for public recital, must have been a work requiring much time, study, and
meditation, and presumes a far greater degree of general culture than any
orthodox Muslim will be disposed to admit.

In close connection with the above remarks, stands the question of Muhammad's
sincerity and honesty of purpose in coming forward as a messenger from God.
For if he was indeed the illiterate person the Muslims represent him to have
been, then it will be hard to escape their inference that the Koran is, as
they assert it to be, a standing miracle. But if, on the other hand, it was a
Book carefully concocted from various sources, and with much extraneous aid,
and published as a divine oracle, then it would seem that the author is at
once open to the charge of the grossest imposture, and even of impious
blasphemy. The evidence rather shews, that in all he did and wrote, Muhammad
was actuated by a sincere desire to deliver his countrymen from the grossness
of its debasing idolatries-that he was urged on by an intense desire to
proclaim that great truth of the Unity of the Godhead which had taken full
possession of his own soul-that the end to be attained justified to his mind
the means he adopted in the production of his Suras-that he worked himself up
into a belief that he had received a divine call-and that he was carried on
by the force of circumstances, and by gradually increasing successes, to
believe himself the accredited messenger of Heaven. The earnestness of those
convictions which at Mecca sustained him under persecution, and which perhaps
led him, at any price as it were, and by any means, not even excluding deceit
and falsehood, to endeavour to rescue his countrymen from idolatry,-naturally
stiffened at Medina into tyranny and unscrupulous violence. At the same time,
he was probably, more or less, throughout his whole career, the victim of a
certain amount of self-deception. A cataleptic13 subject from his early
youth, born-according to the traditions-of a highly nervous and excitable
mother, he would be peculiarly liable to morbid and fantastic hallucinations,
and alternations of excitement and depression, which would win for him, in