popular ideal of Muhammedanism. Certainly no melodramatist's hero ever departed more widely from the truth of nature, or gave less of a clue to the real motives of human action, than does the ordinary Englishman's notion of the creeds and moral codes of Muhammedans.

If the writings of some modern authors, and especially of Dr. Deutsch, gives us a portrait which is somewhat too favourable, they at all events place within popular reach the keys of a right understanding of all that is special and peculiar in Muhammedan belief and ethics, by tracing the derivation of the Talmud from the Mosaic law, and the intimate connection of Muhammedanism with Talmudical Judaism and Christianity.

Dr. Deutsch's essays or Mr. Palgrave's, or Burkhardt's descriptions of the many religions they found in Arabia, will show by comparison with any sketch of Hindooism, how little there is in common between the two systems. The bond between Hindoo and Muhammedan, in fact, is almost always one simply of race or nationality; and, when this is allowed for, it will be found that the true affinity of creed in the Muhammedan is rather with Christianity than with Hindooism.

Unfortunately, such intellectual affinities of creed do not, even among Christians, always conduce to community of feelings; and, in the case of Muhammedans, the fact that theirs had been an imperial creed in India, and Christianity had supplanted it, would for ages prevent any toleration save that with which the decrees of fate and inevitable necessity are regarded.

But within the last few years a very curious change has been coming over the feeling of at least the educated portion of the Muhammedans, with regard to Christianity. Converse, and still more controversy, with Christians, have led the Muhammedans to a more careful and critical examination of many Scriptures which they, as well as we,

regard as the sacred utterances of inspired men, but which, till of late, had been generally neglected for the study of later and exclusively Muhammedan authors. The same prophecies which we read are read by the Muhammedan, and frequently the same canons of interpretation are applied to them-notably with regard to those portions which relate to the chronology of the events foretold, so that Christian and Muhammedan are found agreeing as to the dates to which particular prophecies apply, even when they differ as to the persons or dynasties referred to. This is particularly the case with regard to the numbers specified in the concluding chapters of the book of Daniel. I have known instances where the result deduced by the interpreter had been popularised, and passed into a tradition current among people who had no notion whence it was derived. Many of these interpretations point to great changes which are to take place in this century and about our own age. The first impulse of the Muhammedan interpreter is naturally to find, in prophecies of history and power, promises to his own people, and, in the denunciations of evil, a foreshadowing of vengeance which is to overtake his enemies. But some

times events and facts are too strong to be bent to support such interpretations, and the general result of this study of prophecy is to exercise a depressing effect on the Muhammedan student regarding the future of his creed. This impression passes beyond the theological student into popular belief, and extends to many other races and creeds. Thus, during the mutiny years, the conviction that the terms of days foretold by Daniel pointed to some great catastrophe to Islam, depressed and unnerved many a thoughtful Muhammedan, and a vague popular tradition, grounded on the same prophecy, helped to confirm even Hindoos in their belief that the Christian power must ultimately triumph.

From this and other causes, the Muhammedan controversialist of to-day is less confident and less sanguine of victory than of old. There is less expectation of triumph for Islam under the existing order of things-there is more disposition to look for the visible inauguration of a new era. The advent of the Imaum Mehdi who is to come to judgment preparatory to a renewal of all things, and the punishment of the unconverted, are eagerly anticipated by Muhammedan enthusiasts; and our Lord is often associated with the Imaum, or with a reappearance of Muhammed, in the vision of the future, to which other details are added apparently borrowed from our own popular interpretations of Prophecy. Of all this, as far as I have been able to ascertain, little trace was to be found in the popular expectations of the Muhammedans of a single generation ago.

We are not likely to see in Muhammedanism any eclectic phase such as we are now witnessing in Hindooism; modifications of this character appear incompatible with the simple and definite principles of the creed. But a revolution of some kind seems impending, the popular feeling regarding it among Muhammedans themselves is not one of hopefulness, and the Christian Missionary is now listened to by the young Muhammedan student with an inclination to examine what he says, of which the Missionary of thirty years back saw few examples.*

* Very curious illustrations of the present feeling of the Muhammedans of Northern India towards Christianity will be found in the Autobiography of the Rev. Imaduddeen, a converted Muhammedan, translated by the Rev. R. Clark, and lately published by the Church Missionary Society, Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, 1869.

Since these remarks were first written, there has been a very marked development of the Muhammedan revival which com

We must now refer to those vast communities, aggregating, according to some statisticians, 40 millions of souls, whose creeds, varying from Sabeanism to the grossest kind of Fetishism, have little in common with anything belonging to the Hindoo Pantheon, equally little with Muhammedanism.

Many considerable nations of such people live apart, and form the entire population of large provinces; sometimes, but not always, consisting of mountainous, unhealthy, or inaccessible country. Many more are scattered throughout the Hindoo communities in a kind of Helotage. They appear to be the remnants of aboriginal races, or of immigrants anterior to what we recognize as the Aryan races, and of quite a different stock. Some of these, who claim to be Autocthones or their immediate conquerors, of a pre-Aryan period, seem to have been subsequently driven into the fastnesses of forest and mountain, while others were reduced to bondage and serfdom by later Aryan invaders.

It is only of late years that the progress of ethnological and historical research has clearly proved these races to have a different origin and history from those of the Hindoo nations which surround them, or among whom they are interspersed. Wherever they are found, whether as separate tribes or as helots and serfs, among the purer Hindoo races, they are generally more accessible to the truths preached by the Christian Missionary, than the Hindoos. They are free from many prejudices, and from some characteristic vices of their more advanced and

menced some years ago, and which is not unlikely to come into sharp collision with the other forms of creed of which it is an offshoot. See, for examples, the Calcutta Review for October, 1873, and the "Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Muhammed," by Syed Ameer Ali, a Muhammedan graduate of an English University, and Barrister of the Inner Temple.

fortunate neighbours, though they have other failings peculiarly their own. Like all races which have long been kept in a position of distinct inferiority, they gladly listen to any teaching which does not inculcate the unchangeable perfection of things as they are. Locally they are known to the Hindoos, especially where the races live to some extent intermingled, by a variety of names, implying not, as we are apt to call them, that they are outcastes," for most of them have never belonged to any regular Hindoo caste; but that they are "outsiders" "extra-muralists." In all well-organized Hindoo towns and villages in the plain country they are made to dwell apart, generally outside the town or village walls,

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if there are any. They have their own houses, wells,

etc., which they can use without defiling their fellowtownsmen, and have each their own share of the work of the community assigned to them.

It is difficult to convey to one who has never witnessed it an idea of the practical working of this state of things, especially on the social, moral, and religious relations of the people.

Perhaps the nearest approach to it would be by imagining that in a large English rural township the descendants of the various successive races—the earlier and later Celts, the Picts and Romans, the Saxons, Danes, Normans, and later immigrants from Germany or France-all lived together in peace, but perfectly distinct; and never intermarrying, save Celt with Celt, Saxon with Saxon, Norman with Norman.

Let us suppose that these races had divided among themselves in ages long gone by, not only the lands of the village, but all occupations, crafts and trades; that every one kept rigorously to the work or profession of his father, and that each family guild or community governed itself by an unwritten code of customary law, to