Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ : four lectures on natural and revealed religion

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BUDDHA, AND CHRIST.

FOUR LECTURES

ON

NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION.

MARCUS DODS, D.D.

HODDER AND STOUGHTON,

27, PATERNOSTER ROW.
MDCCCLXXVII.

• I

INWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

'nr^HESE Lectures to Young Men were re-
"*■ cently delivered at the English Presby-
terian College, London, and are published in
compliance with the custom of the Lectureship.

M. D.

Glasgow,

April, 1 8; 7.

.\

CONTENTS,

LECTURE I.
MOHAMMEDANISM.

Page I.

The Mohammedan creed— Unity of God — Estimate of
Mohammed's idea of God — A purely Semitic idea — Its
results on Mohammedan history — The second Article,
Mohammed the Prophet of God — In what sense true—
His courage and sincerity — Change that passed upon
him — His licentiousness — His abuse of the prophetic
office — Practical duties of Moslems — ^Their regularity and
frankness in prayer — The fast of Ramadan — Almsgiving —
Pilgrimage— Mecca— Pilgrim rites — ^Uses of pilgrimage —
Objectionable features of Mohammedanism^Paradise —
Fatalism — Polygamy — Mohammed's example — Facility of
divorce — Disastrous effects of the marriage laws — Lane's
opinion — Slavery.

LECTURE II.

MOHAMMEDANISM.

Page 69.

.: Arabia previous to Mohammedan era — Monotheism
lapsing into polytheism and idolatry — Zabism — Fetishism
—-Barbarous habits and customs — Inhumation of female

vi Contents.

children — Judaism in Arabia — Christianity — Irrehgious-
ness of Arabs — The Hanyfs — Mohammed, a Hanyf —
Mohammed's personal influence — His appearance, man-
ners, character, and habits— ^Voltaire's judo;-ment on cause
of success of Islam -^Carlyle's judgment — Its fallacy —
The sword and Islam — Arab love of fighting and plunder
— Feeding of strength in united Arabia — Simplicity and
upright government of early caliphs — Other causes of
success — Literature and Islam — Saracen and Greek
learning and philosophy — Intolerance of Islam — Meek-
ness towards Moslems — Its results on Arabia — Islam
compared with Mosaism — General criticism — Judgments
pronounced by Freeman, Osborn, and Lord Houghton.

LECTURE III.
BUDDHISM.

Page 129.

Is Buddhism a religion? — Its origin — Three anterior re-
ligions in India — Brahmanism — Emanation and Absorp-
tion— Transmigration — Salvation by priestly rites and
transcendental knowledge — Reaction against Brahmanism
— Lifeof Sakya-muni — His sympathetic nature — His search
for emancipation from suffering — Conversations with
Brahmans — He retires to the jungle — He becomes the
Buddha — Prevails upon himself to publish his discovery
• — Missionary ardour of first disciples — His last words —
Account of the system — Its postulates — Materialism and
transmigration — Misery of all existence — Death no deliver-
ance— Karma — Continuity of personal identity — The Four
Great Truths^Path to Nirvana — Nirvana, a moral condi-
tion— Defect in Buddhist ethical system — Annihilation —
Mr. Rhys David's exposition of Nirvana— Inherent ex-
cellence of Buddhism — Its practical failure — Deterioration
of popular Buddhism— Its formalism — Its atheism has
resulted in polytheism and saint-worship.

Contents. vii

LECTURE IV.

THE PERFECT RELIGION.

Page 187.

Current theories to account for religions — Universality
of religion — Definition of religion — Fallacious tests of
perfect religion — True criterion — The Christian religion
gives highest idea of God — It does so because it has its
root in revelation — Revelation defined — Centres in the
Incarnation — Incarnation not a Semitic idea, therefore
given or revealed — Christianity the one true rehgion —
Primitive revelation — Revelation in history — Revelation
and speculation — Morality of Christianity and other re-
ligions— Moral teaching and moral influence — Superiority
and perfection of Christianity — How far the purposes of
religion have been served by natural religions — The reli-
gious systems to be distinguished from the men adhering
to them — Dadu-Religions, in what sense false — Is the ab-
solutely best also the relatively best religion — Comparison
of Arabian Christianity and Mohammedanism — Conditions
of society impervious to Christianity — Inferences regarding
missionary effort — Conclusion.

I.

MOHAMMEDANISM :
ITS CREED AND PRACTICE.

' ' Say : He is one God :
God the Everlasting /
He hegetteth not, and He is not begotten ;
And there is none like unto Hlni."

Koran, Sura cxii.

I.

FIFTEEN per cent, of our fellow-men are
understood to be Mohammedans, and from
forty to fifty millions of these are fellow-subjects
of our own, whose faith may any day materially
affect our most important interests, yet I cannot
take for granted that you have already in your
minds any clear conception of the religion of
Islam. One of the best modern authorities on
the subject remarks' that, although Islam has
been described in so many books, even educated
people know little more about it than that the
Turks are polygamists. If this is extreme, it
must yet be owned that the knowledge of this
great religion which most people are content
with is confined to the fact that it originated
with Mohammed, and makes its devotees poly-
gamous and fatalistic persecutors, who abstain
from wine. Happily the creed of Islam is brief

^ Sprenger's Das Leben und die Leh'e des Moh. ii. i8i.

2*

4 Aloh a in ni cda n ism .

and easily learned ; its worship, though some-
what formal, is as simple as Calvin or Knox
could have wished; and the conduct it enjoins,
if not always the purest and loftiest, is always
perfectly intelligible and practicable.

The articles of the Mohammedan creed are
six. Every Moslem must believe in the unity
of God, in the Angels, the Koran, the Prophets,
the Day of Judgment, and the Decrees of God.
Or, as the Koran itself puts it, " Whosoever
believeth not on God, and His Angels, and His
Books, and His Apostles, and on the Last Day,
he verily hath erred with far gone error." ^ But
the brief confession which — uttered with upheld
forefinger to denote the unity of God — makes
any man a Mohammedan, is the world-renowned
formula, " There is no God but God, and
Mohammed is the Prophet of God." All that
is essential and peculiar to this religion, its
whole strength and weakness, is embraced in
this twofold assertion.

Mohammed was much more of a poet than
of a thinker. He had no capacity for profound
theological inquiry, but his natural penetration
and sense repudiated idolatry as monstrous,
while his intensely religious temperament made
God more necessary to him than food or drink.
His idea of God was originally formed in pre-

' Sur;i iv. i ;}^,

Unitarianism of Mohaniined. 5

sence of, and in opposition to, idolatry, and not
with any definite knowled,£;'e of, or reference to,
Christianity. Turning with distaste from the
discussions of tritheistic and Arian Christians,
he asserted the existence and supremacy of one
God in a form level to the capacity of his
hearers, and in the definite and absolute terms
of a mind untrammelled and undisturbed by
the suggestions of a better instructed theology/
*' Surely now are they infidels who say God is
a third of three, for there is no God but one
God. . . The Messiah, son of Mary, is but an
apostle ; other apostles have flourished before
him ; and his mother was a just person ; they
both ate food."^ The extent of his inquiries
into the doctrine of the Trinity, which he thus
denounces, may be gathered from the fact that
he believed the Virgin Mary (whom he also
confounded with Miriam, the sister of Moses 3)
to be the third person worshipped by Trini-
tarians, as the Mother of God, with the Father
and the Son.-^ •

But the Unitarianism of I^Iohammed, how-
ever ill-instructed, had the initial advantage of

^ Cf. ^^oltail"e, Essai sur Ics imviirs, c. vi.

2 Sura V. yj.

3 All that can be said in explanation of this anachronism
will be found in Reland's De Rel. Moli, p. 211, and Rod-
well's Koran ^ p. 422.

4 Sura V. 116, and especially vi. loi.

>J

6 2Iohainjncdanisvi.

an easy and forcible presentation. There is
one God, and throu^^h me, Mohammed, that
God summons you to submit to Him. This
was the simple gospel which gave birth to the
most aggressive religion the world has ever
known. vSubmission, says Bishop Butler, is
the whole of religion. This was what Moham-
med laid Jiold of, and Islam, that is, Submis-
^ sion, was the religion he proclaimed. Let all

things come into the harmony of obedience to
one God. It is a great awakening to a man
.when he learns that the universe is one, that
one government, one system, one idea, one Will
orders the whole. Certainly it was the time of
Arabia's regeneration, as it was one of the
grand moments of the world's history, when
Mohammed, in the strength of his new faith
and triumphing overall his native superstitions
and the associations of his childhood, entered
the temple of Mecca, and shivered the three
hundred and sixty idols with the cry, The
truth has come, let falsehood disappear. Round
this belief, that one only w as supreme, and that
He had a will to execute on earth through
all who believed in Him, the dislocated tribes
of Arabia united ; this for the time became
the compact centre of the earth ; and all who
gathered to it— so long as the idea of the unity
of God's government was fresh and living — felt

Its Idea of God.

empowered as His servants to execute His will
upon earth.

A religion stands or falls with its idea of /
God. Now Mohammed claims that his idea off
God is the Christian idea purified. "Say ye
to the Christians," he says, " their God and
my God is one." But, in point of fact, the
peculiar contents of the Christian revelation
are discarded, and the God of Mohammed is a
God exalted indeed and mighty, but remote and
awful, devoid of the subduing, uplifting, holy
love, of which nothing save the Incarnation
conveys an adequate knowledge, or gives the
needed proof. Very spirited and true are the
terms in which he frequently describes God :
*' God ! there is no God but He — the Livine,
the Self-subsisting; neither slumber seizeth
Him, nor sleep : all that is in the heavens and
in the earth is His. Who is he that can in-
tercede with Him but by His own permission ?
He knoweth what is present with His creatures,
and what is yet to befall them ; yet nought of
His knowledge do they comprehend, save what
He willeth. His throne reacheth over the
heavens and the earth, and the upholding of
both burdeneth Him not. And He is the High,
the Great." ^ But, like every other system of
Deism, Mohammedanism fails to convey to our

^ Sura ii. 256.

F

8 ]\Io/ia in uicda n ism .

\. minds the idea of a God perfect in love and in
^ purity, as well as in power. Between Allah
^1 and His creatures there remains a deep and
impassable gulf. Dean Milman has, with his
wonted precision, indicated the radical defect
of this idea of God, when he says : "The ab-
sorption into, or even the approximation to-
wards, the Deity, by contemplation in this life,
or perfection in the life to come, are equally
foreign to the Koran." ^ The sterner virtues
may be cultivated under the light of such
knowledge of God as Mohammed proclaimed ;
but it requires the penetrating w^armth of a
Divine and holy love, pressing on to perfect in-
timacy with His creatures, to fertilize that in-
most soil of the heart where the roots of what
is tender, humble, and self-sacrificing, draw
their nutriment. Mohammed indeed presents to
us a God not only might}^ as is sometimes
alleged, but also holy and forgiving. Every
verse of the Koran is given "in the name of
God, the Compassionate, the Merciful;" but
this compassion is exhibitedrnuch more in a
lenient indulgence to the infirmities of men,
than in making provision for their deliverance
from them. "Goddesireth to make your burden
light to you, for man hath been created weak."
This is the refrain of that notable Sura ^ in
' Latin Christia?ufj, ii. 192. = Sura iv.

JMohaviincd's God Indiiloxjit

<!>

which such liberal allowance is made for the
appetites and errors of the followers of ISIo-
hammed. " God is knowing, wise :" this is
the constantly reiterated ground of man's con-
fidence. God knows how weak human nature
is, He understands the violence of appetite,
and does not expect perfect purity.^ This con-
siderate, indulgent God, who makes no pro-
vision for assimilating men to Himself, is very
different from the God of Christ, whose wel-
come, all-hopeful summons is. Be ye holy, for I
I am holy, perfect as your Father in heaven is ;
perfect. Indeed, the defects of Mohammed's |
idea of God suggest to us to inquire whether /
it is possible to conceive worthily of God's
holiness, except by seeing it expressed in a
perfectly holy human life, or of His love, except
by seeing God incarnate, emptying Himself,
and as a man dying for men, that they may be
one with Him for ever.

Now recent investigation has brought out
with considerable clearness that the Semitic
conception of God is essentially distinct from
the Aryan idea.^ The Aryan races have every-
where shown a tendency to think of God, and
to name Him through His works. They have
recognised the beneficent influence of the sun

^ See the profound remarks of INIozley, Bamptoii
Lectures^ pp. 1 78-181.

2 Fairbairn's Studies, p. 316.

lo Mohammedanism,

and the rain; they have trembled before the
hurricane ; and feeHng that these forces of na-
ture were uncontrolhible by themselv^es, they
have either worshipped them or have prayed
to some Spirit who overruled them. Their
tendency has been to find and worship the
Creator in the creature. The distinction be-
tween the two has been obliterated, and the
interval between heaven and earth filled up.
In the luxuriant mythology of Greece, it is
impossible to say where the Divine ends and the
human begins : gods become men, and men
become gods. In the pantheism of the Aryans
of India, it is as difficult to disentangle the
human from the Divine. And, therefore, as
has been observed, the idea of the Incarnation
was akin to the Aryan conception of God ;
but it was most repugnant and antagonistic to
the Semitic mind, which conceived of God as
the infinitely exalted Sovereign, which named
its God, the Lord, the King, the Mighty One.
Mohammed's idea of God was, therefore, essen-
tially the Semitic idea. He, as little as the
great bulk of the Jews themselves, could not
bring his mind to accept the Incarnation or
fill up the abyss between God and man. As
t /has been said by the writer who has most
/ clearly elucidated this point : " It is of the es-
K sence of Christianity to affirm the Fatherhood

Results of this Defect. 1 1

of God. It is of the essence of Mohamme-
danism to deny the Fatherhood of God. The
quarrel between Mohammedans and Christians
is not, as Mr. Bosworth Smith says, a quarrel
between near relations, but a quarrel between
sons and, servants. " ^

" One God the Arabian Prophet preached to man,

One God the Orient still
Adores through many a mighty span,

A God of Power and Will.

A God that, shrouded in His lonely light,

Rests utterly apart
From all the vast creations of His might,

From Nature, Man, and Art."

The baldness and onesidedness of the Mo-
hammedan confession have received melancholy
illustration throughout the whole history of
Islam. It has been a religion of opposition
from the first, living by aggression, mighty and
purifying while it flows in full flood, but when
resting and at peace, it stagnates and throws |-f
up a filthy and putrid scum. As a battle-cry
none is more animating and invigorating than
"There is no God but God;" everything to
which we are opposed is as stubble before the
fire; already the day is ours, because we fight
the battles of the One God. But when the
victory is won, and men have to shape a life of

^ Dr. Robson, British a7td Foreign Evangelical RevieWy
Jan. 1877.

12 IMoJiannncdanism.

peace for themselves, there is nothing in this
creed to guide or to sustain. " Hence," says
Mr. Maurice, " it has been proved that Ma-
hometanism can onl}^ thrive while it is aiming
at conquest. Why ? Because it is the pro-
clamation of a mere sovereign, who employs
men to declare the fact that he is a sovereign,
and to enforce it upon the world. It is not the
proclamation of a great moral Being, who
-J deigns to raise His creatures out of their
sensual and natural degradation ; wdio reveals
to them not merely that He is, but what He
is — why He has created them — what they have
to do with Him. Unless this mighty chasm
in the Mahometan doctrine can be filled up,
it must wither day by day — wither for all pur-
poses of utility to mankind ; it can leave nothing
behind but a wretched carcase, lilling the air
with the infection of its rottenness." ^ Similarly
writes one who viewed Mohammedanism from a
totally different point of view.^ '' So long as a
Mahometan nation is dominant and conquering,
so long is it great and glorious after its own
standard. When it ceases to have an enemy to
contend against, it sinks into sluggish stupidity
and into a barbarism far viler than that of the
conquerors who raised it to greatnes?."

^ Religions of the ll/or/d, p. 28.

2 Freeman's Lectures, p, 202 (2nd cd.).

Second Article of the Creed, 1 3

But that which differentiates i^Ioslems from
all other deists, is their belief that Ivlohammed
is the prophet of God. This indeed may not
seem an astounding nor an unwarranted claim,
when we learn that they recognise 224,000,
or, according to a more moderate computation,
124,000 prophets ; ^ and that even Mohammed
himself seemed to consider not only Lokman
the Sage — the Arabian /Esop — but even Alexan-
der the Great, a prophet of God. But of these
prophets six have been the bearers of new laws
and revelations, which superseded all that had
been delivered by their predecessors. These
six are Adam, Noah, Abraham, I\Ioses, Jesus,
and Mohammed. Mohammed, coming last, is V^
entitled the '' Seal of the Prophets," ^ summing
up and closing all the revelations of God. Mo-
hammed believed in the miraculous conception
of our Lord, in the miracles of Moses and other
prophets, and in the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures ; but had he known with accuracy
the contents of previous revelations, he would
never have appeared in the character of the
final prophet. His knowledge of Christianity
is so meagre and confused, that it is difficult
to understand how even the most illiterate and
mystified sectary fed on apocryphal gospels

1 Hughes's Notes on MuJianuiiadanisin, P- Si- Reland,
p. 41.

2 Sura lxxxi!i. 40.

1 4 JMohammcdamsm.

could have conveyed to him such notions of the
Gospel. Of the great and enlightening history
of Israel, as a history, he knows nothing, and
has merely caught up some childish tales from
the Talmud and some garbled legends of the
Hebrew patriarchs and great men/ This last
of the prophets firmly believed that the Old and
New Testament Scriptures were from God, and
yet he took no pains to ascertain what they
had revealed. He enjoined on his followers,
on pain of eternal punishment, to believe in
these Scriptures as well as in the Koran, and
yet he did not know what he was commanding
them to believe. He has by this ignorance
involved himself and all his followers in a fatal
inconsistency. The Koran everywhere attributes
inspiration and a Divine origin to the Scriptures
as emphatically as it claims these for itself;
while at the same time it is impossible for a
believer in the Scriptures to believe in the
Koran. " This Koran," it says,^ " could not
have been composed by any except God ! but
it is a confirmation of that which was revealed
before it." Again, " There is no God but God,
the living, the self-subsisting; He hath sent

' This was apparently urged against Mohammed even
by his contemporaries. Sec Ko7'a?i, Sura xvi. 26 : " When
it is said unto them, What hath the Lord sent down to
Mohammed ? they answer, Ancient fables/'

2 Sura X.

Belief in the Christian Scriptures. ^15

down unto thee the book of the Koran with
truth, confirming that which was revealed be-
fore it, for He had formerly sent down the Law
and the Gospel, a direction unto men."^ Again,
unbelief in the Scriptures is by Mohammed put
on a level with unbelief in the Koran itself, as
in the 40th Sura, where he says : " They
who charge with falsehood the book of the
Koran and the other sacred Scriptures and re-
vealed doctrines which we sent our former
apostles to preach, shall hereafter know their
folly, when the collars shall be on their necks,
and the chains by which they shall be dragged
into hell."

Mohammedans, therefore, are in the awkward ^b

predicament of being obliged by their religion Y
to believe in what explodes their religion. They
are commanded to believe in two contradic-
tories. They are commanded to accept Jesus
as a prophet, and at the same time to accept
Mohammed. They are enjoined to receive the
Old Testament Scriptures as a revelation,
although nothing is more obvious in these
Scriptures than that the history of Judaism
developes into and finds its completion and end
in Christianity; and they are enjoined to believe
in the New Testament Scriptures, although
these writings so distinctly claim to be the final

^ Sura iii. I.

1 6 AIohaniDicdanism.

revelation, that it is impossible to find room for
the claims of Mohammed as the ultimate re-
vealer of God's will. It is this inconsistent
demand of their creed which produces those
anomalies in the conduct of Moslems, so as-
tonishing to those who expect to find only
hatred of everything Christian. Lady Duff
Gordon records that the Moslem carpenter she
employed was seen swallowing the sawdust of
the cedar he was using for his work, because
that was the tree under which Mary had sat
with Jesus during the flight into Egypt. ^ Under
Moslem governments men have been put to
death for blaspheming the name of Jesus. And
according to their own divines, " every Alim
(or doctor of the law) should read the Towrat
and the Ingeel {i.e., the Law and the Gospel) ;
the words of Seyiddna Eesa are the true
faith." ^

Neither can they evade the awkwardness of
this false position by propounding that the later
revelation supersedes the earlier, and that they
receive the words of Jesus only in so far as
these are confirmed by the words of Mohammed. >
This may apply in so far as the New Testa-
ment is a code, but in so far as it is a history, it
has no application. Earlier precepts or laws

^ Last Letters^ p. 66 ; and Letters, p. 82.
2 Ibid. p. 206. Comp, Wood's Oxus, p. 301.

IVas Alohainmed a Prophet ? 1 7

may be repealed or superseded by later precepts, -0^
but facts cannot be cancelled from past history.'
If the facts recorded in the Gospels are true,
then there is no room for Mohammed in the
world. And, in point of fact, instructed Mos-
lems recognise their dilemma, and universally
maintain that our Scriptures are ' corrupted ; -^
that is to say, the ultimate defence of Moham-
medanism is one which a single whiff of Euro-
pean criticism will blow to the winds.

But is Mohammed in no sense a prophet ?

Certainly he had two of the most im.portant

• • • ft

characteristics of the prophetic order. He saw

truth about God which his fellow-men did not

see, and he had an irresistible inward impulse

to publish this truth. In respect of this latter

qualification Mohammed may stand comparison

with the most courageous of the heroic prophets

of Israel. For the truth's sake he risked his

life, he suffered daily persecution for years, and

eventually banishment, the loss of property, of

the goodwill of his fellow-citizens, and of the

I " If you believe in the Gospel as inspired, you may
indeed alter its precepts by the Coran, but you cannot
cancel the fact of Christ's death." p. xii. of 17ie Testi-
mony borne by tlie Coran to tJie Jewish and Christiatt
Scriptures. 2nd edition, published anonymously by Sir
William Muir, at Allahabad, i860.

^ Henry Martyn, Controversial Tracts on Christianity
and Alohanwiedanisni, Edited by Dr. S, Lee, Cambridge,
1824.

3

^

] 8 AloJianunedanism.

confidence of his friends — he suffered, in short,
as much as any man can suffer short of death,
which he only escaped by flight, and yet he
unflinchingly proclaimed his message. No
bribe, threat, or inducement could silence him.
*' Though they array against me the sun on the
right hand and the moon on the left, I cannot
renounce my purpose." And it was this persis-
tency, this belief in his call to proclaim the
unity of God, which was the m.aking of Islam.
Other men have been monotheists in the midst
of idolaters, but no other man has founded a
strong and enduring monotheistic religion. The
distinction in his case was his resolution that
other men should believe. If we ask what it
was. that made Mohammed aggressive and pro-
selytizing where other men had been content to
cherish a solitary faith, we must answer that it
was nothing else than the depth and force of
his own conviction of the truth. To himself
the difference between one God and many,
between the unseen Creator and these ugly
lumps of stone or wood, was simply infinite.
The one creed was death and darkness to him,
the other light and life. It is useless seeking
for motives in such a case — for ends to serve and
selfish reasons for his speaking : the impossi-
bility with Mohammed was to keep silence.
His acceptance of the office of teacher of his

MoJiammccTs Barnesf?iess. 19

people was anything but the ill-advised and
sudden impulse of a light-minded vanity or am-
bition. His own convictions had been reached
only after long years of lonely mental agony,
and of a doubt and distraction bordering on
madness. Who can doubt the earnestness of
that search after truth and the living God, that
drove the affluent merchant from his comfort-
able home and his fond wife, to make his abode
for months at a time in the dismal cave on
Mount Hira ? If we respect the shrinking of
Isaiah or Jeremiah from the heavy task of pro-
claiming unwelcome truth, we must also re-
spect the keen sensitiveness of Mohammed,
who was so burdened by this same responsi-
bility, and so persuaded of his incompetency for
the task, that at times he thought his new feel'
ings and thoughts were a snare of the devil,
and at times he would fain have rid himself of
all further struggle by casting himself from
a friendly precipice. His rolling his head in
his mantle, the sound of the ringing of bells in
his ears, his sobbing like a young camel, the
sudden grey hairs which he himself ascribed to
the terrific Suras, — what were all these but so
many physical signs of a nervous organization
overstrained by anxiety and thought ?

His giving himself out as a prophet of God
was, in the first instance, not only sincere, but

3*

20

J\ foil am lucda n ism.

%

V vy

5^

probably correct in the sense in which he him-
self understood it. He felt that he had
thoughts of God which it deeply concerned
all around him to receive, and he knew that
these thoughts were given him by God, al-
though not, as we shall see, a revelation strictly
so called. His mistake by no means lay in his
supposing himself to be called upon by God to

, speak for Him and introduce a better religion,
but it lay in his graduall}^ coming to insist
quite as much on men's accepting him as a
prophet as on their accepting the great truth
he preached. He was a prophet to his country-
men in so far as he proclaimed the unity of
God, but this was no sufficient ground for his
claiming to be their guide in all matters of
religion, still less for his assuming the lordship
over them in all matters civil as well. The
modesty and humility apparent in him so long
as his mind was possessed with objective truth,
gradually gives way to the presumptuousness
and arrogance of a mind turned more to a
sense of its own importance. To put the
second article of the INIohammedan creed on

Ithe same level as the first, to make it as essen-
tial that men should believe in the mission of
Mohammed as in the unity of God, was no
doubt the making of Islam, but it was an
ignorant, incongruous, and false combination.

MoJunnincd' s Original Sincei'ity. 2 1

Had Mohammed known his own ignorance as
well as his knowledge, the world would have
had one religion the less, and Christianity
would have had one more reformer.

But when it is asked, Was Mohammed sin-
cere throughout ? I believe there is no question
in religious biography more difficult to answer.
There need, I think, be no question -about his
original sincerity. Trained like another Samuel
under the shadow of the temple of which his
ancestors were the guardians, alone allowed to
sit with his grandfather on his prayer-rug in
the temple-court,^ prized by that aged chief as
the jewel of all his tribe, it was only to be
expected that he should grow up with a strong
religious bent. It is a striking proof of his
sincerity that his earliest and most devoted dis-
ciples were those of his own household, and his
familiars, who had known him in all circum-
stances and scanned him in all moods — his
wife, his slave, his cousin, his father-in-law
— the latter themselves men of character and
position. Neither is it credible that a man
who was seeking to impose on the public
should have distinctly asserted that he could
not command the spirit of inspiration, and
should have waited for six months or two
3'ears for communications which he very ur-

I Caussin de Perceval's Hist, des Ai'abes^ i. 289,

V3-,

2 2 Mohamnie danism.

cr

ently needed. So far from being a common
impostor, he showed himself superior to the
kind of temptation to which the leader of a
crowd of admiring disciples is most exposed.
On the saddest day of Mohammed's life, when
the light of it seemed to have gone down in
the grave of his little boy Ibrahim, an eclipse
of the sun occurred as he went home, and his
friends spoke of it as a kind of token of the
sympathy of Heaven. A vulgar impostor would
have accepted the flatter}^ but Mohammed
simply said, *' The sun and the moon are
amongst the signs appointed by the Lord.
They are not eclipsed on the death of any
one." ^ His correspondence with the rival
prophet, Moseilama, has commonly and justly
been cited as exhibiting the difference between
the impostor and the true man. It ran thus :
*' Moseilama, the Apostle of God, to Mohammed,
the Apostle of God. Now let the earth be half
mine and half thine." " Mohammed, the
Apostle of God, to Moseilama, the Liar. The
earth is God's ; He giveth it for inheritance to
such of His servants as He pleaseth, and the
happy issue shall attend those that fear Him."
The difficulty is to reconcile with this sin-
cerity acts which certainly at first sight one is
tempted to condemn as immoral and dishonest.

* Muir, iv. i66.

JMohainmcd' s Licentiousness. 23

Instead of feeling it to be incumbent on him
as a prophet of God to set his followers an
example of temperance and high-toned living,
he rather used his office as a title to license
from which ordinary men were restrained.
Restricting his disciples to four wives, he re-
tained to himself the liberty of taking as many 0
as he pleased. He actually married eleven
women,-iiine of whom survived him. And this
he sanctions b}^ publishing a new paragraph of
the Koran, as allowing him this " privilege
above the rest of the faithful." ^ One is tempted
to exclaim, with honest old Hoornbeek, "Dig-
_num certe Propheta privilegium."^ Yet let us
make what allowance is possible. So long as
Kadijah lived Mohammed w^as a strict mono-
gamist. Until he was fifty-three years of age
he showed no disposition to adopt the custom of
his country, and his unmarried youth had been
exceptionally pure. But the sons Kadijah bore ^A
him died in infancy, and his enemies taunted
him in most offensive terms with his lack of
a male heir. Besides this, we must take
into account that among Oriental chiefs and
princes the extension of the harem has ahvays
been one of the first modes of exhibiting the
grandeur of a ruler. We remember the as-

I Sura xxxiii. 48.

^ Hoornbeek, Sin/una Controv. p. 107.

24 ]\ToJiaii?inedanism .

tounding number of Solomon's wives — a num-
ber far exceeded by many of Mohammed's suc-
cessors. Something, too, must be allowed for
his desire to form good alliances and to provide
for the widows of his devoted followers. All
his wives but one were widows, and many of
them were possibly added to his harem as a
mode of showing respect for the dead, and of
^ providing the widows with what was considered
an honourable pension. But this does not
account for all his marriages, and least of all
does it account for his scandalous amours ; and
' I am of opinion that after Kadijah's influence
was withdrawn, his relations with women were
of a thoroughly discreditable kind. His mo-
ralit}^ at this point was not that of a high-
/minded or spiritual man, it was not that of a
man whose religion had exercised a purifying
influence upon him, — it was no higher than
that of his contemporaries, and it was im-
mensely lower than that of Christian countries.
But all this might have been overlooked.
The knot of the matter lies not in his polygamy,
nor even in his occasional licentiousness, but
in the fact that he defended his conduct, when
it created scandal, by professed revelations
which are now embodied as parts of the Koran.
When his wives murmured, and with justice,
at his irregularities, he silenced them by a

■\

Carlyles Defence Invalid. 2

0

revelation giving him conjugal allowances
which he had himself proscribed as unlawful.
When he designed to contract an alliance with
a woman forbidden to him by his own law, an IS
inspired permission was forthcoming, encour-
aging him to the transgression. I fear that,
notwithstanding all that has been urged in
explanation, the common sense of every Chris-
tian community will pronounce that underneath
this kind of conduct a low morale must have
existed. It is idle to dismiss the question as
Carlyle does with the exclamation, '* A false |
man found a religion ? Why, a false man can-
not build a brick house ! " For my part, I'd
as soon go with Thackeray, when he says :
" A lie once set agoing, having the breath of
life breathed into it by the father of lying, and
ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives
with a prodigious vitality. You say, ' Magna
est Veritas et prasvalebit.' Psha ! Great lies
are as great as great truths, and prevail con- '
stantly, and day after day."

But of late years the idea has been gaining
ground that Mohammed was not only sincere
in his zeal for religion, but was also sincere in
his conviction that the revelations above re-
ferred to were from God. The great name of
Mohler is cited as an advocate of this opinion,
and, what is much more, as one who attempts

2 6 Moha 111 me da n ism .

to explain the state of mind in which Mo-
hammed could suppose that immoral precepts
were the inspiration of God. " I maintain,"
he sa3's, "that if one admits the possibility of
any man's being able to give out his own in-
dividual religious impressions, ideas, and
thoughts, without suspicion, for divine inspi-
rations, I cannot perceive the impossibility of
his considering God also to be the author of all
his other inward impulses." It is possible,
that is to say, to suppose that Mohammed con-
sidered that God was the author of his impulse
to lust after other men's wives, and to break
his promise in order to gratify his appetites. If
/\ so, thenjiis conscience was in a state of obfusca-
^ _tion not surpassed by the wildest anabaptists or
v^fanatics of any age, and wholly unfitting him
to be a teacher or ruler of men.

I believe, however, that Mohammed had
I been so much in the habit of promulgating
laws and issuing manifestoes in the capacity
of God's apostle, that he had ceased on each
occasion to consider whether he was merely
speaking for God's cause, or was speaking
God's word. I believe that, situated as he
was, he could not fail at length to act on the
understanding that his commission as God's
apostle was a general one, and that he did not
need to wait on each occasion for what he

Imnioi^al Revelations. 27

could distinctly recognise as a revelation.^ He
had to speak and to act on the spot for the
present emergency, and being God's apostle, "v^
his word was God's word. And this no doubt
made the final step easier. Pressed by strong
temptation, entangled in circumstances that
threatened to diminish his influence, he boldly
used, for his own purposes, the method and
authority he had so often used for the govern-
ment of the cause of Islam. But that he did
so without compunction I do not believe. Nor
do I believe that had he accomplished the \a.
desire expressed on his death-bed of revising ,
the Koran, he would have allowed these parts /
of it to remain, if even he meant that they
should ever be published to the world. But
in whatever way these matters are explained,
Mohammed appears in them a man of a much
lower type than the Old Testament prophets,
not to speak of such men as Paul or John.

The strength of Mohammed's conviction is
best measured by its results in those around
him. It has been said that the best proof a

^ Pfleiderers opinion is that the specification of God as
the author of each revelation had become a form of
speech : *' Es ist das kaum anders zu beurtheiien als die
Phraseologie unseres Konversationsstyls, wo ja die
Unachtheit der kursirenden Phrasen darum schon un-
schuldig ist, weil Jedermann sie kennt."- — Die Religion,
ii. 369.

2S AloJiammc danism.

Q prophet can give of the authenticity of his
U mission is to win credence to it.^ Certainly
Mohammed gave this proof, and thereby evinced,
if not the authenticity of his mission, yet his
own behef in it. With admirable sagacity and
sincerity he declined to give himself out as a
worker of miracles. To those who asked for
signs, he replied, " Signs are in the power of
God alone, and I am no more than a public
preacher." ~ Other prophets had come with
miracles, and had been disbelieved, ^ therefore
Mohammed came with the sword. Those
whom God had ordained to believe would be-
lieve without miracles, and no miracles would
convince the rest. And yet, with all this dis-
claiming of miracle, Mohammed most em-
phatically asserted the existence of a continu-
O-^ ous miracle in the Koran. " We have not sent
^ any before thee as our apostles, other than

men unto whom we spake by revelation. . . .
We sent them with evident miracles, and
written revelations, and we have sent down
unto thee this Koran." ^ Again and again he
appeals to the Koran as the standing proof
of his mission, and challenges the world to pro-
duce anything equal to it. " If ye be in doubt

1 Oclsncr, Effcts^ S:c., p. 35 : "La meillcure preuve
qu'un prophete puisse donner dc Fauthenticite de sa
mission, c'est d'y faire croirc."
^ Sura xxix. 49. 3 Suia \\. passijn. 4 Sura xvi. 45.

