The most extraordinary man who arose after the fall of the Roman
Empire was doubtless Mohammed;* and his posthumous influence has
been greater than that of any man since Christianity was declared,
if we take into account the number of those who have received his
doctrines. Even Christianity never had so rapid a spread. More
than a sixth part of the human race are the professed followers of
the Arabian prophet.
* Spelled also Mahomet, Mahommed; but I prefer Mohammed.
In regard to Mohammed himself, a great change has taken place in
the opinions of critics within fifty years. It was the fashion
half a century ago to speak of this man as a hypocrite, an
impostor, even as Antichrist. Now he is generally regarded as a
reformer; that is, as a man who introduced into Arabia a religion
and a morality superior to what previously existed, and he is
regarded as an impostor only so far as he was visionary. Few
critics doubt his sincerity. He was no hypocrite, since he himself
believed in his mission; and his mission was benevolent,--to turn
his countrymen from a gross polytheism to the worship of one God.
Although his religion cannot compare with Christianity in purity
and loftiness, yet it enforced a higher morality than the old
Arabian religions, and assimilated to Christianity in many
important respects. The chief fault we have to find in Mohammed
was, the propagation of his doctrines by the sword, and the use of
wicked means to bring about a good end. The truths he declared
have had an immense influence on Asiatic nations, and these have
given vitality to his system, if we accept the position that truth
alone has vitality.
One remarkable fact stands out for the world to ponder,--that, for
more than fourteen hundred years, one hundred and eighty millions
(more than a sixth part of the human race) have adopted and
cherished the religion of Mohammed; that Christianity never had so
astonishing a triumph; and that even the adherents of Christianity,
in many countries, have not manifested the zeal of the Mohammedans
in most of the countries where it has been acknowledged. Now these
startling facts can be explained only on the ground that
Mohammedanism has great vital religious and moral truths underlying
its system which appeal to the consciousness of mankind, or else
that these truths are so blended with dangerous errors which appeal
to depraved passions and interests, that the religion spread in
consequence of these errors rather than of the truth itself.
The question to be considered, then, is whether Mohammedanism
spread in consequence of its truths or in consequence of its
errors.
In order to appreciate the influence of the Arabian prophet, we are
first led into the inquiry whether his religion was really an
improvement on the old systems which previously prevailed in
Arabia. If it was, he must be regarded as a benefactor and
reformer, even if we admit the glaring evils of his system, when
measured by the purer religion of the Cross. And it then simply
becomes a question whether it is better to have a prevalent
corrupted system of religion containing many important truths, or a
system of downright paganism with few truths at all.
In examining the religious systems of Arabia in the age preceding
the advent of the Prophet, it would seem that the most prominent of
them were the old doctrines of the Magians and Sabaeans, blended
with a gross idolatry and a senseless polytheism. Whatever may
have been the faith of the ancient Sabaean sages, who noted the
aspects of the stars, and supposed they were inhabited by angels
placed there by Almighty power to supervise and govern the
universe, yet history seems to record that this ancient faith was
practically subverted, and that the stars, where were supposed to
dwell deities to whom prayers were made, became themselves objects
of worship, and even graven images were made in honor of them.
Among the Arabs each tribe worshipped a particular star, and set up
its particular idol, so that a degrading polytheism was the
religion of the land. The object of greatest veneration was the
celebrated Black Stone, at Mecca, fabled to have fallen from heaven
at the same time with Adam. Over this stone was built the Kaabah,
a small oblong stone building, around which has been since built
the great mosque. It was ornamented with three hundred and sixty
idols. The guardianship of this pagan temple was intrusted to the
most ancient and honorable families of Mecca, and to it resorted
innumerable pilgrims bringing precious offerings. It was like the
shrine of Delphi, as a source of profit to its fortunate guardians.
Thus before Mohammed appeared polytheism was the prevalent religion
of Arabia,--a degradation even from the ancient Sabaean faith. It
is true there were also other religions. There were many Jews at
Medina; and there was also a corrupted form of Christianity in many
places, split up into hostile and wrangling sects, with but little
of the spirit of the divine Founder, with innumerable errors and
superstitions, so that in no part of the world was Christianity so
feeble a light. But the great body of the people were pagans. A
marked reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief in the
unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality.
