Books: History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

J >> John William Draper >> History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

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The monks of this convent soon found that their young visitor,
Halibi or Mohammed, was the nephew of the guardian of the Caaba,
the sacred temple of the Arabs. One of them, by name Bahira,
spared no pains to secure his conversion from the idolatry in
which he had been brought up. He found the boy not only
precociously intelligent, but eagerly desirous of information,
especially on matters relating to religion.

In Mohammed's own country the chief object of Meccan worship was
a black meteoric stone, kept in the Caaba, with three hundred and
sixty subordinate idols, representing the days of the year, as
the year was then counted.

At this time, as we have seen, the Christian Church, through the
ambition and wickedness of its clergy, had been brought into a
condition of anarchy. Councils had been held on various
pretenses, while the real motives were concealed. Too often they
were scenes of violence, bribery, corruption. In the West, such
were the temptations of riches, luxury, and power, presented by
the episcopates, that the election of a bishop was often
disgraced by frightful murders. In the East, in consequence of
the policy of the court of Constantinople, the Church had been
torn in pieces by contentions and schisms. Among a countless host
of disputants may be mentioned Arians, Basilidians,
Carpocratians, Collyridians, Eutychians, Gnostics, Jacobites,
Marcionites, Marionites, Nestorians, Sabellians, Valentinians. Of
these, the Marionites regarded the Trinity as consisting of God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Virgin Mary; the
Collyridians worshiped the Virgin as a divinity, offering her
sacrifices of cakes; the Nestorians, as we have seen, denied that
God had "a mother." They prided themselves on being the
inheritors, the possessors of the science of old Greece.

But, though they were irreconcilable in matters of faith, there
was one point in which all these sects agreed --ferocious hatred
and persecution of each other. Arabia, an unconquered land of
liberty, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Desert of Syria,
gave them all, as the tide of fortune successively turned, a
refuge. It had been so from the old times. Thither, after the
Roman conquest of Palestine, vast numbers of Jews escaped;
thither, immediately after his conversion, St. Paul tells the
Galatians that he retired. The deserts were now filled with
Christian anchorites, and among the chief tribes of the Arabs
many proselytes had been made. Here and there churches had been
built. The Christian princes of Abyssinia, who were Nestorians,
held the southern province of Arabia--Yemen--in possession.

By the monk Bahira, in the convent at Bozrah, Mohammed was taught
the tenets of the Nestorians; from them the young Arab learned
the story of their persecutions. It was these interviews which
engendered in him a hatred of the idolatrous practices of the
Eastern Church, and indeed of all idolatry; that taught him, in
his wonderful career, never to speak of Jesus as the Son of God,
but always as "Jesus, the son of Mary." His untutored but active
mind could not fail to be profoundly impressed not only with the
religious but also with the philosophical ideas of his
instructors, who gloried in being the living representatives of
Aristotelian science. His subsequent career shows how completely
their religious thoughts had taken possession of him, and
repeated acts manifest his affectionate regard for them. His own
life was devoted to the expansion and extension of their
theological doctrine, and, that once effectually established, his
successors energetically adopted and diffused their scientific,
their Aristotelian opinions.

As Mohammed grew to manhood, he made other expeditions to Syria.
Perhaps, we may suppose, that on these occasions the convent and
its hospitable in mates were not forgotten. He had a mysterious
reverence for that country. A wealthy Meccan widow Chadizah, had
intrusted him with the care of her Syrian trade. She was charmed
with his capacity and fidelity, and (since he is said to have
been characterized by the possession of singular manly beauty and
a most courteous demeanor) charmed with his person. The female
heart in all ages and countries is the same. She caused a slave
to intimate to him what was passing in her mind, and, for the
remaining twenty-four years of her life, Mohammed was her
faithful husband. In a land of polygamy, he never insulted her by
the presence of a rival. Many years subsequently, in the height
of his power, Ayesha, who was one of the most beautiful women in
Arabia, said to him: "Was she not old? Did not God give you in me
a better wife in her place?" "No, by God!" exclaimed Mohammed,
and with a burst of honest gratitude, "there never can be a
better. She believed in me when men despised me, she relieved me
when I was poor and persecuted by the world."

His marriage with Chadizah placed him in circumstances of ease,
and gave him an opportunity of indulging his inclination to
religious meditation. It so happened that her cousin Waraka, who
was a Jew, had turned Christian. He was the first to translate
the Bible into Arabic. By his conversation Mohammed's detestation
of idolatry was confirmed.