Its Practice. 29 /—

concerning that revelation which we have sent
down unto our servant, produce a chapter
like unto it."^ So that the more enthusiastic
of the Mohammedans have been accustomed to
claim for their prophet a pre-eminence in regard
to miracles. Sixty thousand is the number of 0
the miracles he wrought, each verse of the
Koran being itself a miracle. And he alone of
the prophets has wrought a permanent and
standing miracle, in the Koran, which all gene-
rations may for themselves examine.^

As regards the practice enjoined upon Mo-
hammedans, Islam is commonly said to rest _,
upon five pillars or foundations, ^ viz., i. The ?v^-
recital of the Kalima, or confession : There is ,J
but one God, and Mohammed is His prophet ; ^
2. Observance of the five daily periods of
prayer; 3. The giving of alms ; 4, The fast of
Ramadan ; and 5. Pilgrimage to Mecca. In
these practical duties, there is nothing very dif-
ferent from Judaism, or, if we except pilgrimage,
from Christianity. The times and forms of
prayer are certainly more generally observed
among Mohammedans than among ourselves.
From the first call to prayer in the early morning,

^ Sura ii. 21, and xvii. 91.

2 Pocock, Specimen^ p. 192 ; Gagnier, Vie de Mahouiet^
ii. 367.

3 Reland, De Rcl. Moh, p. 5.

30 MoJiamnicdanism.

when the sleepers are roused by the sonorous
and musical cry of the Muezzin, '' Prayer is
better than sleep," through all the throng and
business of the day, wherever and in whatever
(^ engaged, at each hour of pra3^er the Moham-

medan drops his tools or lays aside his pipe,
and prostrates himself towards Mecca.

There are two features of the devout cha-
racter which the Mohammedans have the merit
of exhibiting with much greater distinctness
j than we do. They show not the smallest

/ hesitation or fear in confessing God, and they

reduce to practice the great principle that the
worship of God is not confined to temples or
any special place : —

" Most honour to the men of prayer,
Whose mosque is in them everywhere !
Who, amid revel's wildest din,
In war's severest discipline.
On rolling deck, in thronged bazaar,
In stranger land, however far,
However different in their reach
Of thought, in manners, dress, or speech, —
W^ill quietly their carpet spread.
To Mekkeh turn the humble head,
And, as if blind to all around,
And deaf to each distracting sound,
In ritual language God adore,
In spirit to His presence soar.
And, in the pauses of the prayer.
Rest, as if rapt in glory there. '^

There are of course formalists and hypocrites in

Prayer. 3 1

Islam as well as in religions of which we have
more experience. The uniformity and regularity
of their prostrations resemble the movements
of a well - drilled company of soldiers, or of
machines, but the Koran ^ denounces "woe
upon those who pray, but in their prayers are
careless ; who make a show of devotion, but
refuse to help the needy ; " while nowhere is
formalism more pungently ridiculed than in the
common Arabic proverb, " His head is towards 0.
the Kibleh, but his heels are among the weeds. "^
We could almost excuse a touch of formalism
for the sake of securing that absolute stillness
and outward decorum in worship which de-
ceives the stranger as he enters a crowded
mosque into the belief that it is quite empty.^
Persons who hold themselves excused from the ,
duty of worship by every slight obstacle might
do worse than get infected with the sublime
formalism of Cais, son of Sad, who would not
shift his head an inch from the place of his ,
prostration, though a huge serpent lifted its
fangs close to his face and finally coiled itself
round his neck.'^ And if some are formal, cer-
tainly many are very much in earnest. ^ It is

^ Sura cvii. ^ Burckhardt's Arabic. Pi'ov. p. 97.

3 Hottinger, Hist. Ofient. p. 310.
* Dozy's Histoire, i. 66.

5 "Etliche beten und rufen in ihren Hausern mit
solchem Eifer und so lange bis ihnen der Odem entgehet.

32 ]\IoJiammcdanism,

only fair, in forming a judgment of the devotional
element in Mohammedanism, to have before us
such a prayer as this : " O Lord, I supplicate
Thee for firmness in faith, and direction towards
rectitude, and to assist me in being grateful to
Thee, and in adoring Thee in every good way ;
and I supplicate Thee for an innocent heart,
which shall not incline to wickedness; and I
supplicate Thee for a true tongue, and for that
virtue which Thou knowest ; and I pray Thee to
defend me from that vice which Thou knowest ;
and for forgiveness of those faults which Thou
knowest. O my defender 1 assist me in remem-
bering Thee, and being grateful to Thee, and ia
worshipping Thee with the excess of my strength.
0 Lord ! I have injured my own soul, and no
one can pardon the faults of Thy servants but
Thou. Forgive me out of Thy lovingkindness,
and have mercy on me ; for verily Thou art the
forgiver of offences, and the bestower of bless-
ings upon Thy servants." ^

But the attachment of the Moslems to their

religion is put to a severer test by the fast of

I Ramadan. This fast is no make-believe, no

abstinence during a hot month from the heavier

articles of food to wdiet the appetite for the

iind sie gleichsam in Ohnmacht niedersinken." — Olcarius,
quoted in Pfeiffer, p. 418.

^ Syed Ali, C7'it. Exam, p. 175.

Fast of Ramadan. 33 ^

lighter efforts of cookery ; but it is a hond-fide
total abstinence from food, drink, and smoking
from sunrise to sunset of each day throughout
the whole month of the Mohammedan Lent.
From half-past two in the morning, or when-
ever the gun gives the signal in the larger
cities, till the happy and eagerly looked-for
release of sundown, nothing may pass over the
throat. The hard - wrought labourer in the
burning streets or under the terrific blaze of
the Eastern noon must endure his faintness
and misery unrelieved by a single mouthful of
water. The traveller in the desert may be
blinded with the glare of the brazen sky above
and the glowing sand beneath, he may fall from
the back of his camel or sit insensible in the
saddle, but he may chew nothing, taste no-
thing, if possible not even smell what might for
the moment revive his failing energy. Even in
illness this fast is kept, although that is not
obligatory. Burton says, '* I found but one
patient who would eat, even to save his life.
And among the vulgar, sinners who habitually
drink when they should pray will fast and per-
form their devotions through the Ramadan."^
It is not surprising that the expiry of this
compulsory fast should be hailed with all the
manifestations of intense satisfaction and re-
^ Burton, Pilgrim, i. 109,
4

^

34 Mohannncdanisni .

lief. Drums are beat, every one who has a
gun or pistol contributes to the roar of jubila-
tion, while the very children, aware how much
more facile the parental temper will now be,
go about shouting, '' Ramadan mat,'" Ramadan is
dead.^ The most obvious, if not the most real
and permanent, effect of this "blessed month"
is to spoil the tempers of the whole commu-
nity. A hungry man is an angry man all the
world over, and though fasting has its spiritual
uses in certain cases, this compulsory abstin-
ence of a whole population produces irritability,
quarrelsomeness, and all the ills of dyspepsia.
But it will of course be understood that the
better instructed and the pious Moslems recog-
nise the necessity of using the season of fast
for spiritual discipline.^ "God cares not,"
says the Mishcat, "that a man leave off
eating and drinking, if he do not therewith
abandon lying and detraction." ^

Great stress is laid upon almsgiving. " A
liberal unbeliever," says Ali,"* " may sooner
hope for Paradise than an avaricious Moham-
medan." Islam has been greatly commended
for the provision it makes for the poor. The

^ Lady Duff Gordon's Letters, p. 217.

2 Pocock's Specimen, p. 310.

3 Mill's Hist, of MoJianunedanisiii, p. 311.

4 Forstcr's Mahoin. Unveiled, i. 346.

Almsgiving, 35

only criticism which one is disposed to pass
upon its law of almsgiving is a criticism which
applies to many other parts of the religion, and
that is, that it leaves too little to the spirit and . .-''^
spontaneity of the individual, and too definitely C"
prescribes and enforces duty. The Zakat, or
legal alms, is collected by Government in Mo-
hammedan countries, and, like our income
tax, is exacted only from those who have a
certain amount of revenue and have been in
possession of the same for a year. Of all his
property, the Moslem must give a prescribed
portion, one-tenth of grain or fruit, one of
every hundred camels, 2t per cent, of his
money, both capital and profits. And the
amount thus contributed is applied to the
relief of debtors who cannot pay their debts,
for the aid of slaves w^ho wish to buy their
freedom, of strangers, travellers, pilgrims, and
destitute persons.^ And it is the judgment of
one who has observed the working of this law
in Mohammedan countries, and is nowise pre-
judiced in favour of Islam, that " whatever be \j
the weak points in Mohammedanism, all can-
did observers acquainted with the condition of
Mohammedan nations must admit that its
provision for the poor is highly commendable. W
As we have journeyed from village to village

' Sura ix. 60.

A ^

V^v

+ 36 liTohainnicdanism.

among the Afghans, we have frequently heen
struck with the ahsence of great poverty, and
even in our large cities, where Mohammedan
beggars are numerous, it must be rememibered
that they are either religious mendicants or
professional beggars, and for the most part
quite unworthy of charitable relief." ^
v> The fourth point of Mohammedan practice is
pilgrimage. Every Moslem, male or female,
and in whatever country resident, must at least
once visit the Holy City and Temple of Mecca.
This duty is enjoined in the Koran ; it is enforced
by the example of Mohammed himself, and by a
\ traditional saying of his, to the effect that he who

dies without performing it may as well die a Jew
or a Christian. A dying man may, however,
bequeath a sufficient sum of money to pay the
expenses of a deputy - pilgrim,^ so that his
personal neglect may be repaired. The words
of the Koran regarding pilgrimage admit of
some latitude of interpretation : *' It is a duty
towards God incumbent on those who are
able to go thither, to visit the house of God." ^
But who are those who are able ? The straiter
sects say : Every one who is able to walk
and to earn his bread on the way ; and,

1 Hughes, Notes, p. 85.

2 Hughes {Notes, pp. 91, 92) denies that proxies are
allowable during the principal's lifetime.

3 Sura iii. ; cf. also Sura xxii.

Pilgrimage. 3 7

consequently, many poor creatures leave their
homes in Northern India or inner Africa, re-
solved to beg their way to Mecca, and face all
the terrors of the desert, the sea, and foreign
countries. The most reasonable teachers, how-
ever, maintain that pilgrimage is incumbent
only on such as have money for the road and
for the support of their families during their
absence/ And as the minimum expenditure of
a man who rides in a litter from Damascus and
back is about £1200, it cannot surprise us if a
large proportion of the Moslem population plead
inability to comply w^ith this demand of their
Prophet. " Going on pilgrimage to Mecca,"
says the first Englishman who ever went there-,
" is a duty incumbent on every Mussulman, if
in capacity of health and purse, but yet a great
many who are so live in the final neglect of it." "
The license given by the Koran ^ to use the
pilgrimage for purposes of trade does not serve
materially to increase the size of the caravans.
And although pauper pilgrims are provided by
the government with a gratis sea passage, and

1 Burton's Pilorimage, iii. 224.

2 Joseph Pitts' FaiUifiil Accoimt, p. 84.

3 Sura ii : "It shall be no crime in you if ye seek an
increase from the Lord, by trading during the pilgrim-
age." Burton's judgment is that the pilgrimage is " es-
sentially religious, accidentally an affair of commerce"
{Pilgri?nagL', iii. 225).

^

2,S MoJiaviinedanisin.

frequently have their expenses paid by wealthy
men who desire the credit of a meritorious act,
the numbers in 1853 were only 50,000, and
seemed then to be steadily decreasing.' Since
then, however, they have increased threefold.

Mecca is the Holy City of Islam, not because
it is the birthplace of ^lohammed, but because
it contains the most ancient temple in Arabia,
the world -renowned Kaabah, or Bait-Allah.^
Of this temple the Koran boldly says : " Verily,
the first house appointed unto man to wor-
ship in was that which is in Becca, blessed,
and the Keblah for all creatures. Therein
are manifest signs i^ the place where Abra-
ham stood ; and whosoever entereth therein
shall be safe." This dictum was evoked in
correction of the Jewish idea, that Jerusalem
was the true Keblah, towards which all wor-
shippers should pray — an idea with which,
remarkably enough, Mohammed himself had
at first fallen in. And enlightened Moham-

^ " AH Bey (a.d. 1807) calculates 83,000 pilgrims;
Burckhardt (1814)70,000. I reduced it, in 1853, to 50,000."
Burton, iii. 259.

"^ Burton (iii. 149) says that Bait-Ullah and Kaabah
are synonymous. So too Sale, PreliiJiinary Discourse^
p. 88. Hughes {NoteSj 88) says that this is a confusion, and
appropriates the name Bait-Ullah to the whole mosque,
and not distinctively to the Kaabah.

3 The fullest account of these signs is given by Boulain-
villiers, La Vie de Maho/ned, pp. 84-91.

The KaabaJi. 39

medans of the present day, while they reject
the legends which ascribe to this temple a super-
natural origin and a date anterior to the Creation,
agree in believing that it was originally built by
Abraham and Ishmael. For this there is no
evidence but that of tradition, and the fact that
the chief object of veneration in it is a stone
which is claimed as a relic of patriarchal wor-
ship. Of its great antiquity there is no doubt.
Not only is it recognised as a holy city by four
different faiths, the Hindu, Sab^an, Gueber,
and Moslem;' but even before the Christian
era it was well known as an ancient and revered
temple.- The Kaabah stands in a wide court,
skirted by colonnades of marble and stone pillars,
and ornamented by a number of domes, and is
itself, as its name denotes, in the form of a cube
of about thirty-five feet.^ Built into its north-
east corner, about four or five feet from the
ground, is the famous " Black Stone," '^ which
sober Moslems believe to have been brought
from a neighbouring mountain to mark the
point from which the circumambulation of the

1 Burton, iii. i6o.

2 Diodorus Sic . iii. 44.

3 For exact measurements and description, see Burton's
third volume, p. 149, et seq. ; or Sale's Preliui. Disc,
p. 88.

4 About eight inches long by six in height. See IMuir's

plate in vol. ii.

0

40 Mohaimnedanis?n.

Kaabah was to commence, but which enthu-
siasts believe to have fallen from heaven/ and
to be destined to witness at the last day in
favour of all those who have kissed it. Origin-
ally white, it is supposed to have become black
by the kisses of sinful men. Close b}^ is the
well Zem-Zem, to which, according to Arabian
ideas, all Moslems owe their being, for it was
here that the despairing Hagar found water to
restore their great ancestor.^

Here also is the burial-place of Hagar and
Ishmael, marked by a slab for the veneration of
believers. And in the small building, called
Makam Ibrahim, is the stone which served
Abraham as a platform while building the
Kaabah, and which retains the print of his feet.
The Kaabah itself is covered with a brilliant
black cloth, called the Kiswah, which is annually
renewed by the Sultan, and on which are in-
scribed portions of the Koran. ^

When the pilgrim arrives at the last stage on

^ " It appeared to me," says Burton (iii. p. 158) "a com-
mon aerolite." See Syed Ahmed's Essay o)i the Histoi-y
of Mecctty where a pretty view of the Kaabah is given.

2 It was Mohammed's ^grandfather, the guardian of the
Kaabah, who first formed a well for the storing of this water.

3 Described in Burton, iii. 295-9; and cf. Lane's
Modern Egyptians, ii. 213. Burton considers that the
origin of the veiling of the Kaabah must be sought " in
the ancient practice of typifying the Church visible by a
virgin or bride." This seems unlikely. \^an Lennep,

Pilgri7n Rites. 41

his wa}^ to Mecca, about five miles from the
town, he enters the sacred territory. Here,
accordingly, he bathes, lays aside his clothes,
and assumes the proper pilgrim garb (Ihram),
which consists of two unstitched white cotton
cloths, one of which is wrapped round the waist,
while the other is thrown over the shoulders.
This, with sandals, is the only covering of the
pilgrim. On arriving at the sacred building
itself, the pilgrim prays, drinks a cup of the
distasteful water of Zem-Zem, and begins his h
circumambulation, or Tawaf^ Seven times he
makes the circuit of the Kaabah, keeping his
left side next it, uttering prayers and acts of
adoration as he goes. The first three circuits
are made with impetuous movements, as of one
making his way against difficulties, asserting
his belief in the face of an opposing world f the
remaining circuits are made with the usual ease

{Bible Lands^ ii. 717) thinks it indicates its connection
with a people dwelHng in tents. The old Kiswah is sold
piecemeal by the officials. It is much used for book- |9
markers for Korans, and as charms. Waistcoats made of
it make the wearer invulnerable.

1 Some Arabic writers connect this circumambulation
with the motions of the heavenly bodies, affirming that
men should resemble these, not only in purity, but in their
circular motion. Salens Preliminary Discourse^ p. 93 ;
Burton, iii. 205. Reland, De Rel. Moh. p. 123, quotes
authorities to the same eftect.

2 " Ut se alacres futuros ostendant in certamine cum iis
qui plures Deos colunt," says Reland, De Rel. Moh. p. 1 1 7.

4- MoJiaiiiinediinism,

of movement. The Black Stone is then kissed,
the whole body pressed against the sacred
edifice, and the pilgrim gives way to the throng-
ing crovv'd that follows him. The other essen-
tials of pilgrimage are the seven runs between
the Mounts Safa and Marwah, the visit to
Mount Arafat, the stoning of the devil, and the
concluding sacrifice. Worn out with the
exposure, the violent exertions, and the watch-
ing entailed by such ceremonies, the wearied
pilgrim rests a few days and then proceeds
homewards. On his arrival he is hailed as a
distinguished person, his intercession is be-
sought,^ and he is ever after dignified by the
J[y title of Haji added to his name.

A recent English apologist for Mohammedan-
ism has remarked that pilgrimage is " in theory
and in reality alien alike to Mohammedanism
and Christianity," ^ and was merely a concession

1 See Lane, ii. 157.

2 Bosworth Smith, Alohainined, p. 164, Sale's re-
marks {^Prelunifiary Discourse^ p. 93) are well worth
weighhig : " The pilgrimage to Mecca, and the ceremo-
nies prescribed to those who perform it, are, perhaps,
liable to greater exception than any other of Mohammccrs
institutions ; not only as silly and ridiculous in them-
selves, but as relics of idolatrous superstitions. Yet
whoever seriously considers how difficult it is to make
people submit to the abolishing of ancient customs, how
imreasonalDle soever, which they are fond of, especially
where the interest of a considerable party is also con-
cerned, and that a man may with less danger change

yustification of PilgTUJiage. 43

to the natural weakness of his followers. And
no doubt it is inconsistent with the spiritual
sentiments which are found here and there
in the Koran. Had pilgrimage not already-
existed, it would scarcely have been originated
by him who said, " There is no piety in turning
your faces towards the east or west, but he is
pious who believeth in God, and the last day,
and the angels, and the Scriptures, and the
prophets ; who giveth money for God's sake
unto his kindred, and unto orphans, and the
needy, and for redemption of captives ; who is
constant at prayers, and giveth alms ; and of
those who perform the covenant which they
have covenanted, and who behave themselves
patiently in adversity and hardships, and in
times of violence ; these are they who are true,
and these are they who fear God." ^

There seems to have always been among the
best Mohammedans a feeling of something like
apology, if not shame, in regard to this insti-
tution. Som.e of their leading theologians have
been accustomed frankly to admit that the per-
formances enjoined on the pilgrims have no
intrinsic value, and make no appeal to the

many things than one great one, must excuse IMoham-
med's yielding some points of less moment to gain the
principal."

^ Sura ii.

t^

44 AloJiamincdanism,

reason, but they justify them on this very
^, ground, pleading that obedience is never so
disciplinary as when rendered blindly.^ Omar
himself is said to have uttered the following
protest while doing obeisance to the black
stone : *' I know thou canst neither help nor
,^' hurt me, and unless I had seen the prophet
y do it, I would never have kissed thee." And
Hakim, the mad Khalif of Egypt, tried to smash
it with a club.^ But the likelihood is that
Mohammed, who himself belonged to what
may be called the high-priestly family, believed
that some peculiar sanctity attached to the
Kaabah, and, knowing the advantages which
accrued to his city from the annual influx of
pilgrims, resolved to make pilgrimage obligatory
on all his followers. And whether he foresaw
the results of this injunction or not, there can
be no doubt that in point of fact the influence
of his religion has been vastly increased by this
apparently absurd ceremonial. It is this which
has stimulated the devotion of susceptible and
imaginative minds ; it is this which communi-
cates to all Mohammedans an inspiring sense
of the universality of their religion, and exhibits

^ Algazali, quoted in Pocock's Specimen^ pp. 312, 313,
says, " Nihil ha2c ad animum hominis, nee consentanea
naturce ; . . . verum mandate simplici constant." Cf.
Kcland, De Rel. Moh. p. 122.

2 "Sl-Oizhnd^s Mo]ia7]inicda}i Religion Explained^ p. 155.

Uses of Pilgrimage. 45

in a form they can appreciate the unity of all
believers.

,J^ What chiefly struck the young English sailor,
who was compelled to apostatize, and in the
capacity of a slave made the pilgrimage with
his master two centuries ago, was the zeal
which marked the worshippers who had jour-
neyed for months, and possibly pinched for
years to see Mecca ere they died. " It was a
sight, indeed," he says, *' able to pierce one's
heart, to behold so many thousands in their
garments of humility and mortification, with
their naked heads and cheeks w^atered Vv'ith
tears ; and to hear their grievous sighs and
sobs, begging earnestly for the remission of
their sins, and promising newness of life." ^
Burckhardt testifies to the same enthusiasm,
and himself witnessed the emotion of an African,
who, on reaching the Kaabah, burst into a flood
of tears, and exclaimed, " O God, now take my U
soul, for this is paradise." And Captain Bur-
ton, a man not much given to emotion of any
kind, acknowledges the impression made upon
himself by the first sight of the bier -like
Kaabah, and also by the simultaneous responses
of thousands of pilgrims to the sermon in the
temple-court. *' I have seen," he says, ''the
religious ceremonies of many lands, but never
^ Joseph Pitts' Faiiliful Accounf, p. 138.

^

46 Mohammedanism.

— nowhere — aught so solemn, so impressive as
this spectacle." ^ But more permanent than any
religious or emotional impressions made by the
worshipping multitudes on susceptible minds,
is the influence of the visibility given at Mecca
to the vastness and unity of the empire of
Mohammed. It is here, where the Moor from
the shores of the Mediterranean prostrates him-
self by the side of the Malay from the Southern
Pacific, that the Mohammedans learn the extent
of the prophet's dominion.^ It is here they
recognise the grandeur of the brotherhood
Islam would fain introduce, as the wild
Maghrabi and the Indian prince are seen kiss-
ing the stone together.^ The pilgrim rites are
foolish and indefensible, but, unmistakably, the
maintenance of a local centre, as it w^as essen-
tial to Judaism, ^ has proved of incalculable
service to Islam.

\ Four points in the theoretical and practical

^ 'teaching of Mohammed have chiefly provoked

criticism ; the material and gross character of

the heaven ^ he set before his followers, his

' Burton, iii. p. 316. Over against these manifest-
ations of devout feeling we must of course set the fact
that the pilgrim caravans were so notoriously riotous and
debauched, that one of the first objects of the Wahabi
reform was to cleanse them.

2 Mill's History, p. 455. 3 Syed Ameer Ali, p. 184.

4 Cf. Ewald's Antig. of Israel, p. 367.

5 See quotations in Rcland, De Rcl. Moh. p. 200.
Cf. Morison's Life of Bernard, p. 374.

Its Pai^adise. 47

allowance of polygamy and divorce, the slavery
and fatalism which prevail among Mohamme-
dan populations.

That you may judge how far Mohammed
is responsible for directing the hopes of his
people to a material paradise, let me read you
a fair specimen of the descriptions given in the
Koran : " These are they who shall be brought
nigh to God, in gardens of delight ; a crowd
from the ancients, and few from later genera-
tions. On inwrought couches reclining on them
face to face : immortal youths go round about
to them with goblets and ewers and a cup from
a fountain ; their brows ache not from it, nor
fails the sense : and with such fruits as they
shall make choice of, and with flesh of such
birds as they shall long for, and theirs shall be
the Houris with large dark eyes like close-kept
pearls, a recompense for their labours past. No
vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor
charge of sin, but only the cry, Peace, peace !
And the people of the right hand, — how happy
the people of the right hand ! amid thornless
lote -trees and bananas clad with flowers, and
extended shade and flowing waters and abun-
dant fruits, unfailing and unforbidden, and lofty
couches. Verily of a rare creation have we
created the Houris, and we have made them
ever virgins, dear to their spouses, of equal

48 MohajJiuiedanisni.

age with them, for the people of the right hand,
a crowd from the ancients and a crowd from
later generations."^

Such passages frequently occur in the earlier
Suras of the Koran, and with little variation
of phraseology ; and I think a candid mind,
accustomed to the Christian conception of
heaven, must own to being somewhat shocked
and disappointed by the low ideal of perfected
human bliss set before the Mohammedan. One
might suppose Mohammed had laid himself
open to the insinuation conveyed in the well-
known lines :

" That prophet ill sustains his holy call,
Who finds not heavens to suit the tastes of all ;
Houris for boys, omniscience for sages,
And wings and glories for all ranks and ages."

Among Mohammedans there are many in
every generation whose aspirations are spiri-
tual, and who crave a heavenly life in which
their purest and worthiest purposes shall not
be defeated by the rebellings of their lower
nature, nor even be delayed by providing for
its necessities.^ They, like the best among our-
selves, seek not only an outwardly secure and

^ Sura Ivi. 10.

2 Reland says, " Non igitur verum est, quod multi auc-
tores qui oppugnarunt Mohamniedanisniuni scripserunt,
Muslimannos non alium bcatitudinem in coelo agnoscere,
nisi usum voluptatum quae sensus afficiunt " (p. 204).

Paradise. 49

affluent condition, but much more an inward
resemblance to God Himself. It has therefore
been commonly pleaded that these somewhat
luscious descriptions in the Koran are to be
understood as figurative, and to be interpreted
as Christians interpret the pictures given in the
Book of Revelation/ But there is a very con-
spicuous difference between the two cases. In
the Book of Revelation, as in the other parts of
Scripture, there is so much said of the spiritual
joys of the future life, as to eclipse all that
is said of pleasures of a lower kind, and to
suggest to every reader a spiritual interpreta-
tion, even of the passages in which material
descriptions are given; whereas in the Koran
it must be owned that the promises of physical
pleasure are, to say the least, very greatly in
excess of promises of a higher kind. It will
also be remarked that even where physical de-
scriptions are used in the New Testament, they
are never of the grosser kind. To the Christian
conception, heaven is formed by the circum-
stance that it is the life suited to Jesus Christ
glorified. We know what He found pleasure
in on earth, and we conceive what are His
heavenly joys. This defines heaven for us, and
absolutely excludes from it everything gross,

I Lane, Modern Egypt, i. p. 84. Syed All's Critical
Exam. pp. 277-285.

5

5 o AloJia in mcda n ism .

mean, and earthly. The Mohammedan has
nothing so clear to rule his conceptions of the
future life. Tradition indeed ascribes to Mo-
hammed the saying that " the most favoured
of God will be he who shall see his Lord's face
night and morning— a felicity which will surpass
all the pleasures of the body, as the ocean sur-
passes a drop of sweat." But in the Koran
itself there is too little evidence that the habi-
tual idea of heaven Mohammed himself pos-
sessed was other than that of an abode of peace,
security, luxury, and reward.'

A deeper and more radical fault of Aloham-
medanism is the constancy and urgency of its
appeal to the desire of reward. It has caught
the primitive tone of the Mosaic legislation,
and has altogether failed to correct this by in-
troducing such motives as form the strength of
the Christian character. It is true that to
awaken in men a regard to the future is a feat
worthy of the greatest moral teacher.* It fur-
nishes him with a hold over the conduct of his
disciples which is both justifiable and influen-

^ Major Osborn has very distinctly illustrated the
thoroughly materialistic character of Mohammed's con-
ceptions. See Islam under the Arabs^ pp. 34-38.

2 "L'idde de I'avenir est une des plus puissantes en mo-
rale, et il est gloricux pour Mohammed de I'avoir misc en
activitd avec plus de force qu'aucun autre legislateur."
Oelsner, Des Effets^ p. 34.

b

Selfishness in Religion. 5 i

tial. But a character formed chiefly on such a
basis will inevitably lack the highest qualities.

"Is selfishness
For time, a sin — spun out to eternity,
Celestial prudence ? Shame ! "

The hope of reward and the fear of punish-
ment are rightly used until the inward dispo-
sition for virtue grows ; but the religion in which
these are the chief or the only motives brands
itself as tit only for the lower strata of humanity
and its undeveloped races. These motives are
retained in Christianity, because Christianity
appeals to the most degenerate as well as to
the most mature and noble specimens of our
race/ but it relies upon them only for pssda-
gogic and occasional assistance, and looks to
very different and much loftier motives for pro-
ducing its highest strain of saintly character
and of heroic virtue. And if, even with its
mingling of higher motives, Christianity has
suffered from the natural incapacity of men to
live by them, and from their ineradicable dis-
position to barter with God, it is not surprising
that a proud and self-righteous belief in the ^^
meritoriousness of good works has always been
part and parcel of Mohammedanism, nor that

^ " La seule religion chretienne est proportionnee a tous,
etant melee d'exterieur et d'interieur." — Pascal, Peiisecs,
II. iv. 3.

52 ]\IoJiainmcdanism.

it encourages the endeavour ''to make one's
soul" by fastings, alms, and endowments.^

As to the supposed fatalism of Islam, it is
true that among Mohammedan populations
there is a tendency to accept as destiny ills
T^-hich might possibly be removed by vigorous
action. " The great bulk of the people are
passive : wars and revolutions rage around
them : they accept them as the decrees of a
fate it is useless to strive against." Such is the
testimonv of those who have lived for some
time among Mohammedans.^ This however
seems more a matter of race than of religion,
of individual temperament than of creed. The
Arabs despise and reproach the Turks for their
stupid apathy in ascribing to God what is the
result of their own folly. " He bared his back,"
they say, " to the stings of the mosquitoes, and
then cried out, God has decreed I should be
stung." 2 It was an Arab who, when his religion
was charged with fatalism, retorted, " Oh,
man, if the wail against which I am now
sitting were to shake above my head, should I
fold my feet under me and say, ' Allah kereem '
[It is the will of God] , or should I use the legs
God has given me to escape from it ?"-^ Mo-

I Lady Uuff Gordon's Letters.

° Osborn's Islam inide?' the Arabs^ p. 27.

3 Burckhardt's Notes, i. 247.

4 Lady Dulf Gordon's Last Letters, p. 23.

Its Fatalism. 53

hammed himself was as thorough a predesti- n_ \K
narian as Calvin, but just as little of a fatalist.
His belief in the decrees of God led him tc»
accept the inevitable with resignation, but
never interfered with his freedom and vigour of
action. Again and again in the Koran he
asserts that " God misleadeth whom He will,
and whom He will He guideth," ^ reproducing
with almost verbal exactness the words of Paul.
In accepting this doctrine he merely coincided,
as Voltaire with his usual insight and knowledge
has shown, with the almost universal opinion
of antiquity. His followers have certainly in
many instances perverted his doctrine, refusing
to attempt the conversion of unbelievers on
the ground that the number of the faithful is
decreed, and cannot be increased or diminished \^
and being unnerved in epidemics by the idea
that their fate is unavoidable. And there are
many sects among the Mohammedans, such as
the Djabaris, the Rayatis, and the Djamis, who
deny free-will altogether, as there are others
who deny that Allah has predestined the deeds
and inclinations of His creatures ; but with
neither of these deductions from his doctrine
is Mohammed fairly chargeable.^ He made no

' Sura xiv. 4. See also xiii. 30 ; iii. 139 ; viii. 17, &c.

2 Lane, i. 353-

3 Gobineaii, Des Religions, &c., p. 72. BosAvorth
Smith's jMohani. p. 191.

5 4 Mo ha m ;;/ cda n ism .

attempt to reconcile man's freedom of action with
the predestination and overruling providence
of God. He gave the freest play to both beliefs,
and while he nerved his troops for battle by as-
suring them they could no more escape their
fate at home than on the field, he forbade them
to enter infected cities, and dealt with them as
free agents. And probably his immediate fol-
lowers, W'ho had been brought up to believe
that their fate was ruled by the stars, and fixed
from the hour of their birth, felt that the doc-
trine of Mohammed was at once more rational
and more encouraging.^

The effects upon society of- the Christian and
Mohammedan religions are most obviously dis-
'tinguished by the position assigned to woman.
Christian society is monogamist, Mohammedan
polygamist. The law laid down in the Koran for
the regulation of marriages is as follow^s : (Sura
iv.) "Take in marriage, of the women wdio please
3^ou, two, or three, or four ; but if ye fear that
y,e cannot act equitably to so many, take one
only, or the slaves whom ye have acquired."
In the opening words of the Sura from which
tliis law is taken, there is, indeed, some slight
indication of a leaning towards monogamy. "O
men, fear the Lord, who hath created you out

^ riiilippsohn (^Develop, of Religious Idea, p. 177)
traces Mohammed's predestinarian belief to Sabeanism.

Its Polygamy, 55

of one man, and out of him created his wife,
and from them two hath multipHed many men
and women ; and fear God, by whom ye beseech
one another ; and respect women ^ who have
borne you, for God is watching over you."
Mohammedans, then, are, by the law of their
prophet, allowed to possess four wives at the

' same time.^

^ The defence of polygamy has been undertaken
from various points of view, and with varying
degrees of insight and of earnestness. But one
cannot detect much progress among its de-
fenders. F. W. Newman has nothing to say in
its favour which had not previously been sug-
gested by Voltaire ; nothing, we may say, which
does not occur to any one who wishes to present
the argument for a plurality of wives. ' It is
somewhat late in the day to be called upon to
argue for monogamy as abstractly right. Spe-
culators like Aristotle,^ who have viewed the
subject both as statesmen having a regard to
what is practicable and will conduce to social
prosperit}^ and as philosophers reasoning from

^ Lit. " the wombs."

