and the Rev. Dr. Adams. The latter gave some very interesting illustrations of the effect of deafness in sharpening the remaining senses. He said:

There are many interesting psychological MOH

inquiries which are suggested in regard to those who are deprived of one or more of the senses, as whether, to use the allegorical language of Bunyan, when ear gate' and 'eye gate,' those avenues of approach to the town of Mansoul,' be closed up, there be not some new method of access, not recognizable to our senses, by which our Father in heaven draws nigh to his afflicted children? I have no visionary theory to suggest on this subject; but it is a pleasant testimony that I am able to give, after a close examination, that in the process of instructing the deaf mute, it has been a question with me whether there be any disadvantage in the loss of human sounds of folly and error, which mislead and delude so many others. There has

been an abundant success in developing the conscience, warming into life their religious sentiments, and establishing direct communion with the Father of spirits. I have often been delighted at the clearness, simplicity, and promptness of the replies which have been made by the mute to questions of a religious import.

"Who made the world?' was the question once proposed to a little boy in the institution. Without an instant's delay, the chalk had rapidly traced the answer:

"In the beginning God created the heavens

and the earth.'

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Why did Jesus come into the world?' was the next question proposed. With a smile of gratitude, the little fellow wrote in reply :

"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' The astonished visitor, desirous of testing the religious nature of the pupil to the utmost, ventured at length to ask: Why were you born deaf and dumb, when I can both hear and speak?' With the sweetest and most touching expression of meek resignation on the face of the boy, the rapid chalk replied:

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"Even so, Father, for it seemeth good in thy sight.'

We rejoice in the privilege of taking part in the services of this occasion. We count it a pleasant thing to be present at the beginning of an edifice, where ampler accommodations shall invite multitudes of the afflicted to its fostering care. We welcome them not only to a safe shelter, to kindly protection, to useful arts, but to the teachings and consolations of religion. We congratulate those who will come after us, afflicted like those who are now with us, in the advantages which will accrue to them from what we have founded to-day. Here let knowledge and religion receive and educate them. On these pleasant lawns let their playful feet find recreation long after our own have rested from the pilgrimage of life. Here may God speak to them in the vision of the morning, and of the stars; and within the chapel here to be consecrated to his worship, may generations be prepared for the temple on high, where no tongue is silent and no ear is deaf."

MOHAMMEDANISM.

THE TEMPLE OF MECCA.

OHAMMEDANISM is an intermediate religion-it arose out of the incompleteness, perversions, and semipaganism of the Christian form of worship that prevailed in the sixth century. The populations that subscribed to the tenets of the Greek Church were only half converted; even in Constantinople, the old formula of worshiping images was preserved with scrupulous exactness.

In Arabia, the doctrines of the magi had by no means been extirpated; in fact, the Christianity that prevailed in the Eastern Churches-and we might consistently add, the Western-was merely a dogma ingrafted on the old trunk of paganism. The spiritualism of the creed was entirely neglected, and its expounders, like people groping in the dark, busied themselves almost exclusively with the discussion of scholastic subtilties. Sale, the historian, aptly describes the deplorable declension and ignorance that prevailed. He says:

"If we look into the ecclesiastical historians, even from the third century, we shall find the Christian world to have then had a very different aspect from what some authors have represented, and so far from being endowed with within itself with purity of doctrine, union and active grace, zeal, and devotion, and established firm profession of faith-that, on the contrary, what by the ambition of the clergy, and what by drawing the abstrusest niceties into controversy, and dividing and subdividing them into endless schisms and contentions, they had so destroyed that peace, love, and charity from among them which the gospel was given to promote, and instead thereof continually provoked evil work, that they had lost the whole subeach other to that malice, rancor, and every contended for their own imaginations concerning stance of their religion, while they thus eagerly it-and, in a manner, quite drove Christianity out of the world, by those very controversies in which they disputed with each other about it."

Bishops fought like maniacs for episcopal seats; and Sale adds, in his old-fashioned, but forcible way :

"These dissensions were greatly owing to the emperors, who, confounding the pure and simple Christian religion with anile superstitions, and perplexing it with intricate questions, instead of reconciling different opinions, excited many disputes. This grew worse in the time of Justinian-and corruption in the doctrine and morals of the princes and clergy was necessarily followed by a general depravity of the people:

those of all conditions making it their sole business to get money by any means, and then to squander it away, when they had got it, in luxury and debauchery."

to the position which Christ had held in the popular mind for three centuries. Taking Judaism for his text and the groundwork of his mythology, he borrowed largely from the New Testament, from the Zenda-a-Visla, and the practices of his own tribe, and compiled the Koran— a work of not much literary merit, but, as far as its consequences were concerned, one of the most wonderful ever published.

But destiny favored Mohammed. Arabia, of all countries in the world, was then the most susceptible of a religious revo

If we add to this moral depression the political weakness of Christendom, we shall be still less at a loss to account for the extraordinary spread of a new and, in discipline, more virile belief. By Mohammed's time, the western half of the empire was overrun by the Goths, and the eastern so reduced by the Huns on the one side and the Persians on the other, that there was no power existing capable of resist-lution. It was the asylum for the dising a powerful invasion. The very vitals of the Christian world were in a state of decay-so that the period in every aspect was favorable to an enterprise of a novel and daring character. Absolute paganism and the worship of the Virgin Mary and a host of saints were so much alike, that the popular mind was reduced to intellectual stagnation-it had not a prop on which to rest its bewildered head.

