The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
the world,” no man, accustomed to philosophize, can for a moment
entertain. No man ever yet went to work deliberately to devise and
impose a false religion, or if any one ever did, he never succeeded. He
who founds a new religion is never an impostor in his own eyes. He works
“in a sad sincerity,” and imposes on himself before imposing on others.
Mahomet evidently believed in himself, in the sanctity of his own
mission, and worked from an earnest conviction, not from simple craft or
calculation. I am pleased to find the author of that admirable poem,
_Mohammed, a Tragedy in Five Acts_, a work of rare sagacity and true
poetic genius, rejecting the old theory of downright imposture. The
estimable author maintains that he was sincere in part, and in part
insincere. He was sincere in his assertion of the unity of God, and in
his hostility to idolatry, but insincere in the assertion of his
prophetic mission. I am not, however, satisfied with this. I do not deny
that men may be half sincere, and half knavish, or that they be sincere
and earnest as to the end, and wholly unscrupulous as to the means. But
in nothing was Mahomet more sincere than in his belief in his own
mission, and in the supernatural origin of the Koran. Never, without
that conviction, could he have inspired his followers with it, or have
himself persevered for so many years, amid the ill success and
discouragements that he experienced. His gratitude, evidently unfeigned,
to Cadijah, his first consort, and to Medina, which received him on his
flight from Mecca, cherished to the last moment of his life, proves that
he believed in his own mission.
The same thing is proved by his open vice and profligacy after his
success. A man conscious that he is playing a part, that he has a
character to sustain, that he is acting the prophet, would have been
more circumspect, more wary in the indulgence of his lusts, and affected
a life of more rigid asceticism. He would have been on his guard against
scandalizing his followers, and would never have dared insert in his
Koran those scandalous provisions which specially exempt him from
obedience to the laws which he professed, by Divine authority, to impose
upon his followers. Imposture can never afford to abandon itself openly
to the empire of the passions. Heretics are usually more careful than
the orthodox in regard to appearances. They usually affect great purity
of life, a decorous exterior, and a grave and sanctimonious face and
tone. Hypocrisy is austere, maintains in its look and tone an awful
gravity, and never relaxes in public. It is only innocence that dares be
light and frolicsome, and yield to its varying impulses. Nobody is so
shocked with the imaginary impurities of Convents and Nunneries as your
debauched old sinners, steeped in corruption, and the miserable slaves
of their own morbid passions and prurient imagination.
What deceives the excellent and gifted author of the Tragedy, is the
fact that so far as Mahomet asserted the unity of God against the
polytheism of the unconverted Arabs, and opposed idolatry, he was on the
side of truth and religion, and consequently was so far opposed to
Satan. He thinks that thus far he could not have been under the
influence of an evil spirit. Has he forgotten the demon of Socrates? Has
he forgotten that the devil can disguise himself as an angel of light?
Paganism, in its old form, was doomed. Christianity had silenced the
oracles and driven the devils back to hell. How was the devil to
reëstablish his worship on earth, and carry on his war against the son
of God? Evidently only by changing his tactics, and turning the truth
into a lie. There is nothing to hinder us from believing that Satan
himself taught Mahomet the unity of God, and inspired him with horror of
the prevailing forms of idolatry. The strong keeps the house, as our
Lord says, till a stronger binds him and enters into possession. The
devil would expel polytheism and the grosser forms of idolatry, no
longer in harmony with the spirit of the times, that he might make the
last state worse than the first; and whoever has studied history knows
that Mahometanism has proved a far more formidable enemy to Christianity
than was the paganism braved by the Apostles. The truths of the Koran
are introduced only to sanction its errors, and its moral precepts, many
of which are good, only to give countenance to its immorality, to its
Satanic abominations.
Mahomet in his life was subject to what we call in these days the
mesmeric trance, as was Socrates. He would often be suddenly arrested,
fall prostrate upon the earth, and in this attitude and in these trances
he professed to receive his revelations. Here are evidently the mesmeric
phenomena which in some form always accompany the presence and invasion
of demons. Mr. Miles has introduced these, and described them with great
spirit, truth, and propriety, in the opening scene of his tragedy. The
time is the night of Al Kadir, the place is the Cave of Hara, three
miles from Mecca, where Mahomet was accustomed to resort and spend much
time alone. Mahomet is seen prostrate upon the slope of a rock,
resembling a rude pedestal, his face concealed by his turban. He is
visited by Cadijah, his affectionate and beloved wife. To her he seems
asleep. She calls him, she approaches him, she embraces him, and tries
to awaken him. All in vain. Finding her efforts fruitless, she exclaims,
“Alas, this is not sleep! Some evil spirit
O’ershadows thee.”
When finally the vision departs, and Mahomet awakes, he breaks out,
“Gone! gone! celestial messenger,
Angel of light!
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . Yes—’twas there—’twas there
The angel stood, in more than mortal splendor,
Before my dazzled vision!—I have heard thee,
Ambassador from Allah to my soul,
Have heard and will obey.”
