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Two days before his death, Mohammed went to the mosque for the last time, and asked if he had injured any man. If so, let his own back bear the stripes. "Better be in shame now," said he, "than at the day of judgment." He then went home. A Jewish maidservant prepared for him a dish which she had poisoned, with the intent of testing his supernatural powers. He ate-of it and died.

To the question if he had injured any man the modern world is constrained to answer in a positive affirmative. He has been the social and religious death of several nations. The fierce enthusiasm which he inspired in the Saracens blazed like a destroying fire for eight hundred years, and left nought but ashes behind. His religion has cursed Turkey and the East for hundreds of years, and has failed to lift them out of semi-barbarism. Whatever may be the theoretical excellence of the precepts of the Koran, the Moslem influence has been singularly inoperative of good upon the nations which embraced the creed. It deepened the natural fatalistic tendencies of

VOL. XIV.-9

the Oriental mind. It gave a religious sanction to unbridled sensuality. It sowed the seeds of religious rancor and bitterness among races not cultured enough to be theological. It stood as an inseparable obstacle to the Christianizing of the East, or rather it uprooted the faith in nations which had the apostles for their missionaries.

Under all the political reasons for the prosecution of the war in the East, there runs a deep current of religious feeling. The Cross and the Crescent are once more arrayed in deadly conflict. It is true that Greek Christianity is not the purest or mightiest force to summon against the Mohammedan superstition, but still as representative of the eternal and irreconcilable enmity between the creeds, it serves to enlist the sympathies of the Christian world. The divided opinion in England upon the merits of the question is a sad illustration of the decay of that Christian feeling which in the times of Richard Cœur de Lion inflamed the island with the faith and fervor of the Crusades. Then England did not rate all good by the standard of

Sultan yearly sends to Mecca a covering for it, of rich black silk, magnificently embroidered. The

pounds, shillings, and pence. Whatever be the motives actuating Russia, it is clear that the humiliation and dismemberment of the Turkish EmAtab, whose marked characteristics pire must prove fatal to the Mussi man creed, which has so long reared its horrid front in the face of Christian and civilized Europe. The downfall of the Turkish power is the prelude to the disintegration of the Moslem system. As it is, the former tenacity of belief has long since given way to the laxity of morals and the prevalence of sectism. Few pilgrims now wend their way to the shrine of Mecca, the glory of which has departed. The nomadic tribes of Arabia, illiterate and immoral, will lose or corrupt the traditions of the Prophet, and once deprived of a settled organ and government, such as Turkey, Mohammedanism, like ancient paganism, must necessarily disappear from the earth, and be relegated to that chaos of false religions and exploded theories, the history of which serves to astonish, instruct, and humiliate mankind.

It is our intention to sketch the rise and progress of Mohammedanism, to search its inner spirit, its influence upon the world, and the evidences at hand of its speedy dissolution. This forms one of the most curious and instructive chapters in the history of religion, and awakens a feeling of awe and gratitude for the possession of that divine faith which at once secures us against the deceits of our own hearts and the machinations of the evil spirit and his instruments.

Mohammed, the Prophet of Islam, was born A.D. 570, at Mecca, in Arabia. He sprang from a sacerdotal tribe who were intrusted with the care of the Caaba, or sacred stone of the Arabians, which they fabled fell down from heaven, and which, very probably, was an aerolite. This huge black stone still plays a part in Islamism, having been retained by Mohammed in deference to the traditional respect of his tribe. The

Mohammed possessed in an eminent degree; has always been noted for religious feeling The ancient Magrans and Persians were star-worshippers, a form of idolatry which appears to be productive of exalted religious ideas and feelings. The primitive Irish also were Sabeans, or worshippers of the sun. The naked. plains of the desert, in which sky and earth seem to meet, afforded to the wandering tribes the most magnificent views of the glory and splendor of the heavenly bodies. There also lingered among them the traditions of the Ishmaelites, and the promise made by God to Abraham, of making his son Ishmael a great people. Mohammed claimed descent from Abraham, and no doubt was familiar with the prophecy which, as we shall see, he was marvellously destined to fulfil.

Of his youth we have no particulars, nor was it until his fortieth year that he claimed to be favored with celestial revelations. He appears to have been a man of a serious and contemplative turn of mind, and frequently passed whole months in retirement. His first revelations came from heaven through the angel Gabriel.

He was instructed to

destroy idolatry, and to announce himself as the apostle of God. Then he phrased the formula, There is but one God, and Mohanmed is the apostle of God. For three years he had made only five converts. His kinsmen with few exceptions kept aloof from him, and regarded his enthusiasm as dangerous to his own safety and the peace of the state. The opposition at length became so violent that he was obliged to flee from Mecca to Medina, a flight or hegira which forms the chronological era of the Moslems (July 16th, A.D. 622).

