Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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Sec. 7. Mohammedanism a Relapse; the worst Form of Monotheism, and a
retarding Element in Civilization.

According to this view, which is no doubt correct, the monotheism of
Mohammed is that which makes of God pure will; that is, which exaggerates
personality (since personality is in will), making the Divine One an
Infinite Free Will, or an Infinite I. But will divorced from reason and
love is wilfulness, or a purely arbitrary will.

Now the monotheism of the Jews differed from this, in that it combined
with the idea of will the idea of justice. God not only does what he
chooses, but he chooses to do only what is right. Righteousness is an
attribute of God, with which the Jewish books are saturated.

Still, both of these systems leave God outside of the world; _above_ all
as its Creator and Ruler, _above_ all as its Judge; but not _through_ all
and _in_ all. The idea of an Infinite Love must be added and made supreme,
in order to give us a Being who is not only above all, but also through
all and in all. This is the Christian monotheism.

Mohammed teaches not only the unity but also the spirituality of God, but
his idea of the divine Unity is of a numeric unity, not a moral unity; and
so his idea of divine spirituality is that of an abstract
spirituality,--God abstracted from matter, and so not to be represented by
pictures and images; God withdrawn out of the world, and above all,--in a
total separation.

Judaism also opposed idolatry and idol-worship, and taught that God was
above all, and the maker of the world; but it conceived of God as _with_
man, by his repeated miraculous coming down in prophets, judges, kings;
also _with_ his people, the Jews, mysteriously present in their tabernacle
and temple. Their spirituality was not quite as abstract then as that of
the Mohammedans.

But Christianity, as soon as it became the religion of a non-Semitic race,
as soon as it had converted the Greeks and Romans, not only imparted to
them its monotheism, but received from them their strong tendencies to
pantheism. They added to the God "above all," and the God "with all," the
God "in us all." True, this is also to be found in original Christianity
as proceeding from the life of Jesus. The New Testament is full of this
kind of pantheism,--God _in_ man, as well as God _with_ man. Jesus made
the step forward from God with man to God in man,--"I in them, thou in
me." The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is this idea, of God who is not only
will and power, not only wisdom and law, but also love; of a God who
desires communion and intercourse with his children, so coming and
dwelling in them. Mohammed teaches a God above us; Moses teaches a God
above us, and yet with us; Jesus teaches God above us, God with us, and
God in us.

According to this view, Mohammedanism is a relapse. It is going back to a
lower level. It is returning from the complex idea to the simple idea. But
the complex is higher than the simple. The seed-germ, and the germ-cell,
out of which organic life comes, is lower than the organizations which are
developed out of it. The Mollusks are more complex and so are higher than
the Radiata, the Vertebrata are more complex than the Mollusks. Man is the
most complex of all, in soul as well as body. The complex idea of God,
including will, thought, and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than
the simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches. But the higher ought
to come out of and conquer the lower. How, then, did Mohammedanism come
out of Christianity and Judaism?

The explanation is to be found in the law of reaction and relapse.
Reaction is going back to a lower ground, to pick up something which has
been dropped, forgotten, left behind, in the progress of man. The
condition of progress is that nothing shall be lost. The lower truth must
be preserved in the higher truth; the lower life taken up into the higher
life. Now Christianity, in going forward, had accepted from the
Indo-Germanic races that sense of God in nature, as well as God above
nature, which has always been native with those races. It took up natural
religion into monotheism. But in taking it up, it went so far as to lose
something of the true unity of God. Its doctrine of the Trinity, at least
in its Oriental forms, lost the pure personal monotheism of Judaism. No
doubt the doctrine of the Trinity embodies a great truth, but it has been
carried too far. So Mohammedanism came, as a protest against this tendency
to plurality in the godhead, as a demand for a purely personal God It is
the Unitarianism of the East. It was a new assertion of the simple unity
of God, against polytheism and against idolatry.

The merits and demerits, the good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be
found in this, its central idea concerning God. It has taught submission,
obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism. It has
made social life lower. Its governments are not governments. Its virtues
are stoical. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride
and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the
submission to an infinite despotism. Time is that it came to an end. Its
work is done. It is a hard, cold, cruel, empty faith, which should give
way to the purer forms of a higher civilization.

No doubt, Mohammedanism was needed when it came, and has done good service
in its time. But its time is almost passed. In Europe it is an anachronism
and an anomaly, depending for its daily existence on the support received
from Christian powers, jealous of Russian advance on Constantinople. It
will be a blessing to mankind to have the capital of Russia on the
Bosphorus. A recent writer on Turkey thus speaks:--

"The military strength of Mohammedanism was in its steady and
remorseless bigotry. Socially, it won by the lofty ideality of its
precepts, without pain or satiety. It accorded well, too, with the
isolate and primitive character of the municipalities scattered over
Asia. Resignation to God--a motto well according with Eastern
indolence--was borne upon its banners, while in the profusion of
delight hereafter was promised an element of endurance and courage. It
had, too, one strikingly Arabic characteristic,--simplicity.

