think only of the effect of actions on the happiness or misery of future states of being. But, if personality and the remembrance of previous existences are not preserved, how can death be regarded in any other light than absolute extinction?

2. Brahmanism rises to a higher level, for here there is a theoretical craving after union with the Supreme Spirit, as the grand aim and object of the system (see p. 500). This union, however, really means identification with or absorption into the One only selfexisting Being, as the river blends with the ocean; so that Brahmanism really ends in destroying man's personality, and practically, if not theoretically, lands its disciples in the same absolute extinction aimed at by Buddhists. In fact, the higher and more esoteric the teaching of both these systems, the more evidently do they exhibit themselves in their true colours as mere schemes for getting rid of the evils of life, by the extinction of all activity, individuality, self-consciousness, and personal existence.

3. Let us now turn to Islam. The end which Muhammad set before the disciples of the Kuran was admission to a material paradise (jannat1), described as consisting of shaded gardens, abounding with delicious fruits, watered by flowing streams (anhär), filled with black-eyed Hūris, and replete with exquisite corporeal enjoyments. It must be admitted that spiritual pleasures and the favour of God are also said to form part of its delights, and that the permanence of man's personality is implied. But a holy God is still immeasurably removed from His creatures, and intimate union with Him, or even admission to His presence, is not the central idea of beatitude.

4. In contrast to Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Islam, the one object aimed at in Christianity is, emphatically, such an access to and union with a holy God as shall not only secure the permanence of man's own individual will, energy, and personality, but even intensify them.

Perhaps, however, it is in the answer to the second question that the great difference between the four systems is most apparent.

How, and by what means is the object aimed at by each system avowedly effected? In replying to this, let us reverse the order, and commence with our own religion.

1 Muslims believe there are seven (or eight) heavens representing degrees of felicity, and seven hells (jahannam), the seventh or deepest of which is for hypocrites, the sixth for idolaters, the third for Christians.

1. Christianity asserts that it effects its aim through nothing short of an entire change of the whole man, and a complete renovation of his nature. The means by which this renovation is effected may be described as a kind of mutual transfer or substitution, leading to a reciprocal interchange and co-operation between God and man's nature acting upon each other. Man-the Bible affirms-was created in the image of God, but his nature became corrupt through a taint, derived from the fall of the first representative man and parent of the human race, which taint could only be removed by a vicarious death.

Hence, the second representative man-Christ-whose nature was divine and taintless, voluntarily underwent a sinner's death, that the taint of the old corrupted nature transferred to him might die also. But this is not all. The great central truth of our religion lies not so much in the fact of Christ's death as in the fact of His continued life (Rom. viii. 34). The first fact is that He of His own free will died; but the second and more important fact is that He rose again and lives eternally, that He may bestow life for death and a participation in His own divine nature in place of the taint which He has removed.

This, then, is the reciprocal exchange which marks Christianity and distinguishes it from all other religions-an exchange between the personal man descended from a corrupt parent, and the personal God made man and becoming our second parent. We are separated from a rotten root, and are grafted into a living one. We part with the corrupt will, depraved moral sense, and perverted judgment inherited from the first Adam, and draw re-creative force - renovated wills, fresh springs of wisdom, righteousness, and knowledge-from the ever-living divine stem of the

It has been objected to Christianity that it discourages increase of knowledge; but the only knowledge it condemns is the empty knowledge which 'puffeth up' (1 Cor. viii. 1, 2). 'God is Light' or knowledge itself. The more a Christian man becomes Godlike, the more he aims at increase of light, whether in religion or science. It is said of Christ that in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge' (Col. ii. 3). Truth must be one, and all truth is declared to come by Him, as well as grace (St. John i. 17). Other religious systems, on the contrary, are interpenetrated with so much that is false in every branch of knowledge, that a simple lesson in geography tends to undermine every thoughtful person's faith in such creeds.

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 Islām, on the contrary, Muhammad is regarded as the prophet of God and nothing more. He claimed no combination of divinity with humanity'. 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 Islām (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, "God hath begotten children." 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 (lxi. 6) has the following: 'Jesus, the son of Mary, said, "O 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" (= Muhammad, in Greek Teρikλútos, the Muslim doctors making out that rapákλnтos 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 (āyat, karāmat), 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 (ummiy), or in other words a wholly

to be immaculate, nor did he make any pretence to mediatorial or vicarious functions. He died like any other man', and he certainly did not rise from the grave that his followers might find in him perpetual springs of divine life and vivifying power, as branches draw sap and energy from a living stem. Nor do Muslims believe him to be the source of any re-creative force, capable of changing their whole being. Whatever the theory as to God's mercy propounded in the Kuran, heaven is practically only accessible to Muslims through the strict discharge of religious duties

