ests of
Mohammed's followers. Islam is to-day a persistent source of ferment in
Algeria, the Sahara, and the Sudan, On the other hand. Buddhism serves
to cement together the diverse nomadic tribes of the Central Asia
plateaus, and keep them in spiritual subjection to the Grand Lama of
Lhassa. The Chinese government makes political use of this fact by
dominating the Lama and employing him as a tool to secure quiet on its
long frontier of contact with its restless Mongol neighbors. Moreover
the religion of Buddha has restrained the warlike spirit of the nomads,
and by its institution of celibacy has helped keep down population below
the boiling-point. [Compare maps pages 484 and 513.]

[Sidenote: The faith of the desert.]

The faith of the desert tends to be stern, simple and austere. The
indulgence which Mohammed promised his followers in Paradise was only a
reflex of the deprivation under which they habitually suffered in the
scant pastures of Arabia. The lavish beauty of the Heavenly City
epitomized the ideals and dreams of the desert-stamped Jew. The active,
simple, uncramped life of the grasslands seems essential to the
preservation of the best virtues of the desert-bred. These disappear
largely in sedentary life. The Bedouin rots when he takes root. City
life contaminates, degrades him. His virile qualities and his religion
both lose their best when he leaves the desert. Contact with the cities
of Philistia and the fertile plains of the Canaanites, with their
sensual agricultural gods, demoralized the Israelites.[1184] The prophets
were always calling them back to the sterner code of morals and the
purer faith of their days of wandering. Jeremiah in despair holds up to
them as a standard of life the national injunction of the pastoral
Rechabites, "Neither shall ye build house nor sow corn nor plant
vineyard, but all your days ye shall dwell in tents."[1185] The ascent in
civilization made havoc with Hebrew morals and religion, because ethics
and religion are the finest and latest flower of each cultural stage.
Transition shows the breaking down of one code before the establishment
of another.

Judaism has always suffered from its narrow local base. Even when
transplanted to various parts of the earth, it has remained a distinctly
tribal religion. Intense conservatism in doctrine and ceremonial it
still bears as the heritage of its desert birth. Islam too shows the
limitations of its original environment. It embod