Mahomet's Regulations with respect to Wives.

1.

Never marry idolatrous women, unless they will become believers. A Mussulman servant is better than an idolatrous woman, though of the highest rank.

2.

They who, having wives, wish to make a vow of chastity, shall wait four months before they decide. Wives shall conduct themselves towards their husbands as their husbands conduct themselves towards them.

3.

You may separate yourself from your wife twice; but if you divorce her a third time, it must be for evér; you must either keep her humanely or put her away kindly. You are not permitted to keep anything from her which you have given to her.

4.

Good wives are obedient and attentive, even in the absence of their husbands. If your wife is prudent, be careful not to have any quarrel with her; but if one should happen, let an arbiter be chosen from your own family, and one from hers.

5.

Take one wife, or two, or three, or four, but never more. But if you doubt your ability to act equitably towards several, take only one. Give them a suitable dowry, take care of them, and speak to them always like a friend.

6.

You are not permitted to inherit from your wife against her will; nor to prevent her from marrying another after her divorce, in order to possess yourself of her dower, unless she has been declared guilty of some crime.

When you choose to separate yourself from your wife and take another, you must not, though you have

even given her a talent at your marriage, take any thing from her.

7.

You are permitted to marry a slave, but it is better that you should not do so.

8.

A repudiated wife is obliged to suckle her child until it is two years old, during which time the father is obliged to maintain them, according to his condition. If the infant is weaned at an earlier period, it must be with the consent of both father and mother. If you are obliged to entrust it to a strange nurse, you shall make her a reasonable allowance.

Here, then, is sufficient to reconcile the women to Mahomet, who has not used them so hardly as he is said to have done. We do not pretend to justify either his ignorance or his imposture; but we cannot condemn his doctrine of one only God. These words of his 122nd sura, "God is one, eternal, neither begetting nor begotten; no one is like to him." These words had more effect than even his sword in subjugating the East.

The

Still his Koran is a collection of ridiculous revelations and vague and incoherent predictions, combined with laws which were very good for the country in which he lived, and all which continue to be followed, without having been changed or weakened, either by Mahometan interpreters or by new decrees. poets of Mecca were hostile to Mahomet, but above all the doctors. These raised the magistracy against him; and a warrant was issued for his apprehension as one duly accused and convicted of having said that God must be adored, and not the stars. This, it is known, was the source of his greatness. When it was seen that he could not be put down, and that his writings were becoming popular, it was given out in the city that he was not the author of them, or that at least he was assisted in their composition by a learned

Jew, and sometimes by a learned Christian,supposing that there were at that time learned Jews and learned Christians.

So, in our days, more than one prelate has been reproached with having set monks to compose his sermons and funeral orations. There was one Father Hercules (Père Hercule) who made sermons for a certain bishop, and when people went to hear him preach, they used to say, "Let us go and hear the labours of Hercules."

To this charge Mahomet gives an answer in his 16th chapter, occasioned by a gross blunder he had made in the pulpit, about which a great deal had been said. He gets out of the scrape thus:

"When thou readest the Koran, address thyself to God, that he may preserve thee from the machinations of Satan. He has power only over those who have chosen him for their master, and who give associates unto God.

“When I substitute one verse for another in the Koran (the reason for which changes is known to God) some unbelievers cry out, Thou hast forged those verses; but they know not how to distinguish truth from falsehood. Say rather, that the Holy Spirit brought those verses of truth to me from God. Others say, still more malignantly, there is a certain man who labours with him in composing the Koran. But how can this man, to whom they attribute my works, have taught me, speaking, as he does, a foreign language, while the Koran is written in the purest Arabic?"

He who, it was pretended, assisted Mahomet, was a Jew named Bensalen or Bensalon. It is not very likely that a Jew should have lent his assistance to Mahomet in writing against the Jews; yet the thing is not impossible. The monk, who was said to have contributed to the Koran, was by some called Bohaira, by others Sergius. There is something pleasant in this monk's having had both a Latin and an Arabic

name.

As for the fine theological disputes which have arisen amongst the Mussulmen, I have no concern with them; I leave them to the decision of the mufti.

In The Triumph of the Cross (Le Triomphe de la Croix) the Koran is said to be Arian, Sabellian, Carpocratian, Cardonician, Manichean, Donatistic, Origenian, Macedonian, and Ebionitish. Mahomet, however, was nothing of all this; he was rather a Jansenist, for the foundation of his doctrine is the absolute decree of gratuitous predestination.

SECTION II.

This Mahomet, son of Abdallah, was a bold and sublime charlatan. He says, in his tenth chapter, "Who but God can have composed the Koran? Mahomet, you say, has forged this book. Well; try then to write one chapter resembling it, and call to your aid whomsoever you please." In the seventeenth, he exclaims, "Praise be to Him who, in one night, transported his servant from the sacred temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem!"

This was a very fine journey, but nothing like that which he took the very same night from planet to planet. He pretended that it was five hundred years' journey from one to another, and that he cleft the moon in twain. His disciples who, after his death, collected, in a solemn manner, the verses of his Koran, suppressed this celestial journey, for they dreaded raillery and philosophy. After all, they had too much delicacy; they might have trusted to the commentators, who would have found no difficulty whatever in explaining the itinerary. Mahomet's friends should have known by experience that the marvellous is the reason of the multitude: the wise contradict in silence, which the multitude prevent them from breaking. But while the itinerary of the planets was suppressed, a few words were retained about the adventure of the moon: one cannot be always on one's guard.

The Koran is a rhapsody, without connection, without order, and without art. This tedious book is, nevertheless, said to be a very fine production, at least by the Arabs, who assert that it is written with an elegance and purity which no later work has equalled. It is a poem, or a sort of rhymed prose, consisting of

three thousand verses. No poem ever advanced the fortune of its author so much as the Koran. It was disputed among the Mussulmen whether it was eternal, or God had created it in order to dictate it to Mahomet. The doctors decided that it was eternal; and they were right: this eternity is a much finer opinion than the other, for with the vulgar we must always adopt that which is the most incredible.

The monks who have attacked Mahomet, and said so many silly things about him, have asserted that he could not write. But how can we imagine that a man who had been a merchant, a poet, a legislator, and a sovereign, did not know how to sign his name? If his book is bad for our times and for us, it was very good for his contemporaries, and his religion was still better. It must be acknowledged that he reclaimed nearly the whole of Asia from idolatry. He taught the unity of God, and forcibly declaimed against all those who gave him associates. He forbade usury with foreigners, and commanded the giving of alms. With him prayer was a thing of absolute necessity, and resignation to the eternal decrees the primum mobile of all. A religion so simple and so wise, taught by one who was constantly victorious, could hardly fail to subjugate a portion of the earth. Indeed the Mussulmen have made as many proselytes by their creed as by their swords; they have converted the Indians and the Negroes to their religion; even the Turks, who conquered them, submitted to Islamism.

Mahomet allowed many things to remain in his law which he had found established among the Arabs as circumcision; fasting; the pilgrimage to Mecca, which was instituted four thousand years before his time; ablutions, so necessary to health and cleanliness in a burning country, where linen was unknown; and the idea of a last judgment, which the Magi had always inculcated, and which had reached the inhabitants of Arabia. It is said, that on his announcing that we should rise again quite naked, his wife Aishca expressed her opinion that the thing would be immodest and dangerous: "Do not be alarmed, my

VOL. I.