A Muhammadan student, after passing through a course of instruction in grammar, rhetoric, logic, law, and dogmatics, at length reaches the stage when he is permitted to enter upon the study of "'Ilm-i-usul," or the exegesis of the Quran, and the inspired sayings of the Prophet. This done, he can henceforth read the approved commentaries in order to learn what the Fathers of Islam have to say. This science in one way fits him to be a commentator, for the work of a Muslim divine now is, not to bring things "new and old" out of the sacred book, but to hand down to others the things old. There is no indwelling spirit in the Church of Islam which can reveal to the devout mind new views of truth, or lead the pious scholar on to deeper and more profound knowledge. The greatest proficient in theology is the man who can repeat the Quran by heart, who knows also and can reproduce at will what the early commentators have said, who can remember, and quote in the most apposite manner, the {42} Prophet's sayings preserved in the Traditions handed down by the Companions, their followers, and their followers' followers, who can point out a flaw in the Isnad (_i.e._ chain of narrators) of a Tradition quoted by an opponent, or maintain, by repeating the long list of names, the authority of the Isnad of the Tradition he quotes himself. A good memory, not critical acumen, is the great desideratum in a Muslim theologian. The chief qualification of a Hafiz, a man who can repeat the whole Quran by heart, is not that he shall understand its meaning, but that he shall be able to pronounce each word correctly. By men who are not Arabs by birth, this is only to be attained after years of practice from childhood. The Sunnis say that no Shia'h can ever become a Hafiz, from which fact they draw the conclusion that the Shia'hs are heretics. In the early days of Islam, the great authorities on the question of the correct pronunciation of the Quran were the Khalifs Abu Bakr, Omar, Osman, and 'Ali, and ten of the Companions, who learned from the Prophet himself the exact way in which Gabriel had spoken. The Arabic of heaven was the Arabic of Islam. The effort, however, to preserve one uniform method of repeating the Quran failed. Men of other lands could not acquire the pure intonation of Mecca, and so no less than seven different ways of reading the sacred book became current. Here was a great difficulty, but it proved surmountable. Abu Ibn Kab, one of the Companions, had become so famous as a reader that the Prophet himself said: "read the Quran under Abu Ibn Kab." These men remembered that Abu Ibn Kab had stated, that one day when scandalized at man after man who entered the mosque repeating the Quran in different ways, he spoke to Muhammad about it. His Highness said: "O Abu Ibn Kab! intelligence was sent to me to read the Quran in one dialect, and I was attentive to the Court of God, and said: 'make easy the reading of the