th contempt on the
ministers and the slaves of superstition. II. The voluntary penance
of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their lives, was odious to
a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow of abstaining from
flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared, that he would suffer
no monks in his religion. Yet he instituted, in each year, a fast of
thirty days; and strenuously recommended the observance as a discipline
which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary exercise
of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During the month
of Ramadan, from the rising to the setting of the sun, the Mussulman
abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and baths, and perfumes;
from all nourishment that can restore his strength, from all pleasure
that can gratify his senses. In the revolution of the lunar year, the
Ramadan coincides, by turns, with the winter cold and the summer heat;
and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst with a drop
of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The
interdiction of wine, peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits,
is converted by Mahomet alone into a positive and general law; and a
considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command, the use
of that salutary, though dangerous, liquor. These painful restraints
are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine, and eluded by the hypocrite;
but the legislator, by whom they are enacted, cannot surely be accused
of alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual appetites.
III. The charity of the Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and
the Koran repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and
indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mahomet,
perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of
charity: the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property,
as it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or
merchandise; but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law, unless he
bestows a _tenth_ of his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him
of fraud or extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is
enlarged to a _fifth_. Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since
we are forbid to injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may
reveal the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts
he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

The two articles of b