more favourable views that have been lately brought forward by European authors, I can only pass on a story that was told me of an educated Mussulman in India who had been shown such a treatise. “This gentleman, Sahib,” he said, as he handed back the volume, “appears to know very little about his own religion, and absolutely nothing about ours.” I myself went to Persia with the intention of making the most of the good points of the religious systems of the country. With regard to the Parsis I was not disappointed. Like many other missionaries, I started with the idea that I should find these people possessed of a great many radically wrong notions about the nature and power of God, which were essential to their religion. I now believe that I was wrong, and I have never heard my right-hand man, Mihraban, who is himself a Parsi, and also one of the most sincere and earnest Christians whom I have ever met, speak one word against the real groundwork of Zoroastrianism. In this religion it is not unteaching but teaching that is required to lead the people to Christ; but, in Mohammedanism, in spite of its greater pretensions, almost every apparent truth crumbles into mere truism or actual falsity the moment that you try to make it the basis of anything practical. Also the more I read of the life of Mohammed, the more convinced I am that the radical rottenness of the system is due to his original teaching. Perhaps this may be a confession of narrowness, but one cannot be broad all round. Unless we are going to deny the iniquity and wickedness of modern Islam, we shall have to believe that somebody is to blame; and, if it is not Mohammed, I suppose it must be either the mullas or the Mussulman laity. I do not know why we should expend all our breadth on the big people: I myself have some sympathy with the little ones: and I firmly believe that the difficulties in the Islam of to-day are due rather to the essential wrongness of the system than to its corruption by the masses. Mohammed was born in Mecca towards the end of the sixth century. He was a member of the important family who had charge of the Ka’aba, which was a heathen temple that the Meccans had attempted to make a common meeting-ground for the whole of Arabia, by including within its limits the idols and symbols of worship that were respected by the different tribes. Some of these tribes had adopted Christianity and Judaism; so pictures even of Jewish and Christian saints were to be found within the walls of the Meccan temple.