After the example of the Christian anchorites in their hermitages
in the desert, Mohammed retired to a grotto in Mount Hera, a few
miles from Mecca, giving himself up to meditation and prayer. In
this seclusion, contemplating the awful attributes of the
Omnipotent and Eternal God, he addressed to his conscience the
solemn inquiry, whether he could adopt the dogmas then held in
Asiatic Christendom respecting the Trinity, the sonship of Jesus
as begotten by the Almighty, the character of Mary as at once a
virgin, a mother, and the queen of heaven, without incurring the
guilt and the peril of blasphemy.

By his solitary meditations in the grotto Mohammed was drawn to
the conclusion that, through the cloud of dogmas and disputations
around him, one great truth might be discerned--the unity of God.
Leaning against the stem of a palm-tree, he unfolded his views on
this subject to his neighbors and friends, and announced to them
that he should dedicate his life to the preaching of that truth.
Again and again, in his sermons and in the Koran, he declared: "I
am nothing but a public preacher.... I preach the oneness of
God." Such was his own conception of his so-called apostleship.
Henceforth, to the day of his death, he wore on his finger a
seal-ring on which was engraved, "Mohammed, the messenger of
God."

VICTORIES OF MOHAMMED. It is well known among physicians that
prolonged fasting and mental anxiety inevitably give rise to
hallucination. Perhaps there never has been any religious system
introduced by self-denying, earnest men that did not offer
examples of supernatural temptations and supernatural commands.
Mysterious voices encouraged the Arabian preacher to persist in
his determination; shadows of strange forms passed before him. He
heard sounds in the air like those of a distant bell. In a
nocturnal dream he was carried by Gabriel from Mecca to
Jerusalem, and thence in succession through the six heavens. Into
the seventh the angel feared to intrude and Mohammed alone passed
into the dread cloud that forever enshrouds the Almighty. "A
shiver thrilled his heart as he felt upon his shoulder the touch
of the cold hand of God."

His public ministrations met with much resistance and little
success at first. Expelled from Mecca by the upholders of the
prevalent idolatry, he sought refuge in Medina, a town in which
there were many Jews and Nestorians; the latter at once became
proselytes to his faith. He had already been compelled to send
his daughter and others of his disciples to Abyssinia, the king
of which was a Nestorian Christian. At the end of six years he
had made only fifteen hundred converts. But in three little
skirmishes, magnified in subsequent times by the designation of
the battles of Beder, of Ohud, and of the Nations, Mohammed
discovered that his most convincing argument was his sword.
Afterward, with Oriental eloquence, he said, "Paradise will be
found in the shadow of the crossing of swords." By a series of
well-conducted military operations, his enemies were completely
overthrown. Arabian idolatry was absolutely exterminated; the
doctrine he proclaimed, that "there is but one God," was
universally adopted by his countrymen, and his own apostleship
accepted

DEATH OF MOHAMMED. Let us pass over his stormy life, and hear
what he says when, on the pinnacle of earthly power and glory, he
was approaching its close.

Steadfast in his declaration of the unity of God, he departed
from Medina on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, at the head of one
hundred and fourteen thousand devotees, with camels decorated
with garlands of flowers and fluttering streamers. When he
approached the holy city, he uttered the solemn invocation: "Here
am I in thy service, O God! Thou hast no companion. To thee alone
belongeth worship. Thine alone is the kingdom. There is none to
share it with thee."

With his own hand he offered up the camels in sacrifice. He
considered that primeval institution to be equally sacred as
prayer, and that no reason can be alleged in support of the one
which is not equally strong in support of the other.

From the pulpit of the Caaba he reiterated, "O my hearers, I am
only a man like yourselves." They remembered that he had once
said to one who approached him with timid steps: "Of what dost
thou stand in awe? I am no king. I am nothing but the son of an
Arab woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun."

He returned to Medina to die. In his farewell to his
congregation, he said: "Every thing happens according to the will
of God, and has its appointed time, which can neither be hastened
nor avoided. I return to him who sent me, and my last command to
you is, that ye love, honor, and uphold each other, that ye
exhort each other to faith and constancy in belief, and to the
performance of pious deeds. My life has been for your good, and
so will be my death."

