"Afar in the desert I love to ride,With the silent bush-boy by my side."
"Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent bush-boy by my side."
The donkey-boy is never silent, he is always singing or calling to his donkey, urging him forward with stick and voice; yet who could wish a more patient or faithful attendant, who, though on foot, trots by your side from morning to night, the slave of your caprice, taking meekly all your rebukes, perhaps undeserved, and content at last with a pittance for his service?
So have I had a little girl as a water-carrier, running close to my saddle all day long, keeping up with the donkey's pace, and carrying a small jar of water on her head, to wash my hands and face, or assuage my thirst, thankful at last for a few piastres as her reward.
We reached Assiout, the capital of Upper Egypt, early Sunday morning, and laid up for the day. While our boat's company were preparing to go on shore to see the town, I mounted a donkey and started off to find the American Mission, which is at work among the Copts, who claim to be the descendants of the ancient Egyptians. I arrived at the chapel in time to hear a sermon and an address to the Sunday-school. As the services were in Arabic, I could not understand what was said, but I could perceive at once the earnestness of the speakers, and the close attention of the hearers. After the sermon there was a baptism. The congregation was a very respectable one both in numbers and appearance. There were perhaps two hundred present, all decently, although some were very poorly clad, and presented a striking contrast to the ragged and dirty people around them. In the quiet and orderly worship, and the songs that were sung, which were Arabic words to American tunes, there was much to make one think of home. There was nothing to distinguish the congregation except the Oriental turbans and dress, and the fact that the women sat apart from the men, separated by a screen, which shows that the seclusion of women is not confined to the Mohammedans. It is an Oriental custom, and is observed by the Copts aswell as the Moslems. I am told that even among Christian families here, it is not considered quite "the thing" for women to go abroad and show impertinent curiosity, and that ladies of good position, who are as intelligent as most Orientals, have never seen the Nile, but two miles distant! Such is the power of fashion even in Africa. In the church are several men of wealth, who give freely of their means, as well as use their influence, for its support. The Copts are nominal Christians, although, like most of the Christian sects of the East, they are very ignorant and very superstitious. But they have not the fanatical hatred to Christianity of the Mussulmans. They acknowledge the authority of the Bible, and are thus more open to argument and persuasion. Besides this congregation, the mission has some dozen schools in the surrounding country. In the town itself, besides the schools for the poorest children, it has a boarding-school for those of a better class, an academy which is the beginning of a college, and half a dozen young men are preparing for the ministry. The field is a very hopeful one, and I was assured that the success of the mission was limited only by the means at its disposal.
After visiting the schools, Rev. Mr. Strang accompanied me through the town. It has over twenty-five thousand inhabitants, and is the point of departure for the caravans which cross the Great Desert to Darfour and the far interior of Africa, returning laden with ivory and ostrich feathers, as in the days of King Solomon. We saw in an open square, or market-place, some hundred camels, that, as they lay wearily on the earth, looked as if they might have made the long journey over the trackless sands. Laborers were at work, with no respect for the day, for Friday is the Mohammedan Sabbath; and my friend pointed out, where a number of workmen were building a house, the "taskmaster" sitting on the top of the wall to overlook them, as in the days of the Bible. As we returned by an old portalin the city walls, we found a number of long-bearded and venerable men, who were "sitting in the gate" as "elders" to administer justice. The city gate is the place of honor and of justice now, as it was thousands of years ago.
In the mountain behind the town are a great number of tombs, like those of Beni-Hassan, vast chambers hewn out of the rock ages ago for burial places. We walked along by these silent memorials of the mighty dead, to the summit, from which is one of the most beautiful views of the valley of the Nile. Below the plain is spread out for many miles, well watered like the garden of the Lord, the emerald green coming up to the very foot of the barren hills. But there it ceases instantly, giving place to the desert.
These contrasts suggest some comparisons between the scenery and the climate of Egypt, and our own country. Whoever breathes this balmy air, and looks up to this cloudless sky, must feel that the Lord of all the earth has been bountiful to Egypt. As we read of the winter storms now raging over half of Europe, we bless the more kindly skies that are over us now. But after a few weeks of this dreamy, languid life, one begins to feel the want of something else to stir his blood. He finds that nature in Egypt, like the works of man, like the temples and the pyramids, is a sublime monotony. The landscapes are all the same. There are four or five grand features, the river, the valley, the hills that enclose it, and beyond the boundless desert, and over all the burning sun and sky. These are the elements that enter into every landscape. There is no change, no variety. Look where you will, there is no vision in the distance of lofty peaks dark with pines, or white with snow, no torrents leaping down the mountain side (thesilenceof Egypt is one of the things that most oppress me), no brooks that run among the hills, no winding paths along their banks that invite the stranger to lose himself in their shade. I see indeed hills on either horizon, but they are barren and desolate.On all this double range, for six hundred miles, there is not a single green thing—not a tree, not a shrub, not a blade of grass, not even a rock covered with moss, only a waste of sand and stone. If you climbed those hills yonder across the valley you would look off upon a boundless plain of sand that stretches to the Red Sea; while behind where we stand is the Libyan Desert, which is only an arm of the Great Sahara, that crosses almost the whole of the continent. In all this waste the valley of the Nile is the one narrow strip of fertility. And even this is parched and burnt up to the very water's edge. Hence the monotony of vegetation. There is not a forest in all Egypt, only the palm groves, which are planted like garden flowers, but no tangled wild wood, no lofty elms, no broad-spreading oaks that cast their grateful shadow on the burning plains. All that variety of nature, with which in other lands she beguiles the weary heart of man, is wanting here. It is indeed the land of the sun, and in that is at once its attraction and its terror, as the fiery orb beats down upon it, withering man and beast, and turning the earth into a desert.
Seeing this monotony of nature, and feeling this monotony of life, one begins to pine after awhile, for a return to the scenes more varied, though more wild and rugged, of his own more northern clime. We hear much of the beauty of a "cloudless sky." It is indeed a relief for a few weeks to those who escape from wintry storms, from bitter winds and blinding snow. But who would have sunshineforever? The light and warmth are better when softened and subdued by clouds that intercept the overpowering rays. But here the clouds are few, and they do not "return after the rain," for thereisno rain. In Lower Egypt there is what may be called a rainy season. In the Delta, as the clouds roll up from the Mediterranean, there is sometimes a sound of abundance of rain. But in Upper Egypt it may be said that it never rains. In Assiout it has rained but three times inten years! Of course the heat is sometimes fearful. Now it is mid-winter, and the air is comparatively cool and bracing, but in midsummer it reaches 110 and 112 degrees in the shade! For days and nights together the heat is so intense that not a leaf stirs in the palm groves. Not only is there not a drop of rain—there is not a breath of air. This it is to have a "cloudless sky"! Gladly then would our friend exchange for half the year the climate of Egypt for that of America. How refreshing it would be to him to see, just for once, great masses of black clouds gathering over the Arabian Hills, to see the lightnings flash as he has seen them in his native Ohio, and to hear the thunder-peals rolling across the valley from mountain to mountain, and at last dying away on the Libyan desert.
