part of heaven; but we will have thee turn to a Qibla which shall please thee. Turn thy face towards the sacred mosque, and wherever ye be, turn your faces towards that part.' This verse not only proves that the observance of a local Qibla in prayer forms part of the religion of Islam; but we can also gather from it that the temple of Mecca had not hitherto been looked upon as such by the Arabs, and that it was not till some time after Muhammad claimed to be a prophet that it was so regarded. The institution itself, therefore, was not of Arabic origin; and it is highly probable Muhammad adopted it from the Jews. This would appear from the circumstance that the Jews, from very ancient times, made the temple at Jerusalem their Qibla, as we may fairly gather from passages such as Psalm v. 7, Isaiah ii. 4, Dan. vi. 10; and still more plainly from the fact that Muhammad himself for many years turned to Jerusalem as his Qibla, a fact recorded by Arabic historians, e.g. Tabari, and also alluded to in Suratu'l-Baqara (ii) 136: 'The foolish ones will say, What has turned them from the Qibla which they used?' It may therefore be looked upon as a fact of which little doubt can be entertained, that Muhammad accepted the idea of a Qibla from the Jews; that for a considerable time he agreed with them in turning towards their temple in Jerusalem, though he ended by adopting the shrine of Mecca for his Qibla. But however this may be, one thing is

certain, namely, that with regard to this observance of a Qibla, the religion of the Muslims stands exactly on the same level with that of the Jews, and that the Christian system is in this particular decidedly superior to both, having entirely dropped the observance of a Qibla, as inconsistent with the absolute spirituality of God, and in no way assisting in the worship of Him. Christians act up to the truth once expressed in the Qur'an [Suratu'l-Baqara (ii) 109] 'The east and the west are God's: therefore, whichever way ye turn, there is the face of God;' and the rejection of a Qibla with them naturally springs from the full recognition of the spirit of this passage in Isaiah lvii. 15: 'For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.'

Next to the Qibla, the ablutions or lustrations are mentioned which the orthodox Muslim has to regard as an essential requisite to acceptable prayer. They are enjoined in the Qur'an in these words: 'O believers, when ye address yourselves to prayer, wash your faces, and your hands up to the elbow, and wipe your heads, and your feet to the ankles. And if ye find no water, then take clean sand, and rub your faces and your hands with it' [Suratu'l-Ma'ida (v) 8-9]. If this direction had been given merely to insure