348 SOCIAL STATE OF THE ARABS. 



Their religious character is marked by the same 

 irreconcilable extremes. Their fanaticism is coupled 

 with infidelity ; their prayers and devotions are 

 mingled with the pursuits of commerce and the 

 ideas of worldly lucre. Islam has but very little 

 hold on the reverence of its disciples, even under 

 the domes of its own temples. In the Desert there 

 is a still more lax observance of its precepts and 

 ceremonies. In a pleasant indifference about the 

 natter, the Bedouins remark that the religion of 

 ^Mohammed never could have been intended for 

 them. " In the Desert," say they, " we have no 

 water ; how then can we make the prescribed ab- 

 lutions 1 We have no money, and how can we 

 bestow alms ? Why should we fast in the Ramadan, 

 since the whole year with us is one continual 

 abstinence ; and if God be present everywhere, why 

 should we go to Mecca to adore him V The whole 

 of their social and moral economy remarkably illus- 

 trates tlie truths of Holy Writ, that " Ishmael shall 

 be a wild man, whose hand is against every man, 

 and every man's hand against him.'" Enemies alike 

 to industry and the arts, they dwell " without bolts 

 and bars," the wandering denizens of the wilderness. 

 Religiously opposed to the luxuries and refinements 

 of civilized life, these rude barbarians present the 

 phenomenon of a people living in a state of nature, 

 unsubdued and unchanged ; yet, in their acknow- 

 ledgment of the true God, still preserving evidence 

 of their lineage as the children of Abraham. 



