The great bulk of the Koran is either legislative or legendary; the book consists of laws and stories. The former relate entirely to subjects which engrossed the Arabs of Mohammed’s day—the laws of inheritance, the relation of the sexes, the law of retaliation, etc—and this part of the book has a local character. The stories on the other hand go back to Adam and the patriarchs, take in several unknown Arabian prophets or leaders, centre around Jesus Christ, Moses and Solomon and do not venture beyond Jewish territory except to mention Alexander the Great and Lukman (Æsop). From the analytical tables it is not very difficult to see whence the material for the Koran was selected. Rabbi Geiger’s book, recently translated into English, will satisfy any reader that Hughes is nearly right when he says, “Mohammedanism is simply Talmudic Judaism adapted to Arabia plus the apostleship of Jesus and Mohammed.” But it is _Talmudic_ Judaism and not the Judaism of the Old Testament. For the Koran is remarkable most of all not because of its contents but because of its omissions. Not because of what it reveals but for what it _conceals_ of “former revelations.” The defects of its teaching are many. It is full of historical errors and blunders. It has monstrous fables. It teaches a false cosmogony. It is full of superstitions. It perpetuates slavery, polygamy, religious intolerance, the seclusion and degradation of woman and petrifies social life. But all this is of minor importance compared with the fact that the Koran professing to be a _revelation_ from God does not teach the way to reconciliation with God and seems to ignore the first and great barrier to such reconciliation, viz: SIN. Of this the Old and New Testaments are always speaking. Sin and salvation are the subject of which the _Torah_ and the _Zaboor_ and the _Injil_ (Law Prophets and Psalms) are full. The Koran is silent or if not absolutely silent, keeps this great question ever in the background.[62] It is a commonplace of theology that “to form erroneous conceptions of sin is to fall into still graver errors regarding the way of salvation.” Mohammed, as is evident from his whole life, had no deep conviction of sin in himself; he was full of self-righteousness. His ideas, too, of God, were _physical_, not _moral_; he saw God’s power, but never had a glimpse of His holiness. And so we find that there is an inward unity binding together the prophet and his book as to their real character in the light of the gospel. With _such_ ideas of God, _such_ a prophet and _such_ a book, it is easy to understand why the Mohammedan world became what it is to-day. These bare outlines of the system of Islam are all that are necessary to indicate its nature and genus. Allah’s character as the revealer, Mohammed’s character as the channel of the revelation, and the revelation itself, show us Islam in its cradle. XIX THE WAHABI RULERS AND REFORMERS