one can open the Koran, or its remarkable commentary, the history of Mahometanism, and not at once recognise the graphic portrait of his religious system, which the sacred text here gives us. There never was a system, true or false, that proclaimed a more deadly war than Mahometanism has ever proclaimed against the false gods of the heathen, or against any representations, whether of sacred or profane subjects. Mahometanism is essentially iconoclastic, and it has done great things in rooting out the gross polytheism of Pagan nations, and yet we cannot say that the words of the text, accurately as they portray this feature of Antichrist, convey any commendation upon him for his hypocritical zeal in this matter. In fact, what commendation is due to him who substitutes one system of imposture for another?
Antichrisius, ut IPSE in templo Dei sedeat." And the blessed St. Ephrem, the Syrian, in his sermon on Antichrist, says of him, "quod aspernabitur Idola." While we find that St. Irenæus declared, that whereas St. Paul foretold of the Man of Sin, "that he would sit in the Temple of God," that temple would be in the literal Jerusalem, "Sedebit in Templo Dei, scilicet Hierosolymitano." (Irenæi, lib. 5.) And St. Hippolytus the Martyr, in his book De Consummatione Mundi, declares, "Antichristum Hierosolymis suscitaturum templum lapideum." How wonderfully was this fulfilled, when the mosque of Omar, the greatest of Mahometan mosques, was erected on the very site of Solomon's temple in this very Jerusalem.