To the question of Cadijah, “What mystery is this?” he answers,
“Ah! the tremendous recollection bursts
So vividly upon me, that my tongue
Grows cold and speechless. I was here alone,
Expecting thee, when, suddenly, I heard
My name pronounced, with voice more musical
Than Peri warbling in my ear.
Ravish’d, I turned, and saw upon that rock,
Resplendent hovering there, an angel form;
I knew ’twas Gabriel, Allah’s messenger.
Celestial glories compassed him around;
Arched o’er his splendid head, his glistening wings
Shed light, and musk, and melody. No more
I saw—no more my mortal eye could bear.
_Prone on my face I fell_, and, from the dust,
Besought him quench his superhuman radiance.
‘Look up,’ he said; I stole a trembling glance;
And then, a beauteous youth, he stood and smiled.
Then, as his ruby lips unclosed, I heard—‘Go
teach what mortals know not yet,—THERE IS
NO GOD BUT ONE—MOHAMMED IS HIS PROPHET!’
E’en as he spoke, his mantling glories burst
With such transporting brightness, that, o’erawed,
I sunk in dizzy trance, which still might thrall
My inmost soul, had not those impious names,
Breathing of hell, dispelled it.”[8]
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Footnote 8:
_Mohammed_, a Tragedy in Five Acts. By George H. Miles. Boston, 1850,
pp. 1-6.
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Here are presented, very clearly, the phenomena which precede or
accompany the demonic approach and invasion. When the false god took
possession of Balaam, he threw him to the earth; and it was in a sort of
somnambulic state that he prophesied, or rather that the demon in him
was compelled, against his will, to bless instead of cursing Israel, and
to prophesy his glory. “There is no God but one,” in the sense intended
by Mahomet, and understood by his followers, is by no means a truth, for
in that sense, it denies not merely polytheism, but was intended more
especially to deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Koran
repeatedly so explains it, and therefore the unity of God, as taught by
the false prophet, is not a truth but a lie, and the Mahometans worship
not the true God, but a false god, as do all who deny that God is at
once three distinct persons in one Divine Essence or Being.
Nothing is less philosophical than the tendency in modern times,
especially since the time of Voltaire, to explain great effects by petty
causes, as the peace of Utrecht by Mrs. Masham’s spilling a little water
on the Duchess of Marlborough’s dress. The stream cannot rise higher
than the fountain, or the effect exceed the cause. A little fire can
kindle a great matter, but that little fire is the occasion, not the
cause of the wide-spread conflagration. Nothing more surely indicates a
narrow, superficial, and unphilosophical spirit than the attempt, as is
the case with most writers, to explain the origin, progress, and power
of Mahometanism by the fanaticism, the cunning, the craft, or the
superior genius and ability of Mahomet, even though we suppose him aided
by a Jew and a Nestorian monk. There were fraud, craft, trickery, and
all the means of imposition employed; yet never can they suffice alone
to account for the terrible phenomena of Islamism, which, for twelve
hundred years has waged battle with the cross, and possessed itself of
the fairest regions of the globe. Whoever studies it calmly and
profoundly must come to the conclusion that there has been at work in it
a more than human power, and that, if not, as the Moslems believe, from
God, it must be from the devil.
Do not ascribe so much to mere human power, wisdom, craft, fraud,
dexterity, or skill. These are far feebler than it is customary in our
days to regard them. In general men are duped themselves before they
undertake to dupe others. Never yet was there a noted heresiarch who did
not believe in his own heresy, and hence there is no instance on record
of a real heresiarch, the originator and founder of a new heresy, being
reclaimed to the orthodox faith, unless we except the doubtful case of
Berengarius. I have never been able to sympathize with those Catholic
writers who would persuade us that the Protestant Reformation originated
in petty jealousies and rivalries between the Dominican and Augustinian
monks. That view is too narrow and superficial; nor can we ascribe it to
the pride, the vanity, and the ambition, or the intelligence, the
virtue, the wisdom, and the sanctity of the monk Luther. Luther was a
man terribly in earnest, a genuine man, and no sham, as Carlyle would
say; and so were all the prominent chiefs in that terrible movement of
the sixteenth century. The cool, subtle, dark, persevering Calvin, the
fiery, energetic, and ferocious John Knox and their compeers were no
petty tricksters, no _dilettanti_, no shrewd calculating hypocrites.
They were terribly in earnest; they believed in themselves; they
believed in the spirit that moved them, that spoke in their words, and
struck in their blows against the old Papal edifice. It is nonsense to
repeat, age after age, that the denial by the Holy See of the divorce
solicited by Henry the Eighth, caused the separation of England from
Catholic unity. That wily and lustful monarch, who must live in history
as the “wife-slayer,” found in that denial only an occasion of
withdrawing his kingdom from its spiritual subjection to Rome, and of
uniting in the crown the pontifical with the royal authority. Whoever
looks beneath the surface of things, whoever studies, in a truly
philosophical spirit, that fearful Protestant movement, must recognize
in it a superhuman power, and say that either the finger of God, or the