Page:The Mohammedan system of theology (IA mohammedansyste00neal).pdf/205

 defect in codes of human fabrication, without which morality degenerates into expediency, or mere selfishness. Here Christianity possesses an unspeakable advantage. Submission is due to Christ necessarily as the Head of his people, in the same manner as the leaders of various sects, or the Prophet of Arabia, challenge obedience from their followers: but there is a far more powerful and engaging motive of love, gratitude, and subjection, to him as the Saviour, who died that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him who died for them and rose again: thus a spirit of filial love and attachment is produced in the hearts of Believers, whose obedience springs from the noblest principle, not the compulsion of a slave, but the affection and duty of a child!

Connected with inferior motives is the want of appropriate sanction; in this the Heathens were deficient, the authority of whose philo-