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 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. 23 tliat form of it which is least known where Christianity pre- vails. The inevitable and invariable history of Moslem races after the first spurt has been spent which the adoption of Monotheism had given them has been the same — decay in family life ; spasmodic attempts to bring about a revival of religious and political life ; steady but sure deca}'.' The fact that family life is impossible among a Moslem people, that to raise the position of woman is con- , destroying trary to tlio teaching of the Koran, that in common "°^'^ '"^' belief women have no souls and are necessarily de- graded, is the great and unanswerable indictment upon which Moslemism must be condemned as an enemy to civilization. Weighed in the balance against the lowest and most degrading form of Christianity, it is found wanting. No matter how completely even an Abyssinian or Chaldean Christianity has forgotten the body of principles which Western Churches have treasured, it has yet never invented a theory by which it becomes degrading for a man to live as an equal with his wife and children. It has never tolerated polygamy or recognized the sinlessness of concubinage. It has never allowed mar- riages for a limited time,'^ or an almost unchecked power of divorce and exchange,^ or allowed the husband to repudiate his wife without any reason being assigned and without warn- ing. It has never made rules as to intercourse with slaves, which make the abolition of slavery impossible in Moslem states. Lastly, no form of Christianity or any other great re- ligious system has ever offered as a reward to its followers a heaven where the enjoyments are purely sensual. The ad- vance made under certain forms of Christianity has been often slow, but the fault cannot fairly be laid to the charge of Christianity itself. Mahometanism, however, by debasing the 1 Or, as described by Mr. Palgrave, " Convulsive fanaticism alternating "with lethargic torpor, transient vigor followed by long and irremedia- ble decay ; such is the general history of Mahometan governments and races." " Hughes's " Notes on Mohammedanism," p. 178. The Sunis are said to have abrogated this law, although the easiness of divorce virtually amounts to the same thing. ' *' Sura," iv. 18. y