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of everything which, at however great a distance, might correspond with the doctrine of Christian sanctification. Man's nature is never cultivated as an end to itself, or-in other and more usual, though practically but equivalent words-as an end to the glory of God. Mahomet would seem, in spite of his petition to be led in the right way, to have had not even a dream of such a doctrine. Religion is reduced to externalism and legality. Even charity is regulated by law. We hear not so much as the whisper of an appeal to the Divine law of love.

3. One of the most eloquent and able of the apologists for Mahomet has said, that the real meaning of his heaven and hell is to teach the supremacy of duty over all questions of mere advantage, over all balancings of profit and loss, and has briefly contrasted Mahomet's teaching herein with that of Paley and Bentham, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. Without any apology for Paleyism - the most heathen thing out of heathendom-we should take all exception to the comparison on other grounds. Mahomet inculcates duty indeed, but not for its own sake, we think. It is no more duty for duty's sake with Mahomet than it was with Paley. Precisely otherwise. The Arab is sensual by nature, it appears, to more than an average degree. He has always been so. He has always been so. And when Mahomet would deter him from wrong, he told him that hell was hot, 'boiling hot, almost bursting with fury,' and that the drink of the damned there was boiling water and filthy corruption.' (Sura lvi. lxvii. lxxviii. lxxxviii.) This at least was a good deal more likely to take effect upon a semi-barbarous Arab than a gospel of duty for duty's sake. And when, again, Mahomet would encourage his disciple to give tenths to the poor and to God, to obey God's Apostle, and to fight for Islam till there should be no other religion left in the land, he promised to his obedience, 'Rest and passive enjoyment; verdant gardens watered by 'murmuring rivulets, wherein the believers, clothed in garments of green silk and brocades with silver ornaments, repose beneath the wide-spreading shade; where they drink the 'sweet waters of the fountain, and quaff aromatic wine, such as 'the Arab loved, placed in goblets before them, or handed round, in silver cups resplendent as glass, by beautiful youths. Clus'ters of fruit, too, hang within reach, and invite the hand to 'gather them.' While so much attention was bestowed upon the mere subsidiaries of this voluptuous paradise, we may be sure that the principal element was not neglected, and that Mahomet did not fail to dwell with captivating eloquence upon the innumerable damsels with swelling bosoms, of an equal age and a full cup; the 'lovely large-eyed girls; girls

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Further Objections against Islam and Mahomet.

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resembling pearls hidden in their shells,' who were to solace the faithful with their complaisance and care. And if, as has been stated, the intention of such discourses, indulged in not once or twice but often, was to teach the just-reclaimed idolater to do right things because they were right, to do duty for duty's sake, we can only answer that it was a very novel, and, indeed, quite original way of putting the matter.

4. But what was the real effect and residue of all this teaching-a teaching, it is to be noted, the emphasis of whose precepts was more than seconded by Mahomet's notorious example-is fully evinced by this: that sensuality has become so thoroughly incorporated in Islam as to form an inseparable part of it. In Mahometanism licentiousness is married to religion and can never be divorced.

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5. It would scarcely be just to object to a religion produced in the Arabian deserts, more than a thousand years since, that it was unphilosophical. An objection different from this, yet related to it, is perfectly legitimate; namely, that Islamism is, to even a revolting degree, the religion of finality. It makes ignorance pious and intelligence profane; and this, not as an accident remediable by succeeding teachers more enlightened than their fathers, but as a vital and integral part of the professed revelation upon which it is based. is a religion which flourishes still, and has for a thousand years been in possession of the fairest regions of the earth. What has it given us? The best men it has produced have been dead almost as long; and the best they gave the world consisted of sundry rudiments of science borrowed from the Greeks, and of an architecture which can be turned to no practical account, and which, without abusing it, is no more comparable with the spiritual beauty and intellectual might of the pagan Acropolis than is Zeid, the editor of the Koran, with Plato 'the divine.'

6. How far Mahomet was indebted for his religion, directly or indirectly, to the Bible and to Christianity, is perhaps for ever indeterminable. Perhaps, also, the determination would be of very little value if obtained. No man who knows anything of the matters involved, can doubt that the Prophet was a plagiarist. It were easy to point out instances by the page. The marvel is that he has plagiarised so ill. After you have excepted sundry passages referring to the unity and power of the Deity, for Nihil tetigit quod non ornavit, read Nihil tetigit quod non depravavit omnino depravavit, and you These descriptions are literally copied from the Koran. See Muir, vol. ii. p. 141, &c.

will have an almost exact account of the fashion in which Mahomet made use of whatever he had in one way or other derived from the Scriptures.

Upon any illustration of what we have called the meaning of Mahomet's success we cannot even touch, nor upon an inquiry into the means of it can we do more than very slightly touch. But if we are to accept the statement of the Arabian historians, that for some time prior to the birth of Mahomet there had prevailed in Arabia the general expectation of a prophet, we may readily allow the probability that such expectation would work favourably for any one who, with the requisite audacity, combined the requisite cleverness and perseverance to avail himself of it.

2. Mahomet was greatly assisted by the ancient rivalry subsisting between Mecca and Medina; a rivalry which we learn from Captain Burton subsists to this day. 'Men are more bound 'together by their antipathies than their sympathies,' has said one of the most thoughtful preachers in all London; and Mahomet found it true. His reception at Medina was greatly facilitated by his quarrel with his own people; and when the quarrel had come to be à l'outrance, Medina flung open her gates, and gave him horses, camels, arms, and men, that he might wage it more successfully.

