1 Visions these so bright and winning, so consonant to the glory of Christ's religion, so worthy of the triumphs of Him who is ever justified in His sayings, and overcomes when He is judged, and overruleth all to good, that we almost shrink from venturing even to hint a doubt of their correctness. We wish to believe them true; we dare not call them false: but it must be, though with regret, remarked, that they do not yet seem to have been ratified by the stern reality of facts. Rather do we fear, with Archdeacon Grant, that the system of the false Prophet offers the most formidable obstruction to the faith of Christ, from the fact of its being, as it is, a counterfeit of the truth itself." Such fear is increased by the accounts of missionaries of the extreme difficulty of converting a Mahometan. One of our own Church to whom we have already alluded, told us, that though he would rejoice in hearing of any idolaters whom the Gospel could not reach turning Mahometans; yet that where the Malay (who is at present the Mussulman missionary) confronts the Christian priest, the only chance, humanly speaking, of the latter making a convert lay in his anticipating the teacher of Mahometanism. We do not wish, however, hastily to prejudge the somewhat peculiar case of Africa. Blessed indeed were it, if these sanguine expectations should prove true! We have spoken chiefly of the Arab, or Saracen, Mahometans; whom we imagine to be the finest specimens of Mussulmans. But if there be a race, who have seldom, if ever, fought against pagan idolatry, but constantly against the Cross; who, though truthful, dignified, and amiable in repose, are cruelty personified when once aroused to deeds of blood; who are, as a nation, at once most proud and most depraved; under whose blighting yoke the most fertile portions of God's earth lie desolate and withering, how, it may well be asked, should Christians feel towards such a race? They may succour them if oppressed, for the Gospel teaches us to befriend all such; they must keep all promises, not in themselves sinful, for the good man observes his plighted word, though it be to his own hindrance;' they must pray, earnestly and lovingly pray, especially on the anniversary of the Crucifixion, that He, the Crucified, would 1 Bampton Lectures, Lect. vii. p. 227. 2 It is with extreme reluctance that we omit the inimitably beautiful passages, upon this part of the subject, contained in 'Lectures upon the History of the Turks,' (p. 138, et seq.) Dr. Newman may be naturally suspected of partiality, where he compares Italy with Turkey, but we can safely affirm that he has, in this respect, under-stated rather than over-stated his case. Cf. Dr. Newman's Preface. him; the fatal manner in which any one great error may lead to more, and become a powerful instrument in the hands of Satan for the deterioration of character; all these jarring and conflicting elements, who, we repeat, of mortal men can combine and harmonize, so as to pronounce a safe and confident verdict?1 In pursuing the line of thought thus laid open, we shall find ourselves gliding almost imperceptibly from Mahomet's view of the relation between Islamism and the faith of the Cross, to ideas which are, we hope, more consonant to a Christian aspect of the subject. In attempting to become a Universal instead of merely a National Prophet, Mahomet was evidently unconscious of the far larger demands, if we may so speak, which would be made upon both his creed and character. Nearly all the national religions are inseparably bound up with the State. We see this not only in the case of the false creeds of Paganism, but likewise in that of the divine creed of Judaism, which we know to have been eminently national. Mahomet, in trying to found a universal religion, retained this idea, and therefore virtually sought to found at the same time a universal Monarchy. He was himself Priest and Prince, the one, because the other; the earliest Caliphs were likewise High Priests; and if the Ottoman Sultan does not actually exercise priestly functions, yet the Mufti who does exercise them is only his representative. Hence the singular circumstance that in Turkey a jurist and a divine go by the selfsame name of Ulema. Hence, in theory at least, all Mussulmans should recognise one sovereign only, whose authority is unique and absolute; and the Mahometan Princes of Hindostan and the Emperors of Morocco have acknowledged their subjection to the Ottoman Lord.' 6 But this clement of a national religion, how shall it ultimately suit a creed which pretends to universality? Judaism owned such a feature, but then Judaism did not pretend to be a faith for all times and nations. No, though Mahomet failed to apprehend this, a religion which shall win the world must enjoy an independent existence of its own, capable indeed of union with any rational form of government, but equally 1 For the proof of Mahomet's liability to epileptic fits, often, though not universally, preceding his visions, see the note to the sixth chapter of Mr. Irving's Life of Mahomet. Möhler (p. 379, text and note,) thinks that these attacks may be fairly compared with the bodily affections of the Montanists and, in a later day, the Jumpers. 12 M. Ubicini (Lettre Sixième) denies this view of the Caliphate. But this writer, though most trustworthy in statistics, is not happy upon points of criticism or history. The best authorities are all against him here. capable, if need be, of standing in the completest isolation. If this inseparable connexion imparted to Islamism no small amount of its first unity and strength, it is not difficult to show that it likewise contains within itself the seeds of disunion and decay. A similar judgment may likewise be passed, perhaps, upon the use of the sword as an instrument of conversion. Under the elder dispensation, the Almighty had employed that dread Scourge as the chastiser of guilty nations, whom He might have punished, had it so pleased Him, with a second flood, or with the fiery doom of the cities of the plain. Mahomet knew this well; he believed and inspired his followers with the belief, that they were as much thoroughly the divinely appointed scourges of God, as ever the Israelites had been. Now, we will not say that in conquest lay the secret of Mahometan success; herein we admit the full force of Mr. Carlyle's remark, that before you proceed to convert with the sword, you must first get your sword, and that the founder of every religion is at first in a minority of one. Neither do we pretend that war has had no share in the defence and propagation of the Christian faith. But most assuredly in no other creed is war a part of its very essence; no other religion ever admitted, as Islamism does, that too long continuance of peace endangered