§ 7. Mohammedanism a Relapse; the worst Form of Monotheism, and a retarding Element in Civilization.
According to this view, which is no doubt correct, the monotheism of Mohammed is that which makes of God pure will; that is, which exaggerates personality (since personality is in will), making the Divine One an Infinite Free Will, or an Infinite I. But will divorced from reason and love is wilfulness, or a purely arbitrary will.
Now the monotheism of the Jews differed from this, in that it combined with the idea of will the idea of justice. God not only does what he chooses, but he chooses to do only what is right. Righteousness is an attribute of God, with which the Jewish books are saturated.
Still, both of these systems leave God outside of the world; above all as its Creator and Ruler, above all as its Judge; but not through all and in all. The idea of an Infinite Love must be added and made supreme, in order to give us a Being who is not only above all, but also through all and in all. This is the Christian monotheism.
Mohammed teaches not only the unity but also the spirituality of God, but his idea of the divine Unity is of a numeric unity, not a moral unity; and so his idea of divine spirituality is that of an abstract spirituality,—God abstracted from matter, and so not to be represented by pictures and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above all,—in a total separation.
Judaism also opposed idolatry and idol-worship, and taught that God was above all, and the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as with man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets, judges, kings; also with his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their tabernacle and temple. Their spirituality was not quite as abstract then as that of the Mohammedans.
But Christianity, as soon as it became the religion of a non-Semitic race, as soon as it had converted the Greeks and Romans, not only imparted to them its monotheism, but received from them their strong tendencies to pantheism. They added to the God "above all," and the God "with all," the God "in us all." True, this is also to be found in original Christianity as proceeding from the life of Jesus. The New Testament is full of this kind of pantheism,—God in man, as well as God with man. Jesus made the step forward from God with man to God in man,—"I in them, thou in me." The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God who is not only will and power, not only wisdom and law, but also love; of a God who desires communion and intercourse with his children, so coming and dwelling in them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and God in us.
According to this view, Mohammedanism is a relapse. It is going back to a lower level. It is returning from the complex idea to the simple idea. But the complex is higher than the simple. The seed-germ, and the germ-cell, out of which organic life comes, is lower than the organizations which are developed out of it. The Mollusks are more complex and so are higher than the Radiata, the Vertebrata are more complex than the Mollusks. Man is the most complex of all, in soul as well as body. The complex idea of God, including will, thought, and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than the simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches. But the higher ought to come out of and conquer the lower. How, then, did Mohammedanism come out of Christianity and Judaism?
The explanation is to be found in the law of reaction and relapse. Reaction is going back to a lower ground, to pick up something which has been dropped, forgotten, left behind, in the progress of man. The condition of progress is that nothing shall be lost. The lower truth must be preserved in the higher truth; the lower life taken up into the higher life. Now Christianity, in going forward, had accepted from the Indo-Germanic races that sense of God in nature, as well as God above nature, which has always been native with those races. It took up natural religion into monotheism. But in taking it up, it went so far as to lose something of the true unity of God. Its doctrine of the Trinity, at least in its Oriental forms, lost the pure personal monotheism of Judaism. No doubt the doctrine of the Trinity embodies a great truth, but it has been carried too far. So Mohammedanism came, as a protest against this tendency to plurality in the godhead, as a demand for a purely personal God It is the Unitarianism of the East. It was a new assertion of the simple unity of God, against polytheism and against idolatry.
The merits and demerits, the good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be found in this, its central idea concerning God. It has taught submission, obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism. It has made social life lower. Its governments are not governments. Its virtues are stoical. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the submission to an infinite despotism. Time is that it came to an end. Its work is done. It is a hard, cold, cruel, empty faith, which should give way to the purer forms of a higher civilization.