be allowed to rank as a commonplace. We | will not insult our readers, therefore, by arguing in its favor, nor by showing that Mahomet is entitled to the benefit of it. With ourselves we believe they will be persuaded that the view which every Christian would be most eager to take of Mahomet and his system, and which, as a Christian, he will gain most by taking, is the view that accords to Mahomet the largest possible amount of credit for every excellent human quality that a man may possess out of the pale of Christian discipleship. Mahometanism, represented as the best possible product of one of the best possible specimens of the natural Arabic mind working after human, and, if abnormal, still natural methods; and not Mahometanism represented as a wretched piece of imposture, cobbled by a clever wretch for his own bad ends-such, surely, is the Mahometanism with which the Christian would be proud and anxious to place his own faith in contrast. By this abnegation, however, of the old hypothesis of imposture, the problem of Mahomet's character is made much more complex and difficult; nor do we think that those, in this country at least, who have passed the subject through their hands, have fairly faced the difficulty, or duly elaborated the solution. To say that Mahomet was an earnest and sincere man, preaching a kind of Theism, or natural religion, to his countrymen, and thus to pass him on, as it were, with his ticket to a place in the hall of heroes, is too hasty a mode of procedure. The rule of Socrates and Plato, we repeat, does not fit the case of Mahomet. He distinctly avowed himself as a prophet, qualified by a divine mission; and it is as he shall be found to have made this declaration honestly or dishonestly that he must stand or fall. If Mahomet said that he had a divine mission, and yet did not himself thoroughly believe his own statement, then, let his honesty in every other point have been never so exact, and let the value of his teachings, in themselves, have been never so great, he was an impostor, a rogue, and a hypocrite. Nor will it do to equivocate about the sense in which he meant to be understood, when he called himself a prophet. That it was not in that sense in which, by a figure of speech, or even in the glow of an intensely excited consciousness, a teacher of important truths will sometimes, even in our parts of the on from the fact that Mahomet's own c poraries, peculiarly tolerant as their S way of thinking would necessarily hay dered them of any mere metaphorical tion of apostleship, were accustomed cuse him of imposture in precisely the terms as modern and European critics used. It was in the fortieth year of M et's age, say the ancient and authent counts, that, spending as usual the mo Ramadhan in his solitary cave Hara, he one night received the divin which he had long expected. As he 1 the ground, wrapped in his mantle, long prayer and fasting, he heard a voic him, and saw a great light. On th swooned away, and when he came to self, he saw an angel, in human form, s ing before him. The angel held a ro silk, whereon were inscribed certain ch ters, and said to Mahomet, Read." cannot read," replied Mahomet. "R repeated the angel, "in the name of Lord, who hath created all things; hath created man of clotted blood. by thy most beneficent Lord, who ta the use of the pen, who teacheth man which he knoweth not." On hearing words, (which were afterward inserted in Koran, and are to be found there at the o ing of chap. 96,) Mahomet looked on scroll, and was able to read what was scribed on it. 66 Then the angel depar said, O Mahomet, thou art the apostl God, and I am Gabriel." Amazed and wildered, proceeds the story, Mahomet his wife Kadijah what had happened; she, eager and excited by the news, infor her cousin Waraka. The opinion of sage, expressed after he had duly deli ated, was, that the appearance was no d sion, but a real call by the Deity to the phetic office. And from that day Maho was subject to prophetic dreams, and ang ic visitations; and the revelations that fi time to time were made to him through | means, were written down from his dictat by Waraka, or by the slave Zaid, and ca fully treasured as the words of God. Such, in its simplest form, is the story Mahomet's call; and, though in the Ko there is not the slightest warrant for any the extravagant circumstances with whi the story has been embellished, nor any e dence that Mahomet himself propagat such astounding details of his subseque with the oncolie would as the xample, to the famous night-journey for granted in the Koran is the theory of Mecca to Jerusalem, being a few pass-periodical revelation. Thus in chap. 13th, ords in chap. 17th, which do not neces- "Every age hath its book of revelation; imply anything so grotesquely miracu- God shall abolish and shall confirm what He s the legend describes,) yet it is clear pleaseth;" and again, in chap. 44th, "Verily, to the extent, at least, of sanctioning we have even used to send apostles with serting this fact of a supernatural vo- revelations at proper intervals, as a mercy vouchsafed to Mahomet by visible from the Lord." In short, it was from the and angelic agencies, the Koran itself first a settled notion in the mind of Mahomet, s literally and expressly committed. that God's method of keeping up the true oof of this see passages in chapters religion among mankind was by maintaining and 53d). One of two things, there- on the earth a succession