appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow' (Isa. i. 13-17). Nevertheless, the Qur'an lays the chief stress upon man's confession of the doctrine of the Unity, and upon the observance of a number of religious ceremonies, as if such a confession and such an observance could save a man from condemnation, and procure for him eternal blessedness; whilst it cannot be hid from the thoughtful observer that it is quite possible to be loud in the confession of the Unity, and punctual in the observance of religious forms, and yet remain inwardly estranged from God, and addicted to grievous sins.

The gospel chiefly urges us to glorify God by sincere repentance and genuine faith in the Saviour of sinners, no less than by earnestly seeking the renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, and worshipping the only true God in spirit and in truth. While the gospel thus emancipates the believer from those many outward forms and religious ceremonies which were in use among the Jews in the days of Jesus (see e.g. Mark vii. 3, 4), and makes

His worship a truly reasonable service (Rom. xii. 1), the Qur'an returns again to many of these elementary forms and outward usages which are characteristic of a less elevated and spiritual religion.

This is well illustrated by the ceremonial observances with which Muslim prayer is inseparably connected. The Muhammadan doctors enumerate no less than twelve requisites to a true and acceptable prayer, and maintain that if any one of these is wanting, the whole prayer is useless, and rejected by God. But if we examine their directions, we find that, instead of giving such spiritual injunctions as the New Testament does, by requiring a prayer to be simple, unostentatious, humbly sincere, earnest, fervent, and believing, they refer only to unimportant external accidents.

It may not be amiss to consider these requisites a little more closely. The twelve requisites are divided into seven external conditions, and five internal pillars, or essentials. The former are, the observance of the Qibla, the previous ablutions, the cleaning of the place of prayer, the proper time of beginning, the actual purposing to pray, the body being decently covered, and the beginning the prayer by the exclamation, 'Allah akbar!'

The institution of the Qibla, or the direction in which the Muslims have to turn their faces in prayer, we find thus recorded in Suratu'l-Baqara (ii) 139: 'We have seen thee turning thy face towards every