Chapter 8

[Sidenote: Examples: slavery. Relations between the sexes.] Take, for example, the institution of slavery. It prevailed in the Roman Empire at the introduction of Christianity, as it did in Arabia at the rise of Islam. In the Moslem code, as we have seen, the practice has been perpetuated. Slavery must be held permissible so long as the Koran is taken to be the rule of faith. The divine sanction thus impressed upon the institution, and the closeness with which by law and custom it intermingles with social and domestic life, make it impossible for any Mohammedan people to impugn slavery as contrary to sound morality or for any body of loyal believers to advocate its abolition upon the ground of principle. There are, moreover, so many privileges and gratifications accruing to the higher classes from its maintenance that (excepting under the strong pressure of European diplomacy) no sincere and hearty effort can be expected from the Moslem race in the suppression of the inhuman traffic, the horrors of which, as pursued by Moslem slave-traders, their Prophet would have been the first to denounce. Look now at the wisdom with which the Gospel treats the institution. It is nowhere in so many words proscribed, for that would, under the circumstances, have led to the abnegation of relative duties and the disruption of society. It is accepted as a prevailing institution recognized by the civil powers. However desirable freedom might be, slavery was not inconsistent with the Christian profession: "Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather."[e] The duty of obedience to his master is enjoined upon the slave, and the duty of mildness and urbanity toward his slave is enjoined upon the master. But with all this was laid the seed which grew into emancipation. "_Our Father_," gave the key-note of freedom. "Ye are _all_ the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus." "There is neither bond nor free, ... for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."[f] "He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman."[g] The converted slave is to be received "not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved."[h] The seed has borne its proper harvest. Late in time, no doubt, but by a sure and certain development, the grand truth of the equality of the human race, and the right of every man and woman to freedom of thought and (within reasonable limit of law) to freedom of action, has triumphed; and it has triumphed through the Spirit and the precepts inculcated by the Gospel eighteen hundred years ago. Nor is it otherwise with the relations established between the sexes. Polygamy, divorce, and concubinage with bondmaid's have been perpetuated, as we have seen, by Islam for all time; and the ordinances connected therewith have given rise, in the laborious task of defining the conditions and limits of what is lawful, to a mass of prurient casuistry defiling the books of Mohammedan law. Contrast with this our Saviour's words, "_He which made them at the beginning made them male and female.... What therefore God hath joined together let not man put asunder_."[i] From which simple utterance have resulted monogamy and (in the absence of adultery) the indissolubility of the marriage bond. While in respect of conjugal duties we have such large, but sufficiently intelligible, commands as "to render due benevolence,"[j] whereby, while the obligations of the marriage state are maintained, Christianity is saved from the impurities which, in expounding the ordinances of Mohammed, surround the sexual ethics of Islam, and cast so foul a stain upon its literature.

[Sidenote: Elevation of woman.] Take, again, the place of woman in the world. We need no injunction of the veil or the harem. As the temples of the Holy Ghost, the body is to be kept undefiled, and every one is "to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor."[k] Men are to treat "the elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity."[l] Women are to "adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety."[m] These, and such like maxims embrace the whole moral fitness of the several relations and duties which they define. They are adapted for all ages of time and for all conditions of men. They are capable of being taken by every individual for personal guidance, according to his own sense of propriety, and they can be accommodated by society at large with a due reference to the habits and customs of the day. The attempt of Mohammed to lay down, with circumstantial minuteness, the position of the female sex, the veiling of her person, and her withdrawal from the gaze of man, has resulted in seclusion and degradation; while the spirit of the Gospel, and injunctions like that of "giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel,"[n] have borne the fruit of woman's elevation, and have raised her to the position of influence, honor, and equality which (notwithstanding the marital superiority of the husband in the ideal of a Christian family) she now occupies in the social scale.

[Sidenote: Relations with the State. Christianity leaves humanity free to expand.] In the type of Mussulman government which (though not laid down in the Koran) is founded upon the spirit of the faith and the precedent of the Prophet the civil is indissolubly blended with the spiritual authority, to the detriment of religious liberty and political progress. The _Ameer_, or commander of the faithful, should, as in the early times, so also in all ages, be the _Imam_, or religious chief; and as such he should preside at the weekly cathedral service. It is not a case of the Church being subject to the State, or the State being subject to the Church. Here (as we used to see in the papal domains) the Church is the State, and the State the Church. They both are one. And in this we have another cause of the backwardness and depression of Mohammedan society. Since the abolition of the temporal power in Italy we have nowhere in Christian lands any such theocratic union of Cæsar and the Church, so that secular and religious advance is left more or less unhampered; whereas in Islam the hierarchico-political constitution has hopelessly welded the secular arm with the spiritual in one common scepter, to the furthering of despotism, and elimination of the popular voice from its proper place in the concerns of State.