It is claimed that Mohammed brought such a reform. He was born in
the year 570, of the family of Hashem and the tribe of Koreish, to
whom was intrusted the keeping of the Black Stone. He therefore
belonged to the highest Arabian aristocracy. Early left an orphan
and in poverty, he was reared in the family of one of his uncles,
under all the influences of idolatry. This uncle was a merchant,
and the youth made long journeys with him to distant fairs,
especially in Syria, where he probably became acquainted with the
Holy Scriptures, especially with the Old Testament. In his twenty-
fifth year he entered the service of Cadijeh, a very wealthy widow,
who sent to the fairs and towns great caravans, which Mohammed
accompanied in some humble capacity,--according to the tradition as
camel-driver. But his personal beauty, which was remarkable, and
probably also his intelligence and spirit, won the heart of this
powerful mistress, and she became his wife.
He was now second to none in the capital of Arabia, and great
thoughts began to fill his soul. His wife perceived his greatness,
and, like Josephine and the wife of Disraeli, forwarded the
fortunes of her husband, for he became rich as well as intellectual
and noble, and thus had time and leisure to accomplish more easily
his work. From twenty-five to forty he led chiefly a contemplative
life, spending months together in a cave, absorbed in his grand
reflections,--at intervals issuing from his retreat, visiting the
marts of commerce, and gaining knowledge from learned men. It is
seldom that very great men lead either a life of perpetual
contemplation or of perpetual activity. Without occasional rest,
and leisure to mature knowledge, no man can arm himself with the
weapons of the gods. To be truly great, a man must blend a life of
activity with a life of study,--like Moses, who matured the
knowledge he had gained in Egypt amid the deserts of Midian.
With all great men some leading idea rules the ordinary life. The
idea which took possession of the mind of Mohammed was the
degrading polytheism of his countrymen, the multitude of their
idols, the grossness of their worship, and the degrading morals
which usually accompany a false theology. He set himself to work
to produce a reform, but amid overwhelming obstacles. He talked
with his uncles, and they laughed at him. They would not even
admit the necessity of a reform. Only Cadijeh listened to him and
encouraged him and believed in him. And Mohammed was ever grateful
for this mark of confidence, and cherished the memory of his wife
in his subsequent apostasy,--if it be true that he fell, like
Solomon. Long afterwards, when she was dead, Ayesha, his young and
favorite wife, thus addressed him: "Am I not better than Cadijeh?
Do you not love me better than you did her? She was a widow, old
and ugly." "No, by Allah!" replied the Prophet; "she believed in
me when no one else did. In the whole world I had but one friend,
and she was that friend." No woman ever retained the affections of
a husband superior to herself, unless she had the spirit of
Cadijeh,--unless she proved herself his friend, and believed in
him. How miserable the life of Jane Carlyle would have been had
she not been proud of her husband! One reason why there is
frequent unhappiness in married life is because there is no mutual
appreciation. How often have we seen a noble, lofty, earnest man
fettered and chained by a frivolous woman who could not be made to
see the dignity and importance of the labors which gave to her
husband all his real power! Not so with the woman who assisted
Mohammed. Without her sympathy and faith he probably would have
failed. He told her, and her alone, his dreams, his ecstasies, his
visions; how that God at different times had sent prophets and
teachers to reveal new truths, by whom religion had been restored;
how this one God, who created the heavens and the earth, had never
left Himself without witnesses of His truth in the most degenerate
times; how that the universal recognition of this sovereign Power
and Providence was necessary to the salvation of society. He had
learned much from the study of the Talmud and the Jewish
Scriptures; he had reflected deeply in his isolated cave; he knew
that there was but one supreme God, and that there could be no
elevated morality without the sense of personal responsibility to
Him; that without the fear of this one God there could be neither
wisdom nor virtue.
Hence his soul burned to tell his countrymen his earnest belief in a
supreme and personal God, to whom alone prayers should be made, and
who alone could rescue by His almighty power. He pondered day and
night on this single and simple truth. His perpetual meditations
and ascetic habits induced dreams and ecstasies, such as marked
primitive monks, and Loyala in his Manresan cave. He became a
visionary man, but most intensely earnest, for his convictions were
overwhelming. He fancied himself the ambassador of this God, as the
ancient Jewish prophets were; that he was even greater than they,
his mission being to remove idolatry,--to his mind the greatest evil
under the sun, since it was the root of all vices and follies.
Idolatry is either a defiance or a forgetfulness of God,--high
treason to the majesty of Heaven, entailing the direst calamities.
