arrive at the essential type of it, and finds "a merit quite other than the literary one." This merit to him is its genuineness, its deep earnestness-to him "it is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said... We said stupid," he adds, "yet natural stupidity is by no means the character of Mohammed's book; it is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speaking; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, he has not time to mature himself into fit speech. The panting, breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle, for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in! .... The successive utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by the various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now well uttered, now worse: this is the Koran." Looking into the Koran, Mr. Carlyle finds, shining out of its dark and muddy waters, something of fervour, of truth; "rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best and truest, glimmering in its depths." The eyes of Mohammed seem to flash out upon him "an eye that flashes direct into the heart of things, and sees the truth of them." Truly

"As in water face answereth to face, So the heart of man to man."

Of such kind is the Koran. This is the mine into which one must dig to find the buried ore of a great soul. It contains the "con

centrated essence of Mohammed's inner life-an essence not expressed and wrung out without strong crying, tears and white hairs to himself.

But the insight afforded by a study of his book will not give us the whole truth of Mohammed. We want the mind and we want the outward shining of the mind. While we would gladly lift the veil that shrouds the abysmal depths of personality, we would fain see him also projected into the outer world of speech and action.

In other words, there is a subjective and an objective side to every man. An inner world, now chequered by mental clouds and storms, now shone upon by a spiritual sky--and a peace which no outer calamities can trouble. There the man dwells far within. There, as Adam in his Eden, he can till the ground, and tend the flowers, have dominion over the birds of the air and beasts of the field, entertain angel visitants, or walk in the garden of his soul with his God.

Or he may be dwelling there like the possessed maniac amid the tombs of the dead, wild and lawless in his own desolation.

This inner life of a man seldom appears to his fellows, and then, as through a veil darkly." The outward demeanour of social life gives no sign of the life below; it is but the surface-skin to shelter the nerves underneath from painful contact with the outer world. Only the unpremeditated flash of the eye, the quick spontaneous smile, the impulsive act half disclose it for a moment, as the vivid lightning calls forth a landscape from the gloom of night, into which it

vanishes again. So in the unselfconsciousness of the Koran, glimpses of its author's soul arise to view, and here his inner thoughts are laid bare.

But this is not enough. Having learned something of his life within, we must also follow him into the outer world of men. How will he appear there? What words will he utter? How will he act? There

fore we need, for a perfect portrait, the world of men and women in which "he lived and moved and had his being," and the circumstances of their race, country, and other influences. Words and deeds are the sparks that are flung out by the friction of these two forces.

Thus, given the man and his surrounding influences-the germ and its environment-the problem of his life is not insoluble. We must, however, travel into the age and country where the poet lived and sang, where the monarch governed the lives, or the lawgiver the hearts of men; or the echoes of their voices will seem strange and meaningless to us, like "the accents of an unknown tongue," and verily we shall not be edified thereby.

Now, in this necessarily concise article we do not pretend to achieve either of these proposed aims, but would rather try (gathering samples from the more original and laboriously wrought stores of others) to exhibit them, like the grapes of Eshcol, as specimens of a promised land-a few of each, and those perhaps not the best for selection. It would seem more feasible in these days to learn, at any rate, approximately the truth of Mohammed and his life, than for the many generations who lived during the thousand years following his death (632 A.D.).

Mr. Smith describes the progress of opinion on this topic. He tells us that as soon as Europe could spare time to breathe and think,

after arresting the waves of the Saracen tide of conquest, the age of chivalry embalmed his memory in their songs and epics, as an idol and a demon; that the Kaliph of Cordova was said to worship him in the following bad company, "By Jupiter! by Mohammed! by Apollyon!"-that Dante found him among the arch heretics in the ninth circle of the "Inferno," while Luther's treatment of him was still worse. Luther questions whether Mohammed or Pope Leo be the man of sin; deciding that the Pope's claim for that office is the best, he sets down Mohammed as the little Horn; and "the eyes of the little Horn are the Alcoran or Law wherewith he ruleth." Deutsch says that Luther translated the "Confutatio Alcoran of a certain Brother Richards (1300 A.D.) (who had travelled to Babylon for his learning), and enriched the same by occasional comments, such as, "Ofie! for shame, you horrid devil! you d-d Mahomet!" or "O pfui dich, Teufel!" ending up with, "Wohlan! God grant us his grace, and punish both the Pope and Mahomet, together with their devils. I have done my part as a true prophet and teacher. Those who won't listen may leave it alone." Melancthon, the gentle, uses equally strong language, if less emphatic. The honest vehemence of Luther, the iconoclast, is not, after all, so very unlike that of this other iconoclast whom he so denounced. At any rate, Deutsch goes on to inform us, writers on the Papal side were not slow to discover that Luther in particular, and the German Reformers in general, were trying to introduce Mohammedanism into the German Church! They found, too, a wonderful likeness between it and Lutheranism.

