1178. So the Bible is true because of the miracles which it records; and these are true because the Bible records them!
1179. If she can so confine her mind as to become master of the pyramid of facts which I have raised in favour of Spiritualism, she will perceive that all other evidence of immortality sinks into insignificance as compared with it. Now all this may be nominally abrogated by denying the truth of it. But if I do not rely on my own senses, is it likely I shall rely on those of other persons, in whom I have no more confidence than her clerical adviser and herself have in Mohammed and his disciples.
1180. I subjoin a portion of the letter of the clerical champion, whose reasoning this interesting devotee deems so conclusive. I have gone over the whole of it, and have ascertained that by substituting Allah for God, Mohammed for Christ, Prophet for Redeemer, Mediator for Saviour, it has a qualification which would be deemed a merit elsewhere, if not in Christendom: it would serve just as well to uphold the religion of Mohammed, as that of Christ.
1181. The letter is so long that it would occupy too many pages to give the whole; but I will give a portion, sufficient to show how the reasoning, on which many sectarians rely, may be just as good for any other creed, founded on an arrogation of premises, as that for which they contend.
1182. “Allah forbid that I should depreciate the value of reason in any of its offices. Reason is Allah’s gift to man, and must be used as Allah designs. But so is the Koran Allah’s gift to man, and must be used as Allah designs. Two gifts from the same perfect being cannot conflict with each other. The Koran in its teachings and revealings may go beyond or rise above the comprehension of our reason, because reason in man is a finite and imperfect gift, while the Koran from Allah opens the mind of an infinite and perfect being. But the Koran does not and cannot in any thing contradict reason, because Allah does not and cannot contradict himself. Unless, therefore, you are prepared to say that the Koran is not Allah’s gift to man—if you are a believer in its true divine inspiration—you must see and admit that when the Koran, as Allah’s mouth, reveals any thing which our reason cannot as yet comprehend, because beyond or above, though not against, that reason, then Faith must submissively receive the revelation addressed to it, and Reason stop her speculation and shut her mouth at the limit which Allah has set. Reason has to do with the evidences which show the Koran to be Allah’s gift; with the grammatical and intended sense of what Allah taught and revealed in the Koran, and with the use of what in the Koran is clear to the comprehension of man. But here Reason’s province ends. When the Koran goes beyond or rises above this point, Reason must pause and adore, and Faith must go forward and receive. I do not hold, as you intimate, that the right exercise of reason ‘is impious,’ or that Reason is to be discarded and Faith substituted, if by this be implied any thing incompatible between the proper offices of Reason and Faith; but I mean that our finite reason is to stop at the limit assigned her by her author, and let Faith as a higher power go forward and receive what Allah teaches or reveals to her acceptance. Faith can now receive more than Reason can as yet comprehend. She does so in the province of nature; she must do so in the province of revelation. This cannot be denied without taking at once the ground of the infidel—a ground from which, I doubt not, you would shrink back as from the border of an open pit of destruction.
1183. I am thus brought to your remark, that ‘The Mohammedan system, as generally received, is not difficult to understand.’ If this be strictly true, it must be because that system, ‘as generally received,’ is not the true system; for, in this sense, or as truly and rightly received, the Mohammedan system contains various things which it is difficult to understand, if by understanding be meant comprehending. We may, indeed, understand that a fact or a truth exists or is revealed, while that fact or that truth itself is, for the present, utterly beyond or above our comprehension. And this is precisely the case with the Mohammedan system rightly viewed. It contains various facts and truths which our reason cannot yet fathom. Natural reason loves to separate and set aside these great and high things from the Koran as non-essentials, and then to busy itself with those parts of the Koran which are level with its own height; pleased with the dream that it has grasped enough, has grasped all that can be of any real value. Believe me when reason does this, for one who has the Koran in his hands, she plays at a perilous game.