At last, one day, in his fortieth year, after he had been shut up a
whole month in solitude, so that his soul was filled with ecstasy
and enthusiasm, he declared to Cadijeh that the night before, while
wrapped in his mantle, absorbed in reverie, a form of divine
beauty, in a flood of light, appeared to him, and, in the name of
the Almighty who created the heavens and the earth, thus spake: "O,
Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of God, and I am his
angel Gabriel." "This," says Carlyle, "is the soul of Islam. This
is what Mohammed felt and now declared to be of infinite moment,
that idols and formulas were nothing; that the jargon of
argumentative Greek sects, the vague traditions of Jews, the stupid
routine of Arab idolatry were a mockery and a delusion; that there
is but one God; that we must let idols alone and look to Him. He
alone is reality; He made us and sustains us. Our whole strength
lies in submission to Him. The thing He sends us, be it death
even, is good, is the best. We resign ourselves to Him."
Such were the truths which Mohammed, with preternatural
earnestness, now declared,--doctrines which would revolutionize
Arabia. And why not? They are the same substantially which Moses
declared, to those sensual and degraded slaves whom he led out of
Egypt,--yea, the doctrines of David and of Job. "Though He slay
me, yet will I trust in Him." What a grand and all-important truth
it is to impress upon people sunk in forgetfulness and sensuality
and pleasure-seeking and idle schemes of vanity and ambition, that
there is a supreme Intelligence who overrules, and whose laws
cannot be violated with impunity; from whom no one can escape, even
though he "take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost
parts of the sea." This is the one truth that Moses sought to
plant in the minds of the Jews,--a truth always forgotten when
there is slavery to epicurean pleasures or a false philosophy.
Now I maintain that Mohammed, in seeking to impress his degenerate
countrymen with the idea of the one supreme God, amid a most
degrading and almost universal polytheism, was a great reformer.
In preaching this he was neither fanatic nor hypocrite; he was a
very great man, and thus far a good man. He does not make an
original revelation; he reproduces an old truth,--as old as the
patriarchs, as old as Job, as old as the primitive religions,--but
an exceedingly important one, lost sight of by his countrymen,
gradually lost sight of by all peoples when divine grace is
withheld; indeed practically by people in Christian lands in times
of great degeneracy. "The fool has said in his heart there is no
God;" or, Let there be no God, that we may eat and drink before we
die. Epicureanism, in its pleasures or in its speculations, is
virtually atheism. It was so in Greece. It is so with us.
Mohammed was now at the mature age of forty, in the fulness of his
powers, in the prime of his life; and he began to preach everywhere
that there is but one God. Few, however, believed in him. Why not
acknowledge such a fundamental truth, appealing to the intellect as
well as the moral sense? But to confess there is a supreme God,
who rewards and punishes, and to whom all are responsible both for
words and actions, is to imply a confession of sinfulness and the
justice of retribution. Those degraded Arabians would not receive
willingly such a truth as this, even as the Israelites ever sought
to banish it from their hearts and minds, in spite of their
deliverance from slavery. The uncles and friends of Mohammed
treated his mission with scorn and derision. Nor do I read that
the common people heard him gladly, as they listened to the
teachings of Christ. Zealously he labored for three years with all
classes; and yet in three years of exalted labor, with all his
eloquence and fervor and sincerity, he converted only about
thirteen persons, one of whom was his slave. Think of such a man
declaring such a truth, and only gaining thirteen followers in
three years! How sickened must have been his enthusiastic soul!
His worldly relatives urged him to silence. Why attack idols; why
quarrel with his own interests; why destroy his popularity? Then
exclaimed that great hero: "If the sun stood on my right hand, and
the moon on my left, ordering me to hold my peace, I would still
declare there is but one God,"--a speech rivalled only by Luther at
the Diet of Worms. Why urge a great man to be silent on the very
thing which makes him great? He cannot be silent. His truth--from
which he cannot be separated--is greater than life or death, or
principalities or powers.
Buffeted and ridiculed, still Mohammed persevered. He used at
first only moral means. He appealed only to the minds and hearts
of the people, encouraged by his few believers and sustained by the
fancied voice of that angel who appeared to him in his retreat.
But his earnest voice was drowned by discordant noises. He was
regarded as a lunatic, a demented man, because he professed to
believe in a personal God. The angry mob covered his clothes with
dust and ashes. They demanded miracles. But at this time he had
only truths to declare,--those saving truths which are perpetual
miracles. At last hostilities began. He was threatened and he was
persecuted. They laid plots to take his life. He sought shelter
in the castle of his uncle, Abu Taleh; but he died. Then
Mohammed's wife Cadijeh died. The priests of an idolatrous
religion became furious. He had laid his hands on their idols. He
was regarded as a disorganizer, an innovator, a most dangerous man.
