were nearest to the Prophet reverenced him most profoundly. With
his wife Ayesha he lived with great frugality. He was 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