ceremonial, as well as
doctrinal and didactic, is embodied with every particularity of detail,
as part of the divine law, in the Koran; and so defying, as sacrilege,
all human touch, it stands unalterable forever. From the stiff and rigid
shroud in which it is thus swathed the religion of Mohammed cannot
emerge. It has no plastic power beyond that exercised in its earliest
days. Hardened now and inelastic, it can neither adapt itself nor yet
shape its votaries, nor even suffer them to shape themselves to the
varying circumstances, the wants and developments, of mankind.

[Sidenote: Local ceremonies: pilgrimage.
Fast of Ramzan.]
We may judge of the local and inflexible character of the faith from one
or two of its ceremonies. To perform the pilgrimage to Mecca and Mount
Arafat, with the slaying of victims at Mina, and the worship of the
Kaaba, is an ordinance obligatory (with the condition only that they
have the means) on all believers, who are bound to make the journey even
from the furthest ends of the earth--an ordinance intelligible enough in
a local worship, but unmeaning and impracticable when required of a
world-wide religion. The same may be said of the fast of Ramzan. It is
prescribed in the Koran to be observed by all with undeviating
strictness during the whole day, from earliest dawn till sunset
throughout the month, with specified exemptions for the sick and
penalties for every occasion on which it is broken. The command, imposed
thus with an iron rule on male and female, young and old, operates with
excessive inequality in different seasons, lands, and climates. However
suitable to countries near the equator, where the variations of day and
night are immaterial, the fast becomes intolerable to those who are far
removed either toward the north or the south; and still closer to the
poles, where night merges into day and day into night, impracticable.
Again, with the lunar year (itself an institution divinely imposed), the
month of Ramzan travels in the third of a century from month to month
over the whole cycle of a year. The fast was established at a time when
Ramzan fell in winter, and the change of season was probably not
foreseen by the Prophet. But the result is one which, under some
conditions of time and place, involves the greatest hardship. For when
the fast comes round to summer the trial in a sultry climate, like that
of the burning Indian plains, of passing the whole day without a morsel
of brea