His fortunes became darker and darker; he was hated, persecuted,
and alone.
Thus thirteen years passed away in reproach, in persecution, in
fear. At last forty picked men swore to assassinate him. Should
he remain at Mecca and die, before his mission was accomplished, or
should he fly? He concluded to fly to Medina, where there were
Jews, and some nominal converts to Christianity,--a new ground.
This was in the year 622, and the flight is called the Hegira,--
from which the East dates its era, in the fifty-third year of the
Prophet's life. In this city he was cordially welcomed, and he
soon found himself surrounded with enthusiastic followers. He
built a mosque, and openly performed the rites of the new religion.
At this era a new phase appears in the Prophet's life and
teachings. Thus far, until his flight, it would seem that he
propagated his doctrines by moral force alone, and that these
doctrines, in the main, were elevated. He had earnestly declared
his great idea of the unity of God. He had pronounced the worship
of images to be idolatrous. He held idolatry of all kinds in
supreme abhorrence. He enjoined charity, justice, and forbearance.
He denounced all falsehood and all deception, especially in trade.
He declared that humility, benevolence, and self-abnegation were
the greatest virtues. He commanded his disciples to return good
for evil, to restrain the passions, to bridle the tongue, to be
patient under injuries, to be submissive to God. He enjoined
prayer, fastings, and meditation as a means of grace. He laid down
the necessity of rest on the seventh day. He copied the precepts
of the Bible in many of their essential features, and recognized
its greatest teachers as inspired prophets.
It was during these thirteen years at Mecca, amid persecution and
ridicule, and with few outward successes, that he probably wrote
the Koran,--a book without beginning and without end, disjecta
membra, regardless of all rules of art, full of repetitions, and
yet full of lofty precepts and noble truths of morality evidently
borrowed from the Jewish Scriptures,--in which his great ideas
stand out with singular eloquence and impressiveness: the unity of
God, His divine sovereignty, the necessity of prayer, the soul's
immortality, future rewards and punishments. His own private life
had been blameless. It was plain and simple. For a whole month he
did not light a fire to cook his food. He swept his chamber
himself and mended his own clothes. His life was that of an
ascetic enthusiast, profoundly impressed with the greatness and
dignity of his mission. Thus far his greatest error and fault was
in the supposition that he was inspired in the same sense as the
ancient Jewish prophets were inspired,--to declare the will and the
truth of God. Any man leading such a life of contemplative
asceticism and retirement is prone to fall into the belief of
special divine illumination. It characterized George Fox, the
Anabaptists, Ignatius Loyola, Saint Theresa, and even, to some
extent, Oliver Cromwell himself. Mohammed's supreme error was that
he was the greatest as well as the last of the prophets. This was
fanaticism, but he was probably honest in the belief. His brain
was turned by dreams, ecstasies, and ascetic devotions. But with
all his visionary ideas of his call, his own morality and his
teachings had been lofty, and apparently unsuccessful. Possibly he
was discouraged with the small progress he had made,--disgusted,
irritated, fierce.
Certainly, soon after he was established at Medina, a great change
took place in his mode of propagating his doctrines. His great
ideas remained the same, but he adopted a new way to spread them.
So that I can almost fancy that some Mephistopheles, some form of
Satanic agency, some lying Voice whispered to him in this wise: "O
Mohammed! of a truth thou art the Prophet of the living God. Thou
hast declared the grandest truths ever uttered in Arabia; but see
how powerless they are on the minds and hearts of thy countrymen,
with all thy eloquence, sincerity, and fervor. By moral means thou
hast effected comparatively nothing. Thou hast preached thirteen
years, and only made a few converts. Thy truths are too elevated
for a corrupt and wicked generation to accept. Even thine own life
is in danger. Thou hast been obliged to fly to these barren rocks
and sands. Thou hast failed. Why not pursue a new course, and
adapt thy doctrines to men as they are? Thy countrymen are wild,
fierce, and warlike: why not incite their martial passions in
defence of thy doctrines? They are an earnest people, and,
believing in the truths which thou now declarest, they will fight
for them and establish them by the sword, not merely in Arabia, but
throughout the East. They are a pleasure-loving and imaginative
people: why not promise the victors of thy faith a sensual bliss in
Paradise? They will not be subverters of your grand truths; they
will simply extend them, and jealously, if they have a reward in
what their passions crave. In short, use the proper means for a
great end. The end justifies the means."
