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BY MIRACLES.
141

him, (the beam on which he leaned when officiating in the mosque at Medina); and that a shoulder of mutton (which story has been alluded to before) told him it was poisoned, but it appears not till one of his followers had fallen a victim to its deleterious effects.

But besides innumerable other miracles ascribed to Mohammed[1], Ali is said also to have stopped the sun in his course, and the Imans successively for a long period to have been endued with the power of working miracles. An objection which lies at the root of the whole is this: that they were not recorded by eye-witnesses at or near the time, nor for some centuries after the death of Mohammed. They want all the other requisites to recommend them to credibility. The gross amount of their testimony is this, as Professor Lee ably remarks[2]: "The miracles may all be traced

  1. See Persian Controversies.
  2. Ibid.