[331]. This too when the Founder of Christianity talks of “Eating and drinking at his table!” (Luke xxii. 29). My notes have often touched upon this inveterate prejudice, the result, like the soul-less woman of Al-Islam, of ad captandum, pious fraud. “No soul knoweth what joy of the eyes is reserved for the good in recompense for their works” (Koran xxxii. 17) is surely as “spiritual” as St. Paul (I Cor. ii., 9.) Some lies, however, are very long-lived, especially those begotten by self-interest.
[332]. I have elsewhere noted its strict conservatism which, however, it shares with all Eastern faiths in the East. But progress, not quietism, is the principle which governs humanity and it is favoured by events of most different nature. In Egypt the rule of Mohammed Ali the Great and in Syria the Massacre of Damascus (1860) have greatly modified the constitution of Al-Islam throughout the nearer East.
[333]. Chapt. viii. “Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia;” London, Macmillan, 1865.
[334]. The Soc. Jesu has, I believe, a traditional conviction that converts of Israelitic blood bring only misfortune to the Order.
[335]. I especially allude to an able but most superficial book, the “Ten Great Religions” by James F. Clarke (Boston, Osgood, 1876), which caricatures and exaggerates the false portraiture of Mr. Palgrave. The writer’s admission that, “Something is always gained by learning what the believers in a system have to say in its behalf,” clearly shows us the man we have to deal with and the “depths of his self-consciousness.”
[336]. But how could the Arabist write such hideous grammar as “La Ilāh illa Allāh” for “Lá iláha (accus.) ill’ Allah?”
[337]. p. 996 “Muhammad” in vol. iii. Dictionary of Christian Biography. See also the Illustration of the Mohammedan Creed, etc. from Al-Ghazáli introduced (pp. 72–77) into Bell and Sons’ “History of the Saracens” by Simon Ockley, B.D. (London, 1878). I regret that some Orientalist did not correct the proofs: everybody will not detect “Al-Lauh al-Mahfúz” (the Guarded Tablet) in “Allauh ho’hnehphoud” (p. 171); and this but a pinch out of a camel-load.
[338]. The word should have been Arianism. This “heresy” of the early Christians was much aided by the “Discipline of the Secret,” supposed to be of apostolic origin, which concealed from neophytes, catechumens and penitents all the higher mysteries, like the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Metastoicheiosis (transubstantiation), the Real Presence, the Eucharist and the Seven Sacraments; when Arnobius could ask, Quid Deo cum vino est? and when Justin, fearing the charge of Polytheism, could expressly declare the inferior nature of the Son to the Father. Hence the creed was appropriately called Symbol, i.e. Sign of the Secret. This “mental reservation” lasted till the Edict of Toleration, issued by Constantine in the fourth century, held Christianity secure when divulging her “mysteries”; and it allowed Arianism to become the popular creed.
[339]. The Gnostics played rather a fantastic rôle in Christianity with their Demiurge, their Æonogony, their Æons by syzygies or couples, their Maio and Sabscho and their beatified bride of Jesus, Sophia Achamoth; and some of them descended to absolute absurdities e.g. the Tascodrugitæ and the Pattalorhinchitæ who during prayers placed their fingers upon their noses or in their mouths, &c., reading Psalm cxli. 3.
[340]. “Kitáb al-’Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán” = The Book of the Beginnings on the Wiles of Womankind (Lane i. 38.)