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SATIRES AND PROFANITIES.

abrogated and superseded by the next, though all were the same in essentials. Thus the Jews from the time of Moses to that of Christ, and the Christians (if they did not accept the corrupt and idolatrous doctrine of the divinity of Jesus) from the time of Christianity to that of Mohammed, were true believers. Of course the last is the greatest Prophet, and since his revelation the Muslims only have been the faithful. The Pentateuch, Psalms and Gospels, though of divine origin, have been so much altered as to contain very little of the true Word of God; but the Kur-an is supposed to have suffered no essential change whatever. Jesus was born of a pure virgin by the miraculous operation of God, without any father human or divine. When he had fulfilled the object of his mission, he was taken up to God from the Jews who sought to slay him, and another man, on whom God had stamped the likeness of Jesus, was crucified in his stead. He will come again upon earth, to establish the Muslim religion and perfect peace and security, after having killed Anti-Christ, and to be a sign of the approach of the last day. In all these doctrines the Muslims are decidedly more consistent and liberal, as well as somewhat less superstitious than the Christians, with their God-man and trinity in unity, their damnation of Mohammed as a mere impostor and of his religion, El Islam, as a vile fabrication of stolen materials. "The Egyptians pay a superstitious reverence not to imaginary beings alone: they extend it to certain individuals of their own species; and often to those who are justly the least entitled to such respect. An idiot or a fool is vulgarly regarded by them as a being whose mind is in heaven, while his grosser part mingles among ordinary mortals; consequently, he is considered an especial favorite of heaven. Whatever enormities a reputed saint may commit (and there are many who are constantly infringing precepts of their religion) such acts do not affect his fame for sanctity: for they are considered as the results of the abstraction of his mind from worldly things; his soul,