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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY
Frederick Maurice
LACONIA PUBLISHERS
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Copyright © 2016 by Frederick Maurice
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON.
PREFACE.
PART I.: THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
PART II.: RELATIONS OF THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD WITH CHRISTIANITY.
THE
RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD
AND THEIR
RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY,
CONSIDERED IN
EIGHT LECTURES
FOUNDED BY THE RIGHT HON. ROBERT BOYLE.
BY
FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A.,
CHAPLAIN OF LINCOLN’S INN, AND
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON.
THE THIRD EDITION, REVISED.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND
THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON.
My Lord,
Through your Lordship’s kindness I was appointed to the Boyle Lectureship; the same kindness has permitted me to relinquish it at the end of one year. I take the liberty of presenting to your Lordship the Discourses of that year. The study of the subject which is considered in them has been most interesting and comforting to myself; I shall be thankful indeed if it should prove of any use to my countrymen. Desiring for the Church universal, for that portion of it especially over which your Lordship presides, and for your Lordship personally all the blessings of this season,
I have the honour to be,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s very obliged Servant,
F. D. MAURICE.
December, 1846.
PREFACE.
THE SUBSTANCE OF THESE LECTURES was delivered, according to the directions of Boyle’s Will, in one of the London Churches, on the first Mondays of certain months in the years 1845 and 1846. Though it is not imperative on the preacher to print his Discourses, it has been the custom to do so. Indeed the intention of the Founder seems to be scarcely fulfilled by addressing a series of Sermons on subjects requiring some attention, at distant intervals, to the eight or ten persons who in the present times compose an ordinary weekday congregation. In preparing them for publication I have omitted the texts, which were little more than mottoes, and have altered the forms of language which belong especially to pulpit composition.
The object of the Lectures, will, I hope, be sufficiently intelligible to those who read them. But it is a duty to speak of some writers who have discussed the same subjects, and to whom I am indebted.
In the first Lecture I have not touched upon the question which is considered in Mr. Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled. My business was with popular views upon the subject, not with learned and ingenious speculations. Of Mr. Forster’s theory I do not feel competent to express an opinion; so far as it evinces a desire to deal fairly with facts which Christian apologists have often perverted, and a confidence, that the cause of Christianity must be the better for such fairness, it must, I am sure, have done good, even if the basis upon which it rests should be found untenable.
Mr. Carlyle’s Lecture on Mahomet in his Hero Worship, is probably much better known to my readers than Mr. Forster’s treatise. Some persons may have been led by that Lecture to identify Mahometanism with reverence for the person of Mahomet; they will strongly object to the sentiments which I have expressed in one passage of this book. But I do not anticipate any such objection from Mr. Carlyle himself. No writer has more distinctly recognized the Islamite principle of subjection to an absolute Will as the vital one in this faith; or has exhibited a more earnest, I had nearly said a more exclusive, veneration for that principle. A man seems to him to be strong or weak, admirable or contemptible, precisely as he is possessed by it or as he substitutes some notion of happiness, some theory of the Universe, in place of it. Those who feel that they are under the deepest obligation to Mr. Carlyle for the power with which he has brought the truth of this principle to their minds, for the proofs which he has given that, as much in the seventeenth century as in the seventh, it could break down whatever did not pay it homage, cannot be persuaded to look upon any phrases of his which appear to convey an opposite impression, however much they may be quoted, however partial he may seem to them himself, as the most genuine expressions of his mind. They rather recognize in these phrases an attempt, confessedly unsuccessful, to bridge over the chasm which separates, as Mr. Carlyle thinks, the ages in which this faith could be acted out from our own in which it has become only a name. That no phrases or formulas, from whatever period or country they may be borrowed, can accomplish this object, Mr. Carlyle is a sufficient witness; that it must be accomplished in some way, his lamentations over the present state of the world abundantly prove. Those who think that it is the first duty of an author to provide them with sunshine, find these lamentations intolerable; there are some who seem to be pleased with them as they might be with any unusually strong exhibition of passion upon the stage. There are others who hear in his wailings the echoes of their own saddest convictions, but who for that reason cannot be content to spend their time merely in listening to them or repeating them. One who desires to lead an honest life, and learns that men in former days were honest, because they believed in a Personal Being, who is, and was, and is to come, must ask himself whether such a belief has become impossible for him. And if we are assured by Mr. Carlyle that under the conditions of Mahometanism or even of Christian Puritanism it is now impossible, then we must again ask, Why so? Is it because the truth which made these faiths so energetic is not what it was, or is it because it dwelt in them apart from other truths, without which in our days, it can scarcely even exist, much less live? These questions may never present themselves to a dilettante admirer of Mr. Carlyle; those whom his writings have really moved, and who regard him with hearty, though perhaps silent, gratitude and affection, are, I know, haunted by them continually. If these Lectures should lead any one such questioner even to hope for an answer, they will do the work for which I especially designed them.