In his dying agony, his head was reclined on the lap of Ayesha.
From time to time he had dipped his hand in a vase of water, and
moistened his face. At last he ceased, and, gazing steadfastly
upward, said, in broken accents: "O God--forgive my sins--be it
so. I come."

Shall we speak of this man with disrespect? His precepts are, at
this day, the religious guide of one- third of the human race.

DOCTRINES OF MOHAMMED. In Mohammed, who had already broken away
from the ancient idolatrous worship of his native country,
preparation had been made for the rejection of those tenets which
his Nestorian teachers had communicated to him, inconsistent with
reason and conscience. And, though, in the first pages of the
Koran, he declares his belief in what was delivered to Moses and
Jesus, and his reverence for them personally, his veneration for
the Almighty is perpetually displayed. He is horror-stricken at
the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, the Worship of Mary as the
mother of God, the adoration of images and paintings, in his eyes
a base idolatry. He absolutely rejects the Trinity, of which he
seems to have entertained the idea that it could not be
interpreted otherwise than as presenting three distinct Gods.

His first and ruling idea was simply religious reform--to
overthrow Arabian idolatry, and put an end to the wild
sectarianism of Christianity. That he proposed to set up a new
religion was a calumny invented against him in Constantinople,
where he was looked upon with detestation, like that with which
in after ages Luther was regarded in Rome.

But, though he rejected with indignation whatever might seem to
disparage the doctrine of the unity of God, he was not able to
emancipate himself from anthropomorphic conceptions. The God of
the Koran is altogether human, both corporeally and mentally, if
such expressions may with propriety be used. Very soon, however,
the followers of Mohammed divested themselves of these base ideas
and rose to nobler ones.

The view here presented of the primitive character of
Mohammedanism has long been adopted by many competent
authorities. Sir William Jones, following Locke, regards the main
point in the divergence of Mohammedanism from Christianity to
consist "in denying vehemently the character of our Savior as the
Son, and his equality as God with the Father, of whose unity and
attributes the Mohammedans entertain and express the most awful
ideas." This opinion has been largely entertained in Italy. Dante
regarded Mohammed only as the author of a schism, and saw in
Islamism only an Arian sect. In England, Whately views it as a
corruption of Christianity. It was an offshoot of Nestorianism,
and not until it had overthrown Greek Christianity in many great
battles, was spreading rapidly over Asia and Africa, and had
become intoxicated with its wonderful successes, did it repudiate
its primitive limited intentions, and assert itself to be founded
on a separate and distinct revelation.

THE FIRST KHALIF. Mohammed's life had been almost entirely
consumed in the conversion or conquest of his native country.
Toward its close, however, he felt himself strong enough to
threaten the invasion of Syria and Persia. He had made no
provision for the perpetuation of his own dominion, and hence it
was not without a struggle that a successor was appointed. At
length Abubeker, the father of Ayesha, was selected. He was
proclaimed the first khalif, or successor of the Prophet.

There is a very important difference between the spread of
Mohammedanism and the spread of Christianity. The latter was
never sufficiently strong to over throw and extirpate idolatry in
the Roman Empire. As it advanced, there was an amalgamation, a
union. The old forms of the one were vivified by the new spirit
of the other, and that paganization to which reference has
already been made was the result.

THE MOHAMMEDAN HEAVEN. But, in Arabia, Mohammed overthrew and
absolutely annihilated the old idolatry. No trace of it is found
in the doctrines preached by him and his successors. The black
stone that had fallen from heaven--the meteorite of the
Caaba--and its encircling idols, passed totally out of view. The
essential dogma of the new faith--"There is but one God"--spread
without any adulteration. Military successes had, in a worldly
sense made the religion of the Koran profitable; and, no matter
what dogmas may be, when that is the case, there will be plenty
of converts.

As to the popular doctrines of Mohammedanism, I shall here have
nothing to say. The reader who is interested in that matter will
find an account of them in a review of the Koran in the eleventh
chapter of my "History of the Intellectual Development of
Europe." It is enough now to remark that their heaven was
arranged in seven stories, and was only a palace of Oriental
carnal delight. It was filled with black-eyed concubines and
servants. The form of God was, perhaps, more awful than that of
paganized Christianity. Anthropomorphism will, however, never be
obliterated from the ideas of the unintellectual. Their God, at
the best, will never be any thing more than the gigantic shadow
of a man--a vast phantom of humanity-- like one of those Alpine
spectres seen in the midst of the clouds by him who turns his
back on the sun.

