Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmans, who composed the greater part of his army, and to pave the way to the more easy conquest of Turkey, by removing the causes of religious animosity. He, however, thwarted his own object, by pressing it too sharply, and by making the great mistake of supposing that new points of faith might be settled by coercion, and that it was not more difficult to rule consciences than to govern men by force of arms. In the end, he incurred the hatred of his subjects, shook the foundations of his own power, and at length perished, without having realized the least success in this design. When we reflect upon the facility with which the Persians adopt foreign customs, even from those they have overcome; and when, in particular, we consider the ease with which they received the Moslem religion from the Saracens, and, in a later age, the Sheah system of belief from Shah Ismail, we may be the more impressed by the tenacity with which they held to their faith on this occasion. We know not what further change there shall be among this people, until that day—oh, that it were come !—in which they are folded with Christ's sheep, and live upon his pastures. A glance thrown forward, in faith, to that time-which is surely coming, though they dream not of it-often cheered our own hearts, in witnessing much that we now describe; and seemed to create a kind of brotherly interest in a people who present many fine qualities, overshadowed by much evil. It is not our object to describe the Mohammedan religion, which is professed by many other nations besides the Persians. We must rather confine our notice to what is peculiar to them, and serves to distinguish them from others who hold the Moslem unbelief. But these peculiarities are almost entirely such as grow out of their appreciation of the high claims of the family of Ali; for, in doctrine and in ceremony, there is little to distinguish them from other Moslems. A slight variation in the mode of holding their hands, and of prostrating themselves in prayer, is the chief visible distinction; and, as a distinction, is somewhat analogous to the different modes of making the sign of the cross in the Roman Catholic and the Greek churches. But it is Ali who is the central point of the Sheah religion-the person who, by the ortho D dox Moslems, is treated with decent respect, is, in the Persian system, exalted unto heaven. It is an article of their faith, that Ali was the lieutenant of God. In an axiom which is very common among them, they demonstrate the respect in which they hold him—“Mohammed is a city of knowledge, and Ali is the gate thereof." It is under the impression conveyed by this metaphor, that they ascribe to him and his descendants a vast superiority to the rest of mankind in virtue and in knowledge. A learned Sheah doctor said, in an answer addressed to Henry Martyn, that the number of expressions in the Koran which could be understood perfectly was extremely small, and that the greater part of the things contained in that book were comprehensible only by the prophet himself and his descendants. One half of this -the part which characterizes the Koran-is certainly true. The more educated class of Sheahs allow a great difference between Mohammed and his son-in-law; and, although they regard Ali as the legitimate successor of their prophet, they are far from looking upon him as his equal. But, in popular opinion, no bound is set to the veneration and fanaticism of which Ali is the object. He is exalted above human nature, to him miracles are ascribed, and almost Divine honours are rendered to him. How they also venerate the chief line of his descendants, the Imaums, has been already shown. Fatimah, the sole child of Mohammed, and wife of Ali, they venerate as a saint; and through this appreciation of her, a woman figures in the Sheah system with honours otherwise unknown to Islamism. Like other Mohammedans, the Persians hold the unity of God in such a sense as precludes them from acknowledging a plurality of persons in the Godhead; and the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ (whom they otherwise respect) they reject with abhorrence, and regard Christians as idolaters and polytheists for holding it, and for making Him an object of worship. In fact, the Mohammedan declaration of faith, "There is no God but God, who neither begetteth, nor is begotten," is, and was designed to be, a standing protest of Islam against this most essential doctrine of the Christian faith, without which that of man's redemption were a shadow and a dream. The fact that Mohammedanism publicly, three times a day, raises its voice against this doctrine, places that system of religion in a truly peculiar and awful condition. Moslems are not like the heathen, who are ignorant of the doctrine of Christ; they are acquainted with it, and knowingly and nationally, from day to day, they protest against its most essential principles, and reject them as abominable. This, as we are assured from experience, forms a great discouragement to missionary exertions among Mohammedans, whether they be Persians, Turks, or Arabians. The Persians make quite as much account of ceremonial purification by washing as do other Moslems, and as did the Pharisees of old. The principle of such purification is thus laid down: "The body appears before God as well as the soul; it must, therefore, be cleansed from all stain previous to the performance of any religious act." There seems nothing to object to in this-and a similar practice or cleansing the body from impurity before taking part in Divine worship, was sanctioned by the law of Moses, from which indeed the Moslem practice seems to have been borrowed. But the tendency of the mind to rest upon external observances has here, as among the Jews, been manifested in the multiplication of objects which render a person unclean, and in the carrying |