V.1 Ritual in the Old Testament 253 are more than 400 different societies, organized and active in ameliorating the woes of suffering humanity and in bringing benefit to the needy at home and abroad. The various missionary societies alone expend over $10,000,000 gold every year to try to do good, while the Bible and Tract and other societies expend other millions, with no thought of return other than the consciousness of doing good to strangers. And yet we are far from the standard. Christian nations so-called are as yet only in the a-b-c of the Christian religion as nations. The Christian ideal is still far far above us, while many of our national acts are far from Christ-like. This The Bible gives no ecclesiastical system or cast-iron rites and ceremonies as universal and perpetual essentials to human salvation and progress. Rites and ceremonies have their place, and in olden days especially were of service before the great salvation appeared. With the introduction of the consciousness of sin came also the consciousnes of the need of sacrifice. became a universal cry for an atonement. Men turned to human sacrifices. Abraham was taught by an object lesson, in the matter of Isaac, that God required no human blood on altars dedicated to him: that the blood of animals was sufficient until the true sacrifice should appear. But the idea of sacrifice, of atonement, was continued, regulated, turned into a vast and complicated series of object lessons to teach men how to understand him who came to be "the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world," of whose great sacrifice and atonement all these were typical. Indeed the Old Testament can be understood only in the light of the New, and the New Testament is made more clear and more tangible as illustrated by the Old. The gorgeous temple, the splendid robes, the imposing ritual, the smoking offerings, the bleeding victims, the ascending incense, the sacrificial altar, the furniture of the holy place, the veil, the ark of 254 Illustrates Christ's Propitiation. [LECT. the covenant, the mercy seat, the light of the Shekinah, one and all, and much more besides, combined to show forth to man the inexpressible many-sidedness of Christ, and the inexhaustible wealth of blessing resulting from his life and work, and then they passed away forever. Without them man could not have been educated into an understanding of a fraction of that which has now been made clear in Christ Jesus. And even long before the great fulfillment came, the Israelites were taught that there was a something much higher than all ritual and all sacrifice of beasts: "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; thou delightest not in burnt offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." "To obey is better than sacrifice, etc." But if you take from Christianity its teaching of Christ's atonement for sin, its moral code may for a time educate men who have accepted Christian civilization, but it is no longer a moral power to regenerate the low and the heathen-its Evangel is dead. All through the Old Testament an unseen hand has been leading man, and the voice of God reiterated in various ways, ever was "Be ye holy for I am holy." But in Christ Jesus. the hand that leads becomes visible, the voice sounds much nearer and more capable of being followed: "Be ye holy as I am holy," giving us a pattern that we should follow in his steps, and humanity will never be capable of more than that. Thus Christianity has its roots in the primitive faith; its trunk extends through all the ages down to Christ, its branches now expand with every advance of man and into all lands; its fruits are fruits of human progress, and its very leaves are for the healing of nations. Whatever land it touches, it kindles into life, civilization, and upward hopeful progress. It seems perhaps strange to have discoursed on comparative religions and to have left out Mohammedanism, one of the V.] Mohammedanism an Anachronism. 255 great religions of the day. Mohammed lived about 600 B.C., founded a religion of one God, with himself as his prophet. He propagated his religion by the Koran and the sword. He lived amongst a people who could not be governed by mildness, but only by the inviolable restraints of bit and bridle, who wanted a religion that would give them liberal allowances both in this world and the next. "They took to Mohammedanism because it solved the problem and showed them how they could please God by pleasing themselves. They enlarged their inheritance in heaven by conquering a broader heritage on earth, and took the Kingdom of heaven by pillage and slaughter.”1 But the fact is, Mohammedanism is such a bastard anachronism, such a mixture of Judaism, false Christianity and paganism as to present another standing evidence of human inability to furnish a supply for man's religious need, and of the unprogressiveness of Shemite nature. The following paragraphs from Dr. Marcus Dods' "Mohammed, Buddha and Christ" put the matter into a nutshell. I would recommend the above work as well worthy of perusal by any one who wishes to inform himself