2 '' Notwithstanding what Sale and some other learned
men have asserted on this subject, the Muslim law cer-
tainly does not limit the number of concubine-slaves whom
a man may have, whether in addition to, or without, a wife
or wives."— Lane's llfod. Egyptians^ i. 123 ; cf. Sale's
Ko7-an, Introd. sec. vi.

3 Arist. Econ. i. 2, 8.

56 ]\loJiainintdanisnu

first principles, have long ago demanded for
their ideal society not only monogamy, but also
that mutual respect and love, and that strict
purity and modesty, w^hich polygamy kills. Let
us say briefly that the only ground conscience
recognises as warranting two persons to become
one in flesh is, that they be first of all one in
spirit. That absolute surrender of the person
which constitutes marriage is justified only by
the circumstance that it is a surrender of the
heart as well, and that it is mutual. To an
ideal love polygamy is abhorrent and impossible.
As Mohammed himself, in another connection,
and with more than his usual profundity, said,
" God has not put two hearts in you." This is
the grand law imbedded in our nature, and by
which it is secured that the children born into
the world be the fruit of the devoted surrender
of one human spirit to another ; by which — in
other words — it is secured that love, the root
principle of all human virtue and duty, be trans-
mitted to the child and born in it. This is the
bentificent law expressed in monogamy, and this
law is traversed and robbed of its effects pre-
cisely in so far as even monogamous marriages
are prompted by fleshly or worldly rather than
by spiritual motives. The utilitarian argument
Mr. Lecky^ has summed up in three sentences :
^ Hist, of Eur op. iMo?'als, ii. 295.

Apologies for Polygamy. 5 7

" Nature, by making the number of males and
females nearly equal, indicates it as natural.
In no other form of marriage can the govern-
ment of the family, which is one of the chief
ends of marriage, be so happily sustained ; ^
and in no other does woman assume the position
of the equal of man."

But we have here to do only with Mohamme-
dan apologists, and their reasonings are some-
what perplexing ; for they first maintain that
nature intended us to be polygamists,^ and then
secondly declare that "the greatest and m.ost
reprehensible mistake committed by Christian
writers is to suppose that Mohammed either
adopted or legalised polygamy." Probably the
most that can be said for Mohammed in regard
to this matter is that he restricted polygamy,
and that its abolition was impossible and un-
suitable to the population he had to do with.

The allegation, however, that Mohammed
confined polygamiy within narrower limits than

' That Mohammedans are not unconscious of the dis-
advantage of polygamy, is shown by the Turkish proverb :

Duo asini, una Carawana :
Du^ uxores, unum forum.

As Pfeiffer (p. 424) explains it, *' Duo asini tantum creant
molestije quantum totus comitatus : et ubi duas mulieres,
ibi ob lites perpetuum est forum."

2 Syed Ahmed's Essay, p. 8 ; and Syed Ameer Ah's
Crit. Eiam., p. 226.

58 MoJiammedanism.

the Arabs bad previously recognised, tboiigb
true, is immaterial. For, in the first place, he
restricted polygamy indeed in others, but not in
his own case ; and thus left upon the minds of
his followers the inevitable impression that an
unrestricted pol3^gamy was the higher state of
the two. In the second place, while he re-
stricted the number of lawful wives, he did not
restrict the number of slave-concubines. In
the third place, his restriction was practically
of little value, because very few men could
afford to keep more than four wives. And,
lastly, as to the principle, he left it precisely
where it was, for as Mr. Freeman justly ob-
serves : " This is one of the cases in which the
first step is everything. The difference between
one wife and two is everything ; that between
four and five thousand is comparatively
nothing." ^

And if the principle be defended as at least
relatively good, nothing is to be urged against
this as matter of fact ; although the circum-
stance has been overlooked, that already very
many thousands of Christian Arabs had found
it quite possible to live in monogamy. But that
polygamy is not incompatible with a sound, if
not perfectly developed, morality, and with the
highest tone of feeling, no one who has read

^ Lectures, p, 69.

Law of Divorce. 59

the history of Israel will be disposed to deny.
That it may suit a race in a certain stage of its
development, and may in that stage lead to
purer living and surer moral growth than its
prohibition would, may be granted. But neces-
sarily the religion which incorporates in its code
of morals such allowances, stamps itself as
something short of the final religion.

But the allowance of polygamy is by no
means so destructive of social progress as the
facility of divorce allowed by Mohammedan law.
Syed Ameer Ali informs us that in India
" ninety-five Moslems out of every hundred
are perfect monogamists;" that "plurality of
wives has come to be regarded as an evil, and
as something opposed to the teaching of the
Prophet ; " ' but the principle of monogamy re-
quires, not only that a man should have but
one wife at a time, but that marriage be indis-
soluble save by death or infidelity. It is nothing
to the purpose to aver that such and such a pro-
portion of Mohammedans have actually only one
wife, if their law allows them to change that
wife as often as they please ; and if, in point of
fact, they largely avail themselves of that liberty.
Lane tells us that polygamy is exceptional in
Egypt, but he adds that "there are certainly
not many persons in Cairo who have not di-
Syed All's Crit. Exam. pp. 227 and 246.

6o MoJiainmcdanism.

vorced one wife if they have been long mar-
ried," and that there are many who in the course
of ten years have married as many as twenty,
thirty, or more wives." ' No doubt this is not
considered respectable, and no honourable man
would so indulge his caprice ; but, unfortunately,
the law is made, not for the honourable, but for
the dishonourable, and the law allows divorce on
the easiest of terms. It is a principle of Mo-
hammedan law that " a husband may divorce
"^ his wife without any misbehaviour on her part,
or without assigning any cause." ^ The hus-
band has only to say, " I divorce thee," or
*' thou art divorced ; " ^ and without any legal
procedure or appearance in a court of law, the
w^ife is no longer a wife ; whereas the woman
can only divorce her husband before. a court of
law, and by proving ill-treatment or other
reasonable ground.

Mohammed himself probably intended to im-
prove the position of women. Possibly, like
Milton, he doubted not " but with one gentle
stroking to wipe away ten thousand tears out

1 Lane's Modern Ei^ypf. i. 227, 231. Burckhardt
{Notes on Bedouins^ i. no) says : " Most Arabs are con-
tented with a sin<,de wife, but for this monogamy they
make amends by indulging in variety."

2 T ago re Law Lectures for 1873, p. 389.

3 Or any one of twenty other expressions which may be
found in the Hidaya, or in the Tagore Law Lectures.

Law of Divorce. 6i

of the life of man." There is no reason to dis-
believe the traditions which represent him as
expressing indignation at men who dismissed
their wives for slight offences. He himself,
although on one occasion he might almost have
been expected to use his legal right of divorce,
did not do so. And there is a look of genuine-
ness about the saying attributed to him : " God
has not created anything on earth Avhich He
likes better than the emancipating of slaves,
nor has He created anything which He dislikes
more than divorce." ^ And in accordance with
this feeling he did lay on the license of his fol-
lowers certain restrictions, which have, how-
ever, proved altogether insufficient to make the
law anything else than a mere abomination.
The first restriction was to the effect that
divorce was revocable until it had been pro-
nounced three times. " Three successive de-
clarations at a month's interval \\ere necessary

T Quoted from the Mishkat by Syed Ali, p. 239. Syed
Ahmed (p. 14 of Essay on question whether Islam has
been beneficial) says : " Our Prophet constantly pointed
out to his followers how opposed divorce was to the best
interests of society ; he always expatiated on the evils
which flowed from it, and ever exhorted his disciples to
treat women with respect and kindness, and to bear pa-
tiently their violence and ill-temper ; and he always spoke
of those who availed themselves of divorce in a severe
and disparaging manner."

62 ■ AloJianinicdanisJii.

in order to niake it irrevocable." ^ This was
intended to protect women, not to say the hus-
bands themselves, against the consequences of
an ill-considered, passionate utterance of the
fatal words. But it is notorious that all the
benefit of this restriction is cancelled by Moham-
medan law, which considers that the treble
divorce uttered in one breath is as irrevocable
as when it is uttered at three distinct times.*
The second feature of the law of divorce which
is claimed by Mohammedan apologists as a re-
striction, is the provision that when a woman
has been irrevocably divorced she cannot ever
be taken back by her husband, unless in the
meantime she has been married to another man.
The Mosaic law pronounced this to be *' abomi-
nation before the Lord." ^ And it is possible
that Mohammed, knowing how abhorrent it is
to the Oriental that his wife be even seen by
another man, considered that by issuing this
enactment he was availing himself of the
strongest possible deterrent from divorce. If
so, he miscalculated the effect of his law, which
has in point of fact degraded Moslem women to
a deplorable extent.*^ The third restriction is

^ Scdillot, quoted by Syed Ali ; see also Mill's His-
tory of MuJianinicdanisiii^ p. 341.

2 See the Hidayah or Tagorc Laiv Lectures as above.

3 Deut. xxiv. 24.

4 See Lane's Modern E^pt* i. 230 ; and the Arabic

Indissolitbility of Marriage. ^^

the provision that when a husband divorces his
wife he shall pay her dowr}^ And this is said
to exercise some restraint upon the Turks, for
though the minimum dowry recognised by law
is only ten dirhems, or a few shillings, it is
in some instances very large. ^

The law of our religion and of our land takes
the highest possible ground in the matter of
marriage. It proceeds upon the understanding
that the indissoluble quality of marriage is that
which best guarantees a perception of its re-
sponsibilities, and a calm and well-considered
acceptance of them. It proceeds upon the
principle that prevention is better than cure,
and that it is a w^iser and safer policy to beget
within the minds of men a strong sense of the
irrevocable nature of the act than to encourage
them to inconsiderate recklessness by the pro-
spect of an easy divorce. It quite understands
that there are many unhappy marriages; it does
not shut its eves to the scandals that from time
to time occupy public attention ; it does not

proverb, " A thousand lovers rather than one Mostahel ; "
on which Burckhardt's brief note {Proverbs, p. 25; is a
caution to all apologists for this ill-advised law.

I Mill {History of iMithaniniedanistn, p. 469) speaks
as if this had considerable practical results : but Hughes
{Notes on Muhanimadanisi}i^ p. 122) says: "The diffi-
culty of restoring the dowry is avoided by compelling the
poor woman, through harsh treatment, to sue for a divorce
herself, as in this case she can claim nothing."

64 Mohaminedanism.

ignore the voluntary separations, the quarrels,
the murders,^ which prove that so long as those
who enter into marriage are imperfect, mar-
riage itself will not always be satisfactory ; but
it assumes that however great are the evils of
indissolubility, the evils of facile divorce would
be greater still. All that can be pleaded in
favour of a relaxation of our marriage laws has
been put most pathetically and in his unap-
proachable language by Milton ; but it is some-
what unfair of Mohammedan apologists to
appeal to him as if he were an advocate of any-
thing like the facile divorce of their own law.
Such a system as their law upholds has always
been the accompaniment either of an unde-
■j veloped or of a decaying stage in a people's
history. The evils it wrought in imperial Rome,
when, according to Seneca, women reckoned
their years rather by their husbands than by
the consuls,^ are well known. " We find," savs
Mr. Lecky, " Cicero repudiating his wife
Terentia, because he desired a new dowry ;

' Sec the terrible paragraph in Legouvd's Histoire des
Fevuncs^ p. 232 : " Qui cree parmi le peuple tant de
bigamies de fait ? L'indissolubilite. Qui fait que trois
ouvriers sur huit ont deuJv menages ? L'indissokibilitc,"'

2 "When Michaud asked an aged Egyptian whether he
remembered the campaign of Napoleon, he answered that
he had his seventeenth wife at that time." — Arnold's
Ishun^ p. 21 1. \

Depreciation of Women. 65

Augustus compelling the husband of Livia to
repudiate her that he might marry her himself;
Cato ceding his wife, with the consent of her
father, to his friend Hortensius, and resuming
her after his death ; Maecenas continually
changing his wife ; Sempronius Sophus re-
pudiating his wife, because she had once been
to the public games without his knowledge ;
Paulus ^milius taking the same step without
assigning any reason, and defending himself
by saying, ' My shoes are new and well-
made, but no one knows where they pinch
me.'"^

Manifestly, however, the position of Mo-
hammedan women is the result of instincts or
principles lying far deeper than the opinion or
religion of Mohammed. It is the result of the
Semitic idea of woman, that she is a "vessel,"^
a mere utensil for man's service.- Accordingly,
after all that has been written both in condem-
nation and defence of this law, no utterance
seems to go so directly to the root of the whole
matter as the judgment pronounced by the
thoroughly informed and impartial Lane.^
" The laws," he says, " relating to marriage and
the license of polygamy, the facility of divorce
allowed by the Koran, and the permission of

^ Lecky's European Morals, ii. 324.
2 Cf. Fairbairn's Studies, p. 279. 3 Mod. Egyp. \. 121.

6

^

66 JMoJiaminedanism.

concubinage, are essentially the natural and
necessary consequences of the main principle
of the constitution of Moslem society — the re-
striction of the intercourse of the sexes before
marriage. Few men would marry if he who
was disappointed in a wife whom he had never
seen before were not allowed to take another ;
and in the case of a man's doing this, his own
happiness, or that of the former wife, or the
happiness of both these parties, may require
his either retaining this wife or divorcing
her."

Mohammed himself was a man of a com-
passionate and humane disposition, and there
can, I think, be no doubt that he intended
to ameliorate the condition of slaves. Had he
conceived the idea of emancipating them, he
would probably have found it an idea impossible
to execute ; and in declaring all Moslems
brethren, he took the surest means in his power
of eventually accomplishing this end, and in the
meantime of securing their good treatment.
His parting admonitions to his followers on
this subject are too important to be omitted.
" Your slaves ! " he says, " see that ye feed them
with such food as ye eat yourselves ; and clothe
them with the stuff ye wear ; and if they com-
mit a fault which ye are not inclined to forgive,
then sell them, for they are the servants of the

Slavery. 67

Lord, and are not to be tormented. Ye people !
hearken to my speech, and comprehend the
same ; know that every Moslem is the brother
of every other Moslem ; all of you are op the
same equality ; ye are one brotherhood." ^ And
it must be owned that, at least in certain coun-
tries, the doctrine of human equality thus pro-
claimed has received practical exemplifications
which are sadly wanting in the parallel region
of Christian practice. The Caliph Omar, leading
his camel while his slave rides ; the prophet's
daughter Fatimah, taking her turn at the mill
with her own slaves ; these are but specimens
of the scrupulous observance in general paid
by Moslems to the injunctions of their prophet.
Unfortunately, whatever kindly intention Mo-
hammed had towards the slave, and whatever
beneficial results might have been wrought by
his bold proclamation of the equality of all be-
lievers, have been frustrated by the Koran's
sanction of concubinage. There is no dis-
guising the fact that it is this allowance which
maintains the slave-trade with all its well-
known abominations and horrors. It is this
system, distinctly sanctioned in the Koran, and
practised by Mohammed himself, which is re-
sponsible for the degradation and misery which
become the life-long lot of the wretched girls

I Muir, iv. 239.
6 ^^

68 Moha^nme danism.

who survive the terrible transit down the Nile
under the tender mercies of the brutal Gellabs/
Enlightened Mohammedans ^ themselves are
humiliated by the pollutions and misery attach-
ing to this system. They say in so many words
that it is ** to the lasting disgrace of the majority
of the followers of Mohammed," that ** slavery
has been allowed to flourish by purchase and
other means," ^ and that the day is come for the
Moslems to show " the falseness of the as-
persions cast on the memory of the great and
noble prophet, by proclaiming in explicit terms
that slavery is reprobated by their Faith, and
discountenanced by their Code." But while we
honour the desire of these men to cleanse their
religion of so black a stain, how are they to
stir a single Moham.medan community to abolish
an indulgence to which their *^ great and noble
prophet " showed them the way, and which is
regulated for in the Koran ? Slavery can only
be abolished when concubinage is abolished ;
and when concubinage is abolished, the whole
'^character of Islam, and especially its attitude
to its prophet and its sacred book, must be
altered.

I Lane's Mod. Egyp. i. 236.
« Syed Ahmed, p. 25. 3 Syed Ali, p. 259.

Jj'.

II.

MOHAMMEDANISM :
ITS SUCCESS AND FAILURE,

" Be joyful, he joyful ; my followers are like rain, of which it is
■unknown whether the frst or last fall zvill be the best ; or like a
garden from which a multitude has been fed one year, and then
another the next year, and perhaps the last is more mnncrous than
the first, and better." — Mohammed.

II,

BEFORE the appearance of Mohammed, the
highest and the lowest forms of religion
existed side by side among the tribes of Arabia.^
The original faith appears to have been the
simple monotheism of Abraham. But a creed
which had no elaborate symbolism, no ritual but
that which inculcated prayer at sunrise, noon,
and sunset, proved too spiritual for the wild
and impressible Arabians. Praying at sunrise
quickly became praying to sunrise; and the
idea of an unseen God who ruled the heavens
and guided them in their wanderings, was

^ The great authority for the Pre-islamic condition of
Arabia is still Pocock's " libellus incomparabihs," entitled,
Specimen HistoricE ArabiDii. Oxon. 1650. (Notes dated
1648) ; of which Gibbon justly says, " Consult, peruse, and
study the Specimen. The 358 notes [pages of notes ?] form
a classic and original work on the Arabian antiquities."
Pocock makes it his business to explain " quales invenerit
Arabes suos Mohammedes, et quales reliquerit." Ras-
mussen's Historia Arab 11 m auie hlamisnuim and his
Additamenta are also works of original research, and are
well worth consulting.

7 2 Alohammeda ?i ism,

obscured by their dependence on the motions
of the planets for all their prognostications and
reckonings. What their own life and habits
chiefly impressed upon them was that every-
thing depended on these inaccessible heavenly
fbodies ; and so their worship gradually was
\directed to Sabaoth, the host of heaven, and
ikhey received the name of Sabians.^ But at
a later period, when Neo-Platonism was adopt-
ing and adapting every form of worship, it
nowhere found a more promising field than in
this worship of the heavens. For it was the
favourite idea of this school, an idea counte-
nanced by their Master, that the abyss existing
between God and His creatures was bridged by
intermediary gods. These intermediate gods
were supposed to animate or have their resi-
dence in, or at least to make themselves visible
and influential through, the planets. The
planets therefore must be carefully observed ;
their risings, settings, conjunctions, and in-
fluences noted, and all human actions regulated
in conformity with these. If Saturn be in the

' "Notum est Abrahamum patrem nostrum educatum
esse in fide Zabaeomm, qui statuerunt nullum esse deuni
pra^ter Stellas" Maimonides, quoted in Wright's Christi-
anity in Arabia^ p. 27). The traditions regarding Abra-
ham are given by Caussin de Perceval, i. 161 ; who also
(i. 349) names the different planets worshipped by the
various tribes.

P re-Islamic Woi^ship. ^2)

ascendant, then it is advisable to select at that
time such dresses, seals, amulets, incantations,
and prayers as may be supposed pleasing to
this planetary god. Another step in the down-
ward process was taken, when permanent and
stationary representations of these gods were
felt to be superior to the planets themselves,
which were sometimes out of sight when their
help was required. Images were therefore
formed, and worship was offered to them rather
than to the stars they represented.^

It will thus be understood how a vague
belief in a supreme God continued to underlie
the profuse idolatry of the Arabian tribes. " I
dedicate myself to Thy service, O God ! I
dedicate myself to Thy service, O God ! Thou
hast no companion, except him of whom Thou
art absolute Master, and of whatever is his."
This seems an explicit enough confession of
monotheism. Yet in practice great deference
was shown to these companions of God,
though their powers were but delegated. Thus,
if on offering their first-fruits some wdiich bC'
longed to God fell over to the idol's portion,
they made no restitution. If while irrigating
the idol's ground, the water ran over to God's
land, they dammed it up ; while if it ran from

^ Voqqq}^, Specimen^ 12,'^et seq. : — An admirable account
is given of Zabisin in Chamber's Encyclopccdia.

74 MoJiammedanism.

God's to the idol's, they did not interfere, con-
ceiving that the Supreme was more placable
than the inferior ; and transferring, as Freeman
remarks, their knowledge of earthly courts to
that of heaven.' In the Kaabah itself, or con-
spicuous in its sacred enclosures, were no fewer
than 360 idols, one for each day in the lunar
year of Arabia. Chief among these was Hobal,
the huge image of red agate, revered as the
giver of rain, and holding in his hand the point-
less and featherless arrows of divination. Here
also — crowning proof of the comprehensiveness
of the early religion — was, perhaps, or a painting
of the Madonna and child. ^ But the idols
against which the Koran inveighs, were the
supposed antediluvian relics — Wadd, in the
form of a man ; Sawa, represented as a woman ;
Yaghuth, worshipped in the shape of a lion ;
Yaiik, who was known under the figure of a
horse ; and Nasr, under that of an eagle. Still
more firmly rooted in the affections of the
people, and more obnoxious to Mohammed,
were the three goddesses Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and

^ See Sale's Intfoditction, and P^reeinan's Lectures,
p. 30

2 Possibly writers have too easily assumed that the
mother and child represented the Virgin and our Lord. In
India, Devaki and Crishna are so represented ; in Egypt,
Isis and Horus ; and in Greece, Venus and Cupid. See
Rawlinson's Herod, ii. p. 539.

Arabian Idolatiy, 75

Manah.^ " What think ye," he says, " of Al-
Lat, and Al-Uzza, and Manah, that other third
goddess? Have ye male children and God
female ? This is an unjust partition. They
are no other than empty names, which ye and
your fathers have named goddesses." ^ Or as
another Sura more fully explains his meaning i^
"They attribute daughters unto God ; but unto
themselves children of the sex they desire.
When any of them is told that a female child
is born to him, his face grows black, and he is
deeply grieved ; he hideth himself from the
people, because of the ill tidings which have
been told him ; considering within himself
whether he shall keep it with disgrace, or
whether he shall bury it in the dust." Beneath
this worship of stars, of the images of inter-
mediate gods or illustrious ancestors, lay the
deeper depth of Fetishism. As the straw is
clutched by the drowning man, so, to those
who had nothing else to trust in, a tree, or
a stone, or even a lump of dough, was enough
to admit of the expression of confidence. And
it might be difficult to determine whether, when
the Hanifites in time of famine ate their god,
the ridicule of their enemies was excited more

^ See Wilkinson's note on Alilat in Rawlinson's Herod.
iii. 8. And for the sites of the temples of these goddesses,
Caussin de Percival's Histoire dcs Arabes^ i. 269.

2 Sura liii. 3 Sura xvi.

76 MoJLammeda7iism,

by triumph over their helplessness or in satire
of their superstition.^

As their notions of the divine government
were confused and various, so also were their
ideas of the future state. Some believed in an
eternal order of nature, which admitted of no
act of creation and of no final, designed con-
summation in which all beings who had con-
sciously contributed to it would play a part.
Some admitted a creative beginning of things,
but could not believe in any final restoration.
Some accepted both,^ and in pursuance of their
belief in a state after death tied a camel to the
grave, that when the dead man rose he might
TxOt be exposed to the ignominy of walking on
his own feet to the judgment-bar. Others again
believed in metempsychosis, and adopted the
curious semi-materialistic notion that out of the
blood gathered about the brain of the dead,
there was formed a bird, which they called
Hamah, and which visited the sepulchre once
in a hundred years.^ If the dead man had

'^ Comederunt Hanifitse dominum suum ob famcm
antiquam et inopiam." The saying of a Tamamitc re-
ported by Rasmusscn, Additainentn^ p. 76.

2 Mosheim is of opinion that their ideas of immortality
were derived from Jewish or Christian sources, but this
seems very doubtful. See Mosheim's Diss, ad Hist. Eccl.
ii. 648.

3 Pocock, pp. 134, 5.

Pre-Islamic Barbarism. ^ ']']

been murdered, his spirit having transmigrated
into this bird, it hovered over his grave, crying,
Oscuni, oscuni ! (give me drink, give me drink !)
until the blood of the murderer was shed to
satiate it.

In conjunction with such idolatries and super-
stitions, one expects to find a very imperfect
civilisation, and some habits and customs which
may be termed barbarous. '' An infinity of tribes,
some settled, but the greater number nomadic,
without community of interests or a common
centre, ordinarily at war with one another —
such," says one of our best authorities,^ " was
Arabia in the time of Mohammed." Tribal wars,
family feuds, and marauding expeditions were
so much the normal state of things, that it was
only by agreeing to suspend hostilities during
certain months of the year that the necessary
pursuits could be followed with safety. The
state of society must have resembled that of
the ancient Germans, of whom Tacitus says,
" pigrum et iners videtur sudore acquirere quod
possis sanguine parare ;" or that significantly
hinted at in the suggestive complaint of Wat
Tinlinn —

" They burned my little lonely tower :
It had not been burnt this year and more ! "

Their leisure seems to have been chiefly spent
^ Dozy, Histoi7'e des Mussulmans ^ i. i6.

A

7 8 Mo ha in me da 71 ism .

in gambling and drinking. Only a small por-
tion in some of the districts, and none at all in
others, could read and write/ This inability
to read made them prize highly recitations
of poetry, whether original or not. These
poems were their tribal and family archives,
maintaining the memory of heroic deeds, and of
ancient friendships and feuds. They were of
course numerous ; so much so, that some
centuries after Mohammed, Hammad the nar-
rator undertook to repeat one hundred pre-
Mohammedan poems for every letter of the
alphabet, and wore out the patience of his
hearers before exhausting his stock. ^

The ugliest features, however, of the times
of ignorance, were the marriage laws and the
custom of burying female children alive. It
was customary for the son to inherit the father's
wives along with his other property. Female
infants have never been much in repute in
barbarous countries. To this day the Breton
farmer, to whom a daughter is born, says, " My
wife has had a miscarriage." ^ In Sparta, of
ten exposed children, seven were female. The
Hebrew law reckoned a woman ceremonially

* Pocock's authorities (pp. 156, 7) imply even greater
ignorance.

2 Wright's Early Christianity in Arabia, p. 6.

3 Lerouvd, Hist, des Fenuncs, pp. 13-17.

Exposure of Female Children. 79

unclean if she gave birth to a son, but doubly
so if she gave birth to a daughter. But while
those countries are the exceptions in which the ,
custom of exposing children has not at some
time being practised, it was practised in Arabia
in a more than usually cold-blooded manner.
Sometimes, indeed, the child was made away
with as soon as born, but often she was allowed
to attain her sixth year, and then, when she
might be supposed to have wound herself
inextricably round the affections of her parents,
her father would one day say to his wife, " Per-
fume and adorn her, that I may take her away
to her mothers." This being done, he would
lead her to a pit he had prepared, bid her look
into it, and, standing behind her, would push
her in, and immediately fill it in level with the
ground.^ Som.e idea of the extent to which
this was practised may be formed from the fact"
that one man had saved from this horrible
inhumation no fewer than 280 girls. ^

But Judaism and Christianity were also
largely, if not very purely, represented in Arabia r
before the time of Mohammed. Even before
the Christian era, the Jews had firmly estab-
lished themselves in Arabia. And it is probable

1 Pocock, p. 336.

2 Rasmussen's Additanienta ad Hist. Arabuni ante
Islam, p. 67.

So Mohammeda7iism.

that their colonies already thriving in that
mercantile country would offer considerable
attractions to those who were forced to flee
from their own land during and after the Ro-
man invasion. Several of the tribes, notably
those of Kendah and Kenanah, of Al Hareth Ibn
Caab, and the powerful tribe of Hamyarites,
professed the Jewish religion.' At one time
they could raise an army of 120,000 men,"*
which, thanks to the unity maintained by their
creed, was probably a larger army than any
other community of Arabia could have brought
into the field. " Centuries before Mohammed,
Kheibar, five days from Medina, and Yemen in
South Arabia, were in the hands of the Jews." ^
In Medina itself there was a large Jewish
population, said to be descended from those
who fled from Nebuchadnezzar, and their in-
fluence is clearly understood when we see the
pains which the prophet took at the outset of
his mission to conciliate them, and the difficul-
ties he found in subduing them. In the rites
of Islam — in circumcision, fasting, pilgrimage,
the Kibleh in prayer — the family connection

' " Judaismo addicti erant Himyaritce, Cananitas, Gens
Haretsi, filii Cabi, atque Cenditac." — Rasmusscn, Addita-
7neHta, p. 76. Pocock, Specimen, p. 136.

2 Milman's History of the Jeivs^ iii. p. 88.

3 Deutsch's Islain^ p. 90, and for details see Wright's
Christianity in Arabia, p. 23.

CJiristianity hi Ai'-abia. 8r^

between the sons of Ishmael and the Beni-
Israel is discernible. And the popularity of the
Jewish Haggadah and Halachah is witnessed in
every legend of Islam and in every Sura of the
• Koran. ^

As the Judaism prevalent in Arabia was rather
of the Rabbinic than the pure Old Testament
type, so the Christianity with which the tribes
were acquainted was meagre, degenerate, apo-
cryphal. It found some acceptance in the tribes
of Rabia and Gassan, and a few bishoprics were
established in friendly districts.^ It is difficult,
however, to estimate the value of this Chris-
tianity, or to determine whether it w^ould have
been a greater boon to Arabia than Mohammed-
anism. On the one hand we have the fact that
at Nadjran about 20,000 Christians preferred a _
horrible death rather than abjuration of their
religion. On the other hand we have the no-
toriously superficial character of the Arabs,
coupled with the saying of Ali, regarding the
tribe in which Christianity had found its heartiest
welcome, "The Taghlib," he said, ''are not
Christians ; they have borrowed from Chris-
tianity only the custom of drinking wine."^ It

^ Deutsch's Isla?n, p. 90, See also Rod well's Koran,
passim.

2 See Caussin de Perceval's Histoirc, \. 348 ; and Pocock,
p. 136. 3 Dozy's Histoirc, i. 20.

7

8 2 Mohammedanism,

IS not likely that a religion so uncongenial to
the Arab character would have made much more
way than it had done in previous centuries.
And although we find the Christian King Abra-
hah leading 60,000 men in a crusade against
Mecca, we cannot conclude that these were
all Christians. We know, indeed, that they
were not. The only inferences we can safely
draw are that at this date — the year of Mo-
hammed's birth and of the destruction of Abra-
hah's army — Christianity was an important
factor in Arabian society, and that had this
vj crusade been successful, it might have become
the dominant religion.^

But it was not only Christianity that failed to
gain any firm anchorage in the Arab character,
their ancestral religions were held with little
greater tenacity. They were radically irreligious,
capable of adhering to forms of worship even
while reverence was entirely avvanting. The
story of Amrolcais is typical and significant.
Setting out to avenge his father's murder, he
entered the temple of the idol Dhou-'l-Kholosa
to consult the oracle by means of the usual
three arrows, inscribed respectively, Permission,
Prohibition, Delay. Having drawn Prohibition,
he tried again. But three times over he drew

^ Sec Wright's Christianity in Arabia; Gagnier's Vie
de MaJionict, i. 70-75. Freeman's Lectures, p. 34.

Sttpcrficiality of Arab Religion. 8

the same arrow, forbidding his enterprise.
Breaking the arrows, and hurHng the fragments
at the idol's head, he cried, " Wretch ! had it
been thy father who had been killed, you would
not have prohibited revenge." ^ It was certainly
no hopeful task which Mohammed undertook
when he proposed by the influence of religion
to combine into one nation tribes so incapable
of being deeply influenced by any religion,^ and
so irreconcilably opposed to one another ; to
abolish customs which had the sanction of im-
memorial usage ; and to root out an idolatry,
which, if it had no profound hold upon the
spiritual nature, was at least bound up with old
family traditions and well-understood tribal in-
terests.

But if the difficulties of the task were suffi-
ciently apparent, there were also circumstances
which made it at least possible. Chief among
these was the existence of a small number of
persons among whom a spirit of religious in-
quiry was cultivated. Not only had there been
from time to time men of devout feeling and
high moral tone, such as Hinzilah, Khalid,
Asad Ibn Karb, and Abdolmottaleb himself,^

^ Dozy, i. 22.

2 " II lui fallait transformer, metamorphoser, une nation
sensuelle, sceptique et railleuse." — Dozy, i. 24.

3 See the account of his Abrahamic surrender of his best
loved son, in Caussin de Perceval, i. 264.

84 Mohaminedanisni.

all of whom had attempted reforms with more
or less success ; but there were also men known
as Hanyfs, or Puritans/ who distinctly re-
nounced the idolatrous practices of their country-
men, and set themselves to seek the pure
religion of Abraham.

It is related of four of these Hanyfs, that
during one of the religious festivals of Mecca,
they held aloof and conversed with one another
in some such term.s as these: " Our tribesmen
are in error : they have destroyed religion. Are
we to encompass a stone which neither hears
nor sees, and which neither hurts nor helps us ?
Let us seek a better faith." Whereupon they
abandoned their homes and journeyed in foreign
lands, seeking the Hanyfite faith, that is, the
religion of Abraham.^ These four men were
Waraka, Othman, Obaydallah, and Zaid. Of
these, the first two were cousins of Khadijah,
Mohammed's first wife, and in frequent inter-
course with him ; the third was his own cousin ;
—^ and all three found their way to Christianity.

1 Pervert, or convert. See Rodwell's Koraji, p. 216.
Sprenger (i. 67) says it originally meant one who does
not believe in the true religion, but it is used in the Koran
of those who abjured the popular religions and became
Moslems. Thus Freethinker, Pervert, or Picrist, may
all translate the word according to the point of view of the
translator.