In illustration of the remark that the Mahometan conquerors were not merely ‘Scourges of God,’ however they may have deserved that title, I would suggest to the reader a comparison of their wars with those of Zinghis Khan. May I advise him also to read with some attention the passage in Gibbon (Chap. lxiv. Vol. xi. pp. 391, 392, Svo. Ed.) on the philosophical religion of that Mogul whom Frederic II., the accomplished Suabian, the enemy of Popes, the suspected infidel, denounced as the common foe of mankind, against whom he invoked a crusade of all princes? Gibbon’s panegyric, illustrated as it is by his faithful narrative of the proceedings of Zinghis Khan and his successors in Persia, Russia, Hungary, &c., of their incapacity to preserve a record of their own acts, and of their ultimate conversion by the bigotted Mussulman, is full of the deepest instruction.
In connexion with the remarks upon the constitution of Mahometan Society as exhibited in the Ottoman Empire, I would recommend the study of Ranke’s excellent Essay upon that subject in his Fürsten und Volken.
The second Lecture is a collection of hints, which may not, I hope, be quite useless to some whose personal observations of India, or whose knowledge of its languages may enable them to detect my mistakes, and if they please, to laugh at my ignorance. The scholars of British India and the intelligent natives have good right to despise any one who sets up his own notions in opposition to their testimonies, and who makes these notions an excuse for severe reflections upon a state of society with which he is unacquainted. They may possibly be tolerant of one who by comparing their testimonies, so far as he has been able to gather them, has corrected many crude notions which he had previously entertained, and who desires nothing more than that any sentiments of disgust and contempt which Englishmen in India may conceive for the notions and practices which they witness, should rather be counteracted than strengthened by their English education. Professor H. Wilson has undertaken an edition of Mr. Mill’s History of British India, in the hope, as he intimates in his preface, of correcting, by the evidence of facts, the harsh judgments of the Hindoos, into which the historian, was led by theory. To the civil and military servants of the Company such a work may be as useful as the design of it is benevolent. But the missionary, though it is to be hoped he will not neglect to profit either by Mr. Mill’s labours, or by the experience and oriental wisdom with which Professor Wilson has enriched them, is open to another kind of temptation, which the one will not much increase, nor the other enable him to resist. The actual sight of a country wholly given to idolatry, must be far more startling and appalling to him than any pictures he can have formed of it previously. Not to weaken these impressions, but to prevent them from overwhelming him, and so destroying that sympathy with the victims of idolatry, which is the most necessary qualification for his task, should be the great object of his home instructors. For this end, I think, we should aim, not merely at cultivating Christian love and pity in his heart: these will scarcely be kept alive, if there be not also an intellectual discipline, (I call it intellectual, yet it is in the very highest sense a moral discipline,) to shew him what the thoughts and feelings of which Hindooism is the expression, have to do with himself, how they are interpreted by the experience of individuals and the history of the world. I look earnestly to St. Augustine’s College, in the hope that it may fulfil both these tasks. Should it do so, it will be indeed worthy of its name; it may be the instrument of restoring faith to England as well as of imparting it to her dependencies. For do we not need, as I have hinted in my last Lecture, to be taught that the Gospel is not a dead letter, by discovering what living wants there are in us, and all men, which it meets and satisfies?
It might have been desirable that I should have appended to this, and the two following Lectures, some illustrative notes: I had intended to do so, but I feared that I should increase the size and price of the volume, without conferring a proportionate benefit upon the reader. I can enumerate in a few lines the books from which my proofs would have been drawn. From them (and they are within the reach of persons who are as ignorant of Oriental literature as I am,) much more may be learnt in the course of a few hours’ fair study, than from long appendices of extracts selected at the pleasure of an Author.
