104 



THE EEV. S. M. ZWEMER^ M.A., D.D., 



he demolished 360 idols that stood round the sacred house, he found 

 this idolatry heaped over an earlier worship of the one true God ; 

 seeing that the Kaaba was fabled to have been set up b3^ Abraham 

 to commemorate an interview of the Almighty One with Adam on 

 the spot. Mount Arafat, which was near, was supposed by the Arabs 

 to be the site of Eden. 



When Mohammed began to revolt from the follies and cruelties of 

 idolatry, he was brought under various religious influences from 

 without. A Nestorian monk named Boheira talked much with him 

 upon the superiority of Christianity to heathenism ; and he was then 

 brought into contact with a famous Jewish Rabbi, Abdollah ibn 

 Salaam, who held repeated interviews with him, and to a certain 

 extent instructed him in the Jewish religion. AVhen Mohammed 

 decided that he was an apostle and must propagate his meagre Deism, 

 he thought the Jews would accept it ; and when they refused, and 

 even treated his overtures with contempt, he was spurred to 

 vengeance and made war upon them, cruelly persecuting them, or 

 driving them out of the castles and towns in Arabia which they then 

 possessed. 



Thus Mohammedanism was mainly a form of J udaism ; but when 

 Mohammed found that he was not accepted as a kind of fresh Moses, 

 he made his religion differ more and more from the Jewish. Hence, 

 probably, he became less eager to drive out existing superstitions ; 

 and accordingly many of these became part and parcel of 

 Mohammedanism. 



Eev. A. Graham-Bartox thought it was well to know that 

 Mohammedanism, in its teachings, had not only largely taken in 

 forms of false Judaism and Christianity, but also embodied within 

 it a large part of genuine Judaism and Christianity. Moreover, it 

 is well to note that, but for the existence of Judaism and Christ- 

 ianity, there would have been no Mohammed and no Mohammedan- 

 ism. It was part of those two great faiths, with a large addition of 

 Pagan systems which were in existence in the world at the 

 time of its appearance. Animism, which had been brutalized into a 

 materialistic form, had played its part in the world of religion. 

 While lie was convinced that Christianity was undoubtedly first 

 and foremost, yet there were a great many places and times in the 

 world's history where and when Christianity had no chance of 



