avowed his belief in the sacred books of the Jew and the Christian, and has given them all the stamp and currency which his authority and influence could impart, he has attempted to rob Christianity of every distinctive truth which it possesses—its Divine Saviour, its Heavenly Comforter, its pure code of social morals, its spirit of love and truth—and has written his own refutation and condemnation with his own hand, by professing to confirm the divine oracles which sap the very foundations of his prophetical pretensions.
have learned them from some Jew resident in or near Mekka. To work them up in the form of rhymed Suras, to put his own peculiar doctrines in the mouths of Jewish patriarchs, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus (who talks like a good Moslem from his birth), must have required time, thought, and labour. It is not possible that the man who had done all this could have forgotten all about it, and believed that these legends had been brought to him ready prepared by an angelic visitor. Muhammad was guilty of falsehood under circumstances where he deemed the end justified the means. . . . . He was brought face to face with the question which every spiritual reformer has to consider, against which so many noble spirits have gone to ruin,—will not the end justify the means?"—"Islam under the Arabs," by Major Durie Osborn, p. 21.