Gibbon was one of the earliest to modify the medieval views of Mo

hammed; but his manifest hostility to Christianity depreciated the value of his testimony. Since then the tide has set in still more decidedly in this new direction, and Mr. Carlyle, in ranking him as his hero-prophet, has probably reached high-water mark.

There are now histories and biographies of Mohammed in which he can be studied from every point of view, including that of an enthusiastic Mussulman, who tenderly holds up every fairer trait for admiration, while he champions the doubtful, and defends the indefensible with the convenient "tu-quoque" turned upon the wearers of the Christian

name.

In reading some of our modern writers, one cannot but be struck with the liberality and tenderness shown towards all forms of faith, or their semblance. This may be the reaction from the illiberality of former times, or possibly the product of our advanced Christian sentiments and more enlightened knowledge. But the contrast is

curious.

Even now, especially with us, also in Spain and Italy, there comes to the surface sometimes an ardent championship between the two so dissimilar offshoots of the Christian faith, and they never entirely cease jostling one another for place. The extreme severity of the measure dealt out to one another by some of the minor Protestant parties is only too noticeable. We find a Mussulman speaking out warmly for his own views of Mohammedanism (which Mr. Hughes, by the way, calls rationalistic, and declares that "they no more represent the Mohammedanism of the Kurān and the traditions, than the opinions of Mr. Voysey represent the teaching

of orthodox Christianity "), while on the outside of any form of socalled Christianity, and beyond the plain speaking of first cousins, we see this chivalrous courtesy of the strong towards the weak, and a perhaps somewhat exaggerated belief in the "soul of good in things evil," which extends its condescending care towards even the weakest weed of religion among savage tribes. Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed, and many others to boot, have their respective merits weighed in the balances, and their places allotted as the scale turns in the judgment of some writers. Another " reverences the Christian Church for the great good it has done to mankind; and (at the same time) reverences the Mahometan Church for the good it has done-a far less good."

A word borrowed from Professor Max Müller may not be amiss here. He says, "Those who would use a comparative study of religions as a means for debasing Christianity by exalting the other religions of mankind, are to my mind as dangerous allies as those who think it necessary to debase all other religions in order to exalt Christianity. Science wants no partisans. I make no secret that true Christianity-I mean the religion of Christ-seems to me to become more and more exalted the more we know and the more we appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the world."

In some such way one might worthily study Mohammed and his book. The earnest confession, where it can be realized, of the purest morality that ever shone upon earth, and of the unapproachable excellence of One who spake as never man spake, need not pre

vent a recognition of the copy, however imperfect, of that Divine ideal which One, and One only, ever realized in his life. "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory." Our studies of great men may become stepping-stones for our faith, and as in other studies we rise from simple lessons and principles within our grasp to the higher and more complex, so in our search after moral and religious excellence, our faith may learn to climb past all human aspirations and strivings towards the unseen good, to fasten upon the revelation of that Good itself. The One so often compared with Mohammed claimed to be the only-begotten Son of God. The subject of this paper, let it not be forgotten, refused to be considered other than a man of like passions with ourselves. He was but the prophet of Allah-meaning thereby his messenger, his mouthpiece; but neither a foreteller of events-nor a worker of miracles. All such attributed to him were the fungusgrowth of later traditions.

Let Mohammed, then, be judged on his own merits according to his own standard, and Christ by his. Noble souls have none the less found him worthy of their love and reverence. Well did the historian say, "Ubi de magna virtute et gloria bonorum memores, quæ sibi quisque facilia factu putat, æquo animo accipit; supra ea, veluti ficta, pro falsis ducit.'

