numerous and so fanciful are these opinions, and so little credit is attached to them by the more learned Mussulmen, that their description would be useless.

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To rewards in another life, as well as to sensual plea sures, and the mental gratification of the performance of virtue in the present, the faithful are urged unceasingly to look; but the exact time of final remuneration of obedience, neither the angel Gabriel nor Mohammed pretended to know. But the disciples of the prophet, arrogating more knowledge than their master had assumed, have ventured to prophesy the signs which will forewarn the world of the coming of the last great day. Antichrist will appear in Syria, and lay waste all places except Mecca and Medina; but at the end of forty days, of different lengths (one of them equal to a year), he will e killed by Jesus himself. Mehdy an Imam, of Monammed's family, will govern all Arabia, and fill the tarth, with righteousness. A general decay of virtue and 1251 proneness to idolatry, wars, universal distress, and wful appearances of nature, will declare the necessity and certainty of, some wondrous approaching change. Accordingly, Christ will descend on earth, in order to zalm the agitated elements of the natural and moral world, and to establish universal tranquillity. At the end of forty years, creation will return to its pristine chaos; but the "blast of resurrection" from the great trumpet shall be sounded, and a perfect restoration o angels, genii, men, and even animals, will ensue. The bodies of mankind, scattered over all the earth, and perished into impalpable dust, will then be re-formed, and, at the command of the Almighty, will be reanimated by their union with the soul. On the day wherein the earth shall be changed into another earth, and when the heavens shall become like molten brass (it is the Koran that now speaks), and the mountains like wools of various colours, scattered abroad by the wind," the final judgment of mankind will take place.›

The unbelievers in Islamism will be condemned to the torments of everlasting fire: the abodes of misery for the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians, and the Idolaters, are each, in the succession of their names, amore dreadful than the other, while, with laudable

justice, the extreme of punishment is reserved for the hypocrites and nominal professors of every religious system. The doom of the infidel part of the world having thus been sealed, the piety of the Mussulmen will be examined. But as the justice of the speculative tenets of a true believer, concerning God and his apostle, is, as it were, implied in the very name of Mussulman, so his actions alone, and not his opinions, will be examined. In ■ balance sustained by the angel Gabriel, one scale over Paradise, the other over hell, and sufficiently capacious to contain both heaven and earth; the actions of the faithful will be weighede qaz yaxud to secrit medianoitenit

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Retaliation of injuries will be made, and, in the absence of all other modes of satisfaction, the injurer will forfeit a proportionable part of his good works to him whom he has injured; and, in case of any moral deficiency, the ag gressor's weight of guilt will be burthened with a portion of the crimes of his wronged brother in the faith.iniOn the preponderance of virtue or vice, will hang the lot of happiness or woe of every individual To the bridge Al Sirat, finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, both the guilty and the virtuous Moslems will then proceed; the guilty will sink into hell that is gaping beneath them, where even those who are least culpable will have their feetoshod with shoes of fire, the fervour of which will makes their skulls boil like cauldrons: yet, as it is a greats doctrines of Islamism that no unbeliever will ever be released, nor any person who in his lifetime has professed the unity of God be condemned to eternal punishment, so those to whom the passage of the bridge has proved too difficult, will remain in misery for different periods of time, and until "the crimes done in their days of nature shall have been burnt and purged away." The virtuous Mussulmen, under the guidance of the prophet, will, with the swiftness of lightning, pass the abyss in safety, and reach the groves and gardens of the seventh heaven, or Paradise, where palaces of marble, and all the idle toys of worldly luxury, await them. But their most exquisite pleasure will consist in their constant society with never-fading beauties, formed, not from clay, but from the purest musk, and the fire of whose large black eyes is so

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sweetly tempered by modesty, that, to use the expressive language of the Koran," they resemble pearls hidden in their shells. Seventy-two hours will be the lot of the meanest believer. All his desires will be gratified at the moment of their formation, and the songs of the daughters of Paradise will add to his delights. Of the reality of these pleasures, the Koran speaks decisively, and we cannot, without a violation of sense, turn them into alle gories. The more pure, however, of the Mussuimen, those who have been exalted in this life for eminence of virtue and learning, will be rewarded with higher grati→ fications than those of luxury and appetite. Such mean pleasures will be lost in the mental felicity of eternal truth, and in the daily contemplation of the Deity, he to

It appears that the knowledge which Europeans have of the degraded state of the female sex in the east, has occasioned some mistakes respecting the Mohammedan opinions concerning women. The Arabic prophet declares that, although the majority of the damned will be women; yet he charitably pronounces the sex to be both immortal and responsible. The future happiness of women, however, will not be so exquisite as that of men ; seeing, as he asserts, that their actions in this life cannot have been equally important and meritorious} neither are the declarations of the Koran positive that the sexes will dwell together hereafter.

We have already stated, that amongst the moral pris ciples of this religion, prayer forms a prominent part: five times a day---in the morning before sun-rise; directly after mid-day; immediately before sun-set; in the evening after sun-set; and again sometime between {that period and mid-night. The cryers from the minarets, or summits of the mosques, announce to the faithful the appointed hours for devout prayer: at those times the Mussulman, in whatever business he may then happen to be engaged, at home or abroad, must, in a brief, but earnest and sincere supplicatory address, pour forth his soul to heaven.

Various ceremonies are prescribed for the due performance of the rite; but the doctors of the mosque with truth maintain, that it is to the devotional state of the heart, and not merely to the attitude of the body, that

the Searcher of spirits looks. One of their ceremonies is in perfect congeniality with a religious feeling of universal influence---a feeling indicative of the devotional nature of man, and of the difficulty to practise a perfectly spiritual mode of worship. When the Persian turns his face to the east, which he considers to be peculiarly sacred to the sun, and the Sabean beholds, to use the beautiful language of Job," the moon walking in brightness," or directs his eye to the northern star, the view of the objects of their worship kindles the fire of devotion, and checks the wanderings of their fancy. To the holy city of Jerusalem, the Jews constantly looked in the hour of prayer; and to the temple of Mecca, every follower of Mohammed, in the seasons of adoration, religiously turns his eye. In imitation of the old Jewish custom, or rather in consonance with the general feeling of the Asiatics against all indiscriminate intercourse between the sexes, women are prohibited from attending the service of the mosque in the presence of the men.

The Moslem sabbath is on Friday, because the pro phet disdained to be thought a servile imitator of eithe the Jewish or the Christian systems. On that day, so lemn prayers are to be offered to God in the mosques and the Koran is to be expounded by some appointed preacher. The larger the congregation, the more effica cious will be the prayers. But the general observance of the day is not prescribed with that character of strictness which distinguishes the Jewish sabbath for the Koran says," in the intervals of preaching and of prayer, believers may disperse themselves through the land as they list, and seek gain of the liberality of God," --by pursuing worldly occupations and innocent amusements, as the context shews us is the meaning.

The practice of frequent ablutions is deemed very meritorious by the Mussulmen. The cleansing of the body is pronounced by Mohammed to be the key of prayer, without which it cannot be acceptable to God; and, in order to keep the mind attached to the practice, believers are enjoined to pour fine sand over the body, when pur suing their journies through the deserts of the east. But as a Mohammedan writer has observed, after describing