Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

common relation so peculiar, that no fourth record can be adduced, which will bear a com. parison with them.*

In this historical analogy between the three religions, as in that before submitted between their founders, many of the resemblances obviously are, and many as certainly are not, the result of imitation. An attentive inspection of the table will enable the reader to separate the designed from the undesigned coincidences. It will be enough to remind him, once more, of the importance to the present subject, of both classes of agreement: the designed, to affix to Mahomet the character of antichrist, as the spurious imitator of the Christ; the undesigned, to mark the counsels of God's providence, and the fulfilment of prophecy, in the appearance of this false prophet, and in the whole rise and progress of his appalling superstition.

In the tabular sketch of the historical parallel, presented in the present section, our object has been to touch merely upon the general outline of facts. The facts themselves, when scrutinized, will be found to branch out into other comparisons, moral, doctrinal, and ritual, — of sects, heresies, and schisms, — between Popery and Mahometanism; between the contents of the

* See section viii.

Bible and Koran: between the Mahometan and Christian holy wars; and between the influences of the opposed religions on the general progress of society, and on the general advancement of the human mind.

The separate consideration of each of these heads will form the subjects of the ensuing sections.

SECTION V.

MORAL PARALLEL OF MAHOMETANISM WITH JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Ir has been stated in the Introduction *, as a fundamental character of Mahometanism, that, in its better features, the law of Mahomet was formed after the models of the law of Moses and the Gospel; and, in its worse features, on precedents derived from the traditional figments of the Jewish Talmudists and Rabbins, or from the still wilder speculations of the early Christian heretics. Thus, in whatever aspect we view it, the distinctive mark of this baleful superstition still will be the continuity of its analogy with the true revelation, either as the servile copy of Judaism and Christianity, or as the counterpart of their corruptions.

If the system of the Koran were, in principle and practice, far sounder and more pure than it can pretend to be, the very position of Mahometanism, excluding as it does, all notion of originality, must for ever disqualify its moral

*See p. 91.

code for competition with the morality of revealed religion. But the parallel, which, as an argument in the hands of infidelity, amounts to less than nothing, possesses a very different value as a link in the great chain of providential coincidences, which connects together the original covenants of Jehovah with Isaac and Ishmael as fulfilled in the history of their descendants. Thus, when we compare, on the principle of comparison laid down in these pages, the religion of Mahomet, and the Mosaic and Christian revelations, with reference to the analogy between their respective moral codes, the agreements and disagreements will be found such precisely as they ought to be: the best features of Mahometanism, in its moral sanctions, falling immeasurably beneath the pure and perfect standard of the Gospel; while, in its worst, it still has parallels and precedents, both in heretical corruptions of Christianity, and in the carnal ordinances of the Jewish law. Its palpable plagiarisms, and its undesigned coincidences, by a rare concurrence, unite together to augment the proof of its providential place and origin: each mark, whether of unpremeditated resemblance, or of studied imitation, (the common patriarchal origin of the founders being always held in view,) standing as a fresh evidence

of the providential connection of Mahometanism with the Law and Gospel: while the moral analogy on the whole, in its actual nature and amount, presents a lively image of the proximity and the distance which characterized the natural relation to which it has been traced, the affinity, I mean, between the legitimate and the spurious seed of Abraham.

Instead, therefore, of indulging in the indiscriminative censures with which we have been too long familiar, in the conduct of this controversy, I would invite my readers to try the morality of Mahometanism by a reasonable and equitable standard. Instead of heaping condemnation on this spurious offspring of the Law and Gospel, because it stands no higher in its moral code, the analysis here proposed may lead us to discover, that the religion of Mahomet, in point of morals, stands accurately at the height, and in the position, becoming it, as, at once, a corruption of Judaism and an antichristian heresy. And, indeed, the amount of the moral parallel, when the relative position of Mahometanism is fairly taken into account, can hardly fail to strengthen, in reflecting minds, the idea of a strictly providential connection between two systems, thus related, and thus opposed.

« PredošláPokračovať »