Page:Mahometanism in its relation to prophecy - or, an inquiry into the prophecies concerning antichrist, with some reference to their bearing on the events of the present day (IA mahometanisminit00philrich).pdf/109

 Church! The former is that of Mahomet, what the devil has long practised in hell: the latter is the life of the angels of God, of whom Jesus said, "That they neither marry, nor are given in marriage;" that life which He, the Lamb of God, led, when He trod this earth in pain and sorrow for three-and-thirty years, seeking and saving that which was lost; that life, which in every age of Christianity, thousands and tens of thousands of His followers have led in imitation of Him, and of whom, when translated to a happier life, the beloved disciple witnesses that he heard them singing such a heavenly song as no one else could learn, for, said the evangelist, "these were virgins, who were never defiled with women, and they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth."—(Apocalypse xiv. 4.) And as with the contrast between Mahometan and Christian celibacy, so also between Christian self-denial, and the impious and truly Manichean abstinence of the false Prophet, to which the Apostle St. Paul here alludes. In the old law, Moses had commanded for mystical and temporary reasons abstinence from certain meats, but this uncleanness was washed away in the all-atoning blood of Christ; Mahomet renewed what had now lost all rational signification, and to the restrictions of Judaism, he added blasphemies of his own: he abolished