of the world not prompted by loyalty to a consciousness of obligation to a God above us as absolutely in his control, through the agency of natural law, as are the motions of the planets.

Nor does the higher freedom of loyalty of soul to the morally right take the actions and volitions of men out of the embrace of a guiding Providence. Rather, it is in the exercise of this nobler freedom that we rise to the higher plane of filial obedience, and come of our own choice into the very lines of Providence. The freedom of moral agency consists in no degree in power to determine when and where and how and in what connections we obey or disobey the voice of God. Alternative freedom is summed up in the power to choose between God and forbidden pleasure.*

The one exception to our author's doctrine of freedom is, that the very dispensation of the Spirit that makes us accountable at the same time and within the same limit endows us with power to make the will of God our pleasure. No man's natural inclination is God-ward. But when, seeing the will of God, we make the great surrender, just then do we begin to incline toward God. God's pleasure begins to be our pleasure, our preference, our will, our choice, when we adopt it. But this is not of nature. The natural man cannot organize and vitalize himself into a spiritual man.

6. Our author, then, was so far right in his doctrine of the dependence of man upon an effectual calling of the Spirit of God as that no man can come to God except as God comes to him with spiritual help. By his call in their consciences do his children first rise above the inferior freedom to do their own pleasure to the higher freedom to resist forbidden indulgence and take hold upon the divine; and by the inspiration of his Spirit do they make all their subsequent advances. How plain does it appear from this that the great Father has also in his perfect control the obedient activity of his loyal children! But even on this higher plane of moral action the Father works in his children to will and to do, not alone through their consciences, but more and more through their affections, making his pleasure theirs, till the life struggle ends in victory and they are completely transformed into his likeness, and to do the will of God becomes henceforth the soul's undisputed, supreme delight. *This is too great a limitation of freedom.-EDITOR.

THE DICTUM NECESSITATIS.

Since our author gave such prominence to his noted dictum, and was so sure it had forever driven freedom of choice from the field, it may be well to notice its claims. It is found in Part II, Section I, and is repeated in other connections. It may be summarized thus:

1. The only way the will can determine any thing is by choosing it, for "in every act of the will the mind chooses." 2. If, therefore, the will is free to determine its own choice it must do so by choosing its choice. 3. It follows either that every choice arises from an antecedent free choice, and so on in an infinite series of free choices, or that there must be a first choice which is not free upon which all the antecedent choices depend, and, consequently, that the whole series of choices is necessitated.

The main difficulty, in answering this attempt to involve the doctrine of freedom to alternatives in the absurdity of an infinite series of dependent free volitions, arises not from its subtlety or its strength, but from the vagueness and fluctuating senses of its language. According to the terms freely used by our author in his statement, the will "determines," "governs," "commands," "chooses," "acts." But we have seen that his idea of the will is that it is simply the mind's preference, or prevailing and unavoidable inclination. Instead of being an actor the will is an irresistible prompter to action. Instead of choosing freely, it is itself the mind's unavoidable choice. This is all he can consistently mean.

Such phrases, freely used by him, as "an act of the will," "an act of volition," "an act of choice," do not fitly represent his thought. They might be used to mean the act of the mind in the execution of its will or choice-the doing of the mind's pleasure; but that is just where our author places freedom, while it is precisely in what he represents by these phrases that the dictum undertakes to prove the impossibility of freedom. But for thus borrowing the language of freedom and using it in the service of necessity the author is not wholly responsible. The inconsistencies of his language arise not from mental dishonesty or lack of courage, but from the difficulty of his task as the defender of necessity. It is impossible to defend neces

sity without such inconsistencies. The common language of mankind implies more liberty than his doctrine admits. The obtrusion of such phraseology into an argument for necessity may be taken as the unconscious protest of liberty against unnatural bonds.

THE SUM.

Upon the main question between freedom and necessity there is but one point of difference worth contesting. But the point of freedom is the point of power in man, and the turning-point between opposite courses of action for life-the true and the false -and is, therefore, the pivotal point of the eternal issues of probation. But even this-freedom to surrender to God in resistance to inclination-is not claimed as an unaided natural power, but rather as a power dependent upon an inspiration from God. The will is not a mysterious endowment that constitutes a man an independent actor or a self-acting machine. Upon questions non-ethical to us what can the will be but the mind's power to execute its unavoidable preference? Here what we call our choice is not of our own making: the will can serve us only in the taking of what we find to be our choice. But upon questions ethical to us I understand the will to be first elective, then executive; in other words, we first make our choice and proceed to take it. How can we be under obligation to choose the will of God without full power to do so? How can we be conscious of such obligation without consciousness of such power? Does not the one hold the other? But an act of choice is not setting out on an independent line of action, whether morally right or wrong. Choose which we may, the right or the wrong, we are free to carry out our choice only in the path Providence makes for us. Our actions, the volitions from which they spring, and the plans that comprehend them, are all under the direction of a power above us. To choose is evermore to elect between masters. At this point, and this only, is our freedom absolute.

then

2-FIFTH SERIes, vol. v.

