The Chief Founders of the Chief

Faiths.

Around no men, amongst all the millions of mankind, does so much interest gather as around the Founders of the Chief Religious Faiths of the world. Such men are sometimes almost lost in the obscurity of remote ages, or of the mystery with which they surrounded themselves or their early followers invested them. But whenever they can be discerned, their characters analysed, and their deeper experiences understood, they are found to be, not only leaders and masters of the multitudes who have adopted more or less of their creed and ritual, but also interpreters (more or less partial) of the universal yearnings of the soul of man. Such men may have seemed to sit at the fountains of human thought and feeling, and to have directed or have coloured the mysterious streams; but they have quite as often indicated in their doctrines and in their deeds the strong courses of the thoughts and feelings which are more permanent and deeper than any one man or even any one age could completely discover. The aim of these papers will be, with necessary brevity, to review the chief of such men, noting suggestively rather than exhaustively, their biography, their circumstances, their theology, and their ethics. And in concluding the series, it is proposed to compare and to contrast each and all of them with the "One Man whom in the long roll of ages we can love without disappointment, and worship without idolatry, the Man Christ Jesus.'

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PRINCIPAL BOOKS OF REFERENCE.-Max Müller's "History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature," "The Science of Language," "Chips from a German Workshop;" Rev. F. D. Maurice's "Religions of the World; " Archdeacon Hardwick's "Christ and other Masters;" Rev. J. W. Gardner's "Faiths of the World;" Miss Mary Carpenter's "Last Days of Rammohun Roy;" Rev. F. W. Farrar's "Witness of History to Christ;" Rev. A. W. Williamson's "Journey in North China;" Cannon Liddon's Bampton Lecture on "Our Lord's Divinity; Cousin's "History of Modern Philosophy; " S. Clarke's "Ten Great Religions;" Father Huc's "Christianity in China."

No. X.

Subject: Mahomet, his Biography.

THIS religious hero, the times and circumstances of whose

era we have indicated already, was born in Mecca, A.D. 570. He was a descendant of the first and most honourable family in Arabia. His father died before his birth; at this his grandfather rejoiced, and held a seven days' feast in honour of the infant heir, on whom he bestowed the name of Mohammed, which means, The Glorified. At the age of six, he lost his mother, a woman noted for her beauty, worth, and sense—a minor, who was unable to leave him any property beyond five camels and a slave. His grandfather, who took him under his protection for three years, died after he had reached his ninth year. He now passed into the hands of his paternal uncles, who acted as his friends and guardians. He was present in 585 and 586 in two battles, fought between the tribe Hanazyin and the Koreish, of which tribe he was, in both

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of which the latter were defeated. About this time one of his uncles took him on a mercantile expedition into Syria. There he came into contact with a foreign world, one foreign element of endless moment to him, the Christian Religion." He seems to have been chiefly taught by travel. For though endowed with a native penetration, such as that of Themistocles, he seems to have been ignorant of books. Indeed he could neither read nor write, and could seldom quote a verse without misarrangement of words. He entitles himself "the illiterate prophet." Still from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man. At twenty-five he had acquired an honourable reputation amongst his fellow-countrymen, his readiness, good faith, aversion to all that was mean, won for him the surname "Al Amin," The Trustworthy. So great was his reputation for probity that a high-born widow, Kadijah, employed him as her mercantile agent; and his great success in this led her to marry him when he was twentyfive. By this union they had six children. His sons died in infancy, his daughters lived to embrace his creed. Through these years he lived an honoured life. He was fond of frequent solitude, wandering often in the gorges round Mecca and on Mount Hira; he spent his time in prayer and practised almsgiving during the religious month Ramadham. In his forty-first year he asserts he received his mission. The first passage of the Koran said to be revealed to him was, "Read in the name of thy Lord who hath created all things, who hath created man of congealed blood; read by thy most beneficent Lord, who hath the use of the pen, who teacheth man that which he knoweth not." He told Kadijah that the angel Gabriel had taught him these words, and she at once accepted him as the prophet of his nation. She was his first and most steadfast follower. In the next few years he spent his life in the midst of persecution; and his adversaries sought to bribe him by wealth to cease from his endeavours. His reply is in the forty-first chapter of the Koran-a really sublime passage, and which led to the natural request that he would work miracles as a proof of his mission. His answer was, that he was sent to

