of Ishmael, and from him came the Edomites, and the Amalekites, and all the people of Arabia. Ishmael and Esau were both, then, of the seed of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, the Friend of God; and as such must have taken with them into the Arabian wilderness the knowledge of the true God and Father of all. But if in Judæa itself, among the chosen race, where God was King, and prophecy and miracle, blessing and curse bore witness to His power if even there the people could leave His worship and go after strange gods—Moloch, and Remphan, and Ashtaroth, and all the host of heaven—what are we to look for among a people where no direct interference checked the yearning for idolatry, the worship of something that the eye could see and the hands could handle?
Out in the open air, tending their flocks by day beneath the burning sun, sleeping by night beneath the innumerable stars of those rainless skies, watching the change of seasons, the ripening of fruits, the real and apparent influence of the host of heaven, it is little to be wondered at if the Arabians, like the Chaldæans, worshipped the stars and planets, and worshipped them through idols, regarding them perhaps as inferior to God Himself, but still divine. Each tribe had its special divinity, each family its household gods, often in the form of rude, unshapen stones. The temple of the Kaaba at Mecca contained the great sacred stone then as now; and about it there is a legend, which is this. Adam and Eve, driven from Paradise, wandered long apart from each other, till at length, repentant and forgiven, they met on Mount Arafat, near Mecca. There, in answer to the prayer of Adam, a temple of clouds was miraculously let down
