But even in their purely spiritual songs and hymns the poets of El Islam do not betray that poverty of invention and puerility of imagination that distinguish the religious rhymesters of Christianity. In the great and noble literature of England, for instance, there is but one poem founded upon the base of revelation--_Paradise Lost_. Who can arise from its perusal without the conviction that a splendid genius has so fettered himself with his theme that many ballad-mongers have produced more poetical effects upon the reader? Who rises without disgust at the dialogues of the Father and the Son in which is discussed at length Calvinistic sectarianism? And what Christian, who deems his Holy Trinity a sacred mystery of the Spirit beyond, not contrary to, material reason, would not blush to see his Divinity thus degraded in the eyes of the stern deistical Muslim? The Koran--the only standard of divine Truth universally admitted by El Islam--consists of threefold matter: of historical and legendary lore, of principles moral and psychical, and of materials for a loose and scattered code of laws. And here, it may be observed, that, with perhaps the exception of the Pentateuch, which we have seen required its tradition, no code embodied in the sacred writings of any race has sufficed to govern it. What Christian nation has ever been ruled by Christian law? Even its codes are either of its own invention or borrowed from ancient custom or translated from Pagan legislation. No divine system yet promulgated to mankind has sufficed for the civil and criminal wants of future and more civilized generations. And thus it was with the Koran. The precepts of the Saving Faith were not fixed and definite enough for the sensuous and objective spirit of the East. In religion, as in politics, wherever public opinion is lax and impotent, law is, and must be, a mass of stringent ordinances so disposed as to provide for every contingency. Such codes cannot deal in principles and spirit; these must be extracted--by the few that require them--from a well-organized system of practical precepts. Thus the Muslim in the earliest ages sought to supply the imperfections of the code bequeathed to him. A remedy was at hand. The deceased Prophet’s sayings were still fresh in the minds of his wives and immediate descendants, of his companions, and his early successors. All lent their best endeavours to the pious task. The earliest traditions were of sensible and useful import. Presently the most trivial precepts and the most puerile practices were either forged or remembered by so-called saints who made this collection the business of their lives. Thus in course of time and by slow degrees appeared that bulky mass of traditional lore popularly known as the Ahadis or Sayings and the Sunnat or Doings of the Prophet.