Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/45

 second Adam, to which, by a simple act of faith, we are united. In this manner is the grand object of Christianity effected. Other religions have their doctrines and precepts of morality, which, if carefully detached from much that is bad and worthless, may even vie with those of Christianity. But Christianity has, besides all these, what other religions have not a personal God, ever living to supply the free grace or regenerating Spirit by which human nature is re-created and again made Godlike, and through which man, becoming once again * pure in heart, and still preserving his own will, self-consciousness, and personality, is fitted to have access to God the Father, and dwell in His presence for ever.

2. In Islam, on the contrary, Muhammad is regarded as the prophet of God and nothing more. He claimed no combination of divinity with humanity 1. Even his human nature was not held

1 He did not even pretend to be the founder of a new religion, but simply to have been commissioned to proclaim Islam (p. xliv) and its cardinal doctrine the unity of the Godhead which dogma the Kuran constantly affirms with great beauty of language (chap. ii. 256, xxiv. 36). God (Allah) in the Kuran has one hundred names, indicative of his attributes, of which the merciful/ the compassionate occur most frequently. But God, Muhammad maintained, begetteth not, nor is begotten. In chap. ii. of the Kuran, we read : To God belongeth the east and the west ; therefore whithersoever ye turn yourselves to pray, there is the face of God ; for God is omnipresent and omniscient. They say, &quot; God hath begotten children.&quot; God forbid. Nevertheless, Muhammad did not deny that Christ was a prophet and apostle. He merely claimed to be a later and greater prophet himself. The Kuran (Ixi. 6) has the fol lowing : Jesus, the son of Mary, said, &quot; children of Israel, verily I am the apostle of God, sent unto you, confirming the law which was declared before me, and bringing good tidings of an apostle who shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad &quot; ( Muhammad, in Greek 7T(piKi&amp;gt;Tos, the Muslim doctors making out that irapaKr)ros ought to be so written). But although thus arrogantly claiming to be the successor of Christ, any sharing (shirk) of God s divinity was utterly abhorrent from his whole teaching. He did not even rest his own claims on miracles (ay at, kardmat), which he constantly excused himself from working. It is said that some doubters once asked him to give them a sign by turning the hill Safa into gold, but he declined to do so on the ground that God had revealed to him that if after witnessing the miracle, they remained incredulous, they would all be destroyed. The only sign of his mission to which he pointed was the Kuran itself, declaring himself to be as untaught as a child just born (umimy), or in other words a wholly