The Essay of Mr. Colebrooke on the Vedas, in the eighth volume of the Asiatic Researches, and Mr. Rosen’s Latin translation of the Rig Veda, are at present the chief helps which the Western student possesses for a knowledge of the earliest Hindoo faith. It is important to observe, that while Mr. Colebrooke’s extracts are chiefly taken from the liturgical part of the Vedas, those upon which the late Rammohun Roy raised his argument for the corruption of the later faith, were doctrinal passages. His conclusion, as I have hinted in my Lecture, is therefore unsatisfactory, though it ought not to be called unfair or disingenuous. If he had quoted the prayers which Mr. Colebrooke has made us acquainted with, English readers would no doubt have discredited his boast of the primitive Monotheism of his country. But they would have done so hastily. Those prayers imply a Monotheism as certainly as the direct teaching; and the one may justly be adduced as the interpretation of the other. The question is, what Monotheism? The prayers and doctrine I think make the same answer: a Monotheism which made it impossible to distinguish the object worshipped from the mind of the worshipper, and therefore which implicitly contained, and out of which was inevitably developed, the later Polytheism. We may be thankful to Rammohun Roy for helping us to detect the old faith at the root of one which seems so unlike it, but cannot allow him to confuse us, however innocently, by the use of a phrase, which is susceptible of the most opposite significations.
The translation of the Menu Code, by Sir W. Jones, brings that part of the subject within the reach of all. I hope the reader will verify the account I have given of it by examining it for himself, together with the excellent digest of it, in the first volume of Mr. Elphinstone’s history.
The third Appendix to the history of this eminent statesman contains an admirable commentary upon the Greek accounts of India, contained in the fifteenth book of Strabo, and the Indica of Arrian.
The Vishnu Purana, edited by Professor Wilson, exhibits another and much more recent stage of the mythology—that which I have spoken of as produced by the artificial incorporation of the old faith with the different kinds of worship which had arisen from popular movements and reactions. To trace the progress of these movements with little help from external history, is of course difficult; no one solution of the problem can be certain; all as hints may be useful. The one I have supposed seems to be internally probable and consistent; still there is an objection to it which I have no wish to conceal. Professor Wilson offers reasons for thinking that the Puranas which have the Siva element predominant in them, are considerably older than those which have the Vaishnava characteristics. It may hence be concluded that the Siva worship itself preceded that of Vishnù. If this were the case, I should be wrong in my fancy respecting the first transition from the merely abstracted Brahminical religion to the popular; at least, wrong in assuming what may have been true in a particular case, as explaining the history generally. Other authorities think that the two forms of worship may have had a contemporaneous development in different places; a view not incompatible with the one I have taken, especially as it is assumed on all hands that the names considered as attributes or characters of the divinity, as forms through which he was beheld, existed almost in the first stage of the religion.
The subject of the Philosophical sects among the Hindoos, is treated by Mr. Colebrooke in a series of papers in the first and second Volumes of the Royal Asiatic Transactions. These papers (which should be compared with the paper on the Védánta System, by Col. Vans Kennedy, Vol. iii. p. 412) are full of interest.
These writings of actual observers should be studied before the speculations of even the most intelligent thinkers. But I should be ungrateful if I did not say that the passages on India in the Mythologies of Baur and Windischmann, and still more in Hegel’s Philosophy of History, with the little book of Frederick Schlegel, called Die Indien, have illuminated many dark and dull reports, and have enabled me to feel the connexion between the thoughts of other periods and countries and those which characterise our own times.
The temptation to speak of Buddhism merely or chiefly in this connexion, is one which I was aware of when I entered upon the subject in my third Lecture, and which I strove to resist. I am sure that any advantage we may derive from a comparison of the difficulties which have beset Asiatics in different ages, with those which are besetting Europeans now, must depend upon the earnestness with which we determine first to understand the former in themselves. If we are more eager to make applications, than to ascertain what we have to apply, we may write a polemical treatise which will convince all who agreed with us before, and will furnish writers in reviews, who have exhausted their old arguments or invectives against some opponent, with a set of new phrases; but we shall not remove one perplexity from any earnest mind; we shall only throw into it a new element of confusion. The ultimate tendencies of Buddhism to entire evaporation, to mere negation, are manifest enough. The like tendencies assuredly exist, perhaps are becoming stronger every day, in Christendom. But to take the result of a certain doctrine or habit of mind, without considering its stages, varieties, counteractions; its lights as well as its shadows; how it weaves for itself at one time a dogmatic or sacerdotal vesture; how it sinks at another into a mere speculation; above all, what an Eternal Verity keeps it alive in all its forms; is not using it for the warning and instruction of men, but turning it into a mask for frightening children. If it is well for us to shew what possibilities lurk in Buddhism because they lurk in us, still more ought we to consider its actual history, because it is the history of a process which may be passing in the minds of persons whom we are most ready to think of as having reached the last development of unbelief; because it may be going on in us when we are giving ourselves credit for the greatest amount of faith.
