Through Force or Faith? — Page 22
?— A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI 22 Pringle Kennedy writes: Muhammad was, to use a striking expression, the man of the hour. In order to understand his wonderful success, one must study the conditions of his times. Five and half centuries and more had elapsed when he was born since Jesus had come into the world. At that time, the old reli- gions of Greece and Rome, and of the hundred and one states along the Mediterranean, had lost their vitality. In their place, Caesarism had come as a living cult. The worship of the state as personified by the reigning Caesar, such was the religion of the Roman Empire. Other reli- gions might exist, it was true; but they had to permit this new cult by the side of them and predominant over them. But Caesarism failed to satisfy. The Eastern religions and superstitions (Egyptian, Syrian, Persian) appealed to many in the Roman world and found numerous votaries. The fatal fault of many of these creeds was that in many respects they were so ignoble… When Christianity conquered Caesarism at the com- mencement of the fourth century, it, in its turn, became Caesarised. No longer was it the pure creed which had been taught some three centuries before. It had become largely de spiritualised, ritualised, materialised. How, in a few years, all this was changed, how, by 650 A. D. a great part of this world became a different world from what it had been before, is one of the most remark- able chapters in human history. This wonderful change