Think of this, ye who shiver in your winter storms at home, and sigh for Egypt. Take it all in all, would you make the exchange?
THE TEMPLES OF EGYPT—DID MOSES GET HIS LAW FROM THE EGYPTIANS?
In the distribution of the monuments of Egypt, it is a curious fact that the Pyramids are found almost wholly in Lower Egypt, and the great Temples in Upper Egypt. It was not till we had been a week on the Nile, that we had our first sight of the latter at Denderah. We have since spent three days at Thebes, the great centre of historical interest, and have made a regular campaign of sight-seeing, starting on excursions every morning, and thus have explored the ruins on both sides of the river—for Thebes, like many other great cities—like London and Paris—was built on two sides of a river, but one much greater than the Thames or the Seine, yet not so great but that it was spanned by a bridge (at least this is inferred from some ancient sculptures and inscriptions), over which poured a population such as pours over London Bridge to-day. The site seems made for a great capital, for here the mountains retire from the river, sweeping round in a circuit of some fifty miles, leaving a broad plain to be filled with human habitations. Here four thousand years ago was built a city greater than that on the banks of the Tigris or the Euphrates, than Nineveh or Babylon. Here was the centre of power and dominion for two continents—not only for Africa, but for Asia—to which flocked the multitudinous nations of Assyria and Arabia and Persia and the farthest East, as well as the tribes of Ethiopia—as two thousand years later all the peoples of the earth flocked to Rome. It is easy, from historical records andmonumental inscriptions, to form some idea of the glory of this capital of the ancient world. We can imagine the tumult and the roar of this more ancient Rome, when the chariots of mighty kings, and the tread of armies returning victorious from distant wars, thundered through her hundred gates.
Then did the kings of Egypt rear temples and palaces and statues and obelisks worthy of all that greatness. Then were built the most gigantic temples ever raised by the hand of man—as much surpassing in vastness and grandeur those reared centuries afterward by the Greeks, as the latter surpass anything by the moderns. The temples of Thebes—including Luxor and Karnac, which are parts of one city—are as much grander than the Parthenon, as the Parthenon is grander than the Madeleine at Paris, which is a feeble attempt to copy it.
We have now been a week—beginning with Denderah—studying these ruins, and may give certain general impressions. We do not attempt any detailed description, which must necessarily be inadequate, since neither words nor figures convey an idea of them, any more than they do of the Alps. What would be thought of an avenue nearly two miles long, lined with over twelve hundred colossal sphinxes? Yet such was the avenue from Luxor to Karnac—an approach worthy to lead to the temple of the gods. What can we say of a forest of columns, each twelve feet in diameter, stretching out in long colonnades; of the massive walls covered with bas-reliefs; and obelisks in single shafts of granite, of such height and weight that it is the wonder of modern engineering how they could be cut from the side of the hills, and be brought a hundred and forty miles, and erected on their firm bases.
But this temple—or rather cluster of temples and palaces—was not, like the temple of Solomon, finished in a single reign. Karnac was not the work of one man, or of one generation.It was twenty-five hundred years in building, successive kings and dynasties adding to the mighty whole, which was to represent all the glory of Egypt.
The general impression of these temples—and the same is true of the Egyptian statues and sculptures—is one of grandeur rather than beauty. They seek to overpower the senses by mere size. Sometimes they overdo the matter. Thus in the temples at Karnac the columns seem to me too large and too much crowded for the best effect. Ordinary trees may be planted in a dense grove, but great, broad-spreading oaks or elms require space around them; and if these columns were a little morespaced—to use a printer's word—the architectural effect would be still grander. So in the Egyptian sculpture, everything is colossal. In the granite lions and sphinxes there is always an aspect of power in repose which is very impressive, and strikes one with awe. But in any lighter work, such as frescoes and bas-reliefs, there is a total absence of delicacy and grace. Nothing can be more stiff. They sometimes have a rude force of drawing, but beauty they have none. That was born in Greece. All the sculptures on all the temples of Egypt are not worth—except as historical monuments—the friezes of the Parthenon.
One thing else has struck me much as to the plan of these temples, viz.: that we see in them the types and models of much that has been reproduced in various forms of ecclesiastical architecture. One has but to observe with some care the construction of these vast basilicas, to see how many features of Jewish, and even of Christian and Moslem architecture, have been adopted from still older temples and an earlier religion. Thus in the temple at Edfoo there is first the vast enclosure surrounding the whole, and then within the walls an outer court open to the sky, corresponding to the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple at Jerusalem, to the Court of the Fountains leading to the Mosques, and the cloister surrounding the approaches to old abbeys and cathedrals.One might find a still closer resemblance in forms of worship, in the vestments of priests, in the altars, and in the burning of incense, etc., a parallel which scholars have often traced.
And now of all this magnificence and glory of the ancient capital of Egypt, what remains? Only these vast ruins of temples and palaces. The "plain of Thebes" is still here, but deserted and silent. A few columns and statues rise above the plain to mark where the city stood, but the city itself is gone as much as the people who inhabited it four thousand years ago. A few miserable mud huts are built against the walls of mighty temples, and the ploughman drives his team over the dust of the city of a hundred gates. I saw a fellah ploughing with a cow and a camel yoked together, and a couple of half-naked Arabs raising water with theirshadoofbetween the Memnon (the statue which was said to sing when its stony lips were touched by the rising of the sun) and its brother statue—the two great Colossi, between which ran the Royal street to Luxor. Was there ever a more complete and utter desolation? In the temple called the Rameseum once stood the largest statue that ever was known—that of Rameses the Great (the same who had a statue at Memphis, for he erected monuments to himself everywhere), cut out of a single block of granite brought from the First Cataract, and weighing nearly nine hundred tons! On this was inscribed, as Herodotus writes, who saw it twenty-three hundred years ago: "I am the king of kings: if any man wish to know how great I am, and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works!" What a comment on the emptiness of human ambition, that this colossal statue, which was to last to the end of the world, was long ago pulled down by a later conqueror, Cambyses, the Persian, and now lies on its back, with its nose knocked off, and eyes put out, and all its glory in the dust!
In studying the figures and the inscriptions on the wallsof temples, there are many things which throw light on the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians. Here is a scene of hunting, or of fishing, or of feasting. Here are the different trades, which show the skill of the people in the mechanic arts, and many scenes which give us an insight into their domestic life. These have been the subjects of two learned and most interesting works by Wilkinson, which open the very interior of ancient Egypt to our modern eyes. They show a very high degree of civilization—of skill in all the useful arts, a skill fully equal in many things, and in some greatly superior, to that of our own day. Wendell Phillips, in his famous lecture on "The Lost Arts," finds many of his illustrations in ancient Egypt. I could not but think that this furnished a very effective answer to those advocates of evolution, who hold that mankind sprung from animals, and have gradually developed to their present state. How much progress have the Egyptians made in four thousand years? Here the race has gone backward, so that there is certainly no inherent tendency in our nature to advance.