per

preach, not to work miracles. The demand, however, continued so urgent that he yielded, and declared that he had formed a night journey to heaven, known as Isra, when the angel Gabriel took him on the animal Borac, into the presence of the patriarchs and prophets and the Almighty Himself. This brought on him much ridicule and desertion. In the eleventh year of his mission he fled before persecution from Mecca to Medina. This flight, called Hegira, is fixed as the great Moslem epoch. During the time he fought and conquered the Koreish, as he asserted, by angelic aid. He resolves to give no quarter to the idolaters. He was accepted by many, but rejected by most of the Jews with whom he came in contact, because he claimed descent from Ishmael, and made a partial consent to the claims of Jesus. It was about this time he sent letters to princes with a silver seal containing in three lines the words-MAHOMET,-APOSTLE,OF GOD.

(Biography to be continued).

The Preacher's Scrap-Room.

SHORT ESSAYS.

THE GOOD MAN'S CONSCIENCE.

UBLIC opinion greatly over-estimates the amount of happiIness which the good derive from an approving conscience. For even the noblest man, in his noblest moral moods, is not free from the taint of evil, of which he is painfully aware; and the better the man the more keen to detect that taint does his conscience become :

Besides this, the highest natures, after performing for the sake of principle the most difficult act of self-denial, are not unfrequently tormented by doubts as to whether, even for the sake of principle, the self-denial was really necessary. Thus,--to select one of many instances that might be quoted in illustration of the foregoing remark, -a man relinquishes a lucrative and otherwise advantageous position, in itself perfectly lawful and unobjectionable, because of certain temptations to which it incidentally exposes him, and to which he fears he might, in time, fall a victim. Now, there can be no question as to the highly honourable conduct

of the man in so acting. But, if he expects that his conscience will reward him with unqualified approval for the self-sacrifice which he has displayed at its behest, he will not unlikely have cause to feel disappointed. The thought which will, probably, soon obtrude itself upon the man's mind, is, that he would have acted a more heroic part in resisting, by God's blessing, the temptations to which his unusually dangerous but essentially legiti mate calling subjected him, instead of ignominiously escaping them by flight. The man's sense of duty to himself alone will, probably, prompt this reflection. But what if others-wife, children-suffer for the step which he has taken ? The reflection will be far more poignant. His conscience will then not only not commend him for acting nobly towards himself, but will positively reprove him for acting ignobly towards them-will not only not praise him for duty performed, but will blame him for duty neglected.

The reader must not mistake the preceding argument for an attempt to justify the slightest disregard of the monitions of conscience, or to show that peculiar pleasure does not often proceed from a scrupulous attention to its promptings. It is simply a protest against the reception in its entirety of the popular notion,-based on truth, but also on error,-that the good man carries within his breast a faithful and sure witness, which at all times, even when his path is dark with the frowns of others, sufficiently rewards and cheers him by its perpetual and unfaltering "Well done!" The good man is not to himself an object of such admiring delight; but, on the contrary, experiences often, and in an especial degree, the lacerating pangs of remorse.

THE CENSURE OF SUBORDINATES.

A man does not necessarily regard with increased favour the subordinate whom he seldom censures.

Often, a man will like the more, of two persons who serve under him, that one whom he rebukes the more, and like the less that one whom he rebukes the less. For, not unfrequently, a superior abstains through mere fear from blaming an inferior. In that case, the anger which, if vented, would speedily pass away, survives long after the occasion that awakened it, if it does not actually increase by being unduly suppressed. Besides which, the very fear, which the man will scorn himself for being influenced by,-will, as a consequence, beget a sullen resentment towards its object. But, when a man can rebuke a subordinate with freedom, and does so rebuke him, there will be derived a kind of self-satisfaction from the very freedom thus enjoyed,-the master realizing that he is master,—which self-satisfaction will, in turn, beget a sort of satisfaction with the subordinate. And further, when we censure another, although not unjustly, we generally regard him afterwards with a certain feeling of pity, which pity is closely akin to, if it does not beget, favour itself. THORNTON WELLS.

The Pulpit and its Handmaids.

MEDIATION in the universe, like the burning bush in the desert, is that great radiant fact, to which the highest minds 'turn aside" in rapt wonderment and awe.