Page:The Fall of Constantinople.djvu/39

 CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM. oj a barbarian. The religion thus appeals on the one side to the highest, and on the other to the lowest side of human nature. Ilonce it is that wherever Mosleniism lias been re- ceived it has been followed by a remarkable access of fight- ing power. The central fact which Moslem teaching insists upon in regard to God is his greatness. Christian teaching calls attention rather to his goodness. The daily prayer of the Moslem begins with the declaration " God is great," and this declaration is repeated again and again in each recital of the ordinary daily prayer. The daily prayer throughout Christendom, common to all Christians as being that of their Founder, begins with an assumption of the fatherhood of God. The cry of the Muezzin, which is ringing in my ears while writing these pages, is " God is great, God is great, God is great ! There is only one God, and Mahomet is his apostle. Come to prayer, come to salvation : God is great !" The differences in the lives of the founders of the two relig- ions is like that which exists between the two creeds. Ma- homet is the w^arrior, the apostle to drive men into the accept- ance of his creed if need be. Jesus is the meek and lowly, whom his followers have represented as wishing to draw all men to him with cords of love. To barbarian converts the oft- repeated creed gives the great conception of Monotheism. It meant, God exists; there is but one God, a living and a great God; all these pictures of the Christians, these images of the pagans, this fire of the Persians, are dead things. It meant the realization that there is a God, whose greatness it is impossible to realize. God's prophet is Mahomet, and we are the servants of God, to accomplish his will, to put down his enemies, to kill pagans outright, and to subdue all nations who refuse to recognize the mission of Mahomet to carry out God's will. The teachings of the Koran are unknown to the mass of the followers of ^Mahomet, as those of any religion are for the most part unknowm to ignorant masses; but the two doctrines known to every Mahometan, proclaimed univer- sally throughout Islam with the clarion-like clearness and con- stant reiteration necessary for a popular creed, are that God is great, and that his w^ill, as revealed through Mahomet, is to