But I was less interested in studying the domestic life of the ancient Egyptians, than their religious ideas. Herodotus says that the Egyptians were a very religious people, excelling all others in the honors paid to their gods; and this we can well believe, seeing the temples that they reared for their worship. But what were the gods they adored, and what sort of worship did they render, and how did all this act on the life and character of the people? Here we obtain a less exalted estimate of the ancient Egyptians. The remains which they have left, while they illustrate the greatness of the empire, which four thousand years ago had its seat in the valley of the Nile, do not give a high idea of its Religion. The land was wholly given to idolatry. The Egyptians had as many gods as the Greeks and Romans, only baser and lower, indicating baser and lower ideas. They made gods,not only of the sun, moon, and stars, but of beasts and birds and reptiles—of the apis and the ibis—of the serpent and the crocodile.
At Sakkara we visited one of the most stupendous mausoleums that we have seen in Egypt—one which Herodotus described, but which for centuries was so buried by the sands of the desert that its very site was not known until brought to light by the researches of Mariette Bey, who has done so much to restore the monuments of ancient Egypt. The approach to it was by an avenue of sphinxes, which led to a vast subterranean gallery—twenty feet wide and high—and leading two thousand feet, more than a third of a mile, under the earth. This long, vaulted passage is hewn in the solid rock—out of which open on either side a series of chambers or recesses, like side chapels—each containing a sarcophagus, 15 × 8 feet. These tombs, hollowed out of the solid granite, are so huge and massive that we wonder how they ever could have been got there. Yet these great sarcophagi—fit for the burial places of a long line of kings—were not for the Pharaohs or the Ptolemies, but for the Sacred Bulls! Thirty of these sarcophagi have been found, and on the walls are tablets which record the birth, and death, and burial of each one of these sacred beasts. These were the gods of Egypt, mother of the arts, and civilizer of the earth! This great repository of dead divinities is a colossal monument, at once of the architectural skill of the ancient Egyptians, and of their degrading superstition.
This single fact is enough to answer those who would imply, if they do not quite dare to assert, that the inspiration of the Books of Moses was derived from the Egyptians. It is a favorite theory of certain writers that Moses, being brought up in Egypt, here obtained both the Law and the Religion which he gave to the Israelites. No doubt he did learn much from a country that was at that time the most civilized in the world. He was brought up in a court, and enjoyedevery advantage of a royal education. He was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And it detracts not at all from his inspiration, to suppose that he may have been instructed to embody in his new and better code whatever was excellent in the older system, and had been approved by the experience of centuries. The ceremonial laws—such as those of purification—may have been adopted from the Egyptians. But these are the mere fringes of the garment of the great Lawgiver. As soon as we open the Hebrew Scriptures, we find traces of a wisdom such as the Egyptians never knew. The very first sentence—"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"—scatters the fables of Isis and Osiris, and substitutes for the troop of heathen deities the worship of One Living and True God. This single declaration marks a stupendous advance in the religious faith and worship of mankind.
The same first principle appears as the corner-stone of the law given on Mount Sinai: "I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
The second law of the first table breaks in pieces the images of the gods of the Egyptians: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, nor in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the earth." This was spoken to a people that had just come out of a country where they worshipped beasts and birds and reptiles, and where the walls of the temples were covered with the images of all kinds of foul and creeping things.
In this age of the world, and among civilized nations, we cannot understand the passion for idolatry. Yet it is one of the most universal and ineradicable instincts of a half barbarous people. They see tokens of an unseen power in the forces of nature, in clouds and winds, in lightning and tempest, and they torment themselves with all imaginable terrors,from which they seek relief and protection in bowing down to gods of wood and stone.
The Israelites coming out of Egypt, were out of the house of bondage in one sense, but they were in it in another. They were continually relapsing into idolatry. The golden calf of Aaron was but an imitation of the sacred bulls of Egypt. Often they pined for the products of the fertile valley of the Nile. With nothing but the burning sands beneath their feet, they might well long for the shade of the palm tree and for its delicious fruit, and they said, Why hath this man Moses brought us up to die in this wilderness? It required forty years of wandering, and that a whole generation should leave their bones to whiten the sands of the desert, before their children could be wholly alienated from the worship of false gods. So not only with the Israelites, but with all nations of men, ages of fiery discipline have been necessary to bring back the race to this first article of our faith: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth."
We might follow the comparison through all the tables of the law, to show how absurd is the pretence that what Moses taught to the Israelites he first learned from the Egyptians. Tell us, ye learned antiquaries, where on all these temples, and in all the records which they have left us, is there any trace of the Ten Commandments?
And yet Egypt is connected very intimately, in history at least, with the birth of our religion. No other country, except Palestine, figures so largely in the Bible. Abraham went down into Egypt. Here came the sons of Jacob to buy corn, and found Joseph ruling in the house of Pharaoh. And hither centuries later fled the virgin mother with her child from the wrath of Herod, fulfilling the prediction, "Out of Egypt have I called my son."
But Religion—the Divine wisdom which at once instructs and saves mankind—came not from the valley of the Nile.Abraham and Jacob and Moses saw the Pyramids standing just as we see them now, but they did not point them to the true God. That knowledge came from a higher source. "History," says Bunsen, "was born on that night when Moses, with the law of God in his heart, led the people of Israel out of Egypt." And not History only, but Religion then came to a new birth, that was to be the herald of new and better hopes, and of a higher civilization than was known to the ancient world.
THE EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
The valley of the Nile is one vast sepulchre. Tombs and temples! Temples and tombs! This is the sum of the monuments which ancient Egypt has left us. Probably no equal portion of the earth's surface was ever so populous, at once with the living and the dead. It is but a narrow strip of territory—a line of green between two deserts; and yet on this mereribbonof Africa lived the millions that made one of the most populous and powerful of ancient empires. They were fed by the marvellous fertility of the Nile valley, till they stood upon it almost as thick as the ranks of corn that waved around them: and here, when life was ended, they found a resting-place in the bosom of the earth that nourished them, on which they slept as children on a mother's breast. This strip of earth, long and narrow like a grave, has been the sepulchre of nations. Here the myriads of Egypt's ancient reigns—from the time of Menes—through the long line of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies—the generations that built the Pyramids and those that came after—laid themselves down to sleep in the great valley. Thus the very dust of Egypt was made up of the dust of ancient Egyptians.