Stung by his treatment by his

friends and neighbors, the revengeful spirit of Mohammed sought in the sword the most available instrument for retaliating his wrongs and spread ing his religion.I can do with the sword what Moses did with, his rod," he exclaimed. The warlike spirit which he infused into his creed held the ascendency over the milder virtues for centuries. The military profession was the path to both temporal and eternal rewards. Paradise was opened to the gallant defender of the Moslem creed. His wounds would shine as glorious suns in the paradise of the blessed. Celestial wings would supply the missing limbs. "One drop of blood," said he, "shed in the cause of religion was more salutary than two months of incessant prayer and fasting." The Koran records the intervention of angelic warriors in several battles. Full of enthusiasm, the Moslem soldiers, assured of eternal happiness, rushed upon the foe with the war-cry of Islam. They are paralleled in modern history by the troopers of Cromwell.

The Bedouin tribes were soon converted by the sword, and after some parleying the inhabitants of Mecca threw open their gates to the Prophet. Mohammed was desirous of enlisting the Jews in his behalf, and an acknowledgment of his prophetic claims; but they obstinately refused to recognize him as the Messiah, and made of him an irreconcilable enemy. He witnessed unmoved the massacre of hundreds of the unfortunate children of Israel. Gibbon thinks it would have been happy for that unfortunate race had they recognized Mohammed as the Expected of Nations (a title which he affected), for he was anxious to number them among the faithful. The many Levitical ordinances of the Koran, such as lustration, purification, and the prohibition of swine's flesh are taken from the Jews, and Jerusalem is one of the three holy cities.

During the lifetime of Mohammed

his opinions spread rapidly, and in his dual character of prophet and king he conducted himself admirably

There was nothing divine or supernatural in his conduct, as we understand the terms. His most complimentary biographers represent him as a man full of human passions, anger, lust, deceitfulness, and revenge. Carlyle makes much ado about the veneration which he inspired among men who were his every-day companions, and argues therefrom that he must have proved his right to the title of prophet; but we must remember that the courtiers of Caligula worshipped his horse as a god. Besides, Mohammed was infinitely superior to the rude and superstitious men that surrounded him, and his other than supernatural qualities, his bravery, his finesse, his magnificent beauty, were all calculated to leave deep impressions upon untutored minds, and to inspire love and admiration in rude bosoms.

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The successors of Mohammed spread the terror of the Moslem name from Grenada to Delhi, and founded one of the mightiest dynasties of modern times. The lust for power and pelf was early fostered by Mohammed, who ordained liberal division of the spoils of conquered territory among his soldiers. This was, no doubt, the most attractive feature in his religion to his first followers, who were famous as merchants and thieves. The idea that made Cromwell's soldiers invincible was the same that inspired the followers of the Prophet. The Calvinistic doctrine of absolute predestination was not more familiar to the conquerors at Worcester than to the Mussulman besiegers of Damascus. Always reckless of life, the Arab had now a reason for death. It was the entrance to a paradise which his sensual mind thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed. Cooling fountains, delightful groves, troops of beautiful damsels, and all the physical gratifications that could be described or

dreamed of, opened upon the dying eyes of the soldier, who thus exchanged a miserable existence on the parched desert for the endless: joys of heaven.

In his quest for lay-figures for his heroes, Mr. Carlyle has fixed upon Mohammed as the hero-prophet. Isaiah or Jeremiah did not furnish the proper heroic qualifications. The patience of Daniel, the rapt vision of Ezekiel, or the consummate virtue of Elias do not seem to find favor in the eyes of the hero worshipper. Of course we need not be surprised at his choice of Mohammed, when he selects the beery monk of Wittenberg as the type of the perfect priest. Around Mohammed he marshals his troop of splendors, infinities, eternities, and actualities, which do such service in all the themes he writes upon, from a suit of old clothes, to the galaxies of the universe. He scouts the idea that Mohammed could have been an impostor. "His heats were all burnt out" at forty, though Gibbon's prurient imagination finds ample material in the numerous amours of the Prophet, who so roused his wives' jealousy that nothing but a timely revelation from the angel Gabriel preserved the domestic peace. Carlyle congratulates the Prophet upon "swallowing up" the innumerable sects and idolatries that afflicted Arabia, and he indulges in very flippant comments upon the words by which the Council of Nice determined for all time the consubstantiality of the eternal Son of God with the Father.

