rd of the Almighty should have flashed in the sky, the
fate of Sennacherib should have been repeated. But it was not so. In the
land of miracles, amazement was followed by consternation--consternation
died out in disbelief.

2. But, dreadful as it was, the Persian conquest was but a prelude to
the great event, the story of which we have now to relate--the Southern
revolt against Christianity. Its issue was the loss of nine-tenths of
her geographical possessions--Asia, Africa, and part of Europe.

MOHAMMED. In the summer of 581 of the Christian era, there came to
Bozrah, a town on the confines of Syria, south of Damascus, a caravan
of camels. It was from Mecca, and was laden with the costly products of
South Arabia--Arabia the Happy. The conductor of the caravan, one Abou
Taleb, and his nephew, a lad of twelve years, were hospitably received
and entertained at the Nestorian convent of the town.

The monks of this convent soon found that their young visitor, Halibi or
Mohammed, was the nephew of the guardian of the Caaba, the sacred temple
of the Arabs. One of them, by name Bahira, spared no pains to secure his
conversion from the idolatry in which he had been brought up. He found
the boy not only precociously intelligent, but eagerly desirous of
information, especially on matters relating to religion.

In Mohammed's own country the chief object of Meccan worship was a
black meteoric stone, kept in the Caaba, with three hundred and sixty
subordinate idols, representing the days of the year, as the year was
then counted.

At this time, as we have seen, the Christian Church, through the
ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had been brought into a condition
of anarchy. Councils had been held on various pretenses, while the real
motives were concealed. Too often they were scenes of violence, bribery,
corruption. In the West, such were the temptations of riches, luxury,
and power, presented by the episcopates, that the election of a bishop
was often disgraced by frightful murders. In the East, in consequence of
the policy of the court of Constantinople, the Church had been torn in
pieces by contentions and schisms. Among a countless host of disputants
may be mentioned Arians, Basilidians, Carpocratians, Collyridians,
Eutychians, Gnostics, Jacobites, Marcionites, Marionites, Nestorians,
Sabellians, Valentinians. Of these, the Marionites regarded the Trinity
as consisting of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Virgin