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community may be regarded by the Christian with shame and confusion. In a
purely Mahometan country,1 however low may be the general level of
moral feeling, the still lower depths of fallen humanity are comparatively
unknown. The "social evil" and intemperance prevalent in Christian
lands are the strongest weapons in the armoury of Islâm. We point, and justly,
to the higher morality and civilization of those who do observe the precepts of
the Gospel, to the stricter unity and virtue which cement the family, and to the
elevation of the sex; but in vain, while the example of our great cities, and
too often of our representatives abroad, belies the argument. And yet the
argument is sound; for, in proportion as Christianity exercises her legitimate
influence, vice and intemperance will wane and vanish, and the higher morality
pervade the whole body; while in Islâm the deteriorating influences of
polygamy, divorce, and concubinage, have been stereotyped for all time.
In fine, the vital and most potent difference between the two systems centres
in the lives of their Founders. The one lived a life of self-sacrifice; the
other of self-indulgence. The one imposing by force of arms the inevitable law
of a Supreme ruler; the other drawing his people by the force of love to a
reconciling Father. The one laying down his life, that we through his death
might have life eternal;—but here the parallel must fail, and with it the
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THE TEACHING OF THE CORÂN.
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parallel also of the new creating energy inherent in the Christian faith.
Dr. Weil, the learned and impartial historian of the Prophet and his
Successors, after describing various features favourable to Islâm, proceeds
with his verdict thus:—
"We are far, indeed, from seeking by these considerations to place the
Founder of Islâm side by side with the Founder of Christianity; but in our view
the difference lies less in their respective dogmas than in their personal
individuality. Had the Motazela school been in a position to develop itself as
freely as the Protestant, perhaps there might have been framed out of the Corân
a theology that would have satisfied the requirements of human reason as fully
as the Rationalism based on the Gospel. It is in the life of Mahomet, first
appearing in its true character at Medina, not in his heterodox teaching as to
the Fall and Salvation, and his rejection of the Trinity (as the doctrine was
taught in the seventeenth century), that we must trace the decline and eventual
fall of Islâm. Christ was true to his teaching, and sealed it with his death.
Mahomet shunned the dangers which beset him, and sought by every kind of
artifice, and in the end by sheer force, to gain the mastery for himself and his
religion. Furthermore, not satisfied with promulgating his religious and moral
precepts in the name of God, at last even his secular laws and ordinances were
treated as emanating from heaven, although he was frequently compelled by
circumstances to change the same, and had not even the self-control to bring
himself first of all under subjection to them. As Mahomet has not only no
pretension to be a mediator between God and man, but cannot be taken in any
respect even as a pattern of virtue, therefore his Revelation has become a dead
letter, powerless to quicken the soul with true religion. That the Corân
appears to us, in its relation to the Gospel, an anachronism is not in
consequence of its opposing certain dogmas the inner significance of which was
imperfectly known at the time, but because, like the books of Moses, it contains
ordinances which are not useful, or even applicable, to all lands and
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