the solemn life of man, and is subject to the same great laws. It is a development of the world of human thought, under the guidance of the Spirit of God. It has things about it which must pass away, but it has its essence which can never pass away. In as far as it is of God, it lives; but in as far as it is not thus fitted to be permanent, it must die. So, with unterrified souls, we may watch it drop off its old worn-out mediæval rags; and behold, without fear, the doings of Science; and listen to the sceptic's denials, knowing that all these things are but as the flail-they do but separate the husks from the wheat. The man who understands these things is ne'er disturbed; he knows that God sends the stormy wind, fulfilling His word, and that it is as much wanted in human thought as it is wanted at sea, where, as each wave goes up to baptize and purify the air, every briny part of it is kissed and made holy.

Thus, then, as the Psalmist sings with rapture of the "Stormy winds, fulfilling Thy word," so the Christian man looks at every storming, babbling Voltaire, and listens to Epicurus and to the Stoic, undisturbed. These may have been stormy winds, but they are fulfilling His word, they are delivering it from polytheism, they are putting in a plea for

the body, and they are triumphing over the body with a grand scorn. Thus, the martyr and the saint, the unbeliever and the believer, the professor of creeds and the man creedless and scepticalthey all be God's; all are helping the world on to the purer and more perfect light that is yet to

come.

CHRIST AND MOHAMMED.

Morning, September 17th, 1876.

"Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.”—JOHN xviii. 36.

TO-DAY I point to a matter of great interest, and one which ought to be attended to. For just now there seems to be some danger lest the religion of Mohammed should be both misunderstood and misrepresented, as compared to the other religions of the world, and therefore to the religion of Christ. No antagonism against the Turks should for a moment bias our understanding as to the peculiar influences for good or evil, the probabilities of a long or short life, the amount of blessing or the amount of cursing bestowed upon the world by the great religion of Mohammed. So, for a little while,

let us separate these two things. For remember, the Turks were not the people to whom the great prophet first preached, he preached to a nobler race by far. It has become the fashion to call Mohammed a "false prophet;" and when you have done that, some of you think you have said all that can be said of this great man. Mohammed was the law-giver of the Arabs, a proclaimer of the Unity of God, a destroyer of idols, the creator of a people who should afterwards become famous in science and art. The Turks were a race of idolators, inferior to the Arabs, and, even to this day, are not to be compared to the race amongst whom Mohammed was born. Who knows what a wonderful religion that must have been which could preach the Unity of God, and do it so well that the false gods fell before it! They fell, from respect to the prophet, and because of that truth, which all men acknowledge-that all religions have lived by virtue of the truth that was in them, and not by virtue of the falsity with which they were mixed.

Therefore, dismissing the Turks, as a set of people whose religion it is only possible to describe in a dead language, for very shame, we will endeavour to show what there is in the religion of Mohammed which marks it as doomed to pass

away, or to be taken up into something larger, deeper, more divine and eternal. It is just possible that you have heard of Mohammed only as a false prophet, a religious quack, who made his Bible as he went on; and that when he wanted something, he got a revelation first, in order to justify what he was determined to have, with or without it. I would ask you to remember that such legends always grow round great men, as parasitic weeds grow round nobler plants.

man.

For the benefit of those of you who are interested, I would remind you that this man rose about 600 years after Christ. He was a strong, passionate, hot-blooded, deep-thinking, honest, sensual, religious He looked round this world and beheld it till it became a riddle. To the half-taught, the world is simple enough; they can explain it as they do everything else: but to the deep-thinking man it is ever a mystery; out of darkness into darkness it seems ever to roll. This deep-thinking man arose in the midst of idolatrous, stupid religions. A wonderful stone, fallen down from heaven, was certainly more respectable on that account than as though dug out of the earth.* Out of the earth

* The Black Stone, in the wall of the Kaaba at Mecca, is a fragment of volcanic basalt, sprinkled with coloured