Whether influenced by such specious sophistries, or disheartened by
his former method, or corrupted in his own heart, as Solomon was,
by his numerous wives,--for Mohammed permitted polygamy and
practised it himself,--it is certain that he now was bent on
achieving more signal and rapid victories. He resolved to adapt
his religion to the depraved hearts of his followers. He would mix
up truth with error; he would make truth palatable; he would use
the means which secure success. It was success he wanted, and
success he thus far had not secured. He was ambitious; he would
become a mighty spiritual potentate.
So he allowed polygamy,--the vice of Eastern nations from remote
periods; he promised a sensual Paradise to those who should die in
defence of his religion; he inflamed the imagination of the
Arabians with visions of sensual joys. He painted heaven as a land
whose soil was the finest wheaten flour, whose air was fragrant
with perfumes, whose streams were of crystal water or milk or wine
or honey, flowing over beds of musk and camphor,--a glorious garden
of fruits and flowers, whose inhabitants were clothed in garments
of gold, sparkling with rubies and diamonds, who reclined in
sumptuous palaces and silken pavilions, and on couches of
voluptuous ease, and who were served with viands which could be
eaten without satiety, and liquors which could be drunk without
inebriation; yea, where the blissful warrior for the faith should
enjoy an unending youth, and where he would be attended by houris,
with black and loving eyes, free from all defects, resplendent in
beauty and grace, and rejoicing in perpetual charms.
Such were the views, it is maintained, with which he inflamed the
faithful. And, more, he encouraged them to take up arms, and
penetrate, as warlike missionaries, to the utmost bounds of the
habitable world, in order to convert men to the faith of the one
God, whose Prophet he claimed to be. Moreover, he made new and
extraordinary "revelations,"--that he had ascended into the seventh
heaven and held converse with Gabriel; and he now added to his
creed that old lie of Eastern theogonies, that base element of all
false religions,--that man can propitiate the Deity by works of
supererogation; that man can purchase by ascetic labors and
sacrifices his future salvation. This falsity enters largely into
Mohammedanism. I need not add how discrepant it is with the
cheerful teachings of the apostles, especially to the poor, as seen
in the deeds of penance, prayers in the corners of the streets, the
ablutions, the fasts, and the pilgrimages to which the faithful are
exhorted. And moreover he accommodated his fasts and feasts and
holidays and pilgrimages to the old customs of the people, thereby
teaching lessons of worldly wisdom. Astarte, the old object of
Sabaean idolatry, was particularly worshipped on a Friday; and this
day was made the Mohammedan Sabbath. Again, the month Rhamadan,
from time immemorial, had been set apart for fastings; this month
the Prophet adopted, declaring that in it he had received his first
revelations. Pilgrimages to the Black Stone were favorite forms of
penance; and this was perpetuated in the pilgrimages to Mecca.
Thus it would appear that Mohammed, after his flight, accommodated
his doctrines to the customs and tastes of his countrymen,--
blending with the sublime truths he declared subtile and pernicious
errors. The early missionaries did the same thing in China and
Japan, thinking more of the number of their converts than of the
truth itself. Expediency--the utterly fallacious principle of the
end justifying the means--is seen in almost everything in this
world which blazes with success. It is seen in politics, in
philanthropy, in ecclesiasticism, and in education. So the earlier
missionaries, disregarding their vows, made the cause to which they
were consecrated subservient to their personal gain. What do you
think of a man, wearing the livery of a gospel minister, devoting
all his energies to money-making, versed in the ways of the
"heathen Chinee,"--"ways that are dark, and tricks that are vain,"--
all to succeed better in worldly thrift, using all means for that
single end,--is he not a traitor to his God, his Church, and his
fellowmen? "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the
throne." What would you think of a college which lowered the
standard of education in order to draw students, or selected, as
the guardians of its higher interests, those men who would
contribute the most money to its funds?
This spirit of expediency Mohammed entertained and utilized, in
order to gain success. Most of what is false in Mohammedanism is
based on expediency. The end was not lost sight of,--the
conversion of his countrymen to the belief in the unity and
sovereignty of God, but it was sought by means which would make
them fanatics or pharisees. He was not such a miserable creature
as one who seeks to make money by trading on the religious capital
of the community; but he did adapt his religion to the passions and
habits of the people in order that they might more readily be led
to accept it. He listened to that same wicked Voice which
afterwards appeared in the guise of an angel of light to mediaeval
ritualists. And it is thus that Satan has contrived to pervert the
best institutions of the world. The moment good men look to
outward and superficial triumphs, to the disregard of inward
purity, that moment do they accept the seductive lie of all ages,--
"The end justifies the means."
