pretation given by Sprenger, that 'he now no longer waited for angel-visits, but took the voice of his own mind for Divine inspirations.' Such, indeed, may have been the case generally; and it is an accepted doctrine with the Moslems themselves, that there were revelations which Gabriel only communicated to Mohammed's heart, without visibly appearing to him: yet the hallucinations do not seem to have ceased altogether, but to have also subsequently occurred from time to time. Amongst others, Ibn Ishak communicates the following account which he received from 'a learned man,' as to the first institution of legal prayer, with the ablutions by which it must be preceded: — 'When prayer was prescribed to Mohammed, Gabriel came to him on the height of Mecca, and pressed his heel into the ground, towards the valley, so that there welled forth water. Then Gabriel washed himself, whilst Mohammed was looking on to see how purification is to be made before prayer. When he had finished, Mohammed also washed himself in like manner, and when Gabriel performed the prayers, he repeated them after him. As soon as Gabriel had departed, Mohammed went to Khadija, and showed her how one is to wash before prayer, just as Gabriel had shown it to him. Then he also performed the prayers, as Gabriel had done; and she repeated them after him.'

Mohammedan history describes the more violent fits during which the supposed supernatural communications were made, as marked by the following traits: — He felt oppressed and his countenance was troubled, turning deadly pale or glowing red. He fell to the ground like one intoxicated or overcome by sleep, and foam would appear at his mouth. Sometimes he would hear the coming of the revelation like the ringing of a bell. If this state came upon him whilst riding on a camel, that camel's leg would bend from the weight of it. Even if it happened during the cold of a winter's day, perspiration would roll from his forehead. The Rawzet ul Ahbab enumerates these seven different modes in which Mohammed received his supposed revelations: I, by true dreams; 2, by suggestions to the heart, without Gabriel being visible; 3, by Gabriel assuming the likeness of a man; 4, by the resemblance of the ringing of a bell, which of all

was the hardest and most painful to the prophet; 5, by Gabriel in his own proper form; 6, by Gabriel coming to him in the highest heaven on the night of the ascension; 7, by God speaking to him direct from behind a curtain on the night of the ascension.

From all this it can be readily perceived how easy and tempting it must have been for Mohammed to pass off as a Divine revelation any thought, wish, or fancy of his own which he liked to see invested, in the eyes of others, with a supernatural origin and a more than human authority. Still it is highly probable that all the visions reported of him are not the mere product of dishonest fabrication, without any foundation in fact. On the contrary, it appears that what formed the important turning-point in his outward course of life and what led him to regard himself as a chosen ambassador of God, such as he had long conceived to be the chief want of his country, was really a hallucination of his senses producing in him the sensations of seeing and hearing the angel Gabriel. It is likewise not impossible that, after the first hallucination, other similar ones supervened; and we have already seen how intensely and morbidly he yearned for them. But the manner in which they are narrated, and even the fact of their occurrence have to be received with stringent discrimination and great caution, because of the impure motives undeniably at work; as e.g., in the case concerning Zeinab; and because of the strong tendency to dissimulation in subjects afflicted with the nervous derangement from which he suffered.

Those night-regions, where the half-conscious soul approaches the precincts of the invisible world of spirits, appear to be such treacherous ground that persons who venture upon it are ever in danger of falling under the misleading delusions of the Powers of Darkness, especially when their mind is still ethically undecided, and not firmly grounded in what is pure and true and good. It is freely to be admitted that Mohammed, in his character of a prophet, showed much zeal to overthrow idolatry and erect a kind of Deism in its place. In this way he conferred an undoubted boon upon his countrymen. But he had already, years before, refused to be led on, like some of his more enlightened Hanifite friends, from Deism to