As the koran has attained considerable celebrity, we should hardly be pardoned should we not notice it. The passage on which the Mohammedan rests his whole faith, for sublimity, and which is confessedly unapproached by any thing else in the koran, is the following:
"God! There is no God but he; the living, the self-subsisting; neither slumber nor sleep seizeth him; to him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven, and on earth. Who is he that can intercede with him but through his good pleasure? He knoweth that which is past, and that which is to come. His throne is extended over heaven and earth, and the preservation of both is to him no burden. He is the High, the Mighty."
If the above passage contained a single original thought, it might entitle it to higher praise than it can now receive. But as there is no thought expressed, but may be found in the book of Job, or among the inimitable Psalms of David, written from sixteen hundred to two thousand years before Mohammed, and which this pretended prophet had before him—and as we can hardly allow their originality of expression—the only praise that can be bestowed upon its author is, that of having studied the Jewish scriptures pretty closely, a fact that is exhibited throughout his famous production. But while we acknowledge that this is a brilliant passage, it evidently does not surpass, nor even equal, either of the following, selected from our own times.
"Eternal Spirit! God of truth! to whom
All things seem as they are. Thou who of old
The prophet's eye unsealed, that nightly saw
While heavy sleep fell down on other men,
In holy vision tranced, the future pass
Before him, and to Judah's harp attuned
Burdens which make the pagan mountains shake,
And Zion's cedars bow,—inspire my song;
My eye unscale; me what is substance teach,
And shadow what, while I of things to come,
As past rehearsing, sing the course of time.
—Hold my right hand, Almighty! and me teach
To strike the lyre——to notes
Which wake the echoes of Eternity."—Pollok.
In the above extracts there is this remarkable difference: Mohammed, in his description of Deity, has no thought that refers to a moral perfection of God! And indeed gross sensuality, and a destitution of high and spiritual views, characterize his whole work.
But with Pollok, the first thought is spirit—a second, truth. And aside from this peculiarity, although you turn over every leaf of the koran, we affirm that you cannot find so sublime a conception as the following:
"Hold my right hand, Almighty! and me teach
To strike the lyre,——to notes
That wake the echoes of eternity."
But how infinitely, both in grandeur and simplicity, do all these fall short of the inimitable original of most of these, penned by David of the Old, or Paul of the New Testament.
"O, my God, take me not away in the midst of my days: thy years are throughout all generations. Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."
"Who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in Light which no man can approach unto,—whom no man hath seen, nor can see!"