But this was only the lot of the common people, to mingle their dust with common clay—their tomb the common earth, their end to be exhaled into the common air, or to reappear in other natural forms, living in plants, blooming in flowers, or in broad-leaved palms, casting a shadow on the earth fromwhich they sprung. But for her great ones, more enduring monuments were reared to guard their dust and perpetuate their names. No people, ancient or modern, ever lavished so much on these sacred and pious memorials. They expended more on the tombs of the dead than on the houses of the living, for they reasoned that the latter were but temporary dwellings, while the former were everlasting habitations. The kings of Egypt cared more for great tombs than great palaces, and they reared such mausoleums as the earth never saw before. The Pyramids were their tombs, and the mountains were hollowed into royal sepulchres. The rock tombs of Beni-Hassan are cut in the side of the hills. The barren mountain that looks off upon the great Libyan desert, is honeycombed with vast and silent halls of the dead. At Thebes the traveller, ascending from the Nile, winds his way among hills of sand into a valley of desolation. The summits around are not covered with pines like our own darkly wooded hills, nor do even the rocks gather moss—but all is bare and desolate. The desert has overflowed the earth like a sea, and not a shrub nor a blade of grass has survived the universal deluge. Yet here where not a living thing can be found, has been discovered underground the most remarkable series of tombs which exists. A whole mountain is pierced with deep excavations. Passages open into its rocky sides, running many hundred feet into the bowels of the earth, and branching off into recesses like side chapels. These Halls of Death are like kings' palaces, with stately chambers broad and high, whose sides and ceilings are covered with hieroglyphics and illustrative symbols.
A fact so remarkable as this, that the architecture of a great empire which has built the most colossal structures in the world, has this tomblike character, must have a meaning. The Egyptians were a very religious people. They were not a gay and thoughtless race, like some of their Asiatic and European neighbors. There is something grave even in theirfaces, as seen in ancient statues and monuments. Their very architecture had this heavy and solemn character. These colossal temples, these silent sphinxes, seem oppressed with some great mystery which they cannot reveal. These tombs show that the Egyptian mind was full of the idea of death, and of another life. The Egyptians were not Atheists, nor Sadducees. They believed devoutly in God, and in a life to come.
How strongly the idea of another life had taken hold of the Egyptian mind is evident from the symbols in their religion. The symbol most frequently employed is that of thescarabæus—or beetle—the image of which appears everywhere, which by analogy teaches that life, in passing through death, may be born to a new life. The beetle lays its eggs in the slime of the Nile; it buries them in mud, which it works into a ball, and rolls over and over, back to the edge of the desert, and buries in sand. There its work is ended: nature does the rest. Out of this grave comes in time a resurrection, and life is born of death. The ostrich eggs hung up in mosques, have the same symbolical meaning. The ostrich buries its eggs in the sand, and nature, that kind mother which watches over all life, gives them being. Thus is conveyed the same idea as in the analogy of the chrysalis and the butterfly.
Studying the religious faith of the Egyptians a little more closely, we see that they believed not only in the immortality of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. The doctrine taught by Paul, was long before taught by the priests of Egypt. Their tombs were not merely memorials of those who had ceased to live, but resting-places for the bodies of those whose spirits were absent but would some day return. For this, bodies were embalmed with religious care; they were buried in tombs hewn out of the solid rock, laid away in Pyramids, or in caverns hollowed out of the heart of the mountains. There, embedded in the eternal rocks, locked up with the bars of the everlasting hills, it seemed that theirremains would rest secure till the morning of the resurrection day.
Further, they believed not only in immortality and in resurrection, but also in retribution. The soul that was to pass into another life, was to go into it to be judged. There it was to be called to account for the deeds done in the body. Even the funeral rites indicated how strong was the belief of a judgment to come for all who departed this life. After the bodies were embalmed, they were borne in solemn procession to the Nile (most of the tombs being on the western bank), or to a sacred lake, across which they were to be ferried. (Did not this suggest to later Roman mythologists the river Styx, and the boatman Charon who conveyed departed souls to the gloomy shades of Pluto?) As the funeral procession arrived at the borders of the lake, it paused till certain questions were answered, on which it depended whether the dead might receive burial: or should be condemned to wander in darkness three thousand years. If it passed this ordeal, it moved forward, not to its everlasting repose, but to the Hall of Judgment, where Osiris sits upon his throne as the judge of all mankind. This scene is constantly represented in sculptures, in bas-reliefs, and in frescoes on the walls of tombs. In one of them a condemned wretch is driven away in the shape of a pig! (Was it here that Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt, obtained his doctrine of the transmigration of souls?) Before Osiris is the scribe, the recording angel, who keeps a faithful record of the deeds done in the body. A long line of judges—forty-two in number—sit arrayed as the final arbiters of his fate—each with his question, on the answer to which may depend the destiny of the departed soul.
The "Book of the Dead" (copies of which are still found wrapped up with mummies: several are in the British Museum) gives the answers to be made to these searching questions, and also the prayers to be offered, and the hymns thatare to be sung, as the soul enters the gloomy shades of the under-world.
In this Egyptian doctrine of a future life there are Christian ideas. Some indeed will say that Egypt gave rather than received; that she was the mother of all learning and all wisdom in the ancient world; that the Greeks obtained their philosophy from her (for Plato as well as Pythagoras studied in Egypt); that the Eleusinian mysteries came from Africa; that Moses here found what he taught the Hebrews; and that even the Christian mysteries and the Christian faith came from the banks of the Nile.
There is certainly much food for reflection in this reappearance of certain religious ideas in different countries and under different forms. But there is a contrast as well as a resemblance. While the Hebrews learned so much from the Egyptians, it is very remarkable that they didnotimbibe that strong faith in the reality of the invisible world, which lies at the foundation of religion. One would suppose that the Israelites, coming out of Egypt, would be full of these thoughts, and of the hopes and fears of a life to come. Yet in all the books of Moses, rarely, if ever, are these motives addressed to the Hebrews. The German critics argue from this that the Hebrews did not believe in another life. The late Dr. Edward Robinson, the distinguished Hebrew scholar, said that he could not find that doctrine in the Old Testament. Without admitting such an extreme view, it is certainly remarkable that that idea is much less prominent in the Old Testament than in the New. It is not Moses, but Christ who has brought life and immortality to light.
But the Egyptian doctrine of a future life, while very curious and interesting as a study of ancient belief, is utterly unsatisfying. The ideas are detached and fragmentary, and wholly without evidence or authority; they are merely the crude fancies of mythology, and not the precise teachings of Revelation. And so in all the tombs and temples of Egyptthere is nothing which can relieve the doubts of a troubled mind, or the sorrows of a heavy heart.
I have had some sober thoughts while floating on the bosom of the Nile. We cannot but see the world through our own eyes and through our moods of mind. To those who have left their dead beyond the sea, foreign travel has many sad and lonely hours. The world seems cold and empty, and even the most religious mind is apt to be haunted with gloomy thoughts. This is not a mood of mind peculiar to atheists and unbelievers. Many devout men, in seasons of mental depression, are tortured with doubts whether, after all, their religious faith is not a delusion and a dream.
And so many dark and bitter questionings come to me here in this land of sepulchres. I have come to Egypt to learn something of the wisdom of the Egyptians. Tell me then, ye tombs and temples and pyramids, about God; tell me about the life to come! But the Pyramids speak not; and the Sphinx still looks towards the East, to watch for the rising sun, but is voiceless and mute. This valley of the Nile speaks of nothing but death. From end to end its rock-ribbed hills are filled with tombs. Yet what do they all teach the anxious and troubled heart of man? Nothing! All these hills are silent. Not a sound, or even an echo, comes from these dark sepulchres. No voice of hope issues out of the caverns hollowed in the bosom of the hills. The hard granite of the tombs itself is not more deaf to the cry of human anguish, or the voice of supplication.
