acknowledging Christ Jesus to be 'honourable and one of those who approached near to the presence of God,' declares that 'He is no other than a servant, whom God favoured with the gift of prophecy, but not to be associated with the worship of God;' and when He comes again at the last day it will be to confute the Christians who believed on Him as God, no less than the Jews who rejected and crucified Him.
Of course, the Koran is full of moral precepts, to many of which no one could take exception. Wine and gambling are forbidden. Crimes are to be punished on the principle of retaliation—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, are all duties to be carefully observed. War against infidels is expressly commanded; the warrior who dies in such battle passes straight to heaven—a belief which, combined with their idea of inevitable fate, renders the Moslems desperately brave and careless of death, as our soldiers found in the recent battles in the Soudan. But there are two special faults in the Mahometan system—it degrades women to an inferior level, and it encourages slavery.
Such, in outline, was the faith which has spread over a great part of Asia and Africa, and at one time threatened to contend successfully with Christianity in Europe. Even now it dominates Egypt, the Turkish Empire, Arabia, Persia, and Turkestan, prevails along the north coast of Africa and irregularly southward to the equator, has great influence in India and among the Malays, and has found a footing in China. Its followers number 100 millions, or one-thirteenth of the inhabitants of the world, against 490 million Buddhists and 360 million Christians, But now that external