With that exquisite coolness and indifference to the norma loquendi, which the Scotch Diogenes shows in the manufacture and use of words, he employs in every and any sense the appellation "Prophet," which has a fixed and distinct meaning. A prophet is one who foretells the hidden future by the divine assistance. Mohammed was neither a prophet nor worker of miracles. When besought to work prodigies in at

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testation of his claims, he angrily replied that the visible world was full of miracles, and that strong faith needed no: Factitious aids. If he had a deep conviction of his own success, it was the extent of any "faith that he possessed. But we must understand Carlyle before we perceive that Mohammed was a prophet because he was sincere; because he smote down idols, and displayed the same rough energy and strength of will that made Frederick the Great a prophet, too, after the order of Carlyle. It is a sign of what Carlyle himself would call the mockheroic to see him building a sacred shrine to a man who must be viewed either as an impostor or enthusiast. Why take him as a hero-prophet when, from every nook in Christendom, there starts out a man filled with the purest and holiest love of God and his glory? Why pass over the St. Bernards and Xaviers to bespangle with tawdry praise the garments of one who set himself over the Lord Jesus Christ?

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If religious enthusiasm is to be the form of religious truth and sincerity, we find ourselves at sea at once, in the unsafe keeping of all sorts of harebrained apostles and prophets. Happy for the Church if, as Macaulay surmises, we have a process of turning Joanna Southcotes into St. Theresas. All the operations of the Spirit of God are peaceful, profound, unspeakable. none of the frenzy of the Pythoness. The spiritual life tends rather to calm and modify our natural impetuosity, while the discipline of the Church soon checks abnormal developments of zeal. If Carlyle's rules for discovering a prophet are to be accepted, we must place the prophetic mantle upon the shoulders of Emanuel Swedenborg and Joseph Smith. Nothing is more contagious than religious excitement. No delusions are more frequent and incurable than religious callings and missions. But Mohammed was not car

ried away by an excitement which unfitted him for the camp or the cabinet. He was a remarkably cool prophet, and he regulated his prophetic ecstasy with surprising convenience, and with marked attention to the exigencies of certain situa

tions.

Carlyle says that Mohammed wrought good, inasmuch as he destroyed Arabian idolatry. Mohammedanism, says he, is a half Christianity. So much the worse, say we. A lie which is half the truth is ever the worst of lies. It is this horrible aping of Christianity which is so revolting. Mohammed artfully displaces our Redeemer and makes him one of the satellites that revolve around himself. It is absurd to claim for Mohammed the credit of destroying idolatry in nations which either had received or were on the point of receiving the Christian faith. Besides, Arabia was a land in which the patriarchal traditions still survived. Mohammed really opposed the spread of the true Light which enlightens every man that comes into this world. He borrowed from the Nestorians and the Docetæ heretical errors, and added to his doctrine many of the absurdities of the Talmud. He thus closed to his people all the pure reforming influences of Judaism and Christianity by his parody of both.

Why supplement the eternal truth of the unity of God with the fiction of his own apostolate? for, according to him, both dicta are to be received as necessary for salvation. The extinction of idolatry was a good which was neutralized by the succeeding superstition. The Caaba with its mystic rites seems preferable to that horrible formula which links the everlasting truth "There is one God" with the lie "Mohammed is his Prophet."

If Carlyle admires the religious idea breaking forth in the flame of noble deeds of high emprise, why does he not turn to that marvellous

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outburst of chivalry and Christian love known as the Crusades? that glorious enthusiasm the Christian Church showed forth its full beauty and power, the noblest object for which a man could fight and die; Europe felt no wild spasm of fanatic rage, but the strong feeling of conviction that it was God's will to reclaim the holy places from the pollution of the infidel. To die for the Cross, to expire upon the field over which the Son of God had walked, to behold the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem from the walls of its earthly namesake, to draw sword in the cause of God against his enemies, here was a theme to satisfy the greatest hero-worshipper under the sun. But Carlyle, notwithstanding his study of Goethe, has still to learn the " open secret.' Dr. Johnson has remarked the striking similarity, rather designed and formed by the Prophet, between the rise and progress of Christianity and the origin and success of Islamism. The whole train of circumstances attending its first promulgation is extraordinary. Its dominion over the human mind, both as conquering and conquered, and its power to change the character of nations, are facts still more extraordinary. Its progress in quarters where it resorted only to the arts of peace and persuasion is unexplained. Its permanency and inviolable preservation of its original pure theism, and the mysterious concurrency, unexampled save in the history of Christianity, of causes and events conducing to favor its introduction and establishment, lead the mind to seek the explanation in some adequate source. This resemblance has given a great deal of uneasiness to apologists for Christianity, who imagine that they can establish its divine origin on simply natural grounds and by a process of mere historical and critical research. The fact is, Mohammedanism has twice the number of merely natural arguments

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