1184. The main position which I have thus far taken is, however, virtually conceded in another part of your letter. Alluding to what I had urged as to the importance of acknowledging Mohammed as your mediator, and relying on his mediation only for justification as all-sufficient, reconciling all difficulties, and removing all embarrassment from the consideration of the union of justice and mercy in the deity, you say: ‘But does it remove all embarrassment? Is not Allah himself the author of the plan of salvation? Was not Mohammed himself Allah, and also his vicegerent?’ The impossibility of answering these questions satisfactorily to the plainest reason, teaches me to recoil from the impiety of inquiring how my Maker will save me or reconcile his own attributes? I know full well that the great mass of human minds are totally incapable of considering such a subject with any approximation to a solution of it, and therefore do I feel that the eternal salvation or condemnation of mankind does not depend on such theological questions. Here you directly admit the inability of reason in most minds satisfactorily to comprehend some of the great and high points of the Mohammedan system, and the consequent impiety of her attempting such a comprehension. You might as well explicitly admit her inability for this comprehension in all minds; for no mind in its present state can by reason alone grasp all that Allah has revealed in the Koran. These great and high things are not proposed to reason alone, but to reason so far as their evidence is concerned, and to faith so far as their substance is to be received. Reason may satisfy herself that they are revealed. Faith alone can take in the substance which they contain. When they are proposed to it, faith must receive them, or salvation cannot come, whether the reason of the individual addressed be the ‘plainest’ or otherwise.
1185. Your argument in the above extract does not satisfy me so well as your admission. From the inability of the great mass of minds satisfactorily to comprehend the high mysteries of the Koran, you infer that the ‘eternal salvation or condemnation of mankind does not depend on such theological questions.’ Certainly, the salvation of mankind in the mass does not depend on these or any other theological questions; if by this be meant depending on the ability to comprehend such questions, because the points involved in these questions, so far as they are mysteries, are proposed not to reason as comprehending, but to faith as receiving. But do you mean to be understood as saying, that when the Koran is put into any man’s hand, and when Allah through the Koran opens to that man his revealed way of salvation, the individual thus approached may accept what is level with his reason, but reject what is proposed to his faith and above his reason, and that yet notwithstanding such rejection he may reasonably hope to be saved? If so, I ask you by what right you argue thus? Who is Allah, and what is man? When he tells you the way in which he will save you, not the mass of mankind or the heathen to whom the Koran has never come, but you yourself, what right have you to say that your salvation does not depend on your faith’s reception of those very things which are above your reason’s comprehension? How do you know but that the whole efficacy of the plan proposed to you, depends on your receiving the great facts and truths propounded to your faith? ‘Faith itself, I admit,’ you may contend, ‘does not save any man; it is the Mediator that saves.’ But you have no right to say, or think, or hope that he will or can save you with the Koran in your hand, in any other way than that which in the Koran he proposes to your faith. And if when he demands your faith in what surpasses your reason, you withhold that faith, and plead the sufficiency of what he has incidentally made level with your reason, do you not thereby show that you have not the spirit which he requires, and that you are yet none of his? In the Koran he has not only revealed to you his mission and sanctification, but also proposed to you his mediation as a propitiation for your sin; and he has told you that ‘you must be born again,’ not only of water, but also ‘of the spirit;’ that except you be converted and become as a ‘little child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven;’ and that ‘he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned:’ ‘believeth’ not a part only, but the whole of the Koran then intrusted to its Ulemas. Here he explicitly demands your faith in the whole Koran. But suppose it had been otherwise, suppose he had simply opened to you a way by which he could certainly save you, without saying any thing about faith, as the one great and necessary receiver of the facts and truths involved in that way; I ask, would not a rejection of a part of those involved facts and truths be equivalent to a rejection of the whole? Would it not display the same spirit as a rejection of the whole? Would it not show that you were not walking in his way, but in some other which you supposed might possibly be found? Nay, would it not show that in your heart you had no confidence in him as a mediator; that you even rebelled against his right to prescribe to you the terms on which he would save you?”
1186. To conclude, with respect to this guardian angel of my soul, to whom this digression owes its existence; it may comfort her to know that I conceive myself so securely protected and guided already, and so sure of the result of that guidance and protection, that I would advise her, in my turn, to consider well whether she ought not to pray to God to give her a little more light respecting her own destiny, than is afforded by the book which is vaunted as being above reason, and as being the word of God. Does she conceive the subterranean cave with the “lake of unquenchable fire,” in which Dives is roasting in sight of the blessed, to be so satisfactory as to be unwilling to hear of a preferable abode in the azure sky? Does she aspire to some official position commensurate with that of the judgships which Christ promised his disciples? If it is to procure me a place in the heaven described in Scripture, I beg leave to decline, being pre-engaged; and therefore give her an invitation to meet me hereafter in the glorious abode to which I confidently aspire, and where I shall feel myself especially called upon to render her my assistance to rise from the inferior though happy sphere to which, with her present opinions, she is destined.
1187. I would recommend to her, and to others in the same predicament, the perusal of the influence of the conversion to Spiritualism on my friends, as presented in this volume. I would also recommend her to study the comparison made between the heaven and hell of Scripture and that of Spiritualism, as herein presented.