[Footnote 97: Sprenger's _Life of Mohammed_, pp. 40, 41.]
[Footnote 98: It is a suspicious fact that the first chapter of the
_Koran_ begins with protestations that it is a true revelation, and with
most terrible anathemas against all who doubt it. This seems
significant, and contrasts strongly with the conscious truthfulness and
simplicity of the Gospel narrators.]
[Footnote 99: Nor have later defenders of the system failed to derive
alleged proofs of their system from Biblical sources. Mohammedan
controversialists have urged some very specious and plausible arguments;
for example, Deut. xviii. 15-18, promises that the Lord shall raise up
unto Israel a prophet from _among their brethren_. But Israel had no
brethren but the sons of Ishmael. There was also promised a prophet like
unto Moses; but Deut. xxxiv. declares that "_There arose no Prophet in
Israel like unto Moses_."
When John the Baptist was asked whether he were the Christ, or Elijah,
or "_that prophet_," no other than Mohammed could have been meant by
"_that prophet_."]
[Footnote 100: Rev. Mr. Bruce, missionary in Persia, states that
pictures of the Father, the Son, and Mary are still seen in Eastern
churches.--_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, January, 1882.]
[Footnote 101: Sales, in his _Preliminary Discourse_, Section 1st,
enumerates the great nations which have vainly attempted the conquest of
Arabia, from the Assyrians down to the Romans, and he asserts that even
the Turks have held only a nominal sway.]
[Footnote 102: China owes her present dynasty to the fact that the hardy
Manchus were called in as mercenaries or as allies.]
[Footnote 103: Dr. Koelle: quoted in _Church Missionary Intelligencer_.]
[Footnote 104: Sales: _Koran and Preliminary Discourse_, Wherry's
edition, p. 89. One of the chief religious duties under the _Koran_ was
the giving of alms (Zakat), and under this euphonious name was included
the tax by which Mohammed maintained the force that enabled him to keep
up his predatory raids on the caravans of his enemies.]
[Footnote 105: _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_, p. 123.]
[Footnote 106: Dr. Koelle gravely questions this.]
[Footnote 107: One of the most wicked and disastrous of all Mohammed's
laws was that which allowed the free practice of capturing women and
girls in war, and retaining them as lawful chattels in the capacity of
concubines. It has been in all ages a base stimulus to the raids of the
slave-hunter. Sir William Muir has justly said, that so long as a free
sanction to this great evil stands recorded on the pages of the _Koran_,
Mohammedans will never of their own accord cease to prosecute the
slave-trade.]
[Footnote 108: According to Dr. Koelle, the number of women and children
who fell to the prophet's share of captives at the time of his great
slaughter of the surrendered Jewish soldiers, was two hundred.]
[Footnote 109: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 112.]
[Footnote 110: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_.]
[Footnote 111: Ibid, p. 112.]
[Footnote 112: Says Sir William Muir: "Three radical evils flow from the
faith, in all ages and in every country, and must continue to flow _so
long as the Koran is the standard of belief_. _First_, polygamy, divorce,
and slavery are maintained and perpetuated, striking at the root of
public morals, poisoning domestic life, and disorganizing society.
_Second_, freedom of thought and private judgment in religion is crushed
and annihilated. The sword still is, and must remain, the inevitable
penalty for the denial of Islam. Toleration is unknown. _Third_, a
barrier has been interposed against the reception of Christianity. They
labor under a miserable delusion who suppose that Mohammedanism paves
the way for a purer faith. No system could have been devised with more
consummate skill for shutting out the nations over which it has sway
from the light of truth. _Idolatrous_ Arabia (judging from the analogy
of other nations) might have been aroused to spiritual life and to the
adoption of the faith of Jesus. _Mohammedan_ Arabia is to the human eye
sealed against the benign influences of the Gospel.... The sword of
Mohammed and the Koran are the most stubborn enemies of civilization,
liberty, and truth which the world has yet known."--_Church Missionary
Intelligencer_, November, 1885.]
