Libraries have been written, not only in Arabic and Persian, but in all the languages of Europe, on the origin, character and history of Islam, the Koran and Mohammed. Views differ “as far as the east is from the west” and as far as Bosworth Smith is from Prideaux. The earlier European writers did not hesitate to call Mohammed a false prophet and his system a clever imposture; some went further and attributed even satanic agency to the success of Islam and to the words of the prophet. Carlyle, in his “Heroes and Hero-worship,” set the pendulum swinging to the other side so far that his chapter on the Hero-prophet is published as a leaflet by the Mohammedan Missionary Society of Lahore. So little did Carlyle understand the true nature of Islam that he calls it “a kind of Christianity.” What Carlyle said was only the beginning of a series of apologies and panegyrics which appeared soon after and placed Mohammed not only on the pedestal of a great reformer but “a very prophet of God,” making Islam almost the ideal religion. Syeed Ameer Ali succeeds in his biography in eliminating every sensual, harsh and ignorant trait from the character of the noted Meccan; and the recent valuable book of T. W. Arnold, professor in Aligarh College, India, attempts to prove most elaborately that Mohammedanism was propagated without the sword. In contrast to this read what Hugh Broughton quaintly wrote in 1662: “Now consider this Moamed or Machumed, whom God gave up to a blind mind, an Ishmaelite, being a poor man till he married a widow; wealthy then and of high countenance, having the falling sickness and being tormented by the devil, whereby the widow was sorry that she matched with him. He persuaded her by himself and others that his fits were but a trance wherein he talked with the angel Gabriel. So in time the impostor was reputed a prophet of God and from Judaism, Arius, Nestorius and his own brain he frameth a doctrine.” In our day, the critical labors of scholars like Sprenger, Weil, Muir, Koelle and others have given us a more correct idea of Mohammed’s life and character. The pendulum is still swinging but will come to rest between the two extremes.