"One God the Arabian prophet preached to man;
One God the Orient still
Adores, through many a realm of mighty span,--
God of power and will.

"A God that, shrouded in his lonely light,
Rests utterly apart
From all the vast creations of his might,
From nature, man, and art.

"A Power that at his pleasure doth create
To save or to destroy;
And to eternal pain predestinate,
As to eternal joy.

"It is the merit and the glory of Mohammed that, beside founding
twenty spiritual empires and providing laws for the guidance through
centuries of millions of men, he shook the foundations of the faith of
heathendom. Mohammed was the impersonation of two principles that reign
in the government of God,--destruction and salvation. He would receive
nations to his favor if they accepted the faith, and utterly destroy
them if they rejected it. Yet, in the end, the sapless tree must fall."

M. H. Blerzey,[399] in speaking of Mohammedanism in Northern Africa,
says:--

"At bottom there is little difference between the human sacrifices
demanded by fetichism and the contempt of life produced by the
Mussulman religion. Between the social doctrines of these Mohammedan
tribes and the sentiments of Christian communities there is an immense
abyss."

And again:---

"The military and fanatic despotism of the Arabs has vested during many
centuries in the white autochthonic races of North Africa, without any
fusion taking place between the conquering element and the conquered,
without destroying at all the language and manners of the subject
people, and, in a word, without creating anything durable. The Arab
conquest was a triumph of brute force, and nothing further."

And M. Renan, a person well qualified to judge of the character of this
religion by the most extensive and impartial studies, gives this
verdict:[400]--

"Islamism, following as it did on ground that was none of the best,
has, on the whole, done as much harm as good to the human race. It has
stifled everything by its dry and desolating simplicity."

Again:--

"At the present time, the essential condition of a diffused
civilization is the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the
destruction of the theocratic power of Islamism, consequently the
destruction of Islamism itself."[401]

Again:--

"Islamism is evidently the product of an inferior, and, so to speak, of
a meagre combination of human elements. For this reason its conquests
have all been on the average plane of human nature. The savage races
have been incapable of rising to it, and, on the other hand, it has not
satisfied people who carried in themselves the seed of a stronger
civilization."[402]

Note to the Chapter on Mohammed.

We give in this note further extracts from Mr. Palgrave's description of
the doctrine of Islam.

"This keystone, this master thought, this parent idea, of which all the
rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained in the
phrase far oftener repeated than understood, 'La Ilah illa Allah,' 'There
is no God but God.' A literal translation, but much too narrow for the
Arab formula, and quite inadequate to render its true force in an Arab
mouth or mind.

"'There is no God but God' are words simply tantamount in English to the
negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean in
Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only to
deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of
person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the
Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness, but
besides this the words, in Arabic and among Arabs, imply that this one
Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act
existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or
spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure,
unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action
or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energy, and deed
is God; the rest is downright inertia and mere instrumentality, from the
highest archangel down to the simplest atom of creation. Hence, in this
one sentence,' La Ilah illa Allah,' is summed up a system which, for
want of a better name, I may be permitted to call the Pantheism of Force,
or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to God, who absorbs it all, exercises
it all, and to whom alone it can be ascribed, whether for preserving or
for destroying, for relative evil or for equally relative good. I say
'relative,' because it is clear that in such a theology no place is left
for absolute good or evil, reason or extravagance; all is abridged in the
autocratic will of the one great Agent: 'sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro
ratione voluntas'; or, more significantly still, in Arabic, 'Kema
yesha'o,' 'as he wills it,' to quote the constantly recurring expression
of the Koran.

"Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar from, all
creatures, which lie levelled before him on one common plane of
instrumentality and inertness, God is one in the totality of omnipotent
and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limit
save his own sole and absolute will. He communicates nothing to his
creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain his alone, and in
return he receives nothing from them; for whatever they may be, that they
are in him, by him, and from him only. And secondly, no superiority, no
distinction, no pre-eminence, can be lawfully claimed by one creature over
its fellow, in the utter equalization of their unexceptional servitude and
abasement; all are alike tools of the one solitary Force which employs
them to crush or to benefit, to truth or to error, to honor or shame, to
happiness, or misery, quite independently of their individual fitness,
deserts, or advantage, and simply because he wills it, and as he wills it.

