"they have covetously reserved shall be bound as "a collar about their neck at the day of judgment*." These are among the truths which the aspiring Arab frequently and emphatically announced to his followers; and they shed, perhaps, a brighter and more useful light on the pages of the Koran, than that which illuminates the classic volumes of Plato or of Tully,

The Koran, however, has promised more than it has performed. Ambitious beyond all other religions in its aim, and proud and lofty in its pretensions, it aspires to the honour of a universal code for the moral and political regulation of man; and we cannot be astonished that it has been found necessary to add to the system which pretends to embrace so wide a circle of interests and of duties, not less than seventy thousand precepts piously deduced from the ambiguous sources of traditionary wisdom, or laboriously and doubtfully inferred from the letter or the spirit of the original doctrine t.

The prophet may be less censured, perhaps, for the falsehood or vanity of a boast so ill fulfilled, than for the contradictions and inconsistencies which he has permitted to impair the truth and the value of his precepts. According to the changeful temper of his will, or the progressive profligacy of his desires, or the accommodation required by his political interests, the divine communications of one moment, were to be modified or rescinded by the divine communications of another. He found no dif

* Koran. ch. ii. pp. 17, 18; chap. lvii. p. 420; chap. xvii. pp. 99, 100, 101; vol. ii. chap. ix. p. 351; chap. iv. p. 101. chap. iii. p. 88; chap. xxx. vol. ii. p. 258.

+ Hamilton. Translat. of the Hedaya or Guide.

ficulty, and felt no shame, in producing a Sura adapted to the wild Euripus of his passions; and Gabriel was introduced, on innumerable occasions, to amplify or explain, amend or abrogate, as occasion required, the doctrines which had been already proclaimed by the same angelic authority, as the perfect and immutable ordinances of heaven*.

Even with the first and most obvious principles of morality, the impostor has intermingled the most vile and selfish doctrines. He legislated not to make men benevolent and wise, but to kindle in them, for his own views, the fires of fanaticism, and to train them to the proselyting barbarity of the sword. We trace him, in his precepts, through all the climax of ambitious persecution. At first, when he was less experienced in the arts of imposture, and the ground on which he stood was every moment ready to crumble from beneath his feet, he declared, with all the meekness of tenderness and of mercy, that he had no command to extend his religion by violence and force; and that the only influence he was permitted to use, was that of persuasion and of truth. But, in proportion as his followers multiplied around him, he displayed the temper and the spirit which meditated the subjection or extirpation of the infidel. A frantic zeal, a desolating bigotry, a savage crusade against tribes and realms which presumed to deny the authority of his mission, were then to be excited under the sanction of celestial command, and as means of procuring celestial favour. At length, presumption, encouraged by success, proclaimed

*Koran. ch. xvi. p. 89. Ludovic. Maracc. ch. ii. pp. 34, 35, 38, 41, &c. The abrogated passages were collected in one volume by the Imam, Abu Hashem Habatallah.

To

to the unbeliever the terrors of vengeance. pillage, to persecute, and to destroy the enemies of Islem, were to be accounted as acts of holiness and of virtue; and the highest privileges and distinctions of this world and of the next, were lavishly promised to provoke in the children of the Koran an eternal enmity to the rest of mankind. "The sword," such is the language of the prophet of Mecca, "is the key of heaven and hell; a drop of blood shed in "the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months spent in fasting and prayer. Whoso falleth in battle, his sins are forgiven at the day of judgment, his wounds shall "be resplendent as vermillion, and odoriferous as musk, and the loss of his limb shall be supplied by wings of angels and cherubims *.-They who "have suffered for my sake and been slain in battle, "I will surely bring them into a garden watered by "rivers. Do ye reckon the giving drink to the

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pilgrims, and the visiting of the holy temple, as "meritorious as the acts performed by him who

fights for the religion of God? They shall not be "held equal by God. Do ye give alms? They shall "be given only to those whose hearts are recon"ciled t." Of these doctrines the result was analogous to the spirit. As we discover in the Koran no law of justice and of benevolence but for the Mussulman, we discover in the Mussulman no charity but for his sect. 66 Hell," he believed, was to encompass the unbelievers;" and, in pursuing the infidel with his vengeance, one of the two

* Gibbon, vol. ix. p. 256.

+ Kor. vol. ii. ch. ix. p. 131; vol. i. ch. iii. p. 91; vol. ii.

chap. ix. pp. 242, 251; vol. i. ch. iv. p. 73.

"most excellent things" was to be his portion, victory or martyrdom. Under the pretence of compelling the heathen to embrace his faith, he was to proceed from the plunder of caravans, and the extermination of tribes and villages, to the overthrow and devastation of states and empires. A bitter, a sanguinary, and an exclusive spirit, was thus fed at the very bosom of the religion, which, in its infancy, had lisped the precepts of equity and of compassion. The Deity himself was represented as communicating the precepts which blasphemed his wisdom by their inconsistency, and arraigned his goodness by their cruelty; and a people were taught, by the preaching of an ambitious schemer, to find, in the very piety and devotion of their faith, the justification and the encouragement of all the crimes of intolerant barbarity *.

The whole history of the Mahometan religion demonstrates, by the most decisive evidence, the dreadful efficacy of the doctrines thus uttered by its founder, and thus sustained, as he pretended, by the sanctions of heaven. While he took care to justify, by divine authority, the vile and vagrant indulgence of his own appetites, he called into action the most furious and vindictive passions of his followers, and consecrated them to violence and to crime. A host of barbarous savages were let loose upon the world, to accomplish the divine will by persecution and massacre, and to nourish their religion with the blood of man, till it was to extend over prostrate nations the shadow of death. During the whole of the concluding years of the impostor, and through many succeeding centuries, a holy warfare was

* Kor. ch. ix. vol. ii. pp. 164, 249.

sustained for the most unholy of purposes. Arabia, Persia, Syria, Egypt, and many of the more distant regions of Africa and of Europe, groaned under the scourge of the most portentous despotism. The Jew and the Christian, perhaps, might be allowed to purchase a vile and galling toleration, embittered by the scorn and detestation of the new sect. But to idolators there was no tender even of this degrading mercy, and they were either to embrace the faith or to die. In the wild and convulsive fury of these pious wars, every principle of justice, of charity and of brotherhood, was disdained and sacrificed; and it seemed as if all bright, and holy, and saving virtue, were supposed, by the disciples of the Koran, to exist in the sacred rage of unrestricted proselytism, and the pious vengeance of unpitying extermination.

The Koran, then, is not to be considered as a system for the moral edification of men, but as an instrument to be first wielded by the execrable ambition of an impostor, and afterwards by the sanguinary fanaticism of a ferocious sect. It was not, however, solely as a member of an association of warriors and enthusiasts, that the compliant Mussulman was to receive the impress of his religion; he was also to be moulded by his creed in his individual character; and even if he had not been inflamed and barbarized as a sectary, there was yet enough to taint and corrupt him as a man.

Man, it is a trite but just observation, is a frail and erring being. Often nourishing unholy passions within, and assailed by dangerous temptations from without, he pursues his course through life, under various influences unfavourable to virtue; sometimes with rapidity where he ought to pause, and sometimes with languor where he ought to persevere.