2 Sprenger, i. 81, and Caussin de Perceval, i. 321.

Prentrsors of Mohainined. 85

With Zaid the search for truth was more per-
plexed and less satisfactory in its results. Even
as an old man he was seen leaning his back
against the Kaabah, vehemently repudiating the
idolatrous worship going on around him, and
yet sadly stretching his hands upwards with the
yearning prayer of the baffled yet whole-hearted
man : "'0 God, if I knew what form of worship
is the most pleasing to Thee, so would I serve
Thee ; but I know it not." In all his travels
he had found nothing which gave the light he
sought ; and, excluded from his town by those
who would not have a censor so keen and bold,
he lived his remaining days and died on the
neighbouring hill Hira ; and doubtless Mo-
hammed was essentially right in saying, " I
will pray for him : in the Resurrection he too
will gather a Church around him."

Men. such as these could not but vastly
quicken and deepen the thoughts of Mohammed.
It was to this little body of seekers for the truth
he belonged. He called himself a Hanyf, and
during the first period of his prophetic office he
aimed at nothing else than to restore the reli-
gion of Abraham, the Hanyfite creed. ^ So in
one of the most important Suras of the Koran

I "Er nennt sich selbst einen Hanyf, und wiihrend der
ersten Periode seines Lehramtes hat er wenig anderes
^ethan als ihre Lehre bestatigt." — Sprenger's Miih. p. 45.

S6 Mohainmcdanisiii.

he sa3-s : " Abraham, the founder of Hanyfism,
wa^ in fact neither Jew nor Christian, but a
Hanvf and a MosHm, and not an Idolater."
And whether he intended it designedly, or was
unconsciously led, it was of immense import-
ance that he did hit upon Abraham as the
founder of his religion. For amidst all the feuds
and enmities, the variances and irreconcilable
ideas and practices of Jews, Christians, and
idolaters, there. was but this one point in com-
mon, their reverence for Abraham. The Jews
at first seem to have expected that ]\Iohammed
would be little else than a champion of Juda-
ism in a slightly modified form. The Han^-fs,
and even the idolaters, would gather round a
man who merely proclaimed a return to the
religion of their fathers. And the Christians,
though they might have their fears, would con-
gratulate themselves that here at least was a
practical religion and not another obscure and
misty heresy. And, above all, let us take note
that the society in which such men as these
Hanyfs could be produced must have been one
in which there was some religious stir and pre-
paredness for any definite and resolute teaching.
But without ^lohammed himself, without
that peculiar force and quality which he and no
other man brought to these circumstances,
Islam would never have existed. The Arabian

0'

Oj^iginality of AloJianinied, 1^ ^7

mind was prepared, and the state of the world
gave opportunity for a new power to find play {'A
in it, but this preparedness and opportunity
none but Mohammed knew how to use. When
the irresistible Amru visited Omar at Medina,
the caliph expressed a wish to see the sword
which had slain so many of the enemiies of the
faith. Amru drew a short and ordinary scimi-
tar, and, perceiving the surprise of the caliph,
said, " Alas ! the sword itself, without the arm
of the master, is no sharper nor heavier than
the sword of Farezdak the poet." And simi-
larl}' we may say that without the mind of
Mohammed there was no more material for
founding a new religion, no state of matters
more suggestive of world-wide conquest in that
generation than in any other. The strong arm
avails little without its suitable weapon, but
the weapon is still more vain without the skil-
ful and untiring arm. But for the concurrence
of circumstances the greatest religious leaders
might have died without a follower or a con-
vert ; ^ yet circumstances need their great man
quite as much as the great man needs favouring
circumstances. We must know the man if we
would understand his religion and the causes of
its success.

Tradition provides us with ample materials

' Jowett's Epistles of Paul, i. 356.

SS MoJiaminedanism.

for seeing the man as he appeared to his con-
temporaries. Thoroughly incongruous with the
substantial nature of his work, and the solid
place it has in the world's history, are the fan-
tastic details indulged in by some of his early
biographers ; such as that his bod}^ cast no
shadow, that his spittle sweetened salt water,
and that he seemed to tower above all those
who approached him, a tradition which may
have arisen from the magnificent poise of his
head. He himself rather encouraged the belief
in the "seal of prophecy" — a mark between
his shoulders, on which were inscribed the words,
" God is alone, without companions." But
eliminating what has obviously no foundation,
much remains to depict the man as he was.
Like some other great men, he was scarcely
above the middle height, but of dignified and
commanding appearance. An admiring follower
says of him, " He was the handsomest and
bravest, the brightest-faced and most generous
of men." He had the broad chest and firmly-
knit limbs of the man of action, the large well-
shaped head of the man of thought and capacity,
tlie fine, long, arching eyebrows ^ and brilliant

^ " Lcs sourcils longs et dclies qui s'approchaicnt mu-
tuellement, sans ncanmoins se toucher, et se confondre
tout h. fait." — Gagnier, Vie de MaJiomct^ ii. 313, where the
fullest description of the prophet's appearance, disposi-

Pei^sonal Appea^^ance of MoJiammed. 89

black eyes which sometimes betoken genius and
always betoken an emotional nature. His mouth
was large but well formed, a kindly and elo-
quent mouth, with teeth " like hailstones," in
Arab phraseology ; that is, we presume, white
and glittering, so as to excuse his favourite and
almost constant use of a toothpick. The large
blood-vessel in his brow filled and darkened and
throbbed when he was angry, which, if it proves
him to have been of an excitable temperament,
illustrates also the self-control which enabled
him habitually to command the storm within.
It was in public speaking that the fiery and
vehement nature of the man was allowed to
appear. " In ordinary address, his speech was
slow, distinct, and emphatic ; but when he
preached, his eye would redden, his voice rise
high and loud, and his whole frame become
agitated with passion, even as if he were warn-
ing the people of an enemy about to fall on
them the next morning or that very night." ^
His gait was as expressive as his appearance.
His step is described as resembling that of
a man descending a hill, and he walked with
such extreme rapidity that those who accom-
panied him were kept at a half run. This swift

tion, and habits, is given. The picture given in Deutsch's
hlaiJi (pp. 71-73) is one of the finest specimens of his
great hterary skill. ' Muir, iv. 316.

90 ]\IoJiainincdanism,

and .decided walk seems eminently character-
istic. It was that of a man who knew where
(LJ he was going, and meant that nothing should
prevent him being there.

His manner was that of the perfect Arab gen-
tleman, who knows no distinction of ranks, and
is as courteous and formally polite to rags as to
purple. He was gracious, unassuming, most
patient and kindly to his slaves, adored by his
followers, captivating to strangers. He was
the most accessible of men : to adopt the ex-
pressive simile used by his admirers, " open as
the river's bank to him that draweth water
therefrom." ^ An unusually delicate considera-
tion for the feelings and comfort of those about
him betrayed itself in his whole manner. He
found it almost impossible to say " No " to any
petitioner, and he never declined the invitation
or small offering even of the meanest of the
people. He understood both joy and sorrow,
and — conclusive proof of his wide and genuine
humanity — had an equally ready sympathy for
both. With all reverence we may say, He was
among men as he that serveth.^ In the last
years of his life, when his strength was failing,
his uncle Abbas proposed that he should occupy

1 Weil, p. 347. Muir, iv. 304.

2 'Ml scrvait volontiers ccux qui le servaient." — Gagnier,
ii. 320-

Character of Mohammed. 9 1

an elevated seat in the mosque, that the people
might not throng him. " No," said Mohammed,
" surely, I will not cease from being in the
midst of them, dragging my mantle behind me
thus, and covered with their dust, until that the
Lord give me rest from among them." ' He
had no kindred with the species of great man
who gives you two fingerG and the head of a
walkins:-stick to shake ; but when anv one ad- .,
dressed him he turned full round and gave to
them the attention, not only of a glance or of
the ear, but of the full countenance. In greet-
ing any one he was never the first to withdraw
his hand. Habitually taciturn, he was yet de-
lightful in his hours of relaxation ;

" Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading ;
Lofty and sour to those that loved him not.
But to those men that sought him, sweet as summer.''

" Ten years," said Anas, his servant,
" have I been about the prophet, and he
never said as much as ' uff ' to me." He was
fond of children, having a kind word for those
he saw in the street, and not ashamed to be
seen, by astounded Arab chiefs, carrying and
fondling one of his own little girls. Indeed,
there is no incident in the life of Mohammed so
affecting, nor any in which we are more drawn

I Muir, iv. 255.

0

92 JMoJiainniedanism.

to love the man, than that of the death of his
infant child Ibrahim. It is with pure compas-
sion we are spectators of the bitter grief and
uncontrollable sobbings of the strong man, and
hear at last, as he puts the little body back
into the nurse's arms, his simple, pious lamen-
tation, " Ibrahim, O Ibrahim ! if it were not
that the promise is faithful, and the hope of
resurrection sure — if it were not that this is the
way to be trodden by all, and the last of us shall
join the first — I would grieve for thee with a
grief deeper even than this." '

Carlyle, amending Shakespere, assures us
that " the man who cannot laugh is not only fit
for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; but his
w^hole life is already a treason and a stratagem."
Mohammed stands this test well. There was
nothing guarded nor constrained in the uncon-
trollable fits of laughter with which he treated
the drolleries of his child-wife Ayesha ; ^ nothing
pompous in the hearty naturalness with which
he entered into her games, ran races with her,
or told her amusing stories. ^ And yet, with all
this fund of playfulness, it is this same Ayesha
who tells us that he was " bashful as a virgin
behind her veil." The blemishes in his charac-
ter are indeed sufficiently obvious, but they are

I Muir, iv. 165. 2 Wcil. p. 88.

3 Sprcnger, iii. 62. ^

B lev lis he s in the Prop he fs CJiaracter. 93

those of his race. He was not above avaiUng him-
self of the dagger of the professional assassin to
remove a dangerous enemy. He used the cus-
tomary treacheries of Arab warfare. He could
even stoop so low as to furnish an officer of
his own with ambiguous instructions, carefully
screening himself from the infamy and danger
of an unjustifiable raid, while he hoped to enjoy
the advantages derived from it. But we are to
remember the axiom of Captain Burton, that
" lying is to the Oriental meat and drink and j vO.
the roof that covers him." ^ His courage is not
wholly above suspicion ; ^ on the field of battle
he almost never played a conspicuous part, and,
like Napoleon, was always provided with the
means of securing his own safety by swift re-
treat. But he had also the Napoleonic power
of discerning and winning to himself the fore-
most of his contemporaries, and of inspiring one
and all of his followers with enthusiastic ardour
in his cause. Of an intensely nervous organiz-
ation, he was very sensitive to praise and blame.
The satirical poets wdio lampooned him he
found it much more difficult to forgive than if
they had opposed him merely with the sword.

His style of living was simple even for an
Arab. ''The true Bedouin," says Burton, ''is

^ Burton's Pilgrimage, ill. 294.
2 Weil, 344. Muir, iv. 313-14.

^'

94 ]\Iohaimnedcniism.

an abstemious man, capable of living for six
months on ten ounces of food a day. The milk
of a single camel, and a handful of dates dry, or
fried in clarified butter, suffices for his wants." ^
According to the testimony of Ayesha, " months
used to pass and no fire would be lighted in
Mohammed's house, either for baking bread or
cooking meat." " How then did ye live ? "
asked some one of her. " By the two black
things, dates and water, and such of the citi-
zens as had milch cattle would send us a little
milk — the Lord requite them ! The prophet
never enjoyed the luxury of two kinds of food
the same day ; if he had flesh, there was nothing
else ; and so if he had dates; so likewise if he
had bread." ^ On his death-bed his wife had to
borrow oil for the lamp. And when he learned
on the same occasion that there w^as a small
sum of money in the house, he ordered it to be
divided among certain indigent families, and
then lying back, said, " Now I am at peace.
Verily it would not have become me to meet my

' Lady Duff Gordon records the exclamation of an Ef-
fendi on hearing how Europeans live. "It is the will of
(iod ; but it must be a dreadful fatigue to them to eat
their dinner." — Last Letters, p. 85. "An Arab will live for
months together upon the smallest allowance ; and then,
if an opportunity should offer, he will devour at one sitting
the flesh of half a lamb without any injury to his health."
— Burckhardt, Notes 07i Bedouins^ i. 242.

2 Muir, i\-. 329.

Simplicity of the PropJiefs Habits, 95

Lord, and this gold in my possession."^ He
did not like another to do for him anything he
could do for himself. He might be seen patch-
ing his own clothes, cobbling his own sandals,
milking the goats, helping in the house work,
or carrying a basket from the market.^ To the
last he retained the simple habits of his youth.
His establishment was of the plainest descrip-
tion, and was for a while retained after his death
t3 rebuke the growing luxury of the Moslems.
It consisted of nine small huts which a tall man
could see over, four built of unbaked bricks and
five of palm branches, with curtains of leather
or hair-cloth for doors. To each of his wives
one of these was allotted, he himself living in
one or another of them.^ His bed was a mat
coarsely plaited with ropes of palm-fibre, which
left its marks on his side when he rose.
Abdallah, his servant, seeing this, rubbed the
place and said, " Let me, I pray thee, spread
a soft covering for thee over this mat." " Not
so," replied Mohammed. " What have I to do

I Muir, iv. 273. 2 Weil, p. 343.

3 " The house of Haritha was next to that of Mahomet.
Now, whenever Mahomet took to himself another wife,
he added a new house to the row, and Haritha was obliged
successively to remove his house and build on the space
beyond. At last this was repeated so often that the
prophet said to those about him, * Verily it shameth me
to turn Haritha over and over again out of his house.'"
Tradition in Muir, iv. 337.

96 Mohainincdanisrn.

with the comforts of this life ? The world and
I, what connection is there between us ? Verily,
the world is no otherwise than as a tree unto
me ; when the traveller hath rested under its
shade, he passeth on." ' His one luxury was
perfumes. "The prophet," says Ayesha, "loved
three things — women, scents, and food : he had
his heart's desire of the two first, but not of the
last."

Add to this that which made all his other
qualities tell, his unconquerable determination.
He was indomitable. The Arabs have a pro-
verb about the man that finds good in evil :
" Throw him into the river, and he will rise
with a fish in his mouth." Mohammed was
such a man ; finding his opportunity in the
most unfavourable circumstances, hopeful and
sanguine in a quite extraordinary degree. When
he and Abu Bekr were lying concealed in a
cave, and heard the angry voices of their pur-
suers coming closer and closer, his brave and
steadfast companion whispered, " What shall
we do ? We are but two against so many."
Mohammed whispered back, " Not so, we are
three ; God is with us."

Such a man was born to greatness. A man
so unlike other men, and yet so interested in

' Muir, iii. 297.

Personal Influence of Mohammed. 97

them — dreamy with the dreaminess of genius,
and yet eminently capable and prompt in all
practical matters, sympathetic and command-
ing— he was bound to move his generation
deeply. And undoubtedly it was largely to his
personal influence with men, and the impres- •
sion his character made upon them, that his
religion owed its success. It was those who
knew him best and were most constantly with
him who first attached themselves to his
cause.

The idea that the success of Islam was due
to the sensual inducements it proposed to its ^^
adherents was exploded by Voltaire. To the
canons, monks, and curates who thus calum-
niated Mohammedanism, he addressed the per-
tinent question: "Were there imposed upon
you a law that you should neither eat nor drink
from four in the morning till ten at night through —
the whole month of July ; that you should ab-
stain from wine and gaming under penalty of
damnation ; that you should make a pilgrimage
across burning deserts; that you should bestow
at least 2J per cent, of your revenue on the
poor ; and that, having been accustomed to
eighteen wives, you should suddenly be limited
to four, — would you call this a sensual re-
ligion ? " ^ As compared with the previous

I Diet. Phil. s.v. IMahometans.
8

p

©

98 Alohammcdanism,

habits of the people to whom it was proposed,
Mohammedanism had not any sensual attrac-
tions to present ; and if it had possessed such,
these would not account for its success. " A
motive of sensuality could never of itself make
the fortune of a religion." ' But this motive,
indirectly and in combination with others, did
operate for the advancement of Islam. The
soldiers of the Crescent were not primed for
battle by doses of arrack and brandy ; but in-
toxication of another kind drove them to deeds
of impetuous and reckless valour. " I see,"
cried Khaled's youthful cousin at the battle of
Emesa, " I see the black-eyed houris of Para-
dise. One of them, if seen on earth, would
make mankind die of love. They are smiling
on us. One of them waves a handkerchief of
green silk and holds a cup of precious stones.
She beckons me. Come hither quickly, she cries,
my well-beloved." ^

For unquestionably the grand cause of the
success of Islam was its use of the sword, its
amalgamation of propagandism with territorial
conquest. The apparent profundity of the well-

1 " Un motif de sensualitd ne sauroit jamais h, lui seul
faire la fortune d'une religion." — Oelsner, Dcs Effcts^ &:c.,
p. 18.

2 Irving, Successors of Mahomet , p. 67, and Gibbon,
cap. li.

Propagation by the Sword, gg

known dictum of Carlyle turns out, when 3-ou
examine it, to be mere sophistication. " The
sword indeed," he says, " but where will you
get your sword ? Every new opinion, at its
starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In
one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet.
One man alone of the whole world believes it ;
there is one man against all men. That he take
a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do
little for him. You must first get your sword ! "
But Carlyle might have been expected to con-
sider that the real difficulty about Mohammed
is not at all how he got twenty or a hundred or
a thousand people to believe in him — any one
almost can do that — but how he has come to
establish a religion as widely extended and as
permanent as our own. And I affirm that the
man must shut his eyes to the broadest, most i
conspicuous facts of the history of Islam, who ''y\^
denies that the sword has been the great means ^
of propagating this religion. St. Hilaire, with
his usual penetration of judgment and precision
of expression, puts the whole matter in a nut-
shell when he says, " Without Islam the Arabs'
had not been the conquerors of the world, but
without war Islam itself had not been." I like
the honesty as I admire the penetration of
Abulwalid, who plainly declared," My principles
are faith in one God and in this" — laying his

8*

lOO Mohammedanism,

hand on his scimitar. Until Mohammed ap-
ipealed to the sword his faith made very Httle
I way. His earhest disciples, Abu Bekr, Ali,
Omar, were undoubtedly moved, partl}^ by the
influence of the truth, partly by the power
Mohammed's personality had over them. But
such men as these were not to be won ever}''
day, and had he been allowed to propagate his
opinions freely there is no reasonable probabi-
litv that he would have been influential bevond
his own citv and sreneration. It was his ban-
\, ishment from Mecca which made him the
founder of a religion. It is with true instinct
^ that Moslems accept the Hegira as their era.
Accepted in Medina as a persecuted man, the
inhabitants of that rival city found in his wrongs
and in his claims no bad pretext for gratifying
their jealous}^ and the Bedouin lust of plunder.
In point of fact it is not the history of a religion,
but the history of an adventurer, or at the best,
of a civil revolution, one reads in scanning the
life of Mohammed after the Hegira. There is
nothing more remarkable about these early
annals than the total absence of all religious
inquiry and discussion. In the early annals of
the Buddhist religion, we find its preachers
endeavouring to awaken a mental and spiritual
interest, and entering freely into prolonged dis-
cussions regarding life and the future. In the

Jlfotive of AloJianimcdan Conqiicst. loi

early annals of Christianity we read of mental
perplexity and spiritual distress, often of years
spent in inquiry and investigation, but in the
Moslem annals all is different. Here con-
verts are made on the field of battle with
the sword at their throat. Tribes are in a
single hour convinced of the truth of the new
faith, because they have no alternative but
extermination.^

In reading the rapid conquests of Syria,
Egypt, Persia, and the brilliant and gallant
deeds of the early Moslem warriors, one wholly
forgets that there is any difficulty in accounting
for the success of Islam. It is m.erely a repe-
tition of what has occurred again and again in
history when a new race appears on the field,
and for a time carries everything before it, till
it in turn is conquered by its own prosperity.
The Arabs were seized with the passion which
has at various times seized the Assyrians, the
Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Goths,
the French, almost every great race or nation,
the passion of being master. Can any one sup-
pose that it was the desire to see men enjoying
the advantages of a true religion which animated

I The chapter in Hottinger's learned Historia Oritntalis,
entitled " De causis Muham. conservantibus," would have
been muca more profitable had it not been levelled at the
Romanists.

i'

1 02 MoJiaivnicdanism.

Akbah, when, after crossing and conquering the
A entire north of Africa, he spurred his horse into
V the waves of the Atlantic and cried, " Great
God ! if my course were not stopped by this
sea, I would still go on to the unknown king-
doms of the West, preaching the unity of Thy
' holy name, and putting to the sword the rebel-
lious nations who worship any other gods than
Thee."

Pity for the benighted condition of their fel-
lows, that pity which lies at the root of all laud-
able propagation of one's faith, has scarcel}' at
all, if at all, been exhibited by Moslems. Zeal
for the glory of God did, I believe, in many
instances, animate them, and the persuasion that
all who fell in battle went straig:ht to Paradise

did much to make them unflinching and daring
in battle. " Paradise is under the shadow of
swords ! " was their battle-cry. " I will come
upon you," wrote their commander to the Per-
sian king, "with men who love death as much as
you love life." " Paradise is before you " — this
was Khaled's pithy address to his troops before
leading them to battle — "the devil and hell
behind. Fight bravely, and you will secure
the one ; fly, and you will fall into the other."
As Mr. Freeman remarks, "the ordinary and
natural inducements of the soldier — average
courage, average patriotism, average profes-

Arab Love of Fighting, 103

sional honour — could not possibly keep him up
to a conflict with men whose whole spirit and
motives savoured of the extraordinary and su-
pernatural." Yet too much must not be made
even of the fanaticism of the conquerors of
Syria and Persia. This we believe would have
availed them little had they not begun for the
first time to feel their strength as a united
people, and had they not been possessed by that
esprit de corps which leads troops to victory, and
had they not been naturally a fighting race. It
was often the least fanatical among them who
did the doughtiest deeds. Khaled, the sword of
God, might conceal his thirst for battle under a
thin veil of religion, but obviously he fought for
fighting's sake : he was never happier than
when dashing single-handed among a troop of
infidels. It is no time to talk of religious en-
thusiasm or anything else but the love of the
thing when you see Derar disobeying orders to
engage thirty of the enemy single-handed, and
leaving seventeen of them dead on the field. In
an army which numbered many such men, and
in which almost every man had been accus-
tomed to plunder from his youth up, there was
really not a great deal for fanaticism to do.
From one city alone the caliph's fifth part of
the spoil took goo camels to transport it to
Medina. Obviously there were other motives

^1

I.

104 ]\Iohain]}iedanisin.

at work in such a war than the simple desire to
propagate the faith.

At the same time, as the Romans were said
to conquer hke savages but to rule like philoso-
phic statesmen, the advance of Islam was due
not less to the admirably equitable and salutary
government of the early caliphs than to the
irresistible prowess of their troops. The im-
pression which was made on the inhabitants
and governors of conquered countries by the
simple habits of these men, as well as by their
integrity and devotion to the cause, went far to
consolidate their empire. The establishment
of the first caliph consisted of a single slave
and one camel, and on accepting the caliphate,
he ordered his daughter to take strict account
of his patrimony that it might testify against
him if he should be enriched by the office which
he held for others' good, and not his own. His
successor, Omar, made his triumphal entry
into Jerusalem mounted on a red camel, with his
whole camp furniture slung across his saddle-
bow in the shape of a sack, one end of, which
held his dates, and the other his rice. Before
him hung a leathern water-bottle, and behind
him a wooden platter ; and be3'ond tliis simple
equipment he needed nothing. " Wh}-," asked
the Emperor Heraclius, " does he go m patched
clothes, and not richly clad like other princes ?"

Eqiuty of Early Caliphs. 105

"Because," replied some of the faithful, "he
cares only for the world to come, and seeks
favour in the eyes of God alone." " In what
kind of a palace does he reside?" asked the
emperor. " In a house built of mud." " Who
are his attendants ?" " Beggars and the poor."
" What tapestry does he sit upon?" — but here
evidently the story becomes legendary. — "Jus-
tice and equity." "What is his throne?"
"Abstinence and true knowledge." "What is
his treasure ?" " Trust in God." "And what
his guard ?" " The bravest of the unitarians."
To nations which had groaned under heavy
taxation, and yet received in return no single '"
advantage of good government, it seemed plea-
sant and hopeful to submit to men who them-
selves were but servants of a great cause. The
Romans had attached to themselves all their
useful and faithful allies by rewarding their
services with Roman citizenship ; the Moslems
did not even require that men should show
themselves worthy of being enrolled in the
number of the faithful, but offered to all con- \
ditions of men equality with themselves on the
spot. They only required a prompt, immediate
decision. The Koran, Tribute, or the Sword,
these were the alternatives offered to all the
world. If any preferred to retain their own
religion, they might do so by paying tribute; if

e

io5 MoJiaininecianism.

, the}' declined to be either Moslems or tributaries
of Moslems, the sword alone could settle it.
And the very promptitude with which this alter-
native was pressed contributed greatly to the
success of Islam. A grey-headed Christian
priest listening to a sermon of Omar's hinted
that he was in error. *' Strike off that old
man's head," said the caliph quietly, "if he
repeats his words." Such was the summary,
unflinching rule that was felt through the whole
empire. When Ziyad entered on the govern-
ment of Bassora he found the place a mere den

/ of robbers and assassins. He gave notice that
he meant to rule with the sword, and that all
persons found strolling in the city after evening
prayers should be put to death. Two hundred
persons forfeited their lives the first night, five
the second, and subsequently the city was a
model of security and peace. Under this strong-
handed government other conquered districts,
which had been notorious for lawlessness, be-
came so safe and w^ell conducted that the people
did not even close their doors at night, but
merely set a hurdle across the doorway to keep
out the cattle.

Again, the extreme simplicity of the creed of
Islam greatly favoured its rapid propagation.
No elaborate explanations were required to
teach the ignorant : the rude negro could under-

Simplicity of Creed. / 107

stand it on its first recital, and it could be ad-
ministered at the point of the sword amidst the
press of battle. It demanded no long noviciate ;
the unhorsed Persian who had fallen to the
ground a fire-worshipper might rise from under
the lance-point of the Arab a fully privileged
Moslem. It was a creed for which the human
mind has an instinctive affinity, and which has
never roused abhorrence even in the mind of a
polytheist. To men who had begun to despair
of finding truth amidst the bewildering subtle-
ties of a metaphysical theology, it was a relief
to find themselves face to face with a simple
creed, and to be compelled to believe it.

" In the fresh passions of a vigorous race
Was sown a hving seed ;
Strong these contending mysteries to displace
By one plain ancient creed.''

All these features of the propagation of Islam
make its success thoroughly intelligible. Its
creed was simple, easily understood, unencum-
bered by observances, and not glaringly false.
It was offered by men who held their own lives
cheap, and other men's still cheaper, and who,
with the Koran in one hand and the scimitar in
the other, demanded an immediate decision.
Its terms were generous, granting at once to
those who accepted it every privilege of the
Moslem scarred and grey in the service of the

To8 Mohaniniedanism.

Prophet. It offered a connection with the most
promising cause then in the world; and not only
at once conferred freedom, equality, and all the
benefits of a strong-handed government, but
opened paths to position, wealth, and honours.

Having thus won its way to empire by
means not altogether though partly commend-
able, the influence of j\Iohammedanism on the
world at large has been neither wholly good
nor wholly evil. In some respects it has re-
tarded, Vvhile in others it has signally advanced
what is convenient!}^, if somewhat vagueh',
termed civilization. There is nothing in the
religion itself which is antagonistic to mental
culture, although the instinct of self-preserva-
tion has produced a sensitive jealousy of an}--
thing like free thought in connection ' with
its theology.

It has been the boast of Islam that it em-
braces sects representing ever}^ shade of opinion,
and undoubtedly its creed gains both emphasis
and comprehensiveness from its brevity. These
sects, it is true, have more than once en-
deavoured to exterminate one another with the
sword, and theologians who have shown the
speculative tendencies of an Abelard or an
Erigena, have been as liable to persecution in
Islam as those philosophers were in Christen-
dom. Averroes himself, by far the greatest of

Inf.iteiice on Mental Culture. 109

Arabic philosophers, was compelled to do pen-
ance for his errors by sitting in the mosque,
while the worshippers were expected to testify
to their own orthodoxy by spitting in his face,
— a form of religious persecution which, as re-
cent events have proved, is not yet obsolete in
Islam. Commanders of the faithful, supreme
in all besides, have been reminded that in this
direction they were fettered. jNIamoun, one of
the most munificent patrons of learning,^ was
suspected of Zendikism ; while ^'athek spent
a troubled reign because he denied the eternity
of the Koran. At the same time, this narrow-
ness and bigotry cannot be laid to the charge
of the creed itself. The creed which is satis-
fied by a man's adherence to the one article of
" God revealed by His prophets," if it does not
bring the impulse and the light which might
result from greater accuracy and detail, at
least leaves the amplest scope for speculation.
And the religion which assigned the martyr's
crown to every soldier who fell in battle for
the cause, and yet proclaimed that the " ink of
_J the scholar was more precious than the blood
of the martyr," can scarcely with justice be
branded as obscurantist.^

1 Hottinger s Hist. Or lent alls. p. 5 So.

2 The instructive pages of Gobineau on this subiect will
well repay perusal. Lcs Religions, &c., pp. 24-2S.

1 1 o Mo ham me da n ism .

It was only to be expected that the severe
monotheism of the Saracens would brook no
contamination with the profuse polytheism and
licentious mythology of Greece and Rome. No
accuracy of thought, no delicate finish of lan-
guage, could compensate for the stain of error
that blots the page of the classical writers.
The colourless writings of Hippocrates, Galen,
S Euclid, and Aristotle, were freely translated
and widely read : but even the liberal son of
the splendid Harun Al Rashid, when he pre-
ferred to bring books instead of captives as his
spoils from conquered Greece, left behind hini
in contempt the plays of Sophocles and ^-Es-
chvlus, the orations of Demosthenes, the histo-
ries of Thucydides and Herodotus — all in fact
which would have opened a new world to the
Eastern mind. If this was so in the golden
age of Saracen history, we can scarcely dis-
credit the story of Amru burning the Alexan-
R drian library by order of the caliph. " If the
books of the Greeks," said Omar, "agree with
the Koran, they are superfluous ; if they dis-
agree, they are dangerous, and must be de-
stroyed " — a saying which, if not uttered by
Omar, is at least full of historical verisimili-
tude and significance.^

But, in the main, education up to a certain

I Gibbon discredits the story ; \o\\ Hammer receives it.

Impulse given to Editcation. 1 1 1

point — literature in certain departments, and
science in some of its branches — have been
materially promoted by the mental awakening
produced by Islam. The Arabian mind had
always shown itself lively and intelligent, and
susceptible of culture, especially in an emo-
tional and imaginative direction/ The Koran
gave an extraordinary impulse to this pre-
existing capability. It was better than an
enactment of compulsory education, for it be-
came the book of the people, and to be able
to read was now an object of pious ambition.
To recite the Koran was a work of merit.
Alongside of the mosques, schools or colleges
were built, or the work of instruction was
carried on inside the sacred building itself.
" To learn to read," they said, " is worth more
than fasting; to teach it, is more meritorious
than prayer,"^ Mohammed himself used to

* Dozy declares that the Arabs are "le peuplc le moins
inventif du monde " {Histoirc, i. 12). Though idolaters,
they had no mythology ; and after they gave themselves
to scientific pursuits, " ils ont montrc la meme absence de
puissance creatrice. lis ont traduit et commente Ics
ouvrages des anciens ; ils ont enrichi certaines specialites
par des observations patientes, exactes, minutieuscs ; mais
ils n'ont rien invente, on ne Icur doit aucune idee grande
et feconde."

2 Oelsner, Des Effds, &c., p. 20S, from whose ad-
mirable, account of the learning of the Saracens many
of the facts here stated are derived.

1 1 2 MoJiammedanism,

say, " Teach your children poetry; it opens the
mind, lends grace to wisdom, and makes the
heroic virtues hereditary." And, what was
more to the purpose, when living in T^Iedina
among a poorly educated population, he gave
0 liberty to every Meccan prisoner who taught
twelve boys of Medina the art of writing.^
And within a comparatively short time after
Mohammed, there were crowded universities
at Baghdad, Damascus, Alexandria, Bassora,
and Samarkand ; and probably at no period of
the world's histor}^ was literature so richly re-
warded as under some of the Abbasside princes.
The victor at the poetic contests received loo
pieces of gold, a horse, an embroidered caftan,
and a lovely slave; and, apparently in one
gift, Abu Taman received from his sovereign
50,000 pieces of gold. But it was not in pure
literature that the work of the Saracens was of
greatest service to the world, but rather in the
departments of medicine, philosophy, and the
mathematical sciences. In medicine their work
has never been adequately appraised, because
barely three European students have carefully
studied their medical books. But their in-
fluence on the study of chemistr}^, algebra, and
astronomy, is visible in the very terminology of
these sciences.

' Sprenger, iii. 131.

Antipathy to Art. 1 13

The arts of statuary and painting were de-
nounced by the early Moslems as incentives to
idolatry, and even 3'et a few of their doctors
forbid the delineation of anything that has life,
under pain of being cast into hell. But this
iconoclastic austerity long ago gave way ; and
while the statues of men are still forbidden,
other works of art are allowed, except in the
mosques.' Music, though condemned by the
Prophet, had too rooted a place in human
nature to be abandoned; and if we are to credit
all accounts of their influence, the Saracen
musicians must have brought their art to a
high state of efficiency.^

In philosophy the attainments of the Arabians
have probably been overrated rather than de-
preciated.^ As middle-men, or transmitters,
indeed, their importance can scarcely be too

1 Burton's Pilgr. i. 137 ; Syed All's Crit. Exam. 331 ;
Lane's Mod. Egyp. ii. 2.

2 Berington's Lit. Hist, of Middle Ages, 426.

3 This is the opinion of Berington {Lit. Hist, of Middle
Ages, p. 455), who sums up a pretty full and interesting
account of Saracenic learning with the remark that it
"has experienced too much prodigality of praise ;" and
even Oelsner admits that the results are somewhat dis-
appointing. Freeman, too, thinks he discerns a prevalent
disposition to assert for the Saracens an untrue monopoly
of excellence in science and philosophy, and calls atten-
tion to the fact that many of the most famous literary
men at the court of the caliphs were not Mohammedans
at all, but Jews or Christians.