I turn from the monuments of man to nature. I stand on the bank of the Great River, and ask if it brings not some secret out of the heart of Africa? Tell me, ye night winds, blowing from African deserts; tell me, ye stars shining in the African heaven (this sky of Egypt is so pure and clear that the stars seem higher and more distant from this lower world), what light can ye throw on this great mystery of death? And the stars twinkle, but speak not, and the palm treesquiver in the night wind, but give no answer; and the great Nile flows on silently to the sea, as life flows on to eternity. Nature is dumb; the great secret is not revealed.
For the revelation of that secret we turn not to Egypt, but to Jerusalem. While the Egyptians groped darkly after the truth, how do these dim shadows, these poor emblems and analogies, set forth by contrast the clearer and better truth of revelation! All that is written on the tombs of Egypt; all that is carved in stone, or written in hieroglyphics on ancient sarcophagi; all that is built in temples and pyramids; is not worth that one saying of our Lord, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."
We spent Christmas day at Thebes, where a number of English boats had drawn up to the landing to keep the day, so dear to the hearts of Englishmen throughout the world. On Christmas eve they were decorated with palm branches, and at night were lighted up with Chinese lanterns, while row-boats were floating about, the Arab boatmen singing their wild, plaintive melodies.
Christmas brought a scene, if not so picturesque, yet far more sweet and tender. It had been our good fortune to meet there Rev. Dr. Potter of New York, the rector of Grace Church. He was going up the Nile with Miss Wolfe, of Madison square. They were on two dahabeeahs, but kept company, and anchored every night together. On Christmas day there was a service on board Miss Wolfe's boat, which was attended by all the English parties. It was held on the upper deck, which was spread with carpets and covered with an awning on the top and sides to protect us from the sun. Whether it was the strange scene, occurring in a distant part of the world, or sad memories which were recalled by these anniversary days, seldom has a service touched me more. It was very sweet to hear the old, old prayers—some of them almost as old as Christianity itself—to which we had so oftenlistened in other lands, and to join with the little company in the Christmas hymn:
"Hark! the herald angels sing,Glory to the new-born King;Peace on earth and mercy mild;God and man are reconciled."
"Hark! the herald angels sing,
Glory to the new-born King;
Peace on earth and mercy mild;
God and man are reconciled."
Dr. Potter read the service in his clear, rich voice, following it with a sermon which was quite extempore and brief, but so simple and so appropriate to the day that it went to every heart. And when at the close was celebrated the communion, we all felt how pleasant it was in such a place, so far from home, in a country surrounded by the ruins of the temples of old idolatries, to join in the worship of Him who on this day was born to be the Light and the Hope of the world. Better is this than all that Egypt can teach us about a life to come.
And so we turn from these great temples and tombs, which only mock our hopes, to Him who has passed through the grave, and lighted the way for us to follow Him. Let scholars dispute the first intent of the words, yet nothing in the Old Testament or the New, more distinctly expresses what I rest upon than this: "I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God!"
THE RELIGION OF THE PROPHET.
In a review of the faiths of Egypt, one cannot overlook that which has ruled in the land for more than a thousand years, and still rules, not only in Egypt, but over a large part of Asia and Africa. We arrived in Cairo a few days too late to witness the departure of the pilgrims for Mecca. Once in the year there is a gathering of the faithful for a journey which is the event of their lives. The spectacle is one of the most picturesque in the East, as a long procession, mounted on camels, many of which are richly caparisoned, files through the streets of the city, amid the admiring gaze of the whole population, and takes the way of the desert. Slowly it moves Eastward to the Red Sea, and passing around it, turns South to the heart of the Arabian Peninsula.
A caravan of pilgrims crossing the desert to visit the birthplace of the prophet, is a proof that religious enthusiasm still lives even in this unbelieving age. Perhaps the Moslem spirit is not so bigoted here as at Constantinople. The Turk, with his heavy stolid nature, is a more obstinate religionist than the Arab. And yet Mohammed was not a Turk; he was an Arab, and the faith which he taught still fires the heart of his race.
In one view Cairo may be considered the capital of Islam, as it is the seat of the great University, from which its priests go forth to all parts of the Mohammedan world. This University is nine hundred years old—older than Oxford, and still flourishes with as much vigor as in the palmydays of the Arabian conquest. A visit to it is the most interesting sight in Cairo. There I saw collected together—not one hundred or two hundred students, such as are found in our Theological Seminaries in America—but ten thousand! As one expressed it, "there were two acres of turbans," assembled in a vast inclosure, with no floor but a pavement, and with a roof over it, supported by four hundred columns, and at the foot of every column a teacher, surrounded by pupils, who sat at his feet precisely as Paul sat at the feet of Gamaliel. As we entered there rose a hum of thousands of voices, reciting the Koran. These students are not only from Egypt, but from all parts of Africa, from Morocco to Zanzibar. They come from far up the Nile, from Nubia and Soudan; and from Darfour beyond the Great Desert, and from the western coast of Africa. Asia too is largely represented in students both from Western Asia, from Turkey, Arabia, and Persia; and from Central Asia, from Khiva and Bokhara, and Turkistan and Afghanistan, and the borders of China. They come without staff or scrip. There is no endowment to support them; no Students' Fund or Education Board. They live on the charities of the faithful, and when their studies are ended, those who are to be missionaries on this continent mount their camels, and joining a caravan, cross the Desert, and are lost in the far interior of Africa.
This strange sight has set me a-thinking, and the more I think, the more the wonder grows. A religion that supports great universities from generation to generation; and that sends forth caravans, that are like armies, on long pilgrimages, is not dead; it is full of life, and can bring into the field tremendous forces to uphold its empire in the East. What is the secret of its power, by which it lives on from century to century, and seems as if it could not but by annihilating die? There is no question of more interest to the historical student; and no one which it is more necessary tounderstand in order to form some just idea of the great Eastern War which is already looming above the horizon. A full recognition of that which is good in Islam, and of that which gives it power, would prevent many mistakes in forecasting the future, although it might abate the sanguine confidence of our missionary friends in the speedy triumph of Christianity over its hereditary foe.
First of all, we must recognize the fact of its existence as one of the great religions of the world. The number of its adherents is variously estimated at from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and eighty millions. It holds but a corner of Europe, but extends its empire over a large part of Asia and Africa. The whole of Africa which is not Pagan, is Moslem. In Asia Islam disputes the sway of Hindooism in India, where the Queen has more Moslem subjects than the Sultan himself, and of Buddhism in the islands of the Malayan Archipelago. Over so large a part of the earth's surface is extended the wide dominion of the Prophet. His followers number one-tenth, perhaps one-eighth, or even one-sixth part of the human race.