Entering upon the subject with these feelings, I desired to hear of Buddhism not in digests, which represented it as a system at rest, but from intelligent observers who saw it in motion and described its different appearances. The papers on the subject in the Royal Asiatic Society are for this purpose invaluable, especially those of Mr. Hodgson, to which I have referred in the text (Transactions, Vol. ii. p. 222); that on Buddha and the Phrabat by Captain Low (Vol. iii. p. 57); that on the consecration of priests by Mr. Knox (Vol. iii. p. 271); the disputations respecting Caste by a Buddhist (Vol. iii. p. 160). To these may be added different accounts of the Lama in the Asiatic Researches, (Vol. i. p. 197, and xvii. pp. 522—524,) and the later narrative of Mr. Turner. For a general statement, I know nothing better than the article on Buddhism in the Penny Cyclopaædia. Dr. Pritchard’s works will supply valuable information upon this as upon most other subjects. Of course it would be absurd to slight the French writers upon Buddhism, though on a subject which offers such facilities for systematising, and in which systematising is so likely to mislead, it may be lawful to view them with some suspicion.
Of the Confucian doctrine, on the other hand, they are probably the best, as they are the most zealous and enthusiastic expounders. The Quatre Livres of Confucius, translated by Pauthier, is a moderately-sized and readable book, and the preface to it is very useful and instructive. The Chinese reverence of Fathers is abundantly illustrated in the fourth volume of the Mémoires sur les Chinois, par les Missionaires de Pekin. All our recent writers, Davis, Medhurst, Gutzlaff, though valuable in reference to China generally, are rather vague and unsatisfactory on the subject of its religion. The Chinese exhibition at Knightsbridge was, in this respect, more valuable than any of them.
The recent interpretation of the arrow-headed inscriptions by Major Rawlinson will add, no doubt, greatly to our knowledge of the Persian or Zend doctrines. They seem to confirm the opinion which was so long entertained upon other grounds, that Darius Hystaspes was an instrument in the restoration of the true Persian faith, after it had been subverted by the Pseudo-Smerdis. It seems also clearer than it was before, that the reformation, which is connected with the name of Zoroaster, consisted mainly in the assertion of the absolute supremacy of Ormuzd. It does not follow that Ahriman worship was prohibited or wholly denounced: that it was continually re-appearing in the popular mind, is evident. The later Magian faith may have been an attempt to reconcile the reformed with the popular doctrine; or rather, may it not be supposed, that Zoroaster’s was the regal creed, and that the priests never more than partially recognized it?
What has been said respecting the three cycles of Egyptian gods, is explained at large in the Ægypten of Chevalier Bunsen, Vol. i. p. 423 433. He has a remark (p. 432) upon the mistaken effort to form Triads in different mythologies, by bringing together gods from different localities, or periods of history, which I have found very useful. Keeping it in memory, I think I have learnt more to find in the Triad, an interpretation of all mythology, than if I had laboured ever so diligently to find parallels for it in the external parts of the systems.
If I had been writing a history instead of a lecture, it would have behoved me, when speaking of the relations of Christianity with Persia, to have noticed the Nestorian missions in that country. I believe the history of these missions would throw an important light upon the whole subject; but it would have led me into many details, which, especially in a recapitulation, I was anxious to avoid. To pass over any facts merely because they might tend to the honour of heretics, would be grossly inconsistent with the professions, and, I hope, with the spirit, of these Lectures.
PART I.
THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
LECTURE I.
WHY THESE LECTURES WERE FOUNDED. DESIGN OF THE PRESENT COURSE. MAHOMETANISM. ITS SUCCESSES. REASONS ASSIGNED FOR THEM. PRINCIPLE OF THE FAITH.
IN THE YEAR 1691 ROBERT Boyle directed by a Codicil to his Will “that Eight Sermons should be preached each year in London for proving the Christian Religion against notorious Infidels, to wit, Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews and Mahometans; not descending lower to any controversies that are among Christians themselves.” He desired “that the preacher of these Sermons should be assisting to all companies, and encouraging of them in any undertaking for propagating the Christian Religion to foreign parts;” and “further, that he should be ready to satisfy such real scruples as any may have concerning these matters, and to answer such objections and difficulties as may be started, to which good answers have not yet been made.”
