In fact, part of this criticism was voiced by the Pharisees, as they attacked the Sadducean insistence upon the letter of the Law. The Pharisean spirit of progress applied new methods of interpretation to the Mosaic Code and especially to the Decalogue, deriving from them a higher conception of God and godliness, breaking the fetters of the letter, and working mainly for the holiness of the inner life and the endeavor to spread happiness about.[1414] Taking no heed of the actual achievements of the Synagogue, the Paulinian Church rose triumphantly to power after the downfall of the Jewish State and impregnated the Christian world with hostility to Judaism and the Jew, which lasts to this very day, thus turning the gospel of love into a source of religious hatred.
10. Nevertheless it cannot be denied that Paulinian Christianity, while growing into a world-conquering Church, achieved the dissemination of the Sinaitic doctrines as neither Judaism nor the Judæo-Christian sect could ever have done. The [pg 440] missionary zeal of the apostle to the heathen caused a fermentation and dissolution in the entire neo-Jewish world, which will not end until all pagan elements are eliminated. Eventually the whole of civilization will accept, through a purified Christianity, the Fatherhood of God, the only Ruler of the world, and the brotherhood of all men as His children. Then, in place of an unsound overemphasis on the principle of love, justice will be the foundation of society; in place of a pessimistic other-worldliness, the optimistic hope for a kingdom of God on earth will constitute the spiritual and ethical ideal of humanity. We must not be blind to the fact that only her alliance with Rome, her holding in one hand the sword of Esau and in the other the Scriptures of the house of Jacob, made the Church able to train the crude heathen nations for a life of duty and love, for the willing subordination to a higher power, and caused them to banish vice and cruelty from their deep hold on social and domestic life. Only the powerful Church was able to develop the ancient Jewish institutions of charity and redeeming love into magnificent systems of beneficence, which have led civilization forward toward ideals which it will take centuries to realize.
Nor must we overlook the mission of the Church in the realm of art, a mission which Judaism could never have undertaken. The stern conception of a spiritual God who tolerated no visible representation of His being made impossible the development of plastic art among the Jews. The semi-pagan image worship of the Christian Church, the representation of God and the saints in pictorial form, favored ecclesiastical art, until it broadened in the Renaissance into the various arts of modern times. Similarly, the predominance of mysticism over reason, of the emotions over the intellect in the Church, gave rise to its wonderful creation of music, endowing the soul with new powers to soar aloft to undreamed-of heights of emotion, to be carried along as upon Seraph's [pg 441] wings to realms where human language falters and grows faint. Beyond dispute Christianity deserves great credit for having among all religions opened wide the flood gates of the soul by cultivating the emotions through works of art and the development of music, thereby enriching human life in all directions.
11. Islam, the other daughter of Judaism, for its part, fostered the intellectual side of humanity, so contemptuously neglected by the Church. The cultivation of philosophy and science was the historical task assigned to the Mohammedan religion. From the sources of information we have about the life and revelation of Mohammed, we learn that the origin of the belief in Allah, the God of Abraham, goes back to an earlier period when Jewish tribes settled in south Arabia. Among these Jews were traders, goldsmiths, famous warriors, and knights endowed with the gift of song, who disseminated Jewish legends concerning Biblical heroes.[1415] Amid hallucinations and mighty emotional outbursts this belief in Allah took root in the fiery soul of Mohammed, who thus received sublime conceptions of the one God and His creation, and of the world's Judge and His future Day of Judgment. The sight of idolatry, cruelty, and vice among his countrymen filled him with boundless indignation, so that he began his career as a God-sent preacher of repentance, modeling his life after the great prophets of yore. With drastic threats of the last Judgment he tried to force the idolaters to return to Allah in true repentance. But few of his hearers believed in his prophetic mission, and the leading men of the city of Mecca, who derived a large income from the heathen sanctuary there, opposed him with fierce and violent measures.
Thus he was forced to flee to the Jewish colony of Yathrib, afterwards called Medina, “the city” of the prophet. He hoped for recognition there, especially after he had made certain concessions, such as turning the face toward Jerusalem in prayer, and keeping the Day of Atonement on the tenth of Tishri. In addition, he emphasized the unity of God in the strongest possible manner, and opposed every encroachment upon it by the belief in additional powers or persons, attacking the Christians on the one hand and his Arabian countrymen on the other, with the sarcastic phrase: “Verily, God has neither a son, nor has He any daughter.” In spite of all these facts, the Jews could not be brought to recognize the uneducated son of the desert as a prophet. Therefore his proffered friendship was turned to deadly hatred and passionate revenge. His whole nature underwent a great change; his former enthusiasm and prophetic zeal were replaced by calculation and worldly desire, so that the preacher of repentance of Mecca became at the last a lover of bloodshed, robbery and lust. Instead of Jerusalem he chose Mecca with its heathen traditions as the center of his religious system and aimed chiefly to win the Arabian tribes for his divine revelation.
