Apart from a few miracles, about the details of which, as we have indicated, Mohammed was very particular, this great prophet really asked his friends to believe nothing which could not with perfect propriety be offered to the Christian world to-day as a valid faith. All the great principles of Christian belief are rigorously complied with in his appeal. Mohammed solemnly declared himself to be the true prophet of the one true God. He offered as credentials a book of revelations, the authenticity of which can hardly be disputed, since he wrote it himself. He gave up the greater part of his time to rewarding his adherents and providing punishments, both temporal and spiritual, for all who refused to believe in him. He made the most complete arrangements in heaven to correspond with his plans upon earth, and he took all his friends into this arrangement and excluded from it all his enemies. He appointed his apostles, founded his church, formulated creed and ritual, and virtually created a bible. In fact, no man ever worked harder to establish a religion, and few have succeeded any better. Mohammed was a good organizer; he knew how to make the best of circumstances. Finding that he had to deal largely with Jews and Christians, he proclaimed that the Jewish law and the Christian gospels were all equally the Word of God, and he inculcated belief in them all on pain of hell-fire. Any confusion which might arise in the minds of the faithful on account of the variety of beliefs set forth in these holy books he removed by the luminous doctrine that "as the Koran was the latest, in so far as it pleased the Almighty to modify his previous commands, it must be paramount." Mohammed lost no opportunity of affirming that his writings were concurrent with the Jewish and Christian scriptures, although of the latter he knew so little that he supposed the Gospel was a direct revelation from God to Jesus. No doubt he possessed a minute knowledge of the facility with which such a literary transaction could be arranged.

"When his own work was condemned as a 'forgery' and 'an antiquated tale' his most common retort was, 'Nay, but

it is but a confirmation of the preceding Revelation and a warning in simple Arabic to the people of the land.' The number and confidence of these asseverations secured the confidence or at least the neutrality of both Jews and Christians.' Thus we see that the analogy between the Christian and the Mohammedan religions is not accidental. "The New Revelation of Arabia" was persistently offered as the Arabian form of both Judaism and Christianity, the chief innovation being confined to the substitution of an Arabian for a Jewish prophet.

The death of Mohammed was a severe shock to the faith of his followers, many of whom had gradually come to believe him immortal. This disaffection, added to the triumph of those who had refused to believe in him, or had only half believed, well-nigh caused a general apostasy. Rival prophets at once appeared all over Arabia. Numerous sects sprang into existence, some of them bordering on avowed infidelity. There had been a few proud families of Mecca, the Omeyyades, who had never made more than the merest semblance of belief in Mohammed. They by degrees came into possession of the chief administrative power of Islamism; and we have the strange spectacle of the primitive and pure generation of Mohammedan leaders exterminated and replaced by a party who had never been in sympathy with the faith. Thus Islamism grew into the power and unity which later distinguished it, from a relative beginning of scarcely any religious faith.

Mohammed was no more the founder of monotheism than of civilization or literature among the Arabs. M. Caussin de Perceval says that the worship of Allah the supreme (Allah taâla) seems to have been always the basis of the Arab religion. "The Semitic race never conceived of the government of the universe otherwise than as an absolute. monarchy. Its theodicy has made no progress since the Book of Job; the sublimities and the aberrations of polytheism have always been foreign to it."

"The Life of Mahomet," Muir., p. 154.

The Mohammedan bible, the Koran, is entirely unique among the sacred books of the world, both in its form and in its manner of production. It is a collection of the preachings of Mohammed (not lacking in beauty of thought and expression), and the daily orders which he issued to his followers bearing the date of the places in which they appeared. "Each of these pieces was written, from the prophet's recitation,' on skins, on shoulder-blades of sheep, camels' bones, polished stones, palm-leaves; or was kept in memory by the principal disciples, who were called Bearers of the Koran." These pieces were collected into a single book soon after the prophet's death, and copied in the order of the length of their contents without any regard to the sense or connection. This want of arrangement in the Koran is regarded by scholars as an evidence of its authenticity: a forgery would have had more method in it.

The Moslem sects are as numerous as the Christian. Between these sects, which are grouped in two principal branches, cruel wars and persecutions have long prevailed. The most zealous Moslems are the Turks, who observe the fasts and holy days with rigor, and have no desire to make proselytes, but cordially hate all outside of Islam. So many hard things have been said of the Turks of late years, that it is refreshing to meet with testimonials of their religious and moral character.

Bishop Southgate says: "I have never known a Mussulman, sincere in his faith, *** in whom moral rectitude did not seem an active quality and a living principle. In seasons of plague the Turks appear perfectly fearless. They do not avoid customary intercourse and contact with friends. They remain with and minister to the sick with unshrinking assiduity. ✶ ✶ ✶ In truth, there is something imposing in the unaffected calmness of the Turks at such times. It is a spirit of resignation which becomes truly noble when exercised upon calamities which have already befallen them."'

Allah is constantly on the lips of the Mohammedans, both men and women; but it has become with them a mere form of speech. The incidents of their daily and religious life prove that they do not regard God as a person, but rather as a divine unity of will.

Το

The attempt, so often made by Christians, to account for all the imperfections of the Moslem governments by the error of the Mohammedan conception of God is an exalted method of criticism, but one which can hardly be consistently employed by believers in a personal deity. The conception which a civilization forms of God indicates the stage of its development, but this conception is the consequence or function of the whole civilization, not its cause. improve it would be to remould the life of a race. morality is shown to be a logical phenomenon only by first establishing the interdependence of thought and feeling, so the effect upon individual and national conduct of the belief in a personal God can alone be made clear by tracing knowledge and belief to their humblest beginnings, which is to take the widest possible view of religious development.

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CHAPTER XXI.

THE HEBREW

RELIGION.

Semitic Monotheism-The Jewish Conception of God.

WHAT can be more instructive than the diverse opinions of our great religious critics and historians concerning the origin of our ideas of God, especially when we remember that no two of them agree as to the nature of Deity? If by the term God is meant the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, it would seem but natural to credit the Jews with the origin of the conception; but we are by no means sure that it is the God of Israel that we are seeking. In the preface to the great work of Ewald on the history of Israel, Russell Martineau tells us that the author is a devout theologian, and that no one could have labored more sincerely than he did to defend the belief in a personal God, and a supernatural revelation coming from him to Israel, against the contrary evidence which an intelligent study of tradition would supply. A careless reader might understand this to mean that Ewald · had not studied tradition intelligently; but had this been the meaning of Mr. Martineau, is it likely that he would have written an eloquent preface to Ewald's great work? With regard to Ewald's treatment of tradition, Mr. Martineau says: "If we penetrate further back than the age of mythic heroes, we come only to a time when the gods themselves were imagined to people the earth with their kind. If this is true everywhere alike, we might expect to find it in Israel also, where, indeed, we do find the very same ideas and stories. We cannot treat the Assyrian, Persian, and Greek deluges as mythical, and refuse the character to the Hebrew.