The one must in nowise be done, the
other in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them; they are
incommensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, the other is life
eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this
God's-world to a dead brute Steam-engine, the infinite celestial Soul of
Man to a kind of Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles on, pleasures
and pains on:--if you ask me which gives, Mohammed or they, the
beggarlier and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I
will answer, It is not Mohammed!--
On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Mohammed's is a kind
of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest
looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The
Scandinavian God _Wish_, the god of all rude men,--this has been
enlarged into a Heaven by Mohammed; but a Heaven symbolical of sacred
Duty, and to be earned by faith and well-doing, by valiant action, and a
divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian
Paganism, and a truly celestial element super-added to that. Call it not
false; look not at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For
these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of
the fifth part of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has
been a religion heartily _believed_. These Arabs believe their religion,
and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early ages, or only
perhaps the English Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their
Faith as the Moslem do by theirs,--believing it wholly, fronting Time
with it, and Eternity with it.
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