292 THE EIDDLE OF THE UNIVEKSE. 



Catholicism, still the most extensive branch of Chris- 

 tianity, a rich and variegated polytheism that dwarfs 

 the Olympic family of the Greeks. 



Islam, or the Mohammedan monotheism, is the 

 youngest and purest form of monotheism. When the 

 young Mohammed (born 570) learned to despise the 

 polytheistic idolatry of his Arabian compatriots, and 

 became acquainted with Nestorian Christianity, he 

 adopted its chief doctrines in a general way ; but he 

 could not bring himself to see anything more than a 

 prophet in Christ, like Moses. He found in the dogma 

 of the Trinity what every emancipated thinker finds on 

 impartial reflection — an absurd legend, which is neither 

 reconcilable with the first principles of reason, nor of 

 any value whatever for our religious advancement. He 

 justly regarded the worship of the immaculate mother 

 of God as a piece of pure idolatry, like the veneration 

 of pictures and images. The longer he reflected on 

 it, and the more he strove after a purified idea of 

 deity, the clearer did the certitude of his great maxim 

 appear : " God is the only God " — there are no other 

 gods beside him. 



Yet Mohammed could not free himself from the 

 anthropomorphism of the God-idea. His one only 

 God was an idealised, almighty man, like the stern, 

 vindictive God of Moses, and the gentle, loving God 

 of Christ. Still, we must admit that the Moham- 

 medan religion has preserved the character of pure 

 monotheism throughout the course of its historical 

 development and its inevitable division much more 

 faithfully than the mosaic and Christian religions. 

 We see that to-day, even externally, in its forms of 

 prayer and preaching, and in the architecture and 

 adornment of its mosques. When I visited the East 



