international treaties for the suppression of slavery, from their point of view this was a premature anticipation of a future political and social development—­a step which they felt obliged to take out of consideration for the great powers.  In Arabia, every effort of the Turkish Government to put such international agreements into execution has thus far given rise to popular sedition against the Ottoman authority.  Therefore, the promulgation of decrees of abolition was stopped; and slavery continued to exist.  The import of slaves from Africa has, in fact, considerably diminished; but I am not quite sure of the proportional increase of the liberty which the natives of that continent enjoy at home.

Slavery as well as polygamy is in a certain sense to Mohammedans a sacred institution, being incorporated in their Holy Law; but the practice of neither of the two institutions is indispensable to the integrity of Islam.

All those antiquated institutions, if considered from the point of view of modern international intercourse, are only a trifle in comparison with the legal prescriptions of Islam concerning the attitude of the Mohammedan community against the parts of the world not yet subject to its authority, “the Abode of War” as they are technically called.  It is a principal duty of the Khalif, or of the chiefs considered as his substitutes in different countries, to avail themselves of every opportunity to extend by force the dominion of Allah and His Messenger.  With unsubdued unbelievers peace is not allowed; a truce for a period not exceeding ten years may be concluded if the interest of Islam requires it.

The chapters of the Mohammedan law on holy war and on the conditions on which the submission of the adherents of tolerated religions is to be accepted seem to be a foolish pretension if we consider them by the light of the actual division of political power in the world.  But here, too, to understand is better than to ridicule.  In the centuries in which the system of Islam acquired its maturity, such an aspiration after universal dominion was not at all ridiculous; and many Christian states of the time were far from reaching the Mohammedan standard of tolerance against heterodox creeds.  The delicate point is this, that the petrification or at least the process of stiffening that has attacked the whole spiritual life of Islam since about 1000 A.D. makes its accommodation to the requirements of modern intercourse a most difficult problem.

But it is not only the Mohammedan community that needed misfortune and humiliation before it was able to appreciate liberty of conscience; or that took a long time to digest those painful lessons of history.  There are still Christian Churches which accept religious liberty only in circumstances that make supreme authority unattainable to them; and which, elsewhere, would not disdain the use of material means to subdue spirits to what they consider the absolute truth.