being sometimes couched in the very words, but abounds with childish marvels, such as we find in the Gospel of the Infancy. The Crucifixion is denied;

Sura IV. 155.

the Lord's Supper and Baptism are unnoticed; and in his conception of the Trinity (a doctrine which he repeatedly repudiates indignantly), the Virgin Mary would seem to have been regarded as one of the Persons. Yet he appeals to the Gospel equally as to the Pentateuch in confirmation of his mission; and his rupture at Medina with the Jews led him thereafter to speak more kindly of the Christians than of them. Thus, although some portions. of the Gospel were without doubt known, to Mahomet, it must have been in the most fragmentary form, and his acquaintance with the teaching of Christianity was to the last, scant and distorted.

Islâm (meaning thereby the surrender of the will to God) underlay all previous revelation.

Suras II. 62; V. 74.

To pious Jews and Christians, and even Sabians, salvation was assured, as well as to Moslems. The mission of Mahomet was intended primarily for the Arabs. It had not as yet assumed an exclusive and antagonistic attitude. Mahomet was a mere preacher, a simple warner. The idea of force and compulsion had not up to this time entered his mind. But from his followers he even at this stage demanded and received an absolute submission. They were bound implicitly to "obey God and His Prophet." Along with exhortations to the fear of God, charity, humility, rectitude, purity, and other virtues; there now appear precepts for the stated observance of prayer, and the ceremonial of the Káaba is enjoined.

The flight to Medina changes the scene, and with it the character of the portions of the Corân there revealed. The idolaters of Mecca disappear, and their place is taken by the "hypocrites" of Medina. Here there was no open opposition either to Mahomet or his doctrines; but, nevertheless, a powerful faction was jealous of the stranger's advent, and an undercurrent of disaffection prevailed which not unfrequently appears upon the surface. The head of this party was Abdallah ibn Obey, who, but for the new turn in the fortunes of his city, was on the point of being its chief. The disaffected citizens continue the object of bitter denunciation in the Corân, till near the close of the Prophet's career, when, before the success of Islam, they, too, vanish from the scene.

But the most prominent subject of. discourse in the early Medina revelations is the Jewish people and their religion. At the outset Mahomet spared no endeavour to attach them to his cause. He dwelt upon the lives of their prophets and worthies, and sought by recounting the interpositions of the Almighty in the land of Egypt and elsewhere, to stir their gratitude, and induce them to publish the evidence in his favour which he contended that their books contained; but he failed. Excepting a few apostates, they refused to admit his prophetic claims. Disappointment soon ripened into enmity; and they who had been appealed to before as witnesses are now