f man,
anticipating therein his conclusions. Such a work, noble as may be its
origin, must not refuse, but court the test of natural philosophy,
regarding it not as an antagonist, but as its best support. As years
pass on, and human science becomes more exact and more comprehensive,
its conclusions must be found in unison therewith. When occasion arises,
it should furnish us at least the foreshadowings of the great truths
discovered by astronomy and geology, not offering for them the wild
fictions of earlier ages, inventions of the infancy of man. It should
tell us how suns and worlds are distributed in infinite space, and how,
in their successions, they come forth in limitless time. It should say
how far the dominion of God is carried out by law, and what is the point
at which it is his pleasure to resort to his own good providence or his
arbitrary will. How grand the description of this magnificent universe
written by the Omnipotent hand! Of man it should set forth his relations
to other living beings, his place among them, his privileges, and
responsibilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the
vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last; but it
should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the
physical science, physical power, and physical well-being of our own
times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit things that we are still
ignorant of. The discussion of subjects, so many and so high, is not
outside the scope of a work of such pretensions. Its manner of dealing
with them is the only criterion it can offer of its authenticity to
succeeding times.

[Sidenote: Defects of the Koran.]

[Sidenote: Its God.]

[Sidenote: Its views of man.]

Tried by such a standard, the Koran altogether fails. In its philosophy
it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia Mouni, the founder
of Buddhism; in its science it is absolutely worthless. On speculative
or doubtful things it is copious enough; but in the exact, where a test
can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its astronomy, cosmogony,
physiology, are so puerile as to invite our mirth if the occasion did
not forbid. They belong to the old times of the world, the morning of
human knowledge. The earth is firmly balanced in its seat by the weight
of the mountains; the sky is supported over it like a dome, and we are
instructed in the wisdom and power of God by being told to find a crack
in it if we can. Ranged in st