of expressly comeither Mahomet saw no such signs and missioned men; it was a notion of his also, , but only said he saw them, in order derived, doubtless, from the evident exampress people, and stun them into cer- ple of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, eliefs he had excogitated, or resolved that God's mode of qualifying these missionne reason to advocate; in which case, aries for their work was by dictating sacred beat, he was, let his aims have been words to them, that is, furnishing them with so elevated, a base and unmitigated a book which men might read. Full of this rel; — or he did actually think belief, Mahomet appears from the first to v visions and signs; in which case, have meditated, with special interest and ener fallacy there was, is to be thusiasm, on the lives of those men of the d, not to himself morally, but to Shemitic race, whether Biblical heroes or boriginal singularity, or superinduced mere personages of Arabian legend, in whom, crasy, in his mental constitution. as he fancied, the true conditions of the mesng, as we do, the second hypothesis, senger of God were most conspicuously uld willingly take the present oppor- realized. Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, to sketch, generally, our idea, dim as Hud the Addite, Saleh the Thamudite, Job, of that higher kind of psychological Moses, Ezra, and many more, were included s, under which, we think, rather than in this list; in which, also, he did not hesithe calculus in use for ordinary and tate to place our Lord himself, as the last cases, such characters as those of and greatest, as he seems to have believed, et, Swedenborg, and other men of the of all the Divine prophets. Whatever books, amp, ought to be treated. Failing or fragments of books, could be traced to For this, however, we must content these prophets, were, he believed, infallible es w th an observation or two, special revelations of the truth, transcripts from the case of Mahomet. eternal table kept before the throne of God. Nations, too, beyond the Shemitic circle, had had prophets sent to them, the names of whom no man knew. first, it might be demonstrated, we that pari passu with that spiritual of change which we have described g on in the mind of Mahomet, in the between his twenty-eighth and his year, there was going on also, an tion, according to his peculiar Arabic thinking, of a preconceived theory of on. Like Cromwell, whom in many she resembles, Mahomet is distin, in the midst of all his emotional in-national reform, should begin to ask whether ces, and intermittent blasts of tumulary, by a very large constant amount ality which we will venture to name ionalness. Out of the Koran, incomass of rubbish as it at first appears, lly to such readers as attack only nning of it, which is by far the poor) it would be possible to cull not a ps of the most luminous and clear ional matter. Now one of the pro Holding, to use a modern phrase, this theory of Revelation, it was almost a matter of course that Mahomet, when he had been roused to a sense of the degraded condition of his countrymen under the Polytheism and Sadduceeism that divided and embruted them, and of the necessity of a universal the series of commissioned teachers was closed, whether there might not yet perchance be one specific revelation in store for poor benighted` Arabia. An Arabic book sent down from heaven, through some appointed prophet-this, according to his theory, must be the way and plan of the great reform, if it were to be vouchsafed at all! And then, as this theoretical train of contemplation mingled with his own vehement | victions with whieh his soul had begun to indeed that would seek the root of the overflow, might there not come the query, matter in such facts as these, yet faint and timid at first, but afterward louder ought these facts, we think, to be has and more distinct, whether, if Arabia were to aside. There is, doubtless, a perfe have a Prophet, he, Mahomet Ibn Abdallah, established harmony, if we had but in might not be the appointed man? But the enough to discover it, between the necessary Arabic book! Alas! he was mind of a man and every part or pecu illiterate; he could neither read nor write! of the corporeal organism through w All this he could revolve and ponder, till the acts. Recently, too, science has more very pores and channels of his brain became begun to surmise the existence of clogged, as it were, with the details of the recondite but appreciable connections be notion. Waraka, too, with his sharp and abnormal mental experiences and u subtle wit, may have sometimes helped him states of body. It is weak, therefo out in his speculations. And, at all events, eschew, on any supposed æsthetic gr his theory would have this negative effect this field of explanations. But, indeed, upon him, that it would prevent him from is no choice. If we are to adhere entering with any confidence on the mere hypothesis, that Mahomet was himself career of a sage or uncommissioned human vinced of his divine mission, then, b teacher, appealing in behalf of his views only necessity of the case, we must make a to the ordinary authority of the Arabic draft in his favor upon the region of ye reason. No, if Arabia were to receive en- determined physiological possibilities. lightenment, it must be by the established alternatives only appear to offer themse instrumentality of a revealed book, dictated-Either, first, Mahomet, like