$ 45. THE MOHAMMEDAN RELIGION. 183
We add the most recent version in prose :
" In the name of the merciful and compassionate God.
Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment ! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to ; not of those Thou art wroth with ; nor of those who err." l
As this Sura invites a comparison with the Lord's Prayer infi nitely to the advantage of the latter, so do the Koran's descrip tions of Paradise when contrasted with St. John's vision of the heavenly Jerusalem :
"Joyous on that day shall be the inmates of Paradise in their employ; In shades, on bridal couches reclining, they and their spouses : Therein shall they have fruits, and whatever they require — ' Peace !' shall be the word on the part of a merciful Lord. But be ye separated this day, O ye sinners !" 2
* * * * * #
" The sincere servants of God
A stated banquet shall they have
Of fruits ; and honored shall they be
In the gardens of delight,
Upon couches face to face.
A cup shall be borne round among them from a fountain,
Limpid, delicious to those who drink ;
It shall not oppress the sense, nor shall they therewith be drunken,
And with them are the large-eyed ones with modest refraining glances, fair like the sheltered egg." 3
§ 45. The Mohammedan Religion.
Islam is not a new religion, nor can we expect a new one after the appearance of that religion which is perfect and intended for all nations and ages. It is a compound or mosaic of preexisting elements, a rude attempt to combine heathenism, Judaism and Christianity, which Mohammed found in Arabia, but in a very
1 E. H. Palmer, The Qur'dn, Oxford, 1880, Part L, p. 1.
2 Sura 3G (in Kodwell, p. 128).
3 The ostrich egg carefully protected from dust. Sura 37 (in Kodwell, p. 69). Brides and wives always figure in the Mohammedan Paradise.
184 FOURTH PERIOD. A. D. 590-1049.
imperfect form.1 It is professedly a restoration of the faith of Abraham, the common father of Isaac and of Ishmael. But it is not the genuine faith of Abraham with its Messianic hopes and aspirations looking directly to the gospel dispensation as its goal and fulfilment, but a bastard Judaism of Ishmael, and the post-Christian and anti- Christian Judaism of the Talmud. Still less did Mohammed know the pure religion of Jesus as laid down in the New Testament, but only a perversion and caricature of it, such as we find in the wretched apocryphal and heretical Gospels. This ignorance of the Bible and the corruptions of Eastern Christianity with which the Mohammedans came in con tact, furnish some excuse for their misbelief and stubborn preju dices. And yet even the poor pseudo-Jewish and pseudo-Chris tian elements of the Koran were strong enough to reform the old heathenism of Arabia and Africa and to lift it to a much higher level. The great and unquestionable merit of Islam is the breaking up of idolatry and the diffusion of monotheism.
The creed of Islam is simple, and consists of six articles : God, predestination, the angels (good and bad), the books, the pro phets, the resurrection and judgment with eternal reward and eternal punishment.
GOD.
Monotheism is the corner-stone of the system. It is expressed in the ever-repeated sentence : " There is no god but God (Allah,
1 Luther said of the religion of the Turks : " Also isfs ein Glaub zusammengeflickt aus der Juden, Christen und Heiden Glaube" Milman (II. 139) calls Mohammedanism '* the republication of a more comprehensive Judaism with some depraved forms of Christianity." Kenan describes it as " the least ori ginal" of the religious creations of humanity. Geiger and Deutsch (both He brews) give prominence to the Jewish element. " It is not merely parallelisms," says Deutsch, " reminiscences, allusions, technical terms, and the like, of Juda ism, its lore and dogma and ceremony, its Halacha and Haggadah (which may most briefly be rendered by 'Law' and 'Legend'), which we find in the Koran ; but we think Islam neither more nor less than Judaism as adapted to Arabia — plus the apostleship of Jesus and Mohammed. Nay, we verily believe that a great deal of such Christianity as has found its way into the Koran, has found it through Jewish channels" (1. c. p. 64).