Abubeker had scarcely seated himself in the khalifate, when he
put forth the following proclamation:

In the name of the most merciful God! Abubeker to the rest of the
true believers, health and happiness. The mercy and blessing of
God be upon you. I praise the most high God. I pray for his
prophet Mohammed.

INVASION OF SYRIA. "This is to inform you that I intend to send
the true believers into Syria, to take it out of the hands of the
infidels. And I would have you know that the fighting for
religion is an act of obedience to God."

On the first encounter, Khaled, the Saracen general, hard
pressed, lifted up his hands in the midst of his army and said:
"O God! these vile wretches pray with idolatrous expressions and
take to themselves another God besides thee, but we acknowledge
thy unity and affirm that there is no other God but thee alone.
Help us, we beseech thee, for the sake of thy prophet Mohammed,
against these idolaters." On the part of the Saracens the
conquest of Syria was conducted with ferocious piety. The belief
of the Syrian Christians aroused in their antagonists sentiments
of horror and indignation. "I will cleave the skull of any
blaspheming idolater who says that the Most Holy God, the
Almighty and Eternal, has begotten a son." The Khalif Omar, who
took Jerusalem, commences a letter to Heraclius, the Roman
emperor: "In the name of the most merciful God! Praise be to God,
the Lord of this and of the other world, who has neither female
consort nor son." The Saracens nicknamed the Christians
"Associators," because they joined Mary and Jesus as partners
with the Almighty and Most Holy God.

It was not the intention of the khalif to command his army; that
duty was devolved on Abou Obeidah nominally, on Khaled in
reality. In a parting review the khalif enjoined on his troops
justice, mercy, and the observance of fidelity in their
engagements he commanded them to abstain from all frivolous
conversation and from wine, and rigorously to observe the hours
of prayer; to be kind to the common people among whom they
passed, but to show no mercy to their priests.

FALL OF BOZRAH. Eastward of the river Jordan is Bozrah, a strong
town where Mohammed had first met his Nestorian Christian
instructors. It was one of the Roman forts with which the country
was dotted over. Before this place the Saracen army encamped. The
garrison was strong, the ramparts were covered with holy crosses
and consecrated banners. It might have made a long defense. But
its governor, Romanus, betrayed his trust, and stealthily opened
its gates to the besiegers. His conduct shows to what a
deplorable condition the population of Syria had come. After the
surrender, in a speech he made to the people he had betrayed, he
said: "I renounce your society, both in this world and that to
come. And I deny him that was crucified, and whosoever worships
him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam for my faith, Mecca for
my temple, the Moslems for my brethren, Mohammed for my prophet,
who was sent to lead us in the right way, and to exalt the true
religion in spite of those who join partners with God." Since the
Persian invasion, Asia Minor, Syria, and even Palestine, were
full of traitors and apostates, ready to join the Saracens.
Romanus was but one of many thousands who had fallen into
disbelief through the victories of the Persians.

FALL OF DAMASCUS. From Bozrah it was only seventy miles northward
to Damascus, the capital of Syria. Thither, without delay, the
Saracen army marched. The city was at once summoned to take its
option--conversion, tribute, or the sword. In his palace at
Antioch, barely one hundred and fifty miles still farther north,
the Emperor Heraclius received tidings of the alarming advance of
his assailants. He at once dispatched an army of seventy thousand
men. The Saracens were compelled to raise the siege. A battle
took place in the plains of Aiznadin, the Roman army was
overthrown and dispersed. Khaled reappeared before Damascus with
his standard of the black eagle, and after a renewed investment
of seventy days Damascus surrendered.

From the Arabian historians of these events we may gather that
thus far the Saracen armies were little better than a fanatic
mob. Many of the men fought naked. It was not unusual for a
warrior to stand forth in front and challenge an antagonist to
mortal duel. Nay, more, even the women engaged in the combats.
Picturesque narratives have been handed down to us relating the
gallant manner in which they acquitted themselves.

