parlance; its sesquipedalia verba, with their crowd of prefixes and affixes, each of them affirming
its own position, while consciously bearing upon and influencing the central root, which they
envelop like a garment of many folds, or as chosen courtiers move round the anointed person of
the king." E. H. Palmer says that the claim of the Koran to miraculous eloquence, however absurd
it may sound to Western ears, was and is to the Arab incontrovertible, and he accounts for the
immense influence which it has always exercised upon the Arab mind, by the fact, "that it consists
not merely of the enthusiastic utterances of an individual, but of the popular sayings, choice pieces
of eloquence, and favorite legends current among the desert tribes for ages before this time. Arabic
authors speak frequently of the celebrity attained by the ancient Arabic orators, such as Shâibân
Wâil; but unfortunately no specimens of their works have come down to us. The Qur’ân, however,
enables us to judge of the speeches which took so strong a hold upon their countrymen."^177
Of all books, not excluding the Vedas, the Koran is the most powerful rival of the Bible,
but falls infinitely below it in contents and form.
Both contain the moral and religious code of the nations which own it; the Koran, like the
Old Testament, is also a civil and political code. Both are oriental in style and imagery. Both have
the fresh character of occasional composition growing out of a definite historical situation and
specific wants. But the Bible is the genuine revelation of the only true God in Christ, reconciling
the world to himself; the Koran is a mock-revelation without Christ and without atonement. Whatever
is true in the Koran is borrowed from the Bible; what is original, is false or frivolous. The Bible is
historical and embodies the noblest aspirations of the human race in all ages to the final
consummation; the Koran begins and stops with Mohammed. The Bible combines endless variety
with unity, universal applicability with local adaptation; the Koran is uniform and monotonous,
confined to one country, one state of society, and one class of minds. The Bible is the book of the
world, and is constantly travelling to the ends of the earth, carrying spiritual food to all races and
to all classes of society; the Koran stays in the Orient, and is insipid to all who have once tasted
the true word of the living God.^178 Even the poetry of the Koran never rises to the grandeur and
sublimity of Job or Isaiah, the lyric beauty of the Psalms, the sweetness and loveliness of the Song
of Solomon, the sententious wisdom of the Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes.
A few instances must suffice for illustration.
The first Sura, called "the Sura of Praise and Prayer," which is recited by the Mussulmans
several times in each of the five daily devotions, fills for them the place of the Lord’s Prayer, and
contains the same number of petitions. We give it in a rhymed, and in a more literal translation:
"In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
Praise be to Allah, who the three worlds made,
The Merciful, the Compassionate,
The King of the day of Fate,
Thee alone do we worship, and of Thee alone do we ask aid.
Guide us to the path that is straight —
The path of those to whom Thy love is great,
Not those on whom is hate,
(^177) The Qur’ân, Introd. I., p. 1.
(^178) On this difference Ewald makes some good remarks in the first volume of his BiblicalTheology (1871), p. 418.