454 HISTORICAL POSITION OF MOHAMMEDANISM. [BK. III.

its hinderer and irreconcilable foe. But, with all our just desire to discern plan and harmony in a world created and ruled by God, we are forced to admit, if we judge soberly, that not everything which is or comes to pass, is good. Sin and evil are a terrible reality in this present world; and no one who reads history with open eyes can fail to trace it there, throughout its course.

Yet whatever is not good cannot, as such, claim God for its author. As ethically constituted creatures of a Holy

Mohammed's morality and sincerity. In fact, these are the main pillars which sustain his belief in Mohammed as 'a very Prophet of God.' As if what constitutes a man a prophet was his morality and sincerity, and not rather the message he bears! If Mohammed had been the most moral man in the world, his false teaching would alone suffice to stamp him as a 'false' prophet. Mohammed's morality and sincerity are rather delicate subjects for boasting. So warm an advocate as Mr. Smith feels constrained to admit that 'he had faults, and great ones;' still, as 'he was always the first himself to confess and deplore them,' they did not undo 'the noble sincerity of his character' (238). But is it really true that Mohammed was so ready to confess his faults? Let us put the assertion to the test of facts. David committed adultery. Mohammed also committed adultery. For his favourite wife Aisha boldly accused him thus, 'O Apostle of God, thou hast paid Zeinab a (conjugal) visit, without asking her in marriage, and without witnesses.' The 'penitential Psalms' still witness to the profound and poignant repentance with which David confessed and condemned his sin, and thus mentally separated himself from it. But Mohammed, far from confessing and condemning, rather tried to palliate and justify his adultery, by pretending 'the giver in marriage was God, and the witness Gabriel.'

The theory of men like Messrs. Smith and Carlyle respecting Mohammed as 'a very prophet of God' or 'a hero-prophet,' and respecting Islamism as a genuine twin-sister of Christianity, remains very far indeed from being proved by the self-contradictory statements, the half-truths and unhistorical assertions with which these Lectures abound. But even if it rested on a better foundation, what would be its practical utility, seeing that it could only tend to prolong the domination over Asia and Africa of religions which these authors themselves cannot help admitting to be vastly inferior to Christianity. If 'the poor have the gospel preached to them' (Matt. xi. 5), neither the best nor the worst parts of Asia and Africa can be beyond the limit of its applicability. Mr. Bosworth Smith, in an article published in the December number 1887 of The Nineteenth Century, still affirms (p. 807) that he has 'as yet seen no good reason to depart from the spirit and object' with which he discussed the 'great kindred religion' in the afore-mentioned Lectures. At the same time, he also avows (p. 792) that he would now think certain 'modifications and explanations' of his earlier views 'essential;' and he does not disguise that he has made great progress in his estimation of the relative position of the two religions, by concluding his article in these far more judicious words, 'If we are able to believe in God at all, we must also believe that the ultimate triumph of Christianity is not problematical but certain, and in His good time, across the lapse of ages, will prove to be not local but universal, not partial but complete, not evanescent but eternal.
SEC. I.] GOD NOT THE AUTHOR OF SIN AND EVIL. 455

God, we must admit that sin is not the free product of His will, nor enjoys His loving approbation. There is a sense in which it must be fearlessly affirmed that all sin and its consequent evil exist in spite of God and contrary to His will. Ethically opposite forces flow from ethically opposite sources. Much seed is scattered on God's field, to spring up and yield a bitter, baneful fruit, respecting which it must be sorrowfully confessed, 'An enemy hath done this' (Matt. xiii. 28). The harvest is not benefited by confounding weeds with wheat. Harmony is not enhanced by a premature recourse to synthesis, before due scope has been given to discriminating analysis. God is not honoured by attributing to His causation what He only overrules, in working out His sovereign designs. God is greater in permitting the exercise of free action, even if opposed to His own will, and in yet finally accomplishing His purpose, than if He were to exercise His sovereignty to the extent of rendering every counter-current impossible, and monopolising the whole channel of history by the unchecked flow of His own volition. Man could not have been the crown and masterpiece of God's workmanship, if he had not been made a free agent, able to determine himself for good. But the capacity of becoming voluntarily good, necessitates the possibility of becoming what is not good. Had it been physically impossible for man to become evil, his goodness could never have been really voluntary, i.e. no ethical goodness at all. Now if ethically constituted man, instead of realising the good on whose account he has been created a free agent, realises the evil which had only been made possible for him in order that he might be able to become good by his own free will, he abuses his liberty and acts contrary to the intention of his Creator. By means of a God-given faculty he actually offends God and contravenes His will.

So little can the moral responsibility for the actuality of sin and evil rest with God. It must be traced to a being opposed to God and hostile to man, as the Bible traces it. No great acuteness is required to perceive that antagonistic forces are at work throughout the world. As everywhere around us our eyes are met by the opposites of life and death, light and darkness, good and evil, so likewise the