: 'Have you not the Koran, and have you not read
it? for that will tell you everything about him.'

The Koran was not collected or arranged until after Muhammad's death.
It is to be regretted that there is no reliable record of the exact
order in which its various verses and chapters were given to the world
by the Prophet, as that would have given us a great insight into the
working of his mind from the time that he began his first recitals up
to the time of his death. It is true that attempts have been made to
formulate the order of delivery, but these can only be more or less
conjecture. At the same time, though earlier and later verses appear
mixed up in the different chapters, in some cases, of course, the
period to which they belong can be pretty accurately fixed and
determined.

As an interesting work, it can hardly be compared with our Old and New
Testaments, nor would it be fair to make such a comparison. It must be
remembered that the Koran is the work of Muhammad alone, while the
Biblos, or Book, commonly called the Bible, is the work of many men.
In its compilation many authors were rejected, and it represents as a
whole the united talents of the ages. Indeed, the Bible may be
considered as the most wonderful book in existence, and certainly the
most interesting after visiting the countries it describes and the
localities it refers to. If read from a matter-of-fact point of view,
it gives an abundance of various kinds of literature, and describes
the workings of the human mind from the earliest ages, and the
progress of ideas as they gradually and slowly dawned upon man and
drove him onwards. If read from a spiritual or mystical point of view,
it can be interpreted in many ways to meet the views of either the
readers or the hearers. In a word, the Bible is full of prose and
poetry, fact and imagination, history and fiction. It was lately
described in an Italian newspaper, _Il Secolo_, about to issue a
popular edition of it in halfpenny numbers, as follows:

'There is one book which gathers up the poetry and the science of
humanity, and that book is the Bible; and with this book no other work
in any literature can be compared. It is a book that Newton read
continually, that Cromwell carried at his saddle, and that Voltaire
kept always on his study table. It is a book that believers and
unbelievers should alike study, and that ought to be found in every
house.'

As a scientific work it has little value exc