9

5>

114 AIoJiaininedaiLisin.

A highly estimated. They were keen students of
Aristotle when the very language in which he
wrote was unknown in Roman Christendom ;
and the commentaries of Averroes on the most
exact of Greek philosophers are said to be
worthy of the text. It was at the Moham-
medan university in his native city of Cordova,
and from Arabian teachers, that this precursor
of SpixLoza derived those germs of thought
wA w^hose fruit may be seen in the whole history of
scholastic theology. And just before Aver-
roes entered these learned halls, a young man
passed from them, equipped with the same
learning, and gifted with a genius and penetra-
tion of judgment which have made his opinions
final wherever the name of Maimonides is
known. Undoubtedly these two fellow-citizens
— the Arabic-speaking Mohammedan and the
Arabic-speaking Jew — have left their mark deep
on all subsequent Jewish and Christian learn-
ing. And even though it be doubted whether
their influence has been wholly beneficial, they
may well be claimed as instances of the intellec-
tual ardour which Mohammedan learning could
inspire or awaken.

A recent writer of great promise in the philo-
sophy of religion has assigned to the Arab
thinkers the honourable function of creating
\ modern philosophy. *' Theology and philosophy

Saracen PJiilosophy. \ 1 5

became in the hands of the Moors fused and
blended ; the Greek scientific theory as to the
origin of things interwound with the Hebrew
faith in a Creator. And so speculation became
in a new and higher sense theistic ; and the
interpretation of the universe the explication of
God's relation to it and its relation to God." '
But speculation had become theistic long before
there was an Arab philosophy. The same
questions which form the staple of modern
philosophy were discussed at Alexandria three
centuries before Mohammed ; and there is
scarcely a Christian thinker of the third or
fourth century who does not write in presence
of the great problem of God's connection with
the world, the relation of the Infinite to the
finite, of the unseen intangible Spirit to the crass
material universe. What we have here to do
with, however, is not to ascertain whether
modern philosophy be truly the offspring of the
unexpected marriage of Aristotle and the Koran,
but whether the religion promulgated in the
latter is or is not obstructive of intellectual
effort and enlightenment. And enough has
been said to show that there is nothing in the
religion which necessarily and directly tends to
obstruct either philosophy or science, though
'.vhen we consider the history and achievements

^ Fairbairn's Studies, p. 398.
9-

1 16 ]\loJiamvudanisin.

of that race which has for six centuries been
tlie leading representative of Islam, we are in-
clined to add that there is nothing in the religion
which necessarily leads on tlie mind to the
highest intellectual efforts. Voltaire, in his own
nervous way, exclaims, "I detest the Turks,
as the tyrants of their wives and the enemies
of the arts." And the religion has shown an
affinity for such uncivilized races. It has not
taken captive any race which possesses a rich
literature, nor has it given birth to any work of
n ^j.which the world demands a translation; and
precisely in so far as individuals have shown

• themselves possessed of great speculative and
Qi'eative genius, have they departed from the
rigid orthodoxy of the Koran. We should con-
clude therefore that the outburst of literary and
scientific enthusiasm in the eighth century was
due, not directly to the influence of the Moham-
medan religion, but to the mental awakening
and exultant consciousness of power and

/widened horizon that came to the conquering
Saracens. At first their newly-awakened energy
found scope in other fields than that of philo-
sophy. " Marte undique obstrepente, musis
vix erat locus." ^ But when the din of war
died down, the voice of the Muses was heard,

' Dr. Hunt's Oration Dc Aiitiq. Ling. Arab, quoted
by Inchbald, p. 37.

• Its Intolerance. 1 1 7

and the same fervour which had made the
Saracen arms irresistible was spent now in the
acquirement of knowledge/

Tolerance has frequentl}^ been claimed as one
of the virtues of Islam, but, we think, erro-
neously. A religion which punishes apostasy
with death can scarcely claim to be a tolerant '
religion. It is true that there have been some
most notable exemplifications of tolerance
amiong Mohammedans. When the pertina-
cious and over-zealous Raymond Lully had •)
worn out the patience of his Mohammedan i /
hosts by his arguments in favour of Christianity,
and when they had resolved to silence him by
death, he was defended by one of the Saracen
muftis. This admirable specimen of the toler-
ance of theology remarked "that as they would
praise the zeal of a Mohammedan who should
go among the Christians for the purpose of
converting them to the true faith, so they could
not but honour in a Christian the same zeal for
the spread of that religion which appeared to
him to be the true one." ^ But the whole

^ Renan, one of the few audiorities qualified by first-
hand acquaintance with the subject to pronounce a judg-
ment, considers Islamism incompatible with the highest
development of science and philosophy, '"incapable de se
transformer et d'admettre aucun element de vie civile et ^^
profane, I'islamisme arracha de son sein tout germe de
culture rationelle." See Averroes, p. iii.

2 Neander, Hist, of Church, vii. 90. For other in-
stances, Freeman's Leclurcs, 2nd ed. p. 153.

N

1 1 8 Mohammedanism.

spirit of the religion is counter to these indi-
vidual instances. Our most reliable authorities,
such observers as Lane and Burton, assure us
that the toleration which many Moslems show
is mere superficial politeness. The children
are taught formulas in which they may com-
pendiously curse Jews, Christians, and all un-
believers. At the same time they exercise
remarkable self-control, and do not forget what
is due to their own dignity; and, as Lady Duff
Gordon's experience proves, they will show
themselves more tolerant to those who treat
them tolerantly.^

And if not remarkable for charity to un-
believers, they are singularly long-suffering
towards one another. One who spent many
years among them writes : "I have often heard
an Egyptian say, on receiving a blow from an
equal, ' God bless thee ! ' ' God requite thee
good ! ' ' Beat me again ! ' In general a quarrel
terminates by one or both parties saying, ' Jus-
tice is against me ! ' Often, after this, they recite

' The true account of this feature of Islam is given
with his usual knowledge and impartiality by Dozy, who
says {Histoire, ii. 50), " II arriva en Espagne ce qui
arriva dans tous Ics pays que les Arabes avaient conquis :
Icur domination, de douce et d'humaine qu'elle avait etd
au commencement, ddgencra en un despotisme intole-
rable." Instances of very gross intolerance on the part of
Moslem governments are given in the same volume,
pp. 108,9.

Its Results in Arabia. 1 19

the Fathah together, and then sometimes em-
brace and kiss one another."^ And just as we
speak of Christian charity and Christian meek-
ness, so, when they wish to say that any one is
humble, meek, and charitable, they say he has
" Moslem feelings ;" " The meekness of a Mos-
lem."^ And this meekness is all the more
striking because it exists alongside of the manly
independence and fortitude which undoubtedly
the religion tends to produce.

But as we endeavour to estimate the good
and evil of Islam, it gradually appears that the
chief point we must attend to is to distinguish
between its value to Arabia in the seventh cen-
tury and its value to the world at large. No
one, I presume, would deny that to Mohammed's
contemporaries his religion was an immense
advance on anything they had previously be-
lieved in. It welded together the disunited
tribes, and lifted the nation to the forefront of
the important powers in the world. It effected
what Christianity and Judaism had alike failed
to effect — it swept away, once and for ever,
idolatry, and established the idea of one su-
preme God. Its influence on Arabia was justly
and pathetically put by the Moslem refugees in
Abyssinia, who, when required to say wdiy they

^ Lane, i. 386.

2 Ladv Uuff Gordon's Letters^ p. 257.

1 20 MoJiaunncdanism.

should not be sent back to Mecca, gave the
following account of their religion and what it
had done for them. " O king, we were plunged
in ignorance and barbarism; we worshipped
idols; we ate dead bodies ; we committed lewd-
ness; disregarded family ties and the duties of
neighbourhood and hospitality ; we knew no law
but that of the strong, when God sent among
us a messenger of whose birth, truthfulness,
integrity, and innocence, we were aware; and
he called us to the unity of God, and taught us
not to associate any god with Him ; he forbade
us the worship of idols, and enjoined upon us-
to speak the truth, to be faithful to our trusts,
to be merciful, and to regard the rights of others ;
to love our relatives and to protect the weak ; to
flee vice and avoid all evil. He taught us to
offer prayers, to give alms, and to fast. And
because we believed in him and obe3^ed him,
therefore are we persecuted and driven from our
country to seek thy protection."

The radical vice of Mohammedanism lies far
deeper than any mere blot on its morality or
error in its doctrinal teaching. It is an ana-
■{] chronism. It is an ignorant attempt to insert
into a series of acknowledged revelations an
assumed revelation which is incongruous and
out of date. Islam claims to be a historical
religion, a religion which has regard to God's

Coinpainson with Mosaisin. 1 2 1

historical connection with the world, and yet it

has thoroughly misapprehended its own place

in history. It owes its success, in large mea- ^

sure, to its appropriation of preceding revela- /■-'^^

tions, but, through ignorance of the real history

and relation of these revelations, it has so '«"

bungled this appropriation, as to stultify itself

and work mischief on earth.

Its defenders are fond of comparing it with
Judaism, in order to bring out that its morality . j

is at least as high, and its legislation at least as ^ -^t '
advanced and just, as that of Moses. But this
line of defence betrays ignorance of the grand
distinction between the two religions. Moham-
medanism claims to be hnal and complete;)
Alosaism distinctly disclaimed both finality and
completeness. "A prophet," said Closes, " shall
the Lord your God raise up unto you, like t A

unto me." Every part of the ^^losaic religion -^t^
had a forward look, and was designed to leave
the mind in an attitude of suspense and expecta-
tion. Accommodations were made to the weak-
ness and immaturity of the people, which were
abolished in their adult strength. Mosaism
must therefore be judged according to its own
claims as a temporary and local religion, as the
mere psedagogue slave leading men to the teacher
but not itself uttering the final truth. But Islam,
claiming to be final and universal, must be

122 MoJiamniedanism.

judged as such ; and professing as it does to
supersede not only Judaism but also Chris-
tianity, it must be condemned by every point in
which we find it a retrogression and not an
advance on our own religion. The accommo-
dations to a rude and untaught tribe which are
judicious, seasonable, and helpful, as a tem-
porary expedient, are an insufferable offence to
morality when proclaimed as the ultimate law
of conscience. The institutions, such as pil-
grimage, which are at least harmless, and pro-
bably conducive to unity in a local religion,
become a ridiculous burden when proclaimed as
binding on the whole race. The reforms of Mo-
hammed, such as the restriction of polygamy,
were good and useful for his own time and
place, but by making them final, he has pre-
vented further progress, consecrated immorality,
and permanently established half-measures.
What were restrictions to his Arabs would have
been license to other men.^ *' Considered as
delivered only to pagan Arabs, the religious,

^"Whcn Islam penetrates to countries lower in the
scale of humanity than were the Arabs of Mohammed's
day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. But it does
so at a tremendous cost. It reproduces in its new con-
verts the characteristics of its first — their impenetrable
self-esteem, their unintelligent scorn, and bhnd hatred of
all other creeds. And thus the capacity for all other
advance is destroyed." — Osborn's Islam uiider the Afuibsj
P- 93-

Its Claim to be the Fi7ial Religion. 123

moral, and civil precepts of the Koran are
admirable. The error of their author was in
delivering them to others besides pagan Arabs,"
and in giving to temporary expedients a sanction
which has erected them into permanent laws.
A writer w^ho has studied the matter with the
insight of a widely-informed historian, says :
"The temporary and partial reform effected by
Islam has proved the surest obstacle to fuller
and more permanent reform. A Mahometan
nation accepts a certain amount of truth, re-
ceives a certain amount of civilization, practises
a certain amount of toleration. But all these
are so many obstacles to the acceptance or
truth, civilization, and toleration in their perfect
shape." ^

In plain terms, Mohammed was an ignorant
man — a man so ignorant that he did not know
his own ignorance. Knowing nothing of the
government, policy, or law of Rome, to which
all the civilized world has paid its tribute of
respect, he presumed that the code of Justinian
ought to be superseded by the fragmentary
ideas he had jotted down on palm-leaves and
mutton bones and thrown higgledy-piggledy into
a chest. Knowing nothing of Christianity, and
never having even read the canonical Gospels,
he imagined he had more to say for the world's
^ Freeman's Lectures, P- S^-

124 Mohamincdanisin.

good than had fallen from the lips and shone
from the life of Jesus Christ. Had his religion
preceded Christianity, or had he never enjoyed
the means of informing himself regarding it, some
apology might have been devised for his extreme
presumption in aspiring to the sovereignty of the
world in things civil* and spiritual. Na}^, we
r^ will go further, and say that had Mohammed
1 / preceded Christianity, or had he not proclaimed
his own religion as final, it might have been a
^\ blessing of the most extensive kind to the
world. Doctrinally and morally it is a half-:way
house between heathenism and Christianit}^
but practically it can never serve as such, be-
cause it claims to be itself an advance upon
Christianity, and final. It is this claim that
has choked it throughout. The dead hand
of the short-sighted author of the Koran is on
the throat of every Mohammedan nation. And
it is this claim which stultifies it in the view
of any one who has studied other religions. It
bears the marks of immaturity on every part
of it. It proves itself to be a religion only for
the childhood of a race, by its minute prescrip-
tions, its detailed precepts, its observances, its
appeals to fear. It does not even recognise
that there is a higher religion, that the only
true religion is a religion of liberty and of the
spirit.

Co7iclus2on. 125

Here is the judgment of one who has spent a
large part of his life among Mohammedans, and
seven years of it in a careful study of their
history.

"There are to be found," he says, ''in Mo-
hammedan history all the elements of great-
ness— faith, courage, endurance, self-sacrifice.
But enclosed within the narrow walls of a rude
theology, and a barbarous polity, from which
the capacity to grow and the liberty to modify
have been sternly cut off, they work no deliver-
ance upon the earth. They are strong onl}'
for destruction. When that work is over, they
either prey upon each other, or beat themselves
to death against the bars of their own prison-
house. No permanent dwelling-place can be
erected on a foundation of sand ; and no durable ^
or humanising polity upon a foundation of fatal-
ism, despotism, polygamy, and slavery. When
Muhammadan states cease to be racked by re-
Volutions, they succumb to the poison diffused
by a corrupt moral atmo.-phere. A Durwesh,
ejaculating 'Allah!' and revolving in a series
of rapid gyrations until he drops senseless, is
an exact image of the course of their history."^

Or, hear the conclusion of a very different
writer, who has given the most favourable view
of Islam that can reasonably be given.

- Osborn's Islam under the Arabs, pp. 94, 95.

126 Mohammedanism.

"Thus in the faiths old heathendom that shook

Were different powers of strife ;
Mohammed's truth lay in a holy Book,

Christ's in a sacred Life.

So while the world rolls on from change to change,

And realms of thought expand,
The Letter stands without expanse or range,

Stiff as a dead man's hand ;

While as the life-blood fills the growing form,

The Spirit Christ has shed
Flows through the ripening ages fresh and warm,

More felt than heard or read.

And, therefore, though ancestral sympathies.

And closest ties of race,
May guard Mohammed's precepts and decrees

Through many a tract of space ;

Yet in the end the tight-drawn line must break.

The sapless tree must fall.
Nor let the form one time did well to take

Be tyrant over all."

/

III.

B UDDHISM.

" Sai/f le Christ tout sen I, il 71 est point, parmi les foudateiirs de
religion, de fig iti-e plus pure 11 i plus touchante que celle du Bouddha.''
Saint Hilaire.

III.

I CHOOSE Buddhism as a representative
religion, because, if 3'ou will allow the
paradox, it can only by courtesy be termed a
religion at all.' It does not, like other re-
ligions, start from some conception of a super-
natural world to which man must somehow
adjust himself; it does not aim, like other
religions, at bringing man into harmony with
God ; but it sets itself manfully to solve the
problem of human existence and to find de-
liverance from moral and physical evil, and in
doing so it does not find itself compelled to
recognise God at any point of the process. In
its attitude towards the idea of a Personal God
it resembles modern Agnosticism, but its whole
motive was earnestly ethical. The popular
religion of India, which Buddhism for a while
competed with and almost superseded, had

^ " In real fact, Buddhism ought not to be called a re-
ligion at all, for where there is no god, there can be no
need," &c. — IMonier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 57.

10

I ^o Buddhism,

o

entirely disassociated the ideas of religion and
morality. The priests had never been the
social moralists to whom men looked for in-
struction in matters of conduct, neither had
they in their own lives shown that there is any
necessary connection between the service of
God and personal purity. A similar state of
matters in the history of the religion of Rome
at last produced a reaction against the priest-
hood, and gave rise to a very elevated school of
moralists, of which Plutarch and Dion, Epic-
tetus and Marcus Aurelius, are the well-known
representatives. So in India there came a time
when the people were prepared to admit the
insufficiency of ceremonial to purge them from
sin, and responded to a teaching which, though
it told them nothing of God, was yet in all
other respects true to the deepest convictions
of their own moral nature. Sakya-muni did
not set himself in declared opposition to the
whole popular faith ; he was neither a scoffer,
nor, on all points, a dogmatic controversialist.
Like his Roman fellow-labourers, he was not
so concerned to explode the popular opinions
about gods supreme and subordinate, as to
show them the way to emancipation from evil
\ by righteousness and charity. The words of
Seneca might with slight alteration have fallen
from his lips: "Would you know what it is

A PhilosopJiical System. 1 3 1

that philosophy promises? I answer, Prac-
tical advice. The lost, the dying, stretch their
hands towards you, they implore you, they cast
upon you all their hopes. They entreat you to
draw them forth from such abject misery, to
show them their errors, and enlighten their
perplexities by the bright shining of the truth.
Tell them, then, what nature declares to be
necessary, and what superfluous ; how easy her
laws ; how pleasant life and how^ free to those
who accept them ; how bitter and perplexed to
those who follow their own fancies rather."
It was in this character that Sakya-muni pre-
sented himself to men. He described himself
as " the father and mother of his helpless
children, their guide and leader along the pre-
cipitous path of life ; shedding the light of his
truth like the sun and moon in the vault of
heaven; providing a ferry-boat for passengers
over this vain sea of shadows ; as a propitious
rain-cloud, restoring all things to life ; provid-
ing salvation and refuge, by directing men into
the final path that leads to the eternal city." ^
But not only did Buddha leave room for a
religion, and secure that religion should above
all else be moral and practical, but in point of
fact it is as a religion and not as a philosophy

I Beal's Buddhist Sa'iptu7-cs^ p. 137.
10-''

132 Buddhism.

that Buddhism has been received and is now
adhered to by a full third of the human race.

Buddhism arose in India in the sixth century
B.C., but in the religious stratification of that
eminently religious and productive country it is
by no means the earliest layer. Three religions
preceded it : the wild devil - worship of the
aborigines, which still, with its significant re-
deeming features, lingers among the Sudras
and hill-tribes ; the religion of the Aryan in-
vaders, which is represented in the Vedic
h}'mns, and which has been described as '' a
naturalism with a nascent sacerdotalism super-
induced;" ^ and finally Brahmanism, which
was this nascent sacerdotalism fully developed,
especially in its distinctive features of priestly
mediation, caste, and pantheism.

Whether the pantheism of the Brahmanical
religion arose from the priestl}' craving to iden-
tify their own caste more closel}^ with the
Deity than others, or whether it was evolved
by the theosophic speculators who started, in
accordance with their race instincts, from an'
abstract conception which excluded, alike as'
regards God and man, the notion of personalit}',
it is difficult to say.- Probably both influences

^ Fairbairn's Studies, p. 130.

2 Fairbairn's Studies give an admirably lucid and pro-
found sketch of the growth of Brahmanism. Cf Pfleid-
erer's Kelij^ion, ii.

A Reaction against Brahntanis^n. 133

were at work. What concerns us is to note
that the doctrines of emanation and transmi-
gration were both the necessary outcome of
this pantheistic conception. All things have
emanated from Brahma ; all must return to
him again. '' As the threads from the spider,
the tree from the seed, the fire from the coal,
the stream from the fountain, the waves from
the sea, so is the world produced out of
Brahma." " It is with us when we enter the
Divine Spirit as if a lump of salt was thrown
into the sea : it becomes dissolved into the
water from which it was produced, and is not
to be taken out again." But this absorption is
regulated. Those who have served and known
Brahma will be absorbed into him at death ;
those who have not done so must pass through
a purgatory proportioned to their guilt. They
seized upon the great principle that the punish-
ment is of the same nature as the guilt, the
reward as the merit ; or, in their own expres-
sive and far-reaching maxim, " A man is born
into the world he has made." To the guilt
contracted in former lives he must trace all
the sorrows that afflict him here. The lex
talionis is carried out with the most horrify-
ing exactness, and with a wealth of realistic
invention which Dante might have envied.
He who has killed a Brahman, after paying

134 Buddhis7n.

the first instalments of his penalt}^ b}^ suffer-
ing protracted tortures in a graduated series
of hells, will be born again in this world as
a boar, an ass, a goat, or an outcast, accord-
ing to the degree of his guilt. He who has
stolen gold from a Brahman will be born again
with diseased nails. If he has been a drunk-
ard, he will be born with discoloured teeth. If
it is grain that has tempted a man's thievish
propensities, he shall be reborn as a rat ; if he
has shown a partiality for fruit, he shall live
again as an ape. And thus only by passing
through an almost endless succession of pun-
ishments and births and revolting experiences
could man win his slow way back to a welcome
extinction in Brahma. Nothing could tell
more powerfully on the popular imagination
than the future thus depicted — a future, the
reality of which seemed to be vouched for by
the very facts of the present life.

The good side of this view of the future there
is no space here to enlarge upon. It was un-
fortunately the evil tendencies of it which were
chiefly developed. Two things resulted from it.
The Bralimans, without whom no sacrilice
could be performed, and no deliverance from
the alarming prospect effected, gained absolute
supremac}^, and religion in consequence became
more and more a matter of ceremony, less and

Absorption into Brahma. 135

less a matter of moralit}^ Secondly, as in a
pantheistic system there can be no absolute
immortality of individuals, and as all persons
must eventually be absorbed in the impersonal
existence, the rewards and punishments of men
must have a limit. Reward as well as punish-
ment must terminate. But so long as men do
good the}^ deserve reward, as the}' deserve
punishment so long as they do evil. Works of
all kinds, therefore, must be got rid of. Man's
highest state is the state of contemplative ab-
straction, in which nothing is done. Here is
the doctrine as it appears in various passages
of the Upanishads. " As flowing rivers are
resolved into the sea, losing their names and
forms, so the wise^ freed from name and form,
pass into the Divine Spirit, which is greater
than the great. He who knows that supreme
Spirit, becomes spirit." " Whoever knows this,
' I am Brahma,' knows all. Even the gods are
unable to prevent his becoming Brahma."
" Know him, the Spirit, to be one alone. Give
up all words contrary to this. He is the bridge
of immortality." *' Crossing this bridge, the
blind cease to be blind, the wounded to be
wounded, the afflicted to be afflicted ; and on
crossing this bridge nights become days, for
ever-refulgent is the region of the universal
Spirit." Salvation, that is to say, is to be

136 Buddhism.

obtained by priestly rites and transcendental
knowledge.

Now, whatever profound thoughts lay about
the roots of Brahmanism, and however suitable
to the Hindu mind it may originally have been,
there can be no question that it held the people
of India, as it still holds them, in a bond-
age at once tyrannical and degrading. It was
against the demoralising ceremonialism and the
despotic exclusiveness of this sacerdotal re-
ligion that the revolt at last came in the form
of Buddhism. Analogous to Christianity in
many respects, Buddhism resembles it in its
historical origin. Both religions had their
roots in an exclusive sacerdotal religion, and
both proclaimed deliverance to all without dis-
tinction of caste or race. The sufferings of
men which the Brahmans had used to confirm
their own supremacy and illustrate the perma-
nence of caste distinctions, roused in the sym-
pathetic heart of Buddha a feeling of kindred
with all men, and a purpose to deliver himself
and them at any cost. And as the method of
deliverance was elaborated by his own experi-
ence and thought, it is best understood when we
learn the outline of his life and the ideas which
formed it. And although the material out of
which such an outline can now be sketched is
almost entirely legendary, yet legendary as it

j

Life of Sakya-immi. 1 3 7

is, I believe it will leave on the mind substan-
tially the right impression of this certainly his-
torical person.^

The names by which he is most commonly
designated, Sakya-muni and Buddha,^ are titles
which he acquired : the former meaning the
Sage 2 of the Sakya tribe, and the Buddha mean-
ing the Enlightened. His own name was Sid-
dartha, and his family name Gautama. He was 1 J
the son of Suddhodana, a rajah of the Sakya \
tribe, who reigned in Kapilavastu, a few days'
journey north of Benares. There is some rea-

^ " It seems not impossible, after all, that Sakya-muni is
an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as
much a fiction as is that of his preceding migrations, and
the miracles that attended his birth, his life, and his de-
parture."— Wilson's Works, ii. 346. M. Senart {Essaisur
la legende die Bicddha^ Paris, 1875) claims to have sifted
the legends thoroughly, and his answer to the question,
How much of a historical character remains ? is " Bien peu
assurement" (p. 509).

2 Those who have any curiosity to see the other numer-
ous names and titles of the Buddha may consult Wilson's
Wo7'ks, ii. 9, 10, and Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p.

354.

3 The Dhammapada (268, 269) says : " A man is not a

Muni because he observes silence, if he is foolish and
ignorant ; but the wise who, taking the balance, chooses
the good and avoids evil, he is a Muni, and is a Muni
thereby ; he who in this world weighs both sides is called
a Muni." To which Max ]\Iuller appends the statement
that Muni means a Sage, and comes from " man," to
think ; and from '' muni " comes " manna," silence. — Bud-
dhaghosha's Parables, p. 133.

13B BiLcidJiisin.

son to believe that these Sakyas were not of
Aryan, but of Turanian descent,^ and this, were
it estabhshed, would account for his ability to
emancipate himself from the idea of caste under
which the Hindu mind lay helpless. And un-
questionably it is among the Turanians that
Buddhism has found most acceptance : although,
in presence of the fact that Christianity, of
Semitic origin, has been most cordially received
b}^ people of Aryan race, this may not be con-
sidered evidence of much weight. It is of more
importance to observe that Buddhism at a very
early period in its history showed a tendency
to ally itself with the devil - worship which
characterized many of the existing Turanian
religions.

The voluntary incarnation of Buddha is a
myth of later formation, and one of many in
which there exists a very striking, and, it mus^
be ovv'ned, perplexing similarity to the most
striking points in our Lord's career.- It would
seem that he grew up to all outward appearance
very like other young rajahs, dividing his time
^1 between the relaxing luxuries of an oriental pa-
lace and the invigorating exercises and athletic

' Bcal's BuddJiist Scriptures^ p. 137. Wilson's Works^
ii. 345. Ikit comp. Hodgson's Essays, p. 123.

2 The references to Buddhism by the early Christian
fathers, and soma hints on the connection between the two
religions, will be found in Wilson's Works, ii. 312.

His Eye for Suffering. 139

contests in which he outdid all competition.
But he was born with an eye for suffering and
a heart for suffering, and through all the glitter
of his luxurious and magnificent life his keen
sight penetrated to the coarse and wasting
fabric which it overlaid ; through the soft strains
of musicians and Natch -girls he heard the
moans of those who la}^ in the outer darkness ;
through the perfumes of his gardens and halls
the smell of death struck on his sense ; between
his brooding spirit and all the pride of life with
which he was studiously surrounded there
floated without ceasing visions of decay and
dissolution, of ghastly suffering and never-end-
ing bondage. The growth of this distaste for
pleasures that could not last, of this yearning
for an eternal rest, is depicted in a striking and
well-known legend. One day when the prince
was going out by the eastern gate of the city to
his pleasure-garden he met on the way a decrepit
old man, leaning heavily on a stick and tremb-
ling in every limb, his veins standing out on
his emaciated body, his teeth gone or loose, and
his voice broken and quavering. " What is
this?" said the prince anxiously to the charioteer. \
" Is this condition peculiar to this man or to his
family?" ''By no means, my lord," replied
the driver. " This is old age ; suffering and toil
have broken this man's strength, and he is now

/

140 Bttddhism.

scorned by his kindred, and left without support,
' like a dead tree in the forest. And this comes
to all men ; your father, your mother, every
creature must come to this." *' Alas ! " said
the prince, " how ignorant and mistaken is man,
who is proud of the youth which intoxicates
him, and sees not the old age which awaits him.
Turn back to the city, what have I to do with
pleasure, who am destined to such an end ? "
I Another time, going out by the south gate to
;his pleasure-garden, he saw on the road a man
seized v/ith sickness, lying without shelter and
without companion, gasping and cramped, and
with dismay in his face. Having again heard
from his charioteer that this was no peculiar
condition, but a calamity to which all men are
liable, he once more felt the incongruit}' of
pleasure -seeking, and returned to the city.
Similarly, a third time, he met on the road a
funeral procession, the dead man stretched
stark on his bier, and the relatives throwing
dust on their heads, beating their breasts, and
uttering piercing lamentations. ''Alas for
youth," said the prince, " which old age de-
stroys ! Alas for health which sickness invades !
Alas for life which ends in death ! Oh, that
there were no old age ; no sickness ; no death.
Let us go back. I will meditate how to ac-
complish deliverance."

He forsakes the World. \\\

This determination was confirmed by a fourth
spectacle. This was a bhikshu, or mendicant,
walking with the placid expression of a disci-
plined spirit, wearing his single poor garment
with dignity, and carrying in his hand his alms-
bowl. The prince's interpreter, the driver, ex-
plained to him that this man walks through
life with calmness because he has renounced
its pleasures, and has forced himself to conquer
himself, and lives now without passion, without
env}^, without desire, " This," said the prince,
*' is the way of escape. I also will renounce
life and its pleasures."

This resolution was vehemently opposed b\^
his father and the courtiers. But the very
means they took to entangle him more deeply
in pleasures contributed to his emancipation.
For, awaking one night, and rising from the
couch where he had gone to sleep in contempt
of the Natch-dancers, he saw the lamps un-
trimmed, smoky, and defiled with oil; and the
sleeping women themselves lying about in un-
seemly positions, some grinding their teeth,
others dribbling from their mouth, or uneasily
moving and muttering.^ This was final.
"Never again," he vowed, " will I indulge in
the pleasures of sense; never again — this is the

^ Bigandet, Life of Gaitdama^ p. ^^. Beal's Romantic
Hist, of Buddha, p. 130.

14^ BiiddJiism,

last time ; from henceforth I entertain such
thoughts no more." Going to his wife's cham-
ber, he gazed a farewell to her and his infant
heir, then summoned his groom, mounted his
horse, and forsook once for all his home, his
kindred, his kingdom, and every worldly posses-
sion. Riding all night, he halted only when
^pursuit was impossible, and halted then only
to make his " great renunciation " complete by
giving his royal mantle and circlet of pearls to
his faithful and remonstrating servant, and by
cutting off with his sword the long locks of the
warrior, thus reducing himself wholly to the
condition of mere undistinguished humanity.

But though thus strong in his resolve, Sid-
dartha was only tasting the hardships and diffi-
culties that beset his path from this his twenty-
ninth year, till in his thirty-sixth year he won
{ the peace he sought. The great tempter M^ra,
though roughly repulsed for the time, congratu-
lates himself with the thought, " Sooner or
later some lustful or malicious or angry thought
must arise in his mind : in that moment I shall
be his master." And " as a shadow follows the
body, so from that day," says the chronicle,
" did IMara follow the blessed one, striving to
throw every obstacle in his way towards the
Buddhahood." Not only did his royal palate
nauseate the food that was first offered to him

He seeks Deliverance fi'orn Suffermg. 14

'^

as a mendicant, but the ties of home, though so
sternly cut, left wounds not soon healed. His
father offered him the kingdom if he would re-
turn. " Dear son," he said, " the practice of
religion involves as a first principle a loving,
compassionate heart for all creatures ; and for
this reason the very name of a religious life is
given to it. Why, then, should you consider a
religious life as a term applied only to those
who dwell in the lonely mountains? Informer
days men lived at home and practised religion.
They did not then cast away their jewels, or
shave their crowns, and yet they were able to
attain to complete emancipation." But to all
such remonstrances his son had but one an-
swer: " I have given up all fancied joys, and
I am searching for joys that endure. Will the
man who has eaten poison and vomited it
up, return to the tempting dish again ? Will
he who has escaped from the burning house
voluntarily go back to the flames ? " ^ His
father could assure him of no release from sick-
ness, death, decay; and it was this he sought.

It was from the recognised religious teachers,
the Brahmans, he first sought direction. And r
it is important to observe the difficulties which '
chiefly perplexed him, and the point at which /
he felt their system to be weak. After living '

^ Beal's Romantic Hist, of Buddha^ pp. 163-5.

144 BttddJiism.

for some da3's among a company of distin-
guished ascetics, and observing their practices,
he begged to be allowed to question them, and
receiving permission, he at once pierced to the
heart of the matter. " Venerable sirs," he
said, " I perceive that your system, although it
promises the reward of heaven to certain per-
sons, yet provides no means of /z/za/ deliverance.
You give up all, friends, relatives, and worldly
delights, and suffer pain, that you may be born
in heaven ; not considering that after being
thus born on high, you may in future years
return and be born even in hell. In coveting
to be born into heaven you forget that this very
continuance involves the recurrence of the evil
you now seek to escape from. So it is with
men who when they come to die are filled
with fear, and seek some happ}^ state of birth,
and through this very desire for life the}^ doom
themselves to return again to the inconstant
state of life they have left. They do not con-
sider the ever-recurring evil of future births.
Coveting the joys of heaven, the}^ do not con-
sider that the very nature of the body, however
pure and spiritual, involves the necessity of
decay, and therefore of change." He also
objects to the means which the Brahmans
employed to gain their end. *' If," he argued,
" abstention from sufficient food is meritorious,

His Discussions luitJi Brahma ns. 145

the wild beasts, who are content with grass,
ought to abound in merit ; and the man who
now suffers hardships ought, as a necessary
consequence, to enjoy future happiness." Hav-
ing thus disposed of asceticism, he as summarily
exploded the practice of sacrifice. "How can'
the system which requires the infliction of
misery on others be called a religious system ?
To seek a good by doing an evil is surely no
safe plan. If a man, in worshipping the gods,
sacrifices a sheep, and so does well, why should
he not kill his child and so do better ? " ^

To these difficulties the Brahmans had little
to reply. They could only say that it was by
such methods all the ancient saints had attained
felicity. These teachers make no mention of ab-
sorption into Brahma as the final deliverance ;
a circumstance which seems to indicate that
this doctrine may have been helped to its com-
plete development by the teachings of Buddha
himself. Resorting in turn to the most cele-
brated of the Brahman sophists, Alara and
Udra, he questioned them also, not as an itine-
rant disputant, of which in these days there
were many, but as one who sought a physician,
as a wanderer who had lost his way in the
midst of a great solitary wild.^ Nowhere could
he find the object of his search — an escape from

I Beal, 157-9. 2 Ibid. 171.

