compatible with the fact that He was the final Court of Appeal. However adversely the theologian may criticize this from the modern Christian standpoint, it is clear and direct proof of Mohammed’s whole-hearted sincerity. Further it is equally direct and tangible evidence of the ardour and zeal that was in him as a prophet and reformer. God, with all His sternness and inflexibility, as He appeared to Mohammed, was just and merciful. A strict comparison between Yahveh and Allah certainly inclines the balance in favour of the latter. Jehovah at His best was a God of blood and vengeance, at His worst a voracious monster. In Allah, stern and avenging God as He was, there was at least compassion and mercy and forgiveness. He was not inexorable. He would listen to reason. Mohammed himself was a distinct advance on the founder of the ancient Jewish faith. He was more humane, a man of broader and deeper sympathies. Stern and hard to a degree where God and the Faith was concerned; where men, but especially women and children, were concerned, he was all tenderness and pity. Dutiful and obedient to his uncle who had been a father to him, he was a faithful servant, an exemplary husband, a kind father, a good master. The very name of Faithful, by which he was always distinguished, proves beyond a doubt what manner of man he was. An orphan himself in childhood, early inured to poverty, his heart went out to all those who had the misfortune to be similarly situated. For the poor, the weak, the helpless, he had a fellow-feeling. The degraded or at least dependent and unprotected position of women, their moral and legal helplessness most of all, appealed to him. But in no sense because he was sensual. Sensuality was not one of his many failings. A man from top to bottom, by birth, breeding and environment Mohammed was an Arab and a Patriarch. As such he only naturally liked women and children. To men and for the Faith a strong hard man, to the weak and helpless he was tender and affectionate. As he was strong, so he was merciful and full of human sympathies. His long and happy union with Khadija shows not only that he was faithful to a degree, but a man of high moral fibre. A man too full of the gravity of life to squander his substance in mere sensuality. But in all eastern and African countries where polygamy prevails, marriage is a pure matter of political convenience. Mohammed knew this. He recognized that marriage was a very important factor in securing influence and power. It threw out octopean feelers at various tangents and established certain associations and connexions to which it clung, as a limpet to a rock or a devil-fish to its victim. The same principle down almost to our own day has been a powerful factor in European statecraft. Even the earlier practice of keeping mistresses, so much indulged in by the sovereign holders of so-called “divine rights,” had much in common with this custom. It was undoubtedly this motive more