But the worst thing which the Prophet did in order to gain his end
was to make use of the sword. For thirteen years he appealed to
conscience. Now he makes it an inducement for men to fight for his
great idea. "Different prophets," said he, in his memorable
manifesto, "have been sent by God to illustrate His different
attributes: Moses, His providence; Solomon, His wisdom; Christ, His
righteousness; but I, the last of the prophets, am sent with the
sword. Let those who promulgate my faith enter into no arguments
or discussions, but slay all who refuse obedience. Whoever fights
for the true faith, whether he fall or conquer, will assuredly
receive a glorious reward, for the sword is the key of heaven. All
who draw it in defence of the faith shall receive temporal and
future blessings. Every drop of their blood, every peril and
hardship, will be registered on high as more meritorious than
fasting or prayer. If they fall in battle their sins will be
washed away, and they shall be transported into Paradise, to revel
in eternal pleasures, and in the arms of black-eyed houris." Thus
did he stimulate the martial fanaticism of a warlike and heroic
people with the promise of future happiness. What a monstrous
expediency,--worse than all the combined usurpations of the popes!
And what was the result? I need not point to the successive
conquests of the Saracens with such a mighty stimulus. They were
loyal to the truth for which they fought. They never afterwards
became idolaters; but their religion was built up on the miseries
of nations. To propagate the faith of Mohammed they overran the
world. Never were conquests more rapid and more terrible.
At first Mohammed's followers in Medina sallied out and attacked
the caravans of Arabia, and especially all belonging to Mecca (the
city which had rejected him), until all the various tribes
acknowledged the religion of the Prophet, for they were easily
converted to a faith which flattered their predatory inclinations
and promised them future immunities. The first cavalcade which
entered Medina with spoils made Mussulmans of all the inhabitants,
and gave Mohammed the control of the city. The battle of Moat gave
him a triumphal entrance into Mecca. He soon found himself the
sovereign of all Arabia; and when he died, at the age of 63, in the
eleventh year after his Hegira, or flight from Mecca, he was the
most successful founder of a religion the world has known, next to
Buddha. A religion appealing to truth alone had made only a few
converts in thirteen years; a religion which appealed to the sword
had made converts of a great nation in eleven years.
It is difficult to ascertain what the private life of the Prophet
was in these years of dazzling success. The authorities differ.
Some represent him as sunk in a miserable sensuality which
shortened his days. But I think this statement may be doubted. He
never lost the veneration of his countrymen,--and no veneration can
last for a man steeped in sensuality. Even Solomon lost his
prestige and popularity when he became vain and sensual. Those who
were nearest to the Prophet reverenced him most profoundly. With
his wife Ayesha he lived with great frugality. He was kindly, firm
in friendship, faithful and tender in his family, ready to forgive
enemies, just in decision. The caliphs who succeeded him, for some
time, were men of great simplicity, and sought to imitate his
virtues. He was doubtless warlike and fanatical, but conquests
such as he and his successors made are incompatible with luxury and
effeminacy. He stands arraigned at the bar of eternal justice for
perverting truth, for blending it with error, for making use of
wicked means to accomplish what he deemed a great end.
I have no patience with Mr. Carlyle, great and venerable as is his
authority, for seeming to justify Mohammed in assuming the sword.
"I care little for the sword," says this sophistical writer. "I
will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any
sword or tongue or implement it has or can lay hold on. What is
better than itself it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In
this great life-duel Nature herself is umpire, and can do no
wrong." That is, might makes right; only evil perishes in the
conflict of principles; whatever prevails is just. In other words,
if Mohammedanism, by any means it may choose to use, proves itself
more formidable than other religions, then it ought to prevail.
Suppose that the victories of the Saracens had extended over
Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,--had not been arrested by
Charles Martel,--would Carlyle then have preferred Mohammedanism to
the Christianity of degenerate nations? Was Mohammedanism a better
religion than the Christianity which existed in Asia Minor and in
various parts of the Greek empire in the sixth and seventh
centuries? Was it a good thing to convert the church of Saint
Sophia into a Saracenic mosque, and the city of the later Christian
emperors into the capital of the Turks? Is a united Saracenic
empire better than a divided, wrangling Christian empire?
But I will not enter upon that discussion. I confine myself to
facts. It is certain that Mohammedanism, by means of the sword,
spread with marvellous and unprecedented rapidity. The successors
of the Prophet carried their conquests even to India. Neither the
Syrians nor the Egyptians could cope with men who felt that the
sacrifice of life in battle would secure an eternity of bliss. The
armies of the Greek emperor melted away before the generals of the
caliph. The Cross waned before the Crescent. The banners of the
Moslems floated over the proudest battlements of ancient Roman
grandeur.
