There has been endless discussion as to how far he may have been self-deceived in making this claim, and how far he may have been guilty of conscious imposture.  Speculation is useless, since on the one hand we cannot judge a man of that age and that race by the rigid standards of our own times; and on the other, we are forbidden to form a too favorable judgment by the subsequent developments of Mohammed’s character and life, in regard to which no other interpretation than that of conscious fraud seems possible.[98]

Aside from the previous development and influence of a monotheistic reform, and the favoring circumstance of a fortunate marriage, he found his way prepared by the truths which had been made known in Arabia by both Jews and Christians.  The Jews had fled to the Arabian Peninsula from the various conquerors who had laid waste Jerusalem and overrun the territories of the Ten Tribes.  At a later day, many Christians had also found an asylum there from the persecutions of hostile bishops and emperors.  Sir William Muir has shown how largely the teachings of the Koran are grounded upon those of the Old and New Testaments.[99] All that is best in Mohammedanism is clearly borrowed from Judaism and Christianity.  Mohammed was illiterate and never claimed originality.  Indeed, he plead his illiteracy as a proof of direct inspiration.  A far better explanation would be found in the knowledge derived from inspired records, penned long before and under different names.

The prophet was fortunate not only in the possession of truths thus indirectly received, but in the fact that both Jews and Christians had lapsed from a fair representation of the creeds which they professed.  The Jews in Arabia had lost the true spirit of their sacred scriptures, and were following their own perverted traditions rather than the oracles of God.  They had lost the vitality and power of the truths revealed to their fathers, and were destitute of moral earnestness and all spiritual life.  On the other hand, the Christian sects had fallen into low superstitions and virtual idolatry.  The Trinity, as they represented it, gave to Mohammed the impression that the Virgin Mary, “Mother of God,” was one of the three persons of the Trinity, and that the promise of the coming Paraclete might very plausibly be appropriated by himself.[100] The prevailing worship of pictures, images, and relics appeared in his vision as truly idolatrous as the polytheism of the heathen Koreish.  It was clear to him that there was a call for some zealous iconoclast to rise up and deliver his country from idolatry.  The whole situation seemed auspicious.  Arabia was ripe for a sweeping reformation.  It appears strange to us, at this late day, that the churches of Christendom, even down to the seventh century, should have failed to christianize Arabia, though they had carried the Gospel even to Spain and to Britain on the west, and to India and China on the east.  If they had imagined that the deserts of the Peninsula were not sufficiently important to demand attention, they certainly learned their mistake; for now the sad day of reckoning had come, when swarms of fanatics should issue from those deserts like locusts, and overrun their Christian communities, humble their bishops, appropriate their sacred temples, and reduce their despairing people to the alternatives of apostacy, tribute, slavery, or the sword.