[Footnote 147: _Vide_ Islam and its Founder, by J.W.H. Stobart, B.A., page 229, London, 1878; and Mohammed, Buddha and Christ, by Marcus Dods, D.D., pp. 122-23, London, 1878. Major Osborn writes, "But to the polity erected on these rude lines was given the attribute of finality. In order to enforce obedience and eliminate the spirit of opposition, Mohammad asserted that it was, down to the minutest details, the work of a Divine Legislature."--_Islam under the Arabs_, pp. 45 and 46.] [Footnote 148: _Vide_ The Faith of Islam, by the Rev. Edward Sell, page 7, London, 1880.] [Footnote 149: _Vide_ Christianity and Islam, the Bible, and the Koran, by the Rev. W.R.W. Stephens, pp. 95 and 131, London, 1877.] [Footnote 150: _Vide_ Islam and its Founder, by J.W.H. Stobart, B.A., page 237; and Stephens' Christianity and Islam, page 121. Major Osborn writes: "From the hour of his birth the moslem becomes a member of a system in which every act of his life is governed by a minute ritual. He is beset on every side with a circle of inflexible formalities."--_Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad_, pp. 78-9. He further writes in a footnote, p. 79: "Thus prayer is absolutely useless if any matter, legally considered impure, adheres to the person of the worshipper, even though he be unconscious of its presence. Prayer also is null and void unless the men and women praying are attired in a certain prescribed manner."] [Footnote 151: _Vide_ Christianity and Islam, by W.R.W. Stephens, pp. 122-23. Major Osborn writes: "The Prophet knew of no religious life where the external rite was not deemed of greater importance than the inner state, and, in consequence, he gave that character to Islam also. Hence there are no moral gradations in the Koran. All precepts proceed from the will of God, and all are enforced with the same threatening emphasis. A failure of performance in the meanest trivialities of civil life involves the same tremendous penalties as apostacy and idolatry."--_Islam under Khalifs_, p. 5. He further says: "In their religious aspect, these traditions are remarkable for that strange confusion of thought which caused the Prophet to place on one level of wickedness serious moral crimes, breaches of sumptuary regulations, and accidental omissions in ceremonial observations. Sin, throughout, is regarded as an external pollution, which can, at once, be rectified by the payment of a fine of some kind." _Ibid_, page 62.] [Footnote 152: "Occasionally our author would seem to write what he certainly does not mean; thus, in the middle of an excellent summary of the causes of Islam's decadence, it is stated,--'Swathed in the rigid bands of the Koran, _Islam is powerless like the Christian dispensation_ to adapt itself to the varying circumstances of time and place.'"--_The Saturday Review_, June 23, 1883.] [Footnote 153: _Vide_ Annals of the Early Caliphate, by Sir W. Muir, K.C.S.I., LL.D., D.C.L., page 456, London, 1883.]