In the fifth year of the caliph Omar, only seventeen years from the
Prophet's flight from Mecca, the conquest of Syria was completed.
The Christians were forbidden to build churches, or speak openly of
their religion, or sit in the presence of a Mohammedan, or to sell
wine, or bear arms, or use the saddle in riding, or have a domestic
who had been in the Mohammedan service. The utter prostration of
all civil and religious liberty took place in the old scenes of
Christian triumph. This was an instance in which persecution
proved successful; and because it was successful it is a proof, in
the eyes of Carlyle, that the persecuting religion was the better,
because it was outwardly the stronger.
The conquest of Egypt rapidly followed that of Syria; and with the
fall of Alexandria perished the largest library of the world, the
thesaurus of all the intellectual treasures of antiquity.
Then followed the conquest of Persia. A single battle, as in the
time of Alexander, decided its fate. The marvel is that the people
should have changed their religion; but then, it was Mohammedanism
or death. And a still greater marvel it is,--an utter mystery to
me,--why that Oriental country should have continued faithful to
the new religion. It must have had some elements of vitality
almost worth fighting for, and which we do not comprehend.
Nor did Saracenic conquests end until the Arabs of the desert had
penetrated southward into India farther than had Alexander the
Great, and westward until they had subdued the northern kingdoms of
Africa, and carried their arms to the Pillars of Hercules; yea, to
the cities of the Goths in Spain, and were only finally arrested in
Europe by the heroism of Charles Martel.
Such were the rapid conquests of the Saracens--and permanent
conquests also--in Asia and Africa, under the stimulus of religious
fanaticism, until they had reduced thirty-six thousand cities,
towns, and castles, and built fourteen thousand mosques.
Now what are the deductions to be logically drawn from these
stupendous victories and the consolidation of the various religions
of the conquered into the creed of Mohammed,--not repudiated when
the pressure was removed, but apparently cherished by one hundred
and eighty millions of people for more than a thousand years?
We must take the ground that the religion of Mohammed has
marvellous and powerful truths, which we have overlooked and do not
understand, which appeal to the heart and conscience, and excite a
great enthusiasm,--so great as to stimulate successive generations
with an almost unexampled ardor, and to defend which they were
ready to die; a religion which has bound diverse nations together
for nearly fourteen hundred years. If so, it cannot be abused, or
ridiculed, or sneered at, any more than can the dominion of the
popes in the Middle Ages, but remains august in impressive mystery
to us, and even to future ages.
But if, in comparison with Christianity, it is a corrupt and false
religion, as many assume, then what deductions must we draw from
its amazing triumphs? For the fact stares us in the face that it
is rooted deeply in a large part of the Eastern world, or, at
least, has prevailed victorious for more than a thousand years.
First, we must conclude that the external triumph of a religion,
especially among ignorant or wicked people, is not so much owing to
the purity and loftiness of its truths, as to its harmony with
prevailing errors and corruptions. When Mohammed preached his
sublimest doctrines, and appealed to reason and conscience, he
converted about a score of people in thirteen years. When he
invoked demoralizing passions, he converted all Arabia in eleven
years. And does not this startling conclusion seem to be confirmed
by the whole history of mankind? How slow the progress of
Christianity for two hundred years, except when assisted by direct
supernatural influences! How rapid its triumphs when it became
adapted to the rude barbaric mind, or to the degenerate people of
the Empire! How popular and prevalent and widespread are those
religions which we are accustomed to regard as most corrupt!
Buddhism and Brahmanism have had more adherents than even
Mohammedanism. How difficult it was for Moses and the prophets to
keep the Jews from idolatry! What caused the rapid eclipse of
faith in the antediluvian world? Why could not Noah establish and
perpetuate his doctrines among his own descendants before he was
dead? Why was the Socratic philosophy unpopular? Why were the
Epicureans so fashionable? Why was Christianity itself most
eagerly embraced when its light was obscured by fables and
superstitions? Why did the Roman Empire perish, with all the aid
of a magnificent civilization; why did this civilization itself
retrograde; why did its art and literature decline? Why did the
grand triumphs of Protestantism stop in half a century after Luther
delivered his message? What made the mediaeval popes so powerful?
What gave such ascendency to the Jesuits? Why is the simple faith
of the primitive Christians so obnoxious to the wise, the mighty,
and the noble? What makes the most insidious heresies so
acceptable to the learned? Why is modern literature, when
fashionable and popular, so antichristian in its tone and spirit?