The second of these clauses seems to explain the intention of the first. The objections to Christianity urged by Jews, Pagans and Mahometans, were not, perhaps, likely to perplex an ordinary Englishman. But England, in the 17th century, was becoming more and more a colonizing country. The American settlements were increasing in importance every year. The East India Company had already begun its career of commerce, if not of conquest. In his own particular department of natural science Boyle observed the most steady progress; no one was doing more to accelerate it than himself. He would naturally divine that an advancement, not less remarkable, must take place in another region, in which the interests of men were far more directly engaged. He must have felt how much the student in his closet was helping to give speed to the ships of the merchant, and to discover new openings to his ambition. As a benevolent man he could not contemplate accessions to the greatness and resources of his country, without longing that she might also be conscious of her responsibility, that she might bring no people within the circle of her government whom she did not bring within the circle of her Light. Accordingly, we find him offering frequent encouragement by his pen and purse to the hard-working missionaries who were preaching the Gospel among the North American Indians. Cheering words, pecuniary help, and faithful prayers, might be all which these teachers of savages could ask from their brethren at home. But Boyle knew that difficulties which they would rarely encounter must continually present themselves to those who came in contact with the Brahmin in Hindostan, with the Mussulman both in Europe and Asia, with the Jew in every corner of the globe. A man who thought lightly or contemptuously of any of these, or of their arguments—who had not earnestly considered what they would have to say, and what he had to tell them—could not be expected to do them much good. Moreover, Boyle was too well acquainted with philosophical men, with the general society of England, and with his own heart, not to be aware that there was another kind of opposition more formidable than this, which the proposal to diffuse Christianity abroad must struggle with. Was the gift worth bestowing? Were we really carrying truth into the distant parts of the earth when we were carrying our own faith into them? Might not the whole notion be a dream of our vanity? Might not particular soils be adapted to particular religions? Might not the effort to transplant one into another involve the necessity of mischievous forcing, and terminate in inevitable disappointment? Might not a better day be at hand in which all religions alike should be found to have done their work of partial good, of greater evil, and when something much more comprehensive and satisfactory should supersede them? Were not thick shadows overhanging Christendom itself, which must be scattered before it could be the source of light to the world?
Such questions as these Boyle must often have heard propounded by others; but the deepest and most painful suggestion of them had been to himself. He tells us, in the sketch of an European tour written under the name of Philaretus, that when he was still a young man, after he had visited other places, his curiosity at last led him to those wild mountains where the first and chiefest of the Carthusian abbeys is seated; where the devil, taking advantage of that deep raving melancholy befitting so sad a place, his humour, and the strange stories and pictures he found there of Bruno, the father of that order, suggested such strange and hideous thoughts, and such distracting doubts of some of the fundamentals of Christianity, that though his looks did little betray his thoughts, nothing but the forbiddingness of self-dispatch hindered his acting it. But, after a tedious languishment of many months in this tedious perplexity, at last it pleased God one day he had received the Sacrament to restore unto him the withdrawn sense of his favour. But, though Philaretus ever looked upon these impious suggestions rather as temptations to be resisted than as doubts to be resolved, yet never did these fleeting clouds cease now and then to darken the clearest serenity of his quiet; which made him often say that injections of this nature were such a disease to the faith as toothache is to the body, for though it be not mortal, it is very troublesome. However, as all things work together for good to them that love God, Philaretus derived from this anxiety the advantage of groundedness in his religion; for the perplexity his doubts created obliged him to remove them—to be seriously inquisitive of the truth of the very fundamentals of Christianity, and to hear what both Jews and Turks, and the chief sects of Christians, could allege for their several opinions; that so, though he believed more than he could comprehend, he might not believe more than he could prove, and not owe the stedfastness of his faith to so poor a cause as the ignorance of what might be objected against it. He said, speaking of those persons who want not means to enquire and abilities to judge, that it was not a greater happiness to inherit a good religion, than it was a fault to have it only by inheritance, and think it the best because it is generally embraced, rather than embrace it because we know it to be the best. That though we cannot always give a reason for what we believe, yet we should be ever able to give a reason why we believe it. That it is the greatest of follies to neglect any diligence that may prevent the being mistaken where it is the greatest of miseries to be deceived. That how dear soever things taken upon the score are sold, there is nothing worse taken up upon trust than religion, in which he deserves not to meet with the true one that cares not to examine whether or no it be so.” (Works, Vol. i. p. 12.)
