Much has been written by philatelists, as well as by Muhammedan scholars, upon the subject, and the continued philatelic fidelity to the _Thoughra_ (the Sultan's sign manual) on the Turkish stamps has ingrained into collectors the belief that the Turks would never depart from their reading of the law as set forth by Muhammed in this particular. The verse which, in the Koran, sets forth the alleged prohibition is transcribed:-- O believers! surely wine and games of chance, and statues, and the divining arrows are an abomination of Satan's work! Avoid them that ye may prosper. The wise men of the East, who have drunk deep of the streams of wisdom that flow from the Book of Warnings, have read many different meanings into the verse, and in Turkey it has been taken to imply the forbidding of all figures, and even the ruminative game of chess is barred by the strict Muslim. We, of Christian faith, would appear to have a more emphatic prohibition of the making of pictures in the translation of the Mosaic law:-- And God spake all these words, saying, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [Illustration: 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279] Our theologians have not regarded the second Commandment as a condemnation of the making of pictures, though many an earnest believer, during the phases of pictorial frenzy through which we have passed and are still passing, may have regarded the picture paper and the picture palace as abominations of Satan's work. The new pictorial stamps of Turkey have dispelled one of the mellow myths of our cult, a myth which, perhaps, was simply an exaggeration of a prohibition which is more in common with Western ideas than with Western practices. For instance, there have been recorded seizures of pictorial postcards in Turkey, attributed to the Muhammedan law; but these probably concerned cards which gave offence to Muslim susceptibilities by their blatant portrayal of the unveiled faces (_inter alia_) of women. If the prohibition of pictures in the past has been no myth, and the late departure from precedent is the result of the advent of the New Turk, then, indeed, the New Turk hath courage, for each true believer of the Prophet must needs regard every new-born child, whether a creature of the flesh or of the mind, as a thing that is touched by Satan.