[Sidenote: The Koran checks progress.] And so, throughout the whole range of political, religious, social, and domestic relations, the attempt made by the founder of Islam to provide for all contingencies, and to fix every thing aforehand by rigid rule and scale, has availed to cramp and benumb the free activities of life and to paralyze the natural efforts of society at healthy growth, expansion, and reform. As an author already quoted has so well put it, "_The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey it is to abandon progress_."[79]

[Sidenote: Is Islam suitable for any nation?] Writers have indeed been found who, dwelling upon the benefits conferred by Islam on idolatrous and savage nations, have gone so far as to hold that the religion of Mohammed may in consequence be suited to certain portions of mankind--as if the faith of Jesus might peaceably divide with it the world. But surely to acquiesce in a system which reduces the people to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism would be abhorrent from the first principles of philanthropy. With the believer, who holds the Gospel to be "good tidings of great joy, _which shall be to all people_,"[o] such a notion is on higher grounds untenable; but even in view of purely secular considerations it is not only untenable, but altogether unintelligible. As I have said elsewhere:

The eclipse in the East, which still sheds its blight on the ancient seats of Jerome and Chrysostom, and shrouds in darkness the once bright and famous sees of Cyprian and Augustine, has been disastrous every-where to liberty and progress, equally as it has been to Christianity. And it is only as that eclipse shall pass away and the Sun of righteousness again shine forth that we can look to the nations now dominated by Islam sharing with us those secondary but precious fruits of divine teaching. Then with the higher and enduring blessings which our faith bestows, but not till then, we may hope that there will follow likewise in their wake freedom and progress, and all that tends to elevate the human race.[80]

[Sidenote: No sacrifice for sin or redemptive grace.] Although with the view of placing the argument on independent ground I have refrained from touching the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, and the inestimable benefits which flow to mankind therefrom, I may be excused, before I conclude, if I add a word regarding them. The followers of Mohammed have no knowledge of God as a _Father_; still less have they knowledge of him as "_Our_ Father"--the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. They acknowledge, indeed, that Jesus was a true prophet sent of God; but they deny his crucifixion and death, and they know nothing of the power of his resurrection. To those who have found redemption and peace in these the grand and distinctive truths of the Christian faith, it may be allowed to mourn over the lands in which the light of the Gospel has been quenched, and these blessings blotted out, by the material forces of Islam; where, together with civilization and liberty, Christianity has given place to gross darkness, and it is as if now "there were no more sacrifice for sins." We may, and we do, look forward with earnest expectation to the day when knowledge of salvation shall be given to these nations "by the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."[p]

[Sidenote: Contrast between divine and human work.] But even apart from these, the special blessings of Christianity, I ask, which now of the two faiths bears, in its birth and growth, the mark of a divine hand and which the human stamp? Which looks likest the handiwork of the God of nature, who "hath laid the measures of the earth," and "hath stretched the line upon it,"[q] but not the less with an ever-varying adaptation to time and place? and which the artificial imitation?

[Sidenote: Islam.] "As a reformer, Mohammed did indeed advance his people to a certain point, but as a prophet he left them fixed immovably at that point for all time to come. As there can be no return, so neither can there be any progress. The tree is of artificial planting. Instead of containing within itself the germ of growth and adaptation to the various requirements of time, and clime, and circumstance, expanding with the genial sunshine and the rain from heaven, it remains the same forced and stunted thing as when first planted twelve centuries ago."[81]

[Sidenote: Christianity compared by Christ to the works of nature.] Such is Islam. Now what is Christianity? Listen to the prophetic words of the Founder himself, who compares it to the works of nature:

"_So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;_

"_And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how._

"_For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself: first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear._"[r]

And again:

"_Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God, or with what comparison shall we compare it?_

"_It is like a grain of mustard-seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all seeds that be in the earth;_

"_But when it is sown, it groweth up and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it._"[s]

[Sidenote: Islam the work of man; Christianity the work of God.] Which is _nature_, and which is _art_, let the reader judge. Which bears the impress of man's hand, and which that of Him who "is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working?"

In fine, of the Arabian it may be said:

"_Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud waves be stayed._"

But of Christ:

"_His name shall endure forever: his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him blessed._

"_He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth._

"_Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen._"[t]

FOOTNOTES:

[e] 1 Cor. vii, 21.

[f] Gal. iii, 26, 28.

[g] 1 Cor. vii, 22.

[h] Philemon 16.

[i] Matt. xix, 4.

[j] 1 Cor. vii, 3.

