ment and the life to come, which are the subjects of revelation. That such a body of revealed truth existed Muhammad did not doubt, but he seems to have learned only very gradually how it was supposed to have come to those who had it, and what it really consisted of. But as there was only one God, so to him there could only be one revelation. The form did not much matter. Not being acquainted with the letter of Scripture he did not trouble himself about verbal accuracy. It was the body of truth which Revelation contained, which he was concerned to bring to the knowledge of his fellow-townsmen. To him the knowledge of the revealed secrets was just as real as the knowledge of Nature which was already open to those who had eyes to see. To put that knowledge in Arabic form for those who, strangely, had not before received it, was probably what he conceived his function to be. In beginning his work at Mecca then I do not believe that Muhammad had anything like the exalted conception of the prophetic office which he afterwards came to hold. That he put forward a fairly high claim to leadership and obedience to himself as the apostle of the true religion is, I think, probable, if not at the very first, at any rate very early. The opposition of the Quraish was, I think, partly due to that.

Having started to produce these oracles or geryane, Muhammad devoted a great deal of pains to the composition of them. Composition did not come easy to him. The slovenliness, the trailing sentences, the mechanical rhymes of the later portions of the Qur'an have often been

remarked on. They are by no means explained by the difference of subject. But in Medina he had become the busy head of a community; his position as the mouthpiece of God on earth was established. He had not the time, nor did he need to devote the same care to their composition. Perhaps, too, there was a falling-off of the poetic fire, only we must remember that he was over forty when he began his work, and that the poetic force of the early portions of the Qur'an was not simply due to the stirrings of youthful imagination. These early portions are really very powerful. They are short, crisp, with a certain obscurity probably designed; but for their purpose wonderfully expressive and impressive. There was point in the sneer of the Meccans that he was a poet. A poet he was, but not of the ordinary Arab type. For religion and righteousness and judgement to come were his themes, themes which the ordinary Arab poet hardly touched. There was a great deal of conscious art about this so-called crack-brained enthusiast of the Last Judgement. There is a passage which seems to me to show him at the labour of composition, Surah lxxiii. vv. 1-8 (v. 3 and the beginning of v. 4 is evidently a later insertion):

O thou who hast taken up thy burden¹
Stay up all night except a short while,
. . . .
. . . and make the Qur'an distinct.
Verily we shall cast upon thee a weighty word.