Nor is this dominion a merely nominal thing. On the contrary, the true believers are strong believers. It may well be doubted, whether among the nations nominally Christian the mass of the people really believe with half the firmness and the fervor of Mussulmans. The Moslems are as sincere, and in their way as devout, as the adherents of any religion on the face of the globe. No one can enter the mosque of St. Sophia, and see the worshippers turning their faces towards Mecca, not only kneeling but prostrating themselves, touching the pavement with their foreheads, and repeating, in a low, mournful tone, passages from the Koran, without feeling that these men really believe. Those prostrate forms, those wailing voices, are not the signs of hypocrisy, but of a faith that, however mistaken, is at least sincere. In their own minds they are in the presence of the Highest,and offer worship to the unseen God. Indeed they are more than believers, they are zealots, carrying their faith to fanaticism. A body so vast in number, composed of such fierce religionists, is certainly a great power in the political and military, as well as religious, forces, that are yet to contend for the mastery of the Eastern world.
Nor is this power inactive in spreading its faith; it is full of missionary zeal. Max Müller divides all the religions of the world into proselytizing and non-proselytizing. Mohammedanism belongs to the former class as much as Christianity. The days are past when the followers of the Prophet swept over large parts of Asia and Africa, converting tribes and nations by the sword. And yet even at the present day it keeps up a Propaganda as vigorous as that of the Catholics at Rome. Its university here is training ten thousand young apostles. Moslem missionaries preach the Koran, and make proselytes, in all parts of India. But the chief field of their labors is in Africa, where they have penetrated far into the interior, and converted numerous tribes to the faith. It is difficult to obtain accurate statistics in regard to the spread of Islam in Africa. Livingstone thought the reports greatly exaggerated. That is quite possible, and yet, making every allowance, there can be no doubt that it has obtained a success much greater than that of Christian missions.
A religion which has such a foundation on the solid earth, holding nations and empires in its wide dominion; and which has such a history, stretching over twelve centuries; is a subject worthy the closest attention of scholars. Its history is not unlike that of Christianity itself, in the feebleness of its beginning and the greatness of its results. It started in an obscure corner of the world—in the deserts of Arabia—and rapidly conquered the East, overrunning all the adjacent parts of Asia and Africa, and extending along the Mediterranean to the Straits of Gibraltar, and thence crossed into Spain, where it maintained itself for eight hundred yearsagainst all the power of Europe to expel it. Such conquests show a prodigious vitality—a vitality not yet exhausted, as it still holds the half of Asia and Africa. A faith which commands the allegiance of so large a part of mankind must have some elements of truth to give it such tremendous power. Perhaps we can find the key in the character of its Founder, and in the faith which he taught.
A great deal has been written about the life of Mohammed, but even yet his character is imperfectly understood. Perhaps we cannot fully understand it, for there are in it contradictions which perplex the most patient and candid student. By many he is dismissed at once as a vulgar impostor, a sort of Joe Smith, who invented monstrous lies, and by stoutly sticking to them got others to believe in them, and as soon as he rallied a few followers about him, compelled neighboring tribes to accept his faith by the unsparing use of the sword.
This is an easy way to get rid of a difficult historical question, but unfortunately it does not explain the facts. It is by that sort of cheap reasoning that Gibbon undertakes to explain the rapid spread of Christianity. But if Mohammed had been a cunning impostor, his first claim would have been to work miracles, which on the contrary he never claimed at all, but distinctly repudiated. Nor was he a greedy mercenary; he was a poor man; his followers relate with pride how he mended his own clothes, and even pegged his own shoes. But he combined every element of the visionary and the enthusiast. He had that vivid imagination that conceives strongly of things invisible to the natural sense, to which "things that are not become as things that are," and that ardent temperament that kindles at the sight of these unseen realities. Perhaps this temperament was connected with his bodily constitution; from his youth he was subject to epileptic fits, and his revelations were accompanied with convulsions. Such things are found in other religions. They arequite common in the history of devout and passionate Romanists. Nor are they unknown even among Protestants, who profess to be more sober and rational. Among the Methodists, at camp-meetings, a very frequent effect of religious emotion has been that strong men were so prostrated that they fell to the ground and became as dead, and when they recovered, retained impressions never to be effaced, as if they had seen things which it was not lawful to utter. The revelations of Mohammed were all accompanied by these "physical manifestations." Sometimes the angel spoke to him as one man to another; at other times something within his bosom sounded like a bell, which he said "rent him in pieces." At such times he fell to the ground and foamed at the mouth, or his eyes turned red, and he streamed with perspiration, and roared like a camel, in his struggle to give utterance to the revelation of God. This does not look like imposture, but like insanity. The constitution of such a man is a psychological study.
This natural ardor was inflamed by long seclusion. From his youth he loved solitude. Like the old prophets, he withdrew from the world to be alone with God. Like Elijah, he hid himself in a cave. Every year, during the month of Ramadan, he retired to a cave in Mount Hera, three miles from Mecca, to give himself up to religious contemplation; and there, it is said, amid spasmodic convulsions, he had his first vision, in which the angel Gabriel appeared to him.
This explanation of a mind half disordered, subject to dreams and visions and fanatical illusions, is much more rational than that of supposing in him an artful design to impose a new religion on his countrymen. Like other enthusiasts, he became the victim of his own illusions. His imagination so wrought upon him that he came to accept his visions as Divine revelations. In this he was not playing a part; he was not the conscious hypocrite. No doubt he believed himself what he wished others to believe. Indeedhe made them believe, by the very sincerity and intensity of his own convictions.
Mohammedanism may be considered as a system of theology, and as a system of morality. The former seems to have been derived largely from Judaism. Mohammed belonged to the tribe of the Koreishites, who claimed to be descended from Abraham through Ishmael. His family were the keepers of the Caaba, or holy place of Mecca, where is the black stone which was brought from heaven, and the spring Zemzem, which sprang up in the desert to save the life of Hagar and her child. Thus he was familiar from his earliest years with the traditions of the patriarchs.
When a boy of fourteen he made a journey with his uncle into Syria, where he may have learned more of the ancient faith. Much is said of his becoming acquainted with a Nestorian bishop or monk, from whom he is supposed to have learned something of Christianity. But he could not have learnedmuch, for his views of it were always extremely vague. It is doubtful whether he ever saw the New Testament, or had any knowledge of it other than that derived from some apocryphal books. There is no trace in the Koran of the sublime doctrines of the Gospel, or even of its moral precepts. Although Mohammed professed great reverence for Jesus, whom with Moses he considers the greatest of prophets next to himself, yet his ideas of the Religion which He taught were of the most indefinite kind.
But one thing he did learn, which was common to Judaism and Christianity—that there is but one God. The Monotheism of the Hebrews took the stronger hold of him, from its contrast to the worship around him, which had degenerated into gross idolatry. The tribes of Arabia had become as base idolaters as the Canaanites. Even the holy Caaba was filled with idols, and the mission of the prophet—as he regarded it—was to restore the worship of the One Living and True God. His first burst of prophetic fire and prophetic wrathwas a fierce explosion against idolatry, and it was a moment of triumph when he was able to walk through the Caaba, and see the idols dashed in pieces.
Here then is the first and last truth of Islam, the existence of one God. The whole is comprehended in this one saying, "God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet."
