Page:Thomas Patrick Hughes - Notes on Muhammadanism - 2ed. (1877).djvu/25

 4 Prophet's depravity. But how different it is in the case of the true prophet David, where, in the words of inspiration, he lays bare to public gaze the enormity of his own crimes. The deep contrition of his inmost soul is manifest in every line—"I acknowledge my+transgression and my sin is ever before me: against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight."

The best defenders of the Arabian Prophet are obliged to admit that the matter of Zeinab, the wife of Zeid, and again, of Mary, the Coptic slave, are "an indelible stain" upon his memory; that "he is once or twice untrue to the kind and forgiving disposition of his best nature; that he is once or twice unrelenting in the punishment of his personal enemies; and that he is guilty even more than once of conniving at the assassination of inveterate opponents;" but they give no satisfactory explanation or apology for all this being done under the supposed sanction of God in the Qurán.

In forming an estimate of Muhammad's pro-