Julius Ca to some chosen man let then that be waited for! And here a particular fact regarding Mahomet puts itself forward to our aid. Even before his assumed call to the Prophetship, there seems to be no doubt, that, like Swedenborg, Le was subject to certain extraordinary physical excitements, trances, or derangements. Medical investigators have even tried explicitly to identify certain facts related of him with the symptoms of epilepsy; the malady, it may be remembered, of another great man, Julius Cæsar. "Mahomet," says Mr. Irving, quoting from a note in the Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre of Dr. Gustav Weil, "would sometimes be seized with a violent trembling, followed by a kind of swoon, or rather convulsion, during which perspiration would stream from his forehead in the coldest weather; he would lie with his eyes closed, foaming at the mouth, and bellowing like a He had such attacks in young camel. Mecca, before the Koran was revealed to him." To one of his followers, who asked him what were the peculiar sensations that accompanied his reception of a revelation, he replied that, though usually an angel appeared to him in human form, yet sometimes he saw no form or shape at all, but only heard "a sound like the tinkling of a bell," on the cessation of which he found himself possessed an extraordinary mind in con tion with a congenital peculiarity or ma of body; till his mature age, the two s of manifestations, the bodily and the me proceeded, to a certain extent, as if dis and parallel, the mind taking its own sp did course, unimpeded by the bodily oxysms, and all but regardless of them; at length, in his fortieth year, a suc alliance was struck up between the two ties; the soul having arrived, in its i pendent investigations, precisely at point (the theory of revelation by period Prophets, and the earnest longing to be of them) where the co-operation of the bo in the shape of certain novel, and as mi then have been thought, preternatural ser tions, was necessary to relieve it; and body, on the other hand, heretofore we ened and fatigued, doubtless, by long fast and solitary thought, being but too ready yield the necessary obedience. Or, secon Mahomet had no congenital malady of bo but was a man moved by such a tremend power of mind, as caused him, about fortieth year, to tumble suddenly, body & soul together, over the brink of the ordin phenomenal platform whereon most n stand, into the outlying region of ph tasms, ringing sounds, and frenzies. In t last supposition (and the analogy of st cases as those of Socrates and Swedenbo 46 * nking subject into a medium of new | from day to day, a new Sura,—that is, a menal conditions. In either case, how- new chapter or passage of the Koran, appromust be supposed that the new state priate to the occasion. These Suras, which d, once acquired, became chronic and doubtless formed the texts of his public disnent. Once thrown over the brink of courses, were carefully written down from his as they ordinarily appear, Mahomet, dictation by his scribes; and copies of them Socrates in this respect, but in a far were distributed among his followers, many conspicuous manner, sustained a change of whom committed them to memory. Someellectual structure, by which all his times he affixed a copy of the Sura last penr relations with nature and mankind ned to the walls of the Kaaba, that all the permanently altered. Not that he lost Meccans might read it. There are incessant ng of his natural disposition and pecu- allusions in the Koran to the manner in which - or became less shrewd, less clear and these messages were received. Thus, in in his perceptions of ordinary affairs, chapter 21st, "They say the Koran is a conable to all his besetting infirmities and fused heap of dreams: nay, he hath forged The change consisted in this, that it: nay, he is a poet: let him come unto us as before his trance on Mount Hara with some miracle, in like manner as the lked in the strength of his own facul- former prophets were sent." Again, in chapdvancing the natural suggestions of his ter 25th, The unbelievers say, the Koran or temper simply on their own merits; is no other than a forgery, which he hath hat trance, he assumed himself to be contrived; and other people have assisted ed, and advanced the same suggestions, him therein. *And they say, what nd good, great and little, bold and kind of apostle is this? He eateth food, and d, as no longer liable to criticism, but walketh in the streets, as we do: unless an ole and highly authenticated. Once angel be sent down unto him, and become a aced that he was a Prophet, then what- fellow-preacher with him; or unless a treasarose in his mind with the ecstatic ure be east down unto him; or he have a e of force, whether it were a mere garden, of the fruit whereof we may eat, we al conception, a political device, a per-will not believe." Even the disciples, it seems, suspicion or antipathy, or even a lustful were not always sufficiently respectful at the fish desire, was fulminated forth by promulgation of a new Sura. Thus, in chapa divine decree. Such, we believe, ter 9th," Which of you hath this caused to only theory of Mahomet that remains, increase in faith? And whenever agreed to abandon the old scandalous a Sura is sent down, they look at one anothhesis of a more or less brutal amount er, saying, 'Doth any one see you?' Then they turn aside, [i. e. steal out of the meeting." Against all these