system, then effectually and for ever blocks the road to greater and more
permanent reform. In all this Muhammad showed his ignorance, for it can hardly
be supposed that he knew anything of the government or laws of the great Roman
Empire; and he certainly knew nothing of the real teaching of Jesus Christ. Had
he known these things he would have seen how superior was the great legal system
he sought to supersede, how much higher the Christian morality he endeavoured to
set aside. A great historian remarks thus: 'A man, himself sincere and
righteous, the greatest of reformers and benefactors to his own people, a
preacher and legislator of truth and civilization, has eventually done more than
any other mortal man to hinder the progress alike of truth and of civilization.
The religious reformer has checked the advance of Christianity; the political
reformer has checked the advance of freedom and indeed of organized government
in any shape; the moral reformer has set his seal to the fearful evils of
polygamy and slavery.' 1
It has been well said, 'He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at
Madina is the legislator and warrior, who dictates obedience and uses other
weapons than the pen of the poet and the scribe. When business pressed as at
Madina, poetry made way for prose, and although touches of the poetical element
occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late period
against the charge of being merely a poet,2 yet this