Why have not the doctrines of Luther held their own in Germany, and
those of Calvin in Geneva, and those of Cranmer in England, and
those of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England? Is it because, as men
become advanced in learning and culture, they are theologically
wiser than Moses and Abraham and Isaiah?
I do not cite the rapid decline of modern civilized society, in a
political or social view, in the most favored sections of
Christendom; I do not sing dirges over republican institutions; I
would not croak Jeremiads over the changes and developments of
mankind. I simply speak of the marvellous similarity which the
spread and triumph of Mohammedanism seem to bear to the spread and
triumph of what is corrupt and wicked in all institutions and
religions since the fall of man. Everywhere it is the frivolous,
the corrupt, the false, which seem to be most prevalent and most
popular. Do men love truth, or readily accept it, when it
conflicts with passions and interests? Is any truth popular which
is arrayed against the pride of reason? When has pure moral truth
ever been fashionable? When have its advocates not been reviled,
slandered, misrepresented, and persecuted, if it has interfered
with the domination of prevailing interests? The lower the scale
of pleasures the more eagerly are they sought by the great mass of
the people, even in Christian communities. You can best make
colleges thrive by turning them into schools of technology, with a
view of advancing utilitarian and material interests. You cannot
make a newspaper flourish unless you fill it with pictures and
scandals, or make it a vehicle of advertisements,--which are not
frivolous or corrupt, it is true, but which have to do with merely
material interests. Your libraries would never be visited, if you
took away their trash. Your Sabbath-school books would not be
read, unless you made them an insult to the human understanding.
Your salons would be deserted, if you entertained your guests with
instructive conversation. There would be no fashionable
gatherings, if it were not to display dresses and diamonds. Your
pulpits would be unoccupied, if you sought the profoundest men to
fill them.
Everything, even in Christian communities, shows that vanities and
follies and falsehoods are the most sought, and that nothing is
more discouraging than appeals to high intelligence or virtue, even
in art. This is the uniform history of the race, everywhere and in
all ages. Is it darkness or light which the world loves? I never
read, and I never heard, of a great man with a great message to
deliver, who would not have sunk under disappointment or chagrin
but for his faith. Everywhere do you see the fascination of error,
so that it almost seems to be as vital as truth itself. When and
where have not lies and sophistries and hypocrisies reigned? I
appeal to history. I appeal to the observation and experience of
every thoughtful and candid mind. You cannot get around this
truth. It blazes and it burns like the fires of Sinai. Men left
to themselves will more and more retrograde in virtue.
What, then, is the hope of the world? We are driven to this
deduction,--that if truth in itself is not all-conquering, the
divine assistance, given at times to truth itself, as in the early
Church, is the only reason why truth conquers. This divine grace,
promised in the Bible, has wrought wonders whenever it has pleased
the Almighty to bestow it, and only then. History teaches this as
impressively as revelation. Christianity itself, unaided, would
probably die out in this world. And hence the grand conclusion is,
that it is the mysterious, or, as some call it, the super-natural,
spirit of Almighty power which is, after all, the highest hope of
this world. This is not discrepant with the oldest traditions and
theogonies of the East,--the hidden wisdom of ancient Indian and
Persian and Egyptian sages, concealed from the vulgar, but really
embraced by the profoundest men, before corruptions perverted even
their wisdom. This certainly is the earliest revelation of the
Bible. This is the power which Moses recognized, and all the
prophets who succeeded him. This is the power which even Mohammed,
in the loftiness of his contemplations, more dimly saw, and
imperfectly taught to the idolaters around him, and which gives to
his system all that was really valuable. Ask not when and where
this power shall be most truly felt. It is around us, and above
us, and beneath us. It is the mystery and grandeur of the ages.
"It is not by might nor by power, but by my spirit," saith the
Lord; Man is nothing, his aspirations are nothing, the universe
itself is nothing, without the living, permeating force which comes
from this supernal Deity we adore, to interfere and save. Without
His special agency, giving to His truths vitality, this world would
soon become a hopeless and perpetual pandemonium. Take away the
necessity of this divine assistance as the one great condition of
all progress, as well as the highest boon which mortals seek,--then
prayer itself, recognized even by Mohammedans as the loftiest
aspiration and expression of a dependent soul, and regarded by
prophets and apostles and martyrs as their noblest privilege,
becomes a superstition, a puerility, a mockery, and a hopeless
dream.