reminds one forcibly of Dante's
lines:

For I have seen
The thorn frown rudely all the winter long,
And after bear the rose upon its top.

_Paradiso_, xiii. 133.

It is not perhaps fanciful to conjecture that one of the hidden causes
of this renaissance is the large quantity of Christian truth which Islam
literature holds, so to speak, in solution. It is a well-known fact that
the Koran has borrowed largely from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal
Gospels, but it is not so generally known that Mohammedan philosophers,
theologians, and poets betray an acquaintance with facts and incidents
of the Gospels of which the Koran contains no mention.

Leaving the Koran on one side, in the "Traditions," _i.e._, sayings of
Mohammed handed down by tradition, we find God represented as saying at
the Judgment, "O ye sons of men, I was hungry and ye gave Me no food,"
the whole of the passage in Matt. xxv. being quoted. This is remarkable,
as it strikes directly at the orthodox Mohammedan conception of God as
an impassible despot. Other sayings attributed to God which have a
Christian ring are, "I was a hidden Treasure and desired to be known,
therefore I created the world"; "If it were not for Thee, I would not
have made the world" (addressed to Mohammed), evidently an echo of Col.
I. 17, "All things have been created through Him and unto Him" (R.V.).
The writer has often heard this last saying quoted by Indian Mohammedans
in controversy.

Another traditional saying attributed to Mohammed is not unlike the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit: "Verily from your Lord come breathings. Be
ye prepared for them." The Second Advent is also referred to in others:
"How will it be with you when God sends Jesus to judge you?" "There is
no Mahdi but Jesus." It is a well-known fact that a certain gate in
Jerusalem is kept walled up because the Mohammedans believe that Jesus
will pass through it when He returns.

Some traditions have twisted Gospel parables, &c., in favour of
Mohammedanism. Thus in the mention of the parable of the hired
labourers, the first two sets of labourers are said to mean Jews and
Christians, and the last comers, who receive an equal wage, though
grumbled at by the others, are believed to indicate the Mohammedans.
Other traditions give one of Christ's sayings a grotesquely literal
dress. Thus our Lord is said to have met a fox, and to have said, "Fox!
where art thou going?" The fox replied