wash them out. It was easy
enough for Mohammed to copy many exalted truths from Judaism and
Christianity, and no candid mind will deny that there are many noble
precepts in the Koran; but after all has been said, its ruling spirit is
base. Even its promised heaven is demoralizing. It is characteristically
a human book, and very low in the ethical scale at that.

Let us now turn to the Bible; let us remember that the Old Testament
represents those early centuries when the people of Israel were
surrounded by the corruptions of Baal worship, which transcended the
grovelling wickedness of all other heathen systems, ancient or modern.
Let us bear in mind the kind of training which the nation had received
amid the corruptions of Egypt, all rendered more effective for evil by
their degrading bondage; and with all these disadvantages in view, let
us search everywhere, from Genesis to Malachi, and see if there be one
prurient utterance, one sanction for, or even connivance at, impurity
in all those records, written by men in different lands and ages, men
representing all social grades, all vocations in life, and chosen from
among all varieties of association. Who will deny that these men appear
to have been raised by some unaccountable power to a common level of
moral purity which was above their age, their social standards, their
natural impulses, or any of the highest human influences which could
have been exerted upon them?

They were often called to deal plainly with moral evils. They record
instances of grievous dereliction, in some cases the writers were
themselves the offenders. But there is always reproof. The story always
has a salutary moral. Sin is always shown to be a losing game, a sowing
to the wind and a reaping of the whirlwind. It is either followed by
severe judgments, or it is repented of with a contrition which bows even
a great monarch in dust and ashes.

The books of the New Testament were also written in an age of great
moral corruption. Judaism was virtually dead; the current religion in
the Holy City was "a sad perversion of the truth." Hypocrisy sat in high
places when John Baptist came with his protest and his rebukes. The
Herods, who held the sceptres of provincial authority, were either base
time-servers, or worse, they were monsters of lust and depravity. In the
far-off capitals of the dominant heathen races vice had attained its
full fruitage and was already going to seed and consequent decay.