by the force of circumstances, and by gradually increasing successes, to
believe himself the accredited messenger of Heaven. The earnestness of those
convictions which at Mecca sustained him under persecution, and which perhaps
led him, at any price as it were, and by any means, not even excluding deceit
and falsehood, to endeavour to rescue his countrymen from idolatry,-naturally
stiffened at Medina into tyranny and unscrupulous violence. At the same time,
he was probably, more or less, throughout his whole career, the victim of a
certain amount of self-deception. A cataleptic13 subject from his early
youth, born-according to the traditions-of a highly nervous and excitable
mother, he would be peculiarly liable to morbid and fantastic hallucinations,
and alternations of excitement and depression, which would win for him, in
the eyes of his ignorant countrymen, the credit of being inspired. It would
be easy for him to persuade himself that he was "the seal of the Prophets,"
the proclaimer of a doctrine of the Divine Unity, held and taught by the
Patriarchs, especially by Abraham-a doctrine that should present to mankind
Judaism divested of its Mosaic ceremonial, and Christianity divested of the
Atonement and the Trinity14-doctrine, as he might have believed, fitted and
destined to absorb Judaism, Christianity, and Idolatry; and this persuasion,
once admitted into his mind as a conviction, retained possession of it, and
carried him on, though often in the use of means, towards the end of his
career, far different from those with which he commenced it, to a victorious
consummation. It is true that the state of Arabia previous to the time of
Muhammad was one of preparedness for a new religion that the scattered
elements were there, and wanted only the mind of a master to harmonise and
enforce them and that Islam was, so to speak, a necessity of the time.15
Still Muhammad's career is a wonderful instance of the force and life that
resides in him who possesses an intense Faith in God and in the unseen world;
and whatever deductions may be made-and they are many and serious-from the
noble and truthful in his character, he will always be regarded as one of
those who have had that influence over the faith, morals, and whole earthly
life of their fellow-men, which none but a really great man ever did, or can,
exercise; and as one of those, whose efforts to propagate some great verity
will prosper, in spite of manifold personal errors and defects, both of
principle and character.

The more insight we obtain, from undoubted historical sources, into the
actual character of Muhammad, the less reason do we find to justify the
strong vituperative language poured out upon his head by Maracci, Prideaux,
and others, in recent days, one of whom has found, in the Byzantine
"Maometis," the number of the Beast (Rev. xii)! It is nearer to the truth to
say that he was a great though imperfect character, an earnest though
mistaken teacher, and that many of his mistakes and imperfections were the
result of circumstances, of temperament, and constitution; and that there
must be elements both of truth and goodness in the system of which he was the
main author, to account for the world-wide phenomenon, that whatever may be
the intellectual inferiority (if such is, indeed, the fact) of the Muslim
races, the influence of his teaching, aided, it is true, by the vast impulse
given to it by the victorious arms of his followers, has now lasted for
nearly thirteen centuries, and embraces more than one hundred millions of our
race-more than one-tenth part of the inhabitants of the globe.

It must be acknowledged, too, that the Koran deserves the highest praise for
its conceptions of the Divine nature, in reference to the attributes of
Power, Knowledge, and universal Providence and Unity-that its belief and
trust in the One God of Heaven and Earth is deep and fervent-and that, though
it contains fantastic visions and legends, teaches a childish ceremonial, and
justifies bloodshedding, persecution, slavery, and polygamy, yet that at the
same time it embodies much of a noble and deep moral earnestness, and
sententious oracular wisdom, and has proved that there are elements in it on
which mighty nations, and conquering though not, perhaps, durable-empires can
be built up. It is due to the Koran, that the occupants in the sixth century
of an arid peninsula, whose poverty was only equalled by their ignorance,
become not only the fervent and sincere votaries of a new creed, but, like
Amru and many more, its warlike propagators. Impelled possibly by drought and
famine, actuated partly by desire of conquest, partly by religious
convictions, they had conquered Persia in the seventh century, the northern
coasts of Africa, and a large portion of Spain in the eighth, the Punjaub and
nearly the whole of India in the ninth. The simple shepherds and wandering
Bedouins of Arabia, are transformed, as if by a magician's wand, into the
founders of empires, the builders of cities, the collectors of more libraries
than they at first destroyed, while cities like Fostât, Baghdad, Cordova, and
Delhi, attest the power at which Christian Europe trembled. And thus, while
the Koran, which underlays this vast energy and contains the principles which
are its springs of action, reflects to a great extent the mixed character of
its author, its merits as a code of laws, and as a system of religious
teaching, must always be estimated by the changes which it introduced into
the customs and beliefs of those who willingly or by compulsion embraced it.
In the suppression of their idolatries, in the substitution of the worship of
Allah for that of the powers of nature and genii with Him, in the abolition
of child murder, in the extinction of manifold superstitious usages, in the
reduction of the number of wives to a fixed standard, it was to the Arabians
an unquestionable blessing, and an accession, though not in the Christian
sense a Revelation, of Truth; and while every Christian must deplore the
overthrow of so many flourishing Eastern churches by the arms of the
victorious Muslims, it must not be forgotten that Europe, in the middle ages,
owed much of her knowledge of dialectic philosophy, of medicine, and
architecture, to Arabian writers, and that Muslims formed the connecting link
between the West and the East for the importation of numerous articles of
luxury and use. That an immense mass of fable and silly legend has been built
up upon the basis of the Koran is beyond a doubt, but for this Muhammad is
not answerable, any more than he is for the wild and bloodthirsty excesses of
his followers in after ages. I agree with Sale in thinking that, "how
criminal soever Muhammad may have been in imposing a false religion on
mankind, the praises due to his real virtues ought not to be denied him"
(Preface), and venture to think that no one can rise from the perusal of his
Koran without argeeing with that motto from St. Augustin, which Sale has
prefixed to his title page, "Nulla falsa doctrina est, quæ non aliquid veri
permisceat." Qu‘st. Evang. ii. 40.

The Arabic text from which this translation has been made is that of Fluegel.


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