"One might at first think that this tremendous autocrat, this uncontrolled
and unsympathizing power, would be far above anything like passions,
desires, or inclinations. Yet such is not the case, for he has with
respect to his creatures one main feeling and source of action, namely,
jealousy of them lest they should perchance attribute to themselves
something of what is his alone, and thus encroach on his all-engrossing
kingdom. Hence he is ever more prone to punish than to reward, to inflict
than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build. It is his singular
satisfaction to let created beings continually feel that they are nothing
else than his slaves, his tools, and contemptible tools also, that thus
they may the better acknowledge his superiority, and know his power to be
above their power, his cunning above their cunning, his will above their
will, his pride above their pride; or rather, that there is no power,
cunning, will, or pride save his own.

"But he himself, sterile in his inaccessible height, neither loving nor
enjoying aught save his own and self-measured decree, without son,
companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for himself than for his
creatures, and his own barrenness and lone egoism in himself is the cause
and rule of his indifferent and unregarding despotism around. The first
note is the key of the whole tune, and the primal idea of God runs through
and modifies the whole system and creed that centres in him.

"That the notion here given of the Deity, monstrous and blasphemous as it
may appear, is exactly and literally that which the Koran conveys, or
intends to convey, I at present take for granted. But that it indeed is
so, no one who has attentively perused and thought over the Arabic text
(for mere cursory reading, especially in a translation, will not suffice)
can hesitate to allow. In fact, every phrase of the preceding sentences,
every touch in this odious portrait, has been taken, to the best of my
ability, word for word, or at least meaning for meaning, from the 'Book,'
the truest mirror of the mind and scope of its writer.

"And that such was in reality Mahomet's mind and idea is fully confirmed
by the witness-tongue of contemporary tradition."

Chapter XII.

The Ten Religions and Christianity.

Sec. 1. General Results of this Survey.
Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.
Sec. 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism,
and Buddhism.
Sec. 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in
all Religions.
Sec. 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Sec. 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in
all Religions.
Sec. 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the life of Jesus.
Sec. 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of Universal Unity.

Sec. 1. General Results of this Survey.

We have now examined, as fully as our limits would allow, ten of the
chief religions which have enlisted the faith of mankind. We are prepared
to ask, in conclusion, what they teach us in regard to the prospects of
Christianity, and the religious future of our race.

First, this survey must have impressed on every mind the fact that man is
eminently a religious being. We have found religion to be his supreme and
engrossing interest on every continent, in every millennium of historic
time, and in every stage of human civilization. In some periods men are
found as hunters, as shepherds, as nomads, in others they are living
associated in cities, but in all these conditions they have their
religion. The tendency to worship some superhuman power is universal.

The opinion of the positivist school, that man passes from a theological
stage to one of metaphysics, and from that to one of science, from which
later and higher epoch both theology and philosophy are excluded, is not
in accordance with the facts we have been observing. Science and art, in
Egypt, went hand in hand with theology, during thousands of years. Science
in Greece preceded the latest forms of metaphysics, and both Greek science
and Greek philosophy were the preparation for Christian faith. In India
the Sankhya philosophy was the preparation for the Buddhist religion.
Theology and religion to-day, instead of disappearing in science, are as
vigorous as ever. Science, philosophy, and theology are all advancing
together, a noble sisterhood of thought. And, looking at facts, we may
ask, In what age or time was religion more of a living force, acting on
human affairs, than it is at present? To believe in things not seen, to
worship a power above visible nature, to look forward to an unknown
future, this is natural to man.

In the United States there is no established religion, yet in no country
in the world is more interest taken in religion than with us. In the
Protestant denominations it has dispensed with the gorgeous and imposing
ritual, which is so attractive to the common mind, and depends mainly on
the interest of the word of truth. Yet the Protestant denominations make
converts, build churches, and support their clergy with an ardor seemingly
undiminished by the progress of science. There are no symptoms that man is
losing his interest in religion in consequence of his increasing knowledge
of nature and its laws.

Secondly, we have seen that these religions vary exceedingly from each
other in their substance and in their forms. They have a great deal in
common, but a great deal that is different. Mr. Wentworth Higginson,[403]
in an excellent lecture, much of which has our cordial assent, says,
"Every race believes in a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom
devout souls recognize a Father also." But Buddhism, the most extensive
religion on the surface of the earth, explicitly denies creation, and
absolutely ignores any Ruler or Governor of the world. The Buddha neither
made the world nor preserves it, and the Buddha is the great object of
Buddhist worship. Mr. Higginson says: "Every race believes in
immortality." Though the Buddhists, as we have seen, believe in
immortality, it is in so obscure a form that many of the best scholars
declare that the highest aim and the last result of all progress in
Buddhism is annihilation. He continues, "Every race recognizes in its
religious precepts the brotherhood of man." The Koran teaches no such
doctrine, and it is notorious that the Brahmanical system of caste, which
has been despotic in India for twenty-five hundred years, excludes such
brotherhood. Mr. Higginson therefore is of opinion that caste has grown up
in defiance of the Vedas. The Vedas indeed are ignorant of caste, but they
are also ignorant of human brotherhood. The system of caste was not a
defiance of the Vedas.

