Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/36

 IS THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE. Europe trembled in the balance, when the decisive victory of Charles Martel at the great battle of Tours in 732, exactly a century after the death of Mahomet, turned the scale in favor of Christianity, and rescued Western Europe from the re- ligion and law of Mahomet. A few years before, namely, in 718, Europe had experienced a deliverance in the East of at least equal importance with that obtained at Tours. The strongest army which Arabia had ever furnished made an at- tack upon Constantinople, and 180,000 men and a great fleet were utterly defeated by the military skill of the Byzantine generals. The tide of Mahometan progress was, however, only momentarily checked, and amid the conquests in the East as far as Sinde the failure before Constantinople was forgotten. Among the causes which contributed to this amazing sne- Reasonsof ^css wcro tlic cntliusiasm with which Mahomet had thisBuccess. inspired his followers, the peculiar character of his teachinor, and the accidental circumstances of the time in Arabia and Syria. Much was no doubt due to the enthusiasm wnth which Mahomet, by his personal influence, inspired his followers. Every caliph or pretender to authorit}^ over Mos- lems has claimed to reign in his name. Mahomet to-day rules over Moslemdom in a sense in which Jesus does not rule over Christendom. Mahomet only claimed that he was the apos- tle of God, and distinctly repudiated any title to divinity, and his followers have never asserted the higher claim. The Christian Church, on the other hand, has almost universally afiirmed that Jesus is God. Yet the authority of Mahomet is much more absolute over Islam than that of the Divine Founder over Christendom. While Christians, or, to speak correctl}', some of them, claim that the Bible is the only safe guide in matters of religion, all Moslems admit that the Koran is all that any Ciiristians admit the Bible to be, and is, more- over, the rule of daily life in things temporal as well as spiritual. The Christian Church, in its various forms of or- ganization, has taken possession of much of the power over the followers of Christ which belongs in Mahometan countries to the direct authorit}^ of the successors of Mahomet. The