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in the present, continuous progress in the future. Christianity, they maintained, must adapt its modes of thinking to the progress of philosophy and science, and to men's ideas on political and social subjects; it must continually advance in experience and apprehension of religious truth, which in its fulness forever lies beyond men's power of conception and adequate expression. The evolution of dogma was, therefore, not merely a historical theory, it was a programme of progress.

Against these ideas and tendencies the Church has expressly and emphatically pronounced. In the decree "Lamentabili Sane Exitu" (1907) and the encyclical "Pascendi Gregis," of the same year, a long catalogue of Modernist errors is condemned, and precautionary and disciplinary measures are prescribed to check the spread of the movement, particularly in institutions of learning and through publications by Catholic scholars. The church is resolved by all means in its power to prevent the disintegrating effects of modern philosophy, science, history, biblical criticism and exegesis, upon the dogmas of religion, which has been so conspicuously exemplified in contemporary Protestantism.

CHAPTER XVI

MOHAMMEDANISM

MOHAMMED

Mohammed-Religion of the Arabs before Mohammed-The First Revelations Hostility of the Meccans-Mohammed at MedinaArabia Won for Islam-Mohammed's Mission-The Idea of God -Predestination-The Koran-The Prophets-The HereafterWorship-Morals in the Koran-The Jews-Nationalising of

Islam.

MOHAMMEDANISM, or to give it its proper name, Islam,1 is the most recent of the great religions, and its rise and early progress lie more fully than any other in the daylight of history. The revelations of the Prophet during the twenty years, more or less, of his career were collected in the Koran within the next years after his death, and of the authenticity of its contents there has never been any substantial question. Besides the Word of God in the Koran, the words of Mohammed in his own name, his decisions and regulations on questions of justice or morals or religious observance, were gathered as precedent; his daily habits were examples. In the spread of Islam, again, there was no long period of obscure propaganda, like the first generations of Christianity; the expansion of the Arab empire carried the religion of the conquerors with it; it was in the name of religion that their victorious hosts were set in motion and that the subject lands were ruled.

Mohammed was born about 570 A. D. Many legends cluster about his childhood, but all that is known with reasonable certainty is that he was early left an orphan and was brought up by an uncle, Abu Talib. As he grew to manhood he journeyed with the Meccan caravans in their visits to Syria and to Yemen, and saw something of the 1 "Submission" (to God).

world from the back of a camel, but the only incident related about these journeys, the meeting with the Christian hermit who recognised the youth's prophetic mission, are pious fictions. Mohammed's first journeys were made in company with his uncle; subsequently he was employed by a widow, Khadijah, whose capital was invested in the caravan trade. He conducted the business so much to her satisfaction that she presently proposed to him a matrimonial partnership. Mohammed was about twenty-five years old; Khadijah was considerably his senior and had already had two husbands, but the marriage seems to have been a happy one, and was blessed with six children, two sons (who died in childhood) and four daughters. Mohammed had great respect for Khadijah, and as long as she lived he took no other wife.

Of the years between his marriage and the beginning of his mission there is no record. We only know that in the period immediately preceding his first revelation, which occurred when he was about forty years of age, he spent much time in solitude upon a mountain near Mecca, engaged in religious exercises in which fasting and vigils seem to have had a large place. From the character of his earliest utterances in the Koran it may be inferred that he had brooded over the idea of divine judgment which he had got from Christian and Jewish sources, until the conviction possessed him that this judgment in all its terrors was impending over his people for their sins, above all for the worship of false gods and idols. Such broodings and forebodings wrought, we can well conceive, with more than common power upon a highly susceptible temperament, and upon nerves overstrung by lonely watching and fasting. The descriptions that are given in Moslem tradition of the way Mohammed was affected in moments of revelation have led some students to believe that he was a victim of epilepsy; others interpret the phenomena as symptoms of a less seri

1 Such exercises had no place in the religion of the Arabs, and seem to be in imitation of Christian ascetics.

ous nervous disorder, perhaps of a hysterical character. Some abnormality there undoubtedly was; but, while these experiences may explain Mohammed's faith in his own inspiration, they no more account for the content or effect of his prophesyings than the similar experiences of Saint Paul account for Pauline Christianity.

The religion of Mohammed's countrymen was of a very primitive kind. There were many gods, and two or three goddesses who were held in especially high esteem. These deities had their several holy places, whither men resorted on occasion to seek their aid, fulfil a vow, or consult the oracle. The sacred precincts were marked off by boundary stones. The object of worship, or, to speak more exactly, the object in which the divinity lodged, was most commonly a stone, sometimes a tree or a group of trees. In Mecca there was a small square temple, into one corner of which the sacred stone was built. Idols, like the image of Hubal in this temple, were rare and recent importations.

Apart from local and tribal associations, the gods had little individuality; there was no specialisation of function and no mythology. The goddesses bore feminine names, but they had nothing else of the sex about them.1 Allah ("the deity," like the Hebrew ha-elohim), before Mohammed elevated him to the place of sole God, had, by virtue of the generality of the appellation a certain precedence over gods who were individualised by proper names and local habitations.

The victim in sacrifice was killed with a dedication, "In the name of "-whatever god it might be; the blood was smeared on the holy stone or poured into a pit at the foot. The flesh furnished a feast for the offerer, his family, and guests. There was no sacrificial priesthood; the priests were diviners, and sometimes custodians of the holy places.

At some of the chief sanctuaries there was an annual concourse of strangers from near and far; the religious festival was combined with a great fair, at which the products

1 This is said of Mohammed's time and place; with what they may have been elsewhere and in other times we are not here concerned.

of different parts of the peninsula and foreign wares were exchanged. Mecca was the scene of the most frequented of these festivals in all that part of Arabia. A suspension of tribal wars and blood-feuds during the sacred months, a kind of truce of God, insured the safety of visitors at the festival and on the journey.

In the north of Arabia, the kingdoms of Palmyra and of Hira, vassal buffer-states of the Roman and Persian empires respectively, were Christian; and from them Christianity had spread into the belt of Arab tribes that stretched across the desert between. In Yemen, in the south, then under Persian rule, the population was largely Jewish and Christian. Not so far from Mecca, there were Jewish tribes at Medina and in the oases north of it. The caravan trade with the north and the south brought the Meccans some acquaintance with these religions; Jewish and Christian slaves were no rarity in Mecca. Several of Mohammed's contemporaries in Mecca, Medina, and Taif had discovered the inferiority of Arab paganism, and became in their personal conviction monotheists, with an eclectic appropriation of Christian ideas. They made no effort, however, to win others to their way of thinking, and did not attack the religion of their countrymen. Two of them, in Mecca, were of kin to Mohammed's wife; one was a neighbor, and intimate in his house. Through such channels Mohammed may have got the ideas which worked in his mind with such different effect; he certainly did not get from them the inspiration to his mission.

At the end of one of his retreats on Mount Hira his call came to proclaim the word of God to his generation. Tradition has embellished the fact with a wealth of legendary circumstance; the simplest story is that in a dream the angel of revelation (Gabriel) appeared to him and bade him recite what God revealed to him. According to the most

In other places in the Koran the verb ("ikra") means "recite" a sacred text (from memory); it is used also of reading (aloud) a written text, and in the latter sense it is understood by the decorative traditions according to which Gabriel brought down a strip of silk inscribed with the words of revelation.

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