prevent? maker. He is stigmatized as a tyrant and a mischief Indeed, a truly honest man is not nearly so great a rarity as is a truly honest man who is generally liked. "Popularity," says F. W. Robertson, "is one of the things of an earthly harvest, for which quite earthly qualifications are required. I say not always dishonourable qualifications; but a certain flexibility of disposition, a certain courtly willingness to sink obnoxious truths and adapt ourselves to the prejudices of the minds of others, a certain adroitness at catching the tone of those with whom we are. Without some of these things no man can be popular in any profession. And Hazlitt, in his trenchant criticism so-called 'good-nature,' which he styles 'humanity that costs nothing,' enunciates the same truth when he paradoxically observes, 'The most disagreeable people are the most amiable." on The moral of the foregoing remarks is, that one should not conclude that a man is deficient in a certain good quality, without first considering whether he does not possess in a higher degree some better one. For, often, two qualities, both good, happen to clash; and it then becomes a question for decision as to which shall be sacrificed to the other. Thus, in the examples which have been furnished above, the first man is not lacking in geniality because he loves religion more; the second man is not lacking in charity because he loves truth more; and the third man is not lacking in kindliness because he loves duty more. THEOLOGY.-The theology you get directly from the Gospel, compared with that you get from human books, is like the flowers scattered over the landscape, delighting all with their beauty and their fragrance, compared to the hortus siccus of the botanist; -like the translucent river starting from unknown heights, and winding its way towards the ocean, touching into life the scenery through which it passes, compared to the little stagnant pool, muddy, and generating the elements of disease. FERTILITY OF GOD'S WORD.-As from the acorn you might evolve forests, so from many sentences of God's word you might elaborate volumes of theological thought. 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." 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;" Canon 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;" Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship." No. XII. Subject: Mahomet (continued). THE theology of the great founder of Islamism was largely derived from the Old and New Testament Scriptures. This is concluded, not only from the plagiarisms from those Scriptures with which the Koran abounds, but from the emphasis laid by Mahomet on, at least, two doctrines that conspicuously mark alike the Jewish and Christian religions. Those two doctrines are, first, absolute Monotheism; the majesty of the Unity of God. This is both expressed in the oft-repeated phrase of the Koran, "Allah akbar," God is great; and practically in Mahomet's intense hatred of idolatry. And the second doctrine thus derived, is that of absolute sub mission to God. This inculcated a sentiment that, in its perfect form of resignation, is notably Davidic and Pauline, and that was one of the prominent moral glories of the Saviour's life. It is expressed in the word " Islam," meaning we must submit to God;" and though its frequent effect was "to drive the soul to the indifference and languor and fatalism that means despair," yet often "the patience of a Turk must awaken our homage and our shame." There can be no doubt that Mahomet did not merely transfer these and other great Christian doctrines from the Holy Scriptures into the Koran, and adopt them simply because of their place on the holy pages where they were originally found. But it is clear that he became interpenetrated with their spirit, and so, in a true sense, made them his own. Indeed, he probably found in them the utterance of his own mystic, dimly perceived, but often overwhelming yearnings about God and duty. Were this not so, his theological teaching could not have wielded the stupendous power that for the first ninety years after its proclamation, completely astounded European Christians, as they saw the conquering progress of Mahometanism through much of Asia and Africa. It was not a mere denial of Polytheism, for mere negations can never thoroughly inspire,— but an individual, intense belief in one God and in submission to Him, that was the inner force of Mahomet and of his more influential followers. Mr. Maurice says, "The awe of an Absolute, Eternal Being, to be obeyed as well as to be confessed, was passing away in some, had scarcely been awakened in others. The soldiers of Mahomet said by their words and acts, God verily is, and man is His minister to accomplish His will upon earth.' This we shall find was the inspiring thought in the warriors of the Crescent-this gave them valour, surbordination, discipline. This, where it encountered no like or equal feeling in the minds of those among whom they came, made them invincible. We must not be content with talking of their armies, here was the life of their armies. We must not speak of men's readiness to receive an imposture; in yielding to this assertion they were bowing to a truth. This was no verbal copy from ancient records; it may have been the oldest of all verities; but it was fresh and new for every one who acted upon it. It was no mere phrase out of a book—no homage to a mortal hero-no mere denial of other men's faith." This is true notwithstanding the two resemblances we have indicated; and if there were no other than these two,-namely Monotheism and submission to the Divine, we do not wonder that Mahomet's creed has been called a kind of Christianity-"a bastard kind of Christianity, but a living kind, with a heartlife in it; not dead, chopping, barren logic merely." Indeed, at the commencement of his public career, it seems as though Mahomet had no desire whatever to establish a new religion; but simply to restore that pure Theism that he found lying at the foundation both of Judaism and Christianity-a Theism that was antagonized not only by Paganism with its numberless false gods, but by corrupted forms of Christianity, whose saint-worship, martyr-worship, and Mary-worship had overrun Christendom. So he sought to revive what he termed the religion of Abraham, of Moses, and of Jesus. The written religion he professed to have received from heaven in detached passages by the angel Gabriel. Consequently he mingles much of his own invention both with the facts and doctrines he received from our Scriptures. This is notably so in his variations of the Scriptural accounts of Adam, of angelology, of the Day of Judgment, and of the Resurrection. In much that is distinctively Christian on all these themes, notwithstanding his gross perversions concerning them, he held hearty faith. Believing intensely in the miraculous, he professed that he underwent miraculous experiences and possessed miraculous power; and whatever occasional deference he paid to some of the teaching of Christ, he summed up the whole of his own doctrine in the aphorism, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet." One article of the Moslem creed refers to the prophets, whose number, beginning with Adam and ending with Mahomet, who is far superior to any one of them, reached 800,000. As our glance at his biography indicated, he diverged widely from the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, religiously using the sword to exterminate both idolaters and Jews. And whilst the very essence of his religion was "the acknowledgment of a dead necessity, a fate against which there is no struggling," -the Koran teaching the doctine of absolute predestination, and the system being "a pantheism of force," so that all intimate relationship and fellowship between God and man is impossible,—it is profoundly interesting and perplexing to observe that the Koran attaches the highest value to prayer. Prescriptions for devotion are strict and numerous. It is always preceded by ablutions. The morning ablutions and prayers are thus described, "The believer first washes his hands three times, saying, 'In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate, praise be to God, who hath sent down. water for purification, and hath made Islam a light and a conductor, and a guide to Thy gardens-gardens of delight, and to Thy mansion-the mansion of peace.' Then rinsing his mouth thrice, he says, ' O God, assist me in reading the book, and in commemorating Thee, and in thanking Thee, and in worshipping Thee well.' Then thrice he throws water up his nostrils, then his face, right arm, hand, and prays God not to swell the fire of the fires of hell, and so he goes on through a long ritual. Besides worship in the mosque on Friday (which may be termed the Mahometan Sabbath), it is incumbent on the Moslem to pray five times every day in exactly the same words." The other claims of the rubric are similarly exacting. So that we may incontrovertibly conclude that his religion is not an easy one, and that "with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas of prayer five times a day, it did not succeed by being an easy religion." Yet notwithstanding all this, it is proverbial that Mahomet's Paradise and his hell are both sensual. The hell is sensual; for all unbelievers in Islam, according to whether they are Christians, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, or hypocrites of any religion, go to separate hells of literal, eternal fire. And for believers there is heaven; for women there is indeed no promise of husbands, but its |