obstacles Mahomet persevered. To those that demanded miraculous proofs of his mission, his uniform reply was, that he could not work miracles; that he was but "a preacher,” “ a public warner," "a denouncer of threats, and a promiser of rewards;" but that the Koran itself contained, in its literary execution, as well as in its sublime matter, ample evidence of its divine origin. He challenged all Mecca to produce anything comparable to it in excellence. Never once, however, in his controversies with his obstinate opponents, did he make the slightest concession on the point of his supernatural call, and his absolute inspiration, in his prophetic capacity. He maintained his equality in this respect with Abraham, Moses, and the great prophets that had appeared in the world before; he was the special prophet of Arabia, he said, as they osture. er his supposed call to the prophetic rank himself among his nephew's disciples, yet would not bear to see him wronged, it is probable that Mahomet's career in Mecca would have been soon brought to an end. As it was, so bitter was the persecution to which he and his followers were exposed, that not a few that had embraced his doctrines left Mecca altogether, and either emigrated to Abyssinia, or scattered themselves over safer parts of Arabia. At length, Abu Thaleb having died, and Abu Sofian, the head of another family of the Koreish having succeeded him in the supremacy of Mecca, the feud between the Meccans or Koreishites at large, and the Haschemite secretaries became so violent, that Mahomet, after much procrastination, deemed it advisable to remove with his whole retinue to another place. The town of Yathreb, afterward known as Medina or Medinat-al-nabi, i. e. "the City of the Prophet," was chosen as the new centre of operations; and so important was this Hegira or Flight from Mecca to Medina, afterward considered, that the day on which it happened (16th July 622) was fixed as the commencement of the Mahometan era. The prophet was then fifty-three years of age. Three years before, he had lost his faithful wife Kadijah; and after her death he had married several other women, the best beloved of whom, and the only one that was not a widow at the time of her marriage with the Prophet, was Ayesha, the young daughter of his follower Abubeker. In all, puring his life, Mahomet had fifteen or sixteen wives. Of his daughters by Kadija, one, named Fatima, had been given in marriage to his early and enthusiastic disciple, Ali. During the last ten years of his life, or subsequently to his removal to Medina, Mahomet appears in a new character; no longer as a mere sectary struggling for the diffusion of his opinions, but as a King and Prophet issuing his commands and leading his armies over the surface of Arabia. After eight years of warfare against Abu Sofian and the Koreishites, varied by expeditions against the Jewish tribes that inhabited certain parts of Arabia, the Moslems, or Mussulmans, as Mahomet's followers began to be called, succeeded in making themselves masters of Mecca; and Mahomet, re-entering his native city in triumph, signalized his victory by breaking in pieces the three hundred and sixty idols of the Kaaba, and purifying it as a place of Monotheistic worship. From that date Talamiam man ha considered 98 established portion of them, still maintained their r tive worships, tolerated to a considerab tent by the Prophet, who regarded tenets, and especially those of the Chri rather as corrupted f rms of the ancie pure Islamism of Palestine than as po heresies; but the Polytheistic tribes obliged universally to submit, and p themselves Mussulmans. Thus sup within the bounds of Arabia, Mahome led to entertain a project which, thoug does not appear at any earlier period to contemplated it, was still but a natura tension of his views-the diffusion nam Islamism over the whole Eastern worl means of Arabian valor. Accordingly was actually engaged in meditating a d war against the Greek empire on the and the Persians on the east, when (A.D. he was cut off by a rapid fever at Me in the sixty-third year of his age. It reserved for his successors, the Caliph undertake that wonderful series of conqu by which, in the course of a century or Mahometanism was extended from the sh of the Atlantic to the Ganges, and made nominal religion of a fifth part of the hu race. Of Mr. Irving's "Life of Mahomet, which the foregoing facts are narrated length, we have only to say, that it is elegant but jejune compilation of legends lating to Mahomet, and by no means suc Life of the Prophet as ought by this tim have been laid before the English pub By far the truest conception of Mahome to be obtained from his own book, the Kor Unfortunately, however, the peculiar sh in which this book now exists, makes it useful as a record of Mahomet's thoug and opinions than it otherwise might ha been. It was not till some years after death that the numberless Suras or passag which he had dictated from time to tir were collected and given to the world as whole; and, then, they were thrown gether and divided into chapters in the m arbitrary way imaginable, no attempt bei made either to classify them according their contents, or to arrange them in t order in which they had been written: her it is not possible to trace Mahomet's life ve exactly through the Koran, so as to see h circumstances developed his views. Something, however, may be inferred fro the nature of the case for seeing that |