devotees into the battle-cry of an armed soldiery. Before his death, nearly all the tribes of Arabia had sent embassies of allegiance to the conqueror of Mecca, and idolatry had given place to the deism of the Koran. The Caliphs who succeeded to the enterprise were men born to empire, possessed of rare courage, and inspired with the patience and self-denial which belong to religious zeal. The campaigns, planned with wonderful forecast, were conducted with the precipitate intrepidity characteristic of fanaticism. In the reign of Omar—we cite from Gibbon—ten years saw thirty-six thousand cities or castles dismantled, four thousand churches or temples demolished, and fourteen hundred mosques erected. Within a century after the Hegira, the young moon which lighted the exile in his solitary flight, filled to a glorious orb; and the Crescent waved in triumph over the plains of Syria, the steppes of Persia, the sands of Africa, and the fertile deltas of Egypt. The desolating flood of conquest swept on, and, washing the Pillars of Hercules, passed from Asia into Europe, soon covered the Spanish Peninsula, and finally broke its fury at the foot of the Pyrennees, when the hardy German race first breasted the mighty surge.
The Koran is not only the corner-stone of the Saracen Empire, but its precepts constitute the fundamental part of the civil law. The Caliph, as successor of Mohammed, which the term indicates, unites in his person the royal and sacerdotal functions. No higher evidence can he demanded of a Church-state than the union of the. crosier with the sceptre, the monarch and the priest.
In Mormonism the civil power is much more built into the ecclesiastical; nor is there the least inclination to blink the union of the two. As the whole religion and polity emanated from Joseph Smith, he was, during life, the head of all power, and gave laws with the authority of a dictator. The hierarchy of the latter-day Church is very complex. It consists of a Presidency supported by a cabinet of counsellors, called the High Council of the Twelve. Next is the travelling Apostolic College of the Twelve, after the New Testament model, who are witnesses to Jew and Gentile, over all the world; then the Seventy, with a whole army of priests, elders, bishops, teachers, deacons, &c.,—each order constituting a court,