Nothing is gained for humanity by such statements, which are refuted
immediately by the most evident facts. The true "sympathy of religions"
does not consist in their saying the same thing, any more than a true
concord in music consists in many performers striking the same note.
Variety is the condition of harmony. These religions may, and we believe
will, be all harmonized; but thus far it is only too plain that they have
been at war with each other. In order to find the resemblances we must
begin by seeing the differences.

Cudworth, in his great work, speaks of "the symphony of all religions," an
expression which we prefer to that of Mr. Higginson. It expresses
precisely what we conceive to be the fact, that these religions are all
capable of being brought into union, though so very different. They may
say,

"Are not we formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
Such difference, without discord, as shall make
The sweetest sounds."

But this harmony can only be established among the ethnic religions by
means of a catholic religion which shall be able to take each of them up
into itself, and so finally merge them in a higher union. The Greek,
Roman, and Jewish religions could not unite with each other; but they were
united by being taken up into Christianity. Christianity has assimilated
the essential ideas of the religions of Persia, Judaea, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and Scandinavia; and each of these religions, in turn, disappeared
as it was absorbed by this powerful solvent. In the case of Greece, Rome,
Germany, and Judaea, this fact of their passing into solution in
Christianity is a matter of history. Not all the Jews became Christians,
nor has Judaism ceased to exist. This is perhaps owing to the doctrines of
the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, which offend the simplistic
monotheism of the Jewish mind. Yet Christianity at first grew out of
Judaism, and took up into itself the best part of the Jews in and out of
Palestine.

The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the
remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Teutonic nations? Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?

Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.

It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion
only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on
all the face of the earth. If it can continue to give them all the truth
their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire
them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and
yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family,
one kingdom of heaven,--then it is fitted to be and will become the
universal religion. It will then not share the fate of those which have
preceded it. It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall. It
will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the
advance of humanity. It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and
broader than itself. But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and
Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies--error, war, sin,
selfishness, tyranny, cruelty--under his feet.

Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on
the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge.
It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought
before. Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may be
found scattered through the ten religions of the world, some here and some
there. Jesus claims no monopoly of the truth. He says. "My doctrine is not
mine, but his who sent me." But he _does_ call himself "the Light of the
World," and says that though he does not come to destroy either the law or
the prophets, he comes to fulfil them in something higher. His work is to
fulfil all religions with something higher, broader, and deeper than what
they have,--accepting their truth, supplying their deficiencies.

If this is a fact, then it will appear that Christianity comes, not as an
exclusive, but as an inclusive system. It includes everything, it excludes
nothing but limitation and deficiency.

Whether Christianity be really such a pleroma of truth or not, must be
ascertained by a careful comparison of its teachings, and the ideas lying
back of them, with those of all other religions. We have attempted this,
to some extent, in our Introduction, and in our discussion of each
separate religion. We have seen that Christianity, in converting the
nations, always accepted something and gave something in return. Thus it
received from Egypt and Africa their powerful realism, as in the writings
of Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and gave in return a spiritual doctrine.
It received God, as seen in nature and its organizations, and returned God
as above nature. Christianity took from Greece intellectual activity, and
returned moral life. It received from Rome organization, and returned
faith in a fatherly Providence. It took law, and gave love. From the
German races it accepted the love of individual freedom, and returned
union and brotherly love. From Judaism it accepted monotheism as the
worship of a Supreme Being, a Righteous Judge, a Holy King, and added to
this faith in God as in all nature and all life.

But we will proceed to examine some of these points a little more
minutely.

Sec. 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism,
and Buddhism.

Christianity and Brahmanism. The essential value of Brahmanism is its
faith in spirit as distinct from matter, eternity as distinct from time,
the infinite as opposed to the finite, substance as opposed to form.

The essential defect of Brahmanism is its spiritual pantheism, which
denies all reality to this world, to finite souls, to time, space, matter.
In its vast unities all varieties are swallowed up, all differences come
to an end. It does not, therefore, explain the world, it denies it. It is
incapable of morality, for morality assumes the eternal distinction
between right and wrong, good and evil, and Brahmanism knows no such
difference. It is incapable of true worship, since its real God is spirit
in itself, abstracted from all attributes. Instead of immortality, it can
only teach absorption, or the disappearance of the soul in spirit, as
rain-drops disappear in the ocean.