With the homage due to God, is the respect due to His revealed will. Moslems claim for the Koran what many Christians do not claim for the Bible—a literal and verbal inspiration. Every word is Divine.
And not only is the unity of God the cardinal truth, but it is vital to salvation. In this respect Islam is a Religion. It is not a mere philosophy, the acceptance or rejection of which is a matter of indifference. It is not merely a system of good morals—it is a Divine code for the government of mankind, whose acceptance is a matter of life and death—of salvation or damnation.
The doctrine ofretributionis held by the Moslems in its most rigid form—more rigid indeed than in the Christian system: for there is no atonement for sin. The judgment is inexorable; it is absolute and eternal. Before their eyes ever stands the Day of Judgment—the Dies Iræ—when all men shall appear before God to receive their doom.
But in that last day, when unbelievers shall be destroyed, the followers of the prophet shall be saved. They can go to the tribunal of their Maker without trembling. One day riding outside the walls of Constantinople, we approached a cemetery just as a funeral procession drew near, bearing the form of the dead. We stopped to witness the scene. The mourners gathered around the place where the body was laid, and then the ulema approached the grave, and beganan address to the dead, telling her (it was a woman) not to be afraid when the angel came to call her to judgment, but to appear before the bar of the Almighty, and answer without fear, for that no follower of the prophet should perish.
The religious observances of the Moslems are very strict. As God is the sole object of worship, so the great act of Religion is communion with Him. Five times a day the voice of the muezzin calls them to prayer. The frequent ablutions were perhaps derived from the Jewish law. Fasting is imposed with a severity almost unknown in the Christian world. The most rigid Catholics hardly observe the forty days of Lent as the Moslems do the month of Ramadan. Almsgiving is not only recommended, but required. Every true believer is commanded to give one-tenth of his income to charity.
As to the moral results of Mohammedanism, it produces some excellent effects. It inculcates the strictest temperance. The Koran prohibits the use of wine, even though wine is one of the chief products of the East. In this virtue of total abstinence the Moslems are an example to Christians.
So in point of integrity; the honesty of the Turk is a proverb in the East, compared with the lying of Christians. Perhaps this comes in part not only from his religion, but from the fact that he belongs to the conquering race. Tyrants and masters do not need to deceive, while falsehood and deceit are the protection of slaves. Subject races, which have no defence before the law, or from cruel masters, seek it in subterfuge and deception. But this claim of integrity may be pushed too far. However it may be in Asia Minor, among simple-minded Turks, who have not been "spoiled by coming in contact with Christians," those who have to do with Turks in the bazaars of Constantinople, are compelled to confess, that if they do not tell lies, they tell very big truths. However, as between the Turk and the Greek, in point of honesty, it is quite possible that those who know them both would give the preëminence to the former.
Whatever the weakness of Mohammedanism, it does notshow itself inthat sortof vices. His very pride makes the Mussulman scorn these meaner sins. His religion, as it lifts him up with self-esteem, produces an effect on his outward bearing. He has an air of independence which is unmistakable. I think I never saw a Mussulman that was afraid to look me in the face. He has none of the sneaking servility that we see in some races. This is a natural consequence of his creed, according to which God is so great that no man is great in his sight. Islam is at once a theocracy and a democracy. God is sole Lawgiver and King, before whom all men stand on the same level. Hence men of all nations and races fraternize together. In Constantinople blacks and whites, the men of Circassia and the men of Ethiopia, walk arm in arm, and stand on the level of absolute equality.
This democratic spirit is carried everywhere. There is no caste in Islam, not even in India, where it is at perpetual war with the castes of Hindooism. So as it spreads in the interior of Africa, it raises the native tribes to a degree of manliness and self-respect which they had not known before. It "levels up" the African race. Our missionaries in Liberia, who come in contact with certain Moslem tribes from the interior, such as the Mandingoes, will testify that they are greatly superior to those farther South, on the Gold Coast, the Ashantees and the people of Dahomey, who have filled the world with horror by their human sacrifices. All this disappears before the advance of Islam. It breaks in pieces the idols; it destroys devil worship and fetichism and witchcraft, and puts an end to human sacrifices. Thus it renders a service to humanity and civilization.
So far Islam is a pretty good religion—not so good indeed as Christianity, but better than any form of Paganism. It has many elements of truth, derived chiefly from Judaism. So far as Mohammed followed Moses—so far as the Koran followed the Old Testament—they uttered only the truth,and truth which was fundamental. The unity of God is the foundation of religion. It is not only a truth, but the greatest of truths, the first condition of any right religious worship. In declaring this, Mohammed only proclaimed to the Arabs what Moses had proclaimed to the Hebrews: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." But he repeated it with great vehemence and effect, wielding it as a battle-axe to break in pieces the idols of the heathen. And so far—as against idolatry—Islam has served a great purpose in history. But there its utility ends. It teaches indeed that there is but one God. But what a God is that which it presents to our worship! "This God is not our God." The Mohammedan idea of God is very different from the Christian idea of a Father in heaven. It is the idea of the Awful, the Invisible—grand indeed, yet cold and distant and far away, like the stars on the desert, or in the Arctic night, "wildly, spiritually bright," shining with a glittering splendor, but lofty and inaccessible, beyond the cries of human agony or despair. This view of God is so limited and partial as to produce the effect of positive error. In a just religious system there must be included the two ideas of God and man; and these in their proper relation to each other. Exclusive contemplation of either leads astray. When man fastens on the idea of one God, he plants himself on a rock. But he must not bow himself upon the rock, and clasp it so as to forget his own separate individuality, lest the mighty stone roll over upon him and crush him. This the Mussulman does. He dwells so on the idea of God, that his own existence is not only lost sight of, but annihilated. The mind, subdued in awe, is at length overpowered by what it beholds. Man is nothing in that awful presence, as his life is but a point in the Divine eternity.
It cannot be denied that the idea of God, and God alone, may produce some grand effects on human character. It inspires courage. If God be for us, who can be against us?That Godisfor him, the Mussulman never doubts; and this confidence inspires him in danger, and on the field of battle, so that he fights with desperation. But if the fortune of war be against him, who so well as the devout Mussulman knows how to suffer and to die? He murmurs not; but bows his head, saying "God is great," and submits to his fate. Thus his creed carried out to its logical consequence ends in fatalism. He believes so absolutely in God, that the decrees of the Almighty become a fixed fate, which the will of man is impotent to resist. All this comes from an imperfect idea of God. Here Islam is defective, just where Christianity is complete.
There is nothing in Mohammedanism that brings God down to earth, within the range of human sympathy or even of human conception. There is no incarnation, no Son of God coming to dwell among men, hungry and weary, bearing our griefs and carrying our sorrows, suffering in the garden, and dying on the cross.
The Mussulman does not feel his need of such help. In his prayers there is no acknowledgment of sin, no feeling of penitence, no confession of unworthiness. He knows not how poor and weak he is, with a religion in which there is no Saviour and Redeemer, no Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world, no Holy Spirit to help our infirmities, to strengthen our weaknesses.
