let him calmly fold his hands, and expect the issues of fate.

Coincidently with this change of opinion as to the government of individual life, there came a change as respects the mechanical construction of the world.  According to the Koran, the earth is a square plane, edged with vast mountains, which serve the double purpose of balancing it in its seat, and of sustaining the dome of the sky.  Our devout admiration of the power and wisdom of God should be excited by the spectacle of this vast crystalline brittle expanse, which has been safely set in its position without so much as a crack or any other injury.  Above the sky, and resting on it, is heaven, built in seven stories, the uppermost being the habitation of God, who, under the form of a gigantic man, sits on a throne, having on either side winged bulls, like those in the palaces of old Assyrian kings.