a spiritual lapse. On the contrary, he and his followers
recognised in his military exploits and political ascendency
nothing less than the natural outcome and the due reward
of his earlier labours and sufferings as a prophet.
To Mohammed and the Mohammedans his public life from
beginning to end is one congruous whole, which leaves
room for no radical change of principles, but only for
the development and maturing of what was originally
aimed at and hoped for.
Therefore the historian of Mohammed's life seems bound,
in order to do justice to his subject, to lay bare,
if possible, this essential union, notwithstanding all
the difference of outward appearances, and to give the
most careful attention to all those historical records
which may help him in explaining the intimate connection
subsisting between the political and the religious,
the worldly and the spiritual, throughout Mohammed's
prophetic career. He must try to discover, from the
materials transmitted to us, those traits and data which
are calculated to demonstrate the inward connection
and agreement of the different periods in Mohammed's
life. He must seek to furnish historical proof that,
as in his later period, when he ruled Arabia with the
harshness of a military despot, he did so in the name
of religion and by virtue of his prophetic character,
so also, when he began his career as a religious reformer
and apostle of God, he already entertained, more or
less consciously, those secular and political designs
which he afterwards realised. An historical view and
psychological study of the subject must greatly enhance
its claims to soundness and correctness, if it can produce
in us the conviction, so natural in itself and so plainly
entertained by the Moslem historians, that Mohammed
became what he desired to become, and that he aimed
from the first at what he obtained at last; and not,
that the single-eyed, spiritually-minded prophet of
the Meccan period rather suddenly, as if by accident,
by the mere change of outward circumstances, turned
into the cunning deceiver, the sensual worldling, of
Medina.
Islam being evidently an attempted amalgam of God
and the world, of religion and politics, the source
from which it flowed cannot have been one of limpid
purity. The prophet who instituted it, and whose impress
it bears, surely cannot |
