and unknown, to whom he feels he cannot approach, being a mere dead idea, and not the living and life-giving God: "for whosoever denieth the Son the same hath not the Father," says scripture. His knowledge of God can therefore never be a practical one, nor exercise a sanctifying influence over him ; it will be mere knowledge, and matter of speculation. It is on this ground that Muhammadanism, like all other false systems, treats but slightly of the moral attributes of God, but gives all preeminence to his metaphysical perfections. The Muhammadans are therefore peculiarly fond of metaphysical discussions, about the divine nature, but they do this in such an indifferent and heartless manner as fully proves that they know nothing of the living God. The following passage, taken from a Persian Treatise on Divinity, is a specimen of such a dead metaphysical knowledge of a dead God, the creature of man's foolish ideas. It is said there: "God is not a body that can be measured; he possesses neither length nor breadth, depth nor height; it is mainly impossible, that there should exist in his nature any necessity to possess the properties of any thing, and he is no line, that is, a thing which can be divided in but one direction; nor is he a flat (plain), that is, a thing which can be divided in both directions. He, the great God, is neither heavy nor light; he is neither in motion nor at rest; he is neither in space nor in time. Before him the past and future are but the eternal present, and he is free from all properties of the creatures." After this it will not surprise us to learn, that the Muhammadans never call God by the dear and consoling name of Father, nor do they ever call themselves God's children. God is the Alláh tála, the great God, and they, even the most religious amongst them, are only Bandas, servants. They are however so far consistent, for only in Christ is God a Father, and the believer his adopted and beloved child.

Another consequence of this knowledge, or rather ignorance of God is, that the Muhammadans do not know of such a thing as prayer in the scriptural sense of the word. Their regular and prescribed namáz, or prayers, are but a mechanical ceremony; everything depends on this, that all the prescribed evolutions of the body are strictly performed, and all the enjoined words correctly repeated; and these words must all be in the Arabic tongue, for in this alone the namáz can be performed. And even these Arabic words are not words of prayer, but only certain verses of the Qurán, speaking of God and his attributes, and certain short sentences or words, as Alláhu akbar, God is great; Alhamedulillah, God be praised, &c.—which are repeated several times in the same prayer. Of private prayer or devotion they have no idea at all, and com

monly prefer to perform their prayers in a public place or in the presence of others. If a Muhammadan is in great distress, all that he does is this: he repeats a certain number more of the prescribed prayers, and sometimes he may also add a few words or some ejaculations of his own. Their mystical writers and poets, and the spiritualists or internals, as they are called among them, who hold all ceremonies and external prayer as useless, and conform to them merely to avoid scorn or persecution, speak indeed much of internal prayer and spiritual communion with God; but they, having all more or less imbibed the principles of pantheism, mean by these expressions nothing more than internal contemplation, or rather absorption of the mind into the Divine Being. But that any Muhammadan should ever bow his knees in the closet before his God, and pour out his heart before him, ask forgiveness of his sins, and seek peace for his soul, and strength from on high to walk in His paths, such a thing is altogether unknown to them, and has in all probability never happened amongst them, except when the light of the gospel began to shine on such a soul. Prayer is therefore no delight to their hearts, but a heavy burden lodged upon them. And but for the good advice of Moses to Muhammad it would have been altogether intolerable; for according to a tradition, which is related in the Mishcát ul Masábih, as well as in Hayat ul Kulub, vol. ii. leaf 176, God ordered them to pray 50 times a day, but Muhammad, on Moses' advice, bargained it down to five times. The tradition is as follows: Muhammad in his journey to heaven, having arrived there, was among other things ordered to command his followers to pray 50 times a day. When in his return he passed by Moses, Moses asked him, as it is said, "What have you been ordered? I (Muhammad) said, Fifty prayers every day. Then Moses said, Verily, your sects will not be able to perform 50 prayers every day. Then return to your Lord, and ask your sects to be eased: and I returned, and ten prayers were taken off. Then I went to Moses, and he asked me as before: and I returned to God's court, and ten prayers more were curtailed. Then I went to Moses, and he said as before; then I returned to God's court, and ten more were taken off. And I went to Moses, and he said as before; then I returned to God, and ten more were lessened. Then I went to Moses, and he said as before; then I went to God's court, and was ordered five prayers every day. Then I went to Moses, and he said, How many prayers have you been ordered? I said, Five prayers every day. He said, Verily your sects will not be able to perform five prayers every day; return then to your cherisher, and ask them to be lightened. I said,

I have asked him till I am quite ashamed; I cannot return to him again: but I am satisfied, and resign the work of my sects to God."

Now if the doctrine concerning God is such a dead and lifeless one as described here, the religion built on such a foundation cannot be otherwise but a dead and unsanctifying religion, which will never be able to raise man from his spiritual death, nor enlighten his mind and sanctify his heart: it will leave him in the bondage of darkness, superstition and sin, as the following extracts from Muhammadan traditions will clearly show, and the moral state of the Muhammadan nations fully proves.

2.-On the Creation.

The Muhammadans believe in good and evil spirits, or in angels and devils, like the Christians; but, though having taken the doctrine concerning them from Scripture, they have, like other doctrines borrowed from this source, greatly disfigured them, and deprived them of their sublime simplicity as well as of their practical tendency, as will be seen by a few extracts from their traditions on this head.

Satan was one of the higher angels, but because he was disobedient (when after the creation of Adam, God ordered all angels to pay homage to him), he became Satan and was cast out of heaven. He then became the father of the devils ; but, as is related in a tradition to be relied upon, "his offsprings do not generate, but lay eggs and hatch them, and his children are all male children. There is no female amongst them:" Hayat ul Kúlúb, vol. i. page 16. Besides the angels and devils they believe in gins or dévs, which according to their ideas are between men and angels, or according to some below man. Some of them are good and some bad; they live somewhere on earth or in the air, and can appear to man and have intercourse with him. They have the distinction of sexes, they marry and have children.

