Such was the state of the Church when Mahometanism came into existence.
"There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet." Such was its
battle-cry and its creed, and the moral precepts of the Koran were its
gospel. There seems nothing in this to account for the mad enthusiasm
and the passion for worship in its followers. But in less than a
hundred years this lion out of Arabia had subjugated Syria,
Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and the Spanish Peninsula. Now,
sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, the Mahometan had crossed
the Pyrenees and was in Southern Gaul.

Under the strange magic of this faith the largest religious empire the
world had known had sprung into existence, stretching from the Chinese
Wall to the Atlantic; from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean; and
Jerusalem, the metropolis of Christianity--Jerusalem, the Mecca of the
Christian--was lost! The Crescent floated over the birthplace of our
Lord, and, notwithstanding the temporary successes of the Crusades, it
does to this day.

If the Pyrenees were passed the very existence of Christendom was
threatened. Charles Martel, the grandfather of Charlemagne, averted
this danger when he stayed the infidel flood at the battle of Tours,
A.D. 732.

The Merovingian kings, if not devout, were faithful sons of the Church,
and when the pope appealed to the last Merovingian king to protect him
from the Lombards, near the end of the eighth century, Pepin, then
Maire du Palais, but holding supreme power, twice crossed the Alps with
an army, wrested five cities and a large extent of territory from the
enemies of the pope, which, upon parting, he tossed as a gift into the
lap of the Church. And this, known as the _Donation of Pepin_, was the