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;" 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. XIII.

Subject: Mahomet (continued).
HIS ETHICS.

YUST as there is a great mixture in the character of

Mahomet, and much inconsistency between details of his creed, so, as we should expect, there is much that is startlingly contradictory in his ideas of morals. We search in vain for any ethical system in his utterances. And moreover, while we seek to note his own opinions as to the right and the wrong, we must avoid confusing with such opinions the notions of his followers.

The root of duty, according to Mahomet, is not in anything approaching to a filial obedience to God, but in a necessary unresisting submission to Him. The great motive of life is not in an inspiration of love, but in an acquiescence in fate. For if there was no recognition of Divine

common.

sonship, there was equally no recognition of human brotherhood. This did not prevent him from cherishing and promulgating at first lofty ideals, nor did it any way prevent him subsequently from lapsing to the low levels that were So, as we have seen, he sanctioned and practised polygamy. So also he let loose the bloodhounds of bigotry, and made it a duty for Moslems to betray and kill their own brothers when they were infidels, and pre-eminently a righte ous thing to hate all infidels and make war on them. And here it should be noticed, that while revenge for personal injuries is not forbidden, but rather permitted, such revenge is to be in measure, not overmuch or beyond justice. Retaliation is not morally illicit; it is licensed, and the licence prescribes its limits. And again, it should be noticed here, that whilst he inculcates none of the spirit of human brotherhood, his system is a perfect equalizer of men: the soul of one believer outweighs all earthly kingships. Moreover, among the joys of Paradise are predicted the death of all spirit of revenge and the prevalence of something like brotherhood. For he says, "Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts." And yet another gleam of light should here be noticed in his moral teachings; he insists not on the propriety of giving alms, but on the necessity for it. He regulates how much is to be given; asserting that a tenth part of a man's annual income is the property of the poor, of those who, from any affliction, need help. All this is true, notwithstanding the fact that he encouraged the apparently antagonistic, but really related, vices of cruelty and luxury. Clearly, in spite of the restrictions of revenge and the enforcement of almsgiving, that teaching must have been cruel which made men tyrants or serfs, and women puppets, and which glorified war. And clearly, in spite of the forbidding of wine and gaming, and of the prophet's personal self-denials as to fare, and dwelling, and clothing, that teaching must have been sensual which re-established polygamy, and declared that the Teacher himself had revelations allowing him to multiply wives in his own harem beyond the limits of the law,

and

sanctioning his giving three beautiful female slaves, taken in war, to his father-in-law and his sons-in-law.

All these notions of Right and Wrong, however flagrantly erroneous some of them, had this true standard as their supposed basis, that they were right and wrong in themselves, apart from all critical calculations of their detailed results. On this point Thomas Carlyle eloquently writes, "That gross sensual Paradise of his, that horrible flaming hell, that great enormous day of judgment, he perpetually insists on—what is all this but a rude shadow, in a rude Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual fact and beginning of facts which it is ill for us too if we do not all know and feel: the infinite nature of duty; that man's actions are here of infinite moment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high as heaven, downwards low as hell, and in his threescore years of time holds an eternity fearfully and wonderfully hidden; all this had burnt itself, as in flame characters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, ever present to him. With bursting earnestness, with a fierce savage sincerity, half-articulating, not able to articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that heaven and that hell. Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the first of all truths. It is venerable under all embodiments. What is the chief end of man here below. ? Mahomet has answered this question in a way that might put some of us to shame. He does not, like a Bentham or Paley, take right and wrong, and calculate the profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other; and, summing all up by addition and subtraction into a net result, ask you, whether, on the whole, the Right does not preponderate considerably. No; it is better to do the one, not the other: the one is to the other as life is to death, as heaven is to hell. The one must in no wise be done; the other in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them: they are incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other is life eternal. Benthamee utility-virtue by profit and loss-reducing this God's world to a dead brute steam engine, the infinite celestial soul

of man to a kind of hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures and pains on; if you ask me which gives,Mahomet or they-the beggarly and false views of man and his destinies in this universe, I will answer, It is not Mahomet!" Bristol. URIJAH R. THOMAS.

The Pulpit and its Handmaids.

MONOPOLY.-There are narrow souls who would keep all that their land produces to themselves, and all that the land yields within its own limits. Ignorant alike of the laws of the universe, the genius of the world in which they live, and the insignificance of their own existence, they vainly and proudly talk about their national independency., Nature laughs them to scorn. Creature independence is a solecism. A universe of creatures cannot make an independency.

FREE TRADE.-A free commerce throughout the world is one of the best means by which men can become mutually acquainted. The free interchange of commodities almost involves free interchange of thought. Buyers and sellers mutually show themselves in their transactions. Feuds and wars are generated in the darkness of ignorance. The evil passions of the human soul go forth like the beasts of prey to devour in the shadows of night. Foreigners are miserably suspected, if not hated, until they are known. Knowledge turns the figure which looked grim and ghastly in the dark, into a man with loving sympathies and radiant

look. Whilst knowledge of man is promoted by such commerce, interest in him is also advanced by it. It is to the interest of traders to be on terms of amity and free intercourse. The commercial interests of the world are against war, and will one day lead the world to look at soldiering as a clog on the wheels of industry which should be thrown away.

VIRTUE SELF-REWARDING. The ointment which Mary poured upon the head of Jesus was waste in the estimation of the prudential of the age; but its expenditure thus to her lov ing soul was a treasure beyond all price. It was a thousand times more valuable to her when it had gone from her possession than it was before. The best acts are always their own rewards. There is not a higher good to be reached than that involved in the service of true devotion.

THE WORLD.- "The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." He made it. He piled up its mountains, poured forth its oceans, and spread out its heavens. He enriched it with its minerals; He sowed its every inch with germs of life and beauty; He tenanted its