Christianity and Islam | Page 2

expounded. The aspirations of mankind attribute to him such words of the New Testament and of Greek philosophers as were especially popular or seemed worthy of Muhammed; the teaching also of the new ecclesiastical schools was invariably expressed in the form of proverbial utterances attributed to Muhammed, and these are now without exception regarded as authentic by the modern Moslem. In this way opinions often contradictory are covered by Muhummed's authority.
The traditions concerning Jesus offer an analogy. Our Gospels, for instance, relate the beautiful story of the plucking of the ears of corn on the Sabbath, with its famous moral application, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." A Christian papyrus has been discovered which represents Jesus as explaining the sanctity of the Sabbath from the Judaeo-Christian point of view. "If ye keep not the Sabbath holy, ye shall not see the Father," is the statement in an uncanonical Gospel. In early Christian literature, contradictory sayings of Jesus are also to be found. Doubtless here, as in Muhammedan tradition, the problem originally was, what is to be my action in this or that question of practical life: answer is given in accordance with the religious attitude of the inquirer and Jesus and Muhammed are made to lend their authority to the teaching. Traditional literary form is then regarded as historical by later believers.
Examples of this kind might be multiplied, but enough has been said to show that much and, to some extent, new light may be thrown upon the development of Christian tradition, by an examination of Muhammedanism which rose from similar soil but a few centuries later, while its traditional developments have been much more completely preserved.
Such analogies as these can be found, however, in any of the world-religions, and we propose to devote our attention more particularly to the influences which Christianity and Islam exerted directly upon one another. While Muhammedanism has borrowed from its hereditary foe, it has also repaid part of the debt. By the very fact of its historical position Islam was at first indebted to Christianity; but in the department of Christian philosophy, it has also exerted its own influence. This influence cannot be compared with that of Greek or Jewish thought upon Christian speculation: Christian philosophy, as a metaphysical theory of existence, was however strongly influenced by Arabian thought before the outset of the Reformation. On the other hand the influence of Christianity upon Islam--and also upon Muhammed, though he owed more to Jewish thought--was so extensive that the coincidence of ideas upon the most important metaphysical questions is positively amazing.
There is a widespread belief even at the present day that Islam was a complete novelty and that the religion and culture of the Muhammedan world were wholly alien to Western medievalism. Such views are entirely false; during the Middle Ages Muhammedanism and Western culture were inspired by the same spirit. The fact has been obscured by the contrast between the two religions whose differences have been constantly exaggerated and by dissimilarities of language and nationality. To retrace in full detail the close connection which unites Christianity and Islam would be the work of years. Within the scope of the present volume, all that can be done is to explain the points of contact between Christian and Muhammedan theories of life and religion. Such is the object of the following pages. We shall first treat of Muhammed personally, because his rise as a religious force will explain the possibility of later developments.
This statement also explains the sense in which we shall use the term Christianity. Muhammedanism has no connection with post-Reformation Christianity and meets it only in the mission field. Practical questions there arise which lie beyond the limits of our subject, as we have already indicated. Our interests are concerned with the mediaeval Church, when Christianity first imposed its ideas upon Muhammedanism at the time of its rise in the East, and afterwards received a material extension of its own horizon through the rapid progress of its protégé. Our task is to analyse and explain these special relations between the two systems of thought.
The religion now known as Islam is as near to the preaching of Muhammed or as remote from it, as modern Catholicism or Protestant Christianity is at variance or in harmony with the teaching of Jesus. The simple beliefs of the prophet and his contemporaries are separated by a long course of development from the complicated religious system in its unity and diversity which Islam now presents to us. The course of this development was greatly influenced by Christianity, but Christian ideas had been operative upon Muhammed's eager intellectual life at an even earlier date. We must attempt to realise the working of his mind, if we are to gain a comprehension of the