The religion itself, in its early days, offered no worldly attractions or indulgences. It was not, Nor by worldly inducements.like Islam, an "easy way." Whether in withdrawal from social observances deeply tainted with idolatry, the refusal to participate in sacrificial ceremonies insisted on by the rulers, or in the renunciation of indulgences inconsistent with a saintly life, the Christian profession required self-denial at every step.
But otherwise the teaching of Christianity nowhere interfered with the civil institutions of the Adaptive principles and plastic faculty of Christianity.countries into which it penetrated or with any social customs or practices that were not in themselves immoral or idolatrous. It did not, indeed, neglect to guide the Christian life. But it did so by the enunciation of principles and rules of wide and far-reaching application. These, no less than the injunctions of the Koran, served amply for the exigencies of the day. But they have done a vast deal more. They have proved themselves capable of adaptation to the most advanced stages of social development and intellectual elevation. And, what is infinitely more, it may be claimed for the lessons embodied in the Gospel that they have been themselves promotive, if indeed they have not been the immediate cause, of all the most important reforms and philanthropies that now prevail in Christendom. The principles thus laid down contained germs endowed with the power of life and growth which, expanding and flourishing, slowly it may be, but surely, have at the last borne the fruits we see.
Take, for example, the institution of slavery. It Examples: slavery.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 1 Cor. vii, 21.it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." 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, Gal. iii, 26, 28.... for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." "He that is called in the Lord, being a 1 Cor. vii, 22.servant, is the Lord's freeman." The converted slave is to be received "not now as a servant, but above Philemon 16.a servant, a brother beloved." 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 Relations between the sexes.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 Matt. xix, 4.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." 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 1 Cor. vii, 3. intelligible, commands as "to render due benevolence," 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.
Take, again, the place of woman in the world. We need no injunction of the veil or the Elevation of woman.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 1 Thess. iv, 4.and honor." Men are to treat "the 1 Tim. v, 2.elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity." Women are to "adorn themselves 1 Tim. ii, 9. in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety." 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 1 Pet. iii, 7.like that of "giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel," 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.
In the type of Mussulman government which (though Relations with the State.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 Christianity leaves humanity free to expand.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.
And so, throughout the whole range of political, religious, social, and domestic relations, the The Koran checks progress.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]
Writers have indeed been found who, dwelling Is Islam suitable for any nation?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 Luke ii, 10. tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people," 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]
Although with the view of placing the argument on independent ground I have refrained No sacrifice for sin or redemptive grace.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 Luke i, 77-79.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."
But even apart from these, the special blessings of Contrast between divine and human work.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 Job xxxviii, 5.measures of the earth," and "hath stretched the line upon it," but not the less with an ever-varying adaptation to time and place? and which the artificial imitation?