The angels are, according to their traditions, of an immense stature; it seems Muhammad and his followers thought this a necessary attribute of perfection. To give an idea of the size of one of the angels bearing the throne of God, it is said in the Mishcat, vol. ii. p. 651, "Verily, the distance from the lower part of his ears to his shoulders, is 70 years' journey." Babívíchi relates, according to an approved tradition, that they once asked the Amir ul Mumenín (the prince of the believers, that is Ali) about the power of God, and he said, "The Lord of the universe has some angels, who are so large, that if

VOL. I.

* Mishcat, vol. ii. p. 694.

one of them would come down upon earth, the earth could not contain him on account of the magnitude of his body and the expansiveness of his wings; and there are some of the angels of whom neither gins nor man would be able to give any description on account of their immense size, and the exceeding beauty of their form and face; for how can an angel be described, who is so great, that there is 700 years' journey (road) from his shoulder to his ear-cap. And there are some which, not mentioning the size of their body, fill alone with one of their wings the vault of heaven. Others are so great that the heavens reach only to their loins, and others standing on the air the earth come up only to their knees*; and there are others again, whose thumb-pit could contain all the waters of the world, if they were to be poured into it. Again, others are so great, that in the waters of their eyes, or dropping from their eyes, ships can sail for years." (Ain ul Hayát, page 26). As if this size was not enough there is said, in the same place, according to another tradition, "that there as an angel the distance from his ear to his eye amounts to the length of 500 years of a bird's flight." (Ibid. page 27.) Muhammad in his journey to heaven, when Gabriel led him about to show him the wonders of heaven, saw, among many other wonderful things, described at large in their Hadiths, an angel called Khorús, or the lock, of whom is said, "His feet stand on the extremities of the seventh earth, and his head reaches to the throne of God. He has two wings, and when he unfolds his wings they reach from east to west. At the dawn of the morning he opens his wings and strikes them together, singing aloud the praise of God. And as soon as his voice is heard, all the cocks on the earth strike their wings together and crow, singing the praise of God, and when he ceases they too cease crowing. The wings of this heavenly Khorús are white, the feathers under the wings are green, and the beauty of these two colours is beyond description. (Hayát ul Kúlúb, vol. ii. page 175.) Another of the wonders which were shown to Muhammad in heaven by his guide, was an angel, half of his body consisted of snow and the other half of fire; the fire did not melt the snow, and the snow did not extinguish the fire. And he heard the angel say with a loud voice, "O God, I praise thee, that thou hast prevented the heat of the fire from melting the snow, and the cold of the snow from extinguishing the fire." (Ibid. page 174.) Again, another of the wonders which Muhammad saw in heaven has been related by him in the

* According to tradition there are seven earths as well as seven heavens contained one in the other, each of the heavens being 500 years' way thick and as many years distant from the other.

following manner: "In passing on I saw one of the angels, sitting in a company, having the whole world between his knees, and a table of light in his hand. On the table was a name written, and he turning his eyes neither to the right nor to the left, he looked with a doleful face always on this table: I said, O Gabriel, who is that? He said, This is the Malak ul maut, angel of death, always occupied in taking the souls. He has the most difficult work of all the angels, and more to do than all others. I said, Does he indeed take himself the soul of every person? He said, Yes. I said, O Malak ul maut, canst thou see them wherever they are, and be present at every one of them? He said, Yes, for according to the power which God has given me, the whole world is to me but like a pence (or pice) in the hands of one of you, which he turns on whatever side he pleases, and there is no house whose inhabitants I do not closely examine one by one five times every day. (Ibid. page 174*.)

The beginning of creation, however, was Muhammad. It is related that the Amir ul Mumenín Ali said, "God the glorious and great created the holy light, the glory of the prophets, before the heavens and earth, before the arch, the throne, the table, the kalam†, before paradise and hell. He created him

* On the table in the hand of the angel of death are by God's power written the names of those who are to die. And as soon as their name appears he goes and takes their souls, that is, makes them die. The way in which he took the soul of Moses is related in the Mishcat, vol. ii. p. 647, in the following manner: "The angel of death came to Moses and said, God sent me to take your soul; approve of his order. Then Moses gave him a slap over his eyes, and blinded him. Then the angel of death returned to God, and said, Verily, you sent me to a servant who did not wish for death, and verily he has blinded my eyes. Then God gave the angel his sight again, and said; Return to him, and say, Do you wish for long life? If you do, put your hand upon the back of a bullock, and your life shall be as the number of hairs you cover with it. His majesty Moses said, What is after long life? The angel said, to die. Moses said, Then I choose death now." In Hayat ul Kúlub, vol. i. page 177, however, the death of Moses is given in the following story: "Moses one day, when going with Joshua on the mountain Sinai, met at the top of it a man with a hoe and a basket. Moses said to him, Where are you going to? He said, One of the friends of God has died, and I am going to dig the grave for him. Moses said, Shall I assist you in digging the grave? He said, Yes. They digged therefore the grave together, and when they had finished, the man wanted to go down into the grave to see if it was well digged; but Moses said, let me go. And when Moses had gone into, and seen the grave and approved of it, the angel of death came and took his holy soul, and the mountain closed itself over the grave, which therefore remained undiscovered." To this as for many other foolish stories the Muhammadans are, no doubt, indebted to the Jewish rabbis.

The arch is the place or flat on which the throne of God stands, and is supported or carried by angels. The idea has been clearly borrowed from Ezek. x. The table is the table of the eternal degrees of God, which