A few words first as to the "environment" of our 66 germ." Before the advent of their prophet and the age of Islām, no common bond of law, social or religious, is said to have prevailed among them. Judaism had found there a home after the destruction of Jerusalem. There were several entire tribes of

Jews, but it would seem they did not sustain the prestige of their ancient faith, and their influence availed no more than to permeate their Arab allies with much of the love of their Scriptures, and still more of their legendary and Rabbinical books. Deutsch says that they were of superior culture; and "with keenness of intellect, with sudden sparks of esprit, with all the arts of casuistry," they would triumph over the Arabs in controversy, appeal to their common father Abraham, and threaten them with a coming Messiah. They would seem, however, to have adopted some semi-idolatrous ways themselves, sending offerings to the Kaaba at Mekka; and Mohammed taxed them with something very like idolatry towards Moses and Ezra "the Son of God!" "Zem

zem

was revered by them as Hagar's Well, and a stone, so-called, Jacob's Pillow. Among a few of their Arab neighbours, however, they had awakened a feeling after one true and only God; and four Arabs are said to have agreed among themselves to go forth in quest of this great object of faith, if haply they might feel after and find Him. Deutsch finds the in

fluence of Judaism on Islām so strong that he says, "We think Islam neither more nor less than Judaism, as adapted to Arabia, plus the apostleship of Jesus and Mohammed."

The latter strove long and earnestly to win them over, but they were ever his bitterest foes, and their treachery at last made an impassable breach between them and Mohammed. Sabæanism, which was a worship of the heavenly bodies, and Christianity of various and debased forms, existed also in Arabia.

Deutsch says, "Of Arabian Christianity of the time of Mohammed, the less said perhaps the better." Mr. B. Smith observes, "Such

Christians as Mohammed had ever met, had forgotten at once the faith of the Jews, and that higher revelation of God, given to them by Christ, which the Jews rejected. . . . Homoousians and homoiousians, monothelites and monophysites, Jacobites and Eutychians making hard dogmas of things wherein the sacred writers themselves had made no dogma, disputing fiercely whether what was mathematically false could be metaphysically true, and nicely discriminating the shades of truth and falsehood in the views suggested to bridge over the abysmal gulf between them; they busied themselves with every question about Christ, except those which might have led them to imitate Christ's life. Now Mohammed came to make a clean sweep of all such unrealities. Images what are they? Bits of black wood pretending to be God; philosophical theories, and theological cobwebs? Away with them all! God is great, and there is nothing else great: this is the Mussulman's creed.. Islam; that is, 'man must resign his will to God's and find his highest happiness in so doing.' This is the Mussulman's life."*

It is now believed, that not only were these living epistles of Christ Mohammed's only experience of professed Christianity, but further, that the only written accounts with which he had acquaintance were the apocryphal gospels, "The Infancy," the "Acta Pilati," and the "Descensus ad Inferos." Two allusions alone seem to have been derived from the gospels of our canon-one, his assumption to himself of the title of the promised Paraclete (ajánλntos, amended, as he received it, to AUTO), the Greek rendering of Mohammed the

'Praised.' The second trace is the account of the birth of John the Baptist. "The wonder is, not that he (Mohammed) "reverenced Christ so little, but so much."t These three faiths had root in Arabia. Magism also had its place. Mohammed ever showed an especial respect for "the people," as he called them, "of the Books," that is the Jews, Christians, and some say the Magians also.

"But the majority of the people were addicted to fetishism" (says Syed Ameer Ali Moulvi, the Mussulman biographer before spoken of) "of the grossest type. Animals and plants. . . the palm-tree ... pieces of rock, stones, &c., formed the principal subjects of adoration." A Babel of voices rising to a Babel of deities! Such a mob of idols besieged the throne of Heaven that the Godhead was hidden. One thinks unavoidably of the French proverb, "Le bruit est si fort qu'on n'entend pas Dieu tonner."

The blue sky at times seems blotted out by the rising vapours of earth. Yet the clouds can in no wise affect the tranquil ether of the heavens. "Yesterday, today, and for ever," a type of Him who inhabiteth eternity, they remain unchanged, while the clouds that conceal it from view are but "a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." Among these idols the Kaaba was the chief object of veneration, with its sacred black stone, and the fountain called the Zem-zem. The tribe of the Koreish were the guardians of this shrine.

Such was the aspect of religions in Arabia before its conversion to Islam. Carlyle describes its physical traits: " Savage inaccessible