It is evident, I think, that a comparison of religious systems undertaken by a man who had just passed through so tremendous a conflict, and who had no professional motive for entering upon it, must have been something very different from a dry legal enquiry respecting the balance of probabilities in favour of one or the other. I do not mean that Boyle will not have brought to this subject all the habits of patient investigation which he ordinarily applied to the study of physical phenomena. The very anguish of his mind made it essential that he should seek for a real standing ground; and that he should not therefore strain facts for the sake of arriving at an agreeable conclusion. Indeed, it is difficult to say which conclusion would seem most agreeable to a man exercised as he was: there would be at times a bias of understanding, and even affection, as strong against Christianity, as his education could create in favour of it. But, undoubtedly, his object in questioning these different schemes of belief will have been to ascertain what each of them could do for him; what there was in it to meet the demands of his heart and reason. It was no occasion for clever special pleading; the question was to him one of life and death: when he had once resolved it, the next duty was to act upon his conviction, and to strive that all men should be better for that, which he, because he was a man, had found to be needful for himself. Upon this principle he founded these Lectures. The truth of which he had become assured, was, he believed, a permanent one; the next generation would need it as much as his own. He did not suppose that the actual relation in which that truth stood to different systems of belief could alter. But it did not follow that the enquiry respecting the nature of that relation would be exhausted in his day. As new regions unfolded themselves to European adventure, new facts modifying or changing previous notions respecting the faiths which prevailed in them, might come to light; fresh and more trying experiences might make the past more intelligible; the same doubts respecting the justice, wisdom, or possibility of bringing other men into our religious fellowship which presented themselves to his contemporaries, might appear again and again in very different shapes, appealing to even opposite feelings and tempers.
The event, I believe, has proved that he was right. Within fifty years a prodigious change has taken place in the feelings of men generally—of philosophical men particularly—respecting Religious Systems. In the latter part of the 17th century, still more during a great part of the 18th, they were regarded by those who most gave the tone to popular thinking and who had the highest reputation for wisdom, as the inventions of lawgivers and priests. Men cleverer and more dishonest than the rest of the world found it impossible to build up systems of policy or to establish their own power, unless they appealed to those fears of an invisible world which ignorance so willingly receives and so tenderly fosters. This being the admitted maxim respecting religions generally, it seemed the office of the Christian apologist to shew that there was one exception; to explain why the Gospel could not be referred to this origin; how entirely unlike it was to those forms of belief which were rightly considered deceptions. That many dangerous positions were confused by works written with this object; that many of the distinguishing marks of Christianity were brought out in them; that many learnt from them to seek and to find a standing-ground in the midst of pits and morasses, it is impossible to doubt. But the demonstrations of God’s providence were in this case, as in all others, infinitely broader, deeper, more effectual than those of man’s sagacity. The evidence furnished by the great political Revolution at the close of the last century seems slowly to have undermined the whole theory respecting the invisible world and men’s connexion with it, which possessed the teachers of that century. Men are beginning to be convinced, that if Religion had had only the devices and tricks of statesmen or priests to rest upon, it could not have stood at all; for that these are very weak things indeed, which, when they are left to themselves, a popular tempest must carry utterly away. If they have lasted a single day, it must have been because they had something better, truer than themselves, to sustain them. This better, truer thing, it seems to be allowed, must be that very faith in men’s hearts upon which so many disparaging epithets were cast, and which it was supposed could produce no fruits that were not evil and hurtful. Faith it is now admitted has been the most potent instrument of good to the world; has given to it nearly all which it can call precious. But then it is asked, is there not ground for supposing that all the different religious systems, and not one only, may be legitimate products of that faith which is so essential a part of man’s constitution? Are not they manifestly adapted to peculiar times and localities and races? Is it not probable that the theology of all alike is something merely accidental, an imperfect theory about our relations to the universe, which will in due time give place to some other? Have we not reason to suppose that Christianity, instead of being, as we have been taught, a Revelation, has its root in the heart and intellect of man, as much as any other system? Are there not the closest the most obvious relations between it and them? Is it not subject to the same law of decay from the progress of knowledge and society with all the rest? Must we not expect that it too will lose all its mere theological characteristics, and that what at last survives of it will be something of a very general character, some great ideas of what is good and beautiful, some excellent maxims of life, which may very well assimilate, if they be not actually the same, with the essential principles which are contained in all other religions, and which will also, it is hoped, abide for ever?