its vigour and vitality. This, again, is a feature which would of itself make the claim of Mahometanism to be a world-religion of the universe utterly hopeless and untenable. It knows nothing of universal love, it cannot imagine the union of special favour to its own, with benevolence to all; it cannot comprehend the maxim, Let us do good unto all men, but especially unto them. who are of the household of faith.' A similar result would probably follow from an investigation of its countenance of the principle of slavery. Granting the many humane provisions of the Koran, and of Turkish law and custom, with regard to slaves; granting, that Christian states, in both hemispheres, have been fearfully guilty at times in this respect, and have treated their slaves far worse than Turks and Arabs treat them, it still remains true that the Mediæval Church was the great instrument for the abolition of slavery in Europe, and that Christianity is at this moment the lever which will in time raise up slavery to freedom from the earth. The principle of slavery can never be recognised by a faith which is to subdue to itself all kingdoms of the earth. There remains to be noticed the great personal distinction between the position of a national prophet, and a prophet of the universe, a distinction which Mahomet entirely failed to grasp, or even to catch a glimpse of. Heathen races have generally some favourite vices, respecting which the national conscience is deadened; whence follows an equally faint approbation, perhaps a positive dis-approbation, of some particular virtues. These, however, will vary in different climates, and different ages; one nation will be shocked at sins which are unblushingly enacted by another; the heathen Germans and the heathen Romans, for example, could mutually condemn some glaring faults in each other's characters and moral practice. Now all that is, humanly speaking, required for the teacher of a race is, that he be a good man, according to the standard of that race. His disciples will not ask from him the inculcation of virtues of which they have never dreamt, nor the repression of vicious customs and ideas, which in their minds have long ceased to appear reprehensible. Such a teacher Mahomet might not irrationally, (however mistakenly as respects a divine mission,) claim to prove; whatever his faults, and they were in reality deep and terrible, there is yet no reason to doubt but that he was in the main a good Arabian; in few respects inferior to the average standard of his countrymen, in many respects extremely far above it. But the prophet of the world must be more than this; the morality which he teaches must accord, not with the conventional rules of his own peculiar age, or clime, or race, but with those eternal, unalterable, rules of right and wrong, wherein even God is a law unto himself; the doctrine which he imparts must satisfy all the really religious needs, not of this nor of that nation, but of humanity at large. He must be, in short, not merely a good Greek, a good Arab, a good member of any of the great human families, he must be emphatically a good MAN. A good man, nay, rather a perfect man; a type and model of humanity. And what son of man should there be found who could be capable of such an office? Who, since the fall of our first parent in Paradise, could suffice for such a task? Not even the holiest among fallen men, not Enoch nor Noah; not Abraham nor Moses; not David nor Elias; nor even the Holy Baptist; these were all great in their generations, endowed with Heaven-sent gifts for special times and circumstances; but for the office of prophet for all times and all nations, ONE alone was fit, the one true and perfect man, who is VERY AND ETERNAL GOD. If true and saintly prophets could not avail for so vast a work, how far less one with no really Divine mission, a man blood-stained, and lust-stained, capable of treachery and fierce revenge, and withal unconscious of his shame. And therefore, Neither the treacherous assassination of his Jewish enemies, nor the command to slaughter Nodar, son of Hareth, because he had satirised him, at all diminished his self-respect, nor the respect of the Arabians. Such deeds were not crimes in their eyes. when the Arabian teacher proclaimed to all the nations round his celebrated motto, There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Apostle of God,' he combined with a great and vital truth, a hopeless and tremendous falsehood. So long, indeed, as his followers turned eastward, and met with superstitions worse than their own, that truth held its way triumphantly, And overthrew, and scatter'd, and destroy'd, with something, it may be, of a blessing in its train. But when, in course of time, the influence of that false claim worked itself to light, and Moslems turned westward, and met the banners of the Cross, then, however much the sins and divisions of Christendom may have deserved the chastisement, they became tools of Satan, and supporters of his kingdom.' Denying alike the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the verity of our Saviour's Godhead, and the historical fact of his crucifixion,3 claiming for their false prophet the place which is due to Christ alone, they must be regarded, within the pale of Christendom, as the abettors of a God-denying heresy. 2 4 We say a heresy, for there is no denying that the amount of truth in Islamism is such as to warrant the adoption of such a term in ordinary parlance, though not perhaps in the scientific language of theology. For there is, as Möhler has acutely remarked in another of his works, one marked and leading distinction between Mahometanism and all heretical creeds, properly so called. Heresies, however much they may distort the Catholic faith concerning the person and office of our blessed Lord, yet agree in recognising in Him the first and best of all teachers, through whom the human race has received its last and highest religious culture. But Islamism does not make this admission; though Jesus be a great prophet, Mahomet is supposed to be greater. Bearing this weighty difference in mind, we may readily admit the many points of resemblance between Moslem and heretical teaching. We have heard a distinguished missionary of our Church, who has had practical experience of Mahometanism side by side with idolatrous beliefs, not long since express himself in this way concerning it; and De Maistre quotes Sir William Jones, Leibnitz, Nicole, and the French Protestant minister, Jurieu, to the same effect. He might have looked yet further back. In the Divina Commedia, the great antagonist of the Church in the West is classed, not with the heathen, but with heretics and schismatics. 1 Cf. Dr. Newman, p. 106. Symbolism, ad init. 2 Koran, chap. v. et alibi. W |