A devout Mussulman will recite these and similar forms of prayer no less than seventy-five times a day. But these words, which admit of no variety or change, become, after ceaseless repetition, rather a mechanical than a mental act and are frequently more in the nature of lip service than the prayer of the Christian, which consists not only in acts of praise, as in the above words of the Moslem worshiper, but also in acts of impetration and thanksgiving. The Moslem’s nearest approach to a Christian prayer is the first sura of the Koran, called the Fatihah, which reads: _Praise be to God, Lord of all the worlds,_ _The compassionate, the merciful._ _King of the day of reckoning!_ _Thee only do we worship, and to Thee only do we cry for help._ _Guide thou us in the straight path,_ _The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious,_ _With whom Thou art not angry,_ _And who go not astray, Amen._ But we have only to compare this prayer--which has been called “the quintessence of the whole Koran”--with the “Our Father” to see the vast difference between the prayer of the Christian and that of the Mohammedan. It is manifest in the very first word of the _Pater Noster_, which shows that there is no comparison between the Christian and the Moslem conception of God. Mohammed believed in God, feared and obeyed Him according to his light, but, not recognizing His Fatherhood, he did not and, from his view of the Deity, could not love Him. It is so with his followers. Their God is a God of fear, not a God of love, because not known as _God Our Father_. How different is this from the relationship--sonship--of the Christian to his Creator, who enjoys the blessed privilege of calling God _Abba_--Father. Denying the Fathership of God, Moslem theologians maintain that it is impossible for men to love Him. Man and God, they contend, are of different natures, and where there is a difference of genus there can be no love. The nearest approach to love, they contend, is man’s perseverance in obedience to Allah. Again, according to the same theologians, there can be no love of God for man, for love, say they, implies change, which, as God is infinitely perfect, is impossible. When God therefore is said to love man, all that is meant, according to Al-Gazali, one of the most eminent of Moslem theologians and philosophers, is that “God so affects man that man comes to God.”[250] But in this case, as in so many others, the common sense--or shall we call it a special divine illumination?--of many in Islam has enabled them to arrive at a truer conception of God and of their relations to Him than was ever attained by Moslem philosophers and casuists and incomparably superior to anything found in the Koran or in the traditional teachings of Mohammed.