“Mohammed did not, indeed, himself conquer a world like Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon. He did not himself weld together into a homogeneous whole a vast system of states like Charles the Great. He was not a philosophic king, like Marcus Aurelius, nor philosopher like Aristotle or like Bacon, ruling by pure reason the world of thought for centuries with a more than kingly power; he was not a legislator for all mankind, nor even the highest part of it, like Justinian; nor did he cheaply earn the title of the Great by being the first among rulers to turn, like Constantine, from the setting to the rising sun. He was not a universal philanthropist, like the greatest of the Stoics.
“Nor was he the apostle of the highest form of religion and civilisation combined, like Gregory or Boniface, like Leo or Alfred the Great. He was less, indeed, than most of these in one or two of the elements that go to make up human greatness, but he was also greater. Half Christian and half Pagan, half civilised and half barbarian, it was given to him in a marvellous degree to unite the peculiar excellences of the one with the peculiar excellences of the other. ‘I have seen,’ said the ambassador sent by the triumphant Quraish to the despised exile at Medina—‘I have seen the Persian Chosroes and the Greek Heraclius sitting upon their thrones; but never did I see a man ruling his equals as does Mohammed.’
“Head of the State as well as of the Church, he was Cæsar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope’s pretensions, Cæsar without the legions of Cæsar. Without a standing army, without a body-guard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by a right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments, and without its supports.
* * *
“By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Mohammed is a three-fold founder—of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion. Illiterate himself, scarcely able to read or write, he was yet the author of a book which is a poem, a code of laws, a Book of Common Prayer, and a Bible in one, and is reverenced to this day by a sixth of the whole human race, as a miracle of purity of style, of wisdom, and of truth. It was the one miracle claimed by Mohammed—his standing miracle he called it; and a miracle indeed it is. But looking at the circumstances of the time, at the unbounded reverence of his followers, and comparing him with the Fathers of the Church or with mediæval saints, to my mind the most miraculous thing about Mohammed is, that he never claimed the power of working miracles. Whatever he had said he could do, his disciples would straightway have seen him do. They could not help attributing to him miraculous acts which he never did, and which he always denied he could do. What more crowning proof of his sincerity is needed? Mohammed to the end of his life claimed for himself that title only with which he had begun, and which the highest philosophy and the truest Christianity will one day, I venture to believe, agree in yielding to him, that of a Prophet, a very Prophet of God.” (Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 340.)
(8) Major Robert Durie Osborn, in his Islām under the Arabs, says:—
“He (Muḥammad) was brought face to face with the question which every spiritual reformer has to meet and consider, against which so many noble spirits have gone to ruin. Will not the end justify the means? ‘Here am I a faithful servant of God, eager only to enthrone Him in the hearts of men, and at the very goal and termination of my labours I am thwarted by this incapacity to work a miracle. It is true, as these infidels allege, that the older prophets did possess this power, and I, unless the very reason and purpose of my existence is to be made a blank, must also do something wonderful. But what kind of miracle?’ In his despair, Muḥammad declared that the Qurʾān itself was that constantly-recurring miracle they were seeking after. Had they ever heard these stories of Noah, Lot, Abraham, Joseph, Zacharias, Jesus, and others? No; neither had he. They were transcripts made from the ‘preserved Table,’ that stood before the throne of God. The archangel Gabriel had revealed them to Muḥammad, written in pure Arabic, for the spiritual edification of the Quraish. Thus in the twelfth Sūrah, where he details at great length an exceedingly ridiculous history of Joseph, he commences the narrative with these words, as spoken by God:—
‘These are signs of the clear Book.
An Arabic Qurʾān have we sent it down, that ye might understand it.’
And at the close of the Sūrah, we are told:—