code for competition with the morality of revealed religion. But the parallel, which, as an argument in the hands of infidelity, amounts to less than nothing, possesses a very different value as a link in the great chain of providential coincidences, which connects together the original covenants of Jehovah with Isaac and Ishmael as fulfilled in the history of their descendants. Thus, when we compare, on the principle of comparison laid down in these pages, the religion of Mahomet, and the Mosaic and Christian revelations, with reference to the analogy between their respective moral codes, the agreements and disagreements will be found such precisely as they ought to be the best features of Mahometanism, in its moral sanctions, falling immeasurably beneath the pure and perfect standard of the Gospel; while, in its worst, it still has parallels and precedents, both in heretical corruptions of Christianity, and in the carnal ordinances of the Jewish law. Its palpable plagiarisms, and its undesigned coincidences, by a rare concurrence, unite together to augment the proof of its providential place and origin each mark, whether of unpremeditated resemblance, or of studied imitation, (the common patriarchal origin of the founders being always held in view,) standing as a fresh evidence

of the providential connection of Mahometanism with the Law and Gospel: while the moral analogy on the whole, in its actual nature and amount, presents a lively image of the proximity and the distance which characterized the natural relation to which it has been traced, the affinity, I mean, between the legitimate and the spurious seed of Abraham.

Instead, therefore, of indulging in the indiscriminative censures with which we have been too long familiar, in the conduct of this controversy, I would invite my readers to try the morality of Mahometanism by a reasonable and equitable standard, Instead of heaping condemnation on this spurious offspring of the Law and Gospel, because it stands no higher in its moral code, the analysis here proposed may lead us to discover, that the religion of Mahomet, in point of morals, stands accurately at the height, and in the position, becoming it, as, at once, a corruption of Judaism and an antichristian heresy. And, indeed, the amount of the moral parallel, when the relative position of Mahometanism is fairly taken into account, can hardly fail to strengthen, in reflecting minds, the idea of a strictly providential connection between two systems, thus related, and thus opposed.

In the present section we purpose to trace the Mahometan scheme of faith and morals to its primitive sources, in the law of Moses, the Gospel, the traditions of the Talmudists and Rabbins, and the doctrines of the ancient heretics. The object, of course, will be merely to indicate the connection, by select examples; it would be superfluous to carry the comparison further. But, as the Gospel revelation rests upon principles, and proposes motives of life and action, not merely above the reach of Mahometanism, but beyond the contemplation of the Mosaic law, it will be our first duty, reverently to separate from the proposed parallel, those distinctive features of Christianity, with which, neither the true revelation which preceded, nor the spurious one which followed it, claim to stand in comparison at all.

Contemplated in the only just view, as the perfect and final revelation of the will of God to man, the supremacy of Christianity plainly consists in its character as a religion of grace and power, as a system of divine influences generating in the human heart those pure principles, and holy affections, which alone can raise us to the practice enjoined by its pure and holy law. The very perfection of the Gospel precepts supposes the constant operation of this

divinely-imparted strength; without which, those precepts must become null and void, and by which, alone, as universal experience proves, they can be rendered practicable. Hence the high standard proposed by our Lord in his heavenly teaching, when he penetrates to the secret springs of human action, and addresses his precepts and his prohibitions to the hidden workings of the mind and heart: hence those exhortations, with which the Gospel everywhere abounds, to inward, no less than outward purity; to meekness and humility of mind, charity, forgiveness of injuries, love of our enemies, and so many other virtues, which, until then, had been barely imagined among men, and imagined only to be accounted unattainable.

any

When we view it in this, its true distinctive aspect, the Gospel of Christ holds up to mankind a standard of attainment, which leaves no room for comparison with the moral standard of · other faith. Let the religion of Mahomet, for example, be brought into contact with Christianity on this ground, and all traces of a moral parallel are gone. In all the higher Christian graces, Mahometanism, as must be anticipated, is found wanting altogether: but, in affirming this irrefragable truth, let it, at the same time, be observed and remembered, that,

in all these particulars, the Gospel is contradistinguished not only from the Mahometan, but also from the Mosaic law. In one sense, indeed, as the repository of the patriarchal faith, which concealed within it the elements of better things to come, and the seeds of an anticipated Gospel, the spirit of Hebrew piety, as expressed in the writings of the prophets, and the lives of individual Jewish worthies, confessedly and triumphantly arose above the mere letter of the law of Moses. Still, however, the letter of this law constituted the ostensible character and sanction of the Jews' religion; whence it has come to pass that Mahometanism, (the too faithful image and reflection of the defects of Judaism,) while in comparison with the spirit of the Gospel precepts it altogether fails, will, when compared with the rule of practice tolerated under the Mosaic dispensation, be found, in many particulars, to bear a certain analogy and proportion to this rule.

This literal correspondence between the laws of Moses and Mahomet, in their respective moral codes, it must now be our part to elucidate, by comparison of the Jewish and Mahometan. laws of marriage, divorce, and concubinage; the penalties of adultery, and fornication; the rules of retaliation, and avenging of blood; the