fered a thousand times that martyrdom by which he finally sealed it, did not hesitate to shield himself by a falsehood from the charge of fellowship with his betrayed Master. And how would that Master himself have acted under similar circumstances? Can it be doubted that, either by some guiltless evasion he would have extricated himself from the embarrassment of the question put to him, or, finding that to be impossible, would have abided by the consequences of the charge? For if we are warranted, by his conduct on numberless occasions, in affirming that he would not, like a mere enthusiast, have thrown himself into straits by a precipitate avowal of what might innocently have been withheld, we are still more sure, from the unerring rectitude of his whole life and conversation, that he would have concealed no fact at the expense of truth. Throughout the Bible, the utmost intrepidity in defence of our faith is shown to be consistent with that prudence which is the reverse of enthusiasm. To do what is right, in defiance of all danger, is an obligation with which no consideration whatever can dispense; yet are we not only allowed, but in duty bound, to use every fair means in our power for the protection of our characters, our persons, and our property. And if on the one hand we must do no evil, so, on the other, we are taught to refrain from that prodigality, as it were, of faith which might lead us—" to tempt the Lord our God.”

CHAPTER VI.

THE SUBJECT OF THE KORAN RESUMED.

No one well-disposed towards religion, who considers how much persons, professing strict religious principles, have gone astray on the leading doctrines of predestination and free-will, will find fault with my anxiety to place them in a just light; and I appear to myself to be doing so when I guard the former from the error of Fatalism, and the latter from that of self-dependence, and a disregard of the doctrine of the Atonement.

Fatalism is incompatible with any merciful dispensation; and I know no shorter, nor, at the same time, more satisfactory way of coming to a decision as to the spuriousness of the Koran, than by showing that it is indisputably committed on a tenet which enlightened reason must repudiate. It is something, I trust, to have shown that in a narrative, common to the Bible and to the Koran, there is a passage omitted in the latter, which establishes the admission, in the former, of man's moral responsibility; and I shall now press the point

of internal evidence to the length of casting Mohammedism into the abyss of Fatalism, on the showing of another remarkable story, which I am sorry to say has figured with distinction in English prose as well as verse. But before I proceed with this important and decisive testimony, I beg to make the observation, that it is evidence to which the thraldom imposed upon the minds of Mohammedans altogether prevents their having recourse. With how little truth then has it, not unfrequently, been said, by sceptics, that we are Christians, just as the followers of Mohammed are Mohammedans, because forsooth we have been born and educated in a Christian country? For however true it may be, nay must be, that many among us have been, and, I trust, will long continue to be, brought up in the Christian faith, without inquiring into the precise nature of its evidences, yet, what indignation would it not excite in the breasts of even uneducated persons, were they to be told that they have no right to trouble themselves about them; and that it was enough for them to know that competent scholars, whose judgment is all-sufficient, have decided that the religion they profess is not a "cunningly devised fable!" Yet such is the language of the Mohammedan Moolahs to the enslaved followers of their Prophet! Yes, and such is very nearly that of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, from the Pope downwards, to their confiding and benighted devotees! They conceal the baseness of that

vast and selfish fabric of superstition which has been reared upon the perverted foundations of eternal truth, by preventing the light of the Bible from shining upon it. But my concern, just now, is with Mohammedans, and with Catholic Christianity, not Roman Catholic, to which latter, nevertheless, there was no harm in making a passing allusion. I shall therefore proceed with another instance of the spuriousness of the Koran, not so much on account of its affording further illustration of the fact of coincidence between Mohammed and Ephrem the Syrian, as for the reason that it presents us with a conspicuous and interesting example of the perverted doctrines of divine power and prescience on the one hand, and of moral responsibility on the other.

"In the eighteenth chapter of the Koran, we have,” Professor Lee says, "the substance of a story which has been admirably told in Parnell's Hermit. M. De Lacy observes in the notes to his Chrestomathie, tom. iii. p. 414. Kaswini cite, à l'appui de ses reflexions, une histoire assez originale, qui me paroit avoir fourni l'idée, de la charmante piece de Parnell, intitulé l'Hermite, &c.' The story is then related, as it may be found almost verbatim in the Spectator, No. 237, where it is ascribed, erroneously Professor Lee thinks, to the Jews. For if we turn to the works of Ephrem, tom. i. Græc. et Lat. p. 119, we shall find, most probably, the original draught of this story, which is given with a view of illustrating the mysterious ways of Providence,

just as it has been re-edited in the Koran, and versified by Parnell.”

This is indeed another curious instance of coincidence; but it is, as I have said, of less importance, with reference to the plagiarisms of Mohammed, than to doctrines which the Bible utterly disowns. The bare comparison of the very finest passages of the Koran-such, for instance, as treat of the Unity of the Deity-with parallel passages in the Old and New Testament, might suffice to show which are originals and which spurious; but instances of perverted doctrines, with which the Koran abounds, afford still more decisive testimony of its earthly origin.

The eighteenth chapter of the Koran was revealed, we are told, at Mecca, and is entitled "The Cave," because it makes mention of the cave wherein the seven sleepers concealed themselves. The commentators of the Koran, who take great pains to give some account of all the unaccountable things that Mohammed pretended to have had revealed to him, say, that "the seven sleepers were certain Christian youths, of a good family in Ephesus, who, to avoid the persecutions of the Emperor Decius, hid themselves in a cave, where they slept for a great number of years;" why or wherefore does not appear. What the prophet himself tells us is, that "the companions of the cave (namely the seven sleepers), and