122 THE RELIGION OF THE CRESCENT.

Whether its place will be taken by another false religion or by the true Revelation of GOD, it does not lie with us to say. In spite of the fact that Muhammadans speak of Christ with deep reverence and acknowledge Him to be a Prophet, yet they know nothing of His Divine Sonship, His atoning Death, His prevailing Intercession, His abiding Presence with His people. In the Saviour's

An
Anti-Christian
Faith.

place stands Muhammad, in the opinion of Muslims, and his character forms their highest ideal of virtue, purity and goodness. Islam is an Anti-Christian faith, a Christless creed; and it has preserved, in the life and character of its Founder, an enduring principle of degradation.

LECTURE III.

THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM.

"Der Prophet hat auch nicht einen neuen Gedanken in die Welt geworfen, wie er denn auch ursprünglich nichts Neues bringen sondern den alten Glauben Abrahams, der nach seiner Meinung durch eine Menge zufälliger Gebräuche verändert worden war, herstellen wollte. Abgesehen von einer Reihe christlicher und persischer Vorstellungen finden wir im Koran wesentlich jüdische Gedanken... Das ganze Leben ist in religiöse Formen eingeschlossen: tägliche Gebete, Festtage, Wallfahrten, Fasten, Enthaltung von gewissen Speisen und äußere Reinigungen. Das ist die Religiösität, mit welcher Mohammed bekannt wurde, und sie hat auf seine Stiftung so großen Einfluss geübt, daß wir sagen müssen: Der Islam ist nicht eine neue Religion, [nicht] auf ein neues Princip gebaut, sondern nur eine Vermengung des einseitig gewordenen Judenthums mit arabischem Heidenthum."— HAURI, Der Islam, pp. 43, 44.

"The prophet also did not bring any new thoughts into the world. What he brought was simply the faith of Abraham which, in the Prophet's view, had been changed by chance through a large number of different uses. Outside of a series of  Christian and Persian manifestations, we find most of the Koran to contain Jewish thinking. All of life is enclosed in religious forms such as daily prayers, festivals, pilgrimages, fasting, abstinence from certain foods, and outward cleansings. That is the religiosity by which Mohammed was known and it had such a great influence on his writing that we must say Islam is not a new religion built on a new principle, but a synthesis of what was once Judaism with Arabian heresy."