s advance is left more or less unhampered;
whereas in Islam the hierarchico-political constitution has hopelessly
welded the secular arm with the spiritual in one common scepter, to the
furthering of despotism, and elimination of the popular voice from its
proper place in the concerns of State.

[Sidenote: The Koran checks progress.]
And so, throughout the whole range of political, religious, social, and
domestic relations, the attempt made by the founder of Islam to provide
for all contingencies, and to fix every thing aforehand by rigid rule
and scale, has availed to cramp and benumb the free activities of life
and to paralyze the natural efforts of society at healthy growth,
expansion, and reform. As an author already quoted has so well put it,
"_The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey it is to abandon
progress_."[79]

[Sidenote: Is Islam suitable for any nation?]
Writers have indeed been found who, dwelling upon the benefits conferred
by Islam on idolatrous and savage nations, have gone so far as to hold
that the religion of Mohammed may in consequence be suited to certain
portions of mankind--as if the faith of Jesus might peaceably divide
with it the world. But surely to acquiesce in a system which reduces the
people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and
semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of
philanthropy. With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be "good
tidings of great joy, _which shall be to all people_,"[o] such a notion is
on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular
considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible.
As I have said elsewhere:

The eclipse in the East, which still sheds its blight on the
ancient seats of Jerome and Chrysostom, and shrouds in darkness the
once bright and famous sees of Cyprian and Augustine, has been
disastrous every-where to liberty and progress, equally as it has
been to Christianity. And it is only as that eclipse shall pass
away and the Sun of righteousness again shine forth that we can
look to the nations now dominated by Islam sharing with us those
secondary but precious fruits of divine teaching. Then with the
higher and enduring blessings which our faith bestows, but not till
then, we may hope that there will follow likewise in their wake
freedom and progress, and all that tends to elevate the human
race.[80]

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