SCIENCE. 



333 



When, now, we pass from the phenomena which 

 Religion presents in the present day to what we know of 

 its phenomena in the earliest historic times, the conclusions 

 we have reached receive abundant confirmation. Of the 

 Origin of Religion, indeed, as we have already seen, history 

 can tell us nothing, because, unless the Mosaic narrative 

 be accepted, there is no history of the origin of Man. 

 But the origin of particular systems of Religion does come 

 within the domain of history, and the testimony it affords 

 is always to the same effect. In regard to them we have 

 the most positive evidence that they have been uniformly 

 subject to degradation. All the great religions of the 

 world whicn can be traced to the teaching or influence of 

 individual men have steadily declined from the teaching of 

 their founders. In India it has been one great business 

 of Christian missionaries and of Christian governors, in 

 their endeavors to put an end to cruel and barbarous 

 customs, to prove to the- corrupt disciples of an ancient 

 creed that its first prophets or teachers had never held the 

 doctrines from which such customs arise, or that these 

 customs are a gross misconception and abuse of the doc- 

 trine which had been really taught. Whether we study 

 what is now held by the disciples of Buddha, of Con- 

 fucius, or of Zoroaster, it is the same result. Wherever we 

 can arrive at the original teaching of the known founders 

 of religious systems, we find that teaching uniformly 

 higher, more spiritual than the teaching now. The same 

 law has effected Christianity, with this difference only, 

 that alone of all the historical religions of the world it has 

 hitherto shown an unmistakable power of perennial re- 

 vival and reform. But we know that the processes of cor- 

 ruption had begun their work even in the lifetime of the 

 Apostles ; and every church in Christendom will equally 

 admit the general fact, although each of them will give a 

 different illustration of it. Mohammedanism, which is 

 the last and latest of the great historical religions of the 

 world, shows a still more remarkable phenomena. The 

 corruption in this case began not only in the lifetime but 

 in the life of the prophet and founder of that religion. 

 Mahomet was himself his own most corrupt disciple. In 

 the earliest days of his mission he was best as a man and 

 greatest as a teacher. His life was purer and his doctrine 

 more spiritual when his voice was a solitary voice crying 

 in the wilderness, than when it was joined in chorus by 

 the voice of many millions. In his case the progress of 

 development in a wrong direction was singularly distinct 

 snd very rapid. Nor is the cause obscure. The spirit of 

 Mahomet may well have been in close communion with 

 the Spirit of all truth, when, like St. Paul at Athens, his 

 heart was stirred within him as he saw his Arabian 

 countrymt n wholly given to idolatry. Such deep impres- 

 sions on some everlasting truth — such overpowering con- 

 victions — are in the nature of inspiration. The intima- 

 tions it gives and the impulses it communicates are true 

 in thought and righteous in motive, in exact proportion 

 as the reflecting surfaces ot the human mind are accu- 

 rately set to the lights which stream from Nature. This 

 is the adjustment which gives all their truthfulness to tne 

 intimations of the senses ; which gives all its wisdom and 

 foresight to the wonderful work of instinct ; which gives 

 all their validity to the processes of reason, which is the 

 real source of all the achievements of genius ; and which, 

 on the highest level of all, has made some men the in- 

 spired mouthpiece of the oracles of God. But it is the 

 tenderest of all adjustments — the most delicate, the most 

 easily disturbed. When this adjustment is, as it were, 

 mechanical, as it is in the lower animals, then we have 

 the limited, but, within its own sphere, the perfect wis- 

 dom of the beasts. But when this adjustment is liable to 

 distortion by the action of a Will which is to some extent 

 self-determined and is also to a latge extent degraded, 

 then the real inspiration is not from without, but from 

 within — then the reflecting surfaces of mind are so 

 longer set true to the light of Nature ; and 

 then "if the light within us be darkness, 



how great is that darkness ! " Hence it is 

 that one single mistake or misconception as to the 

 nature and work of inspiration is, and must be a mistake 

 of tremendous consequence. And this was Mahomet's 

 mistake. He thought that the source of his inspiration 

 was direct, immediate, and personal. He thought that 

 even the very words in which his own impulses were em- 

 bodied were dictated by the Angel Gabriel. He thought 

 that the Supreme Authority which spoke through him 

 when he proclaimed that " the Lord God Almighty was 

 one God, the Merciful, the Compassionate," was the same 

 which also spoke to him when he proclaimed that it was 

 lawful for him to take his neighbor's wife. From such an 

 abounding well-spring of delusion the most bitter waters 

 were sure to come. How different this idea of the methods 

 in which the Divine Spirit operates upon the minds of 

 men from the idea held on the same subject by that great 

 Apostle of our Lord whose work it was to spread among 

 the Gentile world those religious conceptions which had 

 so long been the special heritage of one peculiar people ! 

 How cautious St. Paul is when expressing an opinion not 

 directly sanctioned by an authority higher than his own ! 

 " I think also that I have the Spirit of God." The in- 

 junction, " Try the spirits whether they be of God," is one 

 which never seems to have occurred to Mahomet. The 

 consequences were what might have been expected. The 

 utterances of his inspiration when he was hiding in the 

 caves of Mecca were better, purer, higher than those which 

 he continued to pour forth when, after his flight to Medina, 

 he became a great conqueror and a great ruler. From 

 the very first indeed he breathed the spjrit of personal 

 anger and malediction on all who disbelieved his message. 

 This root of bitterness was present from the beginning. 

 But its developments were indeed prodigious. It was the 

 animating spirit of precepts without number which, in the 

 minds and in the hands of his ruthless followers, have in- 

 flicted untold miseries for twelve hundred years on some 

 of the fairest regions of the globe. 



Passing now from the evidence of the law of corruption 

 and decline which is afforded by this last and latest of the 

 great historical religions of the world, we find the 

 same evidence in those of a much older date. In the 

 first place, all the founders of those religions were 

 themselves nothing but reformers. In the second 

 place the reforms they instituted have themselves all 

 more or less again yielded to new developments of 

 decay. The great prophets of the world have been men 

 of inspiration or of genius who were revolted by the cor- 

 ruptions of some pre-existing system, and who desired 

 to restore some older znd purer faith. The form which 

 their reformation took was generally determined, as all 

 strong revolts are sure to be, by violent reaction against 

 some prominent conception or some system of practice 

 which seemed, as it were, an embodiment of its corrup- 

 tion. In this way only can we account for the peculiar 

 direction taken by the teaching of that one great histor- 

 ical Religion which is said to have more disciples than 

 any other in the world. Buddhism was in its origin a 

 reform of Brahminism. In that system the beliefs of a 

 much older and simpler age had become hid under the 

 rubbish-heaps of a most corrupt development. Nowhere 

 perhaps in the world had the work- of evolution been 

 richer in the growth of briers and thorns. It had forged 

 the iron bonds of caste, one of the very worst inventions 

 of an evil imagination ; and it had degraded worship in- 

 to a complicated system of sacrifice and of ceremonial 

 observances. There seems to be no doubt that the 

 teaching of the reformer Sakya Muni (Buddha) was a re- 

 volt and a reform. It was a reassertion of the para- 

 mount value of a life of righteousness. But the intellect- 

 ual conceptions which are associated wiih this great eth- 

 ical and spiritual reform had within themselves the germs 

 of another cycle of decay. 



( To be continued.) , 



