an unclean animal) treated with cruelty, except in those cities which were overrun by Europeans.’[19] There are some very beautiful traditions of the Prophet, showing the tenderness with which he always treated animals and which he ever enjoined on his people. A man once came to him with a carpet and said, ‘O Prophet, I passed through a wood and heard the voices of the young of birds, and I took and put them into my carpet, and their mother came fluttering round my head.’ And the Prophet said, ‘Put them down;’ and when he had put them down the mother joined the young. And the Prophet said, ‘Do you wonder at the affection of the mother towards her young? I swear by Him who has sent me, Verily God is more loving to his servants than the mother to these young birds. Return them to the place from which ye took them, and let their mother be with them.’ ‘Fear God with regard to animals,’ said Moḥammad; ‘ride them when they are fit to be ridden, and get off when they are tired. Verily there are rewards for our doing good to dumb animals, and giving them water to drink.’ Such, in brief outline, is the religion of Moḥammad. It is a form of pure theism, simpler and more austere than the theism of most forms of modern Christianity, lofty in its conception of the relation of man to God, and noble in its doctrine of the duty of man to man, and of man to the lower creation. There is little in it of superstition, less of complexity of dogmas; it is an exacting religion, without the repulsiveness of asceticism; severe, but not merciless. On the other hand, it is over-rigid and formal; it leaves too little to the believer and too much to his ritual; it places a prophet and a book between man and God, and practically discourages the desire for a direct relation between the Deity and his servant; it draws the picture of that God in too harsh outlines, and leaves out too much of the tenderness and loving-kindness of the God of Christ’s teaching, and hence it has been the source of more intolerance and fanatical hatred than most creeds.