_Mohammed_, a Tragedy in Five Acts. By George H. Miles. Boston, 1850, pp. 1-6. ----- Here are presented, very clearly, the phenomena which precede or accompany the demonic approach and invasion. When the false god took possession of Balaam, he threw him to the earth; and it was in a sort of somnambulic state that he prophesied, or rather that the demon in him was compelled, against his will, to bless instead of cursing Israel, and to prophesy his glory. “There is no God but one,” in the sense intended by Mahomet, and understood by his followers, is by no means a truth, for in that sense, it denies not merely polytheism, but was intended more especially to deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Koran repeatedly so explains it, and therefore the unity of God, as taught by the false prophet, is not a truth but a lie, and the Mahometans worship not the true God, but a false god, as do all who deny that God is at once three distinct persons in one Divine Essence or Being. Nothing is less philosophical than the tendency in modern times, especially since the time of Voltaire, to explain great effects by petty causes, as the peace of Utrecht by Mrs. Masham’s spilling a little water on the Duchess of Marlborough’s dress. The stream cannot rise higher than the fountain, or the effect exceed the cause. A little fire can kindle a great matter, but that little fire is the occasion, not the cause of the wide-spread conflagration. Nothing more surely indicates a narrow, superficial, and unphilosophical spirit than the attempt, as is the case with most writers, to explain the origin, progress, and power of Mahometanism by the fanaticism, the cunning, the craft, or the superior genius and ability of Mahomet, even though we suppose him aided by a Jew and a Nestorian monk. There were fraud, craft, trickery, and all the means of imposition employed; yet never can they suffice alone to account for the terrible phenomena of Islamism, which, for twelve hundred years has waged battle with the cross, and possessed itself of the fairest regions of the globe. Whoever studies it calmly and profoundly must come to the conclusion that there has been at work in it a more than human power, and that, if not, as the Moslems believe, from God, it must be from the devil.