3. As soon as he had half established himself in Medina, he commenced a series of petty expeditions as well against neighbouring tribes as against the caravans of the Coreish. To the former he invariably offered friendship and alliance on condition of their embracing Islam. It was like taking a number of unconnected positions in detail. Disciples were made by the score and the hundred, and were carefully instructed afterwards in the religion they had received at the point of the sword. Mahomet succeeded in this because of the complete want of organization among the several independent tribes. They were unable to co-operate for a common end, and were subdued or converted one by one accordingly.

4. When the Prophet came into contact with the numerous Jewish and Christian settlements scattered up and down Arabia, it might have been supposed that his progress would be effectually stayed. Far from it; and for this reason, that he found a Judaism which had long been dead, and a Christianity which the apostles who planted it would have had no little difficulty to recognise. In some parts, for example, if the mother of our Lord was not distinctly worshipped and confessed as the Third Person of the Trinity, she was at least so spoken of that this was the conclusion drawn by Mahomet as to the

Means of his Success.

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Christian creed, and he rejected it accordingly. He found in the Christian churches what were declared to be authentic portraits of Christ (who was worshipped the while as God), and it seemed to him a thing incredible and monstrous, and was treated as such. From idolatry he had but recently escaped; and what was this, he said, but idolatry? We learn from Leontius, bishop of Neapolis and contemporary with Mahomet, that pictures had already acquired the art of deluging their own faces with blood, and that they received prostrations and adorations from so-called Christian worshippers; all which seemed, even to Leontius, who plainly speaks of the αιμάτων ῥύσεις, commendable and for edification.* We know that in some cases Mahomet's ambassador-missionaries had to demand, on pain of much more than displeasure, the production of a trinity of sticks (two of which were parti-coloured and gilded, and the third a black knotted carre), and which the people worshipped. This trinity was to be inexorably and publicly burned in the market-place. Other corruptions were no less powerful though less offensive. Ceremonialism lived: the Christianity was dead. Who can wonder that, being what it was, it proved no obstacle to Mahomet?

5. When, immediately after Mahomet's death, Islam was to extend itself beyond the boundaries of Arabia, the caliphs and viziers found their battles already more than half fought for them by the miserable schisms and logomachies-theological in their origin but political and social in their issues-by which the Church was divided. In almost every part of the Byzantine empire, for example, the Mussulman invaders were hailed as deliverers. They confounded the oppressed heterodox and the oppressing orthodox in a common charge of infidelity, and demanded from both belief and alliance, or subjection and tribute. An abused priestly power had combined with political power to render the whole state of society dishonest, hollow, unreal; and it went down in ignominious collapse and ruin at the first shock of battle with a vastly inferior religion, which, however, was real and earnest as far as it went.

6. But undoubtedly the chief element of Mahomet's success was his own indomitable persistence, sincerity, and self-confidence. After the first dire struggles were over, he believed in himself, and believed with a faith that never vacillated, never flagged, never failed. He had in that alone the grand requisite towards any success he might aim at. 'If you wish me to weep, you must first weep yourself,' says Horace to

* Gieseler. See also Neander, and others. + Muir, vol. iv. p. 215, note.

the orator; and 'If you wish me to believe, you must first 'yourself believe,' has a thousand times proved itself the omnipotent talisman of the apostles of reform. Be sure yourself, and you will need no arts of rhetoric to persuade others to believe. And observe how Mahomet waited till he was sure. Whole years passed before he attained that self-confidence and self-belief which, once acquired, were never lost. 'There is no doubt in this book' is the emphatic declaration of his Koran; and there is not. Right or wrong, its utterance is clear, decisive, categorical; dogmatic as no other book in the world is dogmatic, and exacting as no other book in the world is exacting. Hence faith, unreasoning, blind, besotted even, it may be, but still faith. Surely it is obvious, almost obtrusively obvious, that in this self-belief, which does not invite, but which irresistibly compels and renders spontaneous a conduct in accordance with it, is the first and indispensable element of success in any one who aspires to lead. Let him provide this, and whom? why? and whither? he would lead, become questions of secondary weight. The examples are without count.

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There is no doubt in this book,' said Hildebrand; and he made the Romish priesthood a hierarchy of celibates, eager to follow him, while he planted the banner of the temporal power on the highest pinnacle of earthly glory. There is no doubt in this book,' said Peter the Hermit; and men bounded through all Christendom to save their souls by driving the Saracen out of Palestine. There is no doubt in this book,' said Luther; and he led the Reformation. 'I am not sure,' said Erasmus; and by men of all parties it is confessed that, save as a mere man of letters, he conspicuously failed. There 'is no doubt in this book,' said Ignatius Loyola; and he converted torpor into zeal, fear into courage, defeat into victory. 'THERE IS NO DOUBT IN THIS BOOK,' said Mahomet; and the intense conviction with which he said it leaped like an electric spark from his own heart to others' hearts. Arabia was kindled into flame. The hay, straw, and stubble of half-beliefs and nobeliefs were consumed, and Islam spread to the right and the left, to the north and the south, and remains to this day the religion of nearly two hundred millions of men.

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