[Footnote 113: Osborne, in his _Islam under the Arabs_, and Marcus
Dodds, in _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, have emphasized the fact that
Islam, however favorably it might compare with the Arabian heathenism
which it overthrew, was wholly out of place in forcing its
semi-barbarous cultus upon civilizations which were far above it. It
might be an advance upon the rudeness and cruelty of the Koreish, but
the misfortune was that it stamped its stereotyped and unchanging
principles and customs upon nations which were in advance of it even
then, and which, but for its deadening influence, might have made far
greater progress in the centuries which followed.
Its bigoted founder gave the _Koran_ as the sufficient guide for all
time. It arrested the world's progress as far as its power extended.
Very different was the spirit of Judaism. "It distinctly disclaimed both
finality and completeness. Every part of the Mosaic religion had a
forward look, and was designed to leave the mind in an attitude of
expectation."
Mohammedanism, in claiming to be the one religion for all men and all
time, is convicted of absurdity and imposture by its failures; by the
retrograde which marks its whole history in Western Asia. As a universal
religion it has been tried and found wanting.]
[Footnote 114: It has been claimed that the spread of Mohammedanism in
India is far more rapid than that of Christianity. If this were true in
point of fact, it would be significant; for India under British rule
furnishes a fair field for such a contest. But it so happens that there,
where Islam holds no sword of conquest, and no arbitrary power to compel
the faith of men, its growth is very slow, it only keeps pace with the
general increase of the population. It cannot compare with the
advancement of Christianity. I subjoin an extract from Sir W. Hunter's
paper in the _Nineteenth Century_ for July, 1888:
"The official census, notwithstanding its obscurities of classification
and the disturbing effects of the famine of 1877, attests the rapid
increase of the Christian population. So far as these disturbing
influences allow of an inference for all British India, the normal rate
of increase among the general population was about 8 per cent, from 1872
to 1881, while the actual rate of the Christian population was over 30
per cent. But, taking the lieutenant-governorship of Bengal as the
greatest province outside the famine area of 1877, and for whose
population, amounting to one-third of the whole of British India, really
comparable statistics exist, the census results are clear. The general
population increased in the nine years preceding 1881 at the rate of
10.89 per cent., the Mohammedans at the rate of 10.96 per cent., the
Hindus at some undetermined rate below 13.64 per cent., Christians of
all races at the rate of 40.71 per cent., and the native Christians at
the rate of 64.07 per cent."]
[Footnote 115: _Leaves from an Egyptian Note-book._]
[Footnote 116: _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_, p. 241.]
[Footnote 117: For the full text of the letter to the _Standard_, see
_Church Missionary Intelligencer_, December, 1888.]
[Footnote 118: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, 1887, p. 653.]
[Footnote 119: See _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]
[Footnote 120: Over against Canon Taylor's glowing accounts of this
broad and gentle charity we may place the testimony of Palgrave in
regard to the remorseless rapacity practised by the Wahábees upon the
Shiyaées of Persia while passing through their territory in their
pilgrimages to a common shrine. He tells us that "forty gold tománs were
fixed as the claim of the Wahábee treasury on every Persian pilgrim for
his passage through R'ad, and forty more for a safe conduct through the
rest of the empire--eighty in all....
"Every local governor on the way would naturally enough take the hint,
and strive not to let the 'enemies of God' (for this is the sole title
given by Wahábees to all except themselves) go by without spoiling them
more or less....
"So that, all counted up, the legal and necessary dues levied on every
Persian Shiyaée while traversing Central Arabia, and under Wahábee
guidance and protection, amounted, I found, to about one hundred and
fifty gold tománs, equalling nearly sixty pounds sterling, English, no
light expenditure for a Persian, and no despicable gain to an
Arab."--Palgrave's _Central and Eastern Africa_, p. 161.]
[Footnote 121: Dodds: _Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ_, p. 118.]
[Footnote 122: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, November, 1887.]
[Footnote 123: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, February, 1888, p.
66.]
[Footnote 124: _Church Missionary Intelligencer_, April, 1888.]