II

146 Bud.ihisin.

the miseries and vanities of life into a condition
from which no return to life and its troubles was
possible. " I search," he said, " for that which
is imperishable and permanent." He seemed
to himself to be inextricably entangled in an
existence in which everything was subject to the
ceaseless rotation of decay, death, birth ; decay,
death, birth.

Failing to receive light from other men, he
resolved to give himself to meditation, and re-
tired for this purpose to the solitude of Uru-
vela. Here for six years he lived in the jungle
with five other ascetics who attended him,
already feeling that he was the greatest and
most resolutely true teacher they had met.
Even from this solitude the fame of his medi-
tation and mortification, says the chronicle,
" spread abroad like the sound of a great bell
hung in the canopy of the skies." But the
crisis was at hand^ His physical strength gave
way under his austerities. He swooned, and
was thought to be dead. Recovering conscious-
ness, it was only to fall into an agony of mental
conflict, which the legends vainly strive to de-
pict by a more than Miltonic picture of a battle
between Buddha and Mara, armed with the
most appalling instruments of destruction.
Doubtless, in his state of physical inanition, the
knowledge of his failure as yet to find deliver-

He becoincs the Bitddha. 147

ance opened the long-closed doors of his memory
and flooded his spirit with regrets, and with the
fond memories of his youthful life so utterly in
contrast to the squalor and discomfort of the
jungle. But gathering his energies for one
supreme effort, he forced his mind, as the night
wore through, to a strict sequence of thought,
and as morning dawned the light he had so
long sought broke upon him.

Such then was the process by which Sid- .
dartha painfully won his way to Buddhahood. \
Henceforth he was the Buddha, the Enlightened.
At this point, however, the legendary histories,
which speak of this eminence as one to which
no other man could attain, are apt to make us
forget that it was by a purely and confessedly
human process he won his way to light, and
that originally this title, the Buddha, can have
meant nothing more than that he was recognised
as a singularly successful thinker. The tradi-
tional accounts affirm that there had been many
Buddhas before him, and that he expected his
religion would last only for 5000 years, when
some new Buddha would appear and supersede
him. But the fact is that no historical person
had borne this title before Sakya-muni. The
Buddhaship was not a well - known vacancy
waiting to be filled ; it was an unknown office,
an insignificant title, which now at last was

II*

/

148 BitddJiisin.

lifted into exceptional, unique significance, by
the importance of the person to whom at first it
was almost casually given.

But no sooner did Sakya-muni become the

\ Buddha than he was appalled at the laborious
enterprise that awaited him in communicating

'his newl3^-attained light to all men.^ He knew
what it had cost himself to accept this light.
He knew how men shrank from any teaching
which forced truth into their convictions. Was
it not hopeless to attempt the deliverance of
men by such a system as his — a system involv-
ing change of character and entirely averse to
all mere magical formulas or rites ? But his
compassion prevailed. For a time the struggle
was severe, but soon we find him making his
way to the great religious centre of Northern
India with the resolve : " I now desire to turn
the wheel of the excellent law ; for this purpose
am I going to that city of Benares, to give light
to those enshrouded in darkness and to open
the gate of immortality to men." At first he
gained disciples rapidly. His princely appear-
ance and bearing, the indubitable thoroughness
of his often-tested self-abnegation and charity,
his skill and persuasiveness and originality in
teaching, and the reasonableness and purity of

' On the interposition of Brahma at this critical junc-
ture, vide Bigandet, p. 105.

He publishes his Discovery. 149

his doctrine, contributed to his success. He
was soon in a position to attempt to " set
rolling the royal chariot -wheel of a univer-
sal kingdom of right." ^ Calling his disciples
about him, he conferred upon them the power
hitherto reserved to himself, to admit members
to the Buddhist Society, and sent them out in
all directions to explain his religion to all.
" Bhikshus," he said, "having myself escaped
from all sorrows, I desire my own profit to re-
dound to the good of others : there are yet a
vast number of men enthralled by grief — for
these we ought to have some care and compas-
sion. Go now% therefore, and teach the most
excellent law. Explain the beginning, the
middle, and the end of the law to all men with-
out exception ; let everything respecting it be
made publicly known, and be brought to the
broad daylight." ^ During the remaining forty-
five years of his life this was his regular pro-
cedure : while the rainy season lasted he and
his apostles lived together under shelter, but as
soon as it became possible for them to itinerate
they scattered again in every direction, still
turning the wheel of the law.

Buddha's own skill in teaching and his me-

1 Rhys Davids in Encyclopcsdia Brit. p. 428. Cf Beal,
p. 244.

2 Beal, p. 285. Bigandet, p. 122.

I5Q B/itddhisin,

thod, as well as the missionary ardour of the
new religion, are illustrated by the following
incidents. Kisagotami had been married earl}^
and while still a girl gave birth to a son.
When the boy was able to walk by himself he
died. The young girl in her love for it carried
the dead child clasped to her bosom, and went
from house to house asking if any one could
give her medicine for it. At length a wise man
understanding her case thought with himself,
*' Alas ! this Kisagotami does not understand
the law of death. I must comfort her." " My
good girl," he said, '' I cannot myself give
medicine for your child, but I know of one who
can." " Oh, tell me who that is," said she.
"The Buddha can give 3^ou medicine; you
must go to him." She. went to Buddha, and
doing homage to him., said, " Lord and master,
do you know any medicine that will be good
for my child?" "Yes," said the teacher; "I
know of some. Get me a handful of mustard
seed." But when the poor girl was hurrying
away to procure it, he added, " I require
mustard seed from a house where no son, hus-
band, parent, or slave, has died." " Very good,"
said the girl, and went to ask for it, carrying
still the dead child astride on her hip. The
people said, " Here is mustard seed ;" but when
she asked, " Has there died a son, a husband,

]\Iissio7imy Ardour. 151

a parent, or a slave, in this house ? " they re-
plied, ''Lady, what is this that you ask? the
living are few, but the dead are many ! " Then
she went to other homes, but one said, " I have
lost a son;" another, "I have lost my parents;"
another, " I have lost my slave." At last, not
being able to find a single house where no one
had died, she began to think, " This is a heavy
task that I am on." And as her mind cleared,
she summoned up her resolution, left the dead
child in a forest, and returned to Buddha.
"Have you procured the mustard seed?" he
asked. "I have not," she replied: "the people
of the village told me, ' The living are few, but
the dead are many.' " Then Buddha said, " You
thought that you alone had lost a son : the law
of death is that among all living creatures there
is no permanence." Thus he cleared away her
darkness of mind, helped her to contentment,
and numbered her among his disciples.^

The other incident is told as follows : — A
rich merchant, of the name of Purna, being
converted to the teaching of Buddha by some
of his companions on shipboard, resolved to
forsake all and fix his residence with a neigh-
bouring but savage tribe, in order to win them
to the same religion. Buddha at first tried to
dissuade him from so perilous an undertaking.

^ MaK Miiller's Lecture on Nihilism, p. i6. Biiddha-
ghosha's Parables, p. 98.

\

152 Bttddhism.

*' The men of Sronaparanta, where you wish
to fix your residence," he said, " are violent,
cruel, passionate, fierce, and insolent. When
these men address you in wicked, brutal, gross,
and insulting language, when they storm at
you and abuse you, what will you do, O
Purna?"

*'When they address me in wicked and in-
sulting language, and abuse me," replied Purna,
" this is what I will think. These men of
Sronaparanta are certainly good and gentle
men, who do not strike me either with their
hands or with stones."

"But if they strike you, what will you
think?"

" I will think them good and gentle, because
they do not strike me with cudgels or with the
sword."

" But what if they do strike you with the
sword?" ;

" I will think them good and gentle, because
they do not completely deprive me of life."

"But if they do deprive you of life, what
then?"

" I will think the men of Sronaparanta good
and gentle, for delivering me with so little pain
from this body full of vihness."

" It is well, Purna," said Buddha ; " with
your perfect patience you may dwell among the

BttddJia s Last Words. ' 153

Sronaparantakas. Go thou, O Purna, thyself
deHvered, deliver others ; thyself arrived at the
other shore, help others thither; thyself com-
forted, comfort others ; having attained com-
plete Nirvana, guide others to it."

Thus commissioned, Purna betook himself to
that desperate mission, and by his imperturb-
able patience, won the inhabitants to attend to
his teaching/

The zeal of these indomitable missionaries,
who certainly have tamed many of the fiercest
and rudest races upon the earth, was kindled at
the undying flame of Buddha's own universal^
charity.^ With his latest breath he continued
to preach his gospel of deliverance. The last
night of his life, when his friends would fain
have secured him a little quiet, he overheard
the voice of a well-known Brahman philosopher
pleading to be allowed to ask him one or two
questions. Buddha desired them to admit him,
and addressed him in the following remarkable
words : " This is not the time for discussions.
To true wisdom there is only one way, the path
is laid down in my law. Many have already
followed it, and conquering the lust and pride

I St. Hilaire, Le Bouddha et sa Religion, pp. 95-97.

^ " Le proselytisme lui-meme n'est qu'un effet de ce
sentiment de la bienveillance et de charite universelle qui
anime le Buddha." — Burnouf, Introd. a rhistoire du Du.l-
dhisme Iiidieii, p. 37.

154 Biiddhisvi.

and anger of their own hearts, have become
free from ignorance and doubt and wrong belief,
have entered the calm state of universal kindli-
ness, and reached Nirvana even in this life.
Except in my religion the twelve great disciples
who practise the highest virtue, and stir up the
world to free it from its indifference, are no-
where to be met with. O Subhadra, I do not
speak to you of things I have not experienced.
Since my twenty-ninth year have I striven after
the supreme wisdom, and followed the path
that leads to Nirvana." ^ Shortly after he said
to his disciples : " Beloved, that which causes
life, causes also decay and death. Never forget
this, let your minds be filled with this truth.
I called you to make it known to you." These
were the last words of the Buddha.

Here, then, we have the essence of the sal-
vation Buddha had to proclaim. Life involnes
death. Wherever there is life, decay must fol-
low. In every form of existence there are
already the germs of dissolution. To get rid
of decay and its accompanying misery w^e must
get quit of life ; of life, not merely in this pre-
sent world, but of life in every form. For in
the Buddhist philosophy there is no such con-
ception as a purely spiritual existence. He is
a heretic who holds that man has a soul or
^ Rhys Davids in Encyc. Brit., and Bigandct, p. 314.

Its Postulates. 155

permanent self separable from the body. What-
ever is material is subject to change and dissolu-
tion, and there is no life which is not material.
These are the postulates, the ultimate facts on
which Buddhism proceeds. As long, therefore,
as man /s, he must be miserable. His only
salvation is, not to be. There is no cure. The
only escape from evil is escape from existence.
The great problem comes to be, how to commit
suicide ; suicide not of that pitiful and delusive
kind which rids a man of life in one particular
form, but which rids him of existence in every
form. The ultimate good to which the indi-
vidual looks forward is annihilation ; the con-
summation of all things which is to be prayed
for and striven after is absolute universal no-
thing.

The two fixed ideas of Buddhism, as it ap-
peared in the mind of its founder, are the
materialistic nature of all existence and the
doctrine of transmigration. These are the root
principles out of which the system sprang.^
The fundamental axioms of Buddhism, or, as
they are technically called, the Four Great or
Excellent Truths,^ which constitute the dis-
covery of Buddha, are these : i. That in all

^ Its Atheism, its Nihilism, are already contained in
these root ideas,

^ See Burnouf, pp. 299 and 629. Hardy's Almiical,
p. 496.

V

156 Ei!ddJiitin.

existence there is sorrow. 2. That all exist-
ence results from attachment to life, or desire.
3. That existence may be extinguished by ex-
tinguishing desire. 4. That desire may be ex-
tinguished by following the path to Nirvana.
No doubt it will at once occur to you that the
very foundation of this system is false. You
will deny its first proposition, that in all ex-
istence there is sorrow. Some lives are wretched
and a living death, but others are' bright and
full of joy. But from the materialistic point of
view life is haunted with the shame and miser}'
of the decay it carries in it, and from which
there is no escape but into some other form of
existence also destined to decay and corruption.
Besides, the actual suffering and disappoint-
ment and sense of the vanity of life are so com-
mon, that any religious teacher who offers relief
from these feelings is sure of much success.
He was not a Buddhist who said, " There are
moments of depression when we seem to feel
still in need of some explanation why organic
life should exist at all."

" A life
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seems hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth." ^

' Andrew Wilson's Abode of Show, p. 310. Comp.
Shelley's stanzas written in dejection near Naples.

Jlliseiy of all Existence. 157

Possibl}^ if we could detect the leading motives
which have first disposed men to accept any
religion, we should see that one of the most
influential of these motives has always been the
pressure or fear of misery, even of a physical or
worldl}^ kind. And it is also to be considered
that in the countries where Buddhism has found
its most permanent and influential acceptance
life is diflicult and precarious. In India there
was, in addition to the natural shrinking from
the known distresses of the present and the un-
known calamities of the future, the loathing of
existence which had been produced by the doc-
trine of transmigration.^ So long as personal
existence is retained the same risk attends every
life as attends the present life. " The being
who is still subject to birth," as one of the
Buddhist writings reminds us, " may at one

^ Some suggestive remarks on the ditTerence between
the Western optimist view of life, and the Eastern pes-
simist view, will be found in Sir Coom^.ra Swamy's Sutta
Nipata^ Introd. p. xxviii. et scq. To the quotations there
given we may add the apparently self-contradictory utter-
ance of John Stuart Mill. " It seems to me not only pos-
sible, but probable, that in a higher, and, above all, in a
happier condition of human life, not annihilation but immor-
tality may be the burdensome idea ; and that human nature,
though pleased with the present, and by no means impa-
tient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the
thought that it is not chained through eternity to a con-
scious existence, which it cannot be assured that it will
always wish to preserve."

158 BiiddJiism.

time sport in the garden of a dewa, and at
another be cut to a thousand pieces in hell ; at
one time he may be Maha Brahma, and at an-
other a degraded outcast ; at one time he may
eat the food of the dewas, and at another he
may have molten lead poured down his throat ;
at one time he may sip nectar, and at another
be made to drink blood ; alternately he may
become wild with pleasure, and then with pain ;
he may now be a king who can receive count-
less gems by the mere clapping of his hands,
and now a mendicant, carrying a skull from
door to door to gather alms." ^

The personal upbringing and experience of
Buddha had no doubt much to do with his de-
preciation of life. The side of it which had been
represented to him as most valuable and attrac-
tive he had found to be utterly nauseating.
And when he gazed on the ignominious decay
of all that was outwardly bright, and put to
himself the question whether there is actually
any being who has not suffered or may not
suffer, he may have erred in the form rather
than in the substantial meaning of his an-
swer. For, is there any moral existence which
does not involve suffering ? - The higher we
ascend in the scale of being, the greater

^ Hardy's Manual, p. 454.

2 See Wilson's Abode of Snow.

Death no Delivera^ice. 159

capacity and readiness for suffering do we
find. As we ascend, we find indeed that we
are rising out of reach of that suffering which
springs directly out of the moral wrong-doing
of the sufferer, but we also find that, very much
in the same proportion, there increases an in-
ability to be happy while any other being is
suffering, an incapacity to enjoy a solitary bliss,
a craving for an equal distribution of suffering
and blessedness, a will to share the one and
communicate the other. Is not God God pre-
cisely because He shrinks from no responsi-
bility His creatures lay upon Him; turns away
from no suffering their sin or need entails ; and
does not rest until they are partakers of His
blessedness ? Buddha, therefore, was probably
not so far wrong in his first proposition, that
all existence involves sorrow, as in failing to
consider that there are deeper evils than sorrow,
and in refusing to lift his eyes to the eternal
issues of things and take into his reckoning the
permanent results of suffering on character. /

But admitting that all existence is miserable,
and that the great aim of man is to escape from
misery, ought not consistent materialists to
have relied upon death as their deliverer from
life and its accompanying sorrow ? Is not the
dissipation of the bodily organism precisely the
deliverance by extinction which men are sup-

1 60 BiLddhism.

posed to long for ? Far from it, says Buddha.
When the bod}^ dies, there remains the aggre-
j:!:ate moral result for good or evil of the life led
in the body, and this moral result of the present
life is the seed of a new existence. Every form
of life now in existence, and indeed every form
of existence animate or inanimate, is the result
of previously existing things, and especially of
the moral value of these previously existing
things ; so all that now exists will by its moral "
character reproduce and determine the next
generation of existences. This is the Buddhist
/ d^trine of Karma. Karma means " act ; " and
the doctrine of karma is that a man's condi-
tion in this present life is the consequence of
his actions in a previous state, and that he
determines by his actions in this life what his
future condition will be. Until a man's karma
is satisfied, until he has entirely exhausted the
consequences of his past actions, he must ^con-
tinue to be reborn in one form or another. A
young Brahman came to Gautama and said :
" From some cause or other mankind receive
existence ; but there are some persons who are
exalted, others who are mean ; some who die
young, others who live to a great age ; some
who suffer from various diseases, others who
have no sickness until they die; . . . some who
are of mean birth, others who belong to the

Kami a, 1 6 1

highest castes. What is the cause of these
differences ? What is it that appoints or con-
trols these discrepancies? " To which Buddha
repHed : " All sentient beings have their own in-
dividual karma, or the most essential property
of all beings is their karma ; karma comes by
inheritance not from parentage but from previous
births ; karma is the cause of all good and evil.
... It is the difference in the karma that
causes the difference in the lot of men, so that
some are mean and others are exalted, some
are miserable and others happy." ^ From this
law Gautama himself was not exempt, but de-
clared that he obtained the Buddhaship "neither
by his own inherent power nor by the assistance
of the dewas, but by the meritorious karma of
previous births."^ Slowly had he won his way
to this high position, having passed through
every form of life — being born as a bird, as a
stag, as an elephant, even as a tree or plant ;
having experienced every rank and condition of
human life by successive births into each, and
only after exhausting this long probation and
rising to increasing altitudes of purity and self-
sacriiice, being born at last into the heaven
from which Buddhas descend to earth.

Though quite untenable, and not even pro"
fessing to justify itself to reason, there is much

^ Hardy, pp. 44.5, 6. 2 Ibid. p. 448.

12

1 62 BitddhisDi,

that is commendable and attractive in this
theory of karma. If it does not so much as
attempt to explain the origin of the universe, it
at least points to a moral and not a physical ne-
cessity as regulating the amount of life and the
nature of life in all worlds. As it is the karma
of the individual which necessitates his being
born again and again until he can attain Nir-
vana, so it is *' by the aggregate karma of the
various orders of living beings that the pre-
sent worlds were brought into existence." ^
Buddhism declines to say anything about the
originating of karma, or what it was which
brought the first living beings into existence
before any karma existed; but confining itself to
the present actual world, it refuses to rest the
condition of man, his miseries and his existence,
on anything but a moral foundation. ' For the
same reason it refused to recognise a personal
Creator, because that would be to rest the blame
of human existence on the v/rong shoulders, and
charge a Creator with all the actual misery
exhibited wherever life is seen. And undoubtedly
if it makes individuals feel responsible for all the
ills that befall them, it acts also as a powerful
incentive to virtue. The man who believes
that every evil act will inevitably have its con-
sequence, and that as he sows he shall reap ;

Hardy, p. 396.

Personal Identity. i6

'»

the man who is convinced that sloth, selfishness,
fraud, or lust, in this life, will necessitate his
being born at death into the terrible Buddhist
hell ^ or into some vile crawling creature, and
that from that condition he can only slowly and
laboriously win his way b}^ righteous living back
into his present state; the man who accepts
such a doctrine has at least one powerful induce-
ment to virtue.

It is obvious that were such a doctrine preached
to Europeans it would at once be met by the as-
sertion, that as we have no consciousness of any
life prior to this, in which we sowed what now we
are reaping, so we shall have no remembrance
of our present selves in any future state. There j
is no continuity of personal identity. It is not
really I w^ho am to be reborn, but another per-
son who is to be born and bear my guilt or en-
joy my merit. When I die, there remains only
my karma, and this karma of mine necessitates
the birth of a man or a beast ; but in this man
or beast there will be no consciousness of
identity with me, nor will my consciousness be

' Adulterers, after being boiled for immense periods in
the lowest hell, are transferred into the Lohakumbha hell-
pot, the bottom of which they reach in 30,000 years. The
same time is spent in coming up to the surface ; and so
on. Well may they say : " To the fooHsh, who know not
the law of the righteous, the life to come is long." — Buddha-
ghosha's Parables J p. 132.

12''^

1 64 Bitddhism.

continued in that life of retribution. ( The sin
is punished, but not the sinner. Buddhism,
denying, as it did, the immateriahty of the soul,
had this objection in view at a very early period,
and met it by the analogical reasoning which
was so much in vogue. The king Milinda, in
the course of conversation with Nagasena, the
Buddhist sage, criticises the doctrine of karma
thus : *' If the same man is not again produced,
that being at least is delivered from the conse-
quences of sinful action." ^ To which Nagasena
replies, " How so? If there be no future birth there
is deliverance ; but if there be a future birth,
deliverance does not necessarily follow. Thus
a man steals a number of mangos, and takes them
away ; but he is seized by the owner, who brings
him before the king, and says, ' Sire, this man
has stolen my mangos.' But the robber replies,
' I have not stolen his mangos ; the mango he
set in the ground was one, these mangos are
other and different.' Will this plea be sus-
tained ? Or a man while eating his food allows
his lamp to flare up and set fii^ito the thatch,
and, the flame extending, th^Q^liole village is
burned. But when the villagers seize him, he
says, ' Good people, I did not burn your village;
the flame that I kindled was one, but the flame

^ Hardy's Maruml, p. 429.

The Four Great Truths. 165

that burned your village was another.' Will
they listen to him ? "

If, then, all life is a misery, and if the bodil}'
death of the individual leaves still a germ
which will produce a renewal of life and of
misery, how is this germ to be got rid of?
The answer is given in a standard Buddhist
writing in the following explicit terms : ^ "What ,
are the four sublime truths? Sorrow, the*
production of sorrow, the extinction of sorrow, I
the path which conducts to the extinction of\
sorrow. What is the sorrow which is the first
great truth ? It is birth, old age, disease,
death ; it is being bound to what you hate and
separated from what you love ; it is powerless-
ness to obtain what you desire and seek. What
is the production of sorrow ? It is the cease-
less, ever - recurring desire, accompanied by
pleasure and passion, to find satisfaction in
one thing or other. What is the extinction of
sorrow ? It is the complete destruction of this
ever-recurring desire ; it is detachment from
this desire — its abandonment, extinction, anni-
hilation ; it is the perfect renunciation of this
desire. And what is the path which conducts
to this ? It is the path which is laid down by ,
these eight things: right views, right will,
right effort, right action, right living, right
' Burnouf's Introd. p. 629.

■UW

1 66 Bttddhisin.

/t
'/ speech, right thought, and right meditation."

Desire, in short, is the root-evil which must be
destroyed. The_thirst for life and its short-
lived empty pleasures must be got rid of.
The ignorance which betrays men, causing
them always to renew their belief in the satis-
fying nature of life, must be dispelled. They
must learn to see things as they are, and to
understand that as man never is, so never will
he be blessed, save by ceasing to be. Igno-
rance and desire, these are man's disease ;
ignorance which cannot see the impermanence
and vanity of all things ; desire which attaches
jiman to life, and carries him, like the crow on
the elephant's carcase, down the river, till he
finds himself seated on a skeleton picked clean,
and hopelessly lost in mid-ocean. The sup-
pression of desire, therefore, by the help of
\./Vwisdom, is the Buddhist means of salvation.
Here is the doctrine in Sakya-muni's own
words. "Existence is a tree; the merit or de-
merit of the actions of men is the fruit of that
tree and the seed of future trees ; death is the
withering away of the old tree from which the
others have sprung ; wisdom and virtue take
away the germinating faculty, so that when the
tree dies there is no reproduction. This is
Nirvana." ^ Or, as the same doctrine is taught

' Wilson, ii. 364.

Path to Nirvmia. 167

in another Buddhist writing: " The heart, scru-
pulously avoiding all idle dissipation, diligently
applying itself to the holy law of Buddha,
letting go all lust and consequent disappoint-
ment, fixed and unchangeable, enters on Nir-
vana." ^

But it must not be supposed that the mere
conquest of sensuality, nor even the eradication
of all malevolent passion, is enough to lift the
disciple into Nirvana. The highest condition,
the Buddhist's perfect blessedness, is attained^
only by those who have so absolutely conquered
self that they do not even desire continued
existence for themselves, but have given up
their hold of everything, and have thus attained
perfect inward peace and charity. It is this
sublimated Stoicism, this condition of perfect!
self-renunciation, which constitutes the Bud-/
dhist Nirvana, and which destroys the possi-*
bility of any future existence. Thus, when a
young Bramatchari asked Buddha to explain
to him his secret, he replied, "Illustrious youth,
if a man let go his hold on the world so as to
store up no further karma, this man will under
stand the character of permanence and of non
permanence." Similarly to another inquirer
he says, " When the world, weary of sorrow,
turns away and separates itself from the cause
^ Beal's Buddhist Scriptiwcs^ p. 159.

1 68 Btiddhism.

of all this sorrow, then, by this voluntary rejec-
tion of it, there remains that which I call ' the
true self.' " ^

Nirvana, then, is the moral condition which
accompanies the eradication of self:will, self-
assertion, self-seeking, self-pleasing. And had
this been the ultimate aim of Buddhism,
nothing could have been w^orthier of human
effort. But this moral self-renunciation is only
a means to the great end of annihilation, ex-
tinction of self in every sense. Self is to be
renounced, not that man may come into a
loving concord with the will of God and with
every living creature, but that he may himself
escape the misery which inevitably accompanies
all existence. The moral condition of Nirvana
is attained in order that at death there may be
no re-birth. The oil is withdrawn and the
flame dies out, so that no other wick can be lit
from it. Unconsciously it would, no doubt,
be the moral attainment which satisfied high-
minded Buddhists ; but theoretically the moral
attainment is not the ultimate end in view, but
only the means by which the man attains to
non-existence. He reaches the highest develop-
ment, not to become serviceable to the world

^ Beal's Buddhist Sc?ip. pp. i8o, 185. An instructive
comparison of the system of Schopenhauer with that of
Buddha will be found in Helen Zimmern's Arthur Scho-
penhauer, c. X.

Nirvana. 1 69

at large, but to pass away into nothingness.
" He that hateth his Hfe in this world, shall
keep it unto life eternal " — that is the well-
balanced, far-seeing, quiet enunciation of the
real law of existence; but the Buddhist Nir-
vana is a travestie of this, and magnificent as
is the conception of man's highest moral state,
it is stultified by the end for which it is to be
attained.

And thus, though the framework of the
Buddhist ethic is beautiful and all but perfect,
the moving spirit of it is radically selfish. It
not only professedly excludes all consideration
of a higher will than a man's own, but it also
excludes all idea of duty. It takes its depar-
ture from man's sense of misery, not from his
sense of sin ; it builds its well-proportioned and
exquisitely-chiselled temple not on conscience,
but on man's craving for happiness; and its
ultimate aim is not to free men from inward
evil, but to emancipate them from misery, that
is, from existence. And therefore, while the
admirable purity and elevation of its moral
teaching must have found a hopeful response
in many a soul, it has signally failed in moving
the multitude. It has in it the makings of the
purest moral system men have ever developed,
but it lacks the two elements which are chiefly
needed in any system which is to be extensively

1 70 Buddhism.

efficacious among men : it lacks the appeal to
conscience which furnishes the steady support
of a sense of duty, and it lacks the idea of a
personal God which calls out the still stronger,
if as yet less constant, principles of love and
hope.

/ But not only does Buddhism show us how
hopeless it is to endeavour to communicate to
nations a high morality apart from a pure
religious faith, it also shows us that the purest
natural instincts point to the same morality
which our religion teaches. It gives us the
proof that in bidding us extinguish self, our
Lord commands that which the truest human
wisdom working in a purely human interest
itself dictates.

The most competent living authority on
Buddhism, Mr. Rhys Davids, has elaborated
a theory which, though it owes, I think, more
to his own elevated moral sentiment than to
Buddhist principles, yet deserves to be noticed,
both on account of its intrinsic beauty and in
deference to its originator. It is a theory in
which the Comtists will recognise that Bud-
dhism has anticipated them not only in their
materialism and agnosticism, but alsc in their
worship of humanity and sacrifice of the indi-
vidual to the race. For the theory is this :
that the Buddhist, in seeking Nirvana, knows

A 7inihilation. 171

that this involves his own personal extinction,
but is upheld by the hope that he will thus
lessen the sum of human misery. By destroy-
ing his karma, by annihilating this seed of a
new existence, he withdraws one individual life
from the sum of beings who are going the
weary round of ever- recurring births. "The
true Buddhist saint does not stain the purity
of his self - denial by lusting after a positive
happiness which he himself is to enjoy here-
after. His consciousness will cease to feel, but
his virtue will live and work out its full effect
in the decrease of the sum of the misery of
sentient beings." ^ He helps forward the uni-
verse to its goal of non-existence. He leaves
behind him no inheritance of misery. He him-
self ceases to be, and no one takes his place ;
there is one unit the less to live and to suffer.
This is the Buddhist analogue to the Positivist
offset to personal annihilation so winningly pre-
sented by George Eliot : —

" O may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who Hve asrain
In minds made better by their presence : live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self.
In thoughts sublime that pierce the nightlike stars,

^ Cojiteinporary Review, ]2iW\.\2irY, iSyy.

1/2 Buddhism,

And with their mild persistence urge man's search
To vaster issues. . . .

This is Hfe to come." ^

Certainly it is competent to a Buddhist to
cherish this desire for the universal good, and
the religion out of which such thoughts can be
even logically evolved is thereby proved to be
worthy of earnest study and of much considera-
tion. Neither ought it to be overlooked that,
with the exception of Christianity, no religion
has laid such stress upon the grace of universal
charity as Buddhism lays. Buddha himself
said, "A man who foolishly does me wrong, I
will return to him the protection of my ungrudg-
ing love ; the more evil comes from him the
more good shall go from me." " A wicked
man who reproaches a virtuous one is like one
who looks up and spits at heaven ; the spittle
soils not the heaven, but comes back and defiles
his own face." Again, in a very remarkable
passage, " To feed crowds by the hundred is not
to be compared to the act of feeding one really
good man ; to feed good men by the thousand
is not to be compared to the act of feeding one
lay-disciple ;" and so on through all the ranks
of Buddhist saintship, till we come to the

' To the same purpose Mr. John Morley has conse-
crated some of the most eloquent passages in the English
language.

Universal Charity enjoined. 173

highest : "To feed Pratyeka Buddhas by the
thousand myriad is not like feeding one Buddha,
and learning to pray to him from a desire to save
all living creatures. To feed one good man, how-
ever, is of infinitely greater merit than attend-
ing to questions about heaven and earth, spirits
and demons, such as occupy ordinary men.
These matters are not to be compared to the
religious duties we owe to our parents. Our
parents are very Divine." ^ And, as here hinted,
it is not only love to parents and Buddhists
that is enjoined, but universal charity ; love for
all living beings, and that of the most substan-
tial kind. "As a mother, even at the risk of
her own life, protects her son, her only son, so
let there be good-will without measure among
all beings. Let good-will without measure —
unhindered love and friendliness — prevail in
the whole world, above, below, around." But
although Buddha himself practised this univer-
sal charity and engaged in his search after truth
for the world's sake as well as for his own, there
is no evidence that he desired extinction in order
to lessen the sum of misery and not rather to
terminate his own. Indeed the words in which
Buddha exultantly celebrated the dawn of light
in his mind imply that his escape from the
danger of re-birth was a subject of congratula-

^ Beal's Bud. Scrip, pp. 193, 4.

1 74 BtiddJiisvi.

tion exclusively to himself. " Through various
transmigrations have I passed, always vainly
seeking to discover the builder of my tabernacle.
Painful are repeated transmigrations. But now,
O builder, thou art discovered. Never shalt
thou build me another house. Thy frames are
broken, thy ridge-pole shattered. To Nirwana
my mind is gone. I have attained to the ex-
tinction of desire." ^

Buddhism stands in no need of any doubtfully
imported merit. It has a genuine and obvious
merit of its own. It proclaims the fundamental
truth that men obtain deliverance from their
j evil destiny and enter into blessedness only
1 when they attain to perfect life and character.
No sooner was this salvation proclaimed, than
the vast sacerdotal system of India, with its
ritual and its caste, was felt to be a useless
encumbrance. Buddha did not make war upon
caste, but as he had discovered salvation by
considering the nature of man, and as his sal-
vation was equally applicable to all men, caste
lost its religious character wherever Buddhism
- gained ascendency. Buddhism has thus the
merit of anticipating Christianity in two of its
most striking features — its universalism and its
ethical character. All men may be saved, and
they are saved, not at all by outward rites or

I Various versions given in Hardy's Manual^ pp. iSo, i.

Practically a Failure. 175

mechanical performances, but by themselves
being emancipated from inward evil.