[k] 1 Thess. iv, 4.

[l] 1 Tim. v, 2.

[m] 1 Tim. ii, 9.

[n] 1 Pet. iii, 7.

[o] Luke ii, 10.

[p] Luke i, 77-79.

[q] Job xxxviii, 5.

[r] Mark iv, 26-28.

[s] Mark iv, 30-32.

[t] Psa. lxxii, 17, 8, 18, 19.

THE END.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Barth.

[2] Bergaigne, in his able treatise, _La Religion Védique_, insists earnestly on what he calls the "liturgical contamination of the myths." See vol. iii, p. 320.

[3] R.V., ix, 42, 4.

[4] R.V., ix, 97, 24.

[5] The religion of the Indo-European race, while still united, "recognized a supreme God; an organizing God; almighty, omniscient, moral.... This conception was a heritage of the past.... The supreme God was originally the God of heaven." So Darmesteter, _Contemporary Review_, October, 1879. Roth had previously written with much learning and acuteness to the same effect.

[6] Muir's _Sanskrit Texts_, v, 412.

[7] R.V., iii, 62, 10.

[8] The rites, says Haug, "must have existed from times immemorial."--_Aitareya Brâhmana_, pp. 7, 9.

[9] Weber, _History of Indian Literature_, p. 38.

[10] Max Müller, _Ancient Sanskrit Literature_, p. 389.

[11] "The haughty Indra takes precedence of all gods." R.V., 1, 55.

[12] "These two personages [Indra and Varuna] sum up the two conceptions of divinity, between which the religious consciousness of the Vedic Aryans seems to oscillate."--Bergaigne, _La Religion Védique_, vol. iii, p. 149.

[13] The meaning of the term is not quite certain. _Sessions_, or _Instructions_, may perhaps be the rendering. So Monier Williams.

[14] For example, Wordsworth:

"Thou, Thou alone Art everlasting, and the blessed Spirits Which Thou includest, as the sea her waves." --_Excursion_, book iv.

[15] Or, the thing that really is--the [Greek: ontôs on].

[16] _Ekamadvitiyam._

[17] This illustration is in the mouth of every Hindu disputant at the present day.

[18] Barth, p. 75.

[19] _Ekamadvitiyam._

[20] Volui tibi suaviloquenti Carmine Pierio rationem exponere nostram Et quasi Musæo dulci contingere melle.

[21] Dr. J. Muir, in _North British Review_, No. xlix, p. 224.

[22] _Miscellaneous Writings_ (Macmillan, 1861), vol. i, p. 77.

[23] But the truth is that every man is accounted a good Hindu who keeps the rules of caste and pays due respect to the Brahmans. What he believes, or disbelieves, is of little or no consequence.

[24] Yaska, probably in the fifth century B.C.

[25] Weber thinks that Christian elements may have been introduced, in course of time, into the representation.

[26] His Ramayana was written in Hindi verse in the sixteenth century.

[27] When Jhansi was captured in the times of the great mutiny English officers were disgusted to see the walls of the queen's palace covered with what they described as "grossly obscene" pictures. There is little or no doubt that these were simply representations of the acts of Krishna. Therefore to the Hindu queen they were religious pictures. When questioned about such things the Brahmans reply that deeds which would be wicked in men were quite right in Krishna, who, being God, could do whatever he pleased.

[28] Born probably in 1649.

[29] Raja Narayan Basu (Bose), in enumerating the sacred books of Hinduism, excluded the philosophical systems and included the Tantras. He was and, we believe, is a leading man in the Adi Brahma Somaj.

[30] Barth, as above, p. 202.

[31] So writes Vans Kennedy, a good authority. The rites, however, vary with varying places.

[32] _Asiatic Researches_, v, p. 356.

[33] Cicero.

[34] We learned from his own lips that among the books which most deeply impressed him were the Bible and the writings of Dr. Chalmers.

[35] See _Life of Mohammed_, p. 138. Smith & Elder.

[36] _Life of Mohammed_, p. 172, where the results are compared.

[37] _Life of Mohammed_, p. 341; Sura ii, 257; xxix, 46.

[38] The only exceptions were the Jews of Kheibar and the Christians of Najran, who were permitted to continue in the profession of their faith. They were, however, forced by Omar to quit the peninsula, which thenceforward remained exclusively Mohammedan.

"Islam" is a synonym for the Mussulman faith. Its original meaning is "surrender" of one's self to God.

[39] _Apology of Al Kindy, the Christian_, p. 18. Smith & Elder, 1882. This remarkable apologist will be noticed further below.

[40] Principal Fairbairn: "The Primitive Polity of Islam," _Contemporary Review_, December, 1882, pp. 866, 867.

