for the religious system of the Persians by a learned living writer; though the teaching may probably have been somewhat vague and dim, and was evidently mixed up with much that was érroneous. Hence, we cannot but suspect, the strength of the Schiite schism among the believers in Islamism; the mere question whether the three first Caliphs were usurpers or not, and whether Ali ought not to have immediately succeeded Mahomet, could hardly have led to such serious and lasting results. But an admixture of the idea of mediation, of union of the divine and human in one nature, and of other ancient Persian tenets, would at once give a subjective basis to a schism which was, at its commencement, rather personal and political, than religious.2

Take again the case of Buddhism. We are not about to defend its morality or its theology; though M. Huc's account of the Thibetians should certainly be weighed in the balance as well as the unfavourable portrait which others give of the Hindoo and Cingalese professors of this creed. In any case, Buddhism now possesses some deep and holy truths, however acquired. And so likewise, does Brahmanism. We have before us,

'M. Felix Lajard, Lettre sur les Traditions Assyriennes et Persanes, appended to the second volume of M. Ňicolas' Etudes Philosophiques.

2 Taylor's History of Mohammedanism' (chap. vii.) quite justifies us in taking this view of the Schiites, and thereby regarding the Sonnites as the truer Mussulmans. It is a sad blemish on this work, which is replete with curious and useful information, that its author commits the unpardonable error of asserting, more than once, that Mahomet taught the doctrine of the incarnation (p. 7, and p. 46). The Koran is as explicit as possible in denying the divinity of our Lord, though it admits His miraculous conception.

while we write, Wilkin's translation of that very curious Sanscrit work, the Bhagvat-Geeta,' which contains the system of those worshippers of Kreeshna, called the Bluktahs. A note, furnished by the present Bishop of Brechin, to Archdeacon Grant's most interesting Bampton Lectures, invites our attention to the following passage, as hinting at the Christian doctrines of remission of sin and the effects of faith, and of man's union. with the Object of all true worship :—

Those who serve me with adoration, I am in them, and they in me. If one, whose ways are ever so evil, serve me alone, he is as respectable as the just man; he is altogether well employed; he soon becometh of a virtuous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness. Recollect, O son of Koönteë, that my servant doth not perish.''

Now, as the work whence this extract is taken is of the tenth century, and consequently coeval with the Mahometan conquest of Hindoostan, it may easily be conceived that men, who could imbibe such sentiments, would regard Islamism with little favour. And thus indeed it proved: Mahomet's disciples smote Indian idolatry, and that most righteously; but forasmuch as their creed, in its bare and rigid Monotheism, did not correspond to the needs of the mystic and contemplative Hindoo, even the sword of Mahmood failed in the long run, to win the convictions of the mass of the inhabitants.

And with respect to rites of sacrifice: sad and

1 Bhagvat-Geeta, lect. ix. In the same chapter occur the following striking words :-'I am the sacrifice; I am the worship; I am the spices; I am the invocation; I am the ceremony to the manes of the ancestors; I am the provisions; I am the fire and I am the victim.'-Krëeshna is the speaker throughout.

XX quoted by the

shocking as it was that an offering like that of
Abel should have been transferred from the true
and living God to his rebellious creatures, the
fallen angels; yet in the existence of the rite
itself, and the many points of agreement in its
mode of performance by all nations, how much of
deep and solemn truth was involved; truth,
assuredly, which needed to be purified and disen-
tangled from masses of superstition, but not to be
lost sight of and forgotten. In the selection of a
victim as innocent as possible, and likewise one
near humanity (tamed animals, as the sheep or the
calf-never wild ones, as the boar or wolf, being
employed), in the infliction of a blood-shedding
death, the knife, not the strangling cord, being
the instrument; in the consumption of part of the
victim by fire, and the rest by the ministrants
and the people; in all these leading features the
nations of the universe were at one.
All recog-
nised thereby, however dimly and unconsciously,
man's need of that Atonement which, in the divine
counsels of God the Holy Trinity, was offered
'before the foundation of the world;' all admitted
that repentance alone could not avail to blot out
sins; all entreated the acceptance of a substitute
for their guilty selves :-

'Cor pro corde, precor, pro fibris sumite fibras :
Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.'1

That Mahomet should either continue the

1 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 161, 2.-These striking lines are quoted by M. Nicolas, from whose chapter ou sacrifices we have drawn largely. 'Etudes Philosophiques,' livre ii. chap. iv. Though the Buddhists have no sacrifices, they do not leave the gulf between man and his Maker which Mahometanism does.

author, S. Andrew's Ch. Cumbral, Good Friday 1859.

abolished sacrifices but he has relegated them to a very 92 obscure and MAHOMETANISM, unimportant piace in his system.

sacrifices of blood, or failing that, should have grasped the idea of spiritual and bloodless sacrifices, was not perhaps to be expected. But in that his doctrine concerning the Godhead stands, as it were, bare and lonely; in that the interval between man and his Maker is left in all its vastness; in that with the loss of sacrifices, he lost much solemn truth conveyed in such ritual; he has thereby framed a religion devoid of some things, which the better among the heathen had retained; and thus far justified the pointed comment of Schlegel upon himself and his work, as the spectacle of a prophet without miracles-a faith without mysteries, and a morality without love.'

These words of Schlegel bring us naturally to another branch of our subject, the relation, namely, between Mahometanism and the Gospel. In attempting to investigate this problem, it is only fair to ask what ideas Mahomet himself has promulgated upon so very important a point. We may then add some comments of our own upon any real features of resemblance, as well as of

contrast.

Now the first remark to be made is, that the Koran is inconsistent on this head. Not, indeed, that this is a solitary instance of its inconsistency; for the Mussulmans, according to M. Renan, recognise 225 contradictions in the Koran'-that is to say, 225 passages, which were abrogated by its author as a consequence of some change in policy. But the inconsistency is, in this case, unusually striking and important. In one set of

1 Möhler, p. 351.

passages Christianity is recognised as equally good with Mahometanism; in another it is merely a preparation for it, as Judaism had been for Christianity.

The mere fact of any view, however self-contradictory, being thus put forth, shows that Mahomet was compelled to recognize the existence both of Judaism and Christianity. He could not ignore them, as a Hindoo teacher might have done: the adherents of both creeds in Arabia were too numerous and too influential to admit of such a course. But, in truth, he had no such desire; the recognition of these religions in some way was compulsory upon Mahomet, quite as much from inward convictions, as from any force of external circumstances. No uninspired teacher ever seems to have felt more deeply the impossibility of grafting a religion upon his own subjective notions merely; none sought more anxiously to win for his doctrines an objective and historical basis.1 In asserting that he came to restore the religion of that great Patriarch, the Father of the Faithful, he at once appealed to associations admitted to be most sacred both by Jew and Christian, and reverenced by numbers more, even of his idolatrous countrymen, with that honour paid everywhere, but most especially in the East, to the memory of a founder of a race :

'Abraham was a model of true religion, obedient unto God, orthodox, and was not an idolater: he was also grateful for his benefits; wherefore God chose him and directed him into the right way. And we bestowed on him good in this world and in the next he shall surely be one of the

1 Möhler.