FALL OF JERUSALEM. From Damascus the Saracen army advanced
northward, guided by the snow-clad peaks of Libanus and the
beautiful river Orontes. It captured on its way Baalbec, the
capital of the Syrian valley, and Emesa, the chief city of the
eastern plain. To resist its further progress, Heraclius
collected an army of one hundred and forty thousand men. A battle
took place at Yermuck; the right wing of the Saracens was broken,
but the soldiers were driven back to the field by the fanatic
expostulations of their women. The conflict ended in the complete
overthrow of the Roman army. Forty thousand were taken prisoners,
and a vast number killed. The whole country now lay open to the
victors. The advance of their army had been east of the Jordan.
It was clear that, before Asia Minor could be touched, the strong
and important cities of Palestine, which was now in their rear,
must be secured. There was a difference of opinion among the
generals in the field as to whether Caesarea or Jerusalem should
be assailed first. The matter was referred to the khalif, who,
rightly preferring the moral advantages of the capture of
Jerusalem to the military advantages of the capture of Caesarea,
ordered the Holy City to be taken, and that at any cost. Close
siege was therefore laid to it. The inhabitants, remembering the
atrocities inflicted by the Persians, and the indignities that
had been offered to the Savior's sepulchre, prepared now for a
vigorous defense. But, after an investment of four months, the
Patriarch Sophronius appeared on the wall, asking terms of
capitulation. There had been misunderstandings among the generals
at the capture of Damascus, followed by a massacre of the fleeing
inhabitants. Sophronius, therefore, stipulated that the surrender
of Jerusalem should take place in presence of the khalif himself
Accordingly, Omar, the khalif, came from Medina for that purpose.
He journeyed on a red camel, carrying a bag of corn and one of
dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern water-bottle. The Arab
conqueror entered the Holy City riding by the side of the
Christian patriarch and the transference of the capital of
Christianity to the representative of Mohammedanism was effected
without tumult or outrage. Having ordered that a mosque should be
built on the site of the temple of Solomon, the khalif returned
to the tomb of the Prophet at Medina.

Heraclius saw plainly that the disasters which were fast settling
on Christianity were due to the dissensions of its conflicting
sects; and hence, while he endeavored to defend the empire with
his armies, he sedulously tried to compose those differences.
With this view he pressed for acceptance the Monothelite doctrine
of the nature of Christ. But it was now too late. Aleppo and
Antioch were taken. Nothing could prevent the Saracens from
overrunning Asia Minor. Heraclius himself had to seek safety in
flight. Syria, which had been added by Pompey the Great, the
rival of Caesar, to the provinces of Rome, seven hundred years
previously-- Syria, the birthplace of Christianity, the scene of
its most sacred and precious souvenirs, the land from which
Heraclius himself had once expelled the Persian intruder--was
irretrievably lost. Apostates and traitors had wrought this
calamity. We are told that, as the ship which bore him to
Constantinople parted from the shore, Heraclius gazed intently on
the receding hills, and in the bitterness of anguish exclaimed,
"Farewell, Syria, forever farewell!"

It is needless to dwell on the remaining details of the Saracen
conquest: how Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed; how Caesarea was
captured; how with the trees of Libanus and the sailors of
Phoenicia a Saraeen fleet was equipped, which drove the Roman
navy into the Hellespont; how Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades,
were ravaged, and the Colossus, which was counted as one of the
wonders of the world, sold to a Jew, who loaded nine hundred
camels with its brass; how the armies of the khalif advanced to
the Black Sea, and even lay in front of Constantinople--all this
was as nothing after the fall of Jerusalem.

OVERTHROW OF THE PERSIANS. The fall of Jerusalem! the loss of the
metropolis of Christianity! In the ideas of that age the two
antagonistic forms of faith had submitted themselves to the
ordeal of the judgment of God. Victory had awarded the prize of
battle, Jerusalem, to the Mohammedan; and, notwithstanding the
temporary successes of the Crusaders, after much more than a
thousand years in his hands it remains to this day. The Byzantine
historians are not without excuse for the course they are
condemned for taking: "They have wholly neglected the great topic
of the ruin of the Eastern Church." And as for the Western
Church, even the debased popes of the middle ages--the ages of
the Crusades--could not see without indignation that they were
compelled to rest the claims of Rome as the metropolis of
Christendom on a false legendary story of a visit of St. Peter to
that city; while the true metropolis, the grand, the sacred place
of the birth, the life, the death of Christ himself, was in the
hands of the infidels! It has not been the Byzantine historians
alone who have tried to conceal this great catastrophe. The
Christian writers of Europe on all manner of subjects, whether of
history, religion, or science, have followed a similar course
against their conquering antagonists. It has been their constant
practice to hide what they could not depreciate, and depreciate
what they could not hide.

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