This concludes the consideration of the exegesis of the Quran, a book difficult and uninteresting for a non-Muslim to read, but one which has engaged and is still engaging the earnest thoughts of many millions of the human race. Thousands of devout students in the great theological schools of Cairo, Stamboul, Central Asia and India are now plodding through this very subject of which I have here been treating; soon will they go forth as teachers of the book they so much revere. How utterly unfit that training is to make them wise men in any true sense of the word, how calculated to render them proud, conceited, and scornful of other creeds, its rigid and exclusive character shows. Still, it is a marvellous book; for twelve hundred years and more it has helped to mould the faith, animate the courage, cheer the despondency of multitudes, whether dwellers in the wild uplands of Central Asia, in Hindustan, or on the shores of the Mediterranean. The Turanian and the Aryan, the Arab and the Negro, alike learn its sonorous sentences, day by day repeat its opening clauses, and pray in its words as their fathers prayed before them. Next to the act of testifying to the unity of God, the Quran is the great bond of Islam. No matter from what race the convert may have come, no matter what language he may speak, he must learn in Arabic, and repeat by rote portions of the Quran in every act of public worship. The next subject for consideration is that of the {66} Traditions, or the second branch of the science of 'Ilm-i-usul. The Traditions contain the record of all that Muhammad did and said. It is the belief of every Muslim, to whatever sect he belongs, that the Prophet not only spake but also acted under a divine influence. The mode of the inspiration is different from that of the Quran. There the revelation was objective. In the Prophet's sayings recorded in the Traditions the inspiration is subjective, but still a true inspiration. This belief places the Traditions in a place second only to the Quran; it makes them a true supplement to that book, and thus they not only throw light on its meaning, but themselves form the basis on which doctrines may be established. Without going so far as to say that every Tradition by itself is to be accepted as an authority in Islam, it may be distinctly asserted that there can be no true conception formed of that system if the Traditions are not studied and taken into account. So important a branch of Muslim theology is it, that the study of the Traditions is included in the 'Ilm-i-usul, or science of exegesis. Some account of them, therefore, naturally forms part of this chapter.