That the moral code of Islam should be even more effective than the Christian in lifting savages to a higher moral level is attributed by Canon Taylor to the fact that the moral standard of Christianity is so high that “its virtues are only vaguely understood and not generally practiced, while the lower virtues which Islam enforces are understood and generally practiced.”
In a word, it is with Islam’s morality the same as with its theology. Its doctrine of one God is simple, concrete, and easily understood, and for this reason Islam is admittedly more readily accepted by races low in culture than Christianity with its metaphysical doctrine of the Trinity. As the simplicity and concreteness of its teachings respecting deity adapt its creed to the savage mind, so do the lower concrete practical virtues of its moral code adapt it to the rudimentary moral sense of the primitive man.
Effects upon Mohammedan morality of an unpliant law
One of the most striking and instructive phenomena of universal history is the contrasted fortunes of Mohammedan and Christian civilization. In the eighth century of our era Mohammedan culture was in many respects superior to that of Christendom. It held forth great promises for the future. But these promises were not kept. Stagnation quickly followed the period of brilliant achievement, and a blight fell upon the Moslem world, while the history of Christendom has been a record of wonderful development and progress, until to-day the two worlds cannot be placed in comparison with one another, but only in contrast.
Beyond question many agencies, such as race, religion, and government, have concurred to produce this contrast in history and fortune, but equally certain is it that a potent contributory cause is the difference in the moral systems which the two civilizations respectively inherited. The moral life of the Christian world, happily freed from the bondage of the rigid Mosaic law, an outer law of positive minute commands, has expatiated under the comprehensive, flexible law of the Gospel, a law of love and liberty. As a result the moral life of Christendom has been, on the whole, notwithstanding certain Mohammedanizing tendencies, an expansive growth under the guidance of a moral consciousness gradually purified and refined by experience and advancing culture. On the other hand, the moral life of the Mohammedan world has been subjected to the authority of an external, unchanging law, a law conceived to have been given for all time, a republication practically of that rigid Mosaic law from the bondage of which the Christian world had fortunately escaped. But the moral life cannot be thus subjected to a rigid external authority without resulting inanition and death. “The blight that has fallen on the Moslem nations,” declares a well-informed and thoughtful Mohammedan writer, “is due to the patristic doctrine which has prohibited the exercise of individual judgment.”[671] The ethical code of a people, like its civil code, must be elastic and responsive to the ever-changing needs and demands of the growing moral life.
CHAPTER XV
THE MORAL LIFE OF EUROPE DURING THE AGE OF CHIVALRY
I. The Church consecrates the Martial Ideal of Knighthood
Introductory
From the third to the ninth century the ideal of asceticism absorbed a great part of the moral enthusiasm of Christendom. During the later part of this period, however, as we have noted, there was growing up alongside the ascetic ideal another of a very different character—the martial ideal of knighthood. In the present chapter we shall first make a brief survey of the various causes that gave this new trend to the moral feelings and convictions of the age, and then shall glance at some of the more important historical outcomes of the vast enthusiasm evoked by this new ideal of character.
The ideal of knighthood, a product in the main of feudalism, grew up outside the Church, and only later was recognized by ecclesiastical authority and approved as compatible with the ethical spirit of Christianity. Had not the ideal been thus approved by ecclesiastical authority, and advantage taken of the enthusiasm it evoked to promote through it the cause of the Church, it would never have become the significant force it did in European history. Therefore we must first inquire what were the influences that engendered a military spirit in the Church and led it to approve the martial ideal of the knight and give the consecration of religion to the institution of chivalry which was its embodiment.