So with Moslem morality; if we scan it closely, we find it wanting in many virtues. Some writers give the most elevated ideas of it. Says Chambers' Cyclopædia: "Aside from the domestic relations, the ethics of the Mohammedan religion are of the highest order. Pride, calumny, revenge, avarice, prodigality, and debauchery, are condemned throughout the Koran; while trust in God, submission to His will, patience, modesty, forbearance, love of peace, sincerity, frugality, benevolence, liberality, are everywhere insisted upon."
This is very high praise. But mark the exception:"Aside from the domestic relations." That exception takes out of the system a whole class of virtues, and puts a class of vices in their place. Here is the great crime of Islam against humanity—its treatment of woman. We will not charge against it more than belongs to it. The seclusion of woman is not a Mohammedan custom so much as an Oriental one, and one of a very ancient date. When Abraham sent a servant to find a wife for Isaac, and he returned bringing Rebekah, as the caravan drew near home, and Isaac went out to meditate at eventide, as soon as Rebekah saw him in the distance, she lighted off from her camel and "veiled herself." Polygamy too existed before Mohammed: it existed among the patriarchs. It is claimed that Mohammed repressed it, limiting a man to four wives, although he far exceeded the number himself. Gibbon, who never misses an opportunity of making a point against the Bible, says: "If we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives." But this pretence of self-restraint is a mockery. It is notorious that Mohammed was a man of the grossest licentiousness; and the horrible and disgusting thing about it is that he grew more wicked as he grew older; and while trying to put restraint upon others put none upon himself. He punished licentiousness with a hundred stripes, and adultery with death, and yet he was a man of unbounded profligacy, and to make it worse, pleaded a Divine revelation to justify it!
This example of the prophet has had its influence on all the generations of his followers. It has trailed the slime of the serpent over them all. Any one who has been in a Mohammedan country must have felt that the position of woman is a degradation. One cannot see them gliding through the streets of Cairo or Constantinople, with their faces veiled as if it were a shame to look on them, and passing swiftlyas if indeed it were a sin for them to be seen abroad, without a feeling of pity and indignation.
And in what a position are such women at home, if it can be called a home, where there is no family, no true domestic life! The wife of a Mohammedan—the mother of his children—is little better than a slave. She is never presented to his friends—indeed you could not offer a greater insult to a Turk than to ask after his wife! Of course there is no such thing as society where women are not allowed to appear. Such a society as that of London or Paris, composed of men eminent in government, in science and literature—a society refined and elevated by the presence of women of such education and manners and knowledge of the world as to be the fit companions of such men—could not possibly exist in Constantinople.
But the degradation of woman is not the only crime to be charged to Islam. In fit companionship with it is cruelty. Mohammed had many virtues, but he had no mercy. He was implacable toward his enemies. He massacred his prisoners, not from hard necessity, but with a fierce delight. Fanaticism extinguished natural compassion, and he put his enemies to death with savage joy. In this his followers have "bettered his instructions." The Turks are cruel, perhaps partly by nature, but partly also because any tender sympathies of nature are kept down by a fiery zeal. Their religion does not make them merciful. When a people have become possessed with the idea that they are the people of God, and that others are outcasts, they become insensible to the sufferings of those outside of the consecrated pale.
In the Greek Revolution the people of Scio joined in the rebellion. A Turkish army landed on the island, and in two months put 23,000 of the inhabitants to the sword, without distinction of age or sex; 47,000 were sold into slavery, and 5,000 escaped to Greece. In four months the Christian population was reduced from 104,000 to 2,000.
What the Turks are in Europe and Asia, the Arabs are in Africa. The spread of Mohammedanism is a partial civilization of some heathen tribes. But, alas, the poor natives come in contact with "civilization" and "religion" in another way—in the Arab slave-hunters, who, though they are Mohammedans, and devoutly pray toward Mecca, are the most merciless of human beings. One cannot read the pages of Livingstone without a shudder at the barbarities practised on defenceless natives, which have spread terror and desolation over a large part of the interior of Africa.
These cruel memories rise up to spoil the poetry and romance which some modern writers have thrown about the religion of the prophet. They disturb my musings, when awed or touched by some features of Moslem faith; when I listen to the worship in St. Sophia, or witness the departure of pilgrims for Mecca. Whatever Oriental pomp or splendor may still survive in its ancient worship, at its heart the system is cold, and hard, and cruel; it does not acknowledge the brotherhood of man, but exalts the followers of the prophet into a caste, who can look down on the rest of mankind with ineffable scorn. Outside of that pale, man is not a brother, but an enemy—an enemy not to be won by love, but to be conquered and subdued, to be made a convert or a slave. Not only does the Koran not bid mercy to be shown to unbelievers, but it offers them, as the only alternatives, conversion, or slavery, or death.
Needs it any argument to show how impossible is good government under a creed in which there is no recognition of justice and equality? I think it is Macaulay who says that the worst Christian government is better than the best Mohammedan government. Wherever that religion exists, there follow inevitably despotism and slavery, by which it crushes man, as by its polygamy and organized licentiousness, it degrades and crushes woman. Polygamy, despotism, and slavery form the trinity of woes which Mohammedanism hascaused to weigh for ages, like a nightmare, on the whole Eastern world. Such a system is as incompatible with civilization as with Christianity, and sooner or later must pass away, unless the human race is to come to a standstill, or to go backward.
But when and how? I am not sanguine of any speedy change. Such changes come slowly. We expect too much and too soon. In an age of progress we think that all forms of ignorance and superstition must disappear before the advance of civilization. But thevis inertiæopposes a steady resistance. It has been well said, "We are told that knowledge is power, but who has considered the power of ignorance?" How long it lives and how hard it dies! We hear much of the "waning crescent," but it wanes very slowly, and it sometimes seems as if the earth itself would grow old and perish before that waning orb would disappear from the heavens. Christian Missions make no more impression upon Islam than the winds of the desert upon the cliffs of Mount Sinai.
I do not look for any great change in the Mohammedan world, except in the train of political changes. That religion is so bound up with political power, that until that is destroyed, or terribly shaken, there is little hope of a general turning to a better faith. War and Revolution are the fiery chariots that must go before the Gospel, to herald its coming and prepare its way. Material forces may open the door to moral influences; the doctrines of human freedom and of human brotherhood may be preached on battle plains as well as in Christian temples. When the hard iron crust of Islam is broken up, and the elements begin to melt with fervent heat, the Eastern world may be moulded into new forms. Then will the Oriental mind be brought into an impressible state, in which argument and persuasion can act upon it; and it may yield to the combined influence of civilization and Christianity. The change will be slow. It will take years;it may take centuries. But sooner or later the fountains of the great deep will be broken up. That cold, relentless system must pass away before the light and warmth of that milder faith which recognizes at once the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.
In that coming age there may be other pilgrimages and processions going up out of Egypt. "The dromedaries shall come from far." But then, if a caravan of pilgrims issues from Cairo, to cross the desert, to seek the birthplace of the founder of its religion, it will not turn South to Mecca, but North to Bethlehem, asking with the Magi of old, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him."