kindly, firm in friendship, faithful and tender in his family, ready to
forgive enemies, just in decision. The caliphs who succeeded him, for
some time, were men of great simplicity, and sought to imitate his
virtues. He was doubtless warlike and fanatical, but conquests such as
he and his successors made are incompatible with luxury and effeminacy.
He stands arraigned at the bar of eternal justice for perverting truth,
for blending it with error, for making use of wicked means to accomplish
what he deemed a great end.

I have no patience with Mr. Carlyle, great and venerable as is his
authority, for seeming to justify Mohammed in assuming the sword. "I
care little for the sword," says this sophistical writer. "I will allow
a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue
or implement it has or can lay hold on. What is better than itself it
cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great life-duel Nature
herself is umpire, and can do no wrong," That is, might makes right;
only evil perishes in the conflict of principles; whatever prevails is
just. In other words, if Mohammedanism, by any means it may choose to
use, proves itself more formidable than other religions, then it ought
to prevail. Suppose that the victories of the Saracens had extended over
Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,--had not been arrested by Charles
Martel,--would Carlyle then have preferred Mohammedanism to the
Christianity of degenerate nations? Was Mohammedanism a better religion
than the Christianity which existed in Asia Minor and in various parts
of the Greek empire in the sixth and seventh centuries? Was it a good
thing to convert the church of Saint Sophia into a Saracenic mosque, and
the city of the later Christian emperors into the capital of the Turks?
Is a united Saracenic empire better than a divided, wrangling
Christian empire?