developed out of it. The Mollusks are more complex and so are higher than
the Radiata, the Vertebrata are more complex than the Mollusks. Man is the
most complex of all, in soul as well as body. The complex idea of God,
including will, thought, and love, in the perfect unity, is higher than
the simplistic unity of will which Mohammed teaches. But the higher ought
to come out of and conquer the lower. How, then, did Mohammedanism come
out of Christianity and Judaism?

The explanation is to be found in the law of reaction and relapse.
Reaction is going back to a lower ground, to pick up something which has
been dropped, forgotten, left behind, in the progress of man. The
condition of progress is that nothing shall be lost. The lower truth must
be preserved in the higher truth; the lower life taken up into the higher
life. Now Christianity, in going forward, had accepted from the
Indo-Germanic races that sense of God in nature, as well as God above
nature, which has always been native with those races. It took up natural
religion into monotheism. But in taking it up, it went so far as to lose
something of the true unity of God. Its doctrine of the Trinity, at least
in its Oriental forms, lost the pure personal monotheism of Judaism. No
doubt the doctrine of the Trinity embodies a great truth, but it has been
carried too far. So Mohammedanism came, as a protest against this tendency
to plurality in the godhead, as a demand for a purely personal God It is
the Unitarianism of the East. It was a new assertion of the simple unity
of God, against polytheism and against idolatry.

The merits and demerits, the good and evil, of Mohammedanism are to be
found in this, its central idea concerning God. It has taught submission,
obedience, patience; but it has fostered a wilful individualism. It has
made social life lower. Its governments are not governments. Its virtues
are stoical. It makes life barren and empty. It encourages a savage pride
and cruelty. It makes men tyrants or slaves, women puppets, religion the
submission to an infinite despotism. Time is that it came to an end. Its
work is done. It is a hard, cold, cruel, empty faith, which should give
way to the purer forms of a higher civilization.

No doubt, Mohammedanism was needed when it came, and has done good service
in its time. But its time is almost passed. In Europe it is an anachronism
and an anomaly, depending for its daily existence on the support received
from Chr