prophet and his God, that the same Being who hurls the lightning may point the sword, and no man may ask him 'What doest thou?'

Mahomedan.-In Allah's hand are the hearts and the lives of his creatures; and shall a created wo m deny his right to harden the one or destroy the other?

O. B. And what think you of the bloody example here set by your vaunted prophet? Truly your Koran "brings not peace on earth, but a sword."

M.-The command was to the children of Islam, and against the idolatrous Arabs; not to us or against any modern heretics.

O. B.—What? and that which Mahomet did and Allah approved, shall not the Musselman now be permitted-nay be enjoined, to imitate? To what purpose the record, if not for your approval or imitation?

M.-Allah knows best; I judge not.

O. B.--But if you judge not, your brethren have judged; ay! and have acted too. The example which Mahomet set them, your caliphs and their lieutenants have followed:*-and followed most consistently! When the Moslem steel sunk through the heretic heart up to its crimsoned hilt,-when your text-engraven bladest drank the mother's life-blood, or offered up to Allah, as a grateful libation, the reeking tide from the unbelieving infant's ghastly death-wound-'twas your Koran that recorded the precedent; 'twas your prophet himself that sanctioned the slaughter.

M.-But our holy prophet commands not the faithful

so to act now.

A more abominable race of governors never existed than the lieutenants of the Caliphs who succeeded Mahomet.-Oakley's History of the Saracens, Vol. 2, reign of Moawijah I.

+ On the blades of their scimetars some verse from the Koran is usually inscribed.-Russel.

O. B.-Out on the paltry evasion! If ye were then the chosen of Allah, ye are his chosen still; if the heretic was his abomination in those days, he is equally his abomination in our times. And if you acted up, not to the spirit of the times, but to the letter and the spirit of your Koran, your scimitar would even now flash from its scabbard, and my head would roll in the dust.

M.-But your head is safe, thanks to the civilization which our holy religion has wrought. If there be violence even now that the prophet's name and the Koran's precepts have spread over half the civilized world, what would there have been had the benighted nations stumbled on, their paths unlighted by the lamp of Islamism?

O. B.--By the souls of my fathers, but you exhaust my patience!* Your Koran sanctions murder-wholesale murder-infant murder-the butchery of orphans and widows; your better nature bids you shrink from the bloody example; and then ye rail against the Nature that whispers peace and mercy, and glorify the Book that commands slaughter and war!

M. By the beard of Mahomet, but you slander our holy Book. It commands not slaughter.

O. B.-No? What says Deuteronomy xx, 12, 13. The command was general, applied to all their enemiesto all unbelievers.

M.--It is not addressed to us.

O. B.--And does the command "thou shalt not steal" apply to you? It, too, was addressed to your forefathers only. The one is just as imperative as the other. And what think you of Deuteronomy xii, 2, 3. Is not this an express command to use violence in suppressing every

* My friend Mr. Bacheler, or rather my personification of him, evinces, I must confess, a degree of impatience throughout this dialogue, more natural than rational. Honest zeal does not always coolly weigh its expressions.

religion but your own? Is it not the very essence of intolerance and persecution? Does it not imperatively command you to tear down our cross and plant the crescent above it? to burn our churches, and build your minarets on their ruins? Allah commands to use the sword as the fittest argument. The command is an outrage on reason, on mercy, on common sense. The book that contains it is not divine. The Koran is a human invention, and its

Allah a fabled idol.

M.-Dog of an unbeliever, you blaspheme! Allahı akbar!* His ways are unsearchable. His will is hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. And, for the sacred Koran, what a holy light has it shed around it! "Here alone in this land so polluted, has the knowledge and worship of Allah been preserved from century to century, while all the world besides were groping in spiritual midnight. Here are the faithful enjoying the benefits of a religion sublime and glorious beyond human conception, while those nations who are infinitely our superiors in science, philosophy and almost every thing besides, have been immeasurably distanced in this most important subject of all. How was this? How, but that our Koran was from heaven ?"t

And now, let my opponent suppose the tables turned upon him, and that the Mussulman calls him to account for some of the Scripture precepts.

Mussulman.-Your Bible enjoins slavery. Read Leviticus, xxv, 44, 45, 46.

Origen Bacheler.-But that command was to the children of Israel, not to us.

God is great.

+ My opponent's words, see his last letter, 4th paragraph; Allah being substituted for God, and Koran for Bible. The argument, (or rather the assertion) is quite as convenient and conclusive in Constantinople as in NewYork.

M.-Ah! so you have already forgotten how indignantly you rejected such an apology from me. But tell me,

Christian! was slavery a good thing among the Israelites

O. B.-It was good. The slaves were wicked idolaters, and their masters a chosen people.

M.-And what think you of slavery among your people, the Americans?

O. B.-It is a deadly sin."

M.-Yet the Africans were wicked idolaters and the Americans a Christian nation. Wherefore, then, is it a deadly sin?

O. B.-Our Republic has declared that all men are free and equal.

M.-But your Bible declares that some shall be masters and some slaves. "Ye shall take them for an inheritance for your children after you; they shall be your bondsmen for ever." He that runs may read. Answer, Christian!

O. B.--I have already told you, the command was limited, and cannot sanction Negro Slavery.

M.-That very answer you refused from me: you cannot answer. Yet again. Your Bible inculcates a belief in witchcraft, and has sanctioned and caused the death of poor, helpless, innocent old women, for a crime which modern knowledge tells us, can have no existence. O. B.-The proof.

M.-It is ready. But yesterday I read the history of

* My opponent, in his last letter, charges it home against the Athenian wgivers that they "permitted to invade and enslave any people deemed fit to be made slaves." If this was a crime in Attica, what was it in Judea ?

your unbelieving nation. "Tis not a century and a half since, in your New England states, nineteen Christians were hanged and one pressed to death-for witchcraft! They were tried by a jury of Christians, before a Christian judge. The wisest men among ye, even the learned Christian Priest, Cotton Mather, publicly testified his belief in their guilt, and eagerly urged on their condemnation. Your Bible justified his nursery superstitions. Your Bible expressly sanctioned the legal and cruel mummery. Your Bible sealed the innocent and miserable wretches' doom.

O. B. You slander our Bible, Mussulman.

M.-I slander it not. It is written: (Exodus, xxii, 18.) "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." If your Bible be true, there are witches; and these witches do justly suffer death. The Salem trials may have been an outrage on common sense; they were strictly in accordance with your Bible precepts. Cotton Mather may have evinced credulity that would disgrace a child just from the nursery, but he was more of a Bible Christian than you. He believed in the 22d chapter of Exodus. Do you believe in it, Christian?

O. B.-Witches may have existed then, and may not exist now.

M.-And how were your New England fathers to guess that they had ceased to exist? or what authority have you for any such conjecture? Your Bible says not a syllable of it. Your Bible, I repeat it, caused, on the memorable 22d of September, 1692, an exhibition of stupidity and barbarity unequalled in modern history.* Bismil

*On that day three men and five women! were hanged as witches. The Rev. Mr. Noyes presided at the execution; and as soon as the convulsive agonies of the poor wretches ceased, he turned to the multitude and exclaimed: "What a sad thing it is, to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there!" -Salem Witchcraft, Boston Edition, page 231.