have again and again accepted (which claimant, alas! except the true one, ever failed to find some acceptance with them?); such a teacher, for example, as that pseudo-Moses in Crete, who said that he had come again from Heaven to lead them through the sea once more, and was followed by numbers, to their destruction; such a deluder as, in fiction, is set before us in Moore's 'Veiled Prophet'-a picture, perhaps, hardly overdrawn ; such a juggler of real history as Moseilama, supporting his pretensions by the display of an egg in a narrow-necked bottle, a chemical trick, with which an Arab author, Tarikh-el-Khamicy, has shown himself perfectly acquainted; such leaders as those half-ascetics, half-charlatans, who have founded a kind of religious orders in Algeria. Such a one as these, Mahomet, we believe, was not; however much his sincerity may have been dimmed and tarnished on particular occasions, more especially amidst the complications of his later years.

In adopting this conclusion, we are well aware that we are running counter to the judgment of many whom we respect, and shall seem to be throwing our lot with the partisans of latitudinarianism and unbelief. Look, it will be urged, at the great names arrayed against such an opinion of Mahomet; take into account the admixture of Judaism and Christianity with Islamism; think of the fruits of this religion as displayed in its long, bitter, and enduring hostility to the Cross; consider the stains of voluptuousness and revenge which disfigure the 1 Socrates, Hist. Eccles. vii. 38.

2 Caussin tom. iii. p. 310.

character of the son of Abdallah; remember the convenient nature of those revelations which were brought out at the exact juncture when they were needed to justify particular (and those very questionable) acts. Well, we have tried to ponder these objections, and allow to each of them their due weight. And, firstly, as regards the authority of great names, we cannot allow them to be decisive in a question of this nature. Unless proved to rest upon a sound basis, their judgments can but serve to remind us of the Aristotle-suggested saying, Amicus Plato, magis amica veritas. And while it ever must remain most true, that the hatred of evil is concomitant with the love of goodness, upspringing with its birth, and growing with its growth, and that we are bound not to employ euphemistic terms concerning that which is wrong, nor put light for darkness, nor sweet for bitter; yet, assuredly, if in our denunciations we overstep the bounds of equity and truth, the truth will be most fearfully avenged. Undue re-action, as has been already intimated, has perhaps been thus brought about respecting Mahomet. Known to the earlier middle age under the names of Maphomet, Baphomet, Bafum, (whence the French words bafumerie and momerie, our English mawmetry and mummery,) as a false god to whom human sacrifices were offered; hardly understood, it would seem, in Western Christendom before the twelfth century, to be a pseudo-prophet only, and not a pretended divinity; regarded by Bibliander, Hottinger and Maracci, in the sixteenth and

2

'M. Renan. Cf. Trench, On the Study of Words.

* Renan.

seventeenth centuries only in the light of an antagonist to Christianity-a most true, but certainly imperfect and one-sided aspect of the founder of Islamism-it can hardly be deemed a marvel that later generations should have to witness a kind of turn in the tide of feeling. And let not those who may be inclined to look only upon the darker side of the character and creed of the Arabian, imagine that in so doing they are of necessity allying themselves with the wise and good alone, in opposition to men of questionable character. The case does not stand thus. On the one hand, those who would impute to Mahomet a very large amount of conscious imposture, may find much to support their views in the sentiments of the sceptical Gibbon: those who would picture him as a monster of cruelty and injustice, will find the portrait already drawn to hand by the crayon of the infidel Voltaire. For Mahomet, however much he fell short of a high standard of religious faith and practice, yet displayed a great deal too much of both to please the unbelieving Frenchman. Voltaire, accordingly, besides contemptuous notices in prose, has represented Mahomet (in a tragedy, of which he is the chief character) in the blackest tints. The play, though extolled by La Harpe as chef-d'œuvre, is justly, we believe, represented to to be as contradictory to the facts of history, as it is to all correct views of Arabian customs. But then Voltaire has admitted that he was unsupported by facts, and has betrayed the secret of his enmity to the memory of Mahomet, by maintaining that such a representation is virtually true, on the ground que celui qui fait la guerre à sa patrie

au nom de Dieu, est capable de tout." While, on the other hand, those who, with us, are unable to see in Mahomet a mere pretender, may range themselves under the banner of one whom both friends and opponents will recognise as one of the noblest examples of sanctified intellect which this century has seen, the calm, the candid, the truly Christian Möhler. Those who have studied the essay of Möhler will hardly, we suspect, lay much stress upon the second point adduced against belief in Mahomet's original sincerity, the admixture, namely, which his creed presents, of tenets and usages from the other religions existent in Arabia before his time. Is it really conceivable, we would rather ask, that he could have framed a system which should be quite independent of the influence of those around? And if, again, the prolonged and savage hostility of the Crescent to the Cross prove that Mahometanism combined in its essence, a great lie with a most solemn truth; if Satan contrived, with consummate craft, to turn its weaknesses and falsities, thus mingled with eternal verities, into an instrument of evil which no unmitigated error could have proved; nay, even if there was that within Mahomet's own heart which contained the germ of all this mischief,—it would still remain to be proved, that he was either an insincere or an hopelessly wicked man. Not necessarily insincere, because in error; for thus should we impute insincerity to all those who, in killing apostles, thought that they did God service: or even to that ardent Pharisee, who, before his conversion, raged furiously against the infant Church,

Dr. Chrichton, p, 222 (note).

Not necessarily bad: excepting in so far as the adoption of erroneous belief betrays some yielding to one of the three forms of temptation by which man is assailed, the whisperings of that subtler spirit who, when Belial or Mammon have done their best and worst, comes forward with the allurements to singularity in creed, and spiritual pride, and domination over the spirits of our fellow-men. It is to this third, this most exalted, and therefore most fatal enchantment, that all great heresiarchs have fallen a prey; yet they need not therefore, in the commencement of their career, have yielded to the two former lusts of sensuality or gold and temporal rule; need not have been immoral, nor covetous, nor tyrannical, nor even hypocrites. Pelagianism has been, in many respects, a far more unmixed source of evil than Mahometanism: but did the great antagonist of Pelagian heresy pursue its author with invectives only? On the contrary, S. Augustine treats with respect both the abilities and the character of Pelagius; calling him 'most acute;' 'circumspect;' 'one who is, as those who know him declare, good, and to be extolled;' of chaste life, and praiseworthy morals;' 'a man who is eminently Christian.' I Between Mahomet and Pelagius there cannot be any proper comparison: whatever were the faults of the former, he had not been, like Pelagius, brought up as one of the children of

6

Vir acutissimus . . circumspectus istum, sicut eum qui noverunt loquuntur, bonum ac prædicandum virum... ipsi qui contra hæc disputant cùm sint castâ vitâ, moribusque laudabiles vir ille tam egregiè Christianus.'-S. Aug. De Peccat. Meritis et Remissione (tom. x. p. 73 C; p. 54 B; p. 74 B. Ed. Ben.)