principles and tendencies they respectively bring to bear on social relations in general. It is true the Qur'an contains some passages similar to those found in tile Old Testament, in which humanity and even liberality towards slaves are recommended; but even in this respect there are one or two particulars which stamp the teaching of the Qur'an as inferior even to that of the Torah. The Qur'an expressly leaves the virtue of all female slaves, even of the married ones, to the mercy of their master, whilst the Torah gives no such license. It cannot but be regarded as a great hardship and cruelty to the female slaves to declare them unprotected in what every right-minded woman prizes most, her feminine virtue. That this is done by the Qur'an will be seen from the following questions: 'The believers are continent, except as regards their wives, or the slaves whom their right-hands possess; for in respect of them they shall be blameless' [Suratu'1-Mu'arij (lxx) 29-30]. Again 'Forbidden to you are married women, except those who are in your hands as slaves ' [Suratu'n-Nisa' (iv) 28]. So likewise, whilst it was ordered in the Torah that every Hebrew slave should only have to serve his master six years, and in the seventh he should go out free (Exod. xxi. 2); and whilst it was further provided that any master who killed his slave was to be 'surely punished' (Exod. xxi. 20); and if he inflicted any bodily injury upon any of them, he was bound to give

them their liberty in return (Exod. xxi. 2b-7); there is no such safeguard found in the Qur'an; and the result is, that masters can exercise cruelties towards their slaves in Muhammadan countries for which they would have been punished by the law of Moses. It, then, is a fact beyond contradiction, that slaves are less protected by the Qur'anic than the Mosaic code; it is a fact that slavery still exists all over the Muhammadan world, and that in no single Muslim country has it ever been abolished; and it is a fact that in the whole of Christian Europe slavery is only known as a thing of the past, and that every living man is free, whilst Christian England, actuated by the spirit of the gospel, has conferred the blessing of liberty upon all the millions formerly kept in bondage throughout her immense possessions in every part of the world. Hence every man of common sense must perceive that, with regard to slaves and slavery, Islam, so far from being more just, humane, and merciful than Christianity, is quite the reverse, not even reaching the Mosaic standard.

6. Polygamy and divorce.

This is the last point of comparison between the teaching of the Old and New Testament which we have considered above (see p. 28), and in which we have found the latter superior to the former; for whilst the law of Moses did not forbid polygamy by any legal enactment, and expressly tolerated divorce,