S. White.

ART. II.-MOHAMMED AND HIS KORAN.

In the latter part of the sixth century there was born at Mecca, in the Arabian peninsula, a child destined to exert a most powerful influence upon the destiny of the human race, and who became the author of a system of religion and civil polity contained in the Koran which has disputed with Christianity itself the dominion of the world. This child, on account of a favorable omen connected with its birth, received the name MOHAMMED.*

It is the purpose of this article to present the most salient points in the history of this remarkable man, and the most important features of his religion as contained in the Koran, the fundamental document of his system. And first of all, to get a clear view of Mohammed and his work, it is necessary for ns to know the state of the country in which he lived, and the influences that surrounded him and which were potent in forming his opinions and in molding his character. Mecca, Mohammed's native town, is situated in a well-watered valley in the mountainous region of Arabia, about fifty miles from the Red Sea, and about midway on the great route of the caravans which passed between the southern part of Arabia Felix and Petrea. Qossay, a member of the Koreish tribe, and an ancestor of Mohammed in the fifth degree, seized upon the valley, enlarged the town, and settled there the members of his tribe about A. D. 400. Owing to its favorable position it attained a considerable degree of prosperity, and in the time of Mohammed its population was about twelve thousand. Its special attraction was the venerable temple, the Kaabah, whose origin was lost in a remote antiquity. Long before the time of Mohammed it had been the usage of the tribes from all parts of Arabia to make a yearly pilgrimage to this temple, to march around it seven times, and to kiss reverently the famous Black Stone in its eastern wall.§ What the psalmist said of Jerusalem might

*Mohammed, greatly praised, passive participle, second conjugation of the Arabic verb hamida.

This is Dr. Sprenger's estimate.

There was a tradition among the Arabs that the temple owed its origin to Abraham.

§ The Kaabah is an irregular cube, the sides of which vary from forty to fifty feet in length.

be applied to Mecca: "Whither the tribes go up." At the time of Mohammed the Kaabah contained three hundred and sixty idols; the great idol, Hobal, occupied the center of the edifice. The fact that Qossay and his descendants extended to the yearly pilgrims the rites of hospitality gave them great power among the other Arab tribes.

Arabia in the time of Mohammed, strictly speaking, had no government. The tribes were independent. "The opinion of the aggregate tribes, who chanced for the time to act together, was the sovereign law." Honor and revenge were the chief forces in the Arab character. The first incited him to deeds of hospitality, and the second protected him from ill treatment and made him a terror to his foes. From what has been said, it is easy to infer that the mass of the Arabs were pagans. Their wandering, predatory habits, their love of revenge, their proud spirit and impatience of restraint, were adverse to their reception of the doctrines of the meek and lowly Jesus. Among the divinities of the Arabian Pantheon may be named Allâh Ta'alah, the God most high; three female divinities, El Huzza, Allât, and Manât, called the daughters of God, mentioned in chap. liii of the Koran; Hobel, the chief of the minor deities, Suwah, Nasr, and Isaph. Sabæanism (the worship of the stars) had not entirely disappeared at the advent of Mohammed. Nevertheless, Christianity had established itself in certain parts of Arabia. Two kingdoms of Arabs, emigrants from Arabia, existed in the time of Mohammed. One of these, the dynasty of Palmyra, the Ghassanides, embraced Christianity in the time of Constantine, and belonged to the Greek empire. The other kingdom, that of Hira, on a western branch of the Euphrates, about forty miles below the site of ancient Babylon, became Christian in the latter part of the sixth century, and in the first part of the seventh became a satrapy of Persia.

In southern Arabia, in the province of Najran, Christianity gained a footing as early as the fourth century, it would seem, and a Christian government was established there before the middle of the sixth century under an Abyssinian viceroy; but before the end of the century the Abyssinians were driven out and the province became a dependency of Persia, a pagan power. Gibbon truly remarks: