them by the sword, not merely in Arabia, but throughout the East.  They are a pleasure-loving and imaginative people:  why not promise the victors of thy faith a sensual bliss in Paradise?  They will not be subverters of your grand truths; they will simply extend them, and jealously, if they have a reward in what their passions crave.  In short, use the proper means for a great end.  The end justifies the means.”

Whether influenced by such specious sophistries, or disheartened by his former method, or corrupted in his own heart, as Solomon was, by his numerous wives,—­for Mohammed permitted polygamy and practised it himself,—­it is certain that he now was bent on achieving more signal and rapid victories.  He resolved 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,