The composition of the "Koran" is all the work of Mohammed. He himself claimed that he spoke merely as the oracle of God. The commands and injunctions are in the first person, as if spoken by the Divine Being. The passionate enthusiasm and religious earnestness of the prophet are plainly seen in these strange writings. Sometimes, however, he sinks into the mere Arabian story-teller, whose object is the amusement of his people. He is not a poet, but when he deals with the unity of God, with the beneficence of the Divine Being, with the wonders of Nature, with the beauty of resignation, he exhibits a glowing rhetoric, a power of gorgeous imagery, of pathos, and religious devotion, that make the "Koran" the first written work in the Arabian tongue. If we take Mohammed's own account of the composition of the volume, we must believe that the completed "Koran" existed from all eternity, on a tablet preserved in the upper heavens. Once a year, during the period of the prophet's active work, fragments of this tablet were brought down by the angel Gabriel to the lower heavens of the moon, and imparted to the prophet, who was periodically transported to that celestial sphere. The words were recited by the angel, and dictated by the prophet to his scribe. These detached scraps were written on the ribs of palm leaves, or the shoulder-blades of sheep, or parchment, and were stored in a chest, in which they were kept until the caliphat of Abu Bekr, in the seventh century, when they were collected in one volume. Such marvels of revelation were made at different periods to the prophet, and were called Surahs, and formed separate chapters in the Koran as we have it to-day. Some of these Surahs contradict what had previously been uttered by the prophet, but this discrepancy is obviated by the expedient of what is called "abrogation," and the more recent utterances were held to supersede and rescind those which were contradictory to it in the earlier revelation.