ITS ORIGIN, ITS STRENGTH, AND ITS WEAKNESS. 181 
if I may so put it. It would be quite easy to find half a dozen 
passages in either the Old or the New Testament which are 
universally recognised as beautiful in their literary composition. 
Take the parable of the Prodigal Son, containing I suppose about 
five hundred words. I should be exceedingly sorry for anyone to 
require of me, as a literary exercise, and using only five hundred 
words, to write a story with as much detail, as much pathos and 
beauty asin this pearl of parables. I could not do it, and I doubt 
whether any living writer could; but I am bold enough to think 
that you could find plenty of English authors who could write as 
good a book as the Koran, so wanting is it in literary power and 
in argument; whilst, as the writer of the paper has shown, its want 
of originality and its plagiarism are patent. I had observed this 
in reference to the Old and New Testaments, but I did not know 
the plagiarism was so wide as the writer of the paper has shown. 
There is another point of difference compared with the writers of 
the Old and New Testaments. You never catch one of them 
incorporating a myth or making a palpable blunder, whereas in 
the Koran you have a man telling you “that the Hebrews in 
the wilderness were persuaded by a Samaritan to make the Golden 
Calf.” Then if you take Muhammadanism as tested by its results, 
one sees in it the lower instincts of man developed—a love of war 
and of lust. As to the degradation of women, one does not know 
where to begin. You have heard a little about it; but the most 
horrible thing I have ever known is the system of temporary mar- 
riages practised in the valley of the Tarim, especially in Kashgar 
The Russian Consul told me that during the five years he had lived 
there, he had known many girls to have twenty husbands before 
they were twelve years old! Temporary marriages are sanctioned 
for a week. Iam not sure whether they are not for a day, and it 
is common for men there to change their wives five or six times a 
year; and that, be it observed, is in a place where Muhammadanism 
has had full sway fora great many years, and where, if the system 
were good, it ought certainly by this time to have shown itself. 
The writer of the paper says “the Sunnis do not allow the legality 
of these marriages,” I do not presume to contradict him, but, it is 
the practice in Kashgar.. It may be that they do it in spite of the 
law rather than in the keeping it. Again, I notice in Muham- 
madanism a neglect of the higher faculties of man. You look in 
vain for mercy to the slave. Everywhere there is slavery in 