unlettered person, to whom a composition in marvellously beautiful language was revealed. It is, however, quite true that Muhammad's biographers afterwards attributed various miracles to their prophet. For instance, it is handed down by tradition that taking a bar of iron he struck a huge rock with such force that it fell shivered to pieces, and the blow created a light which flashed from Medina to Madain in Persia. On the night called lailat ul mi'raj he ascended to heaven from Jerusalem on a fabulous mule named Burāk. He split the moon (by a miracle called shakk ul kamar). He healed the eye of a soldier. He turned a stick into a sword. He put his fingers over empty vessels, and fountains of water flowed into them. He fed 130 men on the liver of a sheep. He fed a million people on a few loaves and a lamb, and many fragments were left. He once, by prayer to God, brought back the sun in the heavens when it had nearly set. On his entrance into Mecca (Makkah) he was saluted by mountains and trees, which said, 'Peace be to thee, O prophet of God!'

Here, again, in contrast to the above, it is to be noted that about ninety names are applied in the Bible to Christ Himself as the God-Man, and that Christians appeal to the personal Christ, as the one miracle of miracles, and to His personal resurrection as the sign of signs; while Christ Himself appealed to no book except the Old Testament; nor did he write any book or direct any book to be written; and attributed more importance to His own personal example, words, and works (pya) than to the wonders He performed, rebuking a constant craving after signs (anuela). We may also note that the artless unaffected simplicity and total absence of what may be called ad captandum glitter of style in the language of the New Testament, contrast remarkably with the studied magniloquence of parts of Muhammad's pretended revelation. See on the subject of miracles a valuable little work by the Rev. G. Renaud, called, 'How did Christ rank the proofs of His mission?' (Hatchards, 1872.)

1 He is supposed, however, not to have died a natural death, but to have been poisoned by a Jewess.

which God as an absolute sovereign and hard task-master imposes'. If these religious exercises are really more than a lifeless form,

1 Muhammad sets forth faith in Islam and in his own mission, repentance, the performance of prayer, fasting, alms, pilgrimages, and the constant repetition of certain words (especially parts of the Kuran), as infallible means of obtaining paradise. In one place, suffering, perseverance, walking in the fear of God, and attachment to Him are insisted on. See Sale's Kurān, xxix. 1–7, iv. 21, xviii. 31, xx. 71, xxi. 94, xxii. 14, xxiii. 1. Yet it must be admitted that the Kuran elsewhere maintains that good works have no real meritorious efficacy in procuring paradise, and that the righteous obtain entrance there through God's mercy alone. Indeed, every action in Islām is done in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate' (b'ismillāh ar-rahmān ar-rahim). But it must be noted that the Kuran is by no means systematic or consistent. It was delivered in detached portions according to the exigences of the moment, and being often confused and contradictory, had to be explained and developed by traditional teaching. These traditions are called Sunnah, and a Sunnī is one who obeys the laws of Muhammad founded not only on the Kurān but on the traditions as interpreted by four great doctors or leaders of Islam, viz. Shafi-'i, Hanifa, Malik, and Hanbal, each of whom is the leader of a sect. It should be noted that the Shi'as-a name derived from shi'at, a party of persons forming a sect-are opposed to the Sunnis, like Protestants to Roman Catholics. They reject the traditions of the Sunnis, having separated from them about 363 years after Muhammad's Hijra (A. D. 985) under one of the 'Abbassi Khalifs (descendants of 'Abbās, Muhammad's uncle, who ruled as Khalifs over Baghdad and Persia from A. D. 749 to 1258). They do not call themselves Shi'as, but 'Adliyah, 'the rightful society,' and deny the Khalifate of the first three successors of Muhammad, Abubakr, Omar, and Othman (the first two being Muhammad's fathers-in-law and the third his son-in-law), who ruled at Medina. The Shi'as regard these three as usurpers of the successorship (Khalifate), which they declare belonged only to another son-in-law, the fourth Khalif, 'Ali (husband of the prophet's daughter Fatima, and father of Hasan and Husain), whom they regard as the first of their true Imāms, and who ruled with his sons at Kūfa. The Turks, Egyptians, and Indian Muhammadans are mostly Sunnis, while the Persians are Shi'as. This doctrine of the Shi'as, which may be called the protesting form of Islam, is no doubt more spiritual than the original system of Muhammad. As it developed itself in Persia, it was influenced in some measure by the ancient religion of Zoroaster, which preceded it in that country. There the Shi'a tenets ultimately gave birth to a kind of spiritual philosophy called Sufi-ism-so similar to the Indian Vedānta (see p. 36 of this volume) that it is said