give clear guidance it was natural to ask what the Prophet himself had done in similar circumstances. That was the Sunna, the custom of the Prophet, which ultimately took its place alongside the Qur'an as the source of authoritative guidance for the Moslem community. Hence the collection of traditions regarding the sayings and doings of the Prophet had for Islam not only an historical interest, but a practical, legal, and religious interest as well. Events, however, ran ahead of theory. As often as not Tradition had to find authority for an already accepted and established custom. The production of a tradition from the Prophet became one of the ways of supporting a custom or sentiment which one desired to see accepted. The authors of the great collections of Tradition which were made in the third century of Islam exercised extreme care and strict criticism according to their lights. But in spite of that many things which certainly do not derive from Muhammad have found their way into these collections, and some things which were rejected, for instance, by Bukhari, the most authoritative of these collectors, have yet survived in popular memory. The Tradition is the deposit of the development rather than its source.

While the sentiment of the community would operate strongly against the introduction of any ritual practice or doctrine which was patently inconsistent with the Qur'an, in the case of edifying sayings, stories, and such like that sentiment did not operate. It was perhaps felt that if these had not been spoken by Muhammad they ought to have been, and we know how easily

such sayings and stories do get, quite unintentionally, transferred from one personage to another. Thus we find quite a number of sayings both from the Old Testament and from the New, reported as having been spoken by Muhammad. On the authority of Abu Huraira, upon whom a large proportion of these pious and edifying sayings are fathered, the Prophet is reported to have commended, "the man who gives alms, but hides it so that his left hand does not know what his right hand does". ¹ On the same authority, the Prophet is reported to have said: "One of you does not really believe until I am dearer to him than father or son",² a reminiscence probably of the Gospel saying: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." I need not continue citations of these. It was natural that these things should find their way into collections of sayings of the Prophet, and Goldziher,³ and recently Guillaume,⁴ have cited a number of them. I shall only cite this, which will lead us over to another phenomenon. The Prophet is reported to have declared that: "God the mighty and glorious has said: I am present when my servant thinks of me: I am with him when he remembers me: Verily God rejoices more over his servant's repentance than one of you when he finds his strayed animal in the wilderness. Whoever draws near to me an inch I draw near to him a span, and whoever draws near to me a span I draw near to him an ell. When he