Notions of this kind will be found, I think, in much of the erudite as well as of the popular literature of this day; they will often be heard in social circles; they are undoubtedly floating in the minds of us all. While we entertain them, it is impossible that we can, with sound hearts and clear consciences, seek to evangelize the world. Yet they are not to be spoken of as if they proceeded from a merely denying, unbelieving spirit: they are often entertained by minds of deepest earnestness; they derive their plausibility from facts which cannot be questioned, and which a Christian should not wish to question. They may, I believe, if fairly dealt with, help to strengthen our own convictions, to make our duty plainer and to shew us better how we shall perform it. All their danger lies in their vagueness: if we once bring them fairly to those tests by which the worth of hypotheses in another department is ascertained, it may not perhaps be hard to discover what portions of truth and what of falsehood, they contain. I think I shall be carrying out the intention of Boyle’s Will, if I attempt, in my present course, to make this experiment. I propose to examine the great Religious Systems which present themselves to us in the history of the world, not going into their details, far less searching for their absurdities, but enquiring what is their main characteristical principle. If we find, as the objectors say, good in each of them, we shall desire to know what this good is, and under what conditions it may be preserved and made effectual. These questions may, I think, be kept distinct from those which will occupy us in the latter half of the course. In what relation does Christianity stand to these different faiths? If there be a faith which is meant for mankind, is this the one or must we look for another?
I shall not take these systems in their historical order, but rather according to the extent of the influence they have exerted over mankind; a reason which would at once determine me to begin in the present Lecture with Mahometanism.
For the first ninety years after the publication of this religion in the world, the Christians of Europe could do little more than wonder at its amazing and, as it seemed, fatal, progress in Asia and Africa. Before the end of a century it had obtained a settlement in a corner of their own Continent and threatened every part of it. But the new Western Empire established itself, Christian champions appeared in Spain, the power of the Caliphs declined. Then Islamism appeared again in another conquering, proselytising tribe. For two centuries the European nations wrestled to recover its conquests in the Holy Land. A period followed during which the disciples of both religions seemed almost equally threatened by Tartar hordes. These stooped to the Crescent; in the 15th century a mighty Mahometan government was seen occupying the capital of the East, threatening the Latin world, profiting by the disputes of Christian sovereigns with one another, exhibiting its own order and zeal in melancholy contrast to the quarrels, unbelief, and heartlessness of monarchs and prelates. It became a question with the thoughtful men of that time, whether the Ottoman empire did not possess a polity which was free from the tendencies to weakness and decay that had existed in all previous governments, and whether it might not last for ever.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the fallacy of this notion was making itself evident, Christians began to speculate coldly and quietly upon the causes which had given such prevalency to this faith in past days, and which still kept it alive in their own. It may be well to consider a few of the explanations which different persons, according to their different observations or habits of mind, have offered of this fact, that we may not lose the benefit of any light which has been thrown from any quarter upon the nature or principle of the religion itself.
I. It was an easy and obvious method of solving the difficulty, to say that the Mahometans had triumphed by the force of their arms; personal valour, and a compact military organization being comprehended under that term. That they were warriors from the first, that their courage was often amazing, and that the Ottomans for a long time possessed the secret of military subordination, as scarcely any nation has ever possessed it, is evidently true. And it is a truth of which Christian apologists would very naturally avail themselves. The opposition, not in some accidental points, but in their whole scheme and conception, between the Sermon on the Mount, and the doctrine which could require or sanction such methods for its diffusion, would of course be carefully noted. Plain men would be asked to declare which teaching bore clearest tokens of belonging to the earth, which of a Divine origin. Nor was this argument an unfair one, however it might be, and has been again and again traversed by an appeal to the practice of Christians, and the weapons to which they have resorted for the defence and propagation of their faith. For it is quite clear that the Mahometan wars were no accidental outgrowth of the system—that they were not resorted to with a doubtful conscience, with any uneasy feeling that they might by possibility be inconsistent with the intentions of their Founder. On the contrary, the very spirit and life of Mahometanism exhibited themselves in these wars. In them came forth all the most striking and characteristic virtues which the doctrine has a right to boast of.