more fully of these three rival religions of modern days : The reforms of Mohammed, such as the restriction of polygamy, were good and useful for his own time and place, but by making them final, he has prevented further progress, consecrated immorality, and permanently established half-measures. What were restrictions to his Arabs would haye been license to other men.2 "Considered as delivered only to pagan Arabs, the religious, moral, and civil precepts of the Koran are admirable. The error of their author was in delivering them to 1 Dr. Dods. 2 "When Islam penetrates to countries lower in the scale of humanity than were the Arabs of Mohammed's day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. But it does so at a tremendous cost. It reproduces in its new converts the characteristics of its first-their impenetrable self-esteem, their unintelligent scorn, and blind hatred of all other creeds. And thus the capacity for all other advance is destroyed."-Osborn's Islam under the Arabs, p. 93. 256 Extract from Dr. Marcus Dods' [LECT. others besides pagan Arabs," and in giving to temporary expedients a sanction which has erected them into permanent laws. A writer who has studied the matter with the insight of a widely-informed historian, says: "The temporary and partial reform effected by Islam has proved the surest obstacle to fuller and more permanent reform. A Mahometan nation accepts a certain amount of truth, receives a certain amount of civilization, practises a certain amount of toleration. But all these are so many obstacles to the acceptance of truth, civilization, and toleration in their perfect shape." In plain terms, Mohammed was an ignorant man-a man so ignorant that he did not know his own ignorance. Knowing nothing of the government, policy, or law of Rome, to which all the civilized world has paid its tribute of respect, he presumed that the code of Justinian ought to be superseded by the fragmentary ideas he had jotted down on palmleaves and mutton bones and thrown higgledy-piggledy into a chest. Knowing nothing of Christianity, and never having even read the canonical Gospels, he imagined he had more to say for the world's good than had fallen from the lips and shone from the life of Jesus Christ. Had his religion preceded Christianity, or had he never enjoyed the means of informing himself regarding it, some apology might have been devised for his extreme presumption in aspiring to the sovereignty of the world in things civil and spiritual. Nay, we will go further, and say that had Mohammed preceded Christianity, or had he not proclaimed his own religion as final, it might have been a blessing of the most extensive kind to the world. Doctrinally and morally it is a half-way house between heathenism and Christianity, but practically it can never serve as such, because it claims to be itself an advance upon Christianity, and final. It is this claim that has choked it throughout. The dead hand of the short-sighted author of the Koran is on the throat of every Mohammedan nation. And it is this claim which stultifies it in the view of any one who has studied other religions. It bears the marks of immaturity on every part of it. It proves itself to be a religion only for the childhood of a race, by its minute prescriptions, its detailed 1 Freeman's Lectures, p. 51. V.] "Mohammed, Buddha and Christ.' 257 precepts, its observance, its appeals to fear. It does not even recognise that there is a higher religion, that the only true religion is a religion of liberty and of the spirit. Here is the judgment of one who has spent a large part of his life among Mohammedans, and seven years of it in a careful study of their history. "There are to be found," he says, "in Mohammedan history all the elements of greatness-faith, courage, endurance, self-sacrifice. But enclosed within the narrow walls of a rude theology, and a barbarous polity, from which the capacity to grow and the liberty to modify have been sternly cut off, they work no deliverance upon the earth. They are strong only for destruction. When that work is over, they either prey upon each other, or beat themselves to death against the bars of their own prison-house. No permanent dwelling-place can be erected on a foundation of sand; and no durable or humanising polity upon a foundation of fatalism, despotism, polygamy, and slavery. When Muhammadan states cease to be racked by revolutions, they succumb to the poison diffused by a corrupt moral atmosphere. A Durwesh, ejaculating' Allah!' and revolving in a series of rapid gyrations until he drops senseless, is an exact image of the course of their history."1 Thus it is seen that the power of Islam is in destroying life and hindering progress, while that of Christ is in infusing hope, life, and the impulses of infinite advance. "So while the world rolls on from change to change, And realms of thought expand, Islam law stands without expanse or range, Stiff as a dead man's hand; While as the life-blood fills the growing form, The spirit Christ has shed Flows thro' the ripening ages fresh and warm 1 Osborn's Islam under the Arabs, pp. 94, 95. |