where the sun continues above the horizon six months without
setting?"

"That is impossible," cried all the Mussulman doctors, to support the
teaching of the prophet; but a hundred nations having attested the fact,
the infallibility of Mahomet could not but receive a severe shock.

"It is singular," said an European, "that God should be constantly
revealing what takes place in heaven, without ever instructing us what
is doing on the earth."

"For my part," said an American, "I find a great difficulty in the
pilgrimage. For suppose twenty-five years to a generation, and only a
hundred millions of males on the globe,--each being obliged to go to
Mecca once in his life,--there must be four millions a year on the
journey; and as it would be impracticable for them to return the same
year, the numbers would be doubled--that is, eight millions: where
would you find provisions, lodgings, water, vessels, for this universal
procession? Here must be miracles indeed!"

"The proof," said a catholic doctor, "that the religion of Mahomet is
not revealed, is that the greater part of the ideas which serve for its
basis existed a long time before, and that it is only a confused mixture
of truths disfigured and taken from our holy religion and from that
of the Jews; which an ambitious man has made to serve his projects of
domination, and his worldly views. Look through his book; you will see
nothing there but the histories of the Bible and the Gospel travestied
into absurd fables--into a tissue of vague and contradictory
declamations, and ridiculous or dangerous precepts.

"Analyze the spirit of these precepts, and the conduct of their apostle;
you will find there an artful and audacious character, which, to obtain
its end, works ably it is true, on the passions of the people it had
to govern. It is speaking to simple men, and it entertains them with
miracles; they are ignorant and jealous, and it flatters their vanity
by despising science; they are poor and rapacious, and it excites their
cupidity by the hope of pillage; having nothing at first to give them on
earth, it tells them of treasures in heaven; it teaches them to desire
death as a supreme good; it threatens cowards with hell; it rewards the
brave with paradise; it sustains the weak with the opinion of fatality;
in short, it produces the attachment it wants by all the allurements of
sense, and all the power of the passions.

"How different is the character of our religion