[41] Herr von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, unter den Chalifen, vol. i, p. 383.

[42] _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 9. Smith & Elder, 1883.

[43] Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, chapter li, and _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 184.

[44] _Ibid._; and Sura xliv, v. 25. _We_--that is, the Lord.

[45] _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 46.

[46] See, for example, Sura lxxviii: "Verily for the pious there is a blissful abode: gardens and vineyards; and damsels with swelling bosoms, of a fitting age; and a full cup. Lovely large-eyed girls, like pearls hidden in their shells, a reward for that which the faithful shall have wrought. Verily We have created them of a rare creation, virgins, young and fascinating.... Modest damsels averting their eyes, whom no man shall have known before, nor any Jinn," etc.

The reader will not fail to be struck by the materialistic character of Mohammed's paradise.

[47] See Sura _Jehad_; also _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 167, _et. seq._

[48] _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 105, _et. seq._

[49] See _Annals_, etc., p. 253.

[50] Sura ix, v. 30.

[51] So Jews and Christians as possessing the Bible are named in the Koran.

[52] See _Annals_, etc., p. 213.

[53] _The Apology of Al Kindy_, written at the court of Al Mamun A.H. 215 (A.D. 830), with an essay on its age and authorship, p. 12. Smith & Elder, 1882.

[54] _Ibid._, p. 34.

[55] _Apology_, p. 47, _et. seq._

[56] Alluding to the "_Ansar_," or mortal "Helpers" of Mohammed at Medina. Throughout, the apologist, it will be observed, is drawing a contrast with the means used for the spread of Islam.

[57] _Apology_, p. 16.

[58] _Apology_, p. 57.

[59] I am not here comparing the value of these observances with those of other religions. I am inquiring only how far the obligations of Islam may be held to involve hardship or sacrifice such as might have retarded the progress of Islam by rendering it on its first introduction unpopular.

[60] See Sura ii, v. 88.

[61] Sura iv, 18. "Exchange" is the word used in the Koran.

[62] Each of his widows had 100,000 golden pieces left her. _Life of Mohammed_, p. 171.

[63] "These divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit or check whatever."--_Annals_, p. 418.

[64] Lane adds: "There are many men in this country who, in the course of ten years, have married as many as twenty, thirty, or more wives; and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or more husbands successively." Note that all this is entirely within the religious sanction.

[65] _Pilgrimage to Mecca_, by her highness the reigning Begum of Bhopal, translated by Mrs. W. Osborne (1870), pp. 82, 88. Slave-girls cannot be _married_ until freed by their masters. What her highness tells of women _divorcing_ their husbands is of course entirely _ultra vires_, and shows how the laxity of conjugal relations allowed to the male sex has extended itself to the female also, and that in a city where, if anywhere, we should have expected to find the law observed.

[66] In India, for example, there are Mohammedan races among whom monogamy, as a rule, prevails by custom, and individuals exercising their right of polygamy are looked upon with disfavor. On the other hand, we meet occasionally with men who aver that rather against their will (as they will sometimes rather amusingly say) they have been forced by custom or family influence to add by polygamy to their domestic burdens. In Mohammedan countries, however, when we hear of a man confining himself to _one wife_, it does not necessarily follow that he has no slaves to consort with in his harem. I may remark that slave-girls have by Mohammedan laws no conjugal rights whatever, but are like playthings, at the absolute discretion of their master.

[67] The case of the Corinthian offender is much in point, as showing how the strict discipline of the Church must have availed to make Christianity unpopular with the mere worldling.

[68] [Sidenote: Laxity among nominal Christians.] _Apology_, p. 51. I repeat, that in the remarks I have made under this head, no comparison is sought to be drawn betwixt the morality of nominally Christian and Moslem peoples. On this subject I may be allowed to quote from what I have said elsewhere: "The Moslem advocate will urge ... the social evil as the necessary result of inexorable monogamy. The Koran not only denounces any illicit laxity between the sexes in the severest terms, but exposes the transgressor to condign punishment. For this reason, and because the conditions of what is licit are so accommodating and wide, a certain negative virtue (it can hardly be called continence or chastity) pervades Mohammedan society, in contrast with which the gross and systematic immorality in certain parts of every European community may be regarded by the Christian with shame and confusion. In a purely Mohammedan land, however low may be the general level of moral feeling, the still lower depths of fallen humanity are unknown. The 'social evil' and intemperance, prevalent in Christian lands, are the strongest weapons in the armory of Islam. 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; whereas in Islam the deteriorating influences of polygamy, divorce, and concubinage have been stereotyped for all time."--_The Koran: its Composition and Teaching, and the Testimony it bears to the Holy Scriptures_, p. 60.