At this crisis, Mohammed, at the mature age of forty, stepped into the agitated arena, with the bold project of uniting the jarring creeds of Jew, Christian, and Magian in a new religion, adapted to the clime and the people. The world was prepared for a wonder, and it greedily received the latest. We cannot follow this prophet throughout his marvelous career; but this much we can confidently say-that, having a willing soil ready prepared for the exertions of his industry, no man in a similar vocation ever went to work more cautiously or skillfully. Like Zoroaster, he first converted his own kinsfolk and neighbors, and then gradually enlarged the sphere of his missionary labors, until he was received by a multitude as one upon whose shoulders the mantle of true inspiration had fallen. Mohammed, having been bred a Pagan, was early initiated in the mysteries of the Christian faith, and had he not been ambitious—or, what is equally as likely, not had any faith in the divinity of his mission-he would probably have been the Luther of his age. Had he been so, the Christian development would undoubtedly have been accelerated a thousand years; but he was not-his temperament and spiritual idiosyncrasy rather inclined him to consult his individual gratification; and, accordingly, he framed a doctrine which, in the course of a few years, advanced him VOL. VII.-2

affected and persecuted of all the eastern nations. Romanist and Greek fled to it for shelter-all the Christians that dwelt in it were, in fact, Jacobites or Nestorians; they were the proscribed of the two great divisions of the Christian Church; and, living in harmony with the worshipers of idols and the stars, can it be wondered that their preachings had created such a ferment in the public mind, that it was ready to receive the latest and newest impression? In such a fertile soil Mohammedanism speedily took deep root, and, under the caliphs, penetrated with extraordinary celerity into Persia, India, and Tartary; and, inviting hordes of barbarous tribes-the Seljukian Turks among the number-to conquests in regions westward of their flat pasturage and huntinggrounds, led to the subjugation of the whole of the eastern Roman empire, and the annihilation of its Church as a secular establishment.

The intermediate doctrine flourished amazingly, brandished the sword in one hand and salvation in the other, and would have subjugated the three continents, had it not been for the personal ambition of its princes, and the conversion to Christianity of those warlike northern barba rians who infused valor into the veins of degenerate Europe, and, with a resolution that laughed at destiny-as interpreted by fatalists-courted danger as a bride, imparted to the trembling fragments of Christendom that unity, consistency, and courage which ultimately beat back the common enemy, and gave to the new and improved condition they created that intelligence and largeness of purpose which soon elevated the cross far above the paler rays of the crescent. In fact, their na tural antagonism was adjusted by the growth of new circumstances, and Mo

hammedanism may now be said to be in some of its last throes. Its services are no longer required-hence the violence of the current which has set in against it.

But whether the waning crescent is to be extinguished in the human sky in this generation or another, its beginning was auspicious, and a number of conflicting elements liberally contributed to its tremendous success. Not the least of these were the peculiar characteristics of Arabia. A spurious Christianity was ingrafted on the Sabian idolatry. The majority of the people, however, followed the latter belief. They adored "the host of heaven," and practiced the worship of images. Their idols, it must be said, were all representatives of men of great piety and merit. They had seven temples dedicated to the seven planets. One of these was the Temple of Mecca, which was consecrated to Zohal, or Saturn.

profane divination. This statue was a monument of Syrian arts. The devotion of ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into rocks or altars, in imitation of the Black Stone of Mecca.

Our illustration shows the Kaaba, covered with black cloth.

The temple known to all true Mussulmans under the name of El Haram-the Holy Place-is situated nearly in the middle of the city, which is built in a narrow valley, having a considerable slope from north to south. In order to form a level area for the great court of the temple, the ground has evidently been hollowed out, subsequently to the erection of the Kaaba, which is the only ancient edifice in the temple: so that, on entering it in any direction, you descend several steps; and the oval surface, paved with marble, that immediately surrounds the Kaaba, upon which the pilgrims perform their rounds, is the lowest part. The great court forms a parallelogram of about five hundred and thirty-six feet by three hundred and fifty-six, surrounded with a double piazza; the fronts of the two longer sides presenting thirty-six, and the two shorter sides twenty-four arches, slightly pointed, supported by columns of grayish marble, of different proportions. Each

This celebrated temple-of which, in its Mohammedan guise, we give a faithful view-is said to have contained three hundred and sixty idols, equaling in number the days of the Arabic year. Its antiquity ascends beyond the Christian era. It is mentioned as the Kaaba, or the Temple of the Black Stone, by Diodorus Siculus. The linen or silken vail, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a king of the Hamy-side is composed of two naves, formed by arites seven hundred years before the time of Mohammed. Of this superstition-of which this temple was the repository the prophet largely availed himself; for the same rites which are to this day accomplished by the faithful Mussulman, were invented and practiced by the Sabian idolators. At an awful distance they cast away their garments. Seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Kaaba, and kissed the Black Stone; seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Minna; and the pilgrimage was achieved by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or introduced in the Kaaba their domestic worship. The temple was adorned with three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hands seven birds without heads or feathers the instruments and symbols of

a triple row of arches-so that there may be counted more than five hundred columns and pilasters. Instead of a column, between every fourth arch there is an octangular pilaster of hewn stone, about three feet in diameter. The capitals of the columns which front the court are very fine, although they do not belong to either of the five orders of architecture; but the capitals of the interior columns are stated to be all of either the Corinthian or the Composite: some are exquisitely carved. The pedestals are of various form and proportion: some have, by an extravagant whim of the architect, a Corinthian capital reversed. The arches that front the court are all crowned with little conical cupolas: the interior ones have low, spherical vaults. The four fronts are also surmounted with stone ornaments, very much resembling fleurs-de-lis. All the galleries, as well as the paths crossing the area to the Kaaba, are paved with hewn stones of quartz rock, of which also the walls of the temple are built. Like the Mosque of