Thus the entire Arabian nation, full of youthful energy, burning with the impulse of great deeds, bore the faith of the One God to the world by the sword. Like Israel of old, it stepped forth from the desert with a divine revelation contained in a holy book. It conquered first the Christian lands of the East, which under the Trinitarian dogma had lapsed from pure monotheism, then the northern coast of Africa, and it finally unfurled the green flag of Islam over the lands of the West to free them from the fanatical Church. Henceforth war was waged for centuries between the One God of Abraham and the triune God of the Church in both Spain and Palestine. Then might the genius of history ask: “Watchman, [pg 443] what of the night? Watchman, what of the night?” And again the words are heard, as from on high: “The morning cometh, and also the night.” The final victory is yet to come.
12. It cannot be denied that the Mohammedan monotheism has a certain harshness and bluntness. It cannot win the heart by the mildness of heaven or the recognition of man's individuality. Islam, as the name denotes, demands blind submission to the will of God, and it has led to a fatalism which paralyzes the sense of freedom, and to a fanaticism which treats every other faith with contempt. Islam has remained a national religion, which has never attained the outlook upon the whole of humanity, so characteristic of the prophets of Israel. Its view of the hereafter is crude and sensuous, while its picture of the Day of Judgment bears no trace of the divine mercy. On the other hand, we must recognize that the reverence of the Koran lent the “Men of the Book,” the representatives of culture, greater dignity, and provided a mighty incentive to study and inquiry. Damascus and Bagdad became under the Caliphs centers of learning, of philosophical study and scientific investigation, uniting Nestorian, Jew, and Mohammedan in the great efforts towards general enlightenment. The consequence was that Greek science and philosophy, banished by the Church, were revived by the Mohammedan rulers and again cultivated, so that Judaism also felt their fructifying power. Our modern Christian civilization, so-called by Christian historians, is largely the fruit of the rich intellectual seeds sown by Mohammedans and Jews, after the works of ancient Greeks had been translated into Syrian, Arabic, and Hebrew by a group of Syrian Unitarians (the Nestorians) assisted by Jewish scholars.[1416]
As for instance the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II, the friend of Jewish and other liberal thinkers, was much more of an investigator than a believer, so did the spirit of investigation derived from Islam and Judaism pervade Christendom, and create the great intellectual movements which finally undermined its creeds and shattered its solidarity into contending sects. Return to the Bible and the God of the Bible, to a Sabbath devoted to instruction in the word of God, and to the recognition of human freedom and the sanctity of the family—this was the watchword of the Reformation. Return to the right of free thought and free conscience, which implies the pure worship of God as He lives in the heart, is now the watchword of those who endeavor to reform the Protestant Church. That is, both are moved by a desire to return to the principles and ideals set forth by Israel's prophets of old.
13. Both the Church, Protestant and Catholic, and the Mosque have a Providential mission which they must fulfill through the ages of history, until all the heathen have learned to worship God as the spirit of holiness in man, instead of seeking Him in the blind forces of nature or of destiny. True, the Mohammedan religion is predisposed to sensuality and still awaits the process of purification to become completely spiritualized; yet indications are not lacking that a process of reform is approaching to bring out the gold of pure monotheism and cast off the dross of Oriental voluptuousness and superstition. We must remember that during the dark night of medieval ignorance and barbarism Islam carried throughout all lands the torch of philosophy and scientific investigation and of the pure faith in God. Even to-day it accomplishes far more for the advancement of life in the east of Asia and the south of Africa than did the Russian Church with her gross superstition and idolatry, or even some branches of Protestantism, with their deification of a human being.
Between Church and Mosque, hated and despised by both, stood and still stands the Synagogue, proudly conscious of its divine mission. It feels itself the banner-bearer of a truth which brooks no compromise, of a justice which insists on the rights of all men. It offers the world a religion of peace and love, admitting no division or discord among mankind, waiting for the day when the God of Sinai shall rear high His throne in the hearts of all men and nations. To-day the Synagogue, rejuvenated by the influences of modern culture, looks with ever greater confidence to a speedy realization of its Messianic hope for all humanity.