It is scarcely necessary for me to speak of the base appeal to man’s low passions found in the Koran.  It is only necessary to trace its unmistakable influence in the moral degeneracy of Mohammedan populations in all lands and all ages—­destroying the sacredness of the home, degrading woman, engendering unnatural vices, and poisoning all society from generation to generation.  It is indeed a hard task for its apologists, by any kind of literary veneering to cover the moral deformity and the blasphemous wickedness which, side by side with acknowledged excellences, mar the pages of the Koran.  The soiled finger-marks of the sensual Arab everywhere defile them.  Like the blood of Banquo, they defy all ocean’s waters to wash them out.  It was easy enough for Mohammed to copy many exalted truths from Judaism and Christianity, and no candid mind will deny that there are many noble precepts in the Koran; but after all has been said, its ruling spirit is base.  Even its promised heaven is demoralizing.  It is characteristically a human book, and very low in the ethical scale at that.

Let us now turn to the Bible; let us remember that the Old Testament represents those early centuries when the people of Israel were surrounded by the corruptions of Baal worship, which transcended the grovelling wickedness of all other heathen systems, ancient or modern.  Let us bear in mind the kind of training which the nation had received amid the corruptions of Egypt, all rendered more effective for evil by their degrading bondage; and with all these disadvantages in view, let us search everywhere, from Genesis to Malachi, and see if there be one prurient utterance, one sanction for, or even connivance at, impurity in all those records, written by men in different lands and ages, men representing all social grades, all vocations in life, and chosen from among all varieties of association.  Who will deny that these men appear to have been raised by some unaccountable power to a common level of moral purity which was above their age, their social standards, their natural impulses, or any of the highest human influences which could have been exerted upon them?

They were often called to deal plainly with moral evils.  They record instances of grievous dereliction, in some cases the writers were themselves the offenders.  But there is always reproof.  The story always has a salutary moral.  Sin is always shown to be a losing game, a sowing to the wind and a reaping of the whirlwind.  It is either followed by severe judgments, or it is repented of with a contrition which bows even a great monarch in dust and ashes.