Practically, however, Buddhism must be
admitted to have been to a large extent a
failure. In no country has it rooted itself more
firmly than in Mongolia, and here, while its
high morality is ignored, the germs of evil which
the system carried in it have found luxuriant
development. From the first, Buddhism re-
served its highest blessings for the man of con-
templation, who could pass through the world
as the stick floats down the river — unattracted
to either bank. Its fundamental principles also
discouraged the increase of population. If life
could only be miserable, the celibate has a
higher degree than the married man. So that
although a man may be a good Buddhist while
supporting a family by ordinary business in the
world, the actual result of the system is, that in
those countries where its influence is most felt
not less than one-third of the male population
become lamas or monks. In one monastery
there are said to be as many as thirty thou-
sand lamas, and several others throughout
Tibet and Mongolia number their inmates by
thousands. It so happens that in some districts
this restriction of population is a boon, owing
to the sterility of the soil and the difficulty
of emigration. Buddhism and polyandry are

176 BiiddJiisin.

evils that work for good. But the withdrawal
of so large a part of the population from pro-'
ductive labour, and their exemption from taxes,
as well as the constant anxiety produced in the
empire of China^ by so large a body of men con-
tiguous to their border, and ready to act at the
word of the Dalai Lama, seriously retard the
civilization of these countries. Lamaism, while
it is the strength of the Buddhist religion, is,
according to the most recent explorer, " the
most frightful curse " of Mongolia.^ Cruelty
and immorality, the two vices against which
\primitive Buddhism most emphatically declared

, I itself, are here common and unopposed. The
Buddhist who before sitting down will brush
his seat lest he crush an insect, will slaughter
his prisoners in cold blood ; and the religion
wdiich originally laid such stress upon medita-

: tion and wisdom, is now represented, if wx

.! except Burmah, by a priesthood that is dis-

\ gracefully ignorant.

All religions undergo rapid and important
alterations. The difference between any religion
as it exists in the actual popular acceptation of
it, and the same religion as it existed in the
mind of its founder, is generally marked and

^ Wilson, ii. 373. Wilson's Abode of Snow, p. 224, &c.
Prejevalsky's Mongolia, i. 76.
2 Prejevalsky, i. 80.

Deterioration of BiiddJiism. 1 7 7

significant. Every religion is modified by the
racial characteristics of the nations among
whom it finds acceptance. It is dragged down
to the comprehension and forced into the forms
of thought of a half-educated people, and it is
compelled to assume a dress which effectuall}^
disguises and hampers it. It is difficult to
identify the dialect of Somersetshire and that of
Berwickshire as the same language ; but it is
still more difficult to detect any close relation-
ship between the superstitious and idolatrous
religion of the Northern Buddhists and the
original system of Buddha. No religion, indeed,
not even Christianity, has suffered such altera-
tion at the hands of its devotees as Buddhism
has suffered.

In two particulars only can this alteration be
here noted. It might have been expected that
if the original ritual of Buddhism was too scant
for the popular mind, it would at least preserve
its adherents from formalism. The actual re-
sult is the very opposite. The perfunctory per-
formance of religious rites and the necessarily
accompanying superstition have attained gigan-
tic proportions in Buddhist countries. It is
true that the ritual of the Parsees, as well as the
most sacred canon of the Hindus, are in a
language not understood by the priests them-
selves, while the breviary of the Roman Catho-

13

I /S Buddhism,

lies is in a language not understood by the
people ; but among the Buddhists the prayer
which may be said to be their Paternoster, and
which is repeated many times a day by millions
of lips, is wholly unintelligible both to priests
and to people. Intelligent travellers have tried
in vain to discover the meaning of the mystical
words, " Om mani padme hum;" and competent
scholars disagree as to their origin and interpre-
tation;^ and yet these are the first syllables
which the child is taught to pronounce, and
the last breath of the dying Buddhist is shaped
into these unintelligible but saving words.
*' The wanderer," we are told, " murmurs them
on his way, the herdsman beside his cattle, the
matron at her household tasks, the monk in all
the stages of contemplation ; they form at once
a cry of battle and a shout of victory. They
are to be read wherever the Lama Church has
spread, upon banners, upon rocks, upon trees,
upon walls, upon monuments of stone, upon
household utensils, upon human skulls and
skeletons." ^ A cry of distress or a sigh of relief
or confidence need not be articulate in order to
be both genuine and intelligible to the person

^ A facsimile of this prayer is given by Schlagintweit,
Budd}iis7n iji Tibet, '^. 120. The interpretation which has
found greatest acceptance is : " O the jewel in the lotus.
Amen." Wilson thinks it means, " Glory to Manipadme."

2 Hecley and Kocppen, quoted by Prcjevalsky, i. 282.

Its Formalism. 179

to whom it is uttered ; and it ought not to be
denied that through these sacred words many
a true and profound emotion has found expres-
sion. To pray inarticulately is at all events
better than not to pray at all. But the charge
of formalism is made good when another feature
of Buddhist prayer is adduced. Praying by
proxy is common in all religions, but praying
by machinery is apparently the invention of
Buddhism. These mysterious words, " Om
mani padme hum," are written or printed many
times over on long scrolls of paper, which are
wound within a small brass cylinder. This
cylinder rotates upon an axis, and as often as it
is set spinning so many prayers are said. These
cylinders are carried by the lamas, who keep
them spinning as they converse with you ; they
are fixed in the walls of houses, and as often as
any of the family passes, another turn is given
to the wheel ; they are also provided with fans
and set on the tops of houses, where the wind
keeps them moving, or in a stream, which drives
the praying mill for behoof of the community.

The most significant change, however, which
has passed upon Buddhism is its abandonment
of atheism. In speaking of Buddhism as an
atheistic religion, it is essential to distinguish
between the original and consistent system and
the aftergrowth which sprang from the root of

13 *

I So Buddhism.

human instinct and national prepossession.
Buddha himself makes no recognition of a per-
sonal God, but this creed was found too abstract
and impersonal for popular acceptance, and the
religious instincts of the masses introduced
various forms of quasi-divine worship.
/ / That the original system of Buddha was athe-
( istic is unquestionable. There is a conversa-
tion recorded in which Sakya-muni interrogates
Alara, the wisest of the Brahmans, as to the
existence of an Isvara or Supreme God who
alone deserves worship. Alara mentions the
Great Brahma as such a Being. But, objects
Buddha, what becomes of him at the end of the
kalpa, when this present heaven and earth are
entirely burnt up and destro3^ed — where then
is your Creator? Again, Buddha argues that if
all things had been created by Isvara, then all
things must have been good, and there could
have been no possibility of evil ; there could
have been no causes of sorrow, neither could
there have been any difficulties of belief; this
very question regarding the existence of Isvara
could have found no place, but all men would
have known him as their Father — an argument
which in other religions also has led men to
abandon monotheism.

Alara has indeed the best of the discussion
when he presses Buddha regarding the origin of

Its Atheism. iSi

the world and man, but as intelligent Buddhists
in our own day evade this difficulty by declaring
it to be a profitless inquiry, so Buddha himself
at this point disclaimed the character of a dis-
putant, and declared himself to be speaking as
one " who participates in the great mass of
evil which exists, and who seeks only a physi-
cian." '

These utterances are sufficiently explicit. It
is also obvious that the fundamental principles
of Buddhism are inconsistent with theism.
These principles do not necessitate nor invite
to the recognition of any beings which are not
radically of the same nature as man, and which
are not exposed to the same risks as he. It
agrees better, as one of our best authorities
affirms, with the genius of the system pro-
pounded by Gautama " to suppose that, like
other sceptics, he believed in neither angel nor
demon, than to imagine that the accounts of
the dewas and other supernatural beings we
meet with in works called Buddhistical were
known at its first promulgation."^

But supernaturalism asserted itself immedi-
ately, and the various polytheists who accepted
Buddhism compensated themselves for the de-

I Vy^d^s Romantic Hist. p. 173. Alabaster's Wheel of
the Law, passim. Hardy's Manual^ p. 375.
^ Hardy, pp. 40, 41.

1 8 2 Buddhism.

privation of their ancestral gods by setting
Buddha above them, and paying him a similar
worship. Brahma and Indra were repudiated
as supreme gods ; but Brahma is represented
as paying religious honours to the discarded
robe of Sakya-muni, while Indra descends from
the heaven of the thirty-three gods to secure the
dish from which the Buddha had eaten, and to
set it up as an object of worship in his own
heavenly abode.

Universally among Buddhists attributes which
are recognised as divine are attributed to
Buddha, especially the attributes of supremacy
and omniscience. He is " the joy of the whole
world ; the helper of the helpless ; the dewa of
dewas ; the brahma of brahmas ; the very com-
passionate ; more powerful than the most power-
ful ; able to bestow Nirvana on him who only
softly pronounces his name, or gives in his name
a few grains of rice. The eye cannot see any-
thing, the ear cannot hear anything, nor the
mind think of anything more excellent or more
worthy of regard than Buddha." ^ Of all per-
sonal beings Buddha is the highest.

It may indeed be thought ^ that this does not
amount to deification. And this is true so far
as regards instructed Buddhists ; but it would
appear that the common people in Nepaul wor-

^ Hardy, p. 360. ^ St. Hilaire, p. 168.

Objects of Worship. 183

ship one Supreme Buddha, called Adi-Buddha,
relying upon him for protection and salvation,
and " treating him to all practical intents and
purposes as if he were the highest God, a per-
sonal being of unlimited wisdom, goodness, and
power, the very creator and sustainer of the
world." ^

But besides Buddha himself there are others
to whom worship is paid, although possibly only
of that lower kind which a devout Romanist
pays to the saints. The heroes and benefactors
of the Buddhist Church could readily fill a Com-
tist calendar, and are surrounded with a legend-
ary halo which lifts them as much above the
ordinary level of humanity as demigods and
saints are exalted by the mythologies of Greece
or the Acta Sanctorum of more modern times.
And it is significant that the ancient atheism
as well as the modern was compelled to deify
humanity, that the individual might at least
have the satisfaction of looking up to and trust-
ing in something higher than himself. Images
ofthese saints profusely adorn or disfigure the
Buddhist temples. Conspicuous among them,
however, are images of the Buddhist Trinity,
Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Tradition tells
us that when Buddha felt himself dying he
called Ananda to him, and said, " Ananda, when
' Eitel's Lectures, p. 117.

184 Bitddhisni.

I am gone you must not think there is no
Buddha ; the discourses I have delivered and
the precepts I have enjoined \i,e.^ Dharma]
must be my successor and representative, and
be to you as Buddha." And among the seven
imperishable precepts he gave to his disciples,
the first in order was '' to keep assemblies "
[Sangha] . From the earliest times admission
was given to the Buddhist Church on the re-
petition of the confession, " I take refuge in
Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha ; " and with its
wonderful gift for personification, the Eastern
mind has elevated these three to a quasi-divine
rank.

But by far the most remarkable development
of Buddhist belief and worship belongs to the
mystical period of its history. During this
period Amitabha, the Eternal, originally a title
of Buddha, began to be worshipped by the
Chinese as the compassionate and loving Father
of men, or as the " universal Self." But as
" Self" manifests itself by Speech, Speech was
regarded as the Son or manifestation of the
Eternal Self, and was adored under the name of
Avalokiteshwara, the manifested God.^ This
Divinity, who has " a thousand arms and a thou-
sand eyes and a merciful heart," and who has
bound himself by an oath " to save completely
' Beal's Buddhist Sa'ip. p. 374.

Popular Biiddhisni. 1S5

all that breathes," is accepted by many millions
as the invisible head of the present Buddhist
Church, and is popularly believed to listen with
compassion to the prayers of all in distress, to
assist in the propagation of the faith, and to give
entrance into the heavenly Paradise which has
superseded the blank Nirvana in the hopes of
the multitude.

IV.
THE PERFECT RELIGION,

" On its historical side, Christianity null fiovcr in the air sj long
as all religions are not recognised in their essential relation to it,
as negative or positive preparations for it. " DoliNER,

'' TJic glory of Christianity is not to he as unlike other religions
as possible, but to be their perfection andfullilnient," JowEi'T.

" Pour condamner le Cliristiauisme, ilfaiit ne pas le coniprendre."
St. Hilaire.

IV.

ONE cannot fail to notice in the literature
of the day a tendency more or less pro-
nounced to put all religions, including the Chris-
tian, more nearly on one level, and especially
to deal with them as if they were all alike out-
growths from the same root, man's religious
faculty. This tendency has been stimulated by
the comparative method of studying religions,
which has brought to light the large number of
resemblances existing in the various religions
of the world, but which has as yet been back-
ward in detecting, analysing, and defining essen-
tial distinctions. Archaeological researches have
discovered the common origin of many customs,
traditions, and beliefs, now found in countries
widely separated from one another. Historical
knowledge has done much to show us the pro-
cesses by which a rude and barbarous tribe
may be developed into a refined and highly
civilised nation ; and as we see how such a sys-
tem as our own civil constitution has been
gradually elaborated out of the summary des-

190 The Perfect Religion.

potism of a tribal chief, the thought cannot but
occur to us, May not the most perfectly elabo-
rated religious system have also grown up with-
out other aids than those which are given in
human nature and in history governed solely by
natural laws ? As man was created with a
faculty of speech, and with instincts and emo-
tions prompting him to communicate with his
fellows, but was not endowed with any actual
language, may not his religious equipment have
been of a similar kind? As he was certain to
create for himself a language sufficient for his
occasions, and competent to bring him effectually
into all needed communication with his fellow-
men, was it not enough that he possessed also
a religious faculty enabling him to hold fellow-
ship with God, and sure to find utterance for
itself in ways not unpleasing nor unintelligible to
Him who had implanted the faculty ?

Certainly this is a suggestion much more
worthy of discussion than the theories which
found acceptance last century, to the effect that
religions were the product of fear or the con-
trivances of priests. It is now generally agreed
that religion is universal ; and that, being uni-
versal, it is necessary; that the faculty for hold-
ing intercourse with the unseen and supernatural
is an essential part of human nature/ From

' See Fairbairn's Sindu'Sf p. 303.

Universality of Religion, 191

man's universal use of some form of food, we
conclude that food is necessary, and that man's
power of assimilating it is an essential part of
his nature. Similarly, when we find that, with
some inconsiderable exceptions, all men have
some form or other of religion, we conclude that
the religious faculty is essential to human na-
ture, and will always find for itself some ex-
pression. To quote the words of M. Renan,
who will not be suspected of undue bias in the
matter: " Is religion destined to die away like
the popular fallacies concerning magic, sorcery,
and ghosts ? By no means. Religion is not
a popular fallacy : it is a great and intuitive
truth, felt and expressed by the people. All the
symbols which serve to give shape to the religious
sentiment are imperfect, and their fate is to be
one after the other rejected. But nothing is
more remote from the truth than the dream of
those who seek to imagine a perfected humanity
without religion. The contrary idea is the
truth. The effect of progress in humanity will
not destroy or weaken religion, but will develop
and increase it." ^ Indeed even Cicero foresaw
that time would only serve to purify religion and
render it more stable. " We see," he says,
"that imaginations and mere opinions wear out
and disappear. Who now believes in the cen-
^ Renan, The Apostles (E. T.), pp. 286, 7.

192 The Perfect Religion.

taur or chimasra ? What old woman is so
silly as to trouble herself nowadays with the
horrors of hell, which once formed a part of
every one's creed ? For time destroys the fab-
rications of opinion, but confirms the decisions
of nature. And therefore, both in our own and
other countries, the worship of the gods and
the sanctities of religions grow daily stronger
and purer." ^ '' More and more," says another
inquirer into this subject, " as they become
better known to us, the original forms of all re-
ligions are seen to fall under the category of
nature and less under that of mind or free will.
Religions, like languages, are inherent in all
men everywhere, having a close sympathy or
connection with political and family life. It
would be a shallow and imaginary explanation
of them that they are corruptions of some
primeval revelation, or impostures framed by
the persuasive arts of magicians or priests." ^
Religion, then, must be defined as that which
satisfies this faculty for dealing with the super-
natural. The etymological definition of Lactan-
tius, which declares religion to be that by which
we are connected with or bound to God, whether
right or wrong as etymology, is true as a defini-
tion. Newman's definition is also careful and

^ De Nat. Dcor. ii. 2.

2 Jowett, St. PauVs Epistles^ ii. 437.

DeJinitio7i of Religio7i. 19

exact : '' What is religion but the system of
relations subsisting between us and a supreme
Power ? " ^ More recently it has been said^ that
religion is ''man's belief in a being or beings
mightier than himself and inaccessible to his
senses, but not indifferent to his sentiments and
actions, with the feelings and practices wdiich
flow from such a belief/' That which is com-
mon to all religions is the effort they make to
bring man into harmony with th6 supernatural,
with that which he cannot control by physical
force. And it may be added that, if we define
religion from that which is found to be common
to all religions, it is the effort to come into
satisfactory relations with some personal being or
beings in whom the supernatural centres. In
presence of much of the current philosophy it
is indeed a great assumption we make when we
assume that personality is a higher form of ex-
istence than impersonality. But we are now
only accepting what the religions of the world
teach us, and unquestionably they teach us
nothing more distinctly than this, that the re-
ligious faculty in man considers personality the
true form of the supernatural. Brahmanism
has attempted to substitute for a personal God
a being universally diffused and constituting all
forms of life, but the unsophisticated cravings

I Univ. Ser. p. 19. ° Flint's Bab-dLcci. Lect. ii.

14

V

194 ^^^^ Perfect Religion,

of the Hindus demand personal objects of wor-
ship and trust. Buddhism began its career
without taking account of God at all, but has
only succeeded thereby in giving birth to a
peculiarly degraded polytheism.
Sii If religion, then, be the medium of communi-

J7\[^y» cation between God and men, that religion is
j/ , the best which most perfectly brings God and

\ man together. In other words, the best religion

^'^^ -^ must furnish us with the true idea of God, and
must enable us to come into the most perfect
\^ harmony with Him that is possible. No sooner,
then, is the definition of religion clearly before
the mind, than it condemns as imperfect many
forms of religion which have been largely ad-
hered to. All religions which propose to bring
men into harmony with God by rites and merely
substitutionary sacrifices, all religions which
furnish men with the means of appeasing an
angry God but with no means of loving Him,
must be dismissed as unsatisfying. Proof is
afforded that such religions do not satisfy the
healthiest religious cravings, by the fact that
alongside of sacerdotalism there has commonly
grown up a development of m3'sticism or theo-
sophic speculation.^ This is the effort of nature
to find a more real approach to God than
priestly rites afford.

^ See this finely illustrated in Fairbairn's Studies, p. 143.

Fallacioits Criterio^is. 195

Again, no sooner do we clearly see what
religion is than we are at once compelled to dis-
miss certain criterions which have sometimes
been applied to distinguish Christianity from
other religions. We cannot, c.g.^ cite in proof
of the superiority of Christianity the fact that
for defence of its truth, and in reliance upon it,
many suffered martyrdom. Every religion has
had its victims. The martyrs of Babism have
left as touching memorials of their constancy as
those w^e read in the annals of the Christian
Church. The freeness and confidence with
which women and girls submitted to torture or
faced the beasts in the amphitheatres convinced
observant spectators that in the religion for
which they died there was certainly something
strengthening, and probably something true.
Many were moved in precisely the same way as
Justin, who himself subsequently laid down his
life for his religion. " I myself," he says,
" while a Platonist heard the Christians evil
spoken of, but when I saw them fearless in
regard to death and all else that men count
terrible, I began to see that they could not
possibly be wicked sensualists." That is to
say, martyrdom may provoke inquiry, but can-
not prove the truth of a religion. Neither can
success be accepted as a criterion. To use the

words of John Henry Newman, *' It is indeed

14*

196

The Perfect Religion,

by no means clear that Christianity has at any
time been of any great spiritual advantage to the
world at large. . . . The true light of the world
offends more men than it attracts ; and its divine
origin is shown, not in its marked effects on the
mass of mankind, but in its surprising power of
elevating the moral character where it is received
in spirit and in truth." ^ We need not expect,
therefore, to find that we can rank religions in
proportion to the number of their adherents.

In short, we must judge of the actual religions
of the world by their relative competency to
give men the highest idea of God, and to bring
men into the profoundest harmony with Him.

I. — That religion is the best which gives us
the highest idea of God; and that idea of God
is the highest which is most satisfying to the
intellect, most educating to the conscience, most
quickening to the spirit, and, therefore, most
influential on the conduct. We would say that
that religion is the true religion which gives us
the true idea of God ; but we are proceeding by
the method of comparing actual religions one
with another, and must therefore, for the pre-
sent, content ourselves with saying that, in com-
parison with other religions, that is the best
which gives us the highest idea of God. Now,
it were affectation to profess any difficulty at
^ University Sc7i)ions^ p. 40.

It gives Highest Idea of God. 197

this point. It is not pretended by any writers
whose thoughts on this subject have been ac-
cepted as a distinct development of rehgious
thought in the country, that there is any higher
or worthier idea of God to be found in any
rehgion than in Christianity. Nay, it is not
pretended that there is any higher or worthier
idea of God present to the mind of the most dis-
cipHned or spiritual thinker than that which was
conveyed by Christ. No such idea has been
published. Tlie_xeligion of Christ has actually
coiweyed__to_tlie world its best idea of God. It
is this idea which has satisfied the most ad-
vanced races, and the most religious natures
among these races. And it has satisfied them
by the combination which it alone presents of
infinite exaltation and infinite lowliness, of ab-
solute holiness and inexhaustible love.

Now, if we inquire what lay at the root of
this superiority of the Christian idea of God,
the first explanation we meet with is that this
was the idea given by God Himself. Other j
ideas of God fall short, and the human spirit
grows past them ; but this idea remains unsur-
passed, for the simple reason that while the
former embody men's thoughts about God, the
latter embodies God's revelation of Himself.
No explanation could be more satisfactory or
better fit the facts ; but is it true ? I cannot

198 The Perfect Religion,

be expected to bring before you what is com-
monly and justly adduced in proof of a revela-
tion, but may be allowed to pursue a single
line of inquiry suggested by the question, Have
we any means of determining whether in the
one case we have only men's thoughts about
God, and in the other a revelation by God Him-
self? I think we have. And although every
revelation will always be its own best evidence
to those who are mentally and spiritually in its
own plane, it may yet be worth while to offer
that which bears some resemblance, not indeed
to demonstration, but to scientific proof of a
revelation.^

Scientific inquiry, if it has not been able to
measure the idea of revelation all round, and
explain to us its method, has at least enabled
us to approximate to a definition of it. If we
find any race in possession of an idea, the roots
of which we cannot trace to any inquiry on
their part or to any contact with other races,
we may fairly say that this is a revelation ;
supposing always that this idea is found to
be true, and is concerned with matters super-
natural. The line can, apparently, be drawn be-
tween the outcome of unassisted human thought

I As Rothe says : "The existence of a Divine Revela-
tion is not to be rigidly demonstrated. It exists only for
faith, — only for him to whom it proves itself by begetting
faith in him."

Definition of Revelation. 199

and supernatural enlightenment. The religious
faculty natural to man may, by centuries of
sustained effort and instructive experience, pro-
duce surprising results, but these results may
be distinguished from the attainments made by
a race under the continuous influence of a
special revelation, and from the truths com-
municated by God's interposition. We are on
all hands surrounded by results of the steady
application of men's natural faculties so aston-
ishing that we may well be cautious in denying
anything to their power. Man has, e. g., a
natural capacity for music, and the picture
which Lucian gives of Hermes constructing the
first lyre out of the shell of a dead tortoise may
rather overrate the ingenuity of those who first
attempted to express the feeling for music that
was in them. If we listen to the tom-toms that
stir the painted savage to his war-dance, and
then to the most overpowering of Beethoven's
symphonies, we apprehend the range of human
faculty and the development of which it is sus-
ceptible. But, keeping this in view, and bear-
ing in mind also that to establish the fact of a
revelation it must be shown that the faculty of
the race to which it was given was not com-
petent to attain the idea it accepts, we think
this can be made good regarding the idea of the
Incarnation of our Lord.

y

200 The Pel' feet Religion,

It is the Incarnation, God revealed in hu-
, man nature, which is the essential formative

i

characteristic of Christianity. It is the Incar-
nation which is the Revelation to which all
other revelation was preliminary and prepara-
tory. But if the science of religion has reached
any trustworthy conclusions at all, one of these
certainly is that the idea of incarnation is alien
to the Semitic mind. The characteristic of the
Semitic conception of God is that it sets an
impassable gulf between God and man, while
the mythologies of the Aryan peoples exhibit a
familiar intercourse between heaven and earth.
It is often difficult to say who is a god and who
is a man, or whether the recognised god has
more of the human or of the divine. Let us
hear one of our very best authorities on this
point. ^ "Neither as monotheisms, nor as po-
lytheisms, do the Semitic religions attribute a
fatherly, humane character to 1;heir gods. Even
the Old Testament knows only an abstract ideal
fatherhood, which the Hebrews as a nation
realise, but the Hebrew as a man almost never
does. The Semitic God dwells in inaccessible
light — an awful, invisible presence, before which
man must stand uncovered, trembling ; but the
Indo-European God is pre-eminently accessible,

^ Fairbairn's Studies, p. 36 ; comp. Doiner's Person of
Christ, Introd.

Inca7niatio}i not a Semitic Idea. 201

loves familiar intercourse, is bound to man by
manifold ties of kinship."

If, then, this professed incarnation had oc-
curred upon the ground of an Indo-European
religion, it might plausibly have been referred
to the natural craving of the Indo-European
for such manifestations. The idea is not alien
to the mind of that race, and this circumstance
would have prejudiced the fact. But occurring,
as the incarnation does, among a Semitic
people, it is impossible to believe that this idea
was a natural growth — the mere result of the
unaided working of Semitic instincts. These
instincts lay all in an opposite direction. Even
the Jews who became Christians showed a
strong repugnance and almost incapacity to
believe in our Lord's divinity. They fell back
into Ebionism and betrayed their Semitic na-
ture. In. the mind of Mohammed the idea of
an incarnation could find no place. It was
with a revulsion of feeling and a passion-
ate indignation, altogether unlike the quiet
unconcern of our European Unitarians, that
the Arabian prophet denounced as horrible
blasphemy the idea that Jesus was God.
Here, then, we have the root-idea of a religion
springing up from a soil in which there was
nothing which could naturally produce it ; that
is to say, we have an idea which perfectly

)

202 The Perfect Religion.

answers to the definition of a revelation which
the science of rehgion gives us — an idea
''given," not acquired. I confess I do not
see how to evade the conclusion that this is
a genuine revelation.

The case is very much strengthened when we
consider that the idea was conveyed by the fact
of incarnation. The idea did not first arise in
the mind of a religious teacher, neither did it
first take possession of a race and subsequently
give birth to the fact. It was the fact which
gave birth to the idea in the minds of the few
who understood it ; it was the overpowering
evidence of the fact itself which overcame the
Semitic repugnance in so far as it was over-
come. Men felt that it was not an idea about
God they were receiving by revelation, but that
God was revealing Himself. It is the fact of
the incarnation that is the revelation.

What we have, then, in the Christian religion
is this : we have the highest idea of God which
has ever actually been conceived by any race or
individual ; and it may therefore safely be said
the highest possible. But this idea has been in
point of fact conveyed through the incarnation.
The prominent idea, therefore, in the Chris-
tian conception of God is that which the incar-
nation presents ; that is, the idea of a God who
can and does become incarnate, a God there-

¥^

Christianity cannot be rivalled, 203

fore of a moral nature similar to our own, and
of a boundless love. But this incarnation,
while it proves itself to be a revelation of God
by giving us the highest possible conception of .

God, has also been proved to be a revelation by , , '^

the soil in which it took root. There seems . \i '
therefore sufficient ground to affirm that Chris-
/ tianity is not only the best religion, but the only . ^ ^ ^^ V
true religion. Its Founder blesses mankind not
by His superior moral teaching mainly, nor^^
only by His giving us better information about
God than other teachers, but by His bringing
God into the world, by showing us our God
suffering with and for us, and thus bringing an
altogether new thing into the world, a thing
in respect of which no other teacher can rival or
imitate Him. It is because He and He alone
has done this, that the religion thus founded
alone deserves the title of the true religion, and
stands upon a distinctly different footing from
all other religions. There is that in it which
essentially distinguishes it from those religions
which can be traced to the unaided operation of
the religious faculty in man. In Mohammed-
anism we find no evidence of revelation strictly
so called. It is very easy to detect the roots of
Mohammedanism in the pre-existing social con-
dition of Arabia, and in the religions to which
Mohammed had access. Buddha, again, by

\^'^ '^^

204 The Perfect Religion,

the atheistic principle of his rehgion, repudi-
ated all idea of revelation.^

There are other peculiarities of the Christian
religion which confirm the impression that it
essentially differs from other religions, and is
not the mere outgrowth of the natural faculty
of a race or of highly gifted individuals. It
connects itself w^ith a series of revelations
extending in one line through the entire pre-
ceding history of the world. The argument in
favour of a primitive revelation has, so far as
I see, been rather evaded than met. It is quite
true that no revelation could create in man the
religious faculty ; you might as well tr}^ to
create in man the gills of a fish by throwing
him into the water. But does the fact that
man was created with a capacity to know God
imply that antecedently to any revelation he
knew Him ? The innate belief in the super-
natural, and the accompanying craving for
communion with a personal God, implies only
such knowledge as the infant has of the lan-
guage he has a capacity for learning but has
yet to learn. This capacity for knowing God
implies that unless the true idea of God is pre-
sented, man will for himself conceive some
idea of the Divine ; but it certainly does not

' On the claims of later Buddhism to be a revealed
religion, see MUller's Ancinit Simskrit Lit. pp. 82-6.

Primitive Revelation. 205

imply that without the presentation to him of
the true idea he will himself arrive at it. It is
quite conceivable that man should have been
enabled to make such use of the revelation of
God in nature and providence as to prepare him
for receiving the personal revelation in the in-
carnation. Paul, indeed, distinctly affirms that
this was possible. But the history of natural
religions proves that men have not in point of
fact so used their natural advantages. And
that idea of God which is recognised as the
highest connects itself historically with what
professes to be a primitive revelation.

The difficulty that is started by the question,
How could this revelation be made ? does not
seem a very serious one. Why must it have
been, as is asserted, either oral or written ?
Why may it not have been by an impression
produced on the mind, or by dream or vision,
or by any of those methods to which the human
mind in an unsophisticated state has shown
itself susceptible ? Whatever was the method
by which the communication was made, here is
the fact, that the earliest tradition known to
exist among men contains in it a prediction
which authenticates itself by its fulfilment at
least 1500 years after its being committed to
writing. Where did this prediction — that the
seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's

\

2o6 The Perfect Religion,

head — come from? It is vague, but it has just
the same vagueness which every embryo has.
The hues are already there on which the definite
organism is to be developed, and by these lines
the w^hole future development is already deter-
mined.

Again, the development of the idea of God on
this line has this distinguishing feature, that it
is historical. It is not the result of human
speculation, however earnest and enlightened,
but of impressions made from without, by God
Himself, on the history of a people. In the
sacred books of other religions we have hymns
full of devotional feeling and thoughts about
God which surprise us by their truth, but in the
Bible we have mainly a history of what God
Himself has done in the w^orld to pave the way
for His appearing in it. Instead of the fanciful
mythological stories which pleased the Greek
mind in its childhood, we have a serious, pro-
saic, ever-progressing, consistent revelation of
God in national history. It is the Being who
moves the history, and makes Himself felt at
every critical time of it, who by doing so com-
municates the knowledge of Himself, His ways,
and His purposes. It supplies, that is to say,
the very element which constitutes revelation
as distinguished from conjecture or research,
and unquestionably that very element which

Revelation through History. 207

has always been lacking' in other religions. Dr.
Newman has expressed this in his own un-
rivalled manner. " While Natural Religion was
not without provision for all the deepest and
truest religious feelings, yet presenting no tan-
gible history of the Deity, no points of His per-
sonal character (if we niay so speak without
irreverence), it wanted that most efhcient incen- jy^
tive to all action, a starting or rallying point— ' r^^
an object on which the affections could be '

placed and the energies concentrated. Common
experience in life shows how the most popular
and interesting cause languishes if its head be
removed ; and how political power is often
vested in individuals merely for the sake of the
definiteness of the practical inipression which a
personal presence produces."^ In short, men
need to know God not as they learn a doctrine,
but as they become acquainted with a person.

It is, I think, in this direction that we find
the most valuable light on the connection be-
tween Christianity and other religions. The
idea of God presented by Christ has in its
essential features l)een very nearly approached
by Hindu and Greek speculation. The Chris-
tian idea is indeed absent from all the other
great religions. These religions have certainly
not succeeded in setting before the minds of
' University Scrnio/is, p. 23.

2o8 The Perfect Religion.

men such a conception of God as can be justi-
fied to a well-informed and religious mind. But
under these religions individual speculators have
constantly been arising to proclaim the fallacy
of the popular conception and to revive the con>
ception of one Supreme and more or less
Spiritual Being. And, moreover, there is dis-
cernible in various polytheistic religions a back-
ground of monotheism and that sense of an
Invisible Upholder of all things w^hich seems
ineradicable from the human mind. But this
vague monotheistic craving, and this high and
admirable speculation of thoughtful and earnest
men, have come to nothing, and have told far
less than they might have been expected to tell
on the religions of the world, for lack of the one
thing which Christianity has — certainty in its
declaration of the God men instinctively crave.
In other words, there is recognisable here pre-
cisely the distinction we should expect between
revelation and speculation or craving. We find
that majestic and loving Presence which men
of deep religious feeling have always longed for
now- fixed in a definite form before men's eyes
and proclaimed with authority and assurance.
We find, therefore, this idea becoming the pro-
perty, not of a few exceptional men, but of all ;
becoming the informing spirit of a religion.
Had men of profound religious feeling never

Revelation and Spccidation, 209

*' felt after " such a God as Christ reveals, we

might have doubted whether this were the God

most suited to our nature because the God who

created it; but had this God never been revealed

in Christ we should now have been no further

on than were the scholars of Plato or Marcus >

Aurelius, with occasional passing conceptions of «

the true God, but lonsfin^: that we knew Him. r, ,

The relation betw^een revelation and speculation i ^^
is precisely the relation between Christianity and!
the best thoughts of men under other religions. *

This is not reasoning in a circle. We do not
receive the assurance because we first believe
this to be a revelation, but the professed revela-
tion is in a form which gives definiteness and
assurance. In the person and life of Christ
there is brought before men's minds, without
effort on their part, the very God wdio has been
felt after by the highest-minded men. We have
God in history, God in the world visible to men.

II. — We pass now to the second function
which religion performs. Every religion aims not
only at giving men a true conception of the super-
natural, but also at bringing men into harmony
with the supernatural. The best religion will be
that which furnishes the highest idea of the super-
natural and at the same time brings men most
efficiently and perfectly into harmony with it.
Now it is manifest that the Christian religion,

15

^

2IO The Perfect Religion.

founded as it is in the Incarnation, exhibits the
closest possible harmony between man and that
which is beyond nature. It is only at first sight
that the union which Brahmanism preaches
seems more complete. The absorption of the
human soul into the soul of the world involves
the extinction of man's personality, and therefore
cannot be its fullest development. The union
presented by Christianity is the closest possible
between two persons — an absolute conformity of
will. The union between God and man which
the Christian religion proclaims is exhibited in
the incarnation, and is there shown to be of so
perfect a kind that God and man can act as one
person. The smnimnn bomun held out to man
is the highest conceivable — a perfect personal
union with God. It is not a mere external
Paradise that Christianity presents to our hope,
it is not mere deliverance from punishment nor
a liberal reward of virtue, but this religion pro-
poses nothing short of that utmost good which
man can imagine — such a resemblance in cha-
racter to the Highest Being as will bring us
into the most perfect harmony with Him and
consequently with all that His will rules.

This is the union with God which Christi-
anity proposes — a personal union dependent on
character; and undoubtedly it is, so far, superior
to other religions. But does it actually accom-

Christian Ethics.

21 I

plish what it proposes ? The accompHshment
of its end involves the highest moral teaching
and the strongest moral influence.

We may assume, as pretty generally ad-
mitted, that no religion surpasses the Christian
in moral teaching. This indeed is involved in
the admission that Christianity presents the
highest conception of God; because this con-
ception of God is given through a human life,
and this human life must therefore present us
with the highest conception of human attain-
ment and of human character. The morality
of Buddhism may very fairly be compared with
Christian morality, but it is unnecessary to
enter into any detailed comparison of the ideal
Buddhist with the ideal Christian, because Bud-
dhism has notoriously failed to make men moral.
And it is not enough that a religion provide
healthy moral teaching, it must also furnish us
with the most powerful moral energy. It must
be able to bring men to the perfect character it
depicts. We must compare religions not only
in regard to the ideal their founders have con-
ceived, but also in regard to their actual results
on races and individuals.

To estimate the value of a religion by its results
is always a task of great difficulty, for the in-
fluence of a religion never operates in a solitary
and separate manner, but always in complication

15*

2 1 2 The Perfect Religion.

with the influences of government, civilisation,
and race. Much has recently been attributed
to Islam which is unquestionably due to the
native and ineradicable ferocity and barbarism
of the Turks. The characteristics of race and
^\ even the habits of a heathen ancestry survive
and crop up through all the growth of the
imported religion. In the very birthplace of
Islam, among the Bedouins of the desert, it
would be difficult to say whether their customs
are more pagan or Mohammedan. They use
pagan oaths and call their children by heathenish
names ; they practise the scarification common
among savages in proof of manhood ; they
decide disputes by the ordeal of licking red-hot
iron, and are addicted to other customs too
shocking for ears polite.^ To judge of Islam
by such adherents would evidently be as unfair
as to judge of Christianity by the licentious
and infamous Coptic monks. The Bedouins
themselves decline being accepted as fair speci-
mens of the product of Islam, though, like most
other people, they ascribe their irreligion to
their unfortunate circumstances. "We pray
not," they say, ** because we must drink the
w^ater of ablution ; we give no alms, because
we have to ask them ; we fast not the Ramazan
month, because we starve throughout the year ;

^ Burton's Pilgrim, iii. 79, 80.

Difficidty of zueigJiing Moral Results. 213

and we do no pilgrimage, because the world is
the house of Allah."'

Again, if we look about for a fair representa-
tion of the character formed by the Koran, we
are perplexed by the endless varieties of belief
and consequently of character embraced in
Islam. To which of its seventy- three sects
are we to look for the fair average Moham-
medan ? Is the Persian freethinker, who dares
to find contradictions in the Koran and to wish
there were no Friday in the week,^ the fit
specimen, or shall we rather look to the fanati-
cal Wahabi, who adds smoking as well as
drinking to the catalogue of deadly sins ? Shall
we inspect the habits of the Hayetis and Hada-
thites, who ascribe divinity to Jesus, or those of
the quietist Sufis, of whom the orthodox Moslem
holds such an opinion that he thinks it more
meritorious to kill a Sufi than to save ten
human lives ? Were we to accept the first
Khalifs and their followers as the normal type
of Mohammedan character, we should say that
a manly contempt for the luxuries and pomps
of life, an unrivalled enthusiasm for the propa-
gation of Islam, prompt and untiring energy,
unostentatious piety, fearlessness and disin-
terested loyalty, were its most striking features.

^ Burton's Pilgrim.; and cf. Burckhardt's Notes, i. 379.
^ Gobineau, Les Religions, p. 118.

2 14 TJie Perfect Religio7i.

But some of these elements are sadly lacking
in the degenerate days of secure prosperity and
well-established empire.

Again, in estimating the results of a religion,
allowance must be made for the influence of
individual temperament. We would as little
accept the blood-thirsty Khaled as the noble
Hosein as a fair representative of the influence
of Islam. It is related of Hosein that a
slave, having accidentally thrown over him
the contents of a scalding dish while he sat
at dinner, fell on his knees and repeated the verse
of the Koran, " Paradise is for those who bridle
their anger." *' I am not angry," said Hosein.
The slave proceeded, " And for those who for-
give men." " I forgive you," answered Hosein.
Whereupon the slave audaciously finished the
verse, " God loveth the beneficent." " I give
you your liberty and 400 pieces of silver,"
replied the faithful Moslem.

Such are some of the cautions to be observed
in an inquiry into the results of any religion.
It must be borne in mind that in order to have
a deep impression, the seal must not only be
deeply cut, there must also be a sufficient depth
of wax to receive its impress. No doubt Chris-
tianity shows better than some other religions
because it has been accepted by superior races.
It has not the whole credit of European civilisa-

Comparison of Ethical Forces. 2 1 5

tion ; but, on the other hand, it has fairly the
credit of approving itself to these superior races,
and, to say the very least, of allying itself with
every beneficent agency. That language is the
best which adapts itself most readily to every
advance in science and philosophy, and most
perfectly covers all the requirements of a rapidly
developing social state ; and that religion is the
best which, even if it be not considered the root
of all that is acceptable among the most civil-
ised races, does at least keep pace with the most
fully and rapidly developing civilisation.

It is of course out of the question to attempt
here any detailed comparison of the moral con-
dition of Christian and other countries. The
superiority of Christianity may be more sum-
marily established. The only religion which can
reasonably be compared wdth Christianity in
point of moral influence is Mohammedanism. '
The teaching of Buddhism is much purer and
more elevated, but it has failed to make its
adherents moral. Mohammedanism, while pro-
mulgating a much less lofty code, has succeeded
to a very considerable extent in enforcing that
code. In the words of Dean Stanley : " Within
a confined circle the code of the Koran makes 1
doubtless a deeper impression than has been

made on Christians by the code of the Bible."'

^ Easte?'}i Chunii, p. 279.

2 1 6 The Pei'fcct Religio7i.

But the means by which Mohammedanism
effects this is not the most perfect moral agency.
It is, like police regulations, effective within a
certain circumference, but leaving a large mar-
gin beyond ; and, like every external law, it
proposes to form the character through the con-
duct, and not the conduct through the character.
The Koran tells men their duty and enforces its
precepts by the promise of rewards and' by the
threat of punishment. It provides no higher
impulse to conduct than a sense of duty may
inspire. Now, a sense of duty is an influence
with which no man can dispense ; but it is not
the most effective moral force, neither can it
alone bring human character to a perfect devel-
opment. Man has not attained resemblance to
his ideal, to his God, if he still needs any ex-
ternal constraint to compel him to duty, and
has not that love of what is right which alone
raises God Himself above all outward law.
There is something lacking in our resemblance
to God until we not merely do what He com-
mands, and recognise as right what He delights
in, but ourselves are possessed by a spontaneous
delight in all that is right, and do it because,
like God, we love it. That religion which makes
no provision for transforming ourselves as well as
our conduct, that religion which cannot make
us like God by furnishing us with a genuine

Christian Injittaice alone Adcqtiate. 217

relish for all that is holy, is not the best, the
ultimate religion. But if there be a religion
which offers us the very spirit of God, which
recognises that law does not bring life with it,
and which, therefore, makes provision not only
for our instruction but also for communicating to
us an inward and spontaneous and permanent
relish for all that we ought to do, this can alone
claim to be the ultimate religion. Happiness is ^
a word and no more to us until religion accom-
plish this for us. Now this is the rational and
perfectly satisfying prospect which Christianity .
affords, and in proof that it is not a dream, the
Founder of the religion exemplifies in His own
veritable life upon earth that the attainment of
perfect conformity with God is possible to human
nature, and He offers to all His disciples the
very spirit which made Him what He was — the
same source of inward life which was always
sufficient for Himself.

We are now in a position to say how much
truth there is in the assertion so frequently
made, that the difference between religions is a
difference of degree and not of kind. If by this
it be meant that all religions satisfy in a greater
or less degree the religious cravings of men, the
assertion is a very harmless, and, at the same
time, very obvious one. All food might in the
same way be said to be of one kind, because

2l8

The Perfect Religion,

even the human flesh, which would fill a Euro-
pean with disgust, satisfies the appetite of the
cannibal. All language may on the same prin-
ciple be said to be of one kind, because even the
birdlike chirping of the aborigines of Malacca
expresses their desires and wants, perhaps better
than Greek or English could. But a classifica-
tion so wide becomes useless. The difference
between Aryan and Semitic languages is not a
difference of degree but of kind. A language of
the one kind can by no process be improved
into a language of the other kind. You might
as well try to improve a camel into a dray-horse.
Both are beasts of burden, but the difference
between them is not a difference in degree.
The one cannot be improved into the other.
And it seems to tend rather to confusion than to
/ clearness of thought to assert that religions differ
only in degree, and that there is no essential
difference between a natural and a revealed
religion. What should be affirmed is that
the religious faculty in men differs only in de-
gree ; that the man who at present is a poly-
theist may have this faculty so developed as to
become a monotheist ; as a negro who has grow^n
up speaking his own barbarous tongue, will, if
educated, prefer and need Arabic or English.
But the negro dialect does not develope into the
higher language, neither does the lower religion

Religions diffe7^ in Kind. 2 1 9

develope into the higher. The one must be
laid aside that the other may be assumed, as
the Red Indian must doff his feathers and buf-
falo robe before he puts on the dress of a higher
civilisation.

It need scarcely be added that, notwithstand-
ing this essential distinction among religions,
scientific investigation must, as far as possible,
discard all prepossession in favour of any parti-
cular religion, and must especially avoid any
classification of religions which prejudges the
whole question of the relation which religions
hold to one another. We cannot start on any
such investigation by classifying religions into
true and false, natural and revealed, or any
divisions which may not be warranted by the
results of the investigation. A scientific inquiry,
however, may very well conclude with such a
classification. And, I may add, that there is
nothing absurd in even antecedently expecting
that religions may fall into two great classes of
natural and revealed, because in religion we
have these two great factors to deal with — the
natural faculty in man and its confessedly super-
natural object. And it is not an unlikely thing]
that, according as the one or the other of these
factors predominates, an essentially distinct re-
ligion may be produced. The racial or ethno-
logical classification of religions is convenient

2 20 The Perfect Religion.

and significant ; and, had we to deal with a
purely natural product, such as language or art,
it might be not only serviceable but sufficient.
In religion, however, we have to deal with a
supernatural element, and a racial classification
seems to me to leave no room for a factor which
may be found more influential in differentiating
or producing new religions than even race dis-
tinctions.

III. — Having determined the comparative
intrinsic value of Christianity and other religions,
two important questions remain to be answ^ered.
Have these inferior religions answered the pur-
poses of religion ? and, Have they in any case
answered these purposes better than Christianity
itself would have done ?

To the first of these questions every one will,
I presume, answer in a general affirmative, while
in regard to the degree in which the purposes of
religion have been accomplished by the various
faiths of the world, a considerable variety of
opinion will be found to prevail. If the purpose
of religion is to bring men into harmony with
God, it must be acknowledged that some of the
religions of the world have not done much to-
wards the accomplishment of this end. They
have maintained in men's minds a false concep-
tion of God, and have misdirected the natural
yearnings of men to attain a lasting harmony

Purposes sei'ved by Imperfect Religions. 221

with Him. But there is one important purpose
which all religions have served — they have kept f
the religious faculty alive from one generation !
to another. The efforts this religious faculty |
has made to satisfy itself have been often like
the vain wavings and ineffectual graspings in-
stinctively made by the tentacles of some marine
creature to anchor itself in a storm, efforts
which, however ineffectual, do yet keep alive the
instincts which guide them and betray the
normal habits of the animal. So every move-
ment and utterance of the religious faculty in
man has served at least to keep it alive, and
hereby at once to evince and to maintain, if not
to develope, his capacity for the highest religion.
This is the first purpose which is served by
every religion.

Other purposes also are served. Some of these
are well presented by Professor Max Miiller in the
following passage. " An old Samoyede woman
who was asked by Castren whether she ever
said her prayers, replied : ' Every morning I
step out of my tent and bow before the sun, and
say, *'When thou risest, I, too, rise from my
bed." And every evening I say, "When thou
sinkest down, I, too, sink down to rest." ' That
was her prayer, perhaps the whole of her re-
ligious service ; a poor prayer it may seem to
us, but not to her, for it made that old woman

2 2 2 The Perfect Religion.

look twice at least every day away from earth
and up to heaven ; it implied that her life was
bound up with a larger and higher life ; it en-
circled the daily routine of her earthly existence
with something of a Divine halo. She herself
was evidently proud of it, for she added, with
a touch of self-righteousness, ' There are wild
people who never say their morning and even-
ing prayers.' " ^ It is easy, no doubt, to go
too far in the direction of spiritualizing rude
superstitions and formal observances, but a
religious mind will always import its own sen-
timent into the forms it has access to ; and it
is to be considered that the best of religions, in
common with the lowest, are for the religious and
not for the irreligious. ' And, as in the instance
of this old woman, so in countless others it wdll
be found that religions of a somewhat low type
have exercised an elevating and comforting in-
fluence on their sincere adherent. To pray daily,
even to a deaf and unconscious god, is certainly
to acknowledge dependence on, and a hopeful
connection with, a higher and intelligent power.
Apart altogether from the question whether
such misdirected prayer does not move the com-
passion of the living God, it certainly introduces
into the life of the worshipper an influence which
must be, in however limited a degree, elevating
' Max MulIcr's/;//;W. p. 201.

Superior Men and Inferior Religions. 2 2

-1

and counteractive of selfish and sensual motives.
In the well-chosen words of Professor Jowett,
*'The first step has been made from sense and
appetite into the ideal world. He who denies
himself something, who offers up a prayer, who
practises a penance, performs an act, not of
necessity, nor of choice, but of duty; he does
not simply follow the dictates of passion, though
he may not be able to give a reason for the per-
formance of his act. He whose God comes
first in his mind has an element within him
which in a certain degree sanctifies his life by
raising him above himself. He has some com-
mon interest with other men, some unity in
which he is comprehended with them. There
is a preparation for thoughts yet higher." ^

That which compels us to make large allow-
ance for religions which seem to have little in
them that is either true or impressive, is the cir-
cumstance that they have in all ages and coun-
tries proved themselves capable of nourishing
men of remarkable religious insight and fervour.
It is a familiar fact that a deeply religious spirit
may find more nutriment and stimulus in a re-
ligion of a somewhat low type than a man of feeble
religious faculty will find even in the highest
religion. The history of Hinduism brings before
us many instances in point. Here, e.g.^ are some

^ Jowett's Epistles of Paid; ii. 465.

2 24 ^^^^ Perfect Religion,

of the devout utterances of Dadu, a religious
reformer who Hved about the 3'ear 1600.

*' Dadu sayeth : Thou, 0 God ! art the author
of all things which have been made, and from
Thee will originate all things which are to be
made. Thou art the Maker and the Cause of
all things made. There is none other but
Thee.

'' He is my God, who maketh all things perfect.
Meditate upon Him in whose hands are life and
death.

'' I believe that God made man, and that He
maketh everj^thing. He is my friend.

" Let faith in God characterise all your
thoughts, words, and actions. He who serveth
God placeth confidence in nothing else.

" If He that perfecteth mankind occupy a place
in your hearts, you will experience His happi-
ness inwardly. Ram is in everything, Ram is
eternal.

*' In order that He may diffuse happiness, God
becometh subservient to all ; and although the
knowledge of this is in the hearts of the foolish,
yet will they not praise His name.

" Dadu sayeth: I will become the sacrifice of
the Godhead ; do unto me, O God, as Thou
thinkest best. I am obedient to Thee. My
disciples ! behold no other God. Fix your heart

Religions in what Sense False. 225

on God and be humble as though you were dead.
He that partaketh of but one grain of the love
of God shall be released from the sinfulness of
all his doubts and actions." ^

It is, however, only one part of the truth
which is expressed by a very eminent authority,
when he says : " However imperfect, however
childish a religion may be, it always places the
human soul in the presence of God ; and how-
ever imperfect and however childish the concep-
tion of God may be, it always represents the
highest ideal of perfection which the human
soul, for the time being, can reach and grasp.
Religion therefore places the human soul in the
presence of its highest ideal, it lifts it above the
level of ordinary goodness, and produces at
least a yearning after a higher and better life —
a life in the light of God."^ This statement
must be corrected by the remembrance that
there have been religions in the world which
did not place the human soul in the presence
of its highest ideal — religions which prevailed
for many centuries and among nations other-
wise enlightened, and which represented the
Divine as more licentious and treacherous than
the human. Zeus and Hermes represented the
ideal of a barbarous age, and these representa-

1 Wilson's Works, i. 106-109.

2 Max Muller's Int7'od. p. 263.

16

2 26 The Perfect Religion.

tions, receiving the prestige of worship, cramped
the national thought and moraHty, and instead
of nourishing the roots of all helpful social and
political agencies, unceasingly retarded and
counteracted them. In fact, as a still more
trustworthy authority informs us, " they changed
the truth of God into a lie." They were /cz/se
religions ; as false as the geographies or the
cosmogonies of the same origin ; true only in
so far as the religious faculty in man declares
for a supernatural of some kind. In short,
there is no stronger argument for the necessity
of a revelation than the history of natural reli-
gions. Whatever may be said of individuals, it
must be acknowledged that the great religions
of the world present most misleading conceptions
of God and of the way to become one with Him.'
But while we condemn many religious sys-
tems as exhibiting more of error than of truth,
we must beware of pronouncing judgment on
the individuals who by means of these sys-
tems, or in spite of these systems, have en-
deavoured to find God and to live the highest
and purest life conceivable by them. It is
my belief that no man is savingly united to God
without the aid of Christ's Spirit. At the
same time I believe that God's care and com-
passion extend not only to those to whom His

^ See Jowett's strongly condemnatory criticism of the
Greek religion in the paper above cited.

S^. Paid and the Heathen. 227

extraordinary revelations have penetrated, but
to all men under whatever religion they are now
living; and if we are at all to judge who have
the Spirit of Christ, we must judge not by men's
possession or lack of a knowledge which has
been impossible to them, but by their conduct.
Christ has been made known to us that we
may become like Him : if others are liker Him
than we are, although they have never heard
the name of Jesus, they will enter the kingdom
of God before us. Salvation is resemblance to
Christ ; ^ it is the possession of the Spirit of
Christ, and if the fruits of that Spirit are found
in the life of those who have known nothing of
the historical Christ, we should welcome the
idea thus suggested, that apart from this know-
ledge our Lord may have found means of com-
municating His Spirit to some.^

IV. — But is it not possible, after all, that
these religions may have actually been more
suitable and more beneficial than Christianity

^ This resemblance, however, must extend not onh^ to
the moral character, but also to the attitude towards God
maintained by Christ.

2 The truth I am trying to present was never better
formulated than in the words of the wise and liberal
authors of the Westminster Confession : " All other elect
persons [besides infants], who are incapable of being
outwardly called by the ministry of the word, are regene-
rated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh
when, and where, and how He pleaseth."

16*

J 2 28 The Perfect Religion.

could have been to the races which adopted
them ?

*' Speaking generally," says Herbert Spencer,
" the religion current in each age and among
\ each people has been as near an approximation
to the truth as it was then and there possible
for men to receive." ^ Similarly we find Max
Miiller asserting that '' in one sense every reli-
gion was a true religion, being the only religion
which was possible at the time, which was com-
patible with the language, the thoughts, and the
sentiments of each generation, which was ap-
propriate to the age of the world. "^ This opinion
has been held by men of various creeds. The
Brahman says, " Men of an enlightened un-
derstanding well know that the Supreme has
imparted to each nation the doctrine most suit-
able for it, and He therefore beholds with sa-
tisfaction the various ways in which He is
worshipped." ^ The complacent Chinaman re-
echoes the same idea when he replies to the
zealous missionary, " Our Josh, your Josh ;
your Josh for you, our Josh for us; all very
good Josh." Mohammed himself seems at
times to have entertained a somewhat similar
view at least of the Jewish and Christian reli-

^ First Principles^ \i. ii6.

2 httrod. to Sc. of Rclig. p. 261.

3 Hardwick's Christ and other Masters^ i. 27 (2nd ed.).

The Absolute aiid Relative Best. 229

gions. " Unto every one of you have we given
a law and an open path ; and, if God had
pleased, He had surely made you one people ;
but He hath thought fit to give you different
laws, that He might try you in that which He
hath given you respectively. Therefore, strive
to excel each other in good works : unto God
shall ye all return, and then will He declare
unto you that concerning which ye have dis-
agreed." '

Now, although it is easy to give to such utter-
ances the accent of indifferentism, and to con-
demn them offhand as putting all religions on a
level, there is no doubt that the theory they sug-
gest is w^orthy of the most patient consideration.
The theory that the religion which is absolutely
the best is not therefore relatively the best, but'-
is found unsuitable and even inapplicable to cer-
tain races in a certain stage of their develop-
ment, is a theory which claims to base itself in
the soundest philosophy of history, and which
brings illustrations of its truth from the actual
successes and failures of various creeds. When
Solon was asked if he had promulgated among
the Athenians the best laws, he replied. "The
best they are capable of receiving." And so a
religion not absolutely the best may be the best
which a given nation is capable of receiving.

^ Sura V. (Sale's Translation).

230 The Perfect Religion,

The great lesson in comparative religion
which we learn from the connection of Judaism
and Christianity, is that men are not always
ripe for the highest religion; that there is
a fulness of time which it may take four
thousand years to produce. The Mosaic reli-
gion, imperfect as it was compared with Christi-
anity, was better for Israel during its period of
tutelage and preparation than the religion of
Christ would have been. And the question is,
How far does this principle apply to the reli-
gions which are not the historical forerunners
of Christianity? Though Christianity as a his-
torical fact was prepared for by Mosaism alone,
may its acceptance as the ultimate religion not
be prepared for by any one of the great religions ?
May not these religions as well as Mosaism
serve in their measures as pedagogues, keeping
the nations from running away from all religious
teaching ? Have they not kept alive in men the
thirst for God and some faint knowledge of His
accessibility and oversight of the world ?

In answer to these questions, it is obvious to
remark, in the first place, that Mosaism, being
itself a revealed religion, stands on so different
a footing from natural religions that we cannot
. argue from it to them. There is evidence that
I it was designed as a preparation for Christi-
anity ; the providential design of the other

Faihii^e of CJiristianity in Arabia. 231

religions is as yet unascertained, and they can
be considered preparations for Christianity only
in the limited sense of keeping before men's
minds some idea of God and of religious duty.
Experience indeed seems to show that practi-
cally they are in many cases hindrances to the
acceptance of any better religion.

And it is to be remarked, secondly, that the
above-cited assertion of Mr. Spencer is purely
gratuitous and incapable of verification. Apart
from experiment, it cannot be ascertained what
religion any age or people is capable of re-
ceiving. Christianity has been accepted by thei
most unpromising races; and, for all Mr.
Spencer knows, had it been offered, it might
long ago have been accepted by tribes that have
lived for centuries, and are still living, under
such "approximation to the truth" as devil-
worship or Sivaism affords.

But the primitive history of Mohammedan-
ism in Arabia is sometimes cited as an instance
in which it seems that where Christianity could
effect little or nothing for a people, an inferior
religion effected much. And although Mo-
hammedanism is no fair specimen of natural
religion, having so largely borrowed from Juda-
ism, yet it is worth while to look at the facts, and
estimate exactly the amount of truth there is in
the assertion. It is not denied that this religion

/

w

232 The Perfect Rcligi07i.

did at once effect reforms which Christianity had
failed to effect ; it accomphshed more for Arabia
in a few years than Christianity had accom-
phshed in centuries. It aboHshed at a stroke
the idolatry against which Christianity had
fought in vain, and it introduced an idea of God
which, though imperfect, w^as at least similar
to, as it was borrowed from, the Jewish idea.
And to this day Mohammedanism has a greater
influence on the outward conduct of the masses
than Christianity has. And Mohammedanism
has this greater influence precisely because it is
an inferior religion, trusting more to law than
to the spirit. The command to abstain from
wine is no more emphatic than the Christian
command to avoid drunkenness, but it is im-
bedded in a religion of precept, rule, and out-
w^ard authority; w^hereas Christians are left
more to their individual feeling and conscience,
and are encouraged to become a law to them-
selves. Mohammedans are treated as children,
and behave themselves as boys in school. Chris-
tians are treated as men, and often show that
they are not worthy of such treatment.

It is therefore idle to imagine that if Moham-
med had become a Christian, and had preached
the religion of Christ with the same zeal and
determination which characterised his preaching
of Islam, the result would have been an exten-

Christianity too good for Arabia, 233

sion of Christianity as wide and enduring and
fruitful as the extension of Mohammedanism
has proved. It is idle to make any such sup-
position as this, because had Mohammed been
a Christian he could not have used the instru-
ments he did use, either for the extension of his
religion among surrounding nations, or for the
enforcement of its precepts upon those who
accepted it. It is not the seeming accident
that the one religion enjoyed the services of an
apostle more zealous and skilful than any en-
joyed by the rival creed ; it is not this which
gave success to Islam wdiere Christianity had
failed, but that the more spiritual creed by its
very spirituality precluded the use of such in-
struments of propagation and enforcement as
the inferior creed could use. The comparative
failure of Christianity in Arabia and in the
neighbouring countries where Islam enjoyed its
most signal triumphs is not accounted for by
that which is accidental, but only by that which
is essential to the one religion and to the other.
Christianity failed, in so far as it did fail, because
its nature required it to attempt to "guide by
the eye " men whose dispositions and habits
could be governed only by the more palpable
and inviolable restraints of bit and bridle. It
failed because the Arabs did not desire to be
"righteous overmuch," but desiderated a re-

i

234 T/ie Perfect Religion.

ligion which gave them Hberal allowances both
in this world and the next. They took, to Mo-
hammedanism because it solved the problem
and showed them how they could please God
by pleasing themselves. They enlarged their
inheritance in heaven by conquering a broader
heritage on earth, and took the kingdom of
heaven by pillage and slaughter. The purer
the form, therefore, in which Christianity had
been presented to the Arabians, the less likely
was it that they would accept it.

It is, however, pertinent to inquire whether
the rapid acceptance of Islam and the conse-
quent improvement in morality was worth the
price paid for it. The triumph of Islam was
the doom of the highest form of religion. No
doubt it was not verv probable that Christianity
would either be intelligently accepted in Arabia
or would become in a pure form the sole religion
of the countries now Mohammedan ; but the
triumph of Islam turned this improbability into
an impossibility. These countries are less open
to Christianity than those more barbarous lands
in which religions much more unlike our own
have prevailed. In point of fact Islam has not
educated its adherents to the reception of a
more spiritual religion than itself. Spiritual
men it has reared : under all religions there
arise men whose spiritual desires burst the

Conditions impervio7ts to Christianity. 235

bonds of the system that first helped them to
understand things divine. But the nations
which have accepted Islam cannot be said to be
any nearer accepting Christianity now, or any
better prepared for the highest form of religion
than the Arabs to whom Mohammed preached.
Now, an illustration of the nature of the evil
thus wrought in the world lies to our hand.
Most of our statesmen and leaders of opinion
vehemently object to anything like paternal
government or the infringement of the liberty
of the subject. They do not question that a
strong hand might put down some of our
national vices, and make us show better on
statistical tables of morality. An entire repres-
sion of the liquor traffic and a relentless punish-
ment of offenders would go far to remove one
stain from the face of society. Why then is
this not done ? Because it is believed that the
gain would be more apparent than real, and that
it would not compensate for the loss of indi-
vidual liberty. That is to say, it is recognised
that nothing is so precious as self-government,
and that enforced virtue is apt to develope into
some more hideous and deep-seated vice. They
recognise that a country may really be in a
healthier and far more hopeful state when liberty
is turned into license than when outward re-
spectability is secured by ignominious despotism.

V

236 The Perfect Religion.

But the gain which Mohammedanism brought
was of a kind analogous to that which is secured
by outward authority : it secured immediate
reformation at the price of future growth.

The conclusion then which, it seems to me,
is fairly deducible from these facts, is this, that
there are conditions of societ}^, as there are
states and stages of the individual character, to
which Christianity appeals in vain,^ or in which,
if it does succeed in finding a nominal accept-
ance, it remains inoperative. And undoubtedly
in such a case it is better that there be an
j inferior religion accepted than none at all, sup-
/ posing always that this inferior religion be one
which is not wholly false and evil. But if this
inferior religion be one which by its nature is
unsusceptible of progress, and still more if it
turns the present incapacity to accept Chris-
tianity into a formal opposition to it, it may

^ These states are not always charactererised by a
backward civilization, or by a low physique. What does
characterise them, is a question too vast to discuss here.
Christian missions have succeeded among the most de-
graded races, while among nations in more favourable
conditions their success has been tardy and doubtful.
Our Scotch missions in India are wisely worked on the
understanding that no great immediate success is to be
looked for, but that every agency which indoctrinates the
community with a healthy morality in business, or with a
respect for law, or with the Christian ideas of excellence
in any department of human life, necessarily aids in
securing the ultimate triumph of Christianity.

Practical Results, 237

reasonably be questioned whether the perma-'
nent disabihty it entails does not far outweigh
the immediate benefit it confers. In other words,
we conclude that what is true in every other
department of human life is true also of religion.
The Red Indian, who receives most important
information from a few rude figures carved on
the bark of a tree, can make no use whatever
of a written description of the country. A
despotism is not the absolutely best form of
government, but it is undeniably the best for
nations at a certain stage of political develop-
ment. But the benefit of its adoption by any
people will be shown especially in the success
with which it trains them to acknowledge and
adopt some higher and more perfect form of
government. A milk diet is very poor food for
the adult, but it is the only food which an
infant can receive or find any nourishment in.
Its suitableness for the infant, however, may be
measured precisely by its success in fitting him
to long for and utilize the food of the adult.
The government of one race by another, as in
our Indian Empire, is not an ideal political con-
dition, but probably a large proportion of the
subject race would acknowledge that self-
government had become impossible to them,
or, at all events, that their subjection brings
them advantages superior to any they could

238 The Perfect Religion.

otherwise have attained. If, however, these
advantages do not fit them for self-government,
if famiharity with our customs, laws, literature,
government, and history, does not lift them
above the condition in which we found them,
and make them capable of the highest forms of
national life, it may be questioned, and it will
be doubted, wdiether, after all, their present con-
dition of subjection has been, even relatively
the best. In like manner it may be granted
that Islam was more akin to the Arabs of the
seventh century than Christianity, and did good
w^hich " Christianity had not done, but it is the
reproach of Islam that it has not trained its
adherents to the reception of Christianity.'

It may still be asked. What is the practical
outcome of these facts and principles ? what is
their bearing on missionary effort ? If there
are tribes so rude that they cannot conceive of
God at all without a visible symbol of His
presence ; if there are races so savage that
they must pass through the discipline of a legal
religion before they can be trusted with a re-

^ It is awkward to omit what is really an essential cle-
ment of this argument — the discussion of the question
whether there are any races strictly non-progressive ; but
space is denied me, and I can only say that, while it
seems as if some nations, like some families, had already
exhausted their chances and must now die out, it cannot
be said that any which survive are incapable of progress.

Conchision. 239

ligion that is wholly inward ; if there is no
department of human affairs in wdiich we need
more carefully to distinguish between what is
absolutely and what is relatively the best — may
not a missionary err in preaching the gospel to
every creature, and might he not be better em- /
ployed in preaching some religion which the'
people would accept ? Now, in the first place,
missionaries do in fact recognise some indi-
viduals and races as hopeful, others as hopeless ;
and in doing so they follow the example of
their Master. Again, it is obvious that the
only infallible w-ay to detect who are capable of
accepting Christianity is to offer it to all. He
would be a very presumptuous man who should,
previous to experiment, take upon him to say of
any nation or race that it was impervious to
Christian truth. Neither can any one predict
at what stage or period or turn of affairs any
country will at length yield to a persistent and
wise, though hitherto ineffectual attempt to
Christianize it. The religion of Christ is fitted
to become the universal religion, although it is
impossible to foresee what agencies may be re-
quisite to bring all nations to the point of
accepting it. And while we may be glad that
in the absence of Christianity men have derived
some comfort, hope, and stimulus from inferior
religions, every one w^ho appreciates the work

240 TJie Perfect Religion.

of Christ will do what he can that as rapidly as
possible He may be acknowledged by all men
as "the way, the truth, and the life." Besides,
in the midst of nations which as a whole lack
the moral tone that predisposes to the recep-
tion of the most spiritual religion, there may
be exceptional individuals far surpassing the
general national character. It was so to some
extent with the Jews. As a whole they proved
themselves unable to accept the religion of
' Christ, and yet among them were found excep-
tional men who so appreciated and received the
religion, that on them the Church was built.
Above all, the man whose own convictions of
the truth are profound will utter himself in
the face of all discouraging appearances. To
quote the words of one whose own experience
of the receptiveness of his generation has been
somewhat mixed : " The highest truth the wise
man sees he will fearlessly utter ; knowing that,
let what may come of it, he is thus playing his
right part in the world — knowing that if he can
effect the change he aims at — well : if not —
well also ; though not